American Dream

 A typical middle-class house

I was walking through the neighbourhood today looking at the residential houses. The houses in the area we live are very middle class: not exactly ranch style but not MacMansions either. In fact I was surprised to find out that lots of them are no bigger than an apartment we live in. I could not see backyards but the general impression was that nobody had a vegetable garden there. The lawns were barely cared for and there was not a hint of individuality: all pretty much generic houses. All have lawns in the front yard and garages. Very few have just an empty lot - no grass.

Anyway, it got me thinking. A few decades ago owning your own house was called an American dream. And this is an interesting cultural phenomenon, we don't hear, for example, about a Chinese dream or Italian dream. Yet everybody knows what an American dream is. America is not the only country where you can buy a house though admittedly more people live in their own houses than in other countries.

 A typical MacMansion

But if we look at it closer, what shall we see. Like I mentioned before, lots of them are not that bigger than an apartments. You have to pay for everything like maintenance and repairs. And the main reason: why do so many people want 30 years mortgage? The word mortgage means "an agreement to death". They end up paying much more than this agreement is. I personally think that the average house is just not worth the asking price but than I am not the best judge of it.

Robert Kiyosaki in his excellent book Rich Dad Poor Dad explained that house is actually a liability and not an asset like most people are led to believe. A banker actually said that "now is the time to buy". She said that while the country is still in economic recession!

 A house in a prosperous neighbourhood

We had a chat with one of the residents who put his house for rent. He said that he commuted to Riverside while his wife commuted to Carlsbad. Both towns are at least 60 miles away from Temecula! Commuting 60 miles a day is not my idea of fun. For the last 2 year I had to commute 7 miles and I got fed up with it. let's see 60 miles commute is at least 2 hours every day you are not get paid for. Add 8 hours of work and we have 10. Looks like they just have enough time in their house to sleep before they go back to work. All this wasted hours so they could have a house in the "country". A dram fulfilled?

I don't think so.

Temecula City Hall

Tanya at the Temecula City Hall. (Tom photo)

Tom at the Same Place. (Tanya photo)

View to the West from Temecula City Hall Fountain. (Tanya photo)

This afternoon we visited the Temecula City Hall for the first time.


The building is almost brand new and it is first class. The architecture is inspired by the old California Missions with a strong touch of The Alhambra.


In fact it is just the place a calif might want to live in--and that's not too bad. Pretty fountains--some beautiful rare potted plants--quiet--clean--well lighted--air conditioned. We had the same reaction as when we visited the State pyramid building in Sacramento: These bureaucrats sure know how to treat themselves well!

This fine new building is located on the Old Town side of the freeway at the edge of the few square blocks of restored old-fashioned buildings which make up the Temecula Old Town--that's why the view above looks like a turn of the century--the nineteenth century that is--town with traditional mainstreet buildings and two-lane main street. 

Of course, the fact is, this is an illusion.


Present day Temecula has nothing to do with any Old Town. It is a late twentieth Century Southern California sprawl designed for automobile locomotion--period. Single family ranch-style houses-- shopping  malls--acres of paved parking lots and hundreds of thousands of cars--that's Temecula.


The day was just about perfect-- warm spring sunlight passing through the Temecula mist and little traffic--we shared the thought: This is not such a bad place to live!

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Temecula Museum

 The Museum

There is a nice little museum in "Old Town Temecula". 

Old Town Temecula is a small group of older restored buildings--all that is left of the original village of Temecula--what was here before the "new"freeway brought the flood of people twenty years or so ago.

Steve, the host on our first visit took the time to lead us around and tell us some of the history of the town.

On our second visit we went by ourselves to the upper floor where we saw a collection of cameras and had fun trying on  costumes of the American pioneers in this part of California and taking the photos in this post.

Tanya in old fashioned dress.

The Gunfighter

Rodeo Star

Temecula Tom

So when you want to do something cultural and fun in Temecula, CA-- we recommend a visit to the town museum.

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Temecula Hilltop

Y

 Tanya Temecula Hilltop. (Photo Tomasito 2011)

This hilltop is a ten minute walk from our apartment.

Ynez Street, one of Temecula's main thoroughfares, crosses the upper photo--passing Duck Pond and a very busy crossroad, Rancho California,  to the freeways and shopping malls.

On the other side of the background hills to the west lies the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base and the Pacific Ocean.


We are having a nice rainy spring so the hills are green and the air is humid and cool.


It is a pretty nice environment.

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Grocery Stores

A word about Temecula Grocery Stores.


They are big, boring,expensive, poor in quality and approachable only by automobile.


Our problem is that we got accustomed to shopping in two very good grocery stores in Escondido: Vallarta market, a ten minute walk from our apartment, and Northgate market, a ten minute drive.


