The Second Jab

Welcome, healthy reader, as the pandemic fades out with a whimper, not a bang. I'm sure there are plenty of shocks and twists in the tail left, but here in Santa Clara County we moved to the legendary Yellow Tier this week, allowing many things to resemble what I'd call normality, but here for some reason they call normalcy.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Of course, the thing that's driving the return to some degree of... er... normalness is vaccination. This week we once again visited Levi's Stadium. Levi didn't seem to be there, but in his place were many cheery folks that were only too pleased to stick needles in our arms so Bill Gates can track our every move. Bill, if you're listening, I can tell you now that I more-or-less never leave Palo Alto.

Our first vaccination was a story of a lot of queuing, and a huge number of people. And you'd imagine that all the people that were being vaccinated with us would be back at roughly the same time for the second dose, so imagine our shock when we found there were no queues, no waiting, and very few people around. It's hard to know how to explain this - I have to assume a lot of the folks we saw last time were actually second dosers.

Anyway, it's done now, and after 24 hours of feeling a bit like I'd got a cold, everything was fine and I'm now glowing with anti-COVID protection, something like a cross between a Chernobyl survivor and the Ready-Brek kids.

As I mentioned, here in Santa Clara County we're now in the Yellow Tier, which as per the pic last week means that cafes and bars can start to seat people for indoor service. I didn't register this until my local coffee haunt, Verve Coffee Roasters, appeared to have some folks sitting inside when I went to get coffee there on Wednesday morning. I'm still hopeful that Palo Alto will retain much of the outdoor seating it has grown during the pandemic - firstly, I'm not ready to sit indoors and eat a meal yet, and secondly, it's much more pleasant to have the main street here shut off and full of people than full of cars. Dare I say it, it lends the place a more European vibe.

But I'm sure you've come to the blog for another instalment of "British Person Rails in Futility at the US", and I don't want to disappoint. The next step in the process of buying my car from the leasing people was to get something called a cashier's check and post it to them. OK, so step one: what's a cashier's check? Well, it's a cheque (note the spelling) which is drawn on the bank's account rather than yours; slightly less likely to bounce. To get one of these, you just need to visit your bank, give your name, rank and serial number (which, presumably they can just read from my Bill Gates tracking chip now?), and you're golden.

So, I bravely headed for the bank. I walk through the door, and barely have I closed it before I'm greeted by some cheery gent behind the counter shouting "WELCOME IN!!!" at me. That's fairly typical when you enter some kind of retail establishment in these parts, but not really what you expect of a bank. Then, in the relatively long walk from the door to the counter, this dude tries surprisingly hard to engage me in conversation. Now I'm from the UK, so it's all I can do to resist stopping him and reminding him this is a BANK and therefore I'm here for a TRANSACTION, not a relationship. But hey, as I've said before, when in Rome...

When I get to the counter, we talk about what I want, and then it gets scary. Chatty dude tells me I have to fill in a check myself, to pay the bank the required funds first. Two scary things here: the last time I wrote a cheque was probably 2015 or something, and I've never done it in the US. Given that checks, or even cheques, are something out of the 1800s, I summon up my finest Copperplate and fill it in to pay Ye Olde Bank of the West an appropriate sum.

Like in the UK, a US check consists of the sum of money written in numbers, and also in words. But the space in which I'm supposed to write the sum in words has the word 'dollars' at the end of it... so wait, am I only supposed to put the dollar bit in here? What about the cents?

Well, I just write out the dollar sum, then my mate behind the counter points out I have to put in the cents. So I go to write 39 cents... and he says, "No, because it's dollars you have to write 39/100".

At this point I have to assume he's just taking the mick. I mean, what, really? I'm really glad that 39 and 100 don't have any common factors, otherwise I'd be tempted to cancel the fraction down to its lowest terms. Anyway, against my better judgment I just write "39/100" and give it back to him.

"Now you have to endorse it on the back."

Well, the check has never done anything to me, although I assume it may have parking fines or something in its past. I have basically no idea what this means either, so there's then a silly sequence of me turning the check over, looking mystified, and him walking me through the process of signing in the right place like I'm some kind of imbecile.

Anyway, we got there in the end, and with a cheery wave I was on my way with a cashier's check... which I then had to post to the finance people. You know, someone should really invent a way to send funds electronically.

To end on a cheery note, the especially dry winter here means we seem to be in for a great rest of 2021:

Ah well - I'm sure it won't come to all that.

Well, today is Eurovision, which is something we'll definitely be tuning into, although Denmark departing in the semi-finals is a real disappointment. Until next week, dear reader, enjoy that year-round fire season!