The current decline in property prices is not just affecting the low classes. While walking through the very affluent neighbourhood of Los Altos, every street had a house for sale
Category Archives: America
SF Giants Game
Tara and Daryl invited to join them at the Giants game on Saturday night. Unfortunately the Giants sucked. I still don’t understand this game.
Go Giants
Work had arranged a team outing to a Giants game with tailgating before.
This was a great work event, we sat on the trolley car on the far side of the stadium with beers.  I couldn’t tell you the final score as we left just before the end to head over to Zeitgeist for more drinks.  Of course we couldn’t take the company provided travel home so we finally got the train at about 11pm.  More photos
This is why I love California
Snow in Bognor Regis on the same day as Sun in California.
Tendy Mountain View?
Has Mountain View finally got a trendy lounge bar?  It just might have happened with the new Xanh Restaurant & Bar on Castro Street.  The old Xanh was known for it’s excellent food, but this new location has a huge lounge bar area and then three dining areas hidden away.  Drinks are reasonable too, with Stella at $5 and cocktails anything from $8-$12.  We didn’t have dinner by all night there were groups of people hanging out waiting for their table.  This is clearly going to be a very popular restaurant.Â
 
 
 
  
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Xanh is something new and exciting for Mountain View, it feels out of place, with the water running down the pebble walls, W-Hotel style bathrooms and DJ spinning Zero-7 and Massive Attack, this is more a San Francisco bar. Â I really hope that it can retain it’s style and not turn into another getto hangout. Â Â
British and their teeth
One things that really bugs me about America is their constant assumption that the British all have bad teeth. This was highlighted over lunch the other day when someone said “an English ascent and good teeth”. I almost take offense to the generalisation(sic). This question has been asked many times, take this example on Yahoo. It’s hard to deny that there are a large number of people in England who have bad teeth but lets look at America as a whole. There’s a lot of people in the southern states who have the most atrocious diet, as a result have terrible teeth…if any at all!
My belief is that this is a largely out dated misconception. Perhaps 5o years ago there were far more people in England with bad teeth but today most are aware that dental hygiene is important. Having experiences both dental schemes, the Americans clearly have the lead, but then again have to pay through the nose for it. My current dentist is amazing! I visited him yesterday for yet another filling (result of bad consultant by my childhood dentist) he’s a real pro. So to all the American readers, “most” British people don’t have bad teeth, there are some bad cases but that’s not the norm!
Application Support Center
I had to go down to the application support center in San Jose yesterday. Â This is the next step in my being permanently here in California. Â However, it really is an odd place. Â There’s a TV with bunny ears that’s almost unwatchable in the waiting area. Â To top that, if you ever want to find a really wide cross section of cultures and people from around the world, a visa processing center is the place. Â Of course everyone there is a from outside the country but all force to follow the same process, that certainly made for good people watching while waiting for my appointment.
Mavericks & San Jose Car Show
This Saturday we packed a lot in, first off, over to Half Moon Bay for the Mavericks surf competition followed by a trek down to San Jose for the San Jose International Motor Show.
Mavericks surf competition is one of the world leading and most challenging events and I can see why. The waves break over a ledge and onto a reef with only a small area clear of rocks.
The San Jose motor show isn’t a huge event, it’s more a room with lots of cars in than your full on motor show with big stands and women draped over cars. However, they did have a concept version of the soon to go into production Camero as well as an Audi R8 (wow that’s a nice car).What better way to finish off the day than with a trip to Original Joe’s, San Jose, and then watching movies at home.Â
New Years Eve
With New Years Eve approaching fast I couldn’t decide what to do. We settled on going to Rudi’s for dinner and drinks. Something mellow but a lot of fun!
Here’s me, clearly drunk by midnight.
(Full Photos here)
Art and OJ’s
Nikki took me to an art sale today for small independent artists. Unfortunately there wasn’t much that good there, apart from some weird people
After the art show Nikki treated me to Original Joes. I love that place, the mushrooms are to die for. To avoid the wait we sat at the counter, which turned out to be far more fun.
Weekend away in Tahoe
A long weekend away in Tahoe was just what we needed before the Thanksgiving celebrations stated. Unfortunately, mother nature had not blessed us with snow again this year.
On the plus side, I did finally buy a snowboard, boots and bindings in the pre-season (last season) sale. Woohoo.
Nikki’s Birthday
It’s Nikki’s big day, so off to the BBC for some fun. We had ‘reserved’ the upper floor of the bar for our group. With a large turnout of over 40 people it was a good job we did.
photos from Gareth By the time the bar was closing the numbers had dwindled but Nikki was still looking for a drink. That’s to Allison & Cisco for dropping us back home.
Moved in with Nikki
I finally moved in with Nikki, well at least all the major furniture is in.
The bedroom really looks amazing now with all the new furniture, carpet and paint. Going to be really fun, now off to Nikki’s birthday.
Painting
I’m moving in with Nikki so we decided to paint her bedroom and replace the carpets.
The new colour is a little different from what we’d hoped for but it really is a nice colour on now. It’s as close as we could find to my sisters spare bedroom colour. And it better do after 3 days of late nights and nearly being gassed to death by the heater paint.
Day at the races
Went to the races for the Leopard launch. Quite interesting to be in the boxed area at Bay Meadows.
