Last three days in Berkeley at a conference. A highlight was the conference dinner cruise. Food was good for the genre, and the viewing spectacular. Not only the sunset and the subsequent city Lights. But the Bay Lights LED light installation is now showing. More than 100,000 individually controlled LEDs that turn the 2 km long bridge of ever changing patterns of light. Truly Spectacular and somewhat mesmerizing. Anyway, this is being written at the airport on...

Walked across the Golden Gate Bridge on another beautiful morning. Truly impressive engineering feat. Quite beautiful close up and far away. Stumbled across a Farmers Market. Good produce - my prediction is that we won't be far behind there being tubs of mixed heritage tomatoes. Good to look at and real flavour. And the other prediction is that we'll be eating an Asian fruit called something like Ju Ju Bee; can eat raw and eat or in cooking (including making te...

Had a look around Chinatown. There is nothing remarkable about it in the sense that we see the 'stuff' (gifts, medicines, foods). But I think the point is that the genre is quite 'unamerican' in its chaotic nature. And of course for many this will be as close as they get to Asia. Also went 'shopping' in a big Mall. A conclusion here is that whereas 20 years ago there were all sorts of things that weren't available in Australia (eg Eddie Bauer style casual clothes...

The Magic Bus took on a "60s revisited" tour of San Francisco. So Haight-Ashbury and the parks but much more. Blinds cam down for projecting documentary footage, and of course there was music throughout. We enjoyed it a lot as it connected many threads - technology (transistor radio), drugs, music, civil rights, eastern spiritualism, the draft, the pill etc. - and was just a bit of fun. Rest of day went to Mission District - down at heel and probably true to the...

Yes, San Francisco. Had a very nice day wandering around the city. I have to say the buses are efficient and logical, and make getting about really easy. The downside was that when we got to the SF Museum of Modern Art - I have enjoyed it in 1999 - it was closed... Until 2016. But then we walked the Castro district, which is the spiritual home of the gay movement, with Harvey Milk and shops called Hand Job (manicures etc. ) and Rock Hard (sex 'aids'). Next was ...