Monday Jan 23- day 17

I am mincing around the living room in my pyjamas, getting my new laptop connected. It takes a little while to figure out how to connect to the wireless network in Ann's house, but once I get it cracked, wow is that badboy fast?! Yeah, I am speeding around the world wide web at breakneck speed. I download my "favourites" from my work pc- funny how much your list of favourite websites says about you! I then have a phone call from Rosy and we have a catch up- she is coming for a well-earned break for two weeks in mid Feb, so we get excited talking about sightseeing ideas. Then we do some MSN messenging (kind of like a chatroom where you can type messages to one another for you technophobes) which is all good.

I do encounter one hitch, which is that Microsoft Office is not activating when I enter the code on the box. I can't use Word, or Excel, which are kind of important. After a wild goose chase trying to get help from the Geek Squad, I eventually learn that Office does not come as standard and I should have bought it at the time. So another trip over to Northgate is called for! Shucks... Still, maybe this time I will see if they have got a suit of armour in my size.

I go in to Uni and wait in line at the post office. You learn a lot about a place by standing in line at the post office, I reckon. There is a rather dishevelled looking lady, of indeterminate age, who is writing on an envelope whilst the queue shuffles forward (btw Americans don't know what a "queue" is, you have to say "line" or they look at you like you just walked out of a pool hall). She writes something on the back, then joins the line, then has another thought, and scribbles something else on the back, etc etc until her envelope is crammed with writing. I can't help but try and get a look at what she is writing. I can make out words like ROYALTY & PRINCESSES & WORLD & CHEAT. As I get nearer to her, the smell of alcohol reaches me. She reeks of booze. She doesn't look too drunk, but she has undoubtedly got more alcohol in her than I've drunk on American soil. I hang back and let her go before me, and she clutches her scruffy, deranged envelope close to her chest. I buy some stamps for postcards, and I am on my way. At the Uni bookstore, I find out that Faculty and students at "U Dub" (UW=University of Washington) get a reduction on microsoft software, so maye I won't go over to Northgate Mall after all. The armour will have to wait.

It's a bright evening- the days are lengthening a bit, and it is still light at 5 o'clock. At a point on campus, I am confronted by a mountain looming over the city which I didn't even know was there. Here's a picture, but I don't suppose it is really visible. It stopped me in my tracks, as I suppose the city has been so cloudy so far that the mountains have been hidden. But in actual fact, Seattle lies between two sets of mountains, the Cascades to the North and the Olympics to the East (I think- need to check the map!)


On the bus back home, I sit next to another crazy- seems it is my day for meeting eccentric people. This is an older chap with 6 massive plastic bags stuffed with something- can't tell what exactly, but there is newspaper on the top, and they look heavy. Somehow it doesn't seem like shopping or washing, it seems like he is shifting his life's possessions around with him wherever he goes. He hauls the bags off the bus at his stop (it takes him two trips) and I wonder what his life has been like. It's easy to be patronising I suppose, to assume that odd people have had sad lives. Maybe the people on the bus have been thinking the same about me! I reach a great bit in my book. The two young guys (Kavalier and Clay) have been invited to a flash party where Salvador Dali has come dressed in a diver's suit (one of those old-fashioned ones with a mahoosive helmet). Suddenly he starts to suffocate, and Joe Kavalier has to use his lock-picking expertise to save the day and get the famous surrealist's helmet off in front of a stunned audience of socialites. I don't suppose it happened, but it should have!

When I get home at about 10 pm, all is quiet. I think Ann had a book group around (a different one which isn't actually a member of) but she must have finished feeding them and gone to bed. My Mum sent over a list of books from her own book group which Ann was delighted to read. Perhaps a word about my host is in order here. She is in her sixties, although pretty young with it- she goes rowing several times a week at frighteningly early hours. She is an Elementary school teacher, having worked for many years as a family therapist, and then retired from that. She spent quite a few years over in Alaska, which I think is where she and her husband lived together. I guess sometime after her divorce, she adopted Krishna from India. He has an amazing story. He lived in Calcutta with a family, and seemingly got lost- one day he tried to follow his Dad on a train somewhere, and was found wandering around the market aged 6. His parents either couldn't or wouldn't come to find him- it is probable that his family lived out of the city, but Krishna didn't know where he was from, they didn't know where he ende up and I guess the police system wasn't efficient enough to reunite them. And so he ended up in an orphanage until Ann came and, through all the legitimate channels, legally adopted him and brought him to America. She says that he coped pretty well with this traumatic upheaval, and I don't think he could have found a kinder or more sensitive person to look after him. They did go back a few years ago to try and trace his family, but without success.

Ann now has a busy life with friends always calling. She's a devoted Mum to the 26-year-old Krishna, although she worries like all Mums, I mean Moms, do that he hasn't really found hs way in life yet. She has to stop herself from suggesting jobs for him to do (he is about to finish managing a Calendar store when that closes down). And we've already discussed the girlfriend issue, so I won't go there! Ann is very fond of the family cat, Evie, and misses their recently departed dog a lot. She is the kind of person who will fight against injustice when she comes across it, and she tells me about the letters she occasionally writes about things that bother her. One of the big issues round here is the expansion of oil drilling which is threatening the environment.

You may have picked up some sarcasm and ambivalence from me towards Americans and the American way of life. Certainly it is a culture of extremes, of amazing oportunities and huge contrasts. And the culture is remarkably free of the kind of cynicism which is rife in England. We can seem like a jaded and sarcastic bunch compared to this lot, I tell you. Just 10 minutes watching their TV adverts, which would NEVER cut the mustard in the UK, or 5 minutes in a shop where you'd be lucky to get a grunt out of the assistant in Sheffield, and it tells you a lot about how sincere they are most of the time. Or you could say cheesy. Take your pick. At their best, Americans are warm-hearted and open. I would say that Ann embodies a lot of what is good about the States, and she is extremely generous and good company, so that's good enough for me.

This has turned in to a long posting.If you are still reading, you must surely have some more important things to do. I suggest you go and do them now. Maybe you should write a letter about something to someone. My Mum once wrote to Ronnie Reagan about the gun laws in the US, although she pretends not to remember this! Off you go, get scribbling...