#Day 14 (Tue, Jan 24).

“If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair…” 🙂

Great to come to visit California again – this time the more northern or middle part of it, San Francisco and the Bay Area. “If you’re going, to San Francisco….” I didn’t wear flowers, but a very cozy “Local” cap, that I got in Utah, from a Wal-Mart. 🙂 We felt with Aurora, that we wanna localize a little. Felt much smoother to go to places, matches and outside with a cap. 

California and especially the Bay Area are really nice weather wise. It was +17’C and sun was shining. Even in the evening at 10pm we could walk with mild clothing, if kept a good pace. 

We took a DELTA airlines flight from Salt Lake City to San Francisco international airport, it cost around 215$ per person one way. Not the cheapest, but it was smooth with a short notice ticket and pretty much in the radar. SLC airport is clean and nice – but it was a pretty frustrating labyrinth to try to get into the gate. We had to go from first floor to third for tickets. Then to the second to find out that we should go back again to the first for better security check, which took anyway its good time. And then go to the second floor again for the flights. With a stroller and a 2.5 year-old baby, it’s not always that easy. Even in such a child-friendly, clean and effective place you can make airport check-in so challenging an experience. 🙂 I started to think that maybe I now finally started to understand, why e.g. Helsinki Airport ranks year after year one of the best international airports in the world. It’s not fancy at all, but super simple – and it works. Sometimes it’s not how complicated and colorful you make things, but how EASY and simple you can make challenging processes. I think that’s what we Finns are often good at? Making complicated things simple – and finding solutions in a simple down-to-earth manner. That’s why we have so many technical solutions and easily usable services…? Look at Nokia phone in the end of 1990s? Or Angry Birds as a game? Or Kone’s elevators? Simple, but nice, easy and comfortable to use. 

Anyway, I shouldn’t judge too much based on an individual experience. However several authorities rank Helsinki Airport as one of the top 10 airports in the whole world – or close to that. Skytrax ranks Helsinki-Vantaa #13 globally, and business insider #11, also the best airport in Northern Europe. (more here.) 🙂

SLC is not in the top 100… But it’s the third globally in on-time performance, which is a great result. https://www.upr.org/utah-news/2023-01-06/salt-lake-city-international-airport-named-one-of-the-worlds-best-for-on-time-departures

Ok, that’s about it!

When we got back to California, and now to SF, it was pretty cool. We met my old friend, David, whom I had met already in Shenzhen back in 2012, over a decade ago. David put his work stuff aside for awhile to take us to see the downtown (big thanks for that!). We visited David’s home, in the South San Francisco, just next to all the global BioTech leading companies. We saw Twitter HQ, the old hippie and “gay” streets in the downtown, the Golden Gate Bridge – at night – and heard some fascinating stories from a barefoot SF local. David has fascinating travels himself too. “Lauri, I got into Berkeley when I was young”, and continued: “You know, we have this thing called critical thinking in SF. Together with all these cultural flavors, it has created the platform for the Silicon Valley and all the innovation here.”

David mentioned, that Berkeley is clearly for the critically, intellectually minded independent folks. And Stanford? “Well, it’s for the rich.” David created a good business with real estate and consulting, but started to ponder his values a couple of decades ago. For him the local pioneers such as Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, Larry Ellison are mainly narcissistic, egoistical individuals, who mainly consider themselves primarily, and aim at making as much profit as possible. David highlights though people like Salesforce Chair Marc Benioff, who shows a different view into tech entrepreneurship: “This guy is amazing. He’s succeeding well, people appreciate him – but he wants to truly give back to the community, and aim at improving people’s lives.” 

David is talkative – but very friendly and helpful. Happy to have a nice local guide, who knows my story from 10 years behind, and gives good personal feedback and advice. 

David’s been all over the world – but prefers to live in San Francisco. The reason? Climate! It’s always nice and warm. Not too sweaty, nor 35’C, but you never need an air conditioner. Never too cold, never too warm. Plus: you can get to do anything in 2-3 hours, climbing, hiking, skiing; business, tech, culture… almost anything. And besides, it’s your hometown. And you have your own house in a nice, safe environment closely. With these assets who would leave? 

“That’s Nancy Pelosi’s house. I’ll show it to you tomorrow.” 

“This is George Lucas’ offices.” 

“Here’s where the Spaniards built the fortress in 1776.”

“This is where our famous Ghirardelli chocolate comes from.”

“That’s the hippy street… This is the curving road.”

A good reminder that it’s never a bad idea to jump in with a local person to have a look into his hometown. That’s what AirBnB was also made of. “That’s their HQ. I had a chance to join these guys – and many others earlier own, but I wasn’t interested then.” Maybe he should have been? 🙂 Or then yeah, maybe not. It’s not necessarily a bad idea to “downshift” your life, if in the exchange you get so much freedom, time, space and chance to live your life more in the way you want to. 

We had some nice local food at David’s – and dined in a local Chinese restaurant close to us. Aurora felt relieved. And actually, so did I. 🙂 (Even if we have had really nice and good food here daily.) But when you normally eat +80% Chinese food back home – and suddenly it drops into 5%, it’s nice to have a Chinese meal occasionally. (In China I’m sometimes happy to just have a classical burger, pizza, or sandwich – or a Finnish salmon soup.) 🙂 

What you need and what you miss is different in different places. 

Plus: we do miss the feeling of maximum safety in the streets of Hangzhou. San Fransisco downtown in the evening … woo. You really don’t want to get out of the car.

Tomorrow we continue our journey. Fascinating to be here.