Weekend 4: San Francisco is like Venice

After my trip to the baseball, I was keen to visit San Francisco again and see something of the city itself.

The weekend began with a dinner invitation to a colleague's house in a SF neighbourhood.  I drove out this time and parked at a reasonably priced motel which she had recommended.  That meant I could have a drink, and then be in situ for some sight-seeing on Saturday.

Dinner was fun, although I probably drank too much wine.  I woke on Saturday morning in a strange motel room with a headache, but undeterred set out to explore the city on foot.

My friends had suggested I start with a cable car ride, but first I got a coffee for breakfast at a cafe near the hotel, and spent about 30 minutes chatting with another customer about life, politics and stuff.  Americans have very different attitudes to most things, but at least in Northern California I can be fairly confident that the person I speak to won't be a far right nutcase.

The cable car is not a cable car as we would understand it, the cables run under the street and enable what are effectively street running trams to manage the hills in San Francisco.  I waited about 30 minutes in the street near the motel as completely full trams went by, before abandoning the attempt and deciding to walk the length of the track all the way to Fisherman's Wharf.  And as I followed a straight line down incredibly steep hills, I became quite glad I had missed the cable car, because it would have been quite terrifying to descend those sort of gradients hanging off a trolley suspended from a cable.

San Francisco is a lovely city, and I was there on a beautiful day.  I wandered round the old wharf, saw the Golden Gate Bridge, and then walked back up through Chinatown, saw Union Square and then up to the catholic cathedral.  I'd actually meant to go to the episcopalian cathedral because that was where the cannibal cult met in "More Tales of the City", but I misread the map and went to the wrong one.

Evenutally I walked back to my motel, picked up the car and drove to what I thought was Golden Gate Park.  I discovered afterwards it wasn't, it was some other smaller park, but it was very pleasant.

So why does San Francisco remind me of Venice?  Simply that the thing I enjoyed the most was wandering in the normal residential areas and soaking up the atmosphere: chatting to locals in the cafés, seeing the wooden houses and the local shops.  It feels like it would be a great place to live, and I liked that better than seeing the tourist sights.  Which is exactly how I felt wandering around Venice.

On Sunday I went back to church, and went to a welcome lunch afterwards for new people.  This included an explanation of how the church works, and what they believe in.  I was very reassured to discover that they don't advocate anything weird (well, nothing unorthodox from a Christian point of view anyway) and allow a range of different opinions.  They also seem happy to partner with other local churches in helping the local community.  So the rather didactic style of the course I'd attended was not as I had feared an indication that I had joined some kind of cult.

So what did I learn last weekend?

1. It is impossible to book into a motel without photo ID in the USA.  In fact it is impossible to do many things without photo ID - this land of the free thing is actually just something they say in films and songs.  Other restrictive rules: they can fine you if you park in the opposite direction to the flow of traffic, they won't allow 42 year olds to buy alcohol without a driving licence, you have to have it with you whenever you drive (the licence not the alcohol).

2. Chinatown is the same everywhere and not terribly exciting.  Dragon processions on special occasions may be OK, but crowded streets and shops selling cheap crap aren't worth worrying about.  

3. I was completely misled when I heard that all American cheese is processed and horrible.  There is some great cheese here.

4. The catholic cathedral is under-appreciated, I think it is rather impressive modern architecture.  I am however planning to visit the more famous cathedral next time.  As well as the real Golden Gate Park.

5. People say that San Francisco is cold and foggy compared to the Valley.  I lugged that heavy rucksack with cagoule and jumper round all day and just got sunburnt and sweaty, so you can't trust anyone.

Baseball

So, I went to watch a sporting event on Thursday.  Hands up who thinks I am now a huge baseball fan?

Well maybe not, but it was an entertaining evening.

We began by going to a pre-game drinks event at the baseball ground called Oktoberfest, themed of course around the Munich beer festival of the same name.  This was a bit of a poor do.  A group of us from the office arrived together expecting that our tickets would afford us entry to some sort of party.  We queued for ages to get into the "fest"' then queued again for even longer to get our one free drink.  In fact we all bought a second drink at the same time as our free one rather than face the queue again.  In the meantime we were entertained by a family dance group dressed in Bavarian costume. The teenage boys in the group looked very much like they'd rather be anywhere else.  It must be hard to be born into a family business of being "professional lederhosen wearing Germans" .  (Available for weddings, christenings and bar mitzvahs, although probably on reflection not many of the latter).  So Oktoberfest was generally reckoned to be not as good as the real thing, although it did have the advantage of getting us slightly drunk, which in my experience makes baseball more enjoyable.

