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Redwood City #2
Just to give confirmation I’m still alive:
- I CANNOT WAIT to get to New Orleans. (Or more to the point, get out of NorCal suburbia.) The three-hour stop over in Houston at 6 AM, not so much.
- It never rains in Southern California (with some recent exceptions); it sure does in Northern California (though not today).
- Restaurant food’s extraordinarily cheap here. Chinese restaurant dishes for $6. Hot and sour soup (which I’ve dearly missed—it redeems tofu): $3.50. Not for a small bowlful: they give you the entire serving bowl! Similar story with the Japanese and Persian–Italian-minus-the-Persian I’ve had. I don’t remember food being that cheap 10 years ago; is it the recession, or NorCal?
- The catch with being in a luxury hotel, it’s still a bare room, and you have to now pay for everything—so you can’t even improvise instant coffee in your room. That’s not really a good deal after all. (And I’ve never had the heart to call room service for anything.)
- Walked over to Belmont for said Chinese meal last night; good to know there is some quaint-looking urban stuff in walking distance. (If you walk long enough.) Clambering over freeways to get there is horrid: it’s that unwelcome reminder, which I’d repressed, that Californian suburbia was not intended for pedestrians.
- Walked down El Camino Real in the process. Uninspiring as a bunch of strip malls and brobdignanian lanes. In my youth I’d formed a different mental picture of the fabled El Camino Bignum; but then again, I’m not in Stanford.
For me, California will always be simply the place my parents turned around on the 2-week camping trips they took with me every summer. Drive from New Jersey to San Francisco, tenting all the way; visit a few of their friends; drive back, tenting all the way.
Now I have friends who have unaccountably moved there, but I no longer go camping, so I only see them when they fly to see me. (I fly only under duress, not because of phobia or nausea but because of severe leg cramps on the flight and severe jet lag afterwards.)
I lasted three years in SoCal. I suspect I lasted as long as I did because I was on a university campus, but still, I feel ya.
When I finally graduated from college, a newly minted Unix geek, I applied for several jobs out there. Interviewed at Sun (Battling Business Units got in the way of the hire), but ended up at a consulting firm.
On arrival I learned that (1) a salary in Madison, Wisconsin is not equal to a salary in Cupertino, (2) way too many people do the same thing I do and (3) this was no place for someone who doesn't drive.
I lasted two weeks, and then fled back to Madison, WI. A day or two before returning I finally got contacted by Sun about the job. Probably just as well I didn't let that tempt me.