OK, now this is California

by Suw on June 15, 2005

Written last night:
Just sitting on the train back up to San Francisco from Palo Alto. The difference in climate between the two was, well, wow. San Francisco has been like London in disguise since I got here, if slightly foggier. A cross, perhaps, between London and Cornwall.
Palo Alto is like what you think California should be like – hot. Blue skies, and hot. Very hot. Thank god for air conditioning.
Had a lovely lunch with Ross Mayfield from Socialtext, talking about how blogs and wikis get used in business, how the IT is easy but the cultural changes less so, and what I've been up to lately with the whole Dark Blogs project. I first met Ross in November last year, and both of us have made serious progress since then, so it was nice to catch up.
Spent the afternoon in a wifi cafe, fretting about whether my friend Jim would find me, after I changed the venue of our meeting up. The cafe he wanted to meet in had no wifi, but it was next to the bike shop above which three tiny companies once started: Yahoo!, Excite and Danger (who do the Hiptop, for those of you not addicted to mobile devices).
Jim found me fine, though, and we had the best evening just talking about stuff. Went to the Palo Alto Apple store, which is all cute and dinky compared to the London store (the only other one I've been in), but apparently Ol' Stevie Boy lives not far away so is a regular. (Hah!)
So now I'm on one of those big double-decker trains, the ones with the horn and the bell constantly going 'ding ding ding' in a way that I had imagined only happened in the movies. Every time I get to a station I search for wifi, and sometimes there is an open access point and just enough time to open a new page or read an email.
My sore throat has developed into a cold, and I'm losing my voice. It's gone all husky, which I am sure some people would say is an improvement on normal, but I'd rather not be croaking and all snotty, thanks.

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