The baseball itself was a long drawn out affair, which I couldn't really follow.  It does not flow terribly well, lots of stopping and starting, but that does make it a very sociable occasion when you are in a large group.  People get up and go to the bar, and to the food stalls, talk about all sorts of non- baseball matters, so it wasn't that different to being in a bar with a group of friends whilst sports were shown on the TV.  And by the end I was beginning to get the hang of the baseball and even enjoy it a little.
 

They aren't as musical as we are in the UK.  Consider the range of songs sung by soccer fans in the UK: the creative chants targeting the opposition, the traditional local songs with no apparent connection to the team or town (e.g.  Theme from Z Cars or I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles), the rapid adaptations of old songs (Nellie the Elephant for Torres at Liverpool) or classic hero chants like "Ooh Ah Cantona".  There's none of that at baseball games.  Instead somebody kept playing a four note refrain on what sounded like an organ (I imagined a Würlitzer being played by a determined little old lady), and everybody sang along "Let's go Giants".  I believe that same chant is used both here for the football ("Let's go Niners") and elsewhere for other teams (Let's go Dodgers" for instance).  If the opposition's star player was dating a Spice Girl, nobody here would think to sing about her sexual tastes.  Which may be a good thing: there is generally a good humored rivalry between fans, no segregation and a family atmosphere.  Giants fans do chant "Beat LA" mind you, which sounds so like DLA that I initially wondered if the firm was sponsoring the game.

 

There was also a team mascot dressed as a seal, who waved at me at one point but seemed disappointed I didn't scream and whoop at him.  Sorry Lou Seal, I am British and we don't do that kind of thing once we pass puberty unless we are much more drunk than I was on Thursday.

The game lasted about two and a half hours, but the time didn't drag like I had feared it might.  That was mainly due to the company who were entertaining.  So what did I learn about baseball and at the baseball?

(1) In American English, "poop" is the noun and "poo" is the verb.  Don't ask me how it came up in conversation, just store the knowledge away in case you ever need to sound convincingly American in a conversation about defacation.

(2) American culture is at its best when it is not attempting to be German.

(3) The Giants' best player is known as the Panda, and a lot of fans wear panda hats in his honour.

(4) Don't Stop Believing by Journey is a local anthem (Journey are from San Francisco) so people play it and sing along to it a lot.  Blurred Lines is a popular song with no local connections so far as I am aware and lyrics which appear to justify rape, however it has a very catchy tune so it too gets played and sung along to a lot.

Hermeneutics and homiletics

By the beginning of my fourth week in the US my evening schedule was beginning to fill up nicely.  I had my Italian speaker's group on Wednesday, an invitation for dinner on Friday, and a trip to see the San Francisco Giants on Thursday.  On top of that there was an attempt to find a date for a drinks evening with the Palo Alto Tax Department in my honour, but that had to be rescheduled!

I didn't have anything planned for Monday or Tuesday, but in church on Sunday I noticed an announcement of a free training course on those two evenings in "Hermeneutics and Homiletics", and on a whim, at the last minute, I signed up.

The course amounted to two two-hour lectures in a classroom forming part of the church buildings.  I learned some interesting things about hermeneutics (approaches to studying the bible) and homiletics (ways of teaching and preaching), but more interesting perhaps was what I learnt about the church itself and the people in it.

When I arrived on the Monday evening I met a few of the other twenty or so people on the course - a range of ages from retired to student.  I got chatting to one lady and asked her why there were so many different churches along that particular road in Palo Alto.  She said it was because people disagreed about theological issues, which I found both shocking and slightly worrying.  My experience in England has tended to be that different churches in general (protestant ones at least) get along with each other reasonably well at a local level, seeing each other as valid alternative choices for people who prefer different styles, and that the Church of England in particular is deliberately (and famously) broad in its churchmanship, embracing a range of views and glossing over minor differences of opinion, notwithstanding the highly publicised antics of extremists of various persuasions who get far more media attention than they really should.  I was suddenly struck by the fact that I had picked this church on the basis of little more than a well constructed website and a shared taste for Matt Redman songs, but had no idea what the party line was on any number of contentious theological issues, or indeed whether there was a party line.  What would happen if I discovered that the church had official links to aggressive anti-gay activism or republican economics?  Or (more importantly) if they discovered what I really think about the claims of Michelle Bachman to follow Christ, or that I had not only participated in a gay wedding as my brother's best man, but even broken every rule of the secular registry office by praying silently for the happy couple during the ceremony?

