Pale and Starchy

I had two or three “breakfast” date appointments on this trip.  Its am American thing, you realize, when its not there, to have eggs and something.  What kind of eggs you want?   I order some huevos rancheros. I wouldn’t order that elsewhere.  He I imagine it will be a long, lost taste.  But the dish pale and starchy.  I pick at the good stuff and mop it up with ketchup and hot sauce. 

Later I cross the San Mateo Bridge and arrive in the same named town. More gentrified then the last gentrified memory I have of the place.  It will always look more blue color than Palo Alto.  No matter how much it sheds what it had been.  The big market has parking.  He has roast beef.  I have tuna salad.  Talk and take apart these sandwiches. 

Now I’m twenty miles down the Bay off into the Great American Parkway.  Someone wants to meet at the Great American Convention Center.   I can do that.  I knew from yesterday. There is some Bay Area Chinese community event for technology . . . All people, as Alexis De Tocqueville noted, form groups when they come to America.   Chinese people all form groups in the Bay Area.  I remember many groups. The parking lot is full.  So is the overflow parking  lot.  I feel late.  I’ll follow the signs then.  Park by a marsh, beneath the shining hills.

I call the appointment and walk along the path to the convention center.  Walk across a creek.  Walk along a manicured lawn. Step on the grass. And I’m up into an environment where everyone is suddenly speaking Mandarin again.  I grin and think of interjecting myself into this conversation or that one.  A beautiful young lady with her head held high walks before me as I settle in to my meeting.  Coffee?  Let’s go over and get coffee.  It is prepared by Mexican ladies who laugh easily.