Year of the Monkey: Day 1

My day began early, but I did sleep for about as long as possible. I prepared everything and called for the cab. When I got the call that the cab was here, I headed out. I had decided to leave my MST3k and Rifftrax videos play and left a couple lights on the hope that it would make Bruno feel less abandoned while I was gone.

I told the cab driver about my plans, and how I had a smaller suitcase packed inside my larger suitcase because I planned to buy a lot of things in Chinatown. We also talked about accents and how Houston is very spread out compared to other cities. In the airport, I checked in and checked my bags, then went to the security line. I went through the maze of ropes and found myself witnessing and participating in a particularly dramatic episode of security theater. My Chromebook didn't come out of the scanning machine on the belt, and was instead sitting off to the side, and I couldn't pick it up. The TSA agents were doing other things, and it took a while before I could ask someone about it. They had to inspect and swab the bags of two other guys before me. Eventually, they got to my computer, and they rubbed some things on the edges, did other things, and finally declared it clean and gave it back.

I went off to find my gate, then got some water, a small neck pillow that looked like a monkey, as well as food and coffee from Starbucks. I then went to my gate to wait for my flight. Soon, it was time to board, so I got in line at my spot and talked to some people near me about whether they got the Earlybird thing (they did) and about how they should go to Chinatown that weekend. When A 31-60 was called, we boarded the plane and I found my seat, on the right side of the plane (when facing the front), and near the back. Eventually, a young woman sat in the aisle seat, then an older man sat in the middle. I spent most of the trip editing photos on my phone, marking emails as read, and editing a couple pieces of my fan fiction.

At first, I thought I was on a flight that was going to stop in Las Vegas, but about half-way through, after I asked when we were going to land, I realized that I had a direct, non-stop flight to Oakland. At one point, I looked out the window and realized that we were flying over the Grand Canyon, so I got a few photos.

That is a mighty grand canyon, and adjusting the color on the photo makes it look even better.

Later in the flight, I got some other photos of a lake (Lake Tahoe?) and mountains.


Then there was the green California terrain.

This photo is cut from the photo below.

Then I realized that we were flying in to Oakland from the north, which I don't think I've ever experienced before. I got some great photos of the Golden Gate, city, and Bay Bridge.

After landing and overhearing a very lame conversation behind me as we taxied to the gate, I went to the baggage claim, where I walked around and saw someone break a glass shot glass because of all the things hanging off the person's body, like neck pillows and the like. My orange suitcase arrived and I set out for the new BART train from the airport, which turned out to not be the BART, but a sort of tram thing. I went to the front where two people having very boring conversation had gone too. I did manage to get some nice photos through the windows that I could edit to remove their heads without losing much of the view. At long last, we reached the Oakland Colliseum station, with a full view of the decaying Colliseum. I can understand the Raider's desire to move if they can't get a better stadium.

I'm not really sure why I look like this in my selfie.

No, you may not see their faces.

I got to the platform and waited and waited for a train, finally getting on the wrong one. I switched trains at Lake Merritt, I believe, and was finally going under the bay. The car I got on was an experimental car to try out new seating arrangements. Finally, I got to the Montgomery station and took the endless escalators to San Francisco. I walked up Montgomery St. to California St. and into the Omni San Francisco, complete with a doorman.

I checked in and went up to the 12th floor, and looked for the directions to my room, 1223, then opened the door. I must have uttered an expletive as I saw how huge the room was, cuz it was YYUUUUGGGEEE! Well, to me anyway. It took forever to walk from the bed to the bathroom, and it had plenty of open space. Actually, I counted 13 paces between the bathroom and the couch at the end of the room. I did some unpacking and arranged things to go out into Chinatown. I took a couple photos of the interior of the hotel as I left.

I snapped a photo before I took the block up from Kearny to Grant. I supposed that I could improve my fitness by going up that block several times, and I could gauge my fitness by how winded I was when I got to the top. Then I realized that this plan would require that I go up that block several times and I only had a weekend. Finally, I was at St. Mary's church at Grant St. I stopped to look up a restaurant on Yelp and also to get my breath. The Yelp rating wasn't very impressive, and I was on another mission: buying most of the things. I went into a store calling itself a Flea Market, and saw some very reasonable prices for scarves and other items. However, since this was my first store, I didn't buy anything.

The picture doesn't do the hill justice.

I left that store and continued down the street until I saw my favorite bakery, Eastern Bakery, which is also the oldest bakery in Chinatown. The people working there had me get a fresh coconut something and a fresh pork bun, and I got three small mooncakes and a sesame ball. I ate the coconut thing in the store and the pork bun and sesame ball as I continued down the street. I went into some shops along the way, but I wasn't seeing the scarf deals I was used to. I had one store owner try to bargain with me, but she wouldn't go below $7, for a single scarf - she clearly knew nothing about me - so I left.