PCB stands for Peninsula Bible Church, so I was expecting them to be grounded pretty solidly in bible study.  But I had never been on a course quite like this.  It felt very much like a university lecture, and what was interesting was that nobody else seemed to think that was odd.  The pastor/lecturer did almost all the talking for two hours, and the students asked questions expecting authoritative answers rather than to challenge or debate.  Some people hardly spoke at all.  The course is apparently run annually for church interns, who as far as I can tell are a mixture of volunteer staff members and other members of the congregation who sign up.

I found the lecture on the second night less helpful: the pastor rushed through a lot of printed material which I would need to read more carefully to follow properly, but he also was quite prescriptive as to how we should approach bible study or leading a group.  I felt there was a presumption within the group that he had the authority to be this prescriptive, which raised my hackles slightly, although there was nothing he said that was at all objectionable in itself, and I warmed to him as a person.  Perhaps I was out of line here, after all he is in charge of this church and I am effectively a guest in his house.

I suppose what seemed to be missing from my perspective was any emphasis on the supernatural element.  The emphasis was on working through the bible in a scholarly, methodical fashion, which is good, and to be fair he was clear about the role of the Holy Spirit in guiding those who study the bible, but I haven't heard anybody at this church talk about miracles or the prophetic, or about ministering to one another in prayer.  The section of the lecture on leading a Bible Study group was quite instructive, it seems that here the main purpose of small groups is study.

So what have we learned from this?

(1) You've probably learned that my posts aren't always light-hearted, but take courage and don't stop reading, I'm not planning a permanent change of tone and it's baseball on Thursday which I am assured will prove a rich seam of comedy nuggets.

(2) I've learned that PCB is not quite what I'm used to, but then again nothing round here is, so there is no point fretting, that's the adventure.  I've met a lovely lady who helps with a church group for recovering addicts, and she's invited me to their worship session on Sunday morning: I guess that will show a completely different side to PCB.  There's also a welcome lunch for new people on Sunday which should give me a clearer picture of what they're all about.

(3) I've also realized that at some point in the last few years I have become a charismatic.  Who saw that coming?

Weekend 3: Wine, wet and Armadillo Willy's

After all the excitement of Texas, my third week in the States has been dull by comparison.  Work was very quiet, so much so that I hardly spoke to a soul in the office.  I became aware that if I didn't actually go to the office nobody would even notice.  Some people have noted in the past that working out of two offices like Manchester and Liverpool gives certain opportunities to "disappear" between the two (mentioning no Corporate Location Heads in particular), but I am beginning to wonder if an international secondment might not work the same way but on a bigger scale - I could spend a week in Vegas and nobody would ever know.  Except of course I wouldn't, I'd be racked with guilt and fear of discovery, and my wife would kill me.

By Wednesday I was very much looking forward to some conversation at my "serata con amici" - weekly meetup with Italian speakers.  Unfortunately it was cancelled at the last minute, but I didn't find out before I had arrived at the caffé, ordered a drink and waited 20 minutes.  After which I went home alone, drank alone and watched crap TV until 2am.

Further disappointments on Friday, when my Saturday meetup was cancelled, or rather postponed due to a poor weather forecast.  It was a 10 mile hike along a coastal path, so I was pretty gutted.  Thankfully things started to look up after that, when I was unexpectedly invited to join a colleague and her family for a meal out.  After a very pleasant evening, and a large quantity of red wine things looked a lot better.

So what did I do with my unexpectedly free Saturday?  Did I go to San Francisco to see the sights or watch the Americas' Cup?  Did I head for the hills?  No, it rained, then I had a haircut.

Rain was an unexpected phenomenon.  I'd kind of assumed that it was always sunny here, but foggy in San Francisco.  I didn't actually bring a coat with me to California (which on reflection was probably a bit foolish).  I missed most of the rain while a nursing a hangover, but by about 3pm I was ready to venture out, and by then the rain had more or less stopped.  So I drove into downtown Palo Alto.  "Downtown" to an American means the part with the shops and the bars.  Of course to an Englishman it means only one thing - Petula Clark.  (Lord only knows what happens if I go to Downtown San José, I'll end up with some dreadful Dionne/Petula mash-up in my head.)

Downtown Palo Alto is quite a pleasant place to go for a wander - small shops although none of them are basic things like greengrocers, they don't appear to exist here, it's all banks, specialist shops like the Apple Store and trendy cafés and bars.  However I did find a proper old fashioned barber's.  I was expecting it to be like the one in "Coming to America", staffed by a series of incomprehensible old men talking about sport all played by Eddie Murphy, but it was more like slasher Dean's in Sale used to be in the 1970s.  Apart from having no idea how much to tip it was all good.  I won't bother with a beard trim next time, but the haircut is OK.

