January 2001: San Francisco

Do You Have Trouble Starting or Holding Your Bowel Movements?

ANNUS CALIFORNICUS

The new millenium began, as I was recently reminded by one of my horde of grocer-in-laws, as a fart without pressure. An immense bottle of New Zealand's finest vintage bubbly, shaken by my sturdy hand, delivered not the cork as expected, but a quiet lisping ssssssththhhhhhhhh and the aged stopper in my hand. Dry as a dead dingo's donger.

Grocer-in-law #2, so proudly the recipient of the bottle in reward for selling shed-loads of some jam or other, had displayed it upright in the sun for 8 months in his office, letting every last ounce of joie de champenoise escape in time for for the great dawning of the 21st century. Without the anticipated fountain of champagne-like substances, aspersions were immediately cast upon my manhood and conclusions were drawn as to the 13 year childless state of my union with their sister.

Well, what say you now brothers-in-grocery? We have put our fertile fortune down to the San Franciscan karma generated from living next door to the Immaculate Conception Academy (illustrated below). Makes us wonder what could have happened had we chosen to live in Cow Hollow, Nob Hill or the Tenderloin.

Thus, with miraculous new male-child member of the clan due early May 2001, what other events could possibly have reached 'slightly interesting' in the history file for regurgitation?

Much of the year has of course revolved around being the last gold-miner to the Gabriel's Gulch of dot com California. A mere thirty days had passed before the 40-odd consecutive financial quarters of economic growth experienced in the USA started unravelling. By October the stock market curve resembled the new downhill ski run for the Utah Olympics. We New Zealanders can have that effect on things sometimes.

DOT COM DEATH RATTLE

With alarming speed the game changed from a scramble to build a business using OPM (other people's money) to just a scramble. Bigfast became 'Begfest', as doors closed in every institution in the nation to an ecommerce based startup proudly planning to lose money for at least a year. There were moments when we thought that changing our Powerpoint slides to read:

"Vision Statement: Enabling online paedophilia and becoming global standard for internet child pornography exchange"...

...might actually elicit more returned Venture Capitalist calls than our business to business human resources ecommerce proposition.

It was thus a very grim year in a business sense. Firstly, learning to cope with American markets, where the combined population of New Zealand and Australia live within 2 hours drive of our office - California is the 6th largest economy in the world, soon to overtake the United Kingdom. Secondly, learning that on bad days 2 hours in the car might only get you to the end of the block because the whole nation owns 2 cars - abandoning one on 24th Street outside Martha's coffee shop, and taking the other to work. Finally, living in a country where a layoff of 5,000 people makes the small print column on page 2 of the business section.

When we arrived in San Francisco, the NASDAQ index, which tracks most of the new economy stocks was just over 5000. As I trudged home 2 days ago, it had fallen to 2300. A mere halving would have been nice. I am composing the first draft of this on the first Saturday where I have not gone to work since April 14.

I reflect with irony that the star investment of 2000 was the Savings and Loan sector, the alternative to bank-lenders that in the 1980s flagrantly pumped up property valuations to allow them to have growth numbers in their lending books that would impress even a modern Venture Capitalist. The orchestrated litany of lies that inflated this sector was like a flame to greedy baby boomer moths, and the eventual realisation that lending 150% of a property's value could only lead to tears required the government to bail everyone out.

Ten years later 'dot com' joins the hall of infamy along with S&L and junk bond. I knew it was bad when people started quoting Michael ‘junk bond’ Milliken and bidding to get him on the board of their ecommerce startup. For those of you who have read Po Bronson's excellent 1999 book "The Nudist on the Late Shift", documenting the madness of the new economy in San Francisco, I can assure you that the reality of 2000 makes the more harrowing passages of his prose seem like a holiday at Surfers.

The dot com industry has regrettably descended to the realm of infamy as the human consequences of a 'dot com' burnout became evident in Boston this week. Workplace massacres with AK47 rifles used to be referred to as 'going postal' in reference to workplace shootings that involved disgruntled US Post Office employees. Its now going to be known as 'dotcommicide' I fear. The company concerned develops software for one of our competitors, just to bring it a little closer to home.

