Dhammerica – Day Twelve

One of the most striking features of American life (atleast it struck us!) is the public library system. This was driven home to us when we visited this bookshop called Title Wave – a nice word play designed to sound like something which can knock one off one’s feet. There are some really good deals if you are a bargain hunter like us.

We picked up 2 of Lance’s books (both hardbound) as well as Seabiscuit from here, all for a grand total of $4!!! Incidentally Seabiscuit is the most prevalent book in the American used book scene. One wonders who printed so many copies or why.
The bookshop is run by volunteers – mostly old women, some of whom must be way past even retirement age and has some good deals even on audio books, CDs and DVDs.

We had to drag ourselves away yet again, but not before a visit to Starbucks.
We land in Oakland airport and are picked up by our enthusiastic host, our school chum who has now moved onto to become a post-doctoral Scholar at Berkeley. He drives an old Honda Civic with such abandon while cheerfully telling us that all the ‘slow moving’ vehicles in the outer lanes are driven by tourists. Welcome to the Golden State.

First stop is an gelato place which we must visit according to our chum and sample half a dozen flavours, before eventually ordering one. Next we return home and drive to SFO. Today is the day we experience SFO for the first time – our pal amuses us by taking us to Coit Place for a view of the city of the Golden Gate bridge and then down Crooked Street, while keeping us entertained with events from his life, since we last met in IITM.

Next, we meet some of our other friends for dinner in San Jose. Yet again, it is an Italian place. We are six people – three bachelors and three married women and none of us is related to the other. What curious company we keep. And 5 of the 6 of us are from the same school.

The bartender has a nice sense of humour. When we ask him where the rest room is, he asks whether it is really urgent. When we nod, he says sorry. Then he asks again whether we need it really desperately, but then says, “Too bad we don’t have one” when we respond. Then he points to the actual location of the place. We commend him for his sense of humour and make prompt use of the place.

The dinner is one noisy affair with each of us dying to tell the other some anecdote. Then, one of our cool school chums takes us for ride in her BMW SUV! We part ways and go home.