Beginning of the end...

This post feels like the last chapter of "Lord of the Rings".  You know, when the hobbits have defeated the forces of evil and they all pack up and go home?  It is just as long a journey over the Misty Mountains and whatnot, but it all gets skimmed over pretty quickly on the way back because the story is finished really.  There's a bit of a subplot with Saruman in the Shire, in the book at least: Peter Jackson, more recently known for padding out a short book into three long films, even cuts that bit out in his final edit, much to Christopher Lee's chagrin.

That's what this week has been really, a long journey home which I want to skim over as quickly as possible (and obviously I'll be annoyed if I get home to find a Saruman-like figure has taken over my house).  Here's the edited highlights:

Sunday: 8 hour train journey to Boston.  Sat next to a man who was barely able to walk due to medical negligence; he was unable to sue his doctors because the hospital was a charity and apparently you can't sue charities for more than a certain amount in the USA.  Went to a very high church Advent Carol Service that evening, pleasant enough music but needed more drums and flags.  I managed to resist the urge to stick my hands in the air during "Lo, he comes".  Saw Cheers bar.

Monday: Worked in Boston office.  Didn't see much of Boston, there wasn't time.  I would have liked to have gone to the famous tea party as I am gasping for a decent cuppa, but I don't think they do them now they've gone all independent.  Their loss.

Tuesday: Travelled to New Haven Connecticut.  Met a client for a drink and a chat.  Travelling through New England the song going through my head was of course "New England" by Kirsty McColl.  When the phone didn't ring, I knew it wasn't you...  Travelled on to New York and met a feisty old lady from Yonkers on the train (who sounds like she ought to be in a limerick with house chestnuts).  Had Kosher Pizza for tea in a room where almost everybody else wore a black homburg (very nice).

Wednesday: did New York in a day.  Walked the High-line, travelled on the Staten Island ferry, saw the Statue of Liberty, visited Ground Zero, rode the subway, cycled in Central Park.  Then caught the train to New Jersey where I now am: yet another hotel, serving same old food, charging through nose for Wi-Fi.  Surprisingly the song in my head today was never Frank Sinatra, I must have got him out of my system in Chicago.  No, it was a combination of (1) Ella Fitzgerald turning Manhattan into an isle of joy (she was clearly never accosted by a man dressed as Mickey Mouse whilst fighting through crowds of shoppers), (2) Lullaby of Broadway (didn't seem particularly soothing to me, mind), (3) Billy Joel singing about the Staten Island Ferry on the Cold Spring Harbor album and mainly (4) I'm leaving tomorrow by Jimmy Somerville (not, as my daughter once did, to be confused with Jimmy Saville).  In the absence of a map or a decent sense of direction I also clung to a musical mantra "the Bronx is up and the Battery's down". 

Ground Zero (or the 9/11 Memorial) is worth a mention.  The site is not finished yet, so there is a lot of fencing and scaffolding around parts of it, and access to the memorial itself is via a lengthy security screening process, not unlike airport check-in.  The Memorial consists of two square pools of cascading water, each the size and shape of one of the original two towers  (nothing to do with Lord of the Rings this time, please keep up).  The sheer scale of it is impressive, and the shockingly high number of names carved around the sides of the pools really brings home the scale of the tragedy.  So I was genuinely moved, and yet at the same time I didn't like the place much.  You may think I have no business forming such an opinion, and you may be right, but to me it seems odd to commemorate people who fell to their deaths from such a great height with a cascading water feature, especially when the water falls with quite some force into the pool, and when each pool is continuously pouring water down a great central opening that gives the impression of being bottomless.  It was like a giant plug hole sucking all the water down, which frankly gave me the chills.  I don't think it's a comforting place for grieving relatives to visit, more like the set for a modern production of Don Giovanni.

So I really am leaving tomorrow, as the song says, I've had all I can take.  Meeting more colleagues in our New Jersey office tomorrow morning and then catching a plane.  Here are some final thoughts on America then:

(1) I still don't know why they all wear vests.

