Thursday, January 31, 2013

San Francisco, Part 2


This is probably my favourite picture that I took the whole trip, one of those that's a happy confluence of moments.  The Bay Bridge, fading into the ombre background, the pier cutting gently across the water.  The lamp in stark relief.  Even the walker at the peak of his stride.  More exciting for me was that I snatched the chance to snap this through the bus window at a brief traffic light, my lens pressed right up to the glass.

San Francisco was a gamut of such fleeting moments, now frozen in time.


There was a weird kind of fire in a glass case in the lobby of our hotel and it really fascinated me.  Fire is mesmerising in the dancing shapes it can create.  I was lucky enough to be able to freeze some of them.


At some point, we managed to give the kids a little bit of shopping time (and stole some for ourselves).  The buildings on the way to Westfield were quite beautiful.  Each time I looked at something with Victorian influence, I ached for England.  Despite everything that has happened (or maybe because of it), I left a big piece of my heart there.


In the mall, we ate a massive Cabo Chop salad, complete with a whole side of Roadhouse shoestring onions.  I just about died.  I sneaked off to do a little bit of shopping in Bath and Body Works and Vera Bradley afterwards, and felt like one of those American girls in the YouTube videos.


We took a walk down to the cable car stand after that, S in her beautiful metallic Melissa flats.  I'm not a big fan of the clunkier platforms, but I can definitely get on board with these.  


I have no idea what S and I are doing in this picture, but I kind of love it.  (Sidenote:  Awesome cowl sweater type thing from Uniqlo.  All my winter clothes were from Uniqlo including a delicious 210gram light down jacket that kept me toasty and could be compressed into the mass of a fat umbrella and thrown into a handbag.  Unbelievable.)

The sun started to set and we stood there and watched the trams trundle up onto the turntable in the gloaming.  We watched them whirr and turn and come and go, as a busker's bagpipes rose and fell behind us, eerie on the evening air. 


On the way down to the Fisherman's Wharf, the cable car sidled along pastel-coloured Victorian homes, their bay windows jutting on the sharply slanted streets.  The wharf was touched by the magic that graces all harbours; the water, the sky, all cool, all blue-scented and deep, all almost-glass water as far as the eye could see.


I recommend Boudin if you're looking for something a bit more fancy.  The service was decent, the oysters fresh and cold and satisfyingly savoury (if you're going to order something else let it be the Artichoke and Crab Dip).  There is a bakery downstairs that makes cute animal-shaped bread (Holy crocodile, Batman!) and shop that sells things like sea-salt caramel butter.


The next day, we got to tour Stanford.  Stanford is one of the biggest campuses in the world and I couldn't get over how the architecture, with its low, Spanish-style red roofs, looked like something out of Buffy (later I found out a lot of Buffy was actually filmed in UCLA).

The campus was sprawling and its buildings were beautiful but I didn't get the same sense of hallowed learning that I felt when I visited Oxford, GW or even Warwick.  Maybe it's different when you're actually a student, dragging your suitcase and a thousand dreams with you. 


Of note: the very first Google server ever, held together with lego.


S and I kept talking and giggling about very silly things, so I told her to look a little more reverent. 


I did a bit of dancing too.


So I wasn't completely buying Stanford, but the students loved it.  I could see it in their eyes as they took in the sights and sounds and the scent of freedom, could sense their eagerness for the richness of this world that was just about to unfold for them.  I felt so excited for them, and a little nostalgic.

On our last day in San Francisco, we went to my favourite place.  I'm a sucker for anything involving animals (that are not cockroaches) and I really enjoyed what I saw of the California Academy of Sciences.


It's a cross between the Underwater World, the Science Centre and the Natural History Museum, and I kept running around, snapping photos of everything.


The collection of frogs and sea creatures alone would've kept me there for a whole day.  I got to touch a sea urchin in the tide pool where an elderly curator showed me how they have tiny suckers on black, threadlike projections that catch food as it wafts slowly in the current.  He made me look at the teeth on the underside of one urchin and I shuddered violently.  It was like watching at a blind, groping creature out of Pan's Labyrinth.

 (That frog that looks like it's made of clay is absolutely real).


In the end though, the stingrays were my favourite exhibit.  They had a lagoon underneath a suspended wooden viewing platform and it was delightful watching them racing each other across the white sand with swiftly curling wings.

While these pictures look kind of sight-see-y, San Francisco was actually pretty damn hectic.  But I am grateful for the chance to travel, to experience something entirely new.  I'm thankful for the lessons I've learned about looking after students and travelling in large groups.

I enjoyed all the little things - getting to know the students, taking the pictures, feeling different, foreign, new.  I even enjoyed the complete change in temperature.  Another visit is definitely on the cards.

And hey, I got a massive kilogram bag of Reese's peanut butter cups out of the excursion.  Any excuse for more Reese's is excuse enough for me.

Monday, January 28, 2013

Gratitude list: Home at last

1)  Jetlag

On the one hand, I get woozy early in the evenings and yawn my way through the day.  On the other, I find myself wide awake early in the mornings and have been taking the time to enjoy some music in the quiet, along with Reese's peanut butter cups and hot tea.  

There is something special about feeling like you're sentient before anyone else in the world is, and it makes it feel like my days are filled with a little more time.  

2)  E and S



Who thought of me and bought me an awesome present from Alcatraz when I stayed back from the trip to chaperone.  I took one look at the magnets and knew the grey one was mine.  It sits on my fridge now, right beneath my brother's favourite Bill Cosby quote.  Thanks, guys!

