Silicon Valley and Stanford

The Sunday we went on a bike trip to Palo Alto and visited the donkey who was apparently the model for the donkey in Shrek. The Pixar headquarters are near by - I say, Silicon Valley... We went to dine in "the best south Indian food restaurant" in the area. Iddly and Dosa really were delicious. I felt just a little odd cause I was actually the only non-indian person in the whole place! And I was there with 5 other Indians.

The next day I went to see the Frida Kahlo exhibition in the San Francisco MOMA. There was also another one, an exhibition about Lee Miller, a really interesting woman with more than one career in her life. She was beautiful, changed from model to photographer to war journalist to cook. I was in Stanford on Tuesday - the grounds and building live up to what the name suggests. It's worth a visit. I spent lots of time in the bookstore, and in the philosophy department, because I met up with a friend from my years in Lueneburg and his wife. I used to be Donovans 'buddy" on the exchange program. His kid Dyllan was too cute. We ran around the campus following his every step.

San Fran Cisco WEEKEND!!

I have this phrase stuck in my head..."Next and final station stop is Saaaan Fraaaan-Ciscoooo!" said in an amuzingly happy voice by a good-mooded conductor on the Caltrain downtown. This was a smashing week, I had so much fun and saw so many things in the Bay area. I took the train every morning to get into the city from Mountain View, where I am staying with my friend Aroon. While my friends here have to work - and they work unbelievably much, also nights and weekends if they have to - I had time to explore SF on my own. In the evenings we met up and went out together. Pretty exhausting. ok, where do I begin? Glad I came for the last weekend, so we had some time during the day. Friday night we went to Wendy's "drop out of 'loopt'" get together (loopt is the company they all work for as computer engineers here in silicon valley - side note: that's why there are so many Indians in the pictures ;-) loopt is a community like facebook, but it works for cellphones. the program tracks the phones on a map - so friends always know where their friends are and keep a journal updated so that any of the friends can see what the others are doing at any given moment.) and to the 500 club, popular hang out place of theirs. On Saturday Aroon and Alok (photo) took me to the Yerba Buena Gardens were we saw a Jamaican band perform and went ice skating. Pretty strange thing to do when it's hot outside. But we had a lot of fun, having little ice princesses teaching us how to spin and laughing and tumbling over each other. Actually, we got better and better. Aroon once showed off a dangerous landing and earned himself a considerable hematoma, it is dark purple and big as an apple now but he is brave about it. We randomly stumbled into a freaky art exhibition opening, the gallery was crowded with the strangest bohemian figures. A transvestite repeatedly tried to hit on my friends! The next day we went to Sausalito, that pretty and expensive area on the other side of the Golden Gate bridge. Unfortunately it was cold and windy and the sunset failed us, it was uncomfortable up there. That night we went to a preparty at a very luxurious apartment of a friend of a friend. The people there were quite drunk already and had soooo much booze in the fridge still! We did a veeeery bad thing: we actually took a bottle of vodka ON THE STREET! Uncovered! oh my. We ran a couple of blocks to the club we wanted to go to. We believed we could save the 10 dollars! A couple of blocks is a long way to run in San Francisco. by the way we got there it was after 11. Clubs close so early in the States, even in big cities. Well, people start partying earlier, it's not too bad.

Wedding times two

Hui, just came home from a wedding marathon. Last night there was the last of the procedures in Orange County, other side of LA from here. We started on Friday with a traditional American ceremony in a nice park on white chairs and with lots of flowers and a beautiful white bride and turquoise brides maids and handsome groomsmen. And Julia as the angelic flower girl. Then we had to prepare everything for the reception and between 5 and 6 the guests arrived at the Keller house (that's where I am staying) to celebrate a wonderful wedding party with all that you need: a delicious dinner, candles, music, wine, prosecco, dance, wedding cake, speeches. I sang a song from Jekyll and Hyde for the bride and groom which seems to have really moved them. The next day we got up early to clean up and clear out the rented stuff and then set off to O.C. to help prepare another part of the wedding: the Thai part! (since Jade is half Thai). The preparing actually led to my first steps as a flower arranger/decorator. We had to create different bouquets and pins for the dresses. The next day the ceremony started at 9:30 in the bride's parents' house with monk chants and buddhist blessings. The monks received a plentiful meal and the picture taking session (the american wedding one lasted about 1 hour before and one hour after the ceremeony) took place. Then we had a nice regeneration break which I spent with two little Thai girls and the bigger kids in the pool. Fulltime job, though. The girls couldn't swim so I had to watch any of the two at any moment. We went to the rented hall and helped set up more glasses, plates and table decoration in the afternoon. Then the second party started with another oh so delicous Thai food buffet (we had one for lunch, too!). Tuiys recepes are unbelievably good. - The family own... three restaurants now, expanding all the time. We were tired when the party started dissolving and had to drive the 2 and a half hours back up to SB in the night. I feel relieved somehow, that the wedding stress is over. But it was a big big honour and a great experience having been able to attend!

