Gustible - under the rubric of [$_SELF]

Being an American Virgin, so to speak – herewith the chronicle of my first visit to the States.

Let’s just get this out the way – why is this the first time I visit the United States ? Well – a combination of two things: in the first instance I’ve never really had any reasons in terms of either business or pleasure to visit, the States not being high on my list of “must-see” places. Secondly I had (have) some reservations about visiting in terms of my personal views on geo-politics, geo-political ethics, the ethics of war, the ethics of consumption and other issues that mostly feature the word ethics. So – why now ? In the first instance, I had a very compelling business reason to visit, having instigated and organised a conference for which Palo Alto was the perfect location. Secondly – it is perfectly unfair to criticise someone or something if one has no personal experience of that thing. So here I am.

After a long and fairly gruelling flight (27 hours from Cape Town – via Dakar and New York) my colleague and I arrived in San Francisco. Tired and lagged.

Lunch

Having been here for only twenty four hours – here are my first impressions. And these are by necessity limited to Palo Alto.

• Everything seems bright and clean. Walking down the street feels a bit like walking through an airport shopping complex.
• The cars are BIG. And, surprisingly, I’ve seen more Lexii (should that be Lexuses ?) here than I have ever seen in any one city before.
• Meals are huge. Really – see picture above. But eating anything here gives me the creeps, probably because I recently read “The Omnivore’s Dilemma“. This point is actually interesting – I get the impressions that certain things here are served or delivered in generous portions, blinding one to the somewhat miserly presentation of other things. For example – the portions of food are huge, but this hides issues with the quality and taste of the food (see “The Omnivore’s Dilemma“).
• Things just taste too too sweet. See “The Omnivore’s Dilemma“.
• People are friendly – with the noted exception of self-important customs and security drones at the airport. But then – petty bureaucrats the world over are the same.
• The hotels we are in does not compare well at all to equivalently rated/priced hotels in other countries – especially those in Asia.
• Things are not particularly cheap here.
• Things are hugely commercialised. Everything has a price. Even the trolleys in the airport. This freaked me out.
• I did find some good books at Borders. Most notably I found a copy of Leonard Cohen’s Beautiful Losers. The man should be canonised.

Right now, I can summarise my impressions with one word: mediocre. Guess that impression is a consequence of forcibly exporting your culture to the entire world – because everything is measured against the standards America sets, when one actually encounters the culture in reality it can only be described as mediocre.

So – I will do a follow up post. Let’s see how things develop – I have only seen a tiny tiny (albeit famous) little part of the United States of America. Keep hearing Alice Cooper’s “Lost in America” in the background. This is somewhat disturbing.