Sanfrancisco vacation day 2

Chinatown!

Day two saw us heading to Chinatown. We started off our day by walking down market street, threading our way thru the homeless people to a little café called Munch Haven. Breakfast was wonderful but expensive. This little place was really neat. Tiny, and inhabited by locals, it wasn’t too busy. We felt like we had found a place that wasn’t touristy. We were in a section of the city known as “The Tenderloin”. I had read horror stories about the Tenderloin and even early in the morning, I knew they weren’t kidding about it.

Back up Market street we got in line to ride a cable car for Chinatown. It was early so there wasn’t a big line. The conductor was calling for people who were going to work to get in the front of the line. The tourists would have to wait. The cable car ride was slow but fun, nothing I would ride unless I needed to really get somewhere. We jumped off and walked several blocks to Chinatown.

Right at the Chinatown gate we strolled in and found out that we were a little early. It was dead in the water. All the stores had not opened yet. Not to worry, I had been studying up on Chinatown and I knew that the REAL Chinatown was on Stockton street a block over. We hiked up the hill to Stockton just as it was awakening. The open air markets are a real blast to your eyes, ears, and nose. Especially your nose. I smelled things and had no idea what they could possibly be. I’m not taking wonderful smells either. It was pretty funky. Kind of a fishy, herby, weird sort of thing. There were lots of shops selling herbal remedies that were dried roots, fungus, mushrooms, and God knows what else. The idea is to tell the doctor at the counter what is ailing you then he prepares a concoction of these dried mysteries and you go home and brew a tea out of it. Drink the tea and hope that it doesn’t kill you in the process, then you are cured. I didn’t buy any. There were lots of Chinese people, mostly elderly, buying groceries and meat at the open markets. We strolled thru and saw butchers cutting up fresh pork, fish markets where the fish were laying out in the open and still wiggling, and even saw an old woman who had a large fish in a cardboard box that she was trying to sell to everyone who walked by. Sort of a miniature yard sale. It was cut up in weird sections and looked a little scary. There was no behind the scenes food preparation going on either. Everything was done right in front of you. The butcher shop was really something. All those people hacking away at the carcasses right in the open. The little shops had just about everything imaginable for sale and it was pretty hard to negotiate the narrow isles. I really enjoyed the Chinese restaurant supply places and wanted to buy everything I touched but there was no way I would have been able to pack it for the trip home. I will get these things on the internet one of these days. One item that I really wanted to bring home was a teapot to remember the occasion. I’m becoming sort of a collector of these silly things and have amassed about a dozen or so. I only really need a couple to brew just about any kind of tea. I must have looked at over 1,000 teapots of all sizes and shapes. I saw teapots that would hold over 5 gallons of tea to tiny ones that would hold only about 1 ounce. I just couldn’t find one that was really “me” though. Towards the end of the day I told Kathy that I thought I would try getting a tea pot in Japantown another day instead. After buzzing thru the area I began to notice that the majority of the stores were either grocery/vegetable markets, restaurants, herb stores, or junk shops. There wasn’t a large variety. We did notice a pet shop in the area but it had went out of business. I won’t try and spin a joke about Chinese restaurants and pet shops but it’s tempting. We were pretty tired from running around looking in all of the shops and decided we would try our luck at lunch. Kathy picked out a dim sum house that looked pretty nice and it turned out to be yummy. We were seated at a very large table that could have held a dozen people. There were others at our table and they must have thought we looked pretty out of place in there since we were the only two white folks in the place. It was packed too. I took that to be a good sign. The food was really good and we ate our fill. After a while, an elderly lady at our table struck up a conversation with us. She was friendly, like all the people in the city, but her English was only slightly better than our Chinese. Anyway, Kathy enjoyed talking with her. She asked how much our bill was and we told her around $20. She said we got out of there pretty good. The dim sum was a little different than what I was used to but it was great. I had some Chinese broccoli that was wonderful. We also had pot stickers, custard muffins, and other things that I can’t even name. The best thing about this place was that you didn’t ask for tea, they just put down a pot right in front of you. I was disappointed that it came in that ugly stainless steel pot just like at home but I guess that is the North American standard for Chinese restaurant tea pots. One lady who was bringing the dim sum out in carts would get right behind me and yell what she had in Chinese. I didn’t know what her game was but she made me jump more than once. Once out of the restaurant we continued on our way to discover new treasures.

