SF and Around

San Francisco City, proper.

Not to miss: Union Square, a vital, cosmopolitan place in downtown San Francisco. A hip, cheery place to have coffee and a lazily read in the midst of the hustle and bustle of city life. Check out for exciting events on the calendar! We happened to chance on an art exhibition by the Art Guild of SF, which added much vibe to the Square. It boasted many local artists, who were right there proudly displaying their work, and eager to speak to any potential admirers. One of them told me she wished more people would be less shy about it and chat more to them about their works, haha. Well, i wasn't an avid art fan so i couldn't appreciate it as much as i wish i did!

Nearby, the renowned Chinatown of SF lay in sprawl over a wide enclave, and you can see Chinese culture (and people) squeezed desperately into tight streets, from kitsch pagodas to traditional Hongkong dim sum shops. You know it can only be Chinese when rowdy middle-aged women surreptitiously creep in front of you in the queue, speaking in Cantonese that 'those young boys have the time to wait.' Well, true. But still...

Japantown was less spectacular; it is said to have shrunk when the Japanese were wound up and interned during WWII. Did some grocery shopping and left in a huff. ( There is a Center for Asian American Media there though, and I just missed the Asian American Film Festival, Mar 10-20.)

Outside SF in Berkeley, a young, vibrant university town and home of UCBerkeley, GS and Toby recommended a cajun cuisine joint. Toby had fond memories of New Orleans in Louisiana, and especially the food there. Very, very flavorful stuff, it just sticks so well to our palates. I'll have to try its Ho'Boy next time!

The weather drizzled and we braved the fog up northwest, through the Richmond-San Rafael bridge. The bridge looked as though it led up to the sky, through a hole in the clouds. It felt surreal, like we were riding up to Heaven! Very interesting ride if you ever get a chance (and a foggy day).

Through San Rafael, Fairfax and little towns sprinkled along the Sir Francis Drake Boulevard road, we rode on. The towns had a somewhat European style, different from SF just miles away. The view... a natural woods route where streams flowed by and redwoods towered high above us.

We finally reached Point Reyes Station, where the visitor centre for the Point Reyes National Seashore was located. This is a definite starting point for all activity here. You can check out the schedules for various activities; we missed out whalewatching in the afternoon, but were in time for the lighthouse tours till 3, 4pm. We also missed out on a really interesting hiking trail to an American Indian village, Kule Loklo, due to the increasing rain.

It takes another hour-long drive through extensive pastures and ranches, where old communities and farmhouses and rickety trucks lay beside their grazing herds of Holstein cattle. The landscape gradually transforms from woods to wetlands, wetlands to plains, plains to hills.

Descending down the foggy slopes, we reached Point Reyes Lighthouse... a historic monument that has saved lives over hundreds of years guiding ships to safety. It was a fascinating look into the life of a lighthouse keeper, often cold, arduous and brutish, be it winding the light up, cleaning the equipment, or sounding the sirens. Over time, of course, the antiquated lighting device has been replaced by automated beacons, GPS and so on.

Many interesting facts popped up along the way, like how the lighthouse was built rather short, BELOW the fogline, rather than ABOVE it, as in the case of most towering lighthouses out there. This enables it to extend its light out to the seas during times of low visibility. Which is pretty important, since Point Reyes records a whopping 2000 hours of fog a year! Ha, good luck whale watching...

Don't miss out the other treasures hidden in Point Reyes Station and around, e.g. Cowgirl Creamery.
Cowgirl Creamery was unfortunately closed during our trip... it offers the freshiest of cheese and creamy delights, churned from old-fashioned ranches lying in the surrounding grasslands. Hope to come by again :)

On the way back, Shoreline Highway 1 offered some of the best road scenery around: Bayous and Bolinas Lagoon, with wild ducks swimming around leisurely and diving for fish; Breaking ocean waves on cliffs and shores, at Stinson and Muir Beaches; Woods, Mount Tamalpais, and the Valley.

Finally, Sausalito. A beautiful little marina town by the sea that combines hillside with shoreline, a residential community there thrives in both houses built on terraced hills, and in houseboats floating in the marina. We had a great, affordable dinner at Fish... lovely food and delightful atmosphere.

Come for the fresh seafood, the lively waterfront scene or the calm, soul-soothing experience in this quaint little picture of a town :)

Well, that concludes the SF side of my travels, and my first week in the US. Huge, huge thanks to GS, Toby, Gary and Co. for taking me in with warm hospitality, the fun chats and games, as well as endeavoring new experiences all over the place with me :) Hope to send them a postcard from Pennsylvania soon!

