Thanksgiving in L.A.

As most Americans make their way to a family gathering this weekend to celebrate Thanksgiving, we decided to take our first road-trip. Long weekends are rare in the American work calendar, and a four-day weekend is exceptional.

L.A. was a natural choice. We spent last Christmas at Hearst Castle and G was well behaved. We felt it was time to be a little more adventurous, so we drove the 350 miles or so south to Los Angeles – the largest metropolis in the US. To avoid other travellers, we took a longer route via Highway 101 that brought us through several of California’s quiet towns on the Central Coast – San Luis Obispo, Solvang and Santa Barbara.

Solvang was probably the most interesting. Founded by Danish academics at the start of the 20th century, they built a town that looked almost like a village transplanted from Denmark. The town was lined with quiant shops and windmills with bakeries serving Danish pastries – except that they were mostly shut on Thanksgiving itself. The streets were lined with tourists and there was no shortage of picture-taking opportunities.

In L.A. proper, there was no shortage of things to do. This was one of the cities that you felt you almost knew. The scenes from movies and TV shows have left a subconcious imprint that spelt “Santa Monica pier”, “Beverly Hills” and other countless familiar names.

On Friday, we visited Santa Monica’s Pacific Park, which was built on a pier leading out over the wide beaches where California met the ocean. If it was anything the Bay Area lacked that Southern California had in abundance was the beaches – miles and miles of prime ocean front lined with palm trees.

Next to Santa Monica was the affluent city of Beverly Hills. Huge, expansive mansions lie next to the designer boutiques of Rodeo Drive. The most expensive homes were higher on the hill, where they overlooked the Los Angeles cityscape and the Pacific ocean. One of those was Greystone Mansion which was now a public park with ornate gardens and Roman columns and fountains.

The last location on Friday was Griffith Observatory, perched on a hill with spectacular views of the valley. There, we watched the full moon rise above the San Gabriel mountains and watched the sun set slowly over the Pacific. Our visit could not have been more perfectly timed.

Today, we visited the Getty Centre a museum set on 750 acres of land on the Santa Monica hills. Funded by the Getty Trust, this private institution was opened only ten years ago, and now draws quite a crowd of visitors. It had seven levels of underground parking which are filled by the afternoon, and electric trams ferry visitors from the gatehouse up to the museum. The museum building itself presented a strong contrast of stone and steel, squares and circles with breathtaking views of the city as the backdrop. The museum boasts a wide collection of artwork – one of the finest in the West Coast.

Tomorrow is the last day of the weekend, and we plan to attend Mass at one of the California Missions (either San Gabriel or San Fernando) and head home, hopefully avoiding the Thanksgiving traffic.

Fleet Week

Of all the annual events held in San Francisco, Fleet Week is possibly the most exciting. The US Navy and Marines visit the city every year during the Columbus Day weekend with a flotilla of ships and they host a superb air show over the waterfront.

The main attraction of the airshow are the Blue Angels, the US Navy’s aerobatics team. The tightly choreographed maneuvers with a team of six F/A-18 Hornets are the main reason why the entire San Francisco waterfront was packed with viewers. The jets announced themselves with a sonic boom and presented one of the finest aerobatic displays. The Blue Angels were also accompanied by several other performers – the Air Force ViperWest, and several civil aerobatics teams – TeamOracle, Patriots, and a bevy of military aircraft including a C-130 and helicopters.

My last visit to Fleet Week was in 2005, where I watched part of the display stuck in a traffic jam in North Beach for over an hour. Today, we parked in the Financial district and walked up the Embarcadero to Fisherman’s Wharf. It was a 40 min walk, but with clear skies and mild weather, we had no reason to complain.

Travels in September

R and G returned from Singapore at the beginning of this month, together with my brother, D.

The first weekend was the Labor Day holiday, so I persuaded the jet-lagged travellers to go to Yosemite. We found a semi-campsite by the Merced River in the heart of Yosemite Valley called “Housekeeping”. They provided bunk beds, three walls and electricity, so it was R’s gentle initiation to the great outdoors. The place was perfect – the river was a stone’s throw away and we caught sunset amidst the granite cliffs that tower over the campsite. The pitch darkness also afforded us a grand view of the stars and the Milky Way – absolutely fabulous. To complete the trip, we had a couple of bears visit the camp that night. In the middle of the night, we awoke to a loud commotion – car horns blaring, pots clashing, whistles blowing. Our neighbours were doing their best to scare off a bear that was sighted. D and I tried but did not sight the creature.

