Shopping and a little of San Jose downtown

On Saturday I woke up late, around 11, as I was up until 3.30 due to a long Uno game, long conversation, and unpacking my bags. I then went to get Brendan and Christina and we went to a shopping center nearby. Before I left I did laundry and it's pretty cool with the drier, as we never had one in NZ. Everything comes out really dry and there's no need to hang things on the line (which doesn't exist in an apartment of course). There is also a dishwasher, but I don't think I'll use it. Clean as you go is my policy. I also made a list of bathroom accessories to get --- cleaning and essentials, including a shower curtain! Apparently the apartment comes with no shower curtains and the old room occupant evidently took hers with her. I had to take a shower the night before with the shower head pointing towards the wall. Somehow I managed to get some water on myself and outside the bathtub too :) Alla's advice was to get the shower curtain from the "Dollar Store".

It was a great sunny day, not a cloud in the sky, just a little mist on the horizon. It was very warm, I wore a t-shirt all day. When we had lunch Brendan was showing the drink they got. The size of the cup was exactly a large by NZ standards. Here this was a small! The food was fine --- I got a Mexican wrap with no cheese, and chips exchanged for rice --- it was quite filling. In terms of prices for takeaways and food it seems that it's either the same dollar for dollar or slightly cheaper. If you converted to $NZ everything would be more expensive. It's true, there are some cheaper products, but in general it's about dollar for dollar in supermarkets and takeaways. Fruit is relatively expensive this year because they had a big frost earlier this year. It's still cheap enough. Petrol here was about $US3/gallon when I filled up the other day. That's 79 cents, which ex.com tells me is about $NZ 1.15. If you buy electronics online things are looking up, most PC parts are at times half the price that in NZ. Cell Phones are cheaper, especially on Ebay. I think I'll buy an unlocked phone that can be used with any network and buy a prepaid SIM card. This way if I want to switch networks or bring the phone back to NZ I can. If you buy a locked phone it only works with that provider network, although I think you can pay to have it unlocked.

Anyway, after we had lunch we went around the mall and drove around. The extension of the shopping center is several blocks of continuous shops... If you want to see it on google maps, it's on Blossom Hill Rd, just search for "westfield oakridge, San Jose". After all that the time was around 3 pm and we decided to head to the San Jose downtown. On the way there was some highway experience lane changes that extended for four lanes at a time to get to the correct exit. I also had a couple of close calls when I was changing lanes --- people seemed to accelerate when I tried once. And there was the situation when two cars try to change to the same lane from opposite sides --- luckily I always check my blind spots so all collisions were avoided.

Downtown San Jose is relatively plain, although I don't know what I expected --- it's San Francisco that's supposed to have all the excitement. Parking was hard to find. In the end we parked near the library, but still had to pay AND there was a 30 minute limit even on Saturday. I think parking is free on Sunday though, just like Wellington. Roads are reasonably wide and streets are square. No need to say that it's absolutely flat. When I get a camera in April sometime I'll take pictures and describe things in more detail.

We got to Brendan&Christina's place around 6 pm and I got home around 8. Alla went to some masquerade party with her brother, also Alex (CAIIIA). We all speak in English though as I don't think their Russian is very good. As an aside, the night before one of Alla's friends mentioned that Russian Jewish people, that's Alla's family, and other Russians (me?) look different. That really put the finger on it --- before I was asking myself if she looked Russian or Ukrainian, but was coming up blank on both counts. Now I can see it --- the facial feature and typical wide and close eyebrows.

Finally I had the place to myself that night... Had dinner, some oatmeal with egg white, carrot, radish, and cucumber --- finally I can eat what I wanted. I didn't do much, but sat with the laptop and updated this blog and browsed the web in general. No TV in the house, so I watched a couple of five minute clips on YouTube, but decided that wasn't really me. I didn't miss TV at all this week. I haven't watched a single thing, not even Prison Break! By the way Prison Break and all the popular series Blayne downloads each week and watches most of it I think. Apparently there is no problem with downloading series, but downloading movies is "dodgy here" as Blayne put it. For now I haven't decided if I'll need a monitor or a whole new PC, after all I will have TV in a month... My work laptop serves me well for the time being.