San Francisco – So what?

Hello, friends and followers of my blog. I freely admit it was time to write a new post here after four whole months of laziness. Thank you to everyone who woke me up and asked me to do this. Okay, everyone, here it goes.

First, I’d like to explain something many of my friends and contacts around the world have been asking. Their question was: what makes me write?

I simply love writing…

Well, it certainly wasn’t the slightest intention of lecturing the rest of the world. I’ve developed writing since childhood as a unique art of self-expression, which helps me develop and refine my thoughts. That’s why writing has become one of my favorite leisure activities. And it simply entertains me immensely and helps me relax and distract myself from the many of my routine daily activities.

Neuroscientists and followers of the Freudian school believe in the great importance of our nighttime dreams for “cleansing” the brain. I rarely have nighttime dreams, but I firmly believe that writing has the same effect.

I just checked my calendar and it says that, since my last blog post, I was in Germany for a week to visit several clients, and I’ve been traveling quite frequently in Brazil,

Quick & short, but intensive & productive. Impressions from my customer visits in Germany during May…

and I have just returned from a trip to California with my wife and son.

I’ll talk more about this trip later.

Over the past four months, I’ve also attended several interesting events, such as the American Chamber’s CEO Day, the ADAPTA AI Summit Brazil, the launch of three new books, “Success Stories,” where I wrote the foreword for one of them, the FENASUCRO exhibition, and a few others.

And we had a wonderful Inauguration event for RINGSPANN do Brazil, the company for which I am acting as General Manager.

Not to forget my “escape week” with my wife over my birthday to Belo (this is true !!!) Horizonte and our VALE train ride to beautiful Vitoria in Espirito Santo state.

Our trip to San Francisco was very special. First, because we accompanied our beloved son Gabriel to Berkeley, where he began his semester as exchange student in economics. We were all very excited to get there. And for the three of us, it was our first visit to California.

Our arrival at Berkely

Personally, I have had my head full of memories, impressions and feelings of my childhood in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Hippie culture, flower power, and rock ‘n’ roll, images and music from the Easy Rider and Woodstock movies, and so on.

Sweet memories of an exiting time and culture long long (pre Trump) ago…

None of that—as I already knew and expected—exists any longer there. To be honest, I found it pleasant to explore San Francisco for practically an entire week, but I see no reasonable reason to return.

What struck me most negatively was the extreme poverty of many people living on the road in this city and—as I’ve already learned from other places during my countless business trips to the United States over the past 25 years—the very poor gastronomic offerings. My wife and I preferred to eat all day in Asian restaurants, as they were the only places where we found truly delicious and healthy food.

The Asian food in San Francisco was delicious, but I clearly prefer our Brazilian China Town “Liberdade” in São Paulo, which as a quarter is very beautiful and offers plenty more options than Chinatown in San Francisco

Time to mention something really beautiful about San Francisco: we loved seeing—and walking across—the world-famous Golden Gate Bridge, an impressive man-made and engineering monument. It’s definitely worth seeing!

A real monument of beauty – the famous Golden Gate Bridge

Another criticism, which just confirmed what I already knew from practically all my previous trips to this “promised land.” The quality of service, regardless of which category, is almost the worst possible, mainly due to the poor qualification of the people who provide it, something I’ve already observed during all my countless travels around the world over the past 40 years, including to many poor countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

Berkely is a small, ancient city (as far as such term makes sence, knowing that the USA are a quite new country without to much history) where everything revolves around the University of California.

The prestigious university welcomes about 40,000 students—many of them international—and boasts a spacious, wonderful campus, complete with cafes, gyms, and numerous libraries.

My son pointed out to me—what I hadn’t known before—that Oppenheimer had spent time working in Berkeley before moving to Arizona to take on his leadership role in the Manhattan Project.

No doubt – my wife and I are terribly proud of our great son and his guest semester in economy in at the University of California in Berkely, one of the most prestigious academic institutions in the world

Our visit to the infamous prison island of Alcatraz left us, like most visitors, feeling overwhelmed upon returning.

Alcatraz reminded me of what Johnny Cash sang about San Quentin: “A living hell”…

A complete disaster—with the sole exception of our visit to the beautiful and well-equipped Museum of Computer Science in Palo Alto—was our guided day trip to Silicon Valley.

Highly recommended – the Computer Museum in Palo Alto gives a wonderfully instructive overview of the development of the computer industry from the very beginning until today

All the Apple, Google, and Meta headquarters are like fortresses, almost invisible from the outside, where these companies don’t even welcome visitors to introduce themselves.

And the so-called “Visitor Centers,” which they all offer, are nothing more than stores. I seriously wondered why I spent $300 and a whole day on a bus to visit an Apple Store, a Google Store, and a Meta Store far from San Francisco. Simply ridiculous, but it fits perfectly with all these purely materialistic and completely unethical technology companies.

What I can confirm to all of you after our return to Brazil is that the famous American writer Mark Twain was absolutely right when he said: “The coldest winter I ever suffered in my life was a summer in San Francisco.” The city has a very special climate, where extreme heat and extreme cold, with strong winds, frequently alternate, especially during summer.

Just another good reason for me to return to São Paulo, albeit with a bad cold.

I hope this brief account of my experiences in and with Gringolandia hasn’t misled you. I mean, everyone has their own criteria and expectations. And that’s more than fine. But, like it or not, I stick to mine.

I`ll finish this post with a music video of one more classical American rock star – the great Chuck Berry. Hope you enjoy it and like it as much as I do !!!

Enough said—or rather, written—for today. I’m sitting in our garden enjoying the nice weather. Some good music (my beloved French radio station) is playing, and I’m enjoying a wonderful espresso accompanied by a nice glass of water.

See you (soon?) back here. Take care! Enjoy the weekend, wherever (and in whatever time zone) you are.

Klaus