Both of these grocery stores are "Mexican" style supermercados--catering mainly to Mexicans or perhaps  I should say, "Spanish speaking people", which form the demographic majority of Escondido residents.


These are BIG grocery stores which combine bakery, fast-food eatery shops along with the usual foodstuffs.


An odd thing we noticed about them when we first moved to Escondido is that though they would be full of customers WE were often the ONLY gringos there. When we got used to them we used to play our own little game: "How Many Gringos Can You Spot Here Today?"--and we were usually the only ones in the store.


The check-out clerks were all bi-lingual--which we found meant they spoke Spanish and English. Their fruits and vegetables were plentiful and cheap and the Muzak tunes were down-home Mexican. They offered a wide variety of foods--their meat departments sold everything imaginable from both north and south of the border and their processed foods came from all over the world--at cheap prices.


Here  we find  the less expensive supermarkets: "Food 4 Less" and "Win Co",  and the high-priced stores: "Von's", "Fresh and Easy", "Ralph's" and "Albertson's"--and no Mexican supermercados at all.


The prices in these markets--even the less expensive ones--are ten to twenty percent higher  than the Escondido Mexican markets for EVERYTHING--  and the fruits and vegetable departments especially are far poorer in selection and quality.


There are NO walk-in customers at all since these stores can only be reached from their own huge parking lots. This does not sound important, but it is. The Grocery stores in Temecula are separated by miles of highway and can ONLY be reached by automobile. No car--no food. This may not seem like a big deal, but as gas prices continue to rise (over four dollars per gallon now) it will become more important.


All the grocery stores here in Temecula, thirty miles north of Escondido, are "gringo" supermarkets--and THAT, unfortunately,  means all alike:  expensive and heartlessly boring. Why do gringos put up with this? We are forced to the obvious conclusion: Because they are stupid.


I can say this knowledgeably because I AM a gringo.

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Jelly Roll

Today we baked the jelly roll and it turned out marvelously. It was our first try. The roll became history in half an hour. It's very easy to make and we are going to make another one very soon.  

Hemet , CA

We drove the forty or so miles out to see Hemet, CA today.

Hemet is another new town like Temecula--or maybe even stranger.


It wasn't hardly there ten years ago either--it was a tiny desert town 20 years ago. 

Now it is a mass of what we call McMansions--identical huge houses on tiny lots built by the thousand on virgin desert land. This land--which was desert or alfalfa fields not long ago--is now a patchwork of housing and shopping malls. 

All the malls are identical too--same stores with same merchandise laid out in identical ways. (They only allow creativity at the corporate level.)


It is REALLY depressing if you think about it very much.


And all these identical people commute to somewhere to work--maybe forty or fifty miles a day. Rivers and oceans of gasoline consumed. (Gasoline today a few cents a gallon less than four dollars per.)


And the children in these instant communities have never heard a rooster crow or a cow moo. They have never planted nor harvested a garden. Life, to them, is this identical existence in Macmansionland.


This is not good.


What is easy to foresee is abandoned old McMansions returning to the dust and thousands of displaced people trying to find work and survive somehow in LA.

Hemet is a disaster waiting to happen.

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Temecula

What have we got ourselves into?

The first night here in an apartment full of boxes and 'stuff' we could heat the neighbour's cough, banging of doors and similar sounds. Surely the place has walls that are too thin. Considering that everything was of that superb Chinese quality that you can depend on, we though we got ourselves into deep trouble.

Luckily it turned out not so bad but it's still does not compare favourably with the previous place. The balcony is nice. We lost a desk while unloading: the piece of junk just fell apart and now we have no desk. Because of French window and "kitchen", if you can call it that, there would not be a place for it anyway. I don't like junk in the middle of the room. I like plenty of space.

I will tell you a little bit about Temecula. We found a little brochure about Temecula and it was so overhyped in the old days that now we suffer the consequences. The town is no more and no less as a typical new American town, which means lots of housing development, shopping centers or rather conglomerates of shoppig centers and , surprisingly, patches of undeveloped land among them. We drove for about 3 miles and all that time there were nothing but shopping centers, one right after another.

There are a few factories in town, which hopefully provide people here with jobs. But we don't know for sure, it seems illegal Mexicans found their ways even here. People here in general seem rather aloof and not very friendly.

Miniature Kitchen

I am learning to cook in our new apartment's miniature kitchen.


The size is about six by eight and it has everything a kitchen is supposed to have. The neat part is you don't have to move your feet much--you just turn in place from refer to stove to sink to pull-out cutting board. Reaching up for the dishes and ingredients is pretty easy too. It's all right there.


No room for two people in this kitchen--it's an intimate  pas de deux if it happens.


Serving is easy too. Heck, you are out of the kitchen and to the dining table in less than a couple of feet--and the dining room, as it were, is all carpeted so you better  not spill the soup!


