Day 12 (17/5) - CDI
In the morning we visited the Community Development Institute in East Palo Alto.
One of the community leaders said that gentrification (the influx of rich, white people) was a problem, and they were trying to defend against this because they liked the ethnic mix of their community (95% minority) as it as. How racist. If it were a white guy saying such things, he'd surely be lynched, but coming from him it might even be seen by many of the same people who'd lynch 'racists' as laudable.
You can't discriminate based on language limitations. So if someone cannot speak English (or even Spanish), you must till hire him. Excellent. Next time we won't be able to discriminate against the lazy and the stupid.
There was a sign: "War is not the answer. fcnl.org". It seems FCNL stands for "Friends Committee on National Legislation", a Quaker group founded in 1943. At first I thought that they didn't think war was the answer to British oppression of the 13 colonies, Slavery in the South and Nazism, Fascism and Japanese Imperialism, but now it seems that campaign was against the Iraq war.
In the afternoon some of us went to the Great Mall, a conglomeration of factory outlets. We took a 1 hr 30 min bus ride to Sana Clara and transferred to a tram for about 1 hr. Just before that, I shared a pork taco from a taqueria billed as having "the best tacos and burritos in the whole world". It was the worst I'd ever had (I didn't have time to record its name since the tram came).
There were many bail bonds shops in Santa Clara, eg "Bad Boy's Bail Bonds".
When we finally reached the place at 3, most of us ate at a Cajun place in the food court. That it was run by a Chinese woman was evident just by looking at the sides - 4/7 were Chinese (eg Chow Mein). They were giving out samples of Bourbon Chicken which was good (primarily because it was sweet), so 5 of us had it. Unfortunately not all the sides were as palatable - I had Cajun Fried Potatoes which were okay (not very crispy but well spiced) and Fried Plantains (dismissed by the rest as 'Goreng Pisang'), but someone had black bean rice which was the worst I'd ever tasted - even SMM made better rice. (Aside: recipe for Bourbon Chicken... without any Bourbon in it!)
There was a shop selling a rubber chicken. It made a noise when you squeezed it. Yay.
At the door of one outlet, there was a picture advertising smock tops. I was about to note that the picture made her look fat, then someone remarked that it was an outlet selling maternity dresses.
At one point there were some massage chairs. This being a litigious country, there was a list of safety precautions on them, and one of them was that menstruating women should not use them. Wth. I thought we'd been over supserstitions about menstruating women for at least a century. Maybe they're scared they'll leak and dirty the chairs.
After countless examples of the reverse, I finally saw an Asian man with a White woman! Jabir claimed he'd seen 1-2 before this, but he never pointed it out to me. This one was a bit taller than her, even in her heels which were quite high, and he had a lot of facial stubble (so, yes, Yellow Fever was right - it's the hair). If so many Asian women go with non-Asian men, I wonder what will happen in a generation's time - there'll be no more Asian women for the non-Asians to date. But then again maybe they marry Asian men in the end after having some fun. Later I saw another such pair who were probably together (Huishan said the guy was cute).
I didn't have energy to process all the outlets, so I only did 3/4. Which was still a lot of outlets, though I didn't spend much.
Two of the girls shared Cold Stone Creamery ice cream, which was hideously expensive. The concept is you start with some plain ice cream and toppings are thrown on and spatula-ed into the ice cream on top of a black stone surface (hence, the name).
We left at 8 and took just over 1.5 hrs to return (excluding dinner) since we took a shorter route involving 1km of walking.
There was a nightclub called 'Buddha lounge' in Mountain View. Seditious!
For dinner we ate at a KFC near Mountain View. Using the toilet was really inconvenient - we had to exit the restaurant, go to the back door and request access through it. What made it worse was that while the 2 front counter staff could speak English, all of the back counter staff seemed to understand Spanish only, so they had to call one front counter staff member over to understand my hollering. Indeed, the Latinos have reached a critical mass and can exist (in California at least) without speaking English.
Quotes:
I wanted to turn to my friend and say, 'Lim Yu Beng is damn hot' but just behind us was Tan Kheng Hwa.