Home»All Photographs»USA»2001»03 - Raleigh

I visited Raleigh, North Carolina, for a 3-day weekend in March. It was just a week after I got back from Toronto, Canada, where among other places, I had visited Algonquian National Park. It was cold, we were up to our knees in snow. This was a complete difference. I was a few hundred miles south and for a while, I was able to enjoy the Spring weather. It was also St Patrick's Day and the town celebrated most exuberantly, with a parade and lots of green-coloured beer. I may be able to post pictures for that one day.
The visit was thanks to an onsite interview I got with Zaiq Technologies. I got a job offer from them, but unfortunately I also got an acceptance from MIT a few days later, and I chose to go to MIT.
Zaiq was very nice. I flew in on Thursday night, and stayed at a hotel from Thursday till Saturday night. I was supposed to get a compact car from the rental agency, but they ran out and gave me a Ford Explorer SUV. What an experience driving one! I felt it was a nice car, but I missed the "lightness" of a smaller car. My interview was on Friday afternoon, I slept in the morning, and met them for lunch and stayed until around 6.30 pm. The part from 4.30 to 6.30 was really chilling out as they had some beer and played darts. Nice bunch of people. My only reservation was that Raleigh-Durham was not exactly the busiest place in the US, I was wondering if I would like to live there. Then again, there were lots of tech companies there.
Later that night I tried to look around downtown Raleigh but found it quite a dead place. There was an Italian restaurant open in the "cultural" area, but the place was quite devoid of nightlife, just a few places, it seemed. In contrast, the area next to my hotel seemed a lot more active, it was sort of one of those new strip mall developments next to a busy road.
I really did quite a bit of travelling and photographing - tried to look around the area. There was quite a bit of navigation using my laptop and the GPS, and I also got into some traffic jams. In a sense, it was one of those rarer occasions I was completely traveling alone - I didn't know anyone in the area though I did have some conversations with a Chinese mom who was trying to take pictures with her daughters at Duke.
Some other pictures that I may one day put up, are those from my visit to University of North Carolina, University of Virginia, and Duke University. (including the college town). What you do get here are some pictures of a new housing development at sunset, and the action at the Arena Motocross, which took place at one of their new indoor arenas. Duke was pretty. Spring had just kicked in and flowers were blooming.
I also visited the city center following the Parade, and checked out the musuem of natural history. It was free because of the St Patrick's Day holiday (it was very good!)
After this North Carolina tour, I went on a visit to Germany, and following that, I went to MIT for a very quick 24 hour visit to attend the TPP Open house. So my Spring 2001 was sort of odd. Sometime in the middle of that, I also remember driving a truck for SSA during Spring Carnival where they were building the "Kelong". I was at student at Carnegie Mellon but aside from my busy school work, I spent most of the weekends out of Pittsburgh.