Midweek

It was a lovely day midweek: the sun was hard at work warming up the wintry land, while booming clouds sprang across the skies to provide occasional, soothing shelter. Work ended at one, and Eli ordered in Japanese teriyaki for our team lunch. Languishing on our full stomachs, ideas started popping up about the best way to spend the beautiful afternoon (it would be sinful to waste it otherwise!) Soon it was settled: Gary would bring us to this exciting joint near the suburbs for some GO-Karting action!

The journey, bringing us from Danville through long, desolate roads in the suburbs to the joint, was unforgettable by itself. Eli drove the 7-seater around, showing us ranches of horses, cows, even the rare llamas (camels with sheep wool on them!). There were some detours, detailing interesting places where Gary biked past. I never seemed to get tired of the hills and greenery... haha.

And finally, destination: Go-Kart. What do I remember?

The shuddering murmur of the engine. The burning smell of diesel and tires. Your vision, encased in aluminium, shrouded through a visor. A continuous landscape of scarred tracks and black walls, interrupted by spinning monsters that crashed you. Or you crashed them.

It was my first time go-karting. Very, very fun :) I did alot of reckless drifting and banging into the walls, and the jarring impact really goes down to the bone! Haha, good stuff. GS was a complete fail, and wound up doing 5 circuit runs less than us. Which means everyone lapped him umpteen times... you can see the scores below.

The rest of the day was spent with GS and Toby, exploring more of the towns around San Francisco... I just enjoy being with these guys so much! Really appreciate how they've been perfect hosts this whole time, bringing me around and catering to my every need. Owe a big, big thank you to them :)

---

The beautiful weather continued.

Gary, needing to get out of the office for the day (he says he's prone to causing destruction while he's in the office haha), took me and his son Max out for a roadtrip. Well... except usually I associate "roadtrip" with a tough four-wheel SUV, or a sedan with peeps screaming out of the windows.

So would you call riding in a BMW M5 a roadtrip?

Oh well. You get what you get :p

We went cruising to the coast near Cliff House and the Sutro Bath ruins. A really unique attraction, accompanied by a rocky shoreline and crashing waves. We didn't explore every nook and cranny, but it was exciting just the same :)

The Bath used to look like this!

Next stop: the Marin Headlands across the world-renowned Golden Gate Bridge.

We rode way up to the top, where breathtaking scenery of San Francisco and the Golden Gate bridge lay before us. The ruins of an old coastal fortress emerged out of the hills for us to explore too.

Close by, as we traversed the coastline, we found the Point Bonita lighthouse and Bird Island (without birds, they'd flown for the winter).

Nearby was beautiful seaside town Sausalito, and Point Reyes... Gary left it for us to explore next time!

We stopped for lunch at Mill Valley, a small but quaint town with an European feel to it. I kinda liked its architecture...somewhat Victorian, like old british cottage-ish. Tried my first burger in the U.S, a gigantic beef burger topped with an overly generous serving of Blue Cheese! It was really, really strong... i knew i should have gotten cheddar :p

We were sleepy after a long day of sightseeing and exploration... but we just couldn't miss out on the Muir Woods, a sacred grove of giant redwood sequoia trees, so we wound through the hills further, into the nature reserve. It bore great historical importance, being co-founded by President Roosevelt (that "Teddy" Roosevelt) and patronized by the U.N. committee. Deeply humbling to hear of the lives of the great pioneers that cared, like the naturalist John Muir, whom the woods was named after. These people fight for the things that are bigger than us, and themselves. Things larger than human society. We have the fortune today to look at what they had the foresight to see, envision and build.

At the same time, i don't think you have to be fighting for something more impactful on the world to qualify for greatness. Everyone can achieve greatness by doing the things they do. As Leo Tolstoy extolled in "War and Peace", we all make history, each and everyone of us; peasant to peasant, royalty to royalty. We all have our own paths in life. And i think it is so wrong to think that you're doing something more important than others, that you deserve more respect for doing so, that your time is worth more than others. Because anything we're doing can be so inconsequential in the course of history, yet so cardinal to the life of someone!

It was delightful talking to Gary too, learning from his experiences, understanding the american lifestyle and the values he held dear (and already tried to impart to young Max, haha). And about how financial trading is a trade, not a career, and how it makes a difference. In particular, i could relate to the fact that there is really so much more than the career landscape in SG that students like me can see from the tiny, tiny well that is SG. I'm tired of people gushing about, say, a banking or consulting job, about the "prestige" or the "high pay", when there is the world out there. Yes, the world. Shouldn't you WANT to see the world before making your choices? Or do you think you already know "enough"?

Call me stupid then. Because I'm still trying to know what i do not know. And slowly but steadily, i'm finding out :)

-----------------------
First week, midweek.