The Indian food at Google’s main cafeteria was odd today: dal, rice, curried squash and some concoction with a French name involving eggplant. Mango lassi flowed from a juice dispenser. It was pleasingly thick but not very sweet — these guys need input from Sainsburys or Whole Foods. From the drink cabinet I snagged a mango tea.

The wood-fired oven spat out much tastier mini-pizzas, espresso machines dot the microkitchens all over campus, and my friends tell me starfruit makes an occasional bow. Some of the kitchens have small Scharffen Berger dark chocolate squares and plastic tubs of organic peanut butter with labels indicating mixing date. Sergey Brin sat at one corner of the cafeteria. His cofounder had warned the minions not to get between Sergey and his fondue at feeding time :)

I lusted after the electric scooters and turned my nose up at the beach cruiser bikes, painted in garish primary colors and sporting a tall, goofy safety flag to deter theft. The actual SpaceShipOne hangs like a trophy in the small main lobby, windows taped over in black and exhaust nozzle signed in silver Sharpie by Rutan and his team.

Google has not built a campus in its own image yet. Like a hermit crab, it’s found the shell of a dying company and taken it over. The off-kilter silver angles and wireframe extrusions refer to when Jurassic Parks were rendered on Indigo workstations, not white-box Linux machines. A long wooden beam stretches diagonally across the facade of the main cafeteria. The Google logo seems pasted on at the end. This company will come into its own when NASA gives up the Moffitt Field space it sold Google, and Sergey and Larry get a parking spot for their 737. Right now it’s like Microsoft’s early days in rented towers in sterile Bellevue.

The furniture is satisfyingly off-the-shelf OfficeMax with precious few Aeron clones. Some engineering offices are Indian ghettoes, single rooms full of Krishnas, Srinivases, Venkats and Bahubalis. Like most tech companies, there seem to be far more first gen desis than second genners. Like most tech companies, the young’uns have figured out that HR and sales are stocked with pretties.

The campus feels cozy. The individual wave pools are trick, but tiny. The gym comes with touchscreen TVs on the cardio machines, but it’s no touch on the Gold’s Gym across the street. Sand volleyball doesn’t seem regulation size. Even the soccer field is transient, shoehorned into an irregular piece of landscaping and striped on demand. Shareholders rejoice: the indoor tents, primary colors and perks haven’t yet translated into G&A burn. I didn’t see Ferraris today — only one Bentley, and that too in sales.

The campus is nestled among dry hills like Stanford’s, built atop landfill behind the Shoreline Amphitheater. One day the Google folks were playing soccer on the landscaping, and Coldplay ambled over and joined the game after sound check. Clinton, Hillary, Gore all added their Hancocks to a long sheet of butcher paper nestled between angled beams in playground red.