Ah Costa Mesa, the city of lights mixed income levels. So I am in Costa Mesa, CA. for the next few days for PeopleSoft training. The actual training starts tomorrow (on St. Patric’s day! woo). So far the experience is agreeable. I found the hotel with out any difficulty, thanks to Google and the slightly creepy street view feature of Google maps.

One thing I am really enjoying is the fact that many many things are within walking distance* of the hotel. The building in which my training is to take place is 0.7 miles away. I walked there today. In typical video game type fashion the front entrance was blocked (by construction in this case) so I had to walk around back which was awesome because there is sort of a new age Japanese style garden out back.

That brings me to my two points so far:

  1. I am never going anywhere without a decent camera ever again
  2. I’ve decided I am going to get the Nokia N95 over the iPhone. The 5 mp camera was the deciding factor. That and I’ll be the only kid on my block with one.

on the mixed income levels. There is a cool little fair sized Japanese market across the street from the hotel I am staying in called Mitsuwa. I went in expecting a grocery store and boy was I wrong. It is more like a mall with a grocery store attached. It even has a food court. I got some vegetable udon and inarizushi, SOOO tasty.

ANYWAY it was funny sitting in the food court area it was possible to observe people who where obviously quite well off and people who appeared to be wanna-be yakuza, and others who appeared to be one meal away from starving, quite interesting. Another interesting observation: A very Caucasian girl, blond hair blue eyes, pale skin, the whole bit, hanging out with the 4 previously mentioned Yakuza wanna-bes. strange.

tomorrow: wandering roaches and too much Assassins Creed

day after: lying signs and dirty looks.

*Honestly if it is on the earth it is pretty much within walking distance, it just depends on how long you want to walk. I know there is an understood ‘convenient’ in there, i.e. within convenient walking distance, but still. The ambiguity of language is amusing to me things such as ‘room temperature’. Where? which room? a meat locker is a room, so is a Sauna perhaps I like to keep my room at a balmy 12K.

On sort of the same topic: I was once asked ‘how far is it from the earth to the sun?’ To which I responded promptly ‘One Astronomical unit‘ which is, of course, defined as ‘the distance between the earth and the sun’