Easter Bunny Moves with the Times

Even with all the orchards gone the valley is still a beautiful place in Spring.  Most houses still have one or two fruit trees left over from the old days in bloom.  It seems to be axiomatic that if you have a fruit tree you add another.  We are all fruit farmers at heart even if we spend our days in gray cloth-covered cubicles.

My childhood Easters were marked by egg hunts in the orchard after church wearing new Mary Janes and a new dress my mother made, usually in a pastel color with a big bow in the back.  I'd get dirt on my socks and in my shoes.  Our baskets were stuffed with malted eggs but the prize was a chocolate egg from See's. Rocky Road was my favorite. We never had See's candy any other time.

When my kids were small they'd hunt eggs in the church apricot orchard.  Now at 16, they hide the eggs for the little ones and wait to see what the "Easter Bunny" brought them.  The most prized gift is an iTunes gift card... and a chocolate egg from See's.

It's about the food

If you want to understand a culture you all you need to do is  look at the cuisine.  There's a small market around the corner from my house.  It's located in a strip mall with a dance studio, a pizza place and a Japanese tapas restaurant.  The Japanese appropriated the Spanish word, tapas (small plates) for the way they present their cuisine.   You wait six weeks to get in.

The pizza place is run by a Sikh family.  Not only can you get pepperoni but also tandoori chicken on your pizza.

The produce market is in the space that used to hold a liquor store.  It's run by a family from Mexico.  At first, it had the usual fruits and vegetables; tomatoes, lettuce, broccoli.  Then the proprietor added tomatillos, a delicacy in his Mexican state.  Then because a lot of Israeli families attend the dance studio and the parents shop while their kids take dance lessons,  kosher items soon appeared.  A karate studio opened up and asian produce followed.  Now I can buy Russian yogurt, Greek olives, and German bread at my little produce market.  The Indian moms like the mangoes and the 3 difference kinds of lentils our Mexican grocer carries.

The produce market now has video display terminals mounted on the walls that carry commercials in Hebrew, Mandarin, Japanese and Russian.  The owner says it's an experiment one of his customers, CEO of a start up, wanted to beta.

Bottom line:  even in the produce market the Silicon Valley spirit of innovation is alive.

Coffee, Tea and Me

The sun has returned to Silicon Valley.  The fruit trees, remnants of when this was The Valley of Hearts Delight, are beginning to send their blossoms out.  We still have cool nights and last evening there was a light misting of rain, reminiscent of Camelot where it only rained at night.

It is a glorious Friday morning and I am in the grips of a coffee craving.  I don't want to leave the house to go to the nearest coffee bar (a Starbucks) but I discovered my coffee maker has decided to keep the coffee to itself.  I am the only one in the house who drinks coffee and ordinarily I wouldn't mind being without it  but the last three mornings I've had breakfast meetings where coffee was served and my body wants it NOW.

I don't want to give in.  I want to write not walk over to Starbucks.  The little devil in my head whispers seductively,  "Don't walk, just drive."  That will increase my carbon footprint and I don't want to spend the gas.  "But I want a coffee.  I can't write without it." whines the devil.  I am firm.   "You can have it after you finish your five pages." "I want it NOW." "No. Now get busy."

After checking my e-mail (a stalling tactic)  my devil and I are still arguing.

I move on Facebook. Still stalling.

This is ridiculous.  Now I'm checking my Spam filter and I NEVER check my Spam filter.  I need to disconnect myself from the Internet.

I could go to the library.  They have a cafe at the Santa Clara library and I could get a coffee AND write.

Then I remember the green tea one of my Chinese neighbors gifted to me.  One cup and sanity returns.

Since when did it become possible to waste so much energy, money and time on a cup of coffee?

There Used To Be Apricot Orchards Here

I'm a second generation "prune picker" - that's a person who is born and raised in the Santa Clara Valley.  Not so long ago my parents had apricot trees in the backyard.  In fact, every house in our childhood neighborhood had at least 6 Blenheim apricot trees and  some had whole orchards surrounding them.

Our house was the old farmhouse in the development.  It was a funky house - huge because the farmer had had 6 kids with 4 bedrooms downstairs and 2 bedrooms upstairs, with only two bathrooms for the whole house.  We had a  septic system the first 2 years we lived there.  My dad hated that septic system with a passion.  The apricot trees would get into the line at least once a year.

My house in Sunnyvale stands in what used to be an apricot orchard but we don't have an apricot tree in the backyard.  Our neighbors have one but it is old and tired.  Apricots don't last forever.  This year we bought fruit trees for our little orchard - a peach, a plum, a Meyer lemon (more on those later) and yes, an apricot.  It's not a Blenheim, the fruit of my childhood.  The nursery didn't stock those.  But I will get one next year even if I have to special order it off the Internet.

I seem to have gotten lost in space ...

Blogger space that is.  I had another blog using my yahoo e-mail account and I kept trying to migrate it over to my google account but alas ... no luck.  I'm not the only one with this problem there are many cries for help in the blogger community but our cries go unanswered. Until I can retrieve my old blog I have decided it will be more efficient to start anew.

The thesis is that there is no where in the world I'd rather be than here but here is rather vexing at times.  Like now, when I can't get my old blog (http:siliconedge@blogspot.com) to do what the instructions say it will.  But then I love this place, especially when I come home from a Toastmasters meeting having learned about zoos in Mongolia and Asia and listening to two speeches by Chinese speakers.

I am living in the United Nations.  Two of my neighbors are from Israel, one is from Taiwan, three are from India and  there's one from Guatamala, too.