This morning (Sunday) I went back to the same church, PCB.  The preacher was really good, they're in the middle of a series on John's gospel.  This week was about Jesus driving the moneylenders out of the temple. The music is good when I know the songs, which is about 50% of the time.  I have spoken to a few people but after the service everybody is rushing round picking up kids (so like home).  I am going to go along to some of their midweek meetings where there will be a smaller number of people and more chance to make friends.

I got back from church to discover that my washing machine had died, the drum had spun itself off its axis.  I rang the letting agent's emergency number and somebody is coming tomorrow to assess the damage.  Hope they fix it soon, or I'll have to go to the laundromat, which will probably fill my head with Marvin Gaye, and I've already got Dionne and Petula taking up all the room.

This afternoon I took my borrowed bike back to the Palo Alto bike store to see if they could fix the strange noises and difficult pedaling.  One extremely helpful young man pointed out that my tyres were flat, another one showed me how to use the pump, and yet another one oiled my chain for me. And none of them made me feel stupid for bringing a bike in for repair just because the tyres were flat: that's American customer service for you.

Flushed with success, I did some more shopping, treated myself to a new raincoat in case yesterday's downpour wasn't an isolated incident, and then stopped off for takeout on the way home.  I know

I've spent a lot of time talking about the difficulties of shopping and cooking for one, but this was a special takeaway - Armadillo Willie's.  That's the name, not the main ingredient.  After my Austin experience it was recommended to me as proper American BBQ food, and it was very good, although I couldn't eat that much meat every day.

So what I have learnt this week:

(1) Californians like to warn people about health risks.  There are signs everywhere warning you about things that might give you cancer.  It is like having cuttings from the Daily Mail pinned up everywhere.  They are generally not specific enough to enable you to make sensible choices to manage the risk: e.g. "This building contains materials which the State of California considers to increase your risk of cancer".  The signs are so prevalent that Californians just ignore them.

(2) Americans call bicycle oil "lube" but that just makes me snigger.  There is a chain of garages here called "Jiffy Lube" which still cracks me up.

(3) Root beer has a rather peculiar taste which I probably won't try again.  Apparently it was invented during prohibition as an alternative to alcohol, but I am not sure why they didn't stop production at the same time as FDR's New Deal.

(4) Tom Lehrer wasn't strictly correct when he said "It's not against any religion to want to dispose of a pigeon".  According to John 2:16, Jesus was strongly opposed to pigeon disposal when it was for monetary consideration in the temple courts.  However poisoning them is still OK.

(5) American children really do sell homemade cookies and lemonade on street corners,  I bought some today.  I don't know why I was surprised, but I guess I'd assumed that only happened on TV.

Weekend 2: Tortillas and Stir-Fry

So, back from Austin, tired and full of unhealthy Tex-Mex food, I was planning to spend a quiet weekend.  Everybody keeps suggesting exciting things I should be doing with my spare time, but I can't quite get used to doing things on my own somehow.

Because of the time difference between Austin and California, we got back fairly early on Friday afternoon and didn't go back to the office.  I was planning a quiet swim, but was surprised when I heard a knock at the door and found two Hispanic cleaners carrying more cleaning equipment between them than you could fit in my mother's utility room cupboard.  I had been told the apartment was serviced, but when the letting agent knew nothing about cleaning I'd assumed there was no cleaner.  So I did just what any other middle-class Englishman would do: I told them I was getting dressed to gain 5 minutes and then frantically rushed round tidying up and shoving stuff in drawers.  I was then faced with a further dilemma - how long should I spend at the pool to give them time to clean up?  Truly a "first world problem".

On Saturday the firm had its annual picnic in a local park.  We'd never had an office picnic in Manchester, which is perhaps just as well given the climate.  It was great to meet more colleagues and their families, even if the food was Tex-Mex again.  I discovered we have another European secondee here in Palo Alto, Christian from Cologne.  After the picnic he and I headed into San José to visit the tech museum.  Sadly it was almost closing time by the time we arrived, so we wandered round San José instead and then went for a coffee.

 On Sunday I went to a new church, called PBC.  It seems to be a friendly, evangelical church with a wide range of ages, the preaching was very good, and the music was lively and familiar.  I am going to stick with this one.  It felt very like a St Mary's 9.30 service (if you've never been to St Mary's you will have to take my word for it). However there wasn't the pressure of the strict one hour limit you get at St Mary's, or the 15 minutes of CBeebies style slapstick at the end.  PCB isn't part of the "hands down for coffee" culture, but there were one or two people sticking their hands up during the worship, and I may summon up the courage to join their number next week if the Spirit leads.  I suppose that's the true test of spontaneous worship - being called to do something nobody else is doing.

