The Hotel Valencia in San Diego
Interior of the Hotel Valencia
A beautiful home in Rancho Santa Fe!
A fountain at that home...
Locale: San Diego, Los Angeles, Minneapolis
Consecutive Days Wearing a Suit: 2
Tired Factor (1-10): 4
Hours of Sleep Last Night: 5
My wake up call did not come. It is Murphy's Law that this happens the one night I don't set my backup alarm. My body clock is so jacked up that I wake up without an alarm only 10 minutes late, even though I only have 4 hours of sleep.
We enter the first meeting through their back door since it was so early. This place has a beautiful view of the ocean. It is second floor of an ocean front property. The entire back wall is made of glass. Too bad it is so foggy! You can't see a thing!
During the meeting, I hit Starbucks. I joke with the coffee-maker: "This place is pretty nice. Are there any more of them?" She isn't amused.
Our next meeting is in downtown San Diego. I get some nice views of the city.
The next meeting was hilarious. It was at this guys house in Rancho Santa Fe. He manages a $1b dollar fund from his house, which is a beaufiful Spanish-style villa. He wears a T-shirt and Birkenstocks. He's also a sports having various jerseys, signed posters, and even famous gym lockers and benches (Fenway?). I do some dips and crunches in his gym.
The Hotel Valencia in San Diego |
Interior of the Hotel Valencia |
A beautiful home in Rancho Santa Fe! |
A fountain at that home... |
We drive in a limo up to Los Angeles. Since I'm in town, I call my parents and my brother and Janet. I didn't have an opportunity to see any of them, but I wanted them to feel the love. I've never really been to tall buildings in downtown. It's quite interesting.
We fly out of LAX. While walking to our gate, I see a gaggle of little blonde girls in green uniforms that say Australia on them. I ask one what they did. She said "skip". i said "what?". She said "skip". Their coach further clarified this with "jumping rope". It ends up that they were in the Skip World Championships in St. Louis. They placed third. The US placed first! I definitely am proud of my country!
Now is a good time to bring up Evan's 5 Herculean tasks. Louis and Vic kept giving me fun stuff to do. I joked about them being my Herculean Tasks. Somehow this degenerated into a specfic number of tasks -- 5. If I complete these tasks, I will be placed on the pricing committee.
What's the pricing committee? They are the group of people (Vic and Louis and perhaps board memebers) that decide the final price that Immersion offers its shares for. Of course the underwriters must agree with this. Supposedly there's a subtle balance between getting the most bang for your buck and not losing investors.
Okay, back to the Herculean tasks. These were not determined all at once, but rather evolved over various limo conversations:
Tonight I completed #1 and #3.
 I swear that's not smog! |
 The new Staples Center, where the Lakers and Kings play.. |
 The Belvedere Hotel (Buck Roger's HQ) in the background and a Calder in the foreground. |
 Sweet views of LA #1 |
 Sweet view of LA #2 (that's Dodger Stadium nestled in the hills on the right) |
 Sweet view of LA #3 |
 A water fountain in the building. |
 Looking up a building... |
 The Pantry -, the 24-hour restaurant that had the LA record for remaining open the longest. Owned by Riordan, LA's mayor, it was temporarily closed by the health department in 1999! |
 The LAX revolving restaurant, a famous LA landmark. |