Today was our first free weekend after D left. We took a day trip to Berkeley, one of the few Bay Area destinations we had not yet explored. We walked around downtown Berkeley (mostly commercial, with arts / jazz clubs that were quiet on a Sunday afternoon), and Telegraph St (Rastafarians and hippies comingled with University freshmen). The area wasn’t as affluent as the Stanford / Palo Alto scene – definitely more colourful.

Hiking in the Pinnacles

Last Saturday, a couple of colleagues and I went up the Pinnacles, a park with soaring peaks and imposing monoliths. These rocks rise in the middle of the valley, remnants of an ancient volcano. The chaparral vegetation provides little shade from the sun and vultures circle overhead. If one is lucky, they might see one of the endangered condors carefully coaxed back from the brink of extinction.

We had previously done this hike a year ago, but this time, AR brought along a new gadget. It was a Magellan Explorist, and it kept a track log of the route we hiked. The trails were well marked, so we had no need for the Explorist, but it was still interesting to see the output of the GPS receiver.

The coolest thing was that the log can be converted (via GPSBabel) to a KML file – native format of Google Earth. The software shows a 3D rendition of the area and the route taken. Here is a shot:

The other thing that the GPS log helped with was the distance and altitude change. Knowing this will help gauge the difficulty and timing of future hikes. My own reckoning from last years hike was about 6 miles, but the GPS corrected this to actually 5.4 miles. Hmm… only 5.4 miles?

Independence Day at the Bay Area

It’s July 4th, and Americans everywhere are celebrating Independence Day. In most towns, fireworks are the order of the day.

On the eve of the holiday, Stanford University had fireworks at Ford Amphitheater. The fireworks were not hard to find – just follow the crowds. The field next to Stanford Stadium was packed with families and kids with multi-coloured lights. Once darkness fell, fireworks lit the horizon – we found that this was an excellent location because the Hoover tower was also silhouetted against the pyrotechnics.

From California

On the 4th of July itself, we went to Shoreline Amphitheater, a huge outdoor arena capped with a huge white tent. There, the San Francisco Symphony performed musicals and entertained the crowd picnicing on the lawn. This was a much larger crowd – the Amphitheater itself can hold 20,000 people. The fireworks here was even better than the one at Stanford – here, the orchestra was synchronized with the fireworks and there we were just a hundred metres away from the lights.

One of the consequence of these fireworks is that they are very popular and since everyone drives here, the parking and traffic jam to get out was horrendous. We were stuck for 45 mins waiting to get out of Stanford and one hour getting out of Shoreline. Fortunately, Gabriel was asleep and did not make a fuss, so it was mostly an exercise of patience. Note for next year: park further away and walk!

Hiking at Villa Montalvo

Villa Montalvo in Saratoga lies amidst a posh estate estate of huge mansions. It is nestled in the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains and its grounds are popular of outdoor weddings and performances. The estate garden is charming – there are fountains and streams, gazebos and flower beds.

The grounds of Villa Montalvo also offers miles of hiking trails. These lead through lush redwood forests and climb up about 200m through the hills above the estate. The highlight of the trail is the lookout which offers one of the best views of Santa Clara valley, from Moffett Field to San Jose city.

Note: picnics are not allowed on the grounds. Trails are narrow, but clearly marked. Villa Montalvo is run by the County of Santa Clara – you can search their website here.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Its the end of the year … already! How quickly time flew. I’ve been busy catching up on processing videos and photos, and there’s quite a bit to share.

We spent the holidays rather quietly. R and I felt that G wasn’t ready for any big ambitious trips so we planned small this year.

We took a driving trip down the California Central Coast and visited Big Sur and Hearst Castle. It was a wondeful trip – the weather was mild and Gabriel was very well behaved. We brought along his baby food and he didn’t make too much of a mess when he fed so we were quite relieved. And he handled the winding journey along Highway 1 very well.

There were breathtaking views of the sheer cliffs and powerful Pacific surf; elephant seals by the shore; rustic towns like Cambria and a beautiful sunset. Hearst Castle was the main highlight of the trip and it was an incredibly beautiful mansion set on the hilltops built by a Californian tycoon who spared no expense to collect all forms of antiques and art.

