Los Gatos, Saratoga, Campbell, and Etc...

I'm sitting at the airport. I've been away from Seattle long enough it doesn't feel like I ever had a home there. If you stay away from home long enough, you won't feel like you have a home after enough time. Also not actually having a place with all of your stuff helps this unattached feeling. I left my things with my father. If I had a home it would be at my father's. I haven't even left the country but I feel like Seattle is a world away.

Over the last few days I've had some good adventures and some good family time. Even while taking Persian (Farsi) I wasn't the best student in class. I found this the first time I've spent any time with my family on my father's side that is sizable enough to count in weeks since I've finished taking Persian. I recalled a lot, which I'm proud of. What I didn't recall much of was my verbs. If I had recalled more verbs I might have been able to have a simple conversion outside of, “How are you?” “I'm good” “Hello” “Goodbye” etc... Verbs were always my biggest enemy while in class, oh and clothing.

Did I mention I'm at the airport in San Francisco, and almost have California behind me. I want to return to California after my trip to spend more time with my mom and other family members again. I miss them all already. What I don't miss are the drivers. People tend to not use turn-signals enough and I've seen a lot of aggressive driving. Also, a lot of the curbs are way too high for most doors to either open all of the way curbside or at all, so watch out. The sheer craziness of everyone basically running red lights is a problem as well. If you see three or more cars take a turn after the light turns red don't be surprised. My best guess is since they turned off the red light cameras people are taking full advantage. Lets cover the last few days, since I've been putting off blogging.

For a few days I didn't do much but catch up on sleep that I missed while trying to maximize time with my mother, brother, and sister. I also helped with some my cousin's homework and such, but not much. The biggest part of the day was getting lunch with my Aunt and my oldest cousin.

I also rode around with my Aunt when she picked up or dropped off people for sports and such. I'm forgetting the order of things as I tend to organize thoughts in my head in categories rather than in the order. So I remember food events in more of a lump than drove here, did this, eat there, etc...we were trying to have a home meal at one point but some how (cough, kids wanted to go out, and the dominoes fell from there) we ended up at Chipotle Mexican Grill, which made my belly feel grand.

During the lunches, pick ups, and drop offs I found myself walking around Los Gatos. It was a long walk; as I let myself get a little lost by walking off into a residential area. I walked the main strip twice and found some nice stores and even purchased some new sunglasses to replace the ones I left in my mother's vehicle. I found an exciting looking bush with poisonous berries, not poisonous for birds though. The picture does do it some justice, but seeing the vibrant colors in person was a site.

 
 


Los Gatos seems to have some character as well. I found some anti-Obama signs, which as far as these for and against graffiti things go looked professionally done. Here is a good question to ask someone that my cousin got me with...

With out delay or stopping to think, tell me Obama's lastname.........................If you said Barack you'd be wrong like me.

This isn't the worst name for a store that I've seen on the Internet, but it did make me stop and gauck at either the boldness of the owner or the massive over looking of her/his store name: Black Watch. Again, not the worst but still thought they could have used a more direct name for their business or if they had put a picture of a watch between the words or had made the “A's” circular part into watches/clocks it might not have stood out to me, maybe.

Los Gatos has a really nice car dealership as well. I found seeing impressive cars that aren't in motion or going balls-to-the-wall fast (a scientificly technical term :) not that impressive. I started to think why don't cheaper sports cars look amazing as well, or even your everyday car? I figure some of it might be the cost but it couldn't be that much if every car looked bang on like a Lambo or such. I figure it is more to do with marketing and creating the :needed” difference between luxury and/or expensive vehicles with those of the bottom end of the line ones.

I went to Cafe De Flore on my long walk, which is a connected to a bike shop. To be clear they each have a their own doors but once inside you can walk back and forth between the two. It reminded me of being in Green Lake in Seattle. Had a hippie vibe with the styling of a rustic northwesterner. I only had the smoothie (Berry Blast) and it was very good. It wasn't overly sweet and used real fruit. It ran me about a five spot but it was better than a Jamba Juice in my humble opinion.

I stayed with my grandpa for a while one of the days, and then I spent the night with him a few days later. An amazing guy. If you have nice grandparents like me, you should talk to them more. Your grandparents most likely have a story that is more interesting than you think or that they let on. I find that spending a lot of time with your grandparents while your still young seems to kill interest in their lives before you. My hypothesis on this is that by spending a lot of time with them our brains come to an unjustified conclusion that we've learned all we need to know about the person, and add with that we're getting older with a ton of new unknown things in life such as personal relationships, jobs, school, music, etc...name your poison. It may be it is just the later distractions, just remember that you don't truly know someone even if you've spent fifty years with them. We all have private histories. Yes, I had some good Persian/English conversations with my grandfather. I also had some similarly informative conversations with both of my uncles...so what am I missing about my father, eh? The final night I was in California we had a family dinner at my youngest uncle's house. We took some normal photographs as well but I find the goofy one of just the grandchildren the best.