(2) I never want to see non-dairy creamer ever again.  Of all the food horrors here (and there are many) it is one of the worst.  Incidentally, here on the east coast they say "skim milk", but in California always seem to say "fat free".  In neither place do they make it available in hotel rooms!

(3) I've decided that my favourite Americanism is "drip coffee" - it is succinct and readily understood, we should adopt it in the UK.

(4) I realised this week that I cannot remember a time when I didn't know that the World Dryer Corporation was based in Berkeley Illinois.  I have obviously been reading whilst drying my hands all my life.  I still prefer Dysons.

(5) The sound of African American women arguing is one of the least attractive sounds in the world.  Lord knows why it seems to feature on Daytime TV so much in the UK. 

(6) Apparently the reason the Americans have not adopted chip and pin technology is down to the banks who are afraid it will discourage use of credit cards which would mean less profit for them.  Instead retailers require a signature which is never ever checked against the card itself.

(7) I now have a preferred bedroom temperature - it is precisely 66 degrees Fahrenheit.

Open letter to the guys who run these hotel chains:

I thought you would appreciate some feedback, so here are my modest requirements for a hotel.

(1) Comfortable bed with feather pillows (or a choice of pillows including feather).   Duvet not blankets, no top sheet (just change the duvet cover for each guest).  I need to regulate my temperature by sticking a foot out.

(2) TV should have instructions and some kind of guide so you can tell what is on.  Include a wide range of good channels, not just the free rubbish ones.

(3) Coffee making facilities should come as standard.  A kettle and teabags would be even better, but only if you can get good teabags (imported from UK).

(4) I want proper keys with proper locks, each attached to a large leather tag with a number and the hotel's address so they can be posted back if left behind, just like we had in the seventies.  Plastic key cards should be avoided, particularly if they are likely to unprogram themselves if they are put in a pocket with a mobile phone.  How sophisticated do you expect us to be at maintaining complete mobile phone separation throughout the day?  It would be nice to stay in an hotel for once without having to go down to reception to have my key card redone.  (And any door entry system that gives the guest an electric shock every time the door is locked?  Not good.  You know who you are.)

(5) Minibars should be half full at most: this is because I won't ever drink anything from it (it was drilled into me from such a young age that I should never touch the minibar in hotel rooms that it is now completely taboo for me, along with using the telephone).  It is also to leave room in the fridge for any milk or other foods I want to store there so I can avoid paying full price in the restaurant.  Come to think of it - you should be providing the milk, sachets of non-dairy creamer may be acceptable for Americans, but some of us have standards.  "Half and half" sounds like a compromise, because it is.

(6) Wifi should just be free, even the fast speeds.  I don't expect to pay extra for hot water or bed sheets, nor should I pay for WiFi, this is the twenty-first century.  Pricing structures should not be based on that innkeeper from Les Mis.  It's funny on stage, but not in real life.

(7) There should be at least two accessible sockets for charging phones and computers.  See earlier comments about the century we are living in.  Rummaging behind the TV is not acceptable.  Note also that if you are going to provide an iron (and you should) there needs to be a socket for it, preferably near where the ironing board is kept.

(8) Useless decorative bed cushions.  Surely you could check the sex of the people making reservations and instruct housekeeping to only put these out for women?  Men don't like them, fact.  They only have to be dumped on the floor before the bed can be used.

(9) There should be a strong overhead light which is easily switched on and off from the bed.  Yes, subtle lighting is all very well, lamps and illuminated headboards and what have you, but when it is time to pack up and go we need to be able to see clearly that we haven't left a pair of pants behind.

(10) We need a return to the days when every hotel room had a desk drawer of stationary.  Not because we are going to write letters, but because the envelopes are handy for keeping receipts in for when we do our expense claims back home.