The very next place we came to was an authentic tea shop. It was tiny and we were the only people in there. The entire shop was about the size of an average bedroom. We sat down at the little counter and talked with the owner for about an hour about tea. He served us several varieties and we all had a great time sipping tea and talking about everything. We came out of there with over $150 worth of tea and that was for only two 8 ounce bags. This stuff was EXPENSIVE. It was also very good. He let us sample a very high grade of tea that sold for $700 a pound. I have never had tea that good. The taste was unlike any other tea I have ever had and to say the least, it was incredible. I learned a lot about tea that day. The owner’s wife also gave us a couple of small bags of tea as gifts. The tea shop visit turned out to be one of the most rewarding aspects of the day.

We wandered around for a couple more hours and saw a little more of the real thing. We went past the Hang ah tea room and I told Kathy we would come back another day for tea. I will discuss the merits of the Hang ah tea room in a future blog. Right past this place (we were in a small alley) we peered into a room that was filled with people playing Mah Jong. No way we were getting in there (it was packed) but I felt like this was part of real Chinatown life. Kathy was afraid we were going to get mugged in the alley so we pressed on. We also found a lovely park that was full of Chinese people playing a game that I think is called “Go”. It kind of looks like checkers but the playing pieces are placed on the intersections of the squares and not in the square itself. It was a very popular game and there would be two guys playing and about a dozen watching them. It could have been the national championships for all we knew. Kathy asked a man if she could take his picture but he pointed to some others. I told her that people don’t always like to have their picture taken. Could have been that there was just a little bit of gambling going on and I figured that they didn’t want to advertise themselves.

Back on the street, we plowed our way thru the rest of Chinatown. I wanted to find the fortune cookie factory but never could locate it. Try as I might, it eluded us for the entire visit. Kathy wasn’t as enthusiastic about finding it as I was but it really wasn’t a “holy grail” type of thing for me anyway. I just wanted to see how they made the stupid things. Chinatown is really “tinsely”, brightly lit, and full of tourists on the main drag and we ended our trip where we started. At the end of the day I told Kathy that I was in “sensory overload” and couldn’t take it anymore. It was just too much to see.

As far as I could tell, we pretty much covered nearly every square inch of Chinatown except for that stupid fortune cookie factory. We even got to the outer limits and saw some of North Beach. This area is Italian and we switched from ducks and pieces of barbequed pork hanging in the windows to the smell of coffee and garlic. We didn’t take too many pictures in Chinatown. I was so intent on seeing everything that I just dragged my poor wife around at high speed and wouldn’t hardly let her stop long enough to snap many pictures. She took nearly all of the pictures on the trip and did a great job with them.

Sanfrancisco vacation day 1

Last fall I asked my blushing bride of some 24 years where she would like to go for our 25^th wedding anniversary and she said, “I’d really like to go to Sanfrancisco”. So for about 10 months or so we talked about it, studied up about it on the internet, and mapped it all out. The following series of 7 blogs will document our trip in words and Kathy’s pictures. I’ll try not to bore anyone with details, instead focusing on highlights and interest.

We arrived at the Sanfrancisco airport easily enough after being packed like sardines for the day in 2 different airplanes. Air travel is not the comfortable, luxuriant, travel option it used to be. Gone are the days of free meals, free baggage check, and generally, free anything. I’m famous for my stingy, cheap, outlook on my wallet so I’m going to be mentioning (whining) about how expensive everything was. $7 for an airline salad that consisted of some lettuce and a few pieces of chicken ain’t a good value in my book. This after paying $60 to check my luggage. After the plane ride it was time for the train. We took the BART (Bay area regional transportation?) train and got off at the stop I thought was ours. I spent weeks studying the city transportation system and my notes indicated it was only a short walk to the hotel. Slight problem was that the short walk had to be in the right direction and I had a little trouble with that. So we humped our luggage through the downtown area like a couple of lost Sherpas in our attempt to find the holy land known as the Parc 55 hotel. Sanfranciscan’s are famous for their friendliness and we found over and over how true this was during our stay. We asked for directions to the hotel and were delighted at how helpful the person was. However; there is one niche of city society that aren’t so friendly. More on “them” later.

