Recruiting in Toronto

I spent the majority of the week in Toronto doing campus recruiting with my colleague Warren.  This was another multi-day, long-format interview trip where we offer candidates a position after several local interviews, rather than a short format "flyback or no flyback" trip where the candidate does the full loop in Redmond.

I was impressed by the overall quality of the candidates we saw.  Each had plenty of knowledge, passion, and problem solving skills.  I believe all of them were from either the University of Toronto or the University of Waterloo. 

I enjoyed the outbound flight, which was on an Air Canada Embraer 190 built in Brazil.  This was my first trip on an Embraer, and I liked the plane.  It' small (100 seat range, 2 rows of 2 seats, center aisle) but not too small, and modern, with each seatback having a full entertainment system including widescreen LCD.  I managed to do some work on the plane as well as watch most of The Prestige.

Theresa came along on this trip and enjoyed herself with sightseeing, shopping, and fine dining while I worked.  She even got a first class upgrade on her ticket out - when Air Canada offered me a free upgrade to get me out of the last row of the plane so the flight attendants could use it to rest, I gave it to Theresa.  I'm not stupid...

We did a little sightseeing with Warren on Tuesday, before the evening recruiting dinner.  Wednesday we interviewed all day and had another recruiting dinner in the evening, although I did squeeze in an hour run in between.  Thursday we interviewed all day, and in the evening Warren, Theresa and I went to dinner at Le Papillon with Warren's uncle and family and several family friends.  I had French onion soup, lamb, and some traditional crepe dessert.  Excellent food and excellent company.

We then saw The Overcoat at the CanStage Bluma theatre.  I enjoyed the production immensely.  It's a dance and mime production with no spoken word, telling the story of a man leading a dull life until he acquires a beautiful overcoat.  I would love something like this to be available in Seattle.  Sigh. 

After the show, we wandered a bit until we found the nearby Esplanade Bier Markt.  One thing I love about urban environments like Toronto is that by simple wandering, you can find wonderful restaurants, bars, and events.  The Bier Markt had a live band (playing mostly 80's rock), a dance floor, and my favorite - a broad European beer menu.  I had several, including this fairly odd Belle-Vue Kriek cherry flavored beer.  It's a wheat beer that's aged for three years, then cherries are added before another year of aging.  I quite enjoyed it, although I would describe it mostly as "excellent cough syrup".  An acquired taste, I'm sure.

Comments

[juFo]

Kriek is beer for girls ;)

but yes Belgium is the father of all beer countries. And were are proud about it :)