Back from the other side of the world

It’s been little over a week since I returned from the other side of the world that was California. It felt like I was flying forever on the way back. And throw in a 7 hour stopover at Singapore in the middle of the night while ones at it. A couple of days of rest & recuperation and I’ve been up and running again.

What was I doing there for 4 weeks? 4 days in San Francisco and then taking a 3 week course on Wine Marketing at UC Davis. Yes, the cats out of the bag, we are heading into the wine business.

I am going to try sum up in 1 line some of the things I did there. 3 BBQ’s, one of which was a weekend at a lakehouse, cruising on a lake, wakeboarding, country line dancing in the middle of California (!), drink lots of beer (Blue Moon’s mainly), taste a lot of wines, getting drunk under the guise of “tasting wines”, visit wineries (6 in all), BBQ lunch with $100 bottles of wine at an exclusive Napa winery (for free!!), getting thrown into a swimming pool, not much sleeping, fine dining experience at Domaine Chandon, swimming (lakes & pools), a Jazz club night, taste sushi for the first time (‘Yo! Sushi’ here I come), amongst other things. And ofcourse there were 4 touristy days in San Fran.

My last visit to the US in Chicago drove home the point that everything was so much bigger in the US than everywhere else in the world. This time I experienced the same. But also the fact a lot of things were just different from the rest of the world. In the sense that, the Americans decided at some point in time that, “Lets just do everything we do different from the rest of the world”. Sample these; some of them are quite menial though,

• Whats with the gallons and pounds and ounces!! Whatever happened to good ole kilos and litres. Miles I can understand, even the Brits and Europeans use it.

• Why are the front & rear brake controls on a bicycle the other way around!! It sounds silly but try interchanging the functions of your right & left hand and you will know what I mean.

• Why are all the currency notes the same size!! How about some size or colour variations to visually differentiate between different denominations. I am not stupid but a few drinks down and the zero’s in a ten dollar bill & hundred dollar bill start to blur!!

• As expected the size 34 pants are slightly larger in the US. One thing that was surprisingly smaller was the size 9-11 (men’s) socks!! I didn’t see that one coming.

• Whats with these big SUV trucks they love? And they are driven by the most tiniest of women in there by themselves!! Talk about waste of space. Isn’t a Range Rover or an X5 type SUV big enough for them?

• Who in this good world charges you for receiving phone calls on a mobile phone? Unless ofcourse if ones on a world roaming. Guess what, they do in the US of A!! And why call it recharge for prepaid, topup sounds better.

• Why use a 3 hole binder when the rest of the world is on a 2 hole binder?? Have you seen the size of one of those 3 hole punchers? It’s huge! It’s a lethal weapon in the wrong hands and….. its huge and inconvenient!!

• If something says $9.99 in a supermarket, let it be inclusive of taxes!! Don’t make it $10.73 or something like that at the checkout. The mind is convinced it’s a steal at $9.99, since it’s below 10. Let psychological pricing do its thing!!

It might sound like ranting, well it is. But it doesn’t take away from the fact that I always enjoy visiting America. It’s just that I am not used to coming across stuff like I mentioned on a daily basis.