Sad Halloween

I can't really understand quite why Halloween is such a big deal here in the US. When we were in a Diner in San Francisco on September 30 they were already putting up the Halloween decorations. Wells Fargo (local bank) was full of fake plastic spiders and scary signs, "Fear here", etc. Actually I think that Banks are scary enough just now without the fake spiders.

The above display has been outside the house next door for about a month, but we just found out that someone has stolen all the figures, which I think is sad. I was just saying that it was nice that this area is so safe that the people that lived in the house felt able to leave the figures outside their house - sad.

I'd think the ghost made out of a sheet is still there down the road.

A short love note to the Claremont Diner

This place is great and, even better, you can walk to it from our house. The people there are always super friendly, it is cheap and the food is very nice. It has all the good things that a traditional American diner should have, without all the artificial 50's pretensions that most 'Frisco diners have.

The people who run the place must be old radio fans, and the shelves of the Diner are full of vintage radios, makes me miss my four or five old radios that are back in my storage locker in Edinburgh.



Even better, they have a model train that runs around your head when you are eating - great!

And it's next door to this areas only decent pub, the Graduate. Free popcorn, a decent jukebox and Blue Moon on draft- does it get any better than this?

Bang

I had to get into Sun's office in Menlo Park on Tuesday, I'm glad it was not Wednesday instead. This area of Interstate 880 is just down the road from where we live, a car swerved into a tanker and the tanker fell over and blew up. Amazingly, the tanker driver was able to walk away and no one was hurt.


Unfortunately the road was closed most of the day, causing traffic chaos in the area.


Of course, the press was there delivering the news.


Thankfully, due to Sun's work form home programme, I was able to sit in my little home office and let the rest of the Bay Area's workforce sit in the traffic.

Farewell old friend, but I remember our good times together

When I first arrived in the USA in May 2005, the only computing device I had at the time was a Sun owned Toshiba Win XP laptop. Having been heartbroken at needing to sell my 18 month old Powermac when I left the UK, I quickly bought two new Macs, an iMac for putting in my new living room to watch movies and listen to music (also later functioned as a recording studio) and an eMac for work.

I'd always thought of laptops previously as being machines that you used when you traveled, so I didn't think much of needing my own laptop at first. But I soon discovered that the combination of a laptop plus wireless internet (which I had for the first time when I moved to the USA) was a pretty useful combination and made the myriad of things you could do with computers all the more interesting, if you were not chained to one part of the house on a desktop. So this Sun Toshiba began to get used more and more in my new house.

Sadly though, after suffering a series of bumps and bashes, it's hard drive failed in the Summer of 2005.

Having already bought two Macs, it seemed profligate to go and buy another, but the laptop was simply now too useful to live without, so I went off to the Apple Store to buy another - this time an iBook.

This became my most used computer for around two and half years, before it got replaced with an Intel Macbook Pro in November 2007. I think, although this is a difficult statement, that this machine may have been my favorite technology purchase ever. It was super reliable, rugged and was lugged around so many places that I have lost track, but the places include - at least five trips over the Atlantic to the UK, Atlanta GA twice, India twice and so many times up and down the SF Peninsula, that I have lost count. I even forgave it's keyboard for partially failing, it was worth it for the comic value of me not realising for weeks that it's "3" key was broken, so I was busy typing out erroneous numbers as anything with a "3" in it got missed out.

However, having sat about since the Macbook Pro's purchase, and as I'm undergoing a programme just now of turning excess possessions into money, I reluctantly decided last weekend it was time for the iBook to go. It managed to sell around 12 hours after being posted to Craigslist, which I thought was pretty good, particularly as for most of those 12 hours it was the night!

But of course, being a boy, I always feel a tinge of sadness when a piece of technology I bonded with so much goes, so I began to think about how many pictures the iBook ended up in (accidentally or deliberately), and I ended up with quite a gallery of good times with the iBook!

Molly the Dog watches David Jackson with Van Der Graaf Generator in Friokheim Scotland, October 2005.

