It’s been over a week since I posted on this blog but I have plenty of news. The days go by so quickly here and once I have anything at all taking my evenings or weekend days, I suddenly have hardly any free time at all. For example, this weekend I spent Saturday with Chiyo around the Haight, then spent Monday night at an Irish bar where my boss plays with some guys in trad sessions every Monday night, with Chiyo. And tonight, I’m going to an oyster restaurant in the Castro… with Chiyo.
Saturday was great fun. What started off as plans to get some lunch and hang out around the Castro ended up with us wandering around Golden Gate Park, getting some dinner, and watching a movie. At Golden Gate Park we just walked around Sharon Meadow really, but there was incredible diversity in the people who were there. First we saw a field full of dads and their sons playing soccer, but once we got past the merry-go-round and approached the tennis courts, there were a lot of homeless people sitting around in their trolleys. One of them passed us and shouted over his shoulder, “KONNICHIWA! OHAYO!” (“hello! good morning!”). We looked back and he was waving so we waved back. Chiyo asked “how did he know I was Japanese?”. I answered by taking a step back and looking at her outfit and she understood.
After getting out of the homeless corner, we came across a field where lots of people were playing percussion instruments in the centre with people sitting on the grass around them. We sat down too and quickly realised that we were in the hippie part of Sharon Meadow. People were playing hacky-sack, juggling, dancing around the place, and at about 4:20pm Chiyo commented on the funny smell.
For dinner we went to this asian fusion restaurant called Straits (warning: pretentious music-playing flash site), which is actually a club myself and Patrick queued up for before, then quit since I didn’t have an ID and his wasn’t real. It’s just a normal restaurant until later and it was really trendy, in that the menu didn’t have cent amounts or dollar signs on it, just “23″ for an entrée, but the service wasn’t great. They put the food down in between us, one by one with a few minutes apart, instead of asking who had ordered what (or actually remembering or noting who had). And when giving us our food they left the plates that were on the table in front of us even though we had no use for them, so we had to do some clever plate-stacking to fit our stuff on the table.
The film was What Happens In Vegas and it really sucked. At least Century Theatres have nice big seats with optional arm-rests and reasonably sized screens. They didn’t play any music before or after the film though so there was this eery quiet in the huge cinema screen which kinda made you not want to talk or made you want to whisper.
I’ll write about the trip to the Irish pub next time I get a chance to write something but right now I’ve got to catch my train to work!