body healing and beach birthday

It's annoying. I can't let people know I have this blog because the W-LAN keeps playing tricks on me with my laptop. Even without that - the constant on and off of the power (due to the fire) is a nuisance.

We went shopping yesterday, at Costco, that is the American version of the Metro. Yet everything is even bigger. In general all products are at least double the size of the biggest German version available. (and the cart surprised me most, it was so hard to push - you can fit 3 REWE carts in one of the Costco ones!) And our aluminium foil for example, it is so thick and there are 150 square feet in one package (!)
There are mainly two types of Americans to be found in California: the I-don't-care-how-I-look-ones and the overly polished goodlooking athletic suntanned perfect body Americans. And there are the Mexicans, they make over 50% of the population and a great number of them live in their own communities. We had a cleaning team at the house today in preparation of the wedding. Not one of them spoke English. I had to make use of my Spanish as far as I could.

We celebrated Tobys 26th birthday on the beach yesterday with a surprise picque nicque including champagne and chocolate cake. We had a lot of fun digging Julia into the sand and pulling her out again:



Today I embarked on the quest of healing my tense muscles. I did some running, gymnastics, yoga, had a massage... yes, I did all that! And now my whole body hurts... :-) But still I could get an introduction tour to the SB shopping places from Jade.

Oh, by the way, Jade and Toby are the ones who get married on Friday. It is going to be a big event with lots and lots of preparation going on for weeks now. There will be an American and a Thai ceremony. I am so excited about it!

Orange juice. Is amazing here. The milk tastes great, too.

Foood

Americanised in 2 days. I was hungry just now. I go to the oversized fridge and scramble in to see if behind the 5 liter milk and orange juice canisters there is something easy to snack. There is so much in there that I like. But I don't want to supersize (me)... :-)
The pizza we had this afternoon after an extended shopping trip along State Street was very greasy. The liter of smoothie (kind of ice cream with different fruit squish - this is an info for the Italians between you) which we had before that was non-fat (wow), but probably heavy-sugered. Most products say "0 % fat", but don't say like 89 % sugar. Instead, on the bottom of the list of nutrition facts they say "23 g of sugar". Good thing that you can tell at once what that means... Oh Americans, you trick yourself when you prentend to live healthy. Anyway, I got something out that was not to heavy for that time of day. Italians and Spanish eat heaps of pasta and potato products, respectively, starting at 10 pm.
But hey I will keep it going, that list of food that is better than anywhere else.

natural fireworks on Independence Day

I've been thrown into the real adventure immediately. Having arrived at LAX on July 2n, been picked up by my cousin and driven to 'the Santa Barbara home' I've taken to heart during other visits, I was confronted with burning hills. The Santa Barbara mountains - they are not far from the sea (this creates an extraordinary climate) suffered from a severe gap fire, one of those Californian horror scenarios. High flames were visible at different places and the sky was dark grey from the smoke. The blood red son gave an apocalyptic feel to it all. foto by Toby Keller - see more fire night shots at Tobys Site on flickr Burnblue

We had a wonderful dinner with the family although it was affected by the nature katastrophe: the electricity went off. The next day the fire became more threatening. The air was unhealthy to breathe and ash and burned leaves landed in the garden and covered the house and cars. The night we evacuated ourselves to Toby and Jades house were we camped on the floor. The fire had reached a place 2 miles from the family's house and all people north of our area were evacuated mandatorily and received gas masks.

See an article of today in the LA TIMES.

For the 4th of July the fireworks in Goleta were cancelled. Americans couldn't be kept from celebrating independence day, though. So everybody barbecued outside in the garden and went to the public spaces to watch the fireworks of Santa Barbara downtown. The steak is one thing that is so much tastier in America. Gotta collect against prejudices.

It was a strange feeling not being able to take beer to the park like you would take beer in Germany! I mean: hide the bottles for the transport, look suspiciously around if no one looks and sip from a bottle hidden in the arm of your jacket. How exaggerated is that. I just shook my head...