The official beginning of another (and my final) semester at UC Berkeley coincided almost exactly with my 26th birthday, starting the day before - a Tuesday, since Monday was a public holiday (Martin Luther King day). I say the official beginning because, as an Master of Engineering student, our 'Engineering Leadership' course (i.e., the more MBA-esque portion of our program) began a week earlier, on the 13th of January.

My winter plans kept me rather busy (although not necessarily in the most productive sense). A flight back to London was followed by a flight to Enfidha, Tunisia and a short coach ride to the Hammamet Beach Resort. My sister, cousin and I were the youngest guests in the 'adult only' beach resort. Tunisia, being in the northern hemisphere, some distance from the equator and adjacent to the Mediterranean sea, was cool. As a beach resort, this rendered the main attraction of the hotel mostly uncomfortable, although still somewhat scenic.

We spent our energies instead on eating well and plenty (as our family holidays always tend to focus on, much to my horror). Taking advantage of the comfy beds, I decided to simultaneously avoid adjusting to the time zone (GMT + 1, 9 hours to the east of Berkeley) and to kick the caffeine habit I picked up in my first four months in America. This went moderately successfully for a few days, sleeping during the day and working a small amount at night. The cold I had picked up in Seattle (through my attempt to 'man up' and 'brave the weather') was on its way out and I was being moderately productive.

Eventually though, my self confidence overtook me and I decided to try one of the local beer bottles in the minifridge - included in our all-inclusive package. This was a foolish move and I quickly regretted it, as I spent half of the next day nautious and the rest of it with a temperate fever. Logical reasoning suggests that most guests were not all-inclusive and as such that bottle had been in the fridge for a very long time. While the contents may have been perfectly safe, it's unclear what unfortunate pathogens had taken up residence on its exterior.

I mostly recovered though, by the time the New Year's Eve celebrations rolled around. The hotel celebrations were predictably underwhelming (running at 40% occupancy, they had neither the guests nor the staff to throw a truly exciting party) but it was very pleasant to spent it with my parents, sister, cousin, aunt and uncle. A local Tunisian band took turns with the hotel activities coordinator and/or DJ to play music. Sadly, their music was less danceable (to the point where all the guests sat down) and they had somehow negotiated the right to play the slot leading up to and including the countdown. It was a very sedentary change of the year.

Later we hung out with some acquaintances of my sister's until the small hours of the morning. You know it's a small world when you run into a Dutch friend in Tunisia who you first met at a hot springs in New Zealand, in your summer holiday from university in Australia while back for Christmas in London. Aside from a potentially embarassing encounter with a belly dancer (avoided by grouping together and collectively bearing the embarassment of dancing with this terrifyingly woman), the hotel 'club' was notable. It was notable because of the installation of UV lights combined with unclean seats. I stood for the short time we spent there. (Interestingly, gin and tonics grow green under UV.)

Another flight back to London's Gatwick and 2014 had truly begun. Within the space of a week I met with approximately 40 odd friends and family, packed up my bike, computer and tried to avoid feeling too homesick. The reality of living away from home in somewhere that is as busy as Berkeley is that home is out of sight and truly out of mind - as there is minimal spare mental capacity. While I still am very happy with life in the Bay Area, being back home made me realise that there were elements of my 'old' life, in England, that hadn't made it with me to California. Most notably, family, but also just the comfort of the house I grew up in, the extent to which I knew parts of London extremely comprehensively and really, the hot chocolate in Europe which is so much better than here in California.

A lot had changed over the preceding few months, my little cousins had grown at least 10% each. At the same, much hadn't changed. Many of my university and school friends hadn't really changed too much. They may have gone on yet another interesting middle class holiday, picked up a new car, or become engaged to their long time girlfriends but otherwise, nothing really interesting had happened. Where's the adventure, friends? :)

My flight back to San Francisco was made wonderfully enjoyable again by the kind Virgin Atlantic staff. When my seat reservation was lost on check-in, I brought this up and they graciously offered me an exit row seat as compensation. I mentioned while doing so that I'd always wanted to sit in the economy cabin on the upper deck. Apparently the timing of this comment was just about right because two hours later, I was sitting in the exit row on the upper deck of a Boeing 747, chatting to a ballet director about his work and enjoying the 4 feet of leg room in front of me!

Landing in San Francisco, my experience collecting and moving my possessions was less intense than the first time I came to Berkeley - primarily because they fit on one trolley. Renting a car worked out cheaper than a taxi (and taking my luggage on the BART was not an option) and, feeling very American, I filled a Jeep Patriot with my luggage and drove into the traffic on the Bay Bridge.

