Hitting on six years removed from my college graduation, I still find myself fighting for a precious table seat with SFSU students at the local Borders. Though I’m really just here to leech their wifi while sipping on an iced tea, Sui’s the one reviewing notes for her board exam. Due to the supposedly insufficient lighting at my place (I totally spent time trying to fix this), we’ve hopped from cafe to library within a 15-mile radius for four straight days searching for quiet, wifi-enabled places of study.
Call me old-fashioned, lazy, and easily-distracted; I don’t get the appeal of seeking out a crowded public area for study or work.
It was, Cal Day, Berkeley, the semester before I would officially start my college tenure. Upon a stroll down infamous Telegraph Avenue was when I saw him: my first interesting – well, “interesting” is probably too strong of a word, more like “atypical” – bum.
As with many things Berkeley, bumming has really been risen to a supposed art form. The dude was tranquil, uncaring of his potential clientele save for his simple, honest sign: “Need money for weed”.
A continuation from the previous post…
Other than being the murder capital of the country, I guess the District of Columbia is also known for its federal government buildings and assortment of historical monuments. Beyond Sui’s optometry conference, we didn’t have much of an itinerary.
Which meant we spent most of our time hanging out around the National Mall.
As with any metropolitan area, living outside of the main tourist area saves a bundle on hotel fare; we stayed at inoffensive Crystal City, a mere twenty Metro minutes away from central D.C. but otherwise an artificial piece of overgrown shopping morass. Sui did her research here, and made sure we slept far away from the murder.
Naming yourself an oxymoron is a cute way to generate a catchphrase. It happens to work a lot better for an actual cute game than a has-been gambling town.
Sui and I happened upon the latter sometime last week (and we beat the former this week) when we went back to the snowy slopes to make another run at winter sporting. We both started anew with snowboarding last year, and this year Sui wanted give skiing a chance ().
She pretty much gave up after 2 hours of floundering with four waxy, slippery snow sticks.
I am a tentative home owner.
“Tentative”, as I’m not yet sitting in my new shack of a condo, looking out at the faux waterfall and enjoying the audio cacophony of SFO flights above. Seems like all I’m doing nowadays is waiting and stressing out about waiting; I see why they build a lot of padding into the entire home purchasing process. Of course, when the elements gather, there’s a 2-3 hour flurry as agents and brokers scramble to save the deal, all poetically puncutuated by fifty copies of my signature.
Zeon and Sam dragged us this past Saturday to Mama’s in San Francisco, one of the best places for breakfast and brunch around the Bay Area and in retrospect worth visiting despite the long line and drizzly weather.
The rest of the day was spent at the Exploratorium, a kid-friendly science exhibit showcasing rudimentary physics and biology; our highlight was a romp through the Tactile Dome, an obstacle course shrouded in complete darkness which actually takes a little effort to navigate through (not recommended is ramming your face into the walls). More pictures found here.
