Touchdown in San Francisco!

We arrived in San Francisco at about 10:30am Wednesday morning. We had our photographs and fingerprints taken at customs, got picked up by a town car and headed to Mountain View.

Our apartment wasn’t going to be ready until 4 and neither were our keys, which we found out when we tried to pick them up. So, we headed to the Google office to get some lunch and get our bearings.

The office is pretty cool and nobody looked at our suitcases strangely. 😛

Strange and different

Some inconsequential differences that were obvious to me in this new country were,

• Driving on the right-hand side of the road. I knew that was going to be the case, but it’s a bit scary once you actually have to do it. Thankfully it was hubby who did the driving when we got a rental car!
• U-turns at lights. It’s illegal to do it in most states of Australia, it’s interesting to see that there are some designated turning/u-turn lanes at some sets of lights.
• Turning right at a red light. Sometimes you can do turn left at a red in NSW, but there’s usually a sign that says you can.
• The toilets are shaped differently and they flush differently. Australian toilets put water in the bowl and drain it at the same time. These ones seem to suck everything down and then fill up… or something like that. (No, I haven’t checked if water drains in the opposite direction yet :P)
• The lightswitches go up for on… I don’t know if that’s in general or just this apartment. I’m pretty sure they usually go down in Oz.

Something that was different, but not inconsequential was the fire alarms. At home they get your attention, but it’s up to you to get out. In large complexes there’s usually a first alarm that indicates you should get ready to leave and then a second one that tells you to leave (sometimes with a voice-over). The one we heard at 6:30am was so loud we had to cover our ears. It practically forces you out of your apartment with the threat of making you deaf! It’s very cold here at 6:30am… in your pyjama pants!

We bought some groceries; the Mountain View Safeway was very impressive.

Other than that, so far California looks very similar to Sydney, there’s more pine and palm trees here… I like it! Little changes are good for me, not too overwhelming. 😀