Downloading pictures whilst camping near Aviemore Scotland, July 2006. I had invested in a gadget that allowed me to re-charge the batteries whilst driving and with my spare battery and the large battery life of the iBook, I was able to enjoy my sister's DVDs of most of Series 2 of the new Doctor Who whilst under canvas. A truly bizarre experience and watching those episodes again takes me right back to Aviemore in '06.

Writing my very first blog entry in my home office in San Jose, March 1997.

Hotel room in Chennai India in July 2007.

Hotel room in Bangalore India in August 2007.

Working away on my website, www.kirkcaldybands.com in Fair Oaks Street San Francisco on Labor Day 1997.

Working from home (kind of) using the garage's WIFI whilst waiting for my car to be serviced in Sunnyvale in October 2007.

The iBook's last long trip, over to Scotland then a stop off where it was pictured here, in my hotel room in Atlanta Ga in October 2007.

So although my old friend was getting a little slow with all the software I was running on it, it never did this! Having bought a new Macbook Pro, I then persuaded my employers to buy me an identical machine for traveling purposes, but it did this and needed to go to Mac hospital. It's taking me rather longer to bond with my Macbook pro.

The DMV and the myth of American Efficiency

DMV stands for Department of Motor Vehicles. It is the place where you have to go to do your driving test, and renew your license. For some reason, your license does not last very long here and time has flown since October 2005 when I passed my driving test here, so I had to go to renew my license as it ran out on October 1st 2008. Getting my license in the first place was very difficult and frustrating as the State of California seems to be trying to set some kind of record by running the most badly run and inefficient organisation you could imagine.

I spent way more time in Oakland DMV than I'd have liked today. The only good thing is that it is walkable from my house, and is actually quite a nice building - shame I didn't get a photo of it and no one else on Flickr seems to have one.

What is on Flickr is quite funny - a tribute to the way the internet manages to publicise problems and issues with society. My own experience was frustrating again. Admittedly I realised too late that my license had already expired. I managed to make 4 different appointments on line, seems there is a way to make appointments on their website but not way to cancel them.

Having not got the paperwork for my renewal, I called to get it, but after struggling for ages with the voice activated phone system they have, I found out that it would take around two weeks for them to send the paperwork to me. Having not got the paperwork, I had to fill it in there and then and didn't know I needed to provide my social security number to renew the license. You would think that they would still have it from last time, but I had to provide it again. Having not memorised my US Social Security number (I can reel off my UK one from the top of my head as I have had it since 1984) I had to go back home and get it. Unbelievably, the DMV person I was dealing with said that she could put in my application for a new licence, but "it would just be rejected" - eh? Maybe the better advice would be to tell me how to do it properly? Or send the renewal notice to me so I wouldn't get there and have to find out what infofrmation I needed to provide there and then.


So having no more appointments left that day, I had to go back and get the Social number and then wait around for around an hour. The second DMV lady I spoke to was even worse, now telling me I needed to provide her with "birth documentation" (whatever that means) as my renewal notice went to my old address. How this happened when I changed my address on their website when I first moved here I have no idea. I had not clue what birth documentation meant, I thought she meant birth certificate - one of the hallmarks of dealing with the State of California is that none of their people seem trained or skilled in communication. It actually seemed to mean also my passport and as I had my green card with me I was out of jail this time.

I then had to join yet another queue and have my photo taken again, seems they can't just re-use the photo from 2005. Having been initially told to join the wrong queue (there are many queues in the DMV) I wasted more time trying to get this done, only to find that I had to sit a 10 question driving theory test to renew the license - this I didn't expect!


I managed to pass this with only 2 questions wrong, which is pretty good for someone who has only used a tank and a half of fuel since July, and one of the ones I got wrong I had managed to change from the right to the wrong answer as I had second thoughts about it.

So, whilst all striving to keep hold of our jobs in a terrible economy, the State of California managed to burn up my entire afternoon by, not sending the renewal notice to the right address, even though I gave them the right address 5 months ago, not being able to send out the renewal paperwork in less than ten working days, not explaining what personal information was needed up front to renew a license, not the explaining that yet more personal information may later be required and having a generally slow, inefficient and badly run system.


