Facebook Engineering Opens a Satellite Office in Kyoto (For a Few Hours)
Nadya and Ryan At Uroko (鱗), Kyoto Japan -- Uroko (鱗) -- Copyright 2015 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D4 + Sigma 35mm F1.4 DG HSM — 1/100 sec, f/1.4, ISO 6400 — map & image datanearby photos
Nadya and Ryan
At Uroko (鱗), Kyoto Japan

Facebook engineer Ryan Mack and his wife Nadia and their blissfully-sleeping two-year-old took time from their 10-year-anniversary Japan trip to join me for dinner at Uroko (鱗) in downtown Kyoto the other night.

Ryan has sometimes provided help or insight on navigating the complexities of Facebook's third-party app API, which I must use for my Export-to-Facebook plugin for Adobe Lightroom, so I was happy to finally meet him in person. Meeting Nadia was a wonderful bonus, though I didn't really get to meet his son, who slept the whole time we were together. (Jetlag sometimes giveth, I guess.)

It's just as well I didn't get to interact with their boy, because I came down with a cold the next day, and I think you're contagious before you're symptomatic. I would hate to have given any of them a cold.

I imagine that Facebook is a huge company with thousands of employees spread out around the globe, but I was happy to find out that he actually knew my other friends working there (Paul, Nam, and Arturo). I guess a big world is smaller in certain circles.

Aftermath with Damien having joined us part way through -- Uroko (鱗) -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2015 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D4 + Sigma 35mm F1.4 DG HSM — 1/160 sec, f/1.4, ISO 5600 — map & image datanearby photos
Aftermath
with Damien having joined us part way through

Uroko has an amazing (though difficult for me to read) menu, so we had a wide variety of wonderful things. They were a bit iffy about the somewhat slimy yamaimo potato, but seemed to enjoy everything else.

I would have liked to host them around Kyoto for a day, but not with a cold, so perhaps when they visit on their 20-year anniversary...


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