<< At my uncles they also have some the cutest bathroom decorations for the kids!




Just to get out a bit and to get an errand accomplished for my uniquely awesome partner in love, my third oldest cousin and I went to get some lunch and coffee. I say coffee because it is always easier to describe getting coffee than tea to those used to living in the U.S.A. I actually purchased a Chai Tea, and don't get me started on how many languages that would really be saying Tea Tea. I received my Tea Tea from Peet's Coffee located in King's Court of Los Gatos. I believe the Chai wasn't bad but I put in cinnamon like I usually do for the health benefits and taste, but their cinnamon left me with a bitter taste and a earthly feeling in my mouth. It may be just this location, or just this batch of cinnamon but I can't in good conscience tell anyone to try the cinnamon at Peet's. I went into a beauty supply store, which wasn't a first, just that it was my first time not going with my mother. It wasn't too bad, other than feeling terribly out of place. I completed my quest to retrieve some hair dye for my companion. I left in hand with 3 oz of raging purple, 3 oz of indigo blue hair dye, and six vinyl gloves so that I don't have to see multicolored hands for a week each time the dye is used. A note here about why I bought the dye in the states, I was told the cheapest that it could be found was something like $70-$90, which could be from a lack of not knowing where to go but most likely is just because if you travel to countries that don't use a lot of dye the prices will be higher...and to my point if you like to have your hair colored and you're traveling best to bring some with you.

Before my father and I had to travel to San Francisco for are departing flights, we went to a park of sorts named Montalvn? Arts Center (see picture for my confusion), and like the name implies there is more there than just a nice lawn and trees. The orange trees' fruit was small and mostly dense , and obviously great for playing catch! There was a small garden with sculptures and plants accompanied by their scientific names. The whole place was rather lovely. My father decided to claim a tree his own, which meant climbing it. I saw him climb at least two trees. If he climbed more I didn't see. My third oldest cousin also climbed a tree. This wasn't the first time on the trip that my pops had climbed a tree. I caught the first time on digitized film and the last episode at the garden. The climbing incidents were entertaining. Speaking of trees I found one tree that looked like it had fat rolls or double chins. Another tree had an impressive amount of bird houses circling the trunk. I caught a glimpse of the art gallery they had open as well, while driving away from “Montalvn”. Overall an interesting place but as my tenth grade science teacher teaching math would put it “the air was lacking in kinetic energy”, which was too little for my energy tastes.

        

                      

                      

The ride to the airport was shorter than I thought it would be. I remember the drive to San Francisco being longer when I was younger, although that could easily be because we stopped more or some combination of the stops with the simple fact I'd find boredom easier while in a car as a child. This drive to San Francisco was shorter because traffic was good; I had an expectation that it would take more time; and lastly, my father let me talk the whole time. I do enjoy talking about things that interest me. My friends probably know all too well about my ranting abilities.

The airport was massive, but that I do remember from my other trips there. I had to kill about 6-7 hours. I started typing this blog journal, I read, I walked, I walked, I stretched, I talked on the phone, I texted, I ate food, I watch some television , I instant messaged, I walked and stretched, I bought a few snacks, talked on the phone again, etc...wasted time. I found myself getting nervous for the first time. The nervousness wasn't at any point until the boarding started. I paced and focused my thought; I found it felt something akin to what I felt when I was just about to jump out of a plane for my first time skydiving. The jitters faded once I got in line to board.

The flight was good...well, I'm still on it but good so far. I traveled Eva Air. The staff was okay. The food wasn't too shabby for economy. I have no idea if after the first meal they came around again for liquids or snacks. The only real snag was before we were to take off there was a little delay and then it turned into a large delay. It took an extra hour and a half to take off. I don't blame most of the delayed time on the airlines because it was a passenger that felt that she/he was having heart issues so we had to left them off and their luggage. I slept most of the flight, except for the first few hours and the last few, which the later is why I was able to finish this entry. We did get a breakfast meal as well. I'm excited to arrive. I'll have to post more once I've been there for a few days. 

And random, but to make sure you say Pho right because I hear a lot of people say it wrong: http://www.lovingpho.com/pho-opinion-editorial/how-to-pronounce-pho/

Tip For The Day: if you must travel, travel with room in your bag. If your bag is full before you get to your destination you've already limited yourself in what you're able to do while traveling, and I don't mean just what new things you are able to put in your luggage. I mean your mindset is too narrowed. Your focus is on what you're leaving behind and not enough on where you're going. There are exceptions to this like virtually all things in life, just make sure you're in an exception scenario before you fill that bag to the brim. And besides the mind set, getting around is much more cumbersome with either heavy luggage or a lot of items to tote around or both.