I will be the pattern of all patience; I will say nothing.

It’s now 11:50pm, and the Halloween revelers are still well, howling outside. It’s another 3 muni stops to Castro, idiots!

Boo, humbug.

Oh, guess what it’s Halloween again. This year it’s on a weekend, with a full moon, wonderful weather and the stock markets on their way up from the doldrums. The only thing working against it this year is the Bay Bridge is still closed.

I guess Halloween is the angmo 7th Moon equivalent. The problem is I’m trained keep away from the candy (much less give it out) and not open the door to strangers. If I had kids I’d have issues too – going door to door getting free candy. Psycho alert!!! If there’s one thing I learnt from my time here, is that while I’ve issues, there are plenty others with plenty more here.

True I am used to celebrating other cultures, so starting right now we’re going out to celebrate – with probably a nice meal, some shopping and a movie. We’ll be home late so don’t ring the doorbell.

Raindrops on (not quite) roses, whiskers on kittens

The air has chilled and gone crisp, a stark contrast to the otherwise balmy weather we’ve had. It’s almost as if someone turned the A/C on again, suddenly.

It smells different. It smells of impending rain. It smells like this in December in Singapore. I love that, it meant Christmas and a lit-up Orchard Road, and days off, and the only time coffee ever smells inviting, and crowded malls.

Even when I’m 8,483 miles away, the sudden change in the weather triggers the same feeling. It’s actually very comforting, albeit a little premature this year.

Rain is a little different here than it is back at home. Rain here is usually a light affair, it sprinkles perhaps for the whole day, and is usually a forgettable affair.

Once in a while, it storms. That is what’s supposed to happen tomorrow. The remnants of Typhoon Melor that blasted through Japan a few weeks ago will pay California a visit, dumping snow on the Sierra Nevada and loads of rain everywhere else. Being from the tropics, storms don’t really faze us. We’re used to our tropical thunderstorms; we’ve probably even had to walk back from school through a few in our time.

Storms here mean something different. Bad traffic, really gusty winds going as fast as a car on a freeway, and my personal favourite – downed powerlines. I guess we’d never give it a second thought – blackouts hardly ever happen back home. The power comes back pretty quickly too. We don’t even see the power lines for goodness sakes! Over here, when it blacks out, it could be days before it’s restored, that’s if you live someplace rural. I don’t. But it’s also a little disturbing when you wake up in the morning and the tree you planted a few years ago on the sidewalk (that’s pavement where we come from) outside your home is now sprawled on the Prius parked in your driveway.

Don’t worry. I don’t have a big tree, and I don’t drive a Prius. I’m just painting sorta suburban picture of Lifestyles of the Green and Liberal.

Anyway. Long story short, it’s cold now. It’s going to storm tomorrow. I hope my power doesn’t go out, because I need my tv and my internet, but at least I am not worried about a tree falling over my car. Later, homies.

We finally made it to the beach yesterday. I thought I’d be beached-out too, having spent something like four weekends at either Sentosa or East Coast when I was back in Sunnypour for vacation, but the last few days were way too warm not to head to one of the local beaches here. So I searched up “San Francisco Beach” and found a Guide to the Best Beaches in San Francisco. Which is a bit of a misnomer, one of the beaches was in Marin, so that whittled my choices down to three.

We headed to China Beach. It was a really nice, hot, perfect for the beach day, so the beach was pretty crowded by the time we got there. Still, we found a great seat, and saw a few sealions swimming, pelicans diving for food, and various bugs and creatures scurrying around. Besides, there’s nothing like sitting in the sun, watching the tankers go by, with the Golden Gate Bridge as the backdrop.

China Beach: 428 Seacliff Drive, San Francisco, CA. It’s a nice drive through really swanky houses which hug the coast. Small 30+ car parking lot, and shower facilities (nice).

I had a rather active weekend. First, we set up the Wii after putting it away for a year. First we didn’t have a tv. Then after we set up the tv we didn’t get around to setting up the Wii. So anyway, almost four months after getting the Wii Fit we set it up.

Wee is unfit.

According to the genius that is Nintendo, my Fitness age is 13 years more than my actual age. Which is bad news. The Wii Fit is kind of like Brain Age for working out, and the games are pretty compelling for now. There is a Yoga module, a Strength training module, an Aerobics module (which is totally misleading) and a Balance module; like Brain Age, you get to unlock more poses as you progress and chalk up more time on the system. I’m not addicted. But I’m trying to chalk up at least 30 mins 4 days a week to start off.

Yesterday, KF took the day off, so we went for a hike. I’ve been bugging him to bring me hiking mostly because I’ve been checking up on the State Parks in California and they all sound like they’ll have picturesque landscapes and beautiful wildlife. Not exactly.

Not all of them have toilets. If they do, it’s literally a hole in the ground with a toilet bowl on top.

Landscapes might be stunning, but sometimes the odd phone or power line will ruin your picture.

You gotta watch out for crap – dog, cat and horse (at least I hope it was horse).

