The fruits are blemish less and the tv is full of patriotic ads, and so far America has been a multisensorial overload. The air is fresh and crisp. Driving down from the airport into nob hill, where we are staying, I smelt roasted garlic and baking dough and then the salty humidity of the bay as we drove past it. :) It's a beautiful country, pristine and kept like that. The streets and buildings are like what they show us in the movies. People dress fabulously and yet, unlike Europe, there is a wonderful sartorial diversity. From where I live now I can see the sea on the horizon and every store I love is stone's throw from where I am staying. The wireless networks here have crazy names like 'scooter pimp', 'Arnold Schwarzenegger' and 'you are jus confused'. The bathroom in my room is built for midgets, with towels for tiny people, in a supersize country, imagine that! The pharmacies here are the size of ur warehouses... :) took a train and went to the suburbs yesterday to pick up a laptop that varun had ordered for his office. I was jus thinking that suburbs anywhere in the world are all the same. Maybe the collective energy of all the people tired and weary of the commute from where they can afford to live to where they need to work to afford that, makes suburbs a collective tired energy pool. Transport and connectivity here is amazingly simple, as a matter of fact all design here is universal. Ramps for the handicapped, signs in Braille and seats reserved for seniors and handicapped on the trains.
California is best summarized by an ad (for garden equipment) I heard on radio, "for all those of you who have a backyard in need of some looking after, what are you waiting for? Spring? It's California, spring is a mere formality.....unless your car is under a snowdrift." :) the radio has a great local flavor and listening to it you feel like you have heard it before even if the songs are not familiar. it reminds me of the video of that ramstein song, we all live in America cos even if you've never come here everything seems familiar and that's probably cos we have all grown up on a staple diet of America beamed straight into our homes on tv.
You can make out the tourists here from the locals cos they are the only ones puffing and panting up and down the steep roads. The roads here are at a 45 degree incline and I watch in amazement as folks here saunter up and down smoking away. Phew!
I love the way the tram, cable cars as they are called here are turned around. So, when they come to the end of the line, they land on a circular wooden base. The driver hops off and rotates the base 90 degrees and viola! the street car turns the other way! :D
Met a punjabi cabbie yesterday, another American movie stereotype, I had forgotten I would encounter. Chatted with us in Hindi and told us how only in America will he get an appointment with the local sheriff, who will actually call if he's gonna be late for that appointment. Hmmm..we didn't have much to say to that in reply. Our cabbie came back to pick us up, a special favour, when he realized we would be going back late and didn't have transport figured and refused the tip we gave him.
I heard a black man answer his phone with 'Yow!'. I saw another playing the drums on upturned dustbins and wine bottles stuck into a cola crate by their neck. I watched as two jets flew in formation over the blue californian sky, four plumes of jet smoke following behind them and I toasted my toes in the sunlight streaming through the picture windows in my room while the radio plays the best of the 70's......Mmmmmmmm......
Tap water here is potable. While I knew this, it is still strange to fill a glass at the sink. And if you live in India, every time you shower here your skin and hair will feel like raisins soaked in water, moist, fresh and spa-clean. :) Everyone here has an i phone. At the risk of Jobs rolling over in his grave, it's the Nokia of America. In my stay here I had been meaning to experience every American icon featured in the movies and popular culture, the microwave dinner, bagels for breakfast, a supersize slice of pizza, Starbucks coffee, a new York cab ride and a picnic in a park. So after a visit to the suburbs on the BART, (bay area rapid transport) we bought beers and 2 microwave dinners and went back to the apartment-suite, where with a view of the san Fran skyline with the fog slowly rolling in, we listened to radio and contemplated the mystery of the awful-tasting thing called a microwave dinner and crashed out after swearing we weren't jet lagged.
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