On Sunday afternoon I went shopping again.  I know, I haven't set foot in San Francisco yet, but I have been to every supermarket in the area, how sad am I?  Thing is, I decided I'd had enough of the noisy tumble dryer, and would treat myself to an airer.  (Still sounds sad!)  I also wanted a spanner to adjust my borrowed bicycle and a cheap wok, as well as some groceries.  So I took myself to the local Ikea (the one they built to create jobs for all the gang members from Michelle Pfeiffer's school).  You might think a Gangster's Paradise would be preferable to a furniture store laid out like Dante's Inferno - I couldn't possibly comment.  I followed my Ikea trip with a visit to Walmart, which is laid out in a far less systematic way than any part of Dante's creation but is no less hellish.

So that was my weekend.  That evening I celebrated my shopping triumphs with some delicious salmon and mushroom pasta, cooked in my new wok, according to my lovely wife's own recipe, and although not as good as hers, it contained no guacamole whatsoever. 

 

On Monday morning I went back to the office, and attended a lunchtime meeting where we were served tortillas and salsa again.

Cyprus and Texas

I spent the first part of this week researching current attitudes towards Cyprus as a jurisdiction for holding companies. This may sound tedious to some, but I quite enjoyed it, because it meant canvassing opinions from Russians, Belgians and Americans and pulling the information together into a published article. A bit different to the stuff I normally do. I thought I was ghost-writing the article for one of the partners, but he gave me credit in the email to the magazine which promptly asked for a photograph of me, so I am soon to be held out to the world as a Cyprus expert. Which is rather odd given that I have never structured any transaction using a Cyprus holding company and probably never will.

On Wednesday I flew with colleagues to Austin, Texas. I am still coming to terms with the scale of America, the vast distances over which people fly from one parts of the country to another. Palo Alto obviously works most closely with the San Francisco office, the distance between them being comparable to Manchester and London. Next I guess it is the southern Californian offices which are reachable in a comparable time to London from Manchester. But after that it seems to be Austin, which is a ridiculous three hour flight away. A visit to see colleagues and clients is a three day event. (I am starting to appreciate quite why Patsy Gallant found it so difficult to find time in her life for the man that she loved.)

I cannot claim to have experienced more than a taste of Austin, but it was a great city that I would love to visit again (at leisure and with my lovely wife). It is incredibly hot (98°F), and although everybody kept telling us that it was ten degrees cooler than last week, that was no consolation as we sweated buckets whenever we went outdoors. That said, the hotel had glorious aircon in a large bedroom with a kingside bed and feather pillows: I haven't slept so well in weeks.

I had several meetings with colleagues and clients, including two clients whom I had worked for previously from the UK but never met, so it was really valuable to make those personal connections. The first night we went out with corporate colleagues from the Austin office who were a great crowd. The second night we met up with some clients for drinks and food. Two really enjoyable evenings.

 

I had some interesting conversations about politics in Texas. Austin has a reputation for being the liberal part of Texas: lots of young, technology companies make it a bit more like California than some Texas cities with a real mixture of arts and music going on. Neverhteless, the young lawyers there believed in carrying weapons and cutting welfare, and slagged off the NHS, which would have seemed quite offensive if they hadn't been so hospitable and good-natured.


On Thursday night we met with clients in a bar out of town.  A proper local place, with a trailer outside available for rent by "the hour, day or week". We got a lift there in a client's huge pick-up truck.  The food was a little bit disappointing to be honest; in fact although I'd been told that the food in Austin restaurants was fantastic especially the barbecue, we seemed to end up both nights in bars that served stuff like nachos and wings, which didn't feel particularly exotic.  Still, the atmosphere was great, and I discovered Tito's Texan vodka which is magnificent stuff. 

So what I have learned this week?

(1)      Despite the banking crisis, Cyprus has retained the tax advantages which make it suitable as a place to hold IP - for now.  Read my article in Gold magazine for more information.

(2)      The Muppets were so right to travel by map.

(3)      They don't have patio heaters in Austin, they have outdoor fans that spray water (which largely evaporates before the smokers outside can get soggy).

(4)      There is at least one corporate lawyer in Austin who carries a concealed weapon.  But having met one of his clients, I don't blame him at all, frankly I'd shoot the woman if she was my client.

(5)      Texan vodka is good stuff.

 

Pinched from internet - not taken by me!