Once again the all-time number 1 victim of workplace shootings bought it (as 1 among 7) - the Human Resources Manager. Reminds me to talk to our R&D Manager about developing an online assessment for homicidal maniac proclivities. Whilst there are still HR Managers to sell it to.

NEW ECONOMY OR NEW MATHEMATICS?

The so-called 'New' economy has been so heavily over-promoted relative to its size and impact on the state of this nation. Through various nefarious mechanisms in calculating the Gross Domestic Product of the United States, the contribution of tech stocks and dot coms is vastly over-multiplied. In December everyone 'nouveau' is weeping because 10,000 people were laid off from all the dot coms that failed that month. Well, Maytag and Whirlpool (the washing machine people) laid off 10,000 people in the South before Christmas because white ware demand is down. Keeps it in perspective.

I read during the year that the employee head count of the top 1000 technology, biotech and generally 'new economy' companies (mostly but not exclusively listed on the NASDAQ exchange) is about 1,000,000 people. Wal-mart alone employs 1.1m people. Even with the hype, ecommerce based retail sales amounted to perhaps 4% of the retail sales in the USA this year. And the largest B2B (business to business) you-beauty chemical exchange ecommerce site in the world undertakes how many transactions per day do you think? A thousand? Ten thousand? Ahhhhh .... one on average actually.

Two main factors the economists among you should consider when thinking about the end of the US boom. First, there is still no real evidence of a productivity gain in the USA that can be attributed to computers or the internet. Yes, the USA has enjoyed 9 years of unprecedented quarter on quarter growth in GDP, and yes, at the same time the PCs have become ubiquitous across the economy (>60% of households for a start). But, when the wizards calculate GDP in the USA they use a magic spell called Hedonic pricing.

Hedonic pricing multiplies any actual spending on anything related to technology by a factor of 2-3 to account for the fact that the processor speed on 2000 year Pentiums is on average twice last years - there must be hidden productivity gains from that extra 300 MHz right? Surely? Likewise software with more functions for the same price on the box this year than it did last year. Surely it would be morally wrong to leave some of those gains unvalued?

Thus at the press of the F5 key (refresh), $92b national spending on computers in 2000 became $250b in GDP contribution this year alone. Test the theory - does your 600MHz laptop really double your productivity over your old 300MHz unit?

The other piece of muggle-wizardry is the way they validate working hours. This is not important for the gross GDP number, for if Americans choose to slave away for 2 extra hours a day to make 10% more digi-widgets good on them. It has its limits though, as that well-known Keynesian economist Monty Python so deftly explained (loooxury!). Anyway, each time the statistics are gathered some lucky young graduate in the Department of Commerce draws the straw to phone 1000 companies nationwide and ask them how many hours on average a person on various amounts of money works each week. Imagine it: "the US Department of Commerce, Washington DC here, we'd like to ask you about working hours at your company..." What human resources clerk wouldn't cack themselves on the spot and quote the party line that everyone strictly works 37.5 hours per their contracts? Any other news gets out and the lefty Cuban sympathising pinko democrats might just have a problem with it.

Germany recently used the US method of GDP calculation and discovered it was the strongest economy in the history of the world. Hope it doesn't give them any big ideas - we're probably safe given that the UK and USA have cunningly unloaded Rover and Chrysler onto their ordered world, the best piece of economic warfare since the Trojan Horse (which I add might well have been a more reliable vehicle than a Rover). That ought to slow them down! Hell, even New Zealand would probably be booming using these mathematics.

I am reminded of my favourite statistic for 2000 - that at the current rate of growth of Elvis impersonators, the entire population of the planet will be growing sideburns and wearing glitter suits by 2017. Coming from San Francisco I'm inclined to believe it.

Keeping a sense of humour, albeit gallows in nature, has been easy enough.

MOMENTS OF LIGHT

I recall laughing our arses off at 1am, amidst a sea of discarded Corona bottles and Thai Takeaway in the realisation that our "We Really Need Money Now or We're Going to the Poorhouse" presentation scheduled for Venture Capitalists the next morning now painted a business proposition so impressive and efficient that we didn't actually need to borrow any money.