The jetlag and tiredness from the week of running around London caught up to me the next week and combined with my hypothyroidism and newly implemented caffeine-free principle to make it a truly lethargic one. Eventually, I went to the doctor to get my thyroid levels checked. The test results came back 'OK' (although they checked just one level, how's that for a lack of comprehensiveness) but I took the opportunity to ask if it would be better to take my medication in the evening. The substitude physician at the Tang Center mentioned that there was no harm in doing so but she was not aware of any increased efficacy. Three words into Google later, I found two papers (2007 and 2010) suggesting a statistically significant benefit in doing so. Sigh.

The day after returning to Berkeley, I had the pleasure of interviewing at a startup whom I first contacted last semester and who told me to get back in touch with them in the new year. As soon as January rolled around, I sent them an email and they duly set up a first 'interview'. Being just 9 employees, they have a wonderful office which is a converted 'loft' - essentially a three story house in San Francisco where the bedrooms house engineers working, rather than sleeping. This went well and, mentioning my expiring offer, they quickly booked another interview. Sadly, the only day I had free from class happened to be my birthday.

The chronological boundaries of my birthday was somewhat blurred, as my sister wished me as it hit midnight in Australia (19 hours ahead of Berkeley) and then my cousin mistakenly wished me 'Happy Birthday' on Facebook. A few friends panicked and wished me a happy birthday by which time Facebook's News Feed algorithm had picked up that people were wishing me a happy birthday in volume and started advertising that fact to my other friends. This only accelerated the process.

On my birthday itself though, I woke up after just a few hours sleep (caused by work, not the onslaught of birthday notifications) and pedalled down to the BART station. At the roundabout or 'traffic circle' near our house, I narrowly avoided a rather ironic death on my birthday when a moronic driver decided that he wouldn't yield at the roundabout and took it at full speed (~ 40 mph). Thank god I'd readjusted my brakes the previous weekend else the roundabout would be bearing rather more visible marks of that encounter than just rubber on the road.

The final interview went badly, at first, and then better. My favourite portion was talking about Canadian folk rock bands with their UX designer - aren't startups cool? Lunch was a sampling of deli meats, cheese and some warm bread. This was pure class.

After a stressful session at the lab, where an important meeting we had been waiting for apparently materialised sooner than expected (and threatened to derail my evening plans). Thankfully, we were able to reschedule it and I wandered off downtown to have dinner with my two awesome flatmates at Saturn, a vegetarian restaurant, that services "chicken" burgers. Note the quotation marks.

Arriving home, a number of packages ordered by my parents were present - including an entire cookie cake which, sadly but deliciously, no longer exists.

On Friday, I had a rather excellent birthday party at the Albatross Pub, not far from the North Berkeley BART station. At first there were just three of us holding a large table to ourselves. Some more people soon arrived and then some more. Eventually we took over nearly the entirety of the back room of the bar and it was great fun catching up with everyone, albeit too brief. My friend Amy amusingly summarised it best when she said, 'I'm amazed that you have so many friends here.' I am too, and rather glad for it.

It was Wednesday in finals week and we had just held a brief meeting to wrap up our capstone project for the semester. Actually, it was less of a wrap-up meeting than a meeting to assign work for the winter break. I cycled down to the BART station, locked my bike and helmet up and ran to the platform where I waited for 9 minutes for the train to arrive.

The train was crowded, perhaps unusually so for 10am on a Wednesday morning but I guess tech employees start work late and it's basically the holidays (for the seemingly limited number of Americans who actually are allowed to take holidays). Eventually, some time after we're passed through most of downtown San Francisco, I managed to find a seat. Soon after I found the seat nearly everyone disembarked from the train. By nearly everyone, I meant everyone except for one other person in carriage who happened to be my neighbour.

Sitting side by side, it was just my neighbour and I occupying the mid section of the carriage for the remaining 30 minutes of the journey. Being the patriotic British person that I am, I refused to strike up any sort of conversation and instead took solace in the comforting glow of my Kindle Paperwhite.

Reaching the airport, and after de-shoeing and re-shoeing through security, I patronised a bagel store - bagels being my go-to robust and relatively inexpensive airport food. There were two counter incentives at play here. Amazon, who had invited me out to Seattle to interview, were providing reimbursement of up to $65 a day for 'meals'. However, operating at scale, they would take between 6-8 weeks to hit my account and I would initially have to bear the cost of the my expenses.

