Aadvik's Blog: 24 Hours in California

On Thursday, December 14, 2023, I skipped school to take a 24 hour trip to California. Amma and I went to California to see Shelia Ajji become the Mayor of Cupertino. She had won the election for vice mayor last year, so now she was going to be the Mayor. When we first arrived, we drove from San Francisco airport to an In and Out burger place near Aditi Pinamma's home. In and Out is my favorite restaurant but they are only in the west coast. I got an animal style burger with animal style fries. Animal style means that they put a special sauce, onions, and cheese 🧀 on your burger and fries 🍟.

After that, we went to Aditi Pinamma’s house where we met Ananya and we later went to pick up Amisha from school. At 4:10 pm, we went to the Cupertino city hall building and we saw the entire ceremony. At first, they had around two dozen people speak about how they wanted things to go for their city and their opinion on the council members. All of the people complemented the former mayor for her efforts and most said that they wanted someone named JR Fruin to be vice mayor and for Sheila Ajji to be the Mayor. They didn’t say that they wanted anyone else to be mayor other than Sheila Ajji and nobody said anything bad about her. One person came up and complimented the former mayor, Shelia Ajji, and JR Fruin and then she called the other two council members an embarrassment. It was very funny. When the voting happened, Shelia Ajji won unanimously and she was the only candidate nominated by all. The vice mayor vote was very interesting. At first, JR Fruin was nominated but then, a council woman Kitty Moore nominated another council member Lian Chao who went off to give a long speech about being a minority. She then proceeded to nominate Kitty Moore who also had a long speech. In the end, Moore and Chao lost and Fruin won. After that Shelia Ajji was sworn in and then she made a speech where she thanked her family and supporters and even mentioned Amma and I coming all way for one day! It was so cool!

Then we went to her house for a party 🎉. We ate pizza and drank apple cider. Amisha, Ananya, and I went home around 9 though because we weren’t doing anything and we wanted to go home and play video games. Ananya wanted to go home because she was studying for her finals. When we went home, Amisha and I played Mario kart where after Amisha beating me 5 times, I finally won. That is what we did during the first 12 hours.

The next day before our flight back in the evening, Amma, Paddu Ajji, and I went to the Apple headquarters. There was an augmented reality app where we could use an iPad camera 📷 to see the entire Apple 🍎 grounds right in front of us. We could swipe to lift roofs so we could see inside of the Apple buildings. It was extremely cool. People are not allowed inside any of the buildings except the visitor center because it is very secretive. The employees can’t even bring their kids to work. After viewing the Augmented Reality app, we went to the store. I got to play games on an iphone 15 Pro Max and see the new features. I also used the new Apple Watch and tried out the gestures feature in which you could move your fingers to navigate the watch without touching it. It was very cool. I then got a hot chocolate from the cafe because I had a cold and the hot chocolate helped my throat. Later, Sheila Ajji came to pick us up and took us to a South Indian restaurant called Madras Cafe that had good dosas. I got a cheese dosa there and everyone else got different kinds of dosa. After that, we went to In and Out burger again to pick it up for the flight. Sheila Ajji then drove us to the airport where we said goodbye. It was a memorable and fun trip and I would gladly come again, for more than 24 hours this time. See the pictures below!