Some weeks later, we had the second largest American business in history (more humour - it was the largest when I started this story but they seem to have just slightly overstated Q4 sales) on the other end of a web-cast to demonstrate our HR software, when a hungry psychologist put a bagel in the toaster and blew the whole floor's electricity supply. I note with some satisfaction that a few of Cisco's toasters must have also blown their fuses lately and their stock is looking a little underdone.

We even managed to top that episode when another psychologist plugged in his infra-red toad warmer and popped the circuits for a second time. Toad-warmer? Rest assured toads are not harmed in our product development process.

A Texas based assessment competitor provided some mirth mid-year when their clients were finally slapped with a class action suit for using such gems of psychometric questions in a job application as (answer true or false):

• I have had no difficulty in starting or holding my bowel movements
• I am an agent of God
• My mother was a good woman
• I like tall women
• The top of my head sometimes feels tender
• Everything tastes the same
• I very much like hunting
• I am fascinated by fire
• Sometimes in elections I vote for men about whom I know very little

The judge awarded damages of $2 million to unsuccessful job applicants with the Texas based 'Rent a Center' who used the test - they have 2100 stores nationwide and employ tens of thousands of people.

There's some kind of irony tied up in that last statement given the Texan that this nation just voted into office as the United States President. He's exactly the kind of good old boy that would pass the test and five minutes later would be renting you a tv or microwave for six bucks a month. To paraphrase Blackadder: "a man with a brain so small that if a hungry cannibal cracked his head open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit".

Equally, I can't recall an election that generated as much humour as this one - perhaps the internet is finding its true place in the American economy at last? Funniest moment? Probably Clinton advising Bush to "follow his conscience" in the leadership role - it had always worked for him. Add 'conscience' to the list of euphemisms for male organ.

Harpers summarized it perfectly, quoting Earl K. Long: “When I die - if I die - I want to be buried in Louisiana, so I can stay active in politics”.

If you answered 'True' to Rent-a-Center’s first question above, then there is even more mirth to be found on the domestic front - check through the California Yellow Pages for a moment in search of a plumber for example. You will find:

• Discount Rooter
• Economy Rooter
• Mister Rooter
• Rapid Rooter
• Ready Rooter
• Rescue Rooter
• Roto-Rooter
• Super Rooter
• Urgent Rooter

California is a very tree-ful state you see, and the tree roots upset plumbing no end. Of course you knew that. Not before one of the Australians in the office had copied down a lot of 1-800 numbers from passing vans in search of special companionship though.

WHITHER 2001?

Well, the first news is that the sun is setting on our California adventure. That rare combination of money, people, entrepreneurism, education, optimism, energy and success that made Silicon Valley the place to be, is just a lingering odour akin to the SOMA street corner drains above which we work. VC funds are giving unspent money back to investors. A long-standing company like Computer Associates can lose 80% of its market value in an hour on the stock exchange. Nobody knows what the next big thing is - biotech? NO! Comms? NO! Software? NO! Anything? NO! The Valley will return, but not until there has been an almighty Darwinistic shaking out of the remaining weak and aged members of the herds.

So we've concluded that with the ridiculous rents and nightmares attracting staff to work here, it is not the place to grow a company. Greener pastures please. Funnily enough many of the big Trust funds that support the Vulture Capitalists have drawn the same conclusion and are seeking investment in the Eastern USA and Europe. Growth in 2001 is suddenly very important - having somehow survived the nightmare that was 2000, the temptation is to curl up and hide from a year in hell. The right answer is to capitalize on our bank balance and finish off rolling up our acquisitions. Wondering where the rent money for your business is going to come from definitely toughens your survival skills.

Thus we are moving the main operation to Minneapolis, Minnesota in January. The slight climatic differences between the 2 locations have been pointed out a few times - on one day last week it was 50 degrees in San Francisco and minus 50 in Minneapolis. A full 100 degree spread. Get Fargo by the Cohen brothers out on video for a few ideas of the environment. An exploratory trip in December left us wondering what we would do with all the extra money each month - in 5 hours Lesley found 6 houses we could live in - 4 bedrooms beside picturesque lakes with nearby village-type shopping for a thousand dollars a month less than we pay here for a hovel. And all that shovelling of snow off the drive ought to rid me of this paunch.