In Europe most people think the USA is a model of efficiency. The problem here seems to be that there is so much resistance to public spending in the US (listen to the presidential debates and it seems that no one will ever be able to make a positive case for taxation), that all public services seem to be run as cheap as possible. However, having hired the people that work there at the lowest pay they can get away with, the net result is a system that wastes everyones time. Wouldn't it be a bit of an investment in US efficiency to make this place better run, so ordinary workers like me wouldn't waste an entire afternoon trying to renew a license? Wouldn't a bit more money spent here benefit the whole economy as the DMV could stop wasting so much of everyone's time? Seems logical to me, it must be easier to renew a driving license in Romania.


So having got my new license now, and the picture on it is a classic as I was so pissed off when it was taken, I have found out this new one does not last three years like the old, it only lasts until my 43rd birthday in December of next year. Do I really have to go through all this again in 2009? Come on California, get your act together.

BART Woes

I love getting public transport places almost as much as I hate driving in the US. I have managed to cope with only using a tank and a third of fuel since July, and my car does not even have a big fuel tank.

So on the odd occasions I have to go into Sun's San Francisco Office, I quite enjoy getting the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) into work. However, today it was not so good, as all the unhappy people above could testify. A fire just before the tunnel under the Bay meant that all the trains going into San Francisco were slow, a journey that normally takes half an hour took more than an hour. All my fellow travelers seemed to take it in good spirit though and the ubiquity of mobile phones these days meant no one had to be unexpectedly late. Someone behind me remarked that it was good that we were stuck in the station and not in the tunnel under the Bay - amen to that.

I learned today though that a BART station (I wish I knew which one) is built right on top of the Hayward Fault, so I hope I am not on BART if that fault creates an earthquake, I'm sure that would make our little delay today seem like nothing.

Back in Broomfield

I'm back in Broomfield Colorado just now, sitting in the very nice Denver International Airport enjoying the free wifi, which is nice but limited bandwidth as I just found out having tried to use the magic skype.

We couldn't get into our normal hotel, but we stayed 4 miles down the road at the Westminster Westin, and it was pretty much the same as our normal hotel. They seem to hav discovered Blue Moon here, which is my new favorite Belguim beer, the Stella having got too much for me over time.

I like it here in Colorado, it's calmer than the Bay Area, although I have a feeling there are rather more guns around than I normally like. Sun's presence here started, like a lot of tech companies, as an overspill from the San Francisco Bay area. Tech companies who got fed up with the high real estate prices out in the Bay area moved started operations here instead of expanding further in the Bay area and employees who were fed up with high Bay area prices moved out here as well. Unfortunately, our rather nice campus here is beginning to look like a ghost town, as I think a lot of employees are working from home now, so it's days are probably numbered.

I love the climate here and the big mountains, reminds me of Scotland.

The portion sizes here though can be bloody huge as can some of the people, the two facts are probably related. Below is the chocolate cake we ordered on Monday, ate about 10% of it, took it back to the hotel in a "to go" box, where I hope now the cleaners enjoy it as it never got eaten, as it was too much of a challenge.

Bin your Bank

Spotted today in Denver International Airport. Funny how some advertising that seemed appropriate when it was written takes on a whole new meaning now.

We went to see Peter Hammill in a (not very) glorified Restaurant

My great musical hero Peter Hammill does not play in the USA very often. I used to have a bootleg tape of him playing LA in 1978 and it was obvious from the crowd reaction that this was a rare and precious event. He was the second of my musical heros playing in 'Frisco in September. So I was particularly excited to find out he was playing over the water from me in San Francisco at the end of September. So, of course, we booked the tickets and went.

The venue seemed promising from the website, but I had reckoned without how different things can be in America....

This venue is called the Great American Music Hall, sounds good. However I'd say the people who run this place have absolutely no idea how to run a music hall, great or otherwise. I should have known what was going on when I was asked by their booking office if I wanted to buy a "Dinner Ticket or a Regular Ticket". Seems in America, you just can't escape food (in the same way you can't escape drink in Edinburgh). So you go into the venue and then realise that the people who buy the "dinner tickets" get the best seats, closets to the stage.

