One of the highlights of our summer camp are the field trips. After having made a 19-hour journey, it would be a waste not to take in all that the wonderful Bay Area has to offer. While there are the usual tours and visits that are open to the public (San Francisco, Monterey Bay Aquarium), Scholarlynk also arranges for special trips, and one that gets people the most excited is the visit to Google Headquarters in Mountain View.
I think everyone with a computer or a smartphone would know of Google, but what most people don’t know is that the headquarters are off limits to everyone except staff and their guests. But here we were, at an exclusive event just for the students from Methodist Girls’ School.
The first thing that everyone wanted to do the minute they set foot on the Google campus was to try out the bicycles that everyone had heard of. Because of the enormity of the campus and since staff may sometimes have to head out for meetings in a different part of the grounds, these bikes were supplied FOC by Google for their staff to use.
Surprisingly, one of the most famous Googlers is actually a Singaporean by the name of Tan Chade-Meng. He is famous for being Googles Jolly Good Fellow (it’s actually on his name card), and the one who is in charge of welcoming all the VIP guests to the Googleplex. In fact, there is a large collection of all the famous people he has received over the years in the visitor centre:
Here’s a mock setup of what a Googler’s office space looks like:
Their famous cafeteria where all the food you can eat is free. The only condition being that you cannot bring any food off the campus.
And of course, a group shot with all the students from Methodist Girls’ School who went on our summer camp’s field trip to the Google campus
The students had a great time, and even had the chance to speak with our hosts to find out more about what it would take for them to one day be Googlers themselves. Now, it was back to the dorms for the students to rest up and continue with their assignments.