Moving over to the west side..

The morning after Sedona was hard. Some muscles ached, other body parts groaned and I was majorly sleep deprived from the previous week. But I had a great incentive to be up early – Breakfast at Sheraton. So a real American breakfast buffet is a carbohydrate shock to the system. It makes you want to go back to sleep.  Pancakes and Bacon strips alone have enough calories to last you days. This is what the South does to you. Thankfully, I moved to the west coast that week without incurring any further damage.

My first stop was San Jose and this post would be incomplete if I didn’t talk about my in-flight extravaganza. So, have you ever heard stories of people who said they got bumped up to first class because the flight was overbooked? Well, I have heard many such stories with umpteen amount of jealousy. And now it was my turn. I am happy to say I have joined this club of annoying people – if only for a once-in-a-lifetime 2-hour flight. The great thing about First Class, besides of course more legroom, more elbow room, extra luggage space, cushy seats, a security-check fast-pass, priority boarding, a polite steward, a coat rack, food menu options and champagne, is that you sit in the front of the plane. THIS is the real game changer because you don’t feel any impact of the flight in the front as opposed to where I am usually forced to sit – an economy seat at the back of the plane, generally close to the toilets – where all you feel is the impact and all you hear are the flushing sounds. I’m always one of the last people to check-in so obviously the best seats get taken. BUT not this time – this time my last-minute check-in (or so I’d like to believe) won me a first class seat. And needless to say, it was a freakin’ awesome. It was the first time that I didn’t want the flight to end.

The Bay Area

I hadn’t done much research on San Jose before arriving. So my first lesson about San Jose was from the taxi driver. Much to my surprise, the cab meter started at $15. San Antonio had expensive cabs but this was the highest I had seen so far. I mentioned my amazement to the driver; he chuckled and said, “Do you know where you are? San Jose is the heart of Silicon Valley. Here $15 is nothing!”  

I decided to familiarize myself with my famous current location. And indeed, a Google search showed that my hotel was actually within 20 miles of the Google HQ! It’s all happening here - Apple, Facebook, CISCO, HP, ebay, Yahoo, Adobe, Oracle and a thousand other hi-tech companies are headquartered here. The more I looked, the more names popped up. San Jose along with a few other counties collectively is known as THE Silicon Valley.

For a completely low-on-tech tourist like me, San Jose isn’t the most happening place to be. Restaurants and bars shut down early, public transportation is slow and things to do are limited. So I decided to trade my evening in San Jose for one in San Francisco. The two cities are unbelievably close and quite different. Frisco has an awesome vibe to it. The vibe starts when you traverse its unique hilly roads, see its world-famous bridges, indulge in the great food and nightlife and interact with the very friendly locals. It has a free-spirit that usually is associated with the west coast. I didn’t do much off the map exploring and that just means I have to go back to soak it all in. It’s definitely on my list to visit again. 

San Jose Workshop Insight

I really loved the San Jose session. It was a full group of 20 and they were all active participants, eager to learn. There was something unusual about this session though. A couple of girls came to me separately and wanted to speak about some of their personal issues at work. My instinctive reaction was to spring for Frank. I wasn’t trained to give advice! But what I realized was that they just needed for someone to listen. Let me pick one example. One of the girls is in a client facing role however her manager hasn’t given her a chance to speak on any of the client calls. She’s been doing a lot of the work behind the scenes but the clients see right past her in meetings. This has been happening for a year and a half. The workshop gave her some time to reflect on this vicious cycle and her post workshop commitment was to change this equation with her manager and be more assertive in front of clients. It was powerful to see her self-realization. Amazing what simply listening can do for someone!