Are you Google material?

0.6 lbs shy of goal, but I'm okay with that. I'm glad I came this far. Needless to say, I did not reward myself with the Frappuccino I'd intended, but that was probably best anyway.

Just a heads up, this kid will be out and about (not blogging) in HK this weekend.

Today I met with Cora and she asked me about health care in the U.S. and the primaries. I demonstrated charisma to her by demonstrating 2 versions of 'we are having bok choy, tomatoes and eggs for lunch.' It's amazing what some personality can do to sell something...

At language exchange with Poppy, she told me about how her dialect of Chinese (the Wu dialect from the Shanghai area of mainland China) has less trouble speaking English with an accent. Apparently her dialect has the 'v' sound along with other sounds that may not be found in other dialects. Thus, English language learners have difficulty separating 'v' and 'w' if it wasn't in their originally learned sounds.

At IEBF tonight, Lauren and I worked hand in hand. I addressed what not to do in an interview. She talked specifically about unique questions that employers use (specifically Google) to funnel out potential employees. Apparently 1 in 14 applicants get into Harvard and 1 in 139 applicants get a job at Google...not at all competitive, right? Here are a few fun examples of questions they ask...see if you can answer them and then I'll tell you the answers at the end. Are you Google material???

1. What's the next number in this sequence: 10, 9, 60, 90, 70, 66...?

2. A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?

3. Using only a 4 minute hourglass and a seven minute hourglass, measure exactly 9 minutes without the process taking longer than 9 minutes.

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ANSWERS: ( NO PEEKING AHEAD OF TIME!)

1. This question is based on roman numerals. Each next number has one more letter than the previous number. 96 could be one answer, or any other number that has 10 letters

2. He was playing Monopoly.

3. Use the 7 minute one fully and then use the 4 minute one half way

There were some more difficult physics and math oriented ones as well, but those are difficult to explain. Needless to say, none of us ETAs did very well. Google is looking for a forward thinking, computer oriented, and math savvy brain that's for sure.

I closed up IEBF with a piece on the importance of Thank You letters after an interview.