Chris has to work for four or five hours before we leave, and we have checked out of the Country Inn Motel, so now I have to mark time. I'm writing this on the seat with the cushions by the magnolia bush in this photo.
It has been really pleasant staying here! Today we take an evening flight to Vancouver, stay near the airport overnight and tomorrow continue our journey to Tokyo. Some of the young engineers we met last night will also be in Tokyo by the time we get there. I sat at a long dining table with 11 men; none of us, as Chris pointed out, born anywhere near this place. The one who spoke German was from Slovenia; Geoff (who'd arranged Chris' visit) is from New Zealand and lives in Japan, speaks fluent Japanese and has a Japanese wife. There were three Japanese gentlemen as well and one from somewhere near Basel in Switzerland (who showed me his Alpine mountaineering photos). Four others were from various parts of India. The one sitting beside me grew up speaking a rare language, the dialect of his village in southern India.
Later ...
I'm going to be hanging around in coffee shops in the local area until Chris pings me to tell me he has finished work. There aren't as many nearby coffee shops as I'm used to in Ottawa. The San Antonio "Village" (planned in 2013) at the intersection of San Antonio Road and El Camino Real is as yet incomplete, with many properties available for lease or still under construction. At present it is mostly the vast parking lots that are occupied, with vehicles. Anyway, I am presently plugged in to one of the line of sockets at the corner Starbucks here. I'm in Mountain View on this side of San Antonio. Before getting here I had a wander round the residential streets west of San Antonio in Palo Alto, getting nowhere because of the crescents, ovals and uncrossable Caltrain line, but appreciating the attractive houses and quiet, well established gardens with their enormous trees, succulents and flowering bushes, many roses among them. The smell of pine needles pervaded. I happened upon a small grassy park with a sandpit and swings inhabited almost entirely by older couples playing with their small grandchildren and calling out to them in Chinese. There was one fair haired young mother with her child, looking awkward and out of place in this crowd. It is much the same in our son's neighbourhood in Australia. Silicon Valley clearly has a huge population of Asian people, although the busses post notices in English and Spanish. We were served our breakfast by a lady from Cambodia and the restaurant next door was Vietnamese. A multicultural place indeed. The quiet streets could have been Latin American, Mediterranean or Australian. They also reminded me of North Carolina. In Monroe Park, described above, I sat on a bench decorated with a memorial to
Sean Christopher Perry A Renaissance Man From All Who Love HimI was touched by that. We need Renaissance Men in this world.
For lunch, I'm going to see if I can find some soup at the Thai restaurant we walked past the other day.
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