 

Weekend 1: Koreans, Cougars and Kosher Church

My first full weekend in California began by my attending a dinner with some colleagues at which a client was being honoured.  However when I arrived I discovered that it was the Korean American Bar Association of North California, and everybody apart from me and my colleagues, and possibly two or three others were Koreans.  I don't have a problem with Koreans, but nevertheless I found the situation ridiculous.  The food was served rapidly, everybody ate and talked, whilst at the same time there were a series of speeches which most people simply ignored.  And as non-Koreans we seemed rather conspicuous.  It would probably have been more enjoyable after a few drinks, but I had to stay sober because I had to be up early the next morning.

So Saturday morning - my second meetup, this time with the walking group.  There were ninety or so people gathered at the start of the six mile hike along the trails at Coal Mine Ridge, of all ages and nationalities.  So there was a wide variety of people to chat with.  The walk began with a series of warnings: don't touch the vegetation in case it is poison oak, watch out for rattle snakes, there may be mountain lions, which is rather daunting for somebody whose walks generally involve nothing more scary than squirrels in Worthington Park or the occasional cow or sheep.  But we didn't meet any of these scary creatures.  I think some of the group thought six miles was a bit short, and I heard some people complain that other walks had better views, but in that heat six miles was plenty for me, and I really enjoyed following the trails under the trees and around the hillsides.  I am looking forward to the next walk.

And then Sunday, and my first attempt at finding a church here in Palo Alto. There are a huge number to choose from, and lots of them have websites, but it is very difficult to get a feel for where I should be. It's not as though I need to find somewhere to belong to permanently, and I don't want to try somewhere different every week. This blog is not the Mystery Worshipper! So I started with C3, for no reason other it had the same name as a church a friend attended in Cambridge twenty years ago. It was a new church (twelve months old) with a young Australian pastor. I think it was a plant from the Hillsong movement, and it meets in the auditorium of a Jewish community centre, which struck me as odd. Everybody was incredibly friendly, and the preacher was good. But it was very much geared towards students, and I felt a bit old. It was also full of unrelentingly happy people, whilst my own feelings are a lot more ambiguous at the moment, and the pastors made it clear that we were expected to whoop enthusiastically whenever they paused. I am not sure whether I will go again or try somewhere different next week

This afternoon I tried yet another supermarket - a smaller chain called Trader Joe's with a lot more fresh produce.  I've resolved to start eating healthier food which is tough out here on my own, so I've bought more salad stuff, as well as some plastic containers to store and freeze smaller portions of food that are only available to buy in family size containers.  I found a bike shop to get myself a helmet and a pump for my borrowed bike, and then finished the afternoon with a healthy swim.

So what have I learned this weekend?

(1) Not all Koreans are popstars, whatever my daughter might think.

(2) If you go for a walk with a group of people from Silicon Valley you are bound to find some of them are geeky or odd.  In my case I met a man wearing special walking shoes with individual toes, a bit like a glove for the feet, who was happy to explain how it was better for his knees.  I am sure he was right, but he did look like a hobbit.

(3) Everything I had been told about making churches appeal to young people (the subdued lighting, the constant background music, the loud worship) was obviously right judging by the rapid growth of C3.  All the stuff I complain about at home!!  I'm obviously just an old fart.

(4) Apparently the Jewish community centre is happy to allow a Christian church to use its premises as long as it doesn't bring any pork or shellfish onto the site.

(5) There is apparently a rugby union club for teenagers here in Palo Alto.  I'm not looking for arguments to persuade my family to emigrate, I'm just saying…

I also learnt how to include pics on my blog!

Ups and Downs

Tuesday was a pretty tough day.  I started work in the Palo Alto office, and although everybody was really friendly, I spent a lot of time sitting at my desk with very little to do, and then went home to an empty flat to watch rubbish TV and eat unhealthy food.  But on Wednesday I had an epiphany (which, when spelled without a capital letter, has nothing to do with the Three Wise Men and means "a moment of clarity and revelation" - I know this thanks to Mr Gibb teaching me Dubliners by James Joyce for A-level.)

On Wednesday I realised it was time to stop moping and start getting a life.  Because nobody likes a moaner. Thanks to a tip from one of my new colleagues I went on a website called Meetup.  Apparently it also exists in the UK but I'd never heard of it.  It is just a catalogue of locally based interest groups that anybody can join.  I am now a member of two, one is an Italian Speakers group and the other is called "San Francisco Bay Area Outings" (but presumably not in a Peter Tatchell kind of way). 

On Wednesday night I met up with my Italian speakers in a café a few miles from my home.  It was good to meet people who are not lawyers or tax professionals, a mixture of ages and nationalities.  The coffee I bought was pretty poor, the barista could probably doing with some Italian speaker explaining what macchiato actually means, but all things considered it was a great evening and I am looking forward to going again.