Settling on a meagre but no doubt calorie-dense bagel with cream cheese of an unorthodox runny texture, I sat next to a power socket and tried, almost in vain, to keep the smart but casual red jumper (or sweater) bought during the Black Friday sale from getting covered in this cream cheese as I ate. In the interim greater-than-half-an-hour there was until we started boarding, I took out my laptop and stared at the extra credit Advanced Robotics assignment. Having struggled with these assignments (as mentioned previously), I was just shy of the mark necessary to receive an A in the course. The extra credit would have taken me there but ultimately despair and post-semester apathy prevented me from writing a single line of Matlab.

Boarding the plane, I squeezed in between a large man to my left and a comparably svelte young woman to my right. The large man was more generous with his food than his stature might suggest, giving me his complementary airline nuts. As a student with a steadily declining bank balance, I accepted. The woman to my right must also have been a student who had just finished semester because we both dozed off at some point during takeoff, waking up with the sound of the beverage cart some time after our aircraft had reached cruising altitude.

Landing in Seattle's Tacoma International Airport was almost the same feeling as landing in London. The humidity, cold and rain was reminiscent of 8 out of 10 return journeys home after holidays abroad. The carpeted, heated airport was not unlike Heathrow. Seattle is significantly cleaner than San Francisco, the city to which I have become accustomed since moving to Berkeley (perhaps explained by a lower population). Certainly the Link Light Rail that services both downtown and the airport was clean, comfortable and affordable (at $2.75 for a single journey). These are terms I wouldn't afford the Bay Area Rapid Transport.

From the airport, I went straight to (one of) Amazon's offices to meet my friend Ryan - a fellow intern and eventual escapee from the-investment-bank-which-must-not-be-named. He joined Amazon after the omnipresent bureaucracy reared its ugly head at said bank and prevented him from working for their New York office.

Sadly, my timing was unfortunate. My rather dry accounting final along with my intention to at least try the extra-credit assignment had pushed my interview date back to the point where my stay in Seattle would barely overlap with Ryan before he flew home for the holidays. Generously, he was able to take some time out of his work day to show me around the Amazon offices, indoctrinate me in the Seattle coffee culture and to catch up. Just before we parted ways, we took a photo in front of a large Amazon.com sign, almost getting a security guard into trouble when we asked if she would take our photo.

That evening I used the waning battery on my smartphone and my eyesight to navigate to the Space Needle, a rather ugly pseudo-futuristic hallmark of the Seattle skyline. An interesting side effect of travelling alone is that one becomes quite efficient at 'being' a tourist and I found that I was satisfied with my experience on the observation deck after just 15 minutes. At $20 that worked out to $80 an hour and I felt mildly disheartened at this somewhat frivolous expense.

Amazon puts interview candidates up at the Fairmont Olympic in Seattle, a lovely many star business hotel where I felt thoroughly out of place in my jeans and red jumper. Certainly, even their generous food stipend would barely cover a single main course plus tax at the hotel's Georgian restaurant. Feeling like eating, more out of meal time dacorum than any genuine hunger, I used to Yelp to find the geographically closest restaurant with three £ signs and good vegetarian food.

As it turns out, this was a restaurant called the Purple Cafe and Bar, across the street from the Fairmont. Half expecting to be enjoying the well lit but otherwise cold company of my Kindle that evening, I was happy to find a free slot at the bar next to a woman who was also travelling alone on a business trip. Sadly, dear reader, this post will not descend into some pedestrian tale of romance.

Conversation was mostly superficial but pleasant enough. We did, however, connect over our shared interest in obsessive data gathering. She had also brought her Kindle to dinner and used Goodreads to track her reading (having read some 30 books this year alone, impressive!).

Returning home after dinner, I had intended to spend a few hours revising for my technical interviews the next day but instead devoted some attention to my Kindle, having felt like it had missed out, perhaps unfairly so. I would like to say that it was the end-of-semester fatigue that put me to sleep within an hour of reading but it's likely the entire gorgonzola and pear pizza plus the glass of merlot at dinner contributed.

Waking up early the next day, I felt an almost immediate sense of failure as I realised the deadline for my extra-credit assignment had come and passed but resolved to bury it in the back of mind, where I store other similar failures to live up to arbitrarily imposed goals.

