Big Ben in San Jose

It’s a bizarre noise to wake up to when you’re in Silicon Valley – the distinctive chimes of Big Ben coming across the palm trees. Very disorientating indeed; I couldn’t locate the source but I can only assume it’s some copy cat bell. Either that or someone was playing the Radio 4 news really loudly.

San Jose is a fairly dull place from what I’ve seen, and is apparently one of the richest areas in the world in terms of average salary. Perhaps the two are connected? The area is home to most of the world’s biggest technology companies – eBay, Cisco, Yahoo!, Google and once upon a time Microsoft. The office buildings (or “campuses” as they seem to insist on calling them) that line the highways are a roll-call of all that is best in IT and technology.

And it’s bloody hot, but not too humid… San Francisco’s better though.