Friday evening in San Jose airport

So I'm in San Jose at the moment. Strange place - it's like a technology theme park. Northern California has a pretty good reputation overall. It has a gorgeous climate, one of the great US cities in San Francisco, and one of the largest economies in the world. San Jose (and the rest of Silicon Valley, spreading all the way up to San Francisco) is like a gigantic technology theme park. You can't move for the offices of some of the biggest tech companies in the world - driving down the highway you'll pass Yahoo!, Google, eBay, Cisco, McAfee and Sun, to name a few. Stanford University's just down the road, as well.

What that means is that people are so well paid here that the property prices are some of the highest in the country outside Manhattan, despite it being really rather a dull place to live. Over the last few weeks I've spent quite a few days in downtown San Jose, and it has less charm and things to do than Milton Keynes. And there aren't even any roundabouts to keep you amused.

[That reminds me - a bit of an aside this, but I'll mention it anyway. One of the few European flavours to be kept at Ikea in Massachusetts was that the (presumably purpose built) complex had lots of roundabouts in, which are unheard of here. It was increadibly amusing to see Americans drive up to them and just sit there in confusion. "Consarn it! What in Sam Hill am I supposed to do here?" They might have said...]

Anyway, back to San Jose. Despite the soporific nature of the town, everyone here (who works hee, anyway) is fantastically intelligent. Most of them seem to have PhDs from Stanford, and that makes business meetings here rather more interesting than they might generally be. Not more productive, as having a room full of bright sparks is no guarantee to getting something useful out of a meeting, but certainly more entertaining.

Finally, did you know Chicago is so-pronounced because it was mostly populated by the French? I didn't. Mental note: find out how significant the French influence was in the early US and proceed to annoy Americans with tales of how the "cheese eating surrender monkeys" helped to build their treasured nation.

Right, I may be in San Jose airport on a Friday evening, but I'm on my way to New York for the weekend, which should be fun. Hopefully there'll be some Tales To Tell.