When I was first asked to accept a contract for technical translation in Santa Clara, California, I was pretty enthusiastic. A few years ago, I visited California, staying with friends in Fremont. I had a great time visiting all the famous tourist spots such as Hollywood and Disneyland in Southern California, the fabulous forests and forests of Yosemite National Park and the old coastal cities in Spanish style in Monterey and Carmel. I had an amazing time, but I didn’t have much desire to return.
I had just started a magistracy at UCD, in Ireland, so the money from such a contract would be great, but the inconvenience due to the fact that ten days to go halfway around the world seemed to outweigh the benefits. After a long search for the soul, I decided to leave. If the contract turned out to be too complicated, since I had never worked as a technical writer before, I really had nothing to lose. So, on October 19, 2000, I went to Santa Clara, not realizing what we had in court.
Within twenty-four hours after arriving in Santa Clara, life suddenly changed dramatically. I was booked to an apartment in Milpitas. I got my own booth in a huge building owned by Nortel, one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world, and was introduced to the team I worked with. One of the members of this team was Bob, a dazzling, playful, very likeable guy who loved nature and a passion for art, literature and Irish culture. We immediately became friends. We spend the most wonderful ten-day tours to the Bay area, having dinner at exotic restaurants in Palo Alto and San Jose, walking along the glorious beach on the Seashore, looking at the magnificent libraries and bookstores, buying long dresses in Capitol and even getting to Crosby, Stream , Nash and Young at the Beach Theater.
When ten days ended, I did not want to leave. I promised to return for Christmas. Bob was planning to visit me in Ireland. Thus, within a few months, life has become a fussy maelstrom between two continents. I quickly began to fall under the spell of the true spirit of California. I always thought it was a sunny haven for artists and hippies, for movie stars and revolutionaries. Of course, this was a setup for a social revolution in the 1960s. I never realized how great its incredible natural beauty was: the thousands of acres of stunning forests and hills that were marked in parks throughout the state; miles of glorious beaches dotted along the entire west coast; a variety of cities and towns, from settlements with gold bags, to Spanish missions and iconic cities.
Of course, Santa Clara is located in the center of Silicon Valley, renamed the high-tech industry, where work is fiercely competitive, and perfectionist standards are very expensive. I received a work visa and worked for several of these companies doing contract work. IT workers are usually well paid, but many long hours are expected in return, and no matter how much effort you put into your work, you can still be let go, not as much as a handshake in the blink of an eye. Then there were other harsh realities of life that stuck with me: the execution of the barbaric death penalty, the number of homeless people, especially in San Francisco, the often heartless attitude associated with poverty with weakness or laziness, high levels of smog from traffic jams and industrial fumes and extremely overpriced housing and rental prices that make most people settle in other parts of the United States.
Despite its social problems, Santa Clara County contains some of the most interesting cities and beautiful parks in the Bay area. There is the small Asian city of Mountain View with its incredible array of restaurants; the city of San José with its old Art Deco hotels and Spanish-style buildings; Los Gatos with its charming antique and designer shops; Saratoga, a beautiful old town at the foot of the Santa Cruz mountains. Some of the incredible parks I have visited include the Wasse Canyon Forest, the Great Basin State Park, the Sanborn Skyline Park, the Henry Coe State Park and Lake Coyote in Mount Hamilton.
The city of Santa Clara is the main administrative center of this area. The most beautiful buildings are the university and the mission. Throughout California, there were twenty-one missions created by the Franciscan Order since 1769. The areas where missions were built gradually turned into major cities and towns. So it was in the city of Santa Clara.
For three years I lived with Bob and his four adorable cats in my apartment in Lick Mill, East Santa Clara, at the historic Lick Mansion. James Lick was one of the richest people in America in the mid-1800s, and he built a fabulous mansion and a mill, both of which are still in pristine condition. Every day I go down the Natural Area of Ulystak, once inhabited by the Olon Indians. I often dreamed of what it was like to live in Santa Clara, long before the white man ever set foot on his sacred forests, hills and beaches.
Over the years, I have made many incredible trips with Bob to cities such as Mountain View and Santa Cruz, to the cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles and Sacramento, to magnificent beaches, forests, deserts and mountains of incredible beauty. Santa Cruz has become my favorite place, with its beautiful bookstores, excellent coffee shops and fancy prisoners. I attended meditation centers in Redwood City and Mountain View, and also practiced the binding class. There has always been so much to do, watch old movies in beautiful cinemas, go to the mountains or surf in the Seascape.
We traveled across the breadth and breadth of the California landscape: snow-capped mountains on the way to Lake Tahoe; lush autumnal vineyards in Napa and Sonoma; the magical red forests in Santa Cruz and the giant sequoias in Yosemite; the magnificence of the Pacific in the summer; the barren desert of the Mojave Desert in the winter, where there is little to break the monotony of the scorched earth, with the exception of the lonely Joshua tree. Sometimes we travel back roads in the mountains of Santa Cruz in the greens of Bob, soaking up luxurious views in the turquoise sky and in the sparkling blankets of stars. On longer trips we will take a bob truck. Then we often turned off the highway and endured several hours of rest before resuming our travels.