Rain began to fall, and I realized the folly of leaving my large purse in the hotel room, because I didn't have my umbrella. I wasn't about to buy another umbrella, and returning to the hotel meant going up that hill again, so I just ducked and weaved under awnings and into stores to stay dry. I had an amusing encounter with a Chinese woman that left me thinking "there are socially awkward people everywhere," and I made my way up to Stockton. I went up the street and looked up "the best dim sum in Chinatown" on Yelp. The result was Delicious Dim Sum, on Jackson. It turned out that I had been on Stockton and Jackson when I looked this up, but I didn't know that at the time. So I went further up the street only to go back down until I re-found Jackson and Delicious Dim Sum.

One of the reviews mentioned that this was the kind of place where you point at things you want, which I guess made me assume that there were photos. There were no photos. The menu on the wall had no English on it, and I got a little worried. Still, I recognized the shrimp dumplings and pot stickers, and they suggested the shrimp and cilantro dumplings. This guy next to me also suggested sharing the food he was getting, which I didn't understand at first. I paid for my 6 pieces of dim sum ($4.20) and realized that he was getting hella dim sum for him and his family, so I joined them at the table at the back of the tiny restaurant. One of the people was from the bay, but the other people were from elsewhere in California, except their dad, who was from Florida, and their ancestry farther back was Filipino. 

The colors don't matter, they're all good luck.

They had done the "Escape San Francisco" thing and were visiting. I think they were going to leave the next day, so they would miss the parade. We had a nice lunch, and then said goodbye. I went down a little alley-way where there was a fortune cookie factory, then to a different street. I ducked into a grocery and got a ten-pack of wafer cookies to feed the lions and a box of ginger drink.  I then found a store I had gone to the year before that I recalled as having reasonable prices, but they didn't have any scarf specials. They did have cute lucky cats and something really cool that I got for my sister. After that store, the buying most of the things began in earnest, and I bought 11 scarves ($4 each), some trinkets, 22 scarves ($3.99 each), more trinkets, a hat, some bags, 14 scarves ($2.85 each, or 7 for $20), and some final trinkets before heading back to the hotel to relax a little before heading into Berkeley.

I hung out in my hotel room for a little while and napped. At first, N was going to come take a shower in my hotel room - she lives in Berkeley, but was in SF and needed a shower. It seemed legit to me - but then she decided to go back to Berkeley and have her hair dyed instead. I set out for the BART and forgot to go to the Walgreens on Montgomery before I got on the train, so I took the train to Downtown Berkeley and went to the Walgreens there. Then I got some boba at a place on Shattuck and contemplated walking to my old place - a 30 minute walk according to Google Maps - or taking the BART. I opted for the BART, but the train was an 18 minute wait! Still, part of the deciding factor about the BART was that the shoes I was wearing were doing hell on parts of my feet. While waiting for my train, I reacquainted myself with the creepy underground of the Bay Area. 

Then I was at the Ashby station and walking back to my old home. Things were very much the same, with small differences here and there. There was a black cat that I meowed at at the apartment complex near my old place. There was now a wooden fence in front of where the door on the chain-link fence used to be in front of the front yard of my old place. As I walked down the drive, I meowed, and noticed a stirring on the porch of the neighbors' house. It was Bitey getting up and finding an opening so he could come to greet me. He ran to the stairs, but we stopped and I opened a can of Fancy Feast. He gobbled that down, but still appeared hungry, so I opened the other can and he gobbled that one down too.

Bitey doesn't face the camera for long.

We hung out for a while, and he sat on my lap for a little bit. When I would think about leaving, he would follow me somewhere - like to throw out the trash from the cat food - and I felt compelled to stay. Eventually, I decided to take the BART back to my hotel, and my phone was dying.

I walked up to Ashby and saw that there are new signs up for the nearby elementary school.

It was before 10, so I stopped in at the corner store at Ashby and MLK and got myself an It's It Cookie. I ate that as I walked the rest of the way to the station, then waited for the train. I transferred at MacArthur, and on that train, my phone fully died, and I started getting a strange painful feeling that didn't subside until I got up and off the train at the Montgomery station.

I got back to my hotel room and turned on the TV to watch things on the Travel Channel, then later, 1000 Ways to Die, where I learned very interesting, but morbid things. I also took advantage of the 24-hour room service to get some better food besides the boba, potato chips, and ice cream that I had eaten for dinner. Around 2am, I managed to get to sleep.