Tidbits

Just some tidbits and observations (probably less interesting to people living in the US, but then again sometimes I find it interesting to hear what people coming to my country notice, that I take for granted).

Street naming
I think it’s hilarious how many streets in US cities, especially downtown, lack names. I knew from movies that they have 1st Street and 22nd Avenue, but I didn’t know about A Street, B Street and C street. I guess it’s kind of practical that you can guess which streets are coming up - but this is always down-town, on the streets that everyone know anyway. And it only works if you have a perfect grid pattern on the streets - very North American, and not European… (I kind of like hills, crooked streets, narrow alleyways and places with history. And streets with names.)

San Francisco
Ever since the first morning I stepped off the BART and took my first tentative steps in SF, I really liked the city. Of course, the beautiful sun, the nice cool weather (nice after three months in Mexico!) and the fact that my first destination was a lovely Chinese-inspired lunch with nice people in the Castro area, all helped a lot. But even after, as I have had more time to walk around, I feel right at home in the city.

It feels almost European in that it is quite dense (I love high-density cities), hilly and very walkable. Lot’s of alternative stores, vegan restaurants, eco-minded people, culture etc. So what’s the backside? Well so far I’ve come up with two things: First, the rents are apparently astronomical (and certainly all the ads I have seen have started at $700,000 for apartments (buying)! This means you need a fairly high-power job to be able to live there comfortably.

Secondly: It’s in the US. All discussions about US foreign and domestic policy aside, that means that settling in SF is non-trivial for a Norwegian (the guy I met at the Norwegian Seamen’s Church confirmed this). To a spoilt Norwegian like me, this is a new idea. I am used to travelling around the world, living in and visiting different cities, always wondering “Is this the one I will settle down in?”, and always thinking that if I really wanted to, I could. Certainly, with the EU most of Europe is wide-open, China would be fine, … most places I’ve been to. Even Canada, although it requires me to jump through a number of hoops, including time and money outlays. But ultimately, I think they would let me settle. But not the US. (There are ways, but not simple or fool-proof ones).

Of course, I could study there. I quite liked Berkeley’s campus, which I visited today. The tour guide took great pride in the school’s academic merits, she showed us a number of parking spots in the best area of the school, that had signs saying “NL”. Those were spots reserved for Nobel Laureates. Apparently, Berkeley has 7 of them on staff. But Berkeley doesn’t really have any grad programs that I am interested in. And Stanford is too far away to be living in SF.

High-tech
People around here are very wired - which should perhaps be expected, since we are in Silicon Valley. Today I walked past a small cafe on the main street in downtown Berkeley, and counted 15 laptops. There were only about three people who did not have laptops! (And every second person - literally - has an iPod).

(Oh, and the toilets on the BART, the metro, are closed because of a heighten security alert, according to the monitors. However, according to my hosts, they have never been functioning. Just an excuse for not paying for cleaning services?)

Stian

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 4th, 2005 at 1:24 and is filed under US, tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.