Angelika President Bush prefers to ignore the liberal stronghold of San Francisco. On his American map, we do not exist. However, this week he mentioned the city by the Bay publicly several times. This is because our newly inaugurated mayor, Gavin Newsom, has shaken Bush to his conservative core.

Michael Who really enjoys shopping at the supermarket! However, when I get to go to the super-supermarket "Costco" once a month, the child in me comes alive. Because Costco, which you can only enter with a membership card (which costs $45 a year), doesn't just have groceries. I can spend hours strolling through the aisles and looking at the craziest things: A laser parking system for the car! A fire extinguisher! An illuminated neon sign that says "Open"! A new anti-saver showerhead that could easily shower elephants in the circus! The number of items is, similar to the German Aldi (which, by the way, has already made its way to the East Coast of the USA), quite limited. There is usually only one brand of something, but almost always the market leader.

Michael In our corner supermarket, I was surprised to discover some time ago that you can even buy Pfanni potato dumpling mixes. However, they are not called "Pfanni" but "Panni," probably because Americans can't pronounce "Pf" correctly and would say "Fanni," which means "funny." And the preparation posed unexpected difficulties: you had to dissolve the dumpling mix provided in the package in "2 1/8 cups" of water. With the help of the internet, you can quickly get to the bottom of such things, for example, check out convertalot.com . There you'll find, for example, that 1 cup is exactly 8 fluid ounces. One ounce is just under 30 milliliters, one cup is 237ml, which is approximately a quarter of a liter.

Michael As often mentioned in our newsletter, unlike German customers, American buyers do not let retailers make a fool of them. Stores are open when the customer has time to shop, not when it suits the noble sales staff to start working. If you don't like a product, you exchange it--no silly questions are asked, no drama with vouchers is performed; instead, you get your money back, and that's that.

Michael In America, just like in Germany, you pay a deposit on glass and even some plastic bottles at the store. However, no one would think of bringing the empties back to the store to get the money back. Instead, people throw the bottles into a blue bin, put it out on the street on a specific day of the week for the municipal glass collector, and forgo the money.

Michael Our TV box assistant Tivo ( Rundbrief 05/2001 ) once again secretly scouted through obscure TV channels and discovered a show that I like: "Mythbusters" on the Discovery Channel.

Angelika Ha, no one noticed that I still owe you the last part of my trilogy "The American School System." I'm always fascinated by the half-knowledge one acquires about American schools through years of watching American TV shows. For example, everyone knows from the teen series "90210" that dates in high school are always arranged in front of the obligatory lockers.

Angelika Despite the persistent propaganda from the Bush administration that America is experiencing an economic upturn, layoffs are still occurring, and there are hardly any new hirings in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. The latest trend is that companies are not only outsourcing their production to low-cost countries but also their development departments, as firms in India pay programmers a fraction of the salary that would have to be paid here. Also, many companies, including large and financially strong ones, are cutting back on their health insurance programs.

Michael On Monday, December 22nd, at eleven o'clock in the morning, I was working in the office when suddenly the AOL/Netscape building began to sway back and forth in a wave-like, quite harmonious motion, about half a meter each way. We had just moved into new premises on the third floor, and at first, I thought someone was pushing a heavy cabinet down the hallway. When it continued and even the colleague who was standing at the entrance to my cubicle talking to me started looking puzzled, I quickly checked the internet, and lo and behold: a 6.5 on the Richter scale.

Michael As we all know, we are currently dealing with the new "Governator," as Arnie Schwarzenegger is called in the newspapers. This neologism is a combination of "Governor" and "Terminator" (the movie). One of his first actions in office was to roll back the vehicle registration fee increase implemented by his predecessor, Gray Davis. In America, this fee is hardly worth mentioning, and for our 13-year-old "PERL MAN," we paid about $80 a year after the increase, whereas it was $40 before. Recently, we received a refund check from the Department of Motor Vehicles to reimburse us for the $41.07 we overpaid.

Michael Shortly before Christmas last year, AOL cleared out the last buildings on the former Netscape campus. Out of 800 people, about 500 were immediately laid off, and around 100 were offered the opportunity to move to the East Coast, to Dulles, to AOL's headquarters. "Immediately laid off" meant being informed at ten o'clock and having to leave the building by 12:00 noon. A hectic scene ensued, with personal belongings being cleared from cubicles, farewell scenes everywhere--a sad day. The company was generous and paid everyone a four-month "severance package," which included salary plus health insurance.