I have my own desk, my own @google.com email address and a shiny shiny MacBook Pro. I also have a million and one things to remember, three floors to learn my way around and a ton of name/face/job combinations I've almost certainly forgotten already. The important thing is, I know where the canteen is. In fact, I'm still in the office right now (the rest of the team having gone home almost an hour ago) purely because I'm waiting for the canteen to re-open for dinner.

Already I have meetings scheduled and an event to attend. I spent a lot of today learning the ropes of the intranet. There are all these delightful extra things within the regular Google products you know and love... Things that aren't available to the public, and that I can't even talk about. Keeping the excitement inside is painful, but if I breathe a word, there will probably be a contract on my head. Not really, that would be evil. But I'd be in trouble.

So while I wait for my second free meal of the day, I'm signing up to internal mailing lists... Things like... the daily menu for the canteen.

Oh, some of you may be interested... I'm entitled to bring two people per month to the canteen for lunch. That's six people in total. Let me know if you're interested, although three to four spots are probably already taken by default.

Now, I hear plates clanking in the distance... Time to go!

Having finally found somewhere to live in London, I'm now looking forward to returning to Google's amazingly brightly coloured office in Belgrave House. The few hours I spent there during my interview left me with impressions of comfy chairs, excitable people, and rubber ducks stuck upside down to the ceiling. I also got a fleeting glimpse of the legendary canteen, which I'm sure I will become very familiar with over the coming weeks.

For those of you who don't know, my role as University Programmes Intern will involve supporting the University Programmes team as they forge links between Google Engineering and the academic world, throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa (read more about it here). It's a non-technical role, but I'm hoping my technical background will be helpful in relating to the technical people (students and academics) the team will be working with.

Here's to hoping I'm up for the task!