Driving down the street passing by offices for most of the major players in my industry as just surreal: eBay, Intel, NVidia, BroadCom.. even some new comers, Evernote.

I’ve heard Peter Day (BBC World Service Business podcast) talk about how important Silicon Valley is - but when you see these names and how close they are it really brings it home.

Knowing that staff from these companies socialise together and the mixing of ideas, insights, and concepts that come from that - well it is easy to understand why there are so many startups in this area.

But does that mean that the same success can’t be had else where ? Well no. But you can understand the advantages of being here, or at least visiting here would bring.

That doesn’t mean of course that all the ideas that come out of here are going to be great - I in particular think that google glasses concept is just nuts. If glasses were such a good idea, we wouldn’t have contact lenses, and hose people who didn’t need glasses would all be buying empty frames… But hey ho…

It is now time to head home. Honestly, it’s been educational and fun, but now it’s time to head back home and I’m looking forward to that too. I’m even looking forward to my long, and delayed JetBlue flight to JFK … once I get there I’m hoping to get some sleep or an hour or two before meeting my family and heading back to Dublin. It’s been two weeks without them - and I’ve really felt it. To most people the idea of a 7 hour flight with two babies, while tired yourself, wouldn’t seem like a good idea - but right now, it sounds like great craic!

But I do have to share my last bit of California wonder - I’m sitting here, in a bar, typing this on an iPhone via a bluetooth keyboard, while listening to music from my iPhone on some bluetooth headphones, and I’m bopping away in my seat - yet as I look up, i’m not drawing a single glance - which is impressive, given my big hair. Maybe there just a new definition of geek here in birth place of it all ?