Rudolph, Herbie, and Yukon Cornelius sail into a thick fog.
Yukon Cornelius: Fog's as thick as peanut butter.
Herbie: You mean pea soup.
Yukon Cornelius: You eat what you like, I'll eat what I like!
 

Monday Morning

Since I've been a little behind on pictures last week, I decided to add a whole bunch just for Monday. I had Mondays but I thought walking to the office early and taking pictures along the way might ease the stress. It's amazing how being in a totally new place makes the really mundane things in life so fresh and new.

Random building on Post St. 

Random buildings in Union Square. 

I thought that this piece of pottery in this gallery was kind of interesting. I took this Chinese Art History class a long time ago and we had to study about bronzes and pottery. Supposely, for early Chinese art, there was this transition from bronze sculpture (with green oxidation) to green glazed pottery. It kind of made me think about that again. 

Another random piece of green pottery. 

Some random street in the Financial District. 

This is in the Financial District. I just liked the "Free Bill Pay" sign. 

I just thought that this was some interesting shrubbery with some white flowers. Unfortunately, the detail of the flowers didn't come out that well. 

This is just some random tower near the ferry building at the Embarcadero. 

Notice the front left wheel. It's not even touching the ground. 

Jumper

This is the view that usually see every morning, Monday to Friday. I believe that this is the Oakland Bay Bridge and Yerba Buena Island. In the San Francisco Chronicle, there was an article about adding these barriers to the bridge to stop people from jumping off and killing themselves. It kept going back and forth about whether or not it was worth the extra money to save these people's lives and whether or not people would just find other ways to kill themselves if they couldn't jump off the bridge. Then there was the engineering side of it about how to actually build these barriers without destablizing the bridge. If it was up to me, I would just put big freakin' spikes at bottom of the sides of the bridge. So if someone decides to jump, maybe the site of previously impaled people would deterrent enough. That's just me though. 

It's been a slow week for pictures. The batteries keep dying out on my SiPix StyleCam. It's this cheapo digital camera that i bought a while back at J&R for like $30. Sure, I could use a fancy-smancy fifty million megapixel camera for my blog but this camera is really small and rugged and I wouldn't cry too much if I lost it or broke it.  

Erhu no go and other stuff

I'm kind of bummed out. I called up earlier this week to sign up for erhu class this Saturday but I guess the erhu teacher fell off the face of the earth or something. The guy working there asked me for my name and number. Yeah... I'm sure he's gonna call me back real soon after I gave him my 646 cell phone number. Well... it's not like I've never had an erhu sitting around collecting dust before. I'm looking for some other weekend class to sign up for though. I was really looking forward to learning how to play the erhu though.

Earlier tonight, I had dinner at this cool hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese place across the street from my friend's place next to the Lumiere Theater. Well, they said that they were Vietnamese but everyone there spoke Cantonese and they had mapotofu on the menu. My friend wanted to grab some dinner. When we stepped out of his place in Polk Gulp and the wind was blowing in the right direction and we got this great wiff of grilled chicken. I was like, "What is the Rock cookin'?" My friend got some grilled chicken and I got the pork chops. Wow. That was a great place. Very simple... not a huge menu but what they have on the menu, they do it right.

Ok... I'm gonna steal this joke from this guy at work about where I'm staying at in San Francisco and we're my friend's living. I always thought that I was staying in Union Square... which is sort of true. It's on the border of Union Square where all of the theaters and hotels and galleries are, I guess. I'm like 4 blocks away from Macy's and Borders. I always thought that my friend lived in the Tenderloin. It was kind of a reasonable assumption after passing all of these transvestite hookers on my way home from his place at night. In actuality, he lives in what they refer to as Polk Gulp, bordering on the Tenderloin. I kind of live between Union Square, Nob Hill and the Tenderloin... or as this guy from work says - "the Tender Nob".

The other night, my friend and I went to his favorite 24 hour donut place in his neighborhood. I think it's owned by these korean people. My friend is a regular there and knows the korean lady who works there. At around 11 o'clock at night, they make the French Crullers. That is my favorite donut. I got two French Crullers with chocolate on top and a pint milk. Really good stuff. I could tell that a lot of love went into making those donuts.

There is this new Italian restaurant that's opened up across the street from where I'm staying. Before that, it was a Chinese Burmanese place. I haven't tried it yet but if Italian food is anything like the pizza around here, I think I'm gonna be truly disappointed. To the left of the restaurant is this minimart. It seems like there are tons of places like this around here in San Francisco. They're sort of like bodegas but they don't sell Malta.