Robot Underwear

Right from getting off the plane, San Francisco was pretty awesome. I was upgraded to a Mustang at the car rental place. I didn’t know what that was, as I do not care about cars, but it’s pretty cool if not somewhat ridiculous since I am only driving for about an hour in it in total. I am going to get some naked ladies to lay on it and take pictures, if I have time.

This woman came with the car.

The unfortunate reality of time on business trips dawned on me pretty quickly once I got into SF. I had about 30 minutes to walk around before I had to go directly into focus groups. In the 30 minutes however, I saw streetcars and walked next to someone smoking up on the street, so I think I got the full SF experience.

I didn't actually see Arnold, unfortunately.

The groups themselves were pretty surreal. Focus groups are weird anyway, watching a bunch of people behind glass, but these were especially weird because they were conducted in languages I don’t speak. A woman of generous girth sat in the room with us and translated everything for us in real time. She tried to do different intonnations for different people, but either way it’s super weird to have someone saying in mostly a monotone, “What do you think about that? I like it, the colors work well. Which colors do you like best? I like purple, it reminds me of home.” for four hours straight. Also, the food at the focus groups was a great disappointment. It was thai, which is a plus, but there was only one bowl of M&Ms and few other snacks were provided. This merits a grade C on food.

This was how I was feeling about the lack of snacks, namely cookies.

Today I am off to San Jose for more groups. NYC conference calls have kept me locked up in the minature hotel room (seriously, it’s smaller than my bedroom in NYC and that’s really saying something) on the phone, so I didn’t get to see anymore of San Francisco today. The view of the building outside of my hotel room window, however, looks pretty sweet.