After finding the hotel we both collapsed on the beds and unwound for a while. I later suggested we go for a walk and try and get our bearings so we ventured out for a big walk around the hotel (1 square block). Walking is the other big thing about Sanfrancisco and we did a ton of it. I lost 5 pounds after only 1 week in this town but I suspect that I’ll find it when we return to good old fatty Alabama. We got a little bolder after the 1 square block jaunt and thought we would expand our horizons slightly so we crossed the street. Well, what do you know, in about 2 seconds we were approached by one of “them”: street people. Homeless, luckless, toothless, nasty, vermon. “Rodney” wanted to sell us a map of the city. It seems that he worked for a homeless shelter for orphaned children and the money was going to be put to good use. The map was only $.25 cents and contained lots of discounts on all kinds of city attractions. Well, he wasn’t getting my quarter. Uh oh. I turned around and there she was, kind hearted and nearly in tears, Kathy was searching thru her purse for the quarter that was going to save all of those dear homeless orphans that “Rodney” was caring for. As soon as he saw her purse come open, he immediately announced that a dollar would be better. Well, how about that. He wound up clipping her for about $1.50. “God bless you Mame, you have saved their lives”, he preached. I later found out that the maps were free anyway. We overheard him running the same story to a lady behind us. She wasn’t having any of it. His response to her was to spit a string of the most venom laden 4 letter words that we had ever heard. That cured Kathy of her generosity towards the street people. We were hit on all week by all manner of scary looking, foul smelling, people that barely passed for humanity.

We snuck into a really neat diner that had a 50’s motif for a bite. It was decorated with all kinds of 50’s memorabilia. There was an Indian motorcycle hanging from the ceiling, a VW microbus half stuck out of a wall, pictures of betty boop, neat stuff. The food was fantastic and the price was right up there in the clouds. Oh well, we’re on vacation!

Lost and found

I hate clutter. Every now and then I have a tendency to toss out junk in our house that appears to have been abandoned and is devoid of any future potential. My constitution sometimes backfires on me though. The wife, kids, and even the dog don't have any real affection for my "throwing away parties". I'm learning that the formally useless, tossed in the corner, seemingly forgotten, piece of junk of yesterday is now today's treasure but only after the owner has discovered that it was thrown into the scrap heap. I get howls of protest. I get death threats. The worst is "the flying dagger look" which is always administered with deadly silence. Believe me, when you've been the recipient of silent, flying daggers, you in a heap o' trouble, cousin.

And so, yesterday while the wife was doing some ironing (after my sarcastic remark slyly indicating that I would just do it myself), she discovered that some essential accessory to her brand new iron was missing. (This is the very iron that I just bought her with all the bells and whistles. The top of the line one that she has used about twice in the last 8 months. Yup, thats the one). I immediately came under suspicion of foul play. She knows that if anything is missing, I must be blamed. It's automatically my fault. No need for a prosecutor, jury, or judge. Sentence is pronounced and it's always the same: guilty on all charges. Send him straight to the electric chair.

She starts by asking me if I've seen this widget that fills the iron with water. Who me? nope. Never seen it, never heard of it, never used it, etc. Don't even know what it looks like. At that instant she knows I've chucked it. "Did it again didn't you"? "YOU THREW IT OUT"! "My filler bottle"! Oh the agony! She ranted and raved like she had rabies. My ass was grass and she was the lawn mower. Well, I very quickly started attempting to mentally review everything I had eighty-sixed in the hope I would remember this stupid thing. No luck. I couldn't place it. Not that I would reserve much memory for an iron accessory. But it was important to her and we don't want Momma upset cause that ain't too fun. I next asked her if she had looked for it. Of course, everywhere. It's nowhere to be found. She's scoured the house and two surrounding counties and it is gone. And by the way, in case you haven't picked up on this, it's my fault that it's gone. Past experience with the rest of my clan is that if they say they have looked for it, they are only talking about the space from their eyes to the tip of their nose.