(Long) Weekend 13: Mr Jones goes to Washington

The only city in America which I had visited prior to this year's trip was Washington DC, when I came for a conference last year.  So I already knew. I liked it, which is one of the reasons I came back here for the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

I realise I am starting to divide America into places I like and places I don't, on the basis of very short visits and first impressions.  Perhaps I am turning into my mother who famously while cruising dismissed an entire country (I think it was Vietnam) as not worth a visit after visiting it for about 6 hours. I shall try to avoid too many snap judgements.

Anyway Washington was definitely on the favoured list, and I was looking forward to three days visiting some of the sights I hadn't been to previously.  I'd already seen the White House (smaller than you think), the Lincoln Memorial (bigger than you think) and walked the Mall taking in the National Museum of the American Indian (very interesting).  So this time I decided to focus on things I hadn't seen before.

My first stop had to be a laundry: two weeks of travel with just one suitcase had always meant I would run out of underpants around now.  Having phoned to check they were open on Thanksgiving, I caught the Metro out to a laundry offering a "wash and fold" service and left my clothes before catching a different train to Arlington cemetery (which I am going to post about separately).

I love the Washington metro.  All the stations consist of large single "caverns" with high vaulted ceilings, curved like hobbit holes built of concrete blocks, and within these caverns run two or sometimes three levels of trains and platforms on overlapping mezzanines.  It all feels beautifully open.  The ticketing system is slightly confusing, and potentially unfriendly to foreigners (once again the machines required a US billing address zip code before they would accept a credit card), but with a bit of effort I mastered it.

I visited some of the monuments I had never made it to previously: the Martin Luther King Jr.  memorial, and the impressive FDR Memorial, which consists of a mini landscaped sculpture park marking many of the great man's achievements.  I also visited the Museum of American History, and saw the original "Star Spangled Banner", the very flag which inspired the National Anthem by surviving the British attack on Baltimore in 1814.

So what can I say about Washington DC?

(1) Franklin D Roosevelt's achievements are celebrated as part of history, but I cannot imagine that any president could get elected on the basis of his politics today.  I am sure the Tea Party Republicans would call him a socialist, would probably try to use the fact he was in a wheelchair against him, would bring the government to a standstill rather than allow him to use public money to combat poverty and unemployment as he did in the 1930s.  It is strange to see statutes of homeless people as part of the FDR memorial when the homeless people on the street of Washington DC today seem much worse off.  It feels like modern America wants to believe that the war on extreme poverty has been won, that this victory is one of its historic achievements, but maintains this aspect of its mythology by ignoring what is going on now.

 (2) Nevertheless, it is hard not to be impressed here by what the USA has become in a relatively short space of time.  Sometimes the British mock the Americans for their "lack of history", however I actually quite envy their discrete and relatively uncomplex origins story, it means it can be presented in a way that people can understand and feel part of, and it can be pretty moving too.  I was impressed by the original flag that inspired the poem, "the Star-Spangled Banner" (the tune being an old  English one).  The museum even made a virtue out of the fact that "every generation reinterprets the anthem in its own style", which is a far more charitable view of the phenomenon which I have previously observed and commented on.

(3) The American museum was quite selective in what it said about Britain.  For instance we were mentioned quite extensively when we were the bad guys, but elsewhere we were subtly glossed over.  For example, a display on modern American culture mentioned Archie Bunker as an iconic TV character in a show that tackled prejudice head-on, without mentioning that it was a rip-off of our own Alf Garnett.  And the discovery of DNA was apparently down to a US scientist without mention of his UK collaborators or Cambridge university.

(4) I learned that Lincoln's famous "emancipation proclamation" only freed the slaves in those southern states which had seceded, but there were in fact three states which remained part of the Union where slavery remained until after the Civil War was won.  The African American section of the museum was particularly interesting, and there is a new museum of African American history being built at the moment.

Arlington National Cemetery

When I came to DC last year, I had the idea that Arlington was some way from the city.  Mainly because it was in Virginia and I didn't realise that the Virginia border was a few hundred yards from the Lincoln Memorial, and also because the city maps have an arrow on the very edge pointing out to Arlington with no indication of distance, in a "there be dragons" kind of way.  This time I decided I would make the effort to visit and was pleasantly surprised to discover it took little or no effort at all!

