San Francisco a sight to behold

EPHRAIM KEORENG
Staff Writer | Friday March 26, 2010 00:00

The splendour of San Francisco is marked by a plethora of ships docked on the coast of the city, which hugs the Pacific Ocean in a perpetual embrace that defines the relationship of the landmass and the sea.

On its edge, the coastal city offers seafood cuisine of various delicacies. For one coming from landlocked Botswana, where the sea is something that we see in movies, you can imagine my anxiety when we walked into one San Francisco restaurant on our first night!

The three-course meal, which included shrimp, vegetable and other food items, was a delightful experience and from then on I was hooked to seafood. I even promised myself I would look up some seafood restaurant in Gaborone to indulge my palate.

Outside the restaurant, under the starry night, lay a scenic beauty painted by the coastal city's historic Golden Gate Bridge and the famous Alcatraz prison.

Alcatraz Island, also referred to as The Rock, after a 007 Sean Connery movie of the same name, used to be a military prison and later a federal prison. Notorious prisoners from all over the United States of America (US) were imprisoned at the prison and our guide said no one ever escaped from it.  The water around the prison is very cold, he said.

One prisoner who tried to run away, made it out of the prison only to come back after nearly freezing to death because of the cold, 'and oh he was so happy to be back inside the prison,' said the guide.

As I looked at the island from an area by the Golden Gate Bridge, I shivered at the thought of anyone trying to swim without the aid of scuba diving equipment in such a situation. However I was reassured by the tour guide's remark that the island has been closed and now become a historic tourist site. It can be accessed by ferry, especially around Fisherman's Wharf.

Then we navigated our way around San Francisco Botanical Garden and into the residences. San Francisco is a melting pot of cultures from all over the globe. It is populated by Hispanics, Caucasians, Asians and many more - the whole world meets here. 

'We have both kinds of people here. There is the Chinese, Russians, Japanese, Indians, Africans and just about everyone from everywhere. My wife is a Japanese,' said the tour guide, himself a US citizen born and bred in the coastal city.

The excursion was an informative as well as an opportune moment for a journalist who is always going through deadlines to unwind and enjoy nature's scintillating beauty.

Of course our greatest joy was seeing the headquarters of Facebook in Palo Alto, the world's highest growing social networking site. It was among the main objective of our trip to the world's powerful nation. We were a 30+ strong group of Social Media journalists from various continents. Organised by the US State Department's Foreign Press Centre, it was aimed at giving journalists an in-depth insight into how the New Media (Social Media networks) can be used in journalism, foreign policy and other things.

Barry Schnitt, director of Policy Communications, said at Facebook on a daily basis 120 million users login onto the site, with six billion minutes spent on it the worldwide.

Then next was a visit to Twitter headquarters where we met Biz Stone, co-founder of the social site, who related the story of the birth of his company.

'We were working at a different company and Twitter was a side project. It subsumed all my attention. When we started, not everyone understood what we were doing. We wanted a system where friends will know what others were doing through SMS (short message service),' he said.

He explained that Twitter is about the triumph of humanity on the use of technology.

'During the war in Georgia in 2008, people used Twitter to communicate with each other, especially motorists who advised others on where to find fuel at gas (petrol) stations that had not been destroyed,' he said.

The Google headquarters located at Mountain View in San Francisco was another sight to behold. Dubbed the Googolplex, the building has offices, health spas, medical facilities, restaurant and everything to cater for people working at the place.

'It would be difficult for one to skip work by claiming to be sick,' observed one colleague.  As we intermingled with the Google officials this reporter tried to verify rumours that Google was considering moving out of China in reaction to its uneasy relationship with the communist government over press freedom matters, but no one was ready to talk about it. 'I cannot comment about that,' said one of the communications officers.

However this week Monday, Google, in its official blog released a statement that it has gone against its earlier decision to censor the use of Google in China.

'Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in Mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong. Users in Hong Kong will continue to receive their existing uncensored, traditional Chinese service, also from Google.com.hk,' reads the statement.

The tour which was in two parts, where we spent half of the week in San Francisco and the other in Washington DC, saw us start the first day at the US Department of State, where we had the privilege of meeting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The security, as you can tell, is very high and just like at the airports, we had to go through the metal detectors.At the Treaty Room, just a few metres from Clinton's office, no cameras and recorders are allowed so we relied on our notebooks to record the words of America's most powerful female politician. We had just sat been asked to sit on chairs arranged in a horseshoe pattern. We were told to 'leave the middle chair unoccupied' and being journalists we wanted to know why, but the aides were tight-lipped. Though our schedule did not include meeting Clinton we became suspicious that we would soon meet President Obama's foreign affairs chief.

Soon she was there and everyone clapped, excited that they had guessed right. She greeted us and gave a brief comment on press freedom and journalism before asking us to pose a few questions.

Ugandan journalist John Njoroge wanted to know what the US's position on his government's anti-gay law was and was thus answered:

'We value our relationship with Uganda. We are against a death penalty law against homosexuals. What can be done is to ensure that it's (homosexuality) not harmful to kids or other people. Who knows, maybe research will later prove that there is a scientific reason why people are homosexual,' said Mrs Clinton.

However, not everyone got to ask their questions as the meeting was a brief one.

Last week Sunday marked the last day of our week-long tour of the US. It was a great experience, especially for me. For the first time in my life, I was close to Kenya, Israel, Palestine, Russia and many other countries that I have only seen in the Atlas through the journalists who came from these countries. It was a good sight indeed, with the war taking place between Palestine and Israel, you  would have expected to see some tension between people from the two states, but the journalists were on quite good terms. A lot of alliances were formed and the most interesting was the one we dubbed the Smoking Team, made up of Khaled Eleketyar of Israel, Petrina Zinck (Fiji), Jamil Karaki (Kuwait) and many others. Most places where we went were No-Smoking zones and this group would plead and cajole the organisers to give them a few minutes to sneak out for a smoke and where possible the amiable Matthew Buffington and Nicole Alberico, both officials of the State Department, would oblige with a smile. The alliance and many others underscored one fact: that as human beings we are one, an example that you would want to see throughout the world especially where people are involved in endless fighting.