Livin' in America

I could get used to this whole "having decent food" thing. Yesterday’s meal prepared by Whitney’s family was excellent, though it did make me have a dream last night that involved finding a live shrimp in my shoes. (And before any of you make any really clever height-related jokes, no, the shrimp in question wasn’t me.)

Oh – I’m in Berkeley, near San Francisco. I should probably have told you that in the last entry, but I sort of forgot to mention it the second time I typed it. Hopefully this entry won’t go the same way, I’ll have to remember that it’s Apple-Option-whateveryoucallit-C to copy.

This afternoon while Whitney was away at work I went to see the Indian Rock. Scotland isn’t the only place where big stones are the attraction. I liked the place a lot, it’s peaceful, shady and away from the sunlight that I find so uncomfortable compared to Aberdeen. I sat there for a while attempting to write a song or two. Apparently it’s only open between 6am and 10pm, but I fail to see how you could close a rock.

The main difference that I find in America is that the familiar definite town-road-town-road layout doesn’t exist – there’s no separation between individual towns at all here and the whole place is like a continuous city. To make up for that, though, there’s a lot more greenery around, making even the main shopping district seem like a suburban area. It’s certainly nowhere near as grey as the Granite City.

Another thing that’s different is television. In Britain we have five channels of drivel that no one would want to watch. Instead, here in America, there are hundreds of channels full of drivel that no one would want to watch. However, there are occasional entertaining programmes here, I’ve already been shown Queer Eye for the Straight Guy which I found quite funny even though I usually don’t like the promotion of stereotypes, makeover shows, or television in general.

Paul and I went down to the arcade yesterday – a thirty-minute walk in each direction, which I think is rather good exercise in itself. There are some people there that are quite excellent at DDR, though, it made us feel rather inadequate. I was impressed with the selection of machines there – there was another musical game that I’d never heard of, Beatmania, that we were fairly terrible at, and I was very impressed with the fact that they had an original Tetris machine.

That reminds me, I think I’ll try and set up the SNES over in the corner and get FF6 running. Jamie, if you’re reading this, get on with that MMF project!