She had me believing that I had indeed thrown this thing away. Heck, I figured she was probably right and I was pretty much resigned to my fate of having her give me a good shellacing about it for the rest of the day, if not the rest of the month. She has the female instinct to not forget about injustices done to her and will bring it up years from now, just in case it might come in handy in an argument or a pending decision to go to an expensive restaurant.

With her trailing off into the bedroom, mumbling about the same crime committed against her for the upmteenth time a certain part of my being kicked in and started to gnaw at me.

I really, really, really hate to lose anything.

It drives me crazy. I will look for the rest of my life until I find what has been lost or at least I can verify it's untimely fate. I lost a strut off a model airplane (in flight) years ago and looked for it for hours in a huge field without success. That field is now a Home Depot and I cannot drive past it without looking on at least one side of the road to see if it's there. Nevermind that the plane was sold in 1995, I want my strut back. It's not just my stuff either, it's anybody's. An aquaintance in the model airplane club lost a muffler off his plane in the same field and I helped him look for it for hours. We never did find it. That muffler haunts me to this day and it wasn't even mine.

I thought that maybe there was a chance that I might actually be innocent of the charges levied against me and proceeded to look for it. Like a bloodhound I started sniffing out every nook and cranny in the laundry room. Our's is about as big as yours is; about the size of the average walk-in closet so there aren't many nooks or crannies. I'm not too clear on what a cranny actually is either. One of these days I'm going to have to do a Google search on crannys and see what pops up. Probably get at least one search result from ebay anyway. I guarentee it. The water filler bottle wasn't behind the washer or dryer and that left me with the cabinet under the sink. Upon opening the sink I started to get a suspicious feeling that I was going to hit pay-dirt because I found the owner's manual to the iron right off the bat. A little digging around and there to be found underneath the dog's puppy training pads was what I was positive was the previously lost water bottle thing. I was grinning from ear to ear, holding it up in front of me like a first place ribbon won at the county fair pie eating contest. Oh and it was neat looking too. Real sleek and sporty like something that might come out of an expensive designer catalog. Probably was inspired by something that Georgio Armanni made for some Italian supermodel. I sort of remembered it from when we took the iron out of the box. It wasn't the kind of thing that a guy would use since you can fill an iron by holding it under the faucett. Apparently, females don't do it this way. Note that I didn't make a jab at them and indicate that they weren't technically savvy enough to fill an iron with water. I'll let that snide remark wait for another day.

I strolled out of the laundry room, holding my prize out in front of me just like an olympic torch bearer and proceeded to look for my bride. I also briefly considered the merits of those puppy training pads since "fluffy" hasn't been doing too good in that department lately. Maybe I should just throw them out. I filed my report mentally and concentrated on the business at hand. Changing from my shit eating grin to my best poker face, I walked into the bedroom. There she was with her back to me in the walk in closet, putting away some clothes, most likely still fuming about the loss of her most prized of all tools. When she turned around I held it up in front of her and said, "Here it is, you want your ass eatin' back"?

Cleared of all these false charges, I exited the bedroom, beaming with delight not because I was once again a free man, but because the water filler thing was FOUND.

Hey Grandpa, whats for dinner?

I enjoy people watching. Most everyone has certain little quirks about them that can be revealed by little more than casual observation. Of all the strange behaviours that can be observed in my fellow man, eating seems to be a really good venue for some genuine entertainment.

My poem, "Ode to an m&m" was inspired by a friend at work. We were talking while she was eating m&ms. She noticed me taking a fair amount of interest in the manner she was eating them and explained to me her method. I didn't know that there was an exact method for eating m&ms but she assured me that she could only do it one way. I have watched others eat m&ms and the procedure does vary to some extent. One guy even uses the "great big handfuls at a time" method and I must admit that I find that one a little hard to watch. Anyway, her details are in the poem (see earlier post) if you wish to imbibe.

A friend relayed a story about a lunch at a pizza buffet in which a fellow there would very neatly stack all of his pizza crusts on his plate in order after trimming them down to the same size with his teeth. He suspected the guy might be an Engineer which was later confirmed. We'll save the excentricities of Engineers for a later post. Being a member of the Engineering fraternity, I doubtless could write for a few miles on this subject. This same friend of mine would always take a big gulp of soda in his mouth and swish it around loudly like you would mouthwash before swallowing it. He didn't gargle it but he was close.

