"Great Google Interview" no monogatari

So today I had round 1 of my Google interview- and although round 2 was supposed to be at 11:00 pm, as of this writing, (11:35pm), the interviewer hasn't called.

Round 1 started as most interviews do; where are you, what are you studying, why exactly do you want to work in Google China? (Oh, St. Mary's College? I lived in Virginia, etc etc).

Then the dreaded interview question of "what is your current GPA?" (oh. shit.)
After explaining to him that my grades do not correctly represent my level of knowledge (which is true), we moved on to phase 2.

Then came the questions. I'd read some of the Google interview questions, but these came more or less out of the blue- here's question 1:

"Let's say you go to Lake Michigan. You have a boat, and you wish to estimate the number of fish within the whole lake. How would you do that?"

My response (after reeling at that question- since it was neither technical, nor behavioural, imo) was that I would take a sample area of water and net it off (to avoid migration), and make an educated guess based on the weighted average of several of such samples. Crude, perhaps, but would give you a relatively good answer.

Second question was technical, and I'm not sure if I got this right, considering that I was trying to code in my head, quickly enough that he didn't think I was an idiot. What I ended up with, may have been worse. The question was this: "If you had n steps, and you could only go up 1 or 2 at a time, what programming structure would allow you to calculate how many ways there are to go up those steps." I mulled it over in my mind, and said "nested for loops" only to try it with pen and paper, and find out that they didn't work. He appreciated my trying though, because he said (a smile creeping into his voice, much as a teacher might, should the student stumble upon something simple yet crucial) "okay, right, so what would work?" My guess was a for loop, using it to store a running total, while calculating combinations based on the # of 1 step and 2 step possibilities (ex. n 1 steps + 0 2 steps, n-1 1 steps + 1 2 steps, etc etc), which he seemed somewhat satisfied with. Asking "does that make sense?" may not have been a strong move on my part.

After that, he opened the floor to any questions I may have had, and after asking him the basics (what do you do, specifically, how big a team do you work for, what do interns do there), we bid our goodbyes, and he said that the recruiter would get back to me soon with my decision. We thanked each other for our time, and bid each other adieu.

After any phone interview, where my breathing becomes irregular (because I cannot convince myself to sit still on the phone, I was pacing around my apartment, stopping only to take notes on my piece of paper, particularly when he asked me questions), I took a few deep breaths, normalized my body, and started thinking: "how could this have been improved?"

Much to my dismay, the only two choices were (a) go back in time and take a CS major instead of CmpE, and (b), fly to Shanghai and interview in person, since occasionally, we had trouble hearing each other, and at least on my end, it sounded like he was in a bathroom, with that level of his own voice echoing, and it sounded like he put me on speakerphone, with a very sensitive microphone- since I could very often hear myself talking to him. This made dialogue difficult, but not impossible. Then again- maybe I'm just looking for excuses.

All in all though- I don't know if I impressed him or not- though I would be leaning towards no. The way I would have thought to impress him was something I simply could not deliver, and the fact that there were many classes he recommended that I'm taking between now and graduation, makes me feel as if I should pack up and head to Japan, work my ass off, and apply to Google China next year.

Just thought I'd update everyone- cheers, Shriram out.