I find war cemeteries very moving.  I have visited the WW1 graves in France and Belgium, the WW2 cemetery in Leningrad (as it then was) and the American War Cemetery in Madingley, Cambs.  There is something incredible about rows of military graves, a poignant reminder of the cost of war.

Arlington is a bit different to what I expected: it is a National Cemetery rather than a War Graves site, so not everybody buried there was killed in battle.  Americans who served in the military and died much later are entitled to be buried with their fallen comrades, and so are their spouses and dependent children.  There are even graves of children lying beside vacant plots reserved for their military parents who are as yet still alive.

The history of Arlington is itself fascinating - it was a country house of a member of George Washington's family who married General Robert E Lee.  He left the property when he fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War and the house was comandeered by the Union government.  It was used as a graveyard out of necessity during the civil war.  Much later the Supreme Court ruled that Lee's family were the rightful owners of the land, but instead of exhuming all the graves as was his right, the owner sold it to the US Government for a significant sum to be the National Cemetery.

The most famous parts of the huge cemetery are the graves of the Unknown Soldier and the graves of JFK and his family.  I had never known before that the Kennedys had lost two children, who are also buried with them, including a son who died at only a few days old a few weeks before his father was assassinated.  Jackie K suffered in more ways than I had realised.

What I found most interesting is that in some sections of the cemetery the relatives were allowed to choose their own headstone and in others the headstones are all uniform.  When I have visited war graves previously, I liked the idea of uniformity, it seems particularly poignant that all victims of war are made equal in death, and to look out at row upon row of identical stones all representing young men who never got the chance to grow old is especially moving.  I read somewhere that the British War Graves commission insisted on uniformity against some opposition, and yet now it seems so clearly the right decision.  I am less sure when it comes to Arlington, is there as much logic to having identical stones for the war casualty, the old man who died fifty years later, and the still born baby whose father is still serving?  You can't look across at a sea of white stones and think "wow, every single one was a young man killed in Vietnam" (or wherever).  Still, on balance I prefer the simplicity of identical headstones.  The older section with different stones is less impressive, it looks like some people are competing for attention on the basis of their wealth or rank, which is perhaps the American way but for me it detracts from the sacrifice the soldiers made.

The strangest thing of all from a European perspective is the complete lack of poppies.  Some symbols just don't make it across the pond I guess.

Los Angeles

 

My road trip ended with a lunch date in Santa Monica with an old friend.  I liked Santa Monica, it is an LA suburb by the sea, with an old wooden pier (currently being repaired), old fairground rides, and a beautiful sandy beach.  After my lunch date I went for a wander along the front, watched the crazy LA people doing yoga on the beach and roller-skating, and then came back along the sand, even having a little paddle on the way.  It felt like a chilled kind of place.

After that I drove to my hotel to check in.  LA is a huge sprawling citywith no real centre as such, just lots of districts connected by a network of extremely busy freeways.  I found the hotel slightly irritating: it is one of those hotels that looks luxurious - all carpets and bellhops - but actually feels very ordinary when you are actually in your room, and wants to charge you extra for stuff that a good hotel ought to include as standard (like coffee making facilities and wi-fi).  The car-parking was $30 per night, and there really was no choice but to pay it.

On Monday I went into the office which was right opposite the hotel (chosen for that very reason).  It was good to meet LA tax colleagues for lunch.  After that I was supposed to catch the train to San Diego at 4pm, but discovered that President Obama was due in town, which would mean lots of street closures making it difficult for me to get to the train station on the other side of town.  However one of my colleagues was driving down to San Diego, and it suited him to take me, because there is a separate lane on many Californian freeways reserved for cars with 2 or more passengers which can shave an hour off the journey.  So I was chauffeured to my hotel in San Diego in pretty quick time (2.5 hours).

