It has been a week in the US and i'm lovin' it !!! :D
Being a capitalist country all u need here is money. I am told, if an indian and american went to a BMW showroom in the US, the indian will be waited upon first !!! Because they assume he is the one who'd going to make a costly purchase.
Sunnyvale is a town in the state of California and houses the headquarters of Juniper Networks and i am told, also Yahoo. I did see a major Yahoo establishment here but i'm not certain its the HQ. I am really amazed at the amount of thought that must have gone into planning infrastructure of this magnitude and this is one of the smaller towns in California !!! You gotta see the super wide roads, the freeway entrances and exits where traffic merges without any hiccups !!!


Check out the amount of space between 2 buildings !!! i believe this is mandatory as per US law. I cant imagine this kind of space between 2 building ( that too with a lush green PUBLIC lawn) back in india. I'm so sure a mini shopping mall would've come up in this area back home !!!

There were some truly scenic moments that i managed to capture on camera for posterity :)
This is where i work.

On a Sunday we decided to go to San Francisco and oh man what an unforgettable experience it was !!! We took the double decker train :) from sunnyvale to SFO and that itself was a super experience ... You gotta see the vending machines to believe it ... Completely automatic and super hi fi ... I sure hope the Bangalore Metro comes close to this kind of efficiency !!! and beauty !!!


The plan was to visit this place called Fisherman's Wharf and try to do some shopping after that. There are organised tours too in SFO but since it was already afternoon we thought its better if we go by ourselves !!!

The photo above was taken at Embercarado Street which is something like Mumbai's Marine Drive. It stretches for a huge distance along the bay and offers some of the most awesome sights and scenes :) Thankfully, this part of San Francisco wasnt too commercialized and also, it was the Superbowl Sunday so we could walk around freely !!! Superbowl is american football finals - our rugby :)
oh wait a minute ... let me show u a couple of snaps of my private limo and speed jet ;)


The piers in the Sanfrancisco Bay are arranged in two consecutive rows - ordered by numbers ... even numbers first followed by odd ones. We needed to get to pier 39 and we were at peir 40 when we alighted from the train. We dint know this kind of arrangement so were feeling really happy that we needn't walk a lot !!! little did we know that we had to walk almost 5 miles to reach Fisherman's Wharf .... a colossal walk of over an hour !!!
but it was completely worth it and the beauty of walking is that u can stop as and when you please to click photographs. And San Francisco is a city where u feel like taking a photo of Everything !!! I caught a few glimpses of the Sky Scraper studded downtown of SFO and some shots of mighty buildings on the seafront.





My favorite however, is this one .... a shot of the SFO Bay Bridge connecting Oakland to San Francisco ... it was built just a few years after the golden gate brigde but is much much less famous as compared to its illustrious relative !!!

Along the way, we stopped at this roadside shop to check out some warm woolen clothing .... it was freezing and i was the only one among the three of us who was pretty much covered head to toe ( and
I was freezing !!! ) The owner of the shop was Luiz and we started chatting .... i picked up a bag and asked him for the price ...
Luiz - " twenty dollah "
Me - " no way .... back in india i give only 2 dollar for this .... i give u 5 ? "
Luiz ( grinning ) - " first time to US eh ? ok 15 dollah "
Me - ( sheepish grin ) " ok 10 dollars? "
Luiz - " sure"
lol .... he was a damn nice chap and managed to bundle off a couple of hats, shawls and some other nick nacks onto us and before we knew it we were parting with almost a hundred dollars !!!
I think we have financed Luiz's next trip to Equador ... lol ... he must be praying for us to come back next time !!!
Oh and yes ... we did take a snap with Luiz ( yeah he's a small guy ... lol )


Can u see my friends all packed up after a stop at Luiz's ? Man he was a godsend that day .... all three of us will vouch for that ... we couldnt've survived the cold if not for those clothes we bought from Luiz.
My friends Abhiman and Santhana convinced me to go on "The Bay Cruise". This is a one hour cruise on a ferry starting from Pier 39 and it takes you under and around the Golden Gate Bridge, around the island where Alcatraz Stands and back to Pier 39 taking a winding path where u get to take in the breathtaking beauty of the San Francisco coastline.
This was a truly unforgettable experience and all for just 21 dollars !!! or as luiz would have it - 21
dollahs !!! lol
There are 3 decks on the ferry and the first two are nicely covered and centrally heated i suppose cuz it was quite comfy there ... my friends had warned me that the top most deck which was open to the elements was meant only for the very brave :) and when i got there i really got a hang of what the phrase "the chill gets to your bones" actually means !!!
The wind was whipping around me and all i could do was just to hold on for dear life with one hand and manage my digicam with the other - furiously clicking away at the glorious SFO landscape.
There were some birds following the ferry and it was simply amazing the way they glided in the wake of the ferry's airdraft .... I got a real up close and personal look at the golden gate bridge .... i got all nostalgic for a moment when i remembered the re-runs of Full House that we've watched back at home and each and every episode starts with a shot of the Golden gate bridge !!!
Truly , a most memorable experience .... it was about 5 30 when i got back on terra firma and i was pretty much chilled ;) The first thing i did was to pull my land loving friends to a coffee shop and order the largest coffee !!! cost me a whopping 7.99 $ but it was totally worth it !!! :)
americans take their coffee black !!! thats like our decoction !!! i find this quite amazing !!!
So instead of looking through the menu and making a choice, i just went up to the clerk and asked him to get me the largest coffee which has milk in it !!! the guy must've had a quiet laugh at me !!!
After coffee, my experienced friends guided me to some shops where we bought a few clothes and accessories :) and there the trip ended with a cab ride back to the caltrain station and finally back to the hotel in sunnyvale !!!
oh yeah, a truly memorable outing :)