We also have an opportunity in New York that we are investigating that might require a few people to base there. Here's hoping. I am reminded by the third person in the bed that they would like to know in the next month or so, to sort out their delivery schedule!

So, may we have seen the last of:

• A housing market where you are paying the equivalent of a $500,000 USD mortgage to rent a one bedroom apartment.
• People who advertise on their resume that the care and feeding of 12 zebra finches was a major achievement for them at College.
• IT developers who can't come in today because they had some bad vibes at their ceramics class last night.
• Vulture Capitalists
• Earthquake damaged buildings that cost $80 per square foot to rent; and
• Grande Egg-nog non-fat soy milk black forest frappucino's, Starbucks special seasonal beverage.

But then again, with the incessant Californication of the world I fully expect to retire to Tuscany in 20 years time and find a bouff-head Italian Elvis in the local Trattoria turning out the very same Christmas special coffee-flavoured beverage. Such is life.

San Francisco 2000

Here are some memories of the year 2000, when we lived in San Francisco.

The street shots are from Noe Valley, the safe 'couple' periphery of the fabulous Castro District. 24th Street was the perfect snapshot of SF life - at one end, in the fringes of Potrero Hill, you took your life in your hands. In the middle, a swirling post-holocaust Tijuana with a battle of dot coms threatening to take over a longstanding hispanic neighbourhood. Up the hill to Noe Valley and the giant homes of Dolores Park start to take over.

We lived across the road from a school called the Academy of Immaculate Conception. Judging by the girsl who went there, not much immaculate was going to be required to conceive, but it worked out for us with the miracle of Noah's conception.

Martha's Coffee Shop was a key hangout in the valley - great coffee, bagels from next door were great too. A regular stop before heading off to work on the 7 day shift.

The out-of-town shots are from the only real trip I took while living in SF (shame!) - with Ivan and Trude to Tahoe for a day's skiiing and the World Sumo Wrestling Championships. I have lived with 'Sumo' as a nickname ever since.

Lesley's photo of the sun setting on Golden Gate was taken on one of her trips to visit the Robertsons in Larkspur.

May 2000: San Francisco

Five headlines and banners you would only find in San Francisco:

1. Cross Dress for Less
2. How am I driving? Dial 1-800-EAT-SHIT
3. Breast Implants through your Navel – new wonder procedure!
4. Now that your Mom has a portable CD player, get MP3
5. FBI investigate Twinkie hoarding.

Eight weeks in Wonderland and the white rabbits are everywhere. Having settled into a routine with our ePredix startup (work until Friday, then celebrate that there are only 2 working days until the next week), SF has become home. Home, crazy home.

We experienced our first earthquake a couple of weekend’s ago, walking along in the main shopping district searching for food for the Sunday work shift. Shop windows were visibly moving, the air felt thicker to breathe and a rumble like 1000 distant jet aircraft filled our ears.

The quake flowed up the street getting louder, and then, just when we started to dive under a doorway we clicked that an earthquake was unlikely to go to the tune of “yo funky nigger get yor ass around…” How anyone could fit that much sound in a Chevy Blazer astonishes me. How anyone can drive that Blazer and have intact internal organs is a medical mystery.

I’m very happy to announce that the cats arrived safely and settled in immediately. They sit on the fire escape watching the world go by and saving up especially large spitwads for the stream of dogs that walk underneath with their unsuspecting owners. “$2 says you can’t land a hoyk on that Lab’s head Lulu”.

Lesley meanwhile, has been painting like a dervish, developing her style in acrylics and managing to cover a fair few walls of our SOMA offices. Bad luck we move to larger space with more walls in 3 weeks time, she has become a gold card holder at the art supplies shop.

CHAPTER 1: The Food Chain has officially collapsed.

Graphic artist MC Escher, who allegedly died in 1972 (www.worldofescher.com) is actually alive and well in the San Francisco dart carm economy. Instead of sitting covertly in Starbucks sipping whatever brew a reasonable Dutchman might find among today’s special coffees (“ja, grande orange mocha chip frappucino to go…”), his spirit has infected everything to do with getting something done in this crazy city.