I've come across more than one person who will only eat one item on their plate at a time. I tried quizzing one of these single item eaters once about why they ate that way and did it matter which food was eaten first but was warned it was a bad idea by my coworkers. Evidentally, they knew him better than I did and realized that my curiousity might be misconstrued as heckling. Nothing could be further from the truth but if you asked anyone who knows me they just might tell you otherwise. I have always wondered what the criteria is for eating order. Kind of a "chicken and the egg" sort of question isn't it?

Anybody who's spent more than 1 meal with a child knows that they are the kings of the wierd eating habit. I much prefer adults because you pretty much expect a kid to do some funky things with his food. A kid peeling the crust off a peanut butter and jelly sandwich has nowhere near the entertainment value of an adult doing the same exercise.

I have my moments too but mostly I like to mess with the ones I share my meal with. I am right handed but I have eaten left handed since I was about 8 years old. Nothing special, I just wanted to see if I could teach myself to do it that way and I do like to be different from the rest of the crowd. It stuck and now I eat left handed nearly all the time. I also have a distinct affinity for Chinese food so I eventually learned how to eat with chopsticks both left and right handed and became better at it with my left hand than my right. A guy in a Chinese restaurant observed me using chopsticks left handed and finally, not being able to contain himself any longer, came over to my table and announced that he was proud that there was at least one other person in these United States of America that knew the correct way to use chopsticks. I floored him when I told him I was really right handed. The look on his face was well worth the training it took to learn how to use them with my left hand.

I'm sure that the good Dr. Freud had an explaination for all of these silly eating behaviours. Probably a term that is at least 8" long and can't even be pronounced without voice lessons. I don't want to know why, I just want to be there to enjoy them.

I'll see you at the buffet, as I deftly pinch up each tasty bite with my left handed chopsticks, seemingly unaware that you are watching, only to become my next curious victim who noticed that something isn't just quite right.

Do you have the time?

Time fascinates me. Every person or thing that has ever crawled, walked, or flown on our island Earth has had a specific amount of time doled out to them. Everyone's time is different. Total length of time is determined by our actions, the affects of the environment on each of us, and by the influence of the positions of the celestrial bodies at the moment of our birth. We don't know just how much total time we have. A few will know how much time they have remaining. Of them, such as the condemmed prisoner waiting for his execution, I wonder if they waste the time they have left waiting for their time to be over, watching the clock as the hours and minutes tick away.



If death and the total length of time available are taken out of the equation then we all have the same amount of time. Each one of us has exactly 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days per year. "I don't have time for that". Ever heard this statement? Probably at least every week. Actually, when you consider time to be a constant then the lack of time is really just a scheduling/priority factor.



Everything changes with time. As we go thru life, we may experience periods of time that are frought with extreme difficulty, financial success, romance, and an entire host of other influences. Situations improve and grow steadily worse; all with time.



Along with time there has to be motion. For without motion everything is static, like in a vacuum. Time only travels in one direction and that is forward. We can look back in time but it is only history and memories.

Time always travels at the same speed but it seems that depending on your age it might be going too fast or too slow. At 8 years old we can't wait for Christmas. At 15 we are going crazy as we wait for our 16th birthday so we can get a driver's license. Each week takes a month. A couple of additional significant life events and then you wake up one morning and you are a full grown adult. At this point you might look forward to the next holiday as you anticipate spending time with family but the holidays will start to blur into one another as you get older. Before you know it, 10 years have passed. What's the next thing to look forward to? Retirement. It's the gateway to the end of everything. The start of the golden years, the final slip down the path towards the end of our time.

Make the most of your time.

Ode to an m&m

I pair my goodies two by two
First the red, then the blue

The colors true must always match
It’s not that hard but there’s a catch

The single ones can’t get the nod
I toss them out for they are odd

To keep them thusly would be a crime
I don’t know why but haven’t time

To understand why I sort them so
OCD is fun, don’t you know?

I munch my candy always in pairs
Happily chewing but must take cares

They have to be eaten as a team
No singles allowed, see what I mean?

