Episode 35 - July 2024
Whoa, where did the month go?
I’m looking through my camera roll for the month of July, and it looks like a ton has happened. How it all was squeezed into one short month, I have no idea!
Friends and family visited me in Seattle, I went on business trips to LA and SF, and somewhere in the middle there, I finished the full renovation of the front yard of Sherwood Cooperative, my summer home.
Oh, and I ran the SF Marathon with no training.
Wow! We better get started :)
July started off with my UCLA friend, Sanketh, visiting me for a few days in Seattle. He and I met as tour guide co-workers at UCLA, and have been amazing friends ever since.
During his stay, we checked out the University of Washington campus nearby (the architecture was grand but the husky statue was lame), laughed a ton, took a nap on the UW campus, and built a new lending library for the Sherwood house with my housemate Jackson. Slowly but surely, the front yard is getting to look nicer and nicer!
That weekend, my sister and her college bestie, Kira, came to visit, too, and we went with a big group on a weekend camping trip to Mt. Rainer National Park. We tagged along with Rachel, Emily and Kira’s housemate at Cal Poly, and Rachel’s boyfriend (whose name I never did catch).
The hikes around Mt. Rainier had some of the most epic scenery I’ve ever seen on a hike, and I had to build a tall rock tower to commemorate it. On the way back from the fire lookout, we saw another group taking pictures with the rock tower, which brought me a ton of joy.
Also, it exposed me to a new type of camping, where we sit around the campfire for hours, drinking beers and talking about work. It was quite a different pace than a normal Gavrilenko camping trip!
The following week, I was sent to LA for a week-long business trip; my case team of 4 people are from the LA, SF, and Seattle offices, so we would fly to a different office each week so that we could work together in person. The LA office was super fancy, and it was AMAZING to be able to hang out with Brooke and Sanketh in LA for an extra week — a week that I had no idea would be happening at the beginning of the summer!
During that week, Brooke and I went to Solvang to feed my beloved ostriches at Ostrichland USA, and I spent a bunch of time hanging out at Sanketh’s apartment as we were both working remotely.
Working at Sanketh’s apartment was a blast, for a few reasons:
We jumped into the pool from the roof of his apartment building at the end of the workday.
We got lunch together each day, and I learned that you can get some (rather yummy) coffee at In-n-Out.
The same 4 girls would go suntan on the pool patio, directly outside of where Sanketh and I were working, from about noon to 3 pm each day. Talk about eye candy. Nice!
After the week in LA, I flew back to Seattle with Brooke! It was her birthday on the 19th, and we celebrated by going to a $500 dinner at the nicest restaurant in Seattle, Canlis.
It was probably the coolest dining experience I’ve ever had, and well worth the crying wallet I had afterward.
Brooke and I went on a few hikes in Seattle, spent a bunch of time together, and watched the sunset over Mt. Rainier on the roof of Sherwood :)
After the weekend in Seattle, it was back on the road for me, this time to SF for 2 weeks in a row. At this point, I was wondering what the point of paying rent in Seattle was since I was spending 3 consecutive weeks not even living there.
lol
The two weeks in SF were amazing — it was so great to see my sister and some UCLA friends who were working in the city. I spent a lot of time hanging out with my friend Akshat, who’s starting to work full-time at JP Morgan and saw my friend Audrey, who took me up to the Accenture offices in the Salesforce Tower. So cool!
The best part of the trip to SF was the weekend by far. So many exciting things happened!
On Saturday, I got a super yummy brunch with my sister’s college friend and previous startup co-founder team, Josh and Johnny. What a bucket of laughs. If I get half as good as Johnny at telling stories, I’ll be able to make anything sound interesting. The way he tells stories is the greatest thing ever.
And the cheeky smile and clever glint in his eye is something I truly aspire to.
Wow!
After the brunch, Josh, my sister, and I headed to Startup School, a startup-focused event in SF hosted by YCombinator, one of the top startup accelerators in the world. There, I met a bunch of founders and prospective founders and made eye contact with Sam Altman from a distance of about 5 meters.
Me! I made eye contact with the man who created ChatGPT. CRAZY!
On Sunday, it was my sister’s 24th birthday, so I celebrated in the proper style by running the SF Marathon at 5:15 am in the morning with no training.
What was interesting about that experience was that running the marathon was remarkably easy, I didn’t need to train at all, and there actually was no point in registering.
I just showed up at the start line, joined the slowest corral in the back of the line, ran the entire course in about 5 hours, crossed the finish line, and got a medal. Akshat ran the last 2ish miles with me, and it was such an exciting feeling. You can check out the full LinkedIn post about it here!
The best part, since it started so early, I was done before noon and still had the entire day ahead of me. :)
My parents and brother came into town for my sister’s birthday, and we 5 got lunch together, walked around Salesforce Park, and then went for a pizza dinner. Honestly, it was such a memorable and fun day!
After the last week in SF, I was back in Seattle, and will be here until the end of the internship on August 16th (so soon!). Thank goodness I don’t need to travel again, that was getting quite exhausting. It’s nice to have a solid home base for the next few weeks.
Back in Seattle, I went to an intern event at the barn of one of the senior partners at the BCG Seattle office, had a great time there, and absolutely swept the competition in foosball with my teammate, Ray. We beat them 20-0. Easy stuff.
But by far the most exciting part of being back in Seattle was finishing up the front yard of Sherwood. Jackson and I built a beautiful retaining wall on Saturday afternoon, I leveled out the dirt, we chiseled our names into the top retaining wall block, and just like that, my summer project is done, hooray!
I HIGHLY recommend you check out the 2-second timelapse of its construction here!
And just like that, July is over. Only one more week of my internship before I spend a few more days as a tourist in Seattle, then I’m off to Alaska for 10 days for a Denali adventure. I can’t wait!
Thanks for sticking with me, and see y’all soon :)
Best,
Dennis
