Election day today! As we don’t have our cable connected yet, so I have been folowing the news and the early results on Radio 4 over the internet. It’s been very reassuring to have James Naughtie keeping me up-to-date while I unpack the all the boxes of our stuff from the UK that arrived yesterday. The dramatic news so far, surprise surprise, is that the uncontroversial states have been called as expected and the ‘swing’ or ‘battleground’ states are all too close to call. Its fun to be listening as states are called very soon after the polls close – quite a change from the long wait for ballot counts in the UK.

More on the election after we get back from the bar…

Turns out the closest ones are still too close to call, and if we don’t know now, we probably won’t know for a week (Ohio doesn’t count provisional votes until 11 days after polling day!) so I’m going to bed.

As there seems to be little going on in the news except the election at the moment, I thought I would bring you a Palo Alto election special.

Of course, there is a presidential race going on out there somewhere, but there is no real evidence of it around here. As California is not a ‘swing state’ it is of little interest to the presidential candidate – it will certainly go democrat. Judging by the posters in people’s yards, the locals are much more concerned about all the local issues which will also appear on the November 2nd ballot paper.

American elections are interesting in that there are so many things to vote for. In Palo Alto, voters will be asked to choose their choice for President, for the Senate, for State Assembly, for City Council and be asked to vote on a number of local and statewide propositions. For the representative for State Assembly, there are two main candidates, Ira Ruskin (democrat) and Steve Poizner (republican), although, as so often in California, it’s really a choice between the liberal and the more liberal guy. Interestingly, the republican candidate will not say who his choice for president will be.

Of chief concern amongst these options seems to be Proposition I, which is a proposal to maintain and increase a parcel tax that is used to pay for Palo Alto schools to $521 per year (with certain groups of people, such as the over 65s exempt). It is refreshing to see so many homes really interested in this issue – many people who haven’t bothered with Kerry/Edwards or Bush/Cheney posters are displaying a Yes on I poster. It is interesting that amongst the discussion of the presidential race and how it is all likely to come down to a few hundred voters in a couple of states, there is little room for the fact that Americans have a great deal of control over their politicians at a local level, where it might actually impact their lives.

Well, here we are after a Great Californian Sunday, which also happens to be halloween. We actually got up and went for a little jog in the sunshine this morning, and then rewarded ourselves with breakfast at the Peninsula Fountain and Grill, which is a diner near here that looks just like you expect a diner to look. We bought the Sunday New York Times, and we pursued those all-american activities of shopping for electronics and DIY – just what Sunday’s should be all about (although Nathan might disagree, having been the one building most of the furniture).

Anyhow, all this rambling is really only to introduce some pictures of the house, so here they are: link to Fotopic gallery

After some minor effort and consulting of help files we have managed to add me to the blog account, so I am able to create my own entries :

Despite the busy week – we managed to go to the office Halloween party on Friday in the city. For those who have never driven highway 101 to San Francisco on the Friday before Halloween – it is hard to describe. Think Wacky Races meets the Cannonball Run with a side order of Carmmeggedon. Ugly.In any case we made it to the party, held at the very funky Fluid Lounge, and met up with a few more people. Amazingly (if you are a Brit) everyone had made an effort and the costumes were very elaborate. Of course there were the obligatory ‘naughty schoolgirls’ and drag queens, but more original highlights included a box of tissues – and memorably a couple dressed as sushi. Inspired.

Overall a good time – and we felt good about getting to the city for the first time. So glad we followed L’s instincts and decided to live in Palo Alto though – that commute is not funny….

One thing that everyone visiting the US from the UK notices is their service culture. As illustrated by the cliches of “Have a nice day” and “I’m going to be your waiter for today”, it’s one of the most distinctive things about the States.

Americans are starting to become conscious of the false sincerity of these pat phrases, but the sentiment behind them is genuine and persists. And the difference between service in the US and service in the UK is how it is pitched. Good service needs to fall somewhere between ingratiatingly obsequious and sullenly reluctant. The english struggle with this balance, swinging wildly from one extreme to the other (see, most obviously, Basil Fawlty).

But the Americans have an uncanny ability to be helpful without intrusive. Take the guy in the bed shop that I went to last week. I stopped at ‘Sleep Train’ to look at the price of mattresses as we needed to get a bed fairly urgently. I wandered around the store for a couple of minutes before he asked if I’d like any help. He then asked if I would like him to explain the different brands they carried, and when I said yes, proceeded to explain the various benefits of each one. He gave an honest price range for the size of bed we needed, and never once gave a ‘sales pitch’ speech.

And then there’s the burger place we went to on Saturday night. Yes, we were living the true American dream – burgers and fries in a restarant where the baseball ‘World Series’ was playing on the big screen. It was a place where you order at the counter then take a number and sit down. The food was good arrived fast, cost $16 for the two of us, and at least 3 people checked that we were OK and had everything we needed during our brief meal. God bless America – or something.