First the shell next comes the candy
I split them deftly if not succinctly

Give it a try, lets have a go
m&ms are fun, don’t you know?

Death to Backpacks

What is the deal with backpacks? Grown men are coming to work with a backpack strapped to them every single day. For the last 25 years I've managed to make it to work with just my lunchbox and my planner. If i'm feeling sporty I might carry a thermos full of coffee but since I've switched to tea that has fallen by the wayside. Is the backpack a sudden fad or fashion statement? I wonder what they have to carry back and forth in them. Maybe they are stuffed with provisions in case they get stuck in their cubicle and don't want to risk starvation. It could be that there is an extra change of clothes; perhaps on the off chance of a bladder malfunction (for that matter I think bladder control is way overrated anyway). My most sneaking suspicion about the contents of these misused contraptions scares me. You see, I think that they are carrying WORK home with them. Yes, work or maybe I should call it "homework". A sure fire way to diagnose a workaholic is to catch him carrying his work home with him. I used to work for one of these guys. He was asked by a subordinate once what he liked to do in his spare time. He response was "I eat, sleep, and work". What a shame. To think that he was going to spend his life doing nothing other than those three tasks was really disheartening. I got after him about it once. He had a very pretty, sweet, wife and 3 daughters. I told him he should spend time with them since I had heard that's what married people do occasionally when they aren't at each other's throats. He looked at me with the "deer in the headlights" look. He just didn't get it. His wife threatened to leave him once if he didn't take a vacation with her and the girls. It was a traumatic experience. I was assured that this was a "working" vacation and he would be checking in every day to see if he was needed. For the last two weeks prior to the vacation he worked himself into a frazzle every night, trying to get it all done. He stayed late. The very last night he was there until 10:30 p.m.. I thought he was going to have a nervous breakdown over this vacation thing. His reward for all of his hard work was a notice of termination a few months later. They bagged him. He was so distraught that he went to the President of the company and literally cried for a job. They felt sorry for him and let him stay on for a little while. He was exiled to a storage area all alone that had no air conditioning and went right back to work, sweating at his makeshift desk like a hog in his white, long sleeve, dress shirt; the uniform of the executive. I just laughed. An out-of-work workaholic is kind of like a heroin addict in dire need of a fix. They also want you to be right there with them and that is the facet of their being that scares me the most. We were all once told by our workaholic boss prior to his fall from grace that we were going to start working Saturdays; and Sundays too. Sunday too? He said he would get us pizza and it would be kind of a "party" type of atmosphere on Sunday. We did the Saturdays but told him to stick the Sunday pizza party where the sun don't shine. Sensing the feel of tar and feathers on his skin, he never mentioned Sunday to us again.

I've lost touch with him (we never actually were in touch) but I know that wherever he is, he's wearing a backpack that is loaded to the hilt with work, just in case he needs a fix. I really don't care if others want to work themselves to death, just don't try and drag me down with you. The only reason I work is because I can't get someone to pay me this much money to stay at home. Oh, I get some satisfaction from work but I don't get my jollies out of it. These backpackers need to reevaluate their priorites in life. Has anyone ever been on their deathbed, murmuring to their family "If I could have only gotten in a few more hours at the plant". I doubt it.

Back in the day backpacks were for boy scouts and school children. They were utilitarian. I saw quite a few even as late as college. Then years later they started sneaking them into the workplace. The workaholics must have their own website or forum to discuss and track trends. It's spreading. I'm getting worried about it too. I saw a high-level manager come tooling into the breakroom one morning, sporting a backpack and an ear-to-ear grin. He looked like an 8 year old on his way to school. I was tempted to tell him that he was going to be late for homeroom but managed to suppress myself (very rare display of tact on my part). The teeth marks on my tongue are still healing.

Not gonna catch me with a backpack. No way. When I leave the office every afternoon I forget all about it until tomorrow morning. I don't work for free. I don't work at home either (just ask my wife ha ha). I've got my eye on you backpackers. Repent! Give up your sinful ways! Stop carrying work home with you! Get a life! If you can't get a life of your own, at least don't interfere with mine.

And for heaven's sake, give that silly looking thing back to your kid.