Here’s a link to the video of our trip.

Hearst Castle was an impressive place but I left with a sense that all the priceless art seemed a little … displaced. There were roofs that came from a chapel in Italy with carvings of religious icons set in a dining room where they were relegated to being part of a collector’s horde. At Hearst Castle, there was little time to ponder on the origins or the meanings of these sculptures or paintings – and I felt a little disappointed. Nevertheless, still worth the visit.

One Way Ticket

Tomorow, R, G and I will board the morning flight to San Francisco. SQ16 flies via Seoul to San Francisco with a flight duration of nearly 20 hours. We’ve already checked in over the telephone, and were assigned seats with a baby bassinet.

The movers have packed most of our belongings on a container en route to San Francisco. This happened two weeks ago. All that remained were the things that we intended to carry by hand and that we won’t miss for 6 weeks. We’re completing the packing today and praying that we can fit everything into the luggage. This is our first time packing for the baby – bath tub, diapers, bottles, creams and toys.

Actually, to think of it, packing for this trip shouldn’t be too difficult – there only one rule: don’t leave anything behind. We don’t have to decide what to leave behind because everything goes as long as we can fit it into our luggage!

Applying for a US Visa In Singapore

We visited the American Embassy in Singapore on Friday to apply for my US L1 Visa. I finally received the approval to work in the US after months of wrangling with bureaucracy, so this was the final step.

Because of the paranoia and xenophobia in a post September-11 era, I read the embassy’s website carefully to make sure I followed all procedures. The Singapore embassy has a well-documented procedure for all applicants including all mandatory forms and fees.

Armed with all all necessary documents, the whole family (including 7-week old G) arrive at the gates of the embassy at 9.30am. OK, we had hoped to arrive an hour earlier, but a baby’s feeding can’t be rushed. We parked at Tanglin Mall, because there was no indication that there was parking available at the embassy (that’s not true – there is a small 15 visitor carpark outside the gates of the embassy)

On arrival, we were shocked to see a long queue outside the gates – there was a white tent under which around 50 people formed a line. There, we sweltered in the tropical morning sun for about an hour before we were allowed into the compound. At 10 a.m., the queue was closed for the morning – no more applicants for that day.

The guardhouse consists of the typical airport-style security scan, and they took our handphones away too. Once inside, there was a comfortable air-conditioned waiting room where various applicants waited to be interviewed for their visas. Depending on the visa type, some applicants are grilled at different intensities. Fortunately, our L1 visa obviously didn’t merit a detailed scrutiny (or perhaps it was me carrying an infant that helped?), and once our turn was up, it was a mere five minutes of basic questions.

Once the application was approved, we were told to turn up two days later to collect our passports. It took 2 1/2 hours to complete this process. I heard conditions are much better at the Singapore embassy than at other places, perhaps because most Singaporeans do not need a visa to travel to the US.

Blizzard at Squaw Valley

Winter isn’t over yet. A couple of friends and I drove up to Squaw Valley yesterday to hit the snow. Our usual routine is to start at 4 a.m. in the morning, arriving at the resort between 8-9 and spending the whole day skiiing and snowboarding. It’s a four hour drive and we took the my rental Jeep Grand Cherokee.

The weatherman predicted heavy snow, but since my friends (who were more familiar with the Sierra Nevadas) didn’t hesitate, neither did I. It rained during the entire journey and when we reached the mountains, the rain turned into snow. The skies were grey with no breaks in sight.

When we finally reached Squaw Valley, it was snowing pretty heavily, but we decided to risk the slopes anyway. Two thirds of the resort was shut down due to the weather and the ones that were open were empty. I was a little nervous as we rode the gondola up the slopes – the wind howled around us and thick flurries limited the visibility to tens of metres.

I discovered that skiing in a snowstorm wasn’t easy. Heavy winds made tiny snowflakes feel like insect bites on my cheeks. Visibility was so poor that I couldn’t tell where the trail led. The best chance was to follow the silhouette of another skiier ahead. Even then, I had to stop when the wind picked up and skiied into a snow drift once in a while. It wasn’t the most enjoyable experience, but certainly a memorable one.

A side note: Squaw Valley was the site of the 1960 Winter Olympics. The entire village was built for that single event and the Olympic rings are proudly displayed at every corner.