In the four hours before my interview, I attempted to revise some programming interview questions. While I've gone through many many interviews over the last three months, it has actually been nearly 1.5 months since my last interview. In Berkeley graduate student time, this is approximately two years. My brain struggled at first but after adjourning briefly for a coffee from Pegasus Coffee (the cup said that this was the oldest coffeeshop in Seattle) and a brilliant savoury brie waffle from Sweet Iron, I felt somewhat more alert.

This alertness did not translate into actually preparing for my interview though and I used a technique honed over years of not actually doing things when I'm meant to - productive procrastion - and finished off a number of other, less time critical but probably important, tasks.

As I prepared to walk to the Amazon office, I noticed a missed call on my phone and a voicemail that indicated Amazon HR had been expecting me at 10am. Calling them back, it was clear that there was some sort of confusion on their end over what time I was arriving. In an attempt to not inconvenience them further, I asked the doorman to hail a taxi. He, correctly, assumed I was heading to Amazon. When questioned why, he said "well, it's a Thursday and it's about that time of day". How astute. I assume that my bespectacled face, casual dress and relative lack of age (compared to other guests at least) must have also helped him come ot that conclusion.

Arriving at the office, it turns out that my interview was actually to begin at the time I had been told and what filled the time gap before that started was some amusing extended small talk with a member of Amazon's HR. The following interviews were straightforward - being easier than I had expected, especially without a huge amount of preparation. At the end of my first interview, my interviewer asked if the photos on my blog were from my trip to Italy - I confirmed and internally celebrated the fact that I had received one more pageview. Thank you, sir!

Ryan had warned me in advance about a 'bar-raising' interview. Amazon has a policy similar to other tech companies where they attempt to ensure quality by mandating new hires are at least better than their average employee. This manifests itself through a single interview which apparently is weighted more heavily than the others. It was clear that my bar-raising interview was the one immediately following lunch when two (versus the modal single interviewer) interviewers sat down and asked me more difficult questions than I had been asked previously. They also took more extensive notes, bordering on frantic at moments!

The interviews were over quickly and I wandered over to Pike Place Market - the next tourist destination on my list. This is a pleasant market that smells strongly of fish and houses the world's first Starbucks. (An amusing sight - people queued up out of the door to get the exact same drink they could buy from around the corner with no queue.) After completing a rather dense Russian 'cheese bun' (not the native name, I assume) I wandered over to one of the coffee shops my friend Arjun recommended. Since he's a (proper, i.e. PhD track) CS graduate student, I had a lot of faith in his coffee recommendations.

After irradiating the right side of my brain for a good 38 minutes, while talking to my parents and sister (who were, as it happens, also loitering in a coffee shop - albeit 8,181 miles away in Melbourne), I fired up my laptop and got to work.

My faith in Arjun's recommendation was not misplaced and I realised, while sipping an exquisite 'spicy chai latte', that in the moment, I was happy. The proprietors were playing reggae over the speaker system, the wi-fi was fast and there was a cute girl sitting opposite me. The only way the moment could possibly have been better would be if I was talking to aforementioned cute girl, discussing our shared love for reggae.

Eventually I had to leave the coffee shop and wandered over to the Central Public Library. All libraries appear to have these huge airy architectures and it was similar to that of the Law Faculty at Cambridge University. It was all-in-all uneventful although I was slightly bemused to share a lift with a sufferer of Tourette's syndrome on my elevator ride down from the vantage point on the tenth floor.

From here, I walked across to the Columbia Center to check out the most cost effective competing view of Seattle's skyline. Sadly, the highly reflective glass prevented good photos from the observation deck. (The Space Needle has an exterior walkway that gives you unfettered access to the city lights.)

After an uneventful dinner in my hotel room and a project video call until 10:30pm, I walked over to Vito's - an Italian restaurant that was hosting Jazz musician Jennifer Kienzie. On my way out of the hotel, my failure to dress like a typical Fairmont Olympic guest became apparently when the doorman wished me a good night as I left. I guess it didn't look like I was coming back!

At Vito's, I ordered a gin and tonic, took out my fountain pen (and promptly blackened the inside of my index finger with Parker's 'Quink') and started writing this post. When the performance finished at around midnight, I attempted to pay for my gin and tonic. Evidently there was some confusion though, because the bartender promptly brought me another gin and tonic. Not wanting to cause a scene, I thanked him and drank the second gin and tonic. Luckily I managed to escape the endless cycle of gin and tonics when attempting to pay a second time and walked home in the near freezing temperatures.