The biggest complainers are the dart carmers themselves, so we’ll start the story there. Within the neighbouring 10 blocks in SOMA, there are 700 internet based startup companies. I daren’t let my staff out at lunchtime for fear they will be tempted by a BMW wielding recruiter.

To get their 700 dart carm projects up and running they needed people – the smartest young people who could be cajoled into working for sixpence and some stock options. These sort of folk used to work at Kinko’s, the global 24 x 7 photocopy and binding company.

So, the dart carms stole the Kinko’s staff.

Kinko’s, in return, stole the Starbuck’s staff. Starbucks, tit for tat stole the Macdonalds counter staff. Mackers, already at the bottom of the employment food chain drafted the bewildered and homeless behind the counter. So, Bobby Dartcarm comes in for a Big Mac and fries to go, and wonders why he ends up with a Fish dinner and hepatitis to go.

We recruit a lot of people from out of the state. This leads to some hilarious moments with the applicant’s approach to getting from the airport to the CBD for their interview. Prize winner so far is the young Java Programmer from Texas who rented a car, drove up the 101 from the airport then spent 2 hours finding a car park.

It hadn’t occurred to him that you did anything else. We didn’t hire him in the end but I’m sure the trip wasn’t wasted – he probably got 3 other job offers just driving around SOMA.


CHAPTER 2: April 10, the Gloss comes off Tech Stocks

Being in the actual center of the Nasdaq earthquake on April 10 was amazing. A fair few internal organs got pulped that day. Not that everyone in this city works at a dart carm, its just that everyone in this city seems to have abandoned any traditional form of financial management (banks, mattresses, savings accounts, bonds, balanced portfolios…) for loading all their spare cash into E*Trade and getting high on the Tech Stock juice (‘drinking the kool aid’ as the jargon goes).

Another of the Escher-like qualities of SF is that we all get to watch the balloon deflate in real time on the net – no need to wait for the papers at the end of the day, everyone’s pager is going off as their portfolio crashes! By the end of the week’s trading, most companies in our sector (human resources, recruiting) were worth a third of their Jan 1 valuation. Not being listed yet made it a little more palatable.

The outcome is some very red-faced Tech Stock gamblers, including the Vulture Capitalists. This sophisticated species (Homo Usurer), watching the millions they loaned to the ninth pet food on line startup vapourise before their eyes have become very cranky as a result (www.sonofabitch.com). Having suddenly moved from 12 Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) a year to 2-3, there is some intense competition over anyone who actually has a solid business idea.

My prediction is that the phrase ‘dot com’ will come to mean something akin to the phrase ‘junk bond’ which emerged with such profile in the 1980s. Like all change, people have fallen for overestimating the speed and underestimating the impact. Its not helped by everyone claiming they are revolutionizing the market that they work within (“revolutionizing on-line sales of barbecues, implements and sauces”), and when one sub-model (B2C) loses its shine quickly shifting to another (B2B). Exhibit A the hordes of consumer sites that have suddenly found a ‘business to business’ angle and rolled out more kool aid.

It might help take some of the heat off the over-pumped housing market here. Right now to get a house you have to be prepared to write a 1000 word essay saying why you should be allowed to buy the property, and bid at least 20% over the asking price. I suppose it keeps the literacy levels up in certain neighbourhoods – maybe there’s a dart carm opportunity writing essays for people who desperately need new accommodation? And so, the net spawns another new business opportunity.


CHAPTER 3: Starting up a Startup is just like … starting up.

I saw a great advert for a programmer the other day that summarized the irrational and desperate nature of what we are undertaking as we surf the industrial revolution. It read “Web Programmer with at least 10 Years Java Experience Required Urgently”. Of course, neither the job, nor the software have existed even half that time.

It reminded me of that scary statistic that 80% of the jobs that today’s 14 year olds will occupy when they graduate DO NOT EXIST yet.