Also on Wednesday night I went to the Apple Store to collect a new iPad.  The Apple Store in Silicon Valley is like every other Apple Store - full of perky young assistants who expect you to be grateful for even being allowed in, but here it almost feels like buying local produce (or would be if they weren't manufactured in China).  I'd never felt I wanted an iPad before, but I have since discovered the delight of combining iPad with strongvpn.com.  This wonderful website allows internet users in the USA to fool the BBC, Netflix and anybody else into thinking that they are in fact back in Blighty, enabling full use of the BBC i-Player.  I don't feel guilty about this deception, I've paid my licence fee so why should I be stuck with Mexican soap operas, or Jane Beaumont's favourite, The Real Housewives of Orange County? 

Since then things have started to look up.  I am gradually acquiring work things to do .  I have been lent a bicycle so I can drive less and keep fitter.  A trip to Texas has been arranged for next week to visit colleagues there, and further trips have been arranged/promised for Seattle and Los Angeles.

Tonight I am off to a client dinner, and then tomorrow I am going on my first outing, a walk in the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains on what promises to be a glorious day.  I've got a water-bottle, sunscreen and some hiking socks, so I am all set.  Sunday's job will be to find a church, which could be interesting too.

So what have I learned?

(1)    The guy down the hall is a bit eccentric. Rather than a computer screen he brings his own widescreen TV in from home which fills the entire wall of his office, and he has a habit of frantically rubbing his hands like Lady Macbeth.

(2)    The office block and one hotel are located in a modern development near the freeway next to a deprived estate which several people have warned me not to visit. From my window I can see perfectly normal looking people living in pretty ordinary looking houses, but apparently they will attack a middle-class person without hesitation, so I am not taking any chances. Perhaps I should buy a gun from Walmart?

(3)    The hotel contains the only restaurant within walking distance of the office, and seems to exist primarily to serve lunch to the same people from the office block every day. Nobody wants to spend too long having lunch, so I suspect the desert menu is just for show and if I decided to have one it would cause a local scandal.

(4)    The toilets are a bit weird. Like other public loos I have seen in the USA, the office toilets have cubicles which start almost a foot above the floor and stop well short of the top of my head. So anybody passing my cubicle could stand on tiptoe and look over the top while I was doing a poo if he so desired. And although I don't expect anyone will, I feel very exposed. There is also a pair of urinals, one of which is set low down at small child height. I have no idea why it is there, but I hope there aren't any small children using that particular "restroom" because they might run under the partition and disturb me when I am taking a dump, and frankly I am stressed enough about the perils of tall people without worrying about an attack from below as well.

Shopping

Yesterday (Monday) was Labor Day, and a public holiday in the US.  So I spent the day trying to do my "big shop", which proved remarkably difficult.

In the UK we are used to having a large supermarket (or two) in the centre of every town everywhere, and I assumed it would be the same here (except they'd probably be bigger).  But there doesn't seem to be a town centre.  The whole San Francisco bay area appears to be a collection of out of town shopping centres with housing in between.

After my trip to Safeway on Sunday night I thought I should find a proper big supermarket to stock up on basics like pasta and rice, as well as toilet paper and the elusive teapot.

The first place I tried was called Mi Pueblo, which was basically a large Mexican supermarket, staffed by Mexicans for Mexicans.  I was the only person in there who didn't speak Spanish.  It was exactly like being in Mercadona on holiday, except that there were fewer English speakers and no cheap English beer.  So, more like "somebody else's Pueblo".  It did a nice line in superhero themed piñatas, but I didn't need one of those.

(As an aside, the Spanishness of California has surprised me generally.  A lot of signs are bi-lingual, a lot of the TV channels are in Spanish too.)

So, I had planned to visit Ikea next door to Mi Pueblo for a teapot, but having failed to get the groceries I wanted, I decided to strike out in search of a Walmart instead.  I was led to believe they were like big Asdas.  This would definitely have been better than Mi Pueblo for basic foodstuffs, but despite an extensive selection of coffee pots and makers, Walmart did not have a teapot or anything resembling one.  They had an entire aisle devoted to firearms but no teapot - what kind of a country is this you might ask?  (But not in a critical way within earshot of the homeland security guy, obviously!)

Food shopping is not that easy either, at any of the supermarkets I visited.  There is a lot of processed, packaged food, usually designed to feed entire families.  Very little choice of, say, pasta sauce, and what there is comes in enormous jars.  

So I went home rather despondent, unable to face Ikea at that point, and took to Facebook, where a very helpful former ex-pat told me about Target.  Having nothing to lose, and not much else on, I drove in the opposite direction and found Target, which is now my favourite US store, because it had both a kettle and a teapot, as well as all the food stuff I had already bought in the other shops, and some pasta sauce on special offer! 