3) Becky


There are very few people who are silly enough to text me while we're on Skype as a joke.  I came home from the US to find a huge box sitting in my bedroom.  It was addressed to the "Grand Poobah" and I knew it was from her right away.  There were a couple of wonderful presents and a beautifully designed wedding invite inside, but the most precious thing to me was a note saying that while she liked reminiscing about all the times we'd had, she didn't need to do that anymore because we make new memories together all the time. 

I've just bought my ticket to attend her wedding in March (I'm the bridesmaid, yo) and I can't wait to see her again.  Every time we meet, it's like we've never been apart.  And that's how I know we're best friends.

PS  I've shuffled the blog format around to make pictures bigger just because, well, I felt like the landscape ones weren't getting enough play and... come on!  They're pictures!  Doesn't everybody love pictures?

Friday, January 25, 2013

San Francisco, Part I


So I was in San Francisco on work with my colleagues (and friends) E, S and T.  And while it was an absolutely exhausting (and often stressful) whirlwind, I managed to get out and about a little bit and take some pictures.  It was my first experience travelling with such a large camera, so I'm glad I got some shots (though the one above is an iphone picture)!

I am ridiculously tired.  Having had some very patchy sleep on the plane this morning, I'm feeling a bit floaty and light-headed now and thought I would sort out my photos to keep myself awake and not jetlagged (hah!).

Taking 26 kids on a school trip is no joke, so a lot of these photos were taken during the only times I had my hands free, including on the bus, so I apologise if there is any weird window reflection or blurriness.

Apologies for the memories being so haphazard - I just thought I would pick out the photos and let them guide the journey for me.


We landed in the early afternoon and the temperature hovered around a delicious 15 or 16 celcius with sunshine and blue skies very reminiscent of Barcelona.  To be honest, I didn't manage to do very much sightseeing, but I did get a sense of the hilliness of the place and the importance of the bay.


My bed for about six days.  Rest assured it was nowhere near this neat when I was done with it.


We walked towards the Fisherman's Wharf shortly after we landed in order to stave off jetlag, and passed what looked like a red light district.  Girls in nothing but overcoats and coiffed hair leaned and smoked on railed stoops.


The famous In-n-Out burger, which was pretty good.  Then again, by that point, I would've eaten anything.  I did appreciate the generous coating of onions that each patty received.


I wish I'd bought one of these hats I saw as we walked along the wharf.  They were hilarious and looked very cosy, particularly the red lobster monster.


I made the mistake of buying this weird sour spray candy at a supermarket.  Remember Wally Warheads from primary school?  They had "sour" and "hot" flavours that really made your tongue tingle, and just as S and I were reliving that moment, we found this bottle in the aisles.  I was so excited to see it and assuming it was a tube of hard sweets, I didn't even bother to check the label.  We spent a couple of gruesome days spraying our tongues and wincing and shuddering afterwards.


In our downtime, we managed to squeeze in a couple of games of cards and bananagrams.  It was funny to see what words people put down ("vagina"/"fish" and "manly"/"queens") and speculate on whether that meant anything about their thought processes.


Our hotel was located right across the road from Chinatown, and that first picture is of an area called Portsmouth Square, where the first US flag was supposedly raised.  Apparently the city started up around this area as well, though everything burned down in the earthquake/fire of 1906 (E, S, T and I took turns reciting the history to each other to see how much attention we'd been paying on the group tours).

I loved the little playground in the square.  So much happens in and around playgrounds and parks, especially in heartland estates.  To pause there is to watch life unfold, in all its bittersweet glory.


While we weren't chaperoning, we went walking to look for dinner places for our charges and that's when I got to slow down and look at the city a little bit.  There was something architecturally interesting or artistic on every corner - the picture above is of one such installation.  

The piece featured blank books hanging on wires, their words tumbled and scattered on the floor below like autumn leaves.  The words and phrases were chosen from books written by San Franciscans which made the artwork quite poignant.  I'm sure we could easily do something similar in Singapore, though artistic types here favour hideous sculptures of garishly spray painted balls (SAM, I'm looking at you).


On one such walk, we stopped for a quick snack.  (That is S smiling as she checked her texts.  We had wifi in the hotel and often Whatsapped each other even though we were in the same building.)

As we stepped into the cafe, we met a gruff old man outside who told us that he had been coming in for coffee every day for 30 years.  T said that he didn't see why anyone would and great speculation ensued, ending with the invention of a story in which he had secretly been carrying a torch for the lady boss.


Later on, E bought us all berries to share and I grabbed dessert wherever I could.  I tried a couple of tiramisus, nutella cake and that's me jonesing for churros while T pretends not to know me (he ate two).


We also took the kids to a cute little Mexican place called Taquieria Zorro where they took turns choosing songs on the jukebox and singing together over dinner.  I don't know much about Mexican food but everything was delicious, particularly my fish taco which was flaky, fresh and piquant.


That tamarind soda was surprisingly good.  I'm used to the idea of tamarind as something tart and occasionally astringent, but in soft drink form it was sweet and fragrant. 

Jetlag is catching up, so I'll stop for now and leave you with a picture of the most amazeballs bagel in the world.   That is a 7-grain bagel with salmon, egg and cheese.  E bought breakfast while we were running around the conference one morning and because she heard me mooning over the cheese in the shop, she got me pepper jack instead of cream cheese.  


Melted cheese, eggs and something smoky?  You can't do better than that for a morning wake up call.
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