I moved to this little town a while ago and it's just such a paradise.

Trees are everywhere, so are biking lanes and bikers. The neighbors are quiet but extremely friendly. Kids are active - often seen on their bikes - but not noisy or naughty. Colorful birds fly around, and they must be singing some kind of happy songs. Sometimes, little dogs bark from the backyards so that passersby knows their existences.

So I woke up this morning in a sunny day, as almost always the case. It's one of the blessings that many Californians tend to take it for granted, unless they are east coast transplants, or had lived in beautiful but rainy and dark Pacific Northwest places before.

Just when I was humming the song to myself "what a wondeful world", I found that I was running out of vegetables, in particular my favorite carrots and mushrooms.

Minutes later I was on my bike to the nearby shopping mall. Technically speaking, it's not the typical cookie cutter shopping mall that you would normally find in continental America. It's more like a village and a few merchants who are also villagers, or your neighbors next door.

I walked around in the grocery store and grabbed a few fresh carrots, mushrooms, green peppers, and aha, some lovely Alaska smoked salmon steaks and a fresh bread stick. The store is small enough that you don't need a roller skate to go from one side to another, but it's big enough to have pretty much everything you need from frozen food to fresh salad. And never did I have to deal with long lines whenever shopping here.  Most shoppers seem to live closely, so they don't buy a lot of stuff like in Costco.

Outside the store, I saw smokes and people doing BBQ. Heck, that's a nice spot but isn't this is a public place, I wondered.  Then I saw the price sign for different food.  It turned out that it's part of the store's business. It's hard to tell from far as it looks so much like family BBQ and picnic, and a few kids were joyfully eating with their parents on the tables under the sunshine. How lovely.

Then I went to the dry cleaner to pick up my clothes. The store manager was reading a newspaper. We chatted last time, he told me that he's originally from Iran and the name is Frank.

"How are you doing, Frank?"  I asked.  

"Very good. Thank you.  How about you?"  Frank replied when he's searching my clothes.

"Good. So President Obama sent the greetings for Persian New Year, huh ?"  I have a few Persian friends and knew that last Friday was the Persian New Year.

"Yeah. Hopefully the government out there got the message. But the people running the government now are idiots."  Frank firstly relaxed, and then became a bit serious.

"Well, let's hope so. You have a good weekend, Frank".  I put the clothes on my back.

"You have a very nice weekend, young man".  Frank sit down and read his newspaper again.






Phil Colin's "Just another day in paradise" MTV