Cultural Exchange Without Leaving Home

 

Last night my cultural exchange student, better said as ‘our’ cultural exchange student, prepared dinner for seven.

 

And the kid can cook.

 

I know the difference when someone mails it in from the kitchen. How? Because someone I know tried doing it for years.

 

Me.

 

Now I’m much better and able to tell the difference between caring about what’s on the table, and caring how it’s made.

 

I’ve always been a fan of cultural exchange. In high school the good wrestlers competed for a chance to take a trip. We had wrestlers from Japan stay with us. Hello Yukio Sakanaka. Hi Norio Yamaguchi.

 

My senior year I qualified for a cultural exchange trip to …  Iowa. The language barrier wasn’t as bad as you’d think.

 

Keeping an open mind to cultural exchange without leaving home, every morning I check my day-after google analytics for the top ten cities reading boomerpdx.

 

Yesterday’s catch: Tigard, Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco, led from the top showing a West Coast trend followed by East Lansing, New York, Boston, and Detroit before Eugene and Wilsonville showed up.

 

My analysis? I cover the I-5 corridor from Seattle to San Fran with a few east coast megalopolises added for flavor.

 

What’s happening in my blog reader cities worth mention? You’ve come to the right place.

 

Tigard blogs

 

The closest thing to a blog on the first five search pages on ‘Best Tigard Oregon blog’ was a dentist office. Good job Tigard Family Dental. I’ve written five pages of posts mentioning Tigard and didn’t make the list, and I live here. Damn that google.

 

Portland blogs

 

The front page of google showed one blogger working it. Love, Rachel.

 

Searching boomerpdx for Portland returns forty seven pages of posts. With ten posts per page? Still not on the first five pages of a portland blog search. Hmmm. At least if Rachel needs the best dentist in Tigard we know where to send her.

 

Seattle blogs

 

This city of mine is the leader. Like Portland the top sites showing on a Seattle blog search were aggregate sites, collections of links, but not Rachel. Different Rachel than Portland’s Rachel?

 

I’ve only mentioned Seattle on ninety posts here. Changing my name to Rachel if things don’t pick up.

 

San Francisco blogs

 

What to do, where to eat, who to read, but nothing on the first page of San Francisco blog search is there a blog, a one man show, a point of view unclouded by professional editing and structure.

 

This is boomerpdx. Where is boomertigard, boomersea, boomersfo? Boomerpdx showed up on google more for images used than anything else. Any mention, any reference, is another step taken.

 

Where it goes from there is another question.

 

PS: This page shows up twice on the first page of a ‘Portland baby boomer’ search.

How was last night’s dinner really?