Nobody likes to admit it too much, but we don’t really know what we are doing here. Its not like we can delve into a bunch of history books. We all sneak a peak at Fast Company magazine in the hope that someone can offer comforting words that the emotions we feel are somehow normal. Recent headlines in Business 2.0 (another dart carm bible) suggested startups without a UK presence were not serious about their businesses. More on that later.

The speed with which we are working is quite phenomenal. Our CEO has not had a day off since November. I’ve had 2 in 8 weeks. Building a business in the new style is quite different - remember we have virtually no customers, no products being sold (yet) and setup costs that could fund much of the national debt of NZ (IT, recruiting…).

Funding this 20th century style (bigslow) out of each month’s tiny growth in profits would be impossible. It’s a bit like driving a Yank-Tank on the freeway, foot to the floor going so fast you can watch the petrol gauge dive every mile, and if you ponder for a moment whether there is a gas station in the next five miles you’ve lost your edge. There just has to be a gas station.

Our software is coming along nicely. With the net economy the primary focus is on having a whiz bang show for the investors - to hell with customers and details like whether it works. So, spend every penny you have on making the web-site dance and sing. Unfortunately, 20 seconds after listing or gaining funding in the market its all about meeting analyst’s revenue targets. So, spend all your money on the engine room and to hell with the pretty pictures. Focus swaps every 30 minutes. Balance that little game and remain fashionable.

I’ve been pondering an outdoor training program to get people to understand how this works. Lots of changing the rules without notice, understanding risk, overcoming obstacles, limited resources etc. Next life maybe.

We have a sensational team who have without protest worked the hours required when only 25% of the crew are on board so far. My time is spent balancing customers with finances and the software developers. Much of it has been dedicated to recruiting – if you do the maths and consider that we need 60 staff across the company at full complement, and for each we might review 20 resumes, that’s a lot of time spent recruiting.

Lesley and I are off to the UK in June to startup the European operation. Our greatest potential competitor is based in London and we think it appropriate to locate somewhere nearby and wave the flag. I’m sure if their stodgy old directors reviewed any proposal from a bright young thing on the team suggesting a dart carm startup they’d fair spew their brandy balloon across the room on the financials alone!!

Chapter 4: Recruiting Americans

I give up. Everyone out of the gene pool, you Yanks have gone too far this time. Getting an American, and more specifically a Californian to work for you is an ugly experience. The average conversation with a 22 year old graduate with no work experience can be summarised thus:

Employer: so*, what did you think of our presentation on the company and what we are offering?
Applicant: it’s kindof okay, but I just want to say that this is like not about you or ePredix, it’s like about me. When can we like, get in step with each other about the stock options?
Employer: well, we did that 5 times today already. What’s not clear in your mind?
Applicant: Well, I thought it was like normal for you to give me like at least 3% of the company…
Employer: ah, no, as I told you three times before your role qualifies you for the standard allocation, which is about 1/2000th of the outstanding shares…
Applicant: okay, but, like, I can sell them the day after we list right, buy my Ferrari and then like, you give me some more?
Employer: no, that’s on the FAQ sheet under “of course you can’t sell them the day after we list, what kind of a dill-brain are you?”
Applicant: so, like, do I get my own office?
Employer: no.
Applicant: secretary?
Employer: no
Applicant: interest free like, loan for car?
Employer: no
Applicant: okay, like the salary you’re offering is just for the first few weeks right, then everyone gets like $150,000?
Employer: ahh, no, where di…
Applicant: so, like, do I pay the phone bill and gas bill and get you to reimburse me or do you just pay them direct to the utility company?
Employer: tell me about how many of your friends have packages like this?
Applicant: well, none actually. But like, this is really not about them, it’s about me - I rock… I really think we need to get one to one about the stock options?

*there you go Tom!

These people would be the worst tennis players. They are the sort of bastards who sit at the other end of the court in a game of social tennis and have to hit every single shot as a winner, every serve an ace. Serve – whack. Serve – whack. They have no appreciation that the enjoyment of the game might be based on rallies, and there is a collaborative element in there somewhere.

Silicon Fever has only made it worse. One job – whack – millionaire – whack – retire – whack. Pete Sampras you have ruined a generation.