So what have I learned?

(1) It doesn't make any difference whether the TV is in Spanish or English, it is all pretty rubbish.  All the good stuff costs extra here and we should all be grateful for the BBC every day.

(2) Everybody gets asked for ID when they buy alcohol over here, even people like me who couldn't pass for less than 21 under any circumstances.

(3) Nobody knows what you mean if you complain about a "wonky trolley".  I believe the recognised expression is a "cart", and apparently "wonky" means "nerdy" or "geeky" rather than "unstable" . 

(4) Americans generally seem much less able to comprehend British English than vice versa, despite Downton and Doctor Who.  The large numbers of native Spanish and Chinese speakers that seem to live here are even less able to understand British idioms, which I guess is not really their fault.  But give me time, they'll improve…

First Impressions

Yesterday was a pretty exhausting day.  I left home at 7am, flew to Heathrow and then on to San Francisco on a delayed 11 hour flight.  I finally arrived in San Fran at about 3pm local time.

This is where the fun started.  At immigration I didn't have one of the required visa forms.  I'd assumed it was an application form for the actual visa (which was attached to my passport) but apparently it forms part of the visa and I should have brought it with me.  So I ended up in the special room for naughty immigrants.  Thankfully I persuaded the scary man from homeland security to accept a PDF copy which was stored on my laptop.

(I do wonder why they call it "homeland security"?  "Homeland" sounds like something you'd hear from an exiled or occupied people.  Zionists dreamed of returning to their homeland, Palestinians dream of being allowed to return to theirs.  It is an odd expression to use of a nation whose population are largely non-indigenous.  Perhaps the word has different resonances in an American ear?)

Then came car hire.  I'd asked for a car to be reserved for me for the entire three month period, but initially the chap at the counter wanted me to return the car in October and then renew my hire in person.  Thankfully his supervisor was very helpful, and explained that as long as I signed three separate rental agreements (in four different places each) I could have a longer rental period.  I now have a blue Dodge, which sounds very American and looks very nice. 

By this time it was 5pm in California (1am in the UK).  The keys to my accommodation had to be collected between 4pm and 6pm, so thinking I might be a bit late (bearing in mind I hadn't braved the freeway yet) I thought I should ring and warn them.  This is when it all got more confusing.  If I were sending somebody confirmation of a booking in California on a piece of paper setting out my office hours and phone number, I would expect that person to assume that those hours referred to the time in California.  Seems logical doesn't it?  I mean you wouldn't tell somebody in Manchester that he could ring you between 9am and 5pm but fail to mention that the office was in Moscow would you?  But apparently when I rang it was 8pm and the office was shut.  I didn't know the office was on the East Coast, and I have no idea how I was supposed to know.  Cue lots of faffing around and phone calls.  I arrived at the apartment at 6.15pm, and the building manager was surprised to see me because he'd been led to believe I was going to be very late.  I'd assumed that Americans were used to living in a country with four different time-zones, but it seems to confuse them even more than it confuses me.

The apartment is pleasant enough but a bit bland.  Hardly surprising really.  Interesting what they do and don't include.  I get napkins and wine glasses, but only six coat hangers, no mugs, and no spare toilet paper.  No instructions for the very noisy aircon.  The lightswitch in the bedroom operates the plug beside the bed, so the clock resets if I use it.  There is quite a large complex of apartments with several pools on the map, but I haven't explored it yet.  It doesn't feel quite warm enough for lazing by a pool right now.  And the bathroom doesn't have a window which was a key requirement. I shall post some photos when I get round to taking some.

I managed to find a supermarket last night to get some milk.  The supermarket was a bit like Mercadona - a lot of the checkout assistants spoke Spanish, but their English didn't seem as good.  Today's jobs include finding a decent supermarket and doing a big shop (including toilet paper), followed by teapot shopping at Ikea.

So what have I learned so far?

(1) Palo Alto and East Palo Alto are different cities, but East Palo Alto is not to the east of Palo Alto, but the north.  Palo Alto is more gentrified, I'm in the other one. 

(2) Palo Alto does mean "tall stick" as I had previously speculated, but by extension can also mean "tall tree" and refers to a particular redwood tree which is the subject of the oldest tree preservation order in California.

(3) The Michelle Pfeiffer film "Dangerous Minds", about a teacher in a school full of scary drug pushers and gangsters, was based on a true story about kids from East Palo Alto.  I think some of them probably grew up to work for the department of Homeland Security.  Yes, I really am living in a Gangsta's Paradise.

(4) San Jose is extremely well signed from the freeway (much more so than Palo Alto) so I don't know what Dionne Warwick's problem was.