Just three hours northwest of the Bay Area, in the Sierra Nevada, lies Lake Tahoe. Nestled on the border between California and Nevada, Tahoe is one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world. It is highly renowned in California for its skiing in winter and pleasant vacationing in summer. It is the ski destination of choice for many in the Bay Area.

Soon after my return to Berkeley from the ...

This is part III of a series on my trip home to Australia for the US winter break (see part I and part II).

Los Angeles is a monstrously large place. The metro area is home to nearly 13 million people, and the city itself is second only to New York in population. Not only this, but LA has bulged out over a truly enormous area; until arriving there, I had not fully appreciated why it might be so difficult ...

This is part II of a series on my trip home to Australia for the US winter break (see part I here).

Santa Barbara is a city of close to 90,000 people just a couple of hours north of Los Angeles. The area is known as the "American Riviera", partially thanks to its pleasant climate. The city draws heavy influence from Spain, with its original inhabitants being Spanish missionaries and soldiers, and even today much of the architecture is ...

My trip back to Australia for the semester break was a long one. Prior to Christmas, I packed into a car with four other international students at Berkeley, and we drove down California Highway 1 from San Francisco to Los Angeles. From LA I flew to Hawaii and visited Honolulu for a couple days, and finally jetted back into Sydney two days before Christmas Day. This is the first installment of a series of blog posts about this great trip ...

Like many other kids, my favourite page of the newspaper growing up was the comics page. Though it was later supplanted by the crossword page (though that's another story), my introduction to traditional media come in the form of those inked scribbles, filled with pithy wisdom, fantastic events, and witty observations.

One of my most beloved comics was Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz. I still vividly remember cleaning my local library out of Peanuts cartoon books on a regular ...

One of the most exciting things about being a computer scientist and visiting the Bay Area is the proliferation of amazing technology companies. Berkeley and Stanford have exceptional computer science programs that supply and are supplied by the companies of the Bay.

Nestled in the heart of Silicon Valley in Palo Alto, Stanford University is one of the top academic institutions in the world. With just 15,000 students on an enormous campus, the university feels incredibly spacious and well ...

Last weekend, I went on a trip to the Contra Costa county, to the east of the Bay Area. Run by the Rotary club, the trip was designed to give international students a taste of country life in California, and how Americans who didn't dwell in the more urban areas made their lives. The day included visits to a nursery, a farm, a ranch, an olive oil plantation, and a historic preserved ranch.

The country areas of northern California ...

A few weekends ago, I went with a group of fellow international students to hire bikes and pedal around San Francisco. This was the first time I really explored the city and its western and northern most areas.

We spent around seven hours all up pedaling around the city, and saw many amazing things. We also experienced the fickleness of San Francisco weather: the conditions varied from brilliant sunshine to chilly overcast to icy winds as we ventured through the ...

A couple of weeks ago I went camping at Big Sur, south of Monterey and Carmel on the California State Route 1. It was a lovely spot, and we spent time on a very windy beach, eating S'mores around a campfire, and enjoying being away from civilisation. A very American camping experience!

Once we packed up and headed for home, we detoured south to the lovely McWay Falls near the Julia Pfeiffer Burns National Park. The whole area is ...