Worse are the army of people who work there, who seem to stand around and watch the audience just waiting to bark an order at them, or mutter a complaint. Seems like the "have a nice day culture" never reached the Tenderloin, where the Great American Music hall is. Sit in not quite the right place, or move a chair without their permission and the Great America Music Hall police are onto you. Welcome, we didn't feel - it was more like being back at school.

Even worse still, having given away the best seats to the people who buy their food too, the waitresses run around and constantly encourage you to buy drink from them as you are sitting waiting for the band to come on, with that old American euphemism - "you doing OK there"? For those of you outside of America, this means, buy my drinks and give me a tip!

Even more worse still, when the support band was on (who admittedly were terrible), the aggressive waitressing and even more aggressive great America music hall policing continued unabated, with the one of the waitresses shouting out a huge long list of drinks choices to a group of people and then wandering around shouting about who had ordered a plate of chips, effectively drowning out the support act from where we were sitting.

Incredibly enough, even more worse still, although the waitressing finally stopped during Peter Hammill's set, the bar and the Great American Music Hall police conspired to spoil the show as much as they could for us. The bar clinked glasses together, slammed the fridge door shut, and slammed the till door shut all the time and the Great American Music Hall Police (obviously being more Bon Jovi fans than the more cerebral Peter Hammill fans) got bored with the show and began to goof around with the waitresses and talk in loud voices to each other - effectively completely spoiling the more quiet parts of Peter's set - unbelievable.

As for Peter Hammill, he was great as ever. I first saw Peter Hammill live in London on the 14th of February 1988, over 20 years ago. Peter was 41 then and I was 21! Now I'm 41 and Peter is 61! It's always a spellbinding experience to see Peter live. I also was the ONLY PERSON THERE wearing a Van Der Graaf Generator t shirt - imagine that. One guy was asked me when I was in the queue for the toilet where I got it, jealousy is a terrible thing amongst Peter Hammil fans. At the beginning of the only encore Peter said "alas the night is young, but the singer is not" and someone in the audience shouted back - "neither is the audience". Quite.

Sadly though, due to the numerous shortcomings of the venue, this was one Peter Hammill gig I didn't really enjoy. Come on America, you can have a bar, or a restaurant, or a music venue, but if you try to combine all three, you end up with a mess like the Great America Music Hall. A visiting icon like Peter Hammill deserved better and I sure won't be back to your venue.

Singapore

Here I am in Singapore and I'm staying in the hugely large Stanford Hotel. Someone said it is the tallest hotel in the world. I'm not sure that is true, but I'm on the 18th floor and that seems pretty tall to me. I'm on a recruitment trip for Sun, trying to hire the first of our new Asia Pacific operation.

Despite what Amnesty International and Wikipedia say about Singapore's rather harsh penal code, I really like it here. It is small, but I expected it to seem crowded, but it seems just fine. Its very clean and I always feel safe, in a way I don't always in America with all it's poverty and guns.

Of course beer is bloody expensive, at it's worst it's SIN $ 14 ($ USD 9.45 / GBP 5.56) a pint, bloody hell! It's also bloody hot and humid, 31 C tends to be the temperature it sticks at all the time.

It actually looks foggy here, but it isn't. I came out of the air conditioning in my room, stood on the balcony and the camera lens steamed up.

It also rains quite a bit here.

There are also loads of British influences here. The plugs are square pin, you drive on the left and even the car license plates are like the old UK ones with the letter denoting the age of the car.

They even have M&S here!

This bar was by far the strangest UK influence though. Believe it or not, it is staffed by a crowd of young Singaporean people wearing kilts. The guy at the bar, when asked what beers he had, told me "Scottish Ale". When I asked him to be more specific, expecting an answer like "McEwans" or "Tennants", he told me, "ale, you make it with hops", quite. Seems they are a micro brewary and make it themselves and I'm happy to report it tasted like any other lager, Scottish or otherwise, although it was sold at the decidedly un-Scottish price of 5 and a half quid a pint!

Other highlights included a visit to Raffles hotel where you are supposed to be able to see the very chair that Noel Coward used to sit in (we couldn't find it), although for some reason the custom here is to eat monkey nuts and throw the shells on the floor, which seems to conflict with Singapore's clear image as you crunch around on all the bits as it makes quite a mess. Also I think we had a beer in the bar that the original Rogue Trader (although everyone seems to be a rouge trader now), Nick Leeson used to drink in.