We have now moved in – pretty impressive to arrive in a new country, find a place to live and then move in, all inside a week. Obviously the main priority before we could inhabit the place was a bed to sleep in. Which is how we ended up in Ikea on Wednesday night. Yes, they do have Ikea in the US (although only about 20 stores nationwide) and yes, they are just as much of a pain as the ones in the UK. Don’t think that Ikea are a pain? Have you ever tried to order a serious quantity of furniture from them? If you have, you will know that there is *always* some vital piece of the order that is not in stock at the moment. In our case, it was only the mattress pad, but it still nearly caused N to walk out of the place there and then. The added complication with Ikea in the US is that the staff have absolutely *no clue* how the names should be pronounced.

“I’d like to order a Liared, please”

“Li-wha?”

“Liared. L-I-A-R-E-D”

“L-Y-R…”

“No, L-I..

etc. etc.

I know they’re all nonsense Swedish names anyway, but I could swear that UK employees have much better stabs at pronunciation. Americans just aren’t used to having to deal with another language, unless it’s Spanish (or, for some reason, Tagalog – there are churches here that advertise special services in Tagalog).

So the conclusion to this story is that we are now safely installed in our new house – we have a bed, and a spare for all you budding guests out there, two rocking chairs, a dining table and chairs and bedding.

Next comes the sofa…

Americans really like cars. They generally like big cars. That’s not really a problem because there are plenty of big roads to drive them on. The main road running along the southern edge of Palo Alto (called El Camino Real) is a 6 lane highway, with a speed limit of 35 mph. Admittedly, we are not in a very representative part of America here. We are in California for starters, which is a pretty cosmopolitan state, and then we’re living in Palo Alto, a town where something like 65% of the adult population have 4 years of college education (i.e. an undergraduate degree). So we see quite a few VW Beetles, Minis and Volvos as well as the Dodge Durangos and Ford Pickups. But the weirdest thing I have seen so far, car-wise, was a hopped-up blue something, metallic paint, tinted windows, and chromed hubcaps that spin around when the wheels aren’t moving. Now I am told by the knowledgeable N that these are illegal in the UK, for the obvious reason that they make your wheels look like they are moving when they aren’t. My thoughts were, as a piece of car decoration, they make about as much sense as spokey-dokeys for bikes!

It’s Monday morning – we’ve been in California just over 2 days now, and here are some observations – may of which have been made before by other people, so apologies for repetition:

• Some people own some very silly cars.
• But that’s OK, because even the fairly minor roads are 6 lanes wide.
  
• There seems to be some sort of election going on here. We were asked if we wanted to register to vote yesterday – tempting to see if would work, but we resisted.
• People drive really slow – the speed limit in most areas is 35 mph, except on the freeway.
• The weather is *so* much better here!! OK, so it’s rained a couple of times already, but it’s warm rain, and it’s so unusual is occupies most of the local news.
• Nothing comes in small sizes – juice cartons, bags of rice, cups of coffee – everything is large, because there’s always plenty of space.
  

You have no concept of how much stuff is in your life until you have had to pack the whole lot into cardboard boxes in 12 hours. Which is what we did on Friday.

OK, so we cheated a little bit. The day started with the shipping company coming to take the 180 cubic feet of our things that we can ship by air freight. Fortunately, these guys packed as well, so all we had to do was point them at the relevant shelves and cupboards and they did the rest – scarily fast as well. N took great pleasure in pointing out the number of boxes that were required just to pack up the kitchen. But what’s the point of coming to California to take a cookery course if you don’t bring your tools??

So after about 2 and a half hours, the shipping was all packed up. The rest of the day was packing up boxes for storage. We must have thrown away about 15 sacks of rubbish over the course of the day, and I took 4 trips to the charity shop around the corner as well – and we still ended up with a ridiculous amount of stuff!

But we did get it all done in one day – from a completely full flat to a completely empty (and completely clean) flat by about 9:30pm. Impressive. But by that point we were too tired to care…

So, it starts here.

This is our last week in the UK.

Passports – check.

Visas – check.

Tickets – check (i hope)

So its just the packing to be done now – the simple process of parcelling a 2 bedroom flat into 4 heaps:

1) Ship to the US

2) Store for a year

3) Pack in a case to go on the flight

4) Get it out of the house – Oxfam, my sister, anyone else who will take things from us.

Oh, how simple it all sounds when you list it like that. My contribution to this so far has been primarily the placing of small sticky dots on various items, colour-coded to correspond to the groups above. On the other hand, I may be confusing ‘contribution’ with ‘displacement activity’.