We recently celebrated our 6 month-aversary of when we moved out here, which prompted me to think about the things that we like about life in California compared to the UK. Please join the debate....
Things California has got right
The weather - although this has been the coldest and wettest winter practically on record, the weather is still so much better out here. It's rare to get a day without sunshine, and California does sunshine so well. Massive blue sky and bright bright sun. My tomatoes are shaping up to be some kind of record size, and for the first time in my life I have managed to keep a basil plant alive for more than a month.
Friendliness - everyone here is very positive and friendly. You go into a shop, they ask you how you are and they smile and they mean it. They seem to actually take pride in being nice. When I go out with Ruth, I am routinely stopped by people wanting to tell me how beautiful she is, and than chat for half an hour about babies. I actually haven't met anyone grumpy and negative at all (apart from Alex). Initially this can seem a bit fake, but you soon realise that people are genuinely cheerful a lot of the time. And that is nice.
Pride - people seem very proud of being American, and of themselves. It is normal and expected to celebrate success in a most un-British way. It is normal to see bumper stickers telling you that the occupant is an honor student at their school, or to have a building/facility/trail named after a local benefactor.
Community involvement - I have been struck by the levels to which normal people are involved in the community here. There seem to be so many volunteer opportunities and so many chances to get involved with the running of things, and everywhere we go we seem to be invited to contribute, much more so than the UK. This ranges from volunteering to lead tours at museums, to rangering at the kiddy farm, to parent-run schools. It is also much more common to go to church and to be involved with it. People also wear their allegiances on their sleeve more openly - we see lots of political banners outside houses supporting a particular candidate or suggesting that you vote a particular way on a referendum, and we have been invited to a coffee morning to support a candidate for assembly - I can't imagine anyone we know bothering to do this in the UK.
Playgrounds - there are 28 parks in Palo Alto, and they all have absolutely lovely playgrounds. Ruth asked me to put this one in.
Things the UK has got right
Pubs - we really miss pubs. There is no equivalent in the US. And weird commercial zoning laws mean that all shops & cafes are in particular groups, and you don't get corner shops or pubs sprinkled through residential areas like you do in the UK. Our walks seem oddly goalless now.
Roundabouts - I can handle the four-way stop signs, they even seem quite sensible after a while, but trying to get onto the motorway via a short slip road that has cars both accelerating to get on, and decelerating to get off, while all frantically trying to change lane to avoid being pushed off at the next junction - just crazy.
Electricity - 110V is wimpy. It takes a good 10 minutes to boil a kettle. By the time the toaster pops, Ruth has had a hunger melt-down. Safety shmafety - give me 240V anyday.
TV - thank goodness we can get the BBC over the internet. I always thought it was good, but American TV brings a whole new meaning to the appreciation I have for the Ten O'clock news. And there are so many adverts! You can flick through 50 channels and well over half will be showing ads at any given point.
Supermarkets - yes, Wholefoods is nice, but I would swap it anyday for a nice big Tesco down the road. Overall, groceries are more expensive than the UK, and there is no one place you can go to to get reasonable quality for reasonable price on the whole range of things you might want to buy. In any given week, I go to four different supermarkets to get different groups of things. And only Safeways does internet delivery.