Here is my video diary of the trip - edited mainly whilst sitting on a Singapore Airlines flight from Singapore to Hong Kong. Sadly though the Credit Crunch may be biting the best airline in the skys, as apart from one sector, I was able to get three seats all to myself all the way, which was great and even better than first class, but sad that it may be a sign of a bad economy. Singapore Airlines even have in seat power in economy in their newer airplanes, so I got most of the work done on my India movie on the plane.

Eric! Wreckless in San Francisco

We went to see the first of two of my musical heros today. I think secretly, Eric does not really want to be known as Wreckless any more, but I think he has tried changing his stage persona a few times, but when you had your biggest hit under the name of Wreckless Eric, I suppose it's better not to confuse the public and stick to your original persona. Even in his mid 50's, Eric is still Wreckless.

Eric was one of the original artists on the iconic Stiff label, was a close friend of Ian Dury and he is one of the best and most idiosyncratic songwriters I've ever had the pleasure to hear. He's also one of the genuinely funniest people I've ever met, although I think the audience in "Frisco struggled a but with the more biting aspects of Eric's humour. The dialogue on Eric's "25 years at the BBC" CD between Eric and Mark Radcliffe (who is also one of the funniest people ever in my opinion, although I don't think he has aged as well as Eric recently), when Eric did a session for Radcliffe is priceless and it always makes me smile. The dialogue between Eric and Jonathan Ross on the same CD is worth a listen too, although I don't find Jonathan Ross very funny, Eric rose to the occasion. Asked if he liked tribute bands, Eric responded that he was thinking of forming his own tribute band as a tribute to himself - brilliant.

I last saw Eric in a year like 2004 in a tiny pub in Haymarket in Edinburgh and he played to around a crowd of 20. My mate Ian and I had numerous beers whilst watching him and ended up meeting him after and found him a great guy in person, very generous of his time with his legion of fans that were there that night. We even sang the opening lines to "Whole Wide World" together, as I always had a hard time working out the second line of the chorus. I found out later that Eric did what I often do when writing songs and got the music and lyric out of synch and had to kind of squeeze his words into not quite enough music, so I think he must get fed up explaining what that second line is. He even signed a copy of his 1991 classic "Donovan of Trash" which was on sale at the venue on glorious vinyl. Although Ian wanted him to sign it "to the Pooheads" and Eric misheard him and put "to the Pinheads" and Ian made him change it. I wasn't so sure that you should correct a punk icon.

his time around Eric played another pub, this time in Protero Hill in San Francisco. I never thought I'd see Eric in the US, but he has now married an American songwriter called Amy Rigby, so hopefully he will be here more often now. As one of those amazing pieces of fate or coincidence he met his wife to be in the same pub in Hull (he went to art school in Hull) where he first played "Whole Wide World" to the general public. Amy played "Whole Wide World" as part of her set and Eric approached her afterwards and told her his one hit only had two chords and she had them both wrong. Very Eric!

Eric is now doing shows with Amy, so it's really the Eric and Amy show now, or maybe the Wreckless and Rigby show. Generous as ever with his time, Eric and Amy were happy to meet the fans after the show and I was touched that Eric even seemed to pretend to remember me from our encounter in a Haymarket pub in '04 (he can't really, can he?). Eric maintains a very caustic and funny blog in his diary section of www.wrecklesseric.com and we had time to have a chat about his latest entries where he was having a go at fat badly dressed Americans - imagine that. Amy also has a good blog, actually on blogger, that is worth a read.

Eric and Amy also seemed cool with the audience videoing parts of their show. Although due to the fact that Eric and Amy didn't come on till around 11pm and me (punctual as ever) insisted on us being there at 9 which is what the ticket said, I had a right few beers before Eric came on (which actually never seem quite as enjoyable or acceptable in America as it does in Scotland, shame about that) and started singing along, especially when he played old favorites like Reconez Cherie or Kilburn Lane and therefore spoiled another tape by singing along. Some things never change.


Eric's diary is at www.wrecklesseric.com, Amy's diary is at http://amyrigby.blogspot.com/