I preferred San Diego to Los Angeles.  It seems more livable somehow.  The hotel was in the downtown area, less fancy than the LA hotel but more welcoming.  I met up with a colleague I had previously met in Palo Alto for dinner.  Next day I got a taxi to the San Diego office - another lengthy journey across town, and met more colleagues.  We had sushimi for lunch which was a new experience for me (having previously tried and enjoyed Japanese food I had never dared try raw fish before but I was glad I did).  Then I got into another taxi (well technically the same taxi as the driver from the morning had become my friend and agreed to come back for me), rushed back to the railway station in good time, and managed to change my ticket to an earlier train that was just leaving for LA.

The train journey was a strange experience.  The train broke down in San Diego station and was delayed, eventually leaving minus half the carriages.  Some of the standard class carriages were arbitrarily redesignated as business class, and half the passengers  asked to move.  The carriage I was in was split down the middle, so that all seats beyond mine were cleared and reserved for business class customers who were booked onto the train.  I sat next to a red flag marked "No Entry" which stuck out into the aisle and threaten to poke out the eyes of unsuspecting passengers who tried to pass into the forbidden zone.  When we first set out there was plenty of space, but the train got increasingly full, and the passengers were irritated to find half an empty carriage which they weren't allowed to enter.  Eventually there was something of a revolution and the passengers surged into the empty seats.  When the conductor came back he was really quite rude to them all, but didn't force them to move.  However one of the passengers was an elderly German gentleman who wouldn't shut up about the poor service.  In Germany if the trains are late you get a refund and an apology apparently.  He was particularly effronted by the red flag.  I was glad I'd caught the earlier train, heaven knows what time the one I was originally booked on arrived.

Once back in LA, I returned to the first hotel, and rested in anticipation of a long flight the next day.  I was most gratified to discover I could get my case to less than 50 lbs, which was a weight off my mind if you'll pardon the pun.  The following morning I collected my car from the hotel car-park and chatted in Italian to the hotel receptionist, who waived part of my parking fee.  Allowing plenty of time I drove to Los Angeles airport with about three hours to spare.  I left the car with Budget car rental (aka those robbing bastards) and checked in.

 

LA airport is the most boring I have ever been in, worse than Paris Orly.  I did see a movie star, well sort of: the guy who plays Sam the shape-shifting bartender in True Blood walked past me.  But I wasn't impressed.  The flight was absolutely jammed, and the seats not terribly comfortable, but at least I ended up 1700 miles closer to my family than I was before.

So what have I realised about Southern California?

(1) I don't like LA much.  I am not impressed by celebrity or glitz, I had no desire to do a tour of the homes of the rich and pointless, or see their names written on concrete slabs.  I didn't have much time, and it was probably a mistake to try to visit both cities in such a short space of time, but LA seems like a playground for the privileged few and a penance for everyone else with its traffic and pressure.  I can't be certain though that my view isn't coloured by my general ennui and longing for home: maybe if I had gone at the beginning I would have embraced it with the same enthusiasm I had for Austin?  Somehow I doubt it.

(2) I might actually like San Diego if I went back and gave it a chance, but I am not planning on making another trip any time soon. Sorry San Diegans, but I am sure you'll cope.

(3) According to the German passenger, the Japanese railways will provide you with a late note to give your employer if the train is late.  The mind boggles at the thought of a society where employes are expected to provide notes like schoolchildren, and the authority of a train conductor will satisfy an employer.

(4) American students travel vast distances by train for Thanksgiving.  Some of the kids on my train were travelling to Seattle by train, a journey of 36 hours.  Presumably plane fares must be significantly higher than train for anybody to put themselves through that.

(5) Being nice to people works.  Whether it is the taxi-driver who wants to chat and then picks you up later, or the receptionist who wants to speak his own language, a bit of human interaction goes a long way.  Service industries seem very formalised in the US, and people working in them get a pretty raw deal, but it is easy to get them onside by treating them as individual human beings.

Weekend 12: Roadtrip!

