This has been another fast and furious week, with events piling themselves on top of one another faster than I can move.

On Wednesday, I spent the entire day in Silicon Valley, to help out on a consulting engagement at a famous Valley company (whose name I'm not at liberty to disclose). My out-of-town colleagues who were leading the engagement had asked me to meet them at their hotel at 7.30. When I pointed out that that the infamous southbound traffic would require me to leave home at 6.00 a.m., they relented, and gave me an hour's grace. As it happens, I ended up overestimating the traffic, and getting there at 7.30 anyway! So I spent an hour reading the newspaper at Starbucks before ambling over to the customer's campus.

And what a waste of a day. I spent nine hours sitting in a windowless enclosure with four colleagues, doing absolutely nothing. Hardware and software problems, which only my colleagues could solve, left me as a fifth wheel. At five-thirty, pale with boredom, I escaped. Unfortunately, I couldn't even head home, since I'd agreed to pick Jed up at San Jose International Airport late in the evening. To pass the time, I worked out at a big local gym in Cupertino, and then headed over for a miserable sandwich in the airport terminal. All in all, a fairly depressing day, although it was nice to see Jed again, after his week of interviewing on the East Coast.

I didn't get home until 11.30 on Wednesday night, and realized that I'd somehow comitted myself to playing squash at 7.15 the next morning, and 7.15 in the evening too! The evening game was my second competitive game. Remember that recently I slaughtered that woman on the squash court? Well last night's game was against a diminutive french guy, who didn't look like tough competition. He beat me 3-0.

However. After the game, his behavior reminded me of something I'd forgotten about: European social graces. Or, perhaps I should say, the lack of social graces in the Bay Area. We were catching our breath after the strenuous match, and he asked if I wanted to go for a drink. Not too surprising a request, you might think. But I'm racking my brains to remember when something like that last happened to me. I feel that in the Bay Area, it's considered socially correct to keep your various lives rigorously seggregated. You just "don't do" something like asking a pick-up squash player to go for a drink with you. In fact, the last time something like this happened to me was three or so years ago, when I played badminton over at U Cal Berkeley with a Swiss guy.

All this is in contrast with another recent squash experience. I'd contacted everybody in my league by email to try to schedule our games, and one of the few people who wrote back, just responded with a one-line email:

"Book a court, and I'll play".

I thought that such an email was so rude, that I wouldn't bother responding. The other day, he called and left a voice-mail, using almost exactly the same words. No, "Hi Keith" or casual greeting. And instead of signing off with a "take care" or something, he just hung up. Perhaps it's just California and New York where people behave like this! In any event, I decided to write to him and tell him that he could have the points for our game since I didn't want to play with him.

As of this morning, I have a whole new kettle of fish to deal with. Jed has been offered a position at a prestigious East-Coast university. He hasn't accepted yet, but he'd be a fool not to take it. Quite obviously, he and I have a lot of talking to do!