Day One at Micorosft- Bill Gates' house...

Straight from an e-mail I wrote to some friends:

Yes- so I’ve got to brag about this one. Had my first day of my internship at Microsoft, and although there must have been some cruel joke or test for interns to get up to speed with the computer and networking- was on the phone for almost 2 hours trying to get logged on (never got logged on!)… This was more than made up by the invite to Mr. Gates house in the evening for a BBQ with another 300 interns ( as a sense of scale, there are a total 1200 interns this summer from high-school to graduate student level).

So the house is pretty modest in size, packed with some stylish/strange use of technology- like the music that plays through the jetty as you wonder near his speed boat. We had 90% access to the fantastic garden. However, security to get in was tight- no cameras, phones etc… and took up an hour.

Won’t go into detail- but lets just say the highlight for me was sitting on his personal wooden garden chair, beer in hand, with the perfect sunset overlooking Lake Washington… A momemnt to take in the personal achievements of a man with great vision and leadership...

I managed to get in two questions- one about the competitive threat of Google which he sidetracked and another about his work on the gates foundation- have to admire his commitment to funding drug discoveries that Big Pharma would never go for due to low/nil return on investment. He rattled off his commitment on malaria vaccine and on some diseases in Africa that I’d never even heard of…

Off to bed- but settling in well in area for the summer.

Mbwana.