The real Silicon Valley (south of here) is a cess-pit of greed and frustration over the simple pretext your neighbour might be making more money than you. With e-businesses sitting cheek by jowl in concrete industrial parks its commonly noted that you can easily change your job without undergoing the trauma of having to change your car pool. In fact god help you if you have to find a new car pool.

Balance this seeming madness and greed against demand for employees. Every 7 days, in the (415) dialing district (SOMA and surrounds), on one job board (there are 6000 in America), over 3500 permanent Java Programmer roles are posted. Start to wonder why unemployment is at a record low? Start to wonder why America should see the medium term challenge of leading the new economy when China will have more citizens using the internet in 18 months than America will have?

My Russian contingent have a great sense of humour over the issue (www.glastnost.com?). According to them, in New York, you arrive on the boat and soon you get the only job that will take someone who has no qualifications and cannot speak English – taxi driver. In San Francisco, you arrive and one day later you are a software QA expert.

Chapter 5: The Days Off

When you get 2 in 60, they are precious and memorable.

In Tahoe we had a day’s snow-boarding out of the text book. Zig-zagging the pine trees, café half way down the mountain, dozens of chair lifts and no queues. The locals had abandoned the field as the conditions were totally ‘end of season’ and below standard. If I ever found a field in NZ or Australia with snow as good as their ‘rejects’, I’d be bottling it and buying a house nearby.

Lake Tahoe is a bit like Taupo in New Zealand, if you could imagine half the lake being in another country. Nevada butts right up to California in the middle of the lake, and of course Nevada has … Casinos! We drove up on Saturday evening, and admiring the billboards on the way for ‘World Sumo Championships’ found ourselves at Caesars Palace ringside for dinner.

If you remember the high profile Hawaiian sumo dude in the 1990s, then you can picture what a 640 pound athlete looks like. He was there, commentating for ESPN (those of you with cable should watch for us in the audience!) and apologized for being a bit lighter than his fighting weight now that he has retired. Truth is America should be apologizing for putting on ‘Fat Guys Who Couldn’t Get into WWF’ as a sumo event.

The draw card was a sad-arsed 710 lb man-mountain. He could barely stand. Three kiwis were on the cards, and we cheered loudly for them as they shuffled uncomfortably on stage with car towing straps jammed up their substantial cracks. It was cringeful but hey, only in Nevada. Much taunting has gone on since between Ivan (6’5”)and I (6’4”) over keeping our food intake up to ensure we can compete at the next world champs.

Might be nice if they invited some Japanese sumo next time too…

Our other trip highlight was coming across the Tahoe equivalent of the neighborhood possum going through your rubbish cans in New Zealand. Get the broom out and shoo them off! Not in Tahoe you don’t - the sight of a good sized brown bear treating a dumpster like a Macdonalds drive through was something to behold. We’d been teasing each other all weekend that bears would be coming out of hibernation (we made Ivan carry the Power Bars!), and so they were.

Chapter 6: Cheese Food

It’s the little things that tell you that the USA is a different place to Australia. For example – you can buy cheese (in fact there is a fabulous cheese shop in Noe Valley where we live), and you can buy ‘cheese food’. Think that through – it says on the label ‘cheese food’. Feel good about that? You know it ain’t even a second cousin to what you call cheese, but the Americans buy it 20:1 over cheese.

It shouldn’t surprise me so much I suppose – this is the nation that brought the world ‘cheese whip’, an aerosol can that shoots out a string of gloop that could not be likened to much else so the marketing department thought cheese was good enough. Equally cheesy poofs (pronounced as in proof for the sensitive souls among you) are a real live food item. Reading labels must be good for the literacy of the nation, no doubt enabling many San Francisco families to move to a better neighbourhood through the increased quality of the essays they write during the house buying process. Escher eat your heart out once more.

Starbucks have the same range of odd-sounding items – you can have coffee, or a coffee drink. No wonder NZ could never figure out exports – they need to quickly combine the works of the dairy industry with the Taranaki petro-chemical industry to ensure healthy trade balances with America.