 

The plan was always to leave Palo Alto for the last time by car on Saturday morning, but thanks to the dreadful cold I was awake at 4am.  Unable to get back to sleep, I was on the road by 5am. I drove the direct route to Monterey in the dark (because I had already driven up the stretch of coast road north of Monterey when we were coming back from our whale watching trip) and arrived there for breakfast at 6.30am.  By then it was getting light, and I set off down the coastal highway 1 towards LA.

We don't really have an expression for "roadtrip" in Britain.  I guess this is because it basically seems to refer to a journey deliberately taken by car for pleasure in circumstances where it might be considered more practical to take the plane.  I don't think we ever do that in the UK.  I might in theory have the choice between flying to Exeter or driving down to see my parents, but the decision to drive is always down to cost, never because the M5 is a particularly attractive road that everybody ought to drive down at least once in their lives.  To put it another way, any car journey of which the very thought makes your heart sink cannot be a roadtrip.

I allowed myself a day and a half to get to LA, because the scenic route can take 12 hours to drive, but almost everybody I have spoken to about things to do here has said that driving the one is a must.

The section of Highway 1 between Monterey and Pismo is beautiful, and very quiet first thing in the morning.  It was more rugged than I had expected and even bleak in parts, it actually reminded me of the coast in north west Ireland, or even north Wales (until the sun warmed the place up).  It also reminded me of the Amalfi coast in places, although it was much quieter, and due to a complete lack of buses and mopeds was much less stressful. I did actually ask myself whether it was in fact any more beautiful than some of the other coastal roads I had driven on previously.  Clearly it beat the A55 to Queensferry, but Amalfi?  I came to the conclusion that the ocean is a particularly big deal here, because so many Americans come to California having never seen the sea.  Hard for us Brits to imagine, but there must even now be kids in the Midwest for whom the first glimpse of the ocean (whether Pacific or Atlantic) will be an incredible experience, and who never get to visit Blackpool, Llandudno or Scarborough.

 I made such good time that by 10am I had reached Hearst Castle where I decided to stop.  Hearst Castle is a curious place, built on a hill top on a huge estate by newspaper magnate, William Hearst, in the early part of the twentieth century.  It is a mixture of historical styles and incorporates original features from older European buildings which he acquired on his travels.  The tour is presented as the story of "our" visits as weekend houseguests in the 1920s, and ends with a film showing how the young William was deeply affected by his visits to Europe as a child and was moved to build his dream incorporating the ideas he met there.  Things is, I can't decide whether I liked it.    Is it just a dreadful old pastiche built by a man without taste who loved to surround himself with celebrities?  Is he to be admired for designing his entire dining room around sixteenth century seats taken from a European abbey and hanging the flags of the Sienese contrade around his hall?    Maybe I am just a terrible snob.  I've had the opportunity to see sixteenth century monks' seats in thirteenth century cathedrals, and Sienese flags in Siena, and most Americans in the 1920s wouldn't have been able to, so I shouldn't begrudge them the chance to see them in this setting.  Clearly the tour organisers expected us to admire his determination and vision, but somehow I couldn't understand how that made him a hero.  They didn't actually explain who got the invitations to the house party, but presumably all the guests were selected from among the élite, nobody suggested that he was providing any kind of public service.  In any case, it was a fascinating place to visit, and the indoor swimming pool was truly magnificent.  The tour guide was very entertaining and friendly.  But it seemed a little bit too uncritical, too much of an homage to somebody I suspect was more multi-faceted.  I couldn't imagine our own National Trust presenting an historical property in such a Disneyfied way.

By the time I had finished at Hearst, I was pretty tired, but determined to make good progress towards LA.  Thankfully the driving was pretty easy all day Saturday, open roads, mainly quiet, and I reached a small town called Lompoc which had many cheap motels, one of which I checked into.  I thought motels were always run by disinterested men in vests who watched black and white TV all day and gave you keys without looking you in the eye, but that apparently is just in the movies.  It was truly basic, but clean and for $45 a night you can't complain.