Now I keep my elbows IN while I am cooking. No flamboyance or Julia Child tricks! And chopping must be carefully controlled--you don't want to flip some cabbage onto the carpet.


Not complaining, just stating facts.


All the appliances are brand new Chinese quality--carpet the same--I suspect even the new paint and the cheap linoleum are from the very far east


The light is not good. Located at the back of the apartment far away from the large french windows which form  the wall on the north side of the room and tucked behind a sort of half-bar situation--not the kind you sit at and not big enough to use for cooking work or anything else-- the "kitchen" (I put it in quotation marks because it is really just a dark corner containing the usual kitchen equipment)-- is almost the darkest part of the apartment--but not quite as dark as the toilet-shower closet--which gets no natural light at all.


Oddly, the electric light switch for the kitchen is located in the apartment entryway--you have to walk around the around the "bar" from the "kitchen" to turn on the light and the electric fixture is so dim you can hardly see the sink or the tiny work surface where you are supposed to prepare your food anyway-- even in the daytime.


We think it would be a good idea if the architects who design these apartments had to LIVE in them for a few years! Maybe then they would not be so concerned with saving money for the owners but would actually THINK about what is best for the residents. Let the punishment fit the crime.


If this new apartment is so miserable then, you might ask, WHY did we rent it? I'll tell you why. It's a LOT better than the others we looked at in Temecula! And cheaper. And very quiet!

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The Move

Our latest move was only about thirty miles distance. 


This time we had selected  an apartment BEFORE we moved. This simple thing eliminated some of the stress.


We also had the sense NOT to move our stuff by "Budget" truck rental company. Instead we rented a sixteen-foot Penske truck and it was a wonderful experience. (I LOVE to be a temporary trucker--it is such fun to look down on all the little cars from a grand high-up cab!)


We can move ALL our impedimenta OURSELVES in about three hours. We have learned to own only objects we can easily lift. We had a heavy computer desk which we managed to load onto the truck but which fell apart when we tried to load it onto a hand truck to bring it up the sidewalk to our new apartment. So it arrived in our new apartment in pieces and we tossed 'em in the trash dumpster the next morning.


We had accumulated quite a few books--several hundred pounds of them--in the ten years since we have lived in California--but we had packed them in small boxes weighing no more than fifteen or so pounds each so they were easy to carry. (Oddly enough we have decided to give most of them away now--we will retain only those which fit into our one small  bookcase.) There are usually good public libraries in every town in California so we seldom re-read any of our own books anyway.


The rest of our stuff are things we use almost daily.


I have collected about twenty papier mache "works of art"--things I have crafted over the last three years (my three wasted years, I call them). Some are pretty big but all of them are light weight  and they all fit into the storage closet that comes with the apartment.

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New apartment

So we have moved.

It feels strange. We've stayed in Escondido for quite a while and became a little attached to the place. The place was nice, the only real drawback was a noisy street right outside the window. Everything else was fine, especially compared to the new place in Temecula.

The new apartment is not bad but it has a really dumb floor plan, the most striking features being the kitchen and the bathroom. The "kitchen" is no more than a dark nook where only one person can stay at a time. Hardly any working space for people who like to cook. It does have all the appliances and they are all new. Chinese fine quality that you can depend on.

The kitchen light cannot be controlled from the kitchen. Kudos to the architect for that. 

The dining area is carpeted: truly stupid thing to do as there is no way to keep crumbs completely off the floor. We had it once before but at least other features were good.

The big room is okay, we have a remodeled balcony, which is quite spacious. Today we had our 5 o'clock tea on a balcony right outside. Nice.

The dumbest features of design were reserved for the bathroom: first of all, it's divided into 2 areas and the part with the sink is carpeted: how stupid is that? The tub is the smallest we ever had and the water pressure is low. This shower is not very conducive to dawdling. We liked to dawdle in the shower of our Escondido apartment because it was just perfect: full water pressure, nice feel of the water jet, the temperature stayed stable and did not jump. In a word, everything you can expect from a perfect shower. Every apartment should have a shower like that.


We like to have a window in our bathroom and this time we are half way there. There is a window in the part with a sink. It has stained glass that casts a strange light like in a cathedral. It looks like an electric light from another room but it's natural. Unfortunately this window cannot be opened. Well, at least we have a window.

As a matter of fact it turned out that only this particular building (and one more) have windows in the bathroom and it was a decisive factor in choosing this particular apartment. We inquired about it and it turned out that it was vacant. So now we live in it.

I think that whoever designs these apartments must live in them for a while to see how it actually feels. And the more uncomfortable they are, the longer they should live there. Let the people who actually live in them decide how comfortable they are.

Anyway, we almost unpacked, set our computers and now are ready to explore Temecula. Temecula, here we come!