Toilets are another thing – the water level is set at really really high tide. Where in the history of khazis did the basic design of the pan and the water level diverge so amazingly? That would have been an interesting moment in history no doubt. “Right Thomas, let’s give the Yanks a lot of water, the Germans a little shelf to admire the impact of their muesli diets, and the rest can just squeeze it down the bit at the bottom. Oh yes, well, luckily we don’t have to worry about the French and Italians at this point…”

The Twinkie strike was front page news here before the Elian issue (the latter having dominated newspapers for 3 weeks). Twinkies are a chemical concoction (twinkie food?) enjoyed by millions of Americans as a separate food group – vegetables, protein, twinkies.... They are yellow, crystalline sponges with white creamy stuff on the inside. The plastic wrapper is the most natural component of this tasty treat, and the only one documented in a chemistry textbook. They last for weeks on the shelf.

Somebody in the twinkie supply downed tools – a twinkie rush took place and hording became a major social issue to deal with (send in the FBI!). Eventually, newspapers nationwide published a recipe for making your own twinkies at home. Ohmygod. We looked at the ingredients list and tried to find anything remote resembling a natural food. None. The white stuff is certainly not cream. Don’t ever worry that the X-Files might run out of plots sometime!

I commend the social trend-watchers among you (and anyone who has to have contact with teenagers) to log onto www.budweiser.com and view the online versions of the phenomenal advertising craze that is sweeping the States right now (the Wassup campaign). If young males live in your household it is only a matter of time before they are uttering a new jungle cry on every occasion possible.

If you don’t have a 56k modem or better don’t try this at home by the way. Once you’ve viewed the official campaign view the unofficial and even more successful web campaign that has spawned:

http://members.xoom.com/jason_post/gomez/
(Editors note: this URL is long dead!)

There is no www in that last URL by the way. It’s a 4.6mb file so again, no slow modems. The other ‘must have’ trend to come out of California will be really intriguing to watch flow around the globe. Young men of the world, raid your mother’s sock drawer, cut the toe out of a knee-high stocking and tie the end in a knot. Now put it on your head like a skull cap. Feel cool. Feel at the cutting edge of fashion. Look like you have a stocking on your skull, but feel cool. You heard it first here okay?

CHAPTER 7: Home Life

A reader of this diary might be excused for thinking that we haven’t fallen in love with San Francisco – well, they’d be wrong. There are things we can do here that bring a smile to our faces just thinking about them.

1. Sitting outside Martha and Brothers coffee shop in Noe Valley in the sun, drinking lattes and reading the New York Times.
2. Sitting in the corner window at Starbucks eating a bagel and still reading the New York Times – it weighs about 3 kilos and is the source of most articles of more than 1000 words in newspapers across the country.
3. Buying Weetbix from the Indian Bazaar on Valencia as it’s the only place in Northern California that imports such oddities. Sanitarium should investigate the possibility of a few spices in the recipe, these taste great after a few weeks in the curry section!
4. Waking up to 3 cats who just love the mild temperatures and long sunshine hours (its raining for only the third time since we arrived) and who bully us into buying tinned cat food instead of healthy biscuits.
5. Having an apartment with a double garage when people often park miles from home to get a space.
6. Not having a car to park there.
7. Living in a town where VW Beetles look relevant, and everyone has one with a flower in the vase on the dashboard.
8. Living in a State where we estimate less than 20% of the citizens have shoes with a notable leather content. We figure this might be Escher’s final contribution to California – if we all dress like the homeless then they won’t know who to hassle for quarters. Brilliant.

Our little apartment is starting to look more like home with some bookcases from Ikea and a stereo. Our stuff has yet to be dispatched from Australia – we’ll get onto it when we get back from the UK later in the year. We don’t spend much time at home - Lesley looks after our friend’s boys some mornings, paints and hangs out. I dart carm most of the time.

We’ve attended a remarkable amount of theatre, thanks to one of the team who has tapped into the network of promotional tickets. Being the USA, there is usually someone famous on stage, which takes a bit of getting used to. Richard Chamberlain playing von Trapp in The Sound of Music for example.

Anyway, that’s enough diary. I have to get a Twinkie before I go to work, and Lesley’s not looking so I’ll just check her sock drawer for a new hat before we go out.

Nigel

March 2000: San Francisco

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