On Sunday I set off early again, thanks to my cold.  For the next stage of my journey the scenic route 1 and the boring old freeway came together, and I unfortunately missed the turning where they split again, meaning I was stuck on the busy road all the way to Los Angeles.  So I never got to drive through Malibu, which was a shame because I had wanted to see if it was like on the Malibu adverts ("Do you want this fish?").  I did however get to stop for breakfast in Santa Barbara.

So what did I learn on my roadtrip?

(1) Where the speed limits are "radar controlled" according to the road signs, that does not mean there is a man somewhere seeing all the cars as bleeps beneath a rotating arm on some screen and able to launch missile strikes on those who offend.  Apparently it means that there may be policemen with handheld speed guns.  There are no roadside speeding cameras in the USA, apart from in Arizona of all places.

(2) William Hearst was the model for Citizen Kane (as is widely known) but was misrepresented as a reclusive figure and was very angry about the film which he tried to block.

(3) As soon as I visited Santa Barbara I couldn't get the theme tune for the soap opera of the same name out of my head.  For some reason the theme tune for the French version.  (Santa Barbara, qui me diras, pourquoi?).  I have absolutely no idea why that tune stays with me when I can't remember ever actually watching Santa Barbara in France, or indeed in any other country.  I remember noticing in Italy 20 years ago that the theme tune was different again over there, so I must have heard the French one when I was a teenager.

(4) Dionne Warwick was right, LA IS a great big freeway (and a traffic jam most of the time).  However the song which finally displaced the French TV theme tune was "I am I said" by Neil Diamond ("LA's fine, the sun shines most the time, and the feeling is laid back.").  He was right about the sun, not so sure about it being laid back.  He also captured so well the sense of belonging in one place and living in another: Mr Diamond, you are a legend.

So farewell then Palo Alto...

My last week in Palo Alto felt a bit strange: I agreed to move into a colleague's house and dogsit while she was on holiday, so I had to vacate my apartment sooner than expected and sort out my packing whilst living between two addresses.  At the same time I developed  a horrible cold which kept me awake most nights, and got sucked into a big and urgent project for a client that demanded a lot of my time.  Nevertheless by Friday I had all my stuff sorted, most of my luggage was boxed up and collected by the shipping company, and I had said goodbye to almost everybody.  I managed to make it to my Wednesday night Italian speakers' group for the last time, and ended up having one last pizza at Vesta, although it wasn't up to their usual standard, too much finocchio in the sausage.

If I am honest I couldn't wait to leave Palo Alto.  I have had such good times there, but I have also been so terribly homesick, I was beginning to feel like I hated the place and everyone in it, which is far from being the case.  I just think I needed to leave in order to remember how much I really like it, if that makes any sense.  It was not to be a final departure from the USA - there are two more weeks until I am finally home - but leaving PA felt like a huge step towards home. 

It felt strange leaving my flat for the last time.  I left behind some stuff I can't take home: clothes airer from IKEA, bottle of toilet cleaner and brush, packet of filter papers for the coffee machine. I hope they get left for the next tenant and aren't simply thrown away because they aren't on the official inventory.  I hate waste.  I had a box full of unopened tins and groceries which I donated to the food bank (whether their clients use British style malt vinegar remains to be seen), and left some of my homemade frozen pasta sauce in my friend's freezer (which she'll probably throw away when she gets back from her holiday).

I still have many unanswered questions with just two weeks to go:

(1) Why do Americans call cider "hard cider" but the hard shoulder they just call the "shoulder"?  

(2) Why don't they sell orange squash or any kind of dilutable cordial?  I know they like their freshly squeezed, but surely hot orange is a medical requirement for anyone with a cold?

(3) Why does the car park under our office have two large bales of straw in the corner?  Does anybody ride their horse to work or are they putting on a Nativity Play?

(4) How can Panda Express state that its mission is to provide a quality authentic Asian dining experience but not sell any Chinese tea, or indeed any drink which isn't cold and fizzy?

Hopefully as I continue my mini-tour of the USA I will find answers to these and other questions!