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Lottery

In 15 years, LittleMaster wrote Swift for more than a year and was told to watch the WWDC session.
Without knowing what WWDC was, he looked it up and clicked on a section.
Surprisingly, even though he didn’t understand English, he could somewhat grasp it through guesswork.
Reflecting on the confusion he experienced while learning Android tutorials in the past, he found this experience to be enlightening.
So he went through most of the videos from that year, and benefited a lot.

Later he learned that as long as he had a developer account and a Visa/Mastercard credit card, he could participate in the lottery.
Registration for WWDC begins in early March each year on the official website and lasts only one week, so don’t miss it.

Due to the large number of participants, Apple randomly selects lucky (company reimbursed) or unlucky (self-funded) individuals to receive a $10,000 ticket 🎫.
Regardless of whether you attend or not, the payment is deducted in advance.
Regardless of visa rejection or refusal of entry, the money is non-refundable.
Tickets cannot be transferred, but can only be given to other developers within the same company.
In short, if you win the lottery, don’t expect a refund, so think carefully before entering.

However, luck has never been on his side, so he signed up without hesitation.

Winning

The lottery results were announced around the end of March.

Late at night, he suddenly received a text message from China Merchants Bank deducting $1599 and a phone call from a suspected card theft incident.
He quickly proved his identity to the bank.
The next day, he woke up to a confirmation email.
He quickly called his friends and was told to prepare for visa and hotel arrangements.

Apple provides some hotels near the conference venue, but the prices were quite high, with the cheapest being $229 per night.
Considering that he was alone, he decided to book a nearby Airbnb.

Fortunately, a colleague who didn’t win the lottery still wanted to attend.
In addition, he had two friends who could fly from Canada 🇨🇦 and the United States 🇺🇸 to San Francisco to have fun.

So he cancelled the hotel reservation and booked an Airbnb that looked good.

And his friend could drive, so he rented a car from Herz.

Perfect.

Visa

First, he needed a passport.
Unlike those who arrive overseas just after getting off the plane, he had never been anywhere before and owned a blank passport.
Luckily, when he went back to his hometown in 15 years to visit his parents, he got it.

Afterwards, he made an appointment on the official website for a visa interview.
He paid online and scheduled the interview time.

It turned out that his application process was faster than using a Taobao agent.
When he paid, the page redirected to China CITIC Bank.
At first glance, the page looked old and he thought it was a phishing website…

Interview

The U.S. Embassy in Beijing is located in Sanlitun, Chaoyang District.

He took the afternoon off for the interview.
When he arrived at the embassy, he was dumbfounded. He had only seen such long lines during the Spring Festival travel rush.
The line for the interview was full of twists and turns, like a winding mountain road, with thousands of people waiting in a zigzag pattern.
It took 3 hours of crawling to finally reach the interview window.

There were a total of 5-6 Chinese interview windows and 1 lonely English window.

His friend suddenly said that they could go to the English window since they could both speak English, and they wouldn’t have to wait.
Thinking about it, he decided to give it a try.

The interviewer was an old lady, and he couldn’t remember exactly what she said, but roughly:

…
Him:  invited us to join their conference.
The old lady was surprised and asked, “Are you working for Apple?”
(After thinking for a moment, he realized that in 2019 he was actually working for Apple, but unfortunately it was still 2016, so he had to say,)
Him: No, it’s a developer conference.
Old lady: Why did they invite you?
…

He opened the folder and took out the  Invitation Letter.
The old lady pointed to the nearby Chinese window and asked him to go there.

The security guard girl who maintained order next to them asked what happened when she saw them being sent away.
Upon hearing the situation, she sighed and was relieved that they weren’t directly rejected, so she asked them to wait next to her for a while.

Then, they had an interview in Chinese with a foreign girl.
She was also confused about the conference.
She guessed that people outside the IT industry might not know what a conference is.
So he showed her the invitation letter, but the girl said she didn’t want to see it and asked him to explain why he was invited.

He was stunned because he thought that even if there was a language barrier before, why didn’t she want to see the materials this time?
Because he had heard various interview experiences, he had only heard of being denied a visa due to not bringing the necessary materials, but he had never heard of someone not looking at the materials at all.
Fortunately, his friend said it was a Developer Meeting, and the girl immediately understood (😓…).

Then she asked if he had any relatives in the USA, how long he would stay, when he would return, and where he would be staying.

After waiting for a long half-minute, the girl smiled and said congratulations, their visas were approved.
They would receive their passports by mail in a few working days.

Although there were twists and turns, he didn’t feel particularly happy.
He expressed his thanks and left with his friend.

Afterwards, he heard that a wealthy person who had lived in Boston for a long time had a Chinese interview and could have two people interviewed together.
They could even bring their whole family together for the interview.
He was really surprised.

The U.S. visa
had already fallen.
He said.

Flight Tickets

When booking the flight tickets, he didn’t know that United Airlines had a bad reputation, so he chose not to fly with Air China due to their obsession with foreign airlines.
Plus, at that time, the infamous incident of Asian-American passenger being forcibly removed from a United Airlines flight hadn’t happened yet.

In fact, regardless of which airline, a 12-hour flight would turn anyone into a zombie.
United Airlines wasn’t as strict and allowed the use of mobile phones 📴, so he took a photo of the horizon from the plane.

He never expected that he would encounter the flight number UA888 again in his FANNG job assignment four years later.

Entry

After getting off the plane, they went through immigration.

He always had an illusion that there were snipers waiting behind the customs, ready to shoot suspects on the spot.
Being his first time stepping on foreign soil, he was a little nervous.

The customs officer asked a few common questions, such as the purpose of their visit and how long they would stay.
Based on the visa situation, he didn’t mention the conference but said it was a Developer Meeting.
Then the customs officer stamped their passports.

After retrieving their passports, they tried to look calm on the surface and walked faster, fearing that they might get shot.

When they saw some people waiting for them, they suddenly remembered that their friend hadn’t come out yet.
While waiting, they thought their friend might have encountered some trouble, but after a while, they saw him.
It turned out that he was also checked because of the mention of the conference.

Conferences are really dangerous 😂

Downtown

They picked up their car and went to the Airbnb to drop off their luggage 🧳.

It was quite far from San Francisco International Airport to downtown.
They didn’t expect that what was usually a long distance with heavy traffic in Beijing could be covered in just 20 minutes.

The 🏠 they rented from Airbnb turned out to be exactly the same as what was shown online, with no deception.
The house had two floors, made of wooden boards, and there was another tenant upstairs, so there might be some noise when they walked around.
There was also a nice garden in the back.

Yosemite National Park

In 1984, Yosemite was designated as a World Heritage site, internationally recognized for its spectacular granite cliffs, waterfalls, clear streams, giant sequoia groves, and biological diversity.

They took a break from their journey and went to Yosemite National Park, which was about a 3-hour drive away. On the way, they saw a group of windmills.
Suddenly, they turned a corner and saw the wallpaper of OS X Yosemite.
Before, they had only seen mountains ⛰️ covered with soil in China, so this was the first time they saw bare, steep granite cliffs.
They made the wrong assumption that foreign mountains are harder than those in China.

It was truly amazing.

On the way back, he stared at the sunset 🌇 and lost himself in thought.

Translated by gpt-3.5-turbo