Other than that, it’s really nice to be in the great outdoors. The weather now is perfect for it, afternoons are a balmy 18C or so, with a little sunblock you’re good to go. There are plenty of nice parks along the coast, and the drive is fun in itself. Highway 1 is totally quaint. If you’re not in a hurry.

Anyway, I picked McNee Ranch State Park for our hike this time around because it was relatively close by, and seemed to offer a good mix of both coastal scenes and plantlife.
View Larger Map

It didn’t feel like the other state parks, mostly because we encountered some roadwork getting there. Usually it’s quiet around the state parks. This felt like a park in the city, because you can hear the traffic and see the homes in the distance on top of the hill. It took me forever to get up the hill because I kept stopping for photos. But that was the point of going for a hike, at least for me. 3.5 hours and 820 photos later, we left tired, hungry but glad to have made the trip.

I’d wanna go on another hike again, maybe over the weekend, but the other parks seem a little further away. If we get another couple of days off, I’d totally wanna head to Big Basin Redwoods State Park. It looks huge on the map, and it’s next to a few other parks.

I don’t know why, but it was harder coming back to the States after my vacation in Sunnypour. Yeah, I stopped waking up wondering where I am, but off and on I still get that I-don’t-belong-here feeling – especially with a draught when the automatic doors open and the spring air rushes in. I don’t really know why, except perhaps one of my first experiences here was just that.

But once past the whimsy and nostalgia, there are very certain indicators every day that remind me that I don’t think we’re in Sunnypour anymore.

I present – my How I Know I’m back in the US of A Indicators:

• Idiotic belief that everyone that has an opinion should be heard: this explains bumper sticker messages, picket lines and reality TV.
• Misguided trust that everything (and mostly anything) on TV is “word”: this explains an unhealthy lack of skepticism for the new administration.
• Overcompensation: for perhaps, general idiocy, but everything is 20x{bigger + louder + more obnoxious + more cathartic + salty + available + a worthwhile cause}.

This often leads to an overload of superfluous, zero value added data floating around, getting rehashed at every point, beaten with a stick, then whipped, till it forms stiff peaks and then all over again. For a general population with larger problems, this poses a somewhat iffy vicious circle of denial. It’s tiring and pretty damn frustrating to think about it – how it slowly slid down this path and got to where it is. It’s sad.

I don’t deny there aren’t the same issues in Sunnypour. But our Asian education has taught us (mostly) to speak when we’re spoken to, or not say anything if we don’t have anything better to say. I appreciate that so much more now. Repressed as we may be, there’s something to be said for restraint.

And efficiency.

The bottom line is – people are the same whereever you go. How society forms around it, government handles it, pretty much is what we see. I think I’m pretty much over the – trust people to be considerate and educated enough to know discern the right thing, and do it. Not going to happen for the most part. And that’s the part that counts, no?

In other news, I’ve conquered what is known as – The Frontyard. Yes, the piece of land in the front of the house visible to anyone who’ll look. Mr Garden Cutters and I had a grand time, later on we were joined by Mr Shovel and Mr Rake. In all, took me 5 hours, over two days to clear the planter bed for my peony and roses. It’s a little bare now, while the little filler plants take their time to grow out. But I dare say it’s going to be fine. In a year perhaps when the roses and peony starts growing out a little .

Yet another shiney happy day. Yay. The downside to all this warmth and sun is that bugs are all alive and everything now. Ants galore. Not to mention the creepies when I go and work on the garden. Freaky.

Just spoke to my folks on Skype, they seem ok. I overslept, if not the Itty Niece would still have been up and I could’ve chatted with her for a bit. By the time I called, all I saw was her sleeping in the background.

Tried some of those radish sprouts I’ve been growing. I put them in KF’s breakfast sandwiches. They’re quite tasty, more tasty than alfafa but somewhat larger leafed. They’re probably going to be good in salads too. Also raising some lettuce. Maybe I should plant those out in peat.

KF bought the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD while I was in Singapore, and we were watching them last night. Luke’s such a freaking whiner, I realise. As a kid I never really had the patience or inclination to complete the trilogy – I never knew what was going on, and really, Yoda was like some freaky house pet turned trainer. But anyway.

The second disc in our trilogy didn’t work, and since we didn’t keep receipts, I’m not sure what we’re going to do with it. And it’s Empire, too.

Luke gets his hand cut off, finds out Vader’s his father… It ends on such a down note. That’s what life is, a series of down endings. All Jedi had was a bunch of muppets.

Name that movie. No peeking on IMDB. No prizes either.

in the Bay Area. The sun is shining, temperatures are up to about 15°C, and the days are longer (thanks mostly to the move to daylight savings).

Despite this, off and on I still get the I’m-in-a-foreign-land pang. Which is strange and unnerving, especially after a year and a half. I don’t know what triggers it, but sometimes it’s the change in temperature, or a certain scent/smell in the air, or both. Makes me feel, in a flash, like I’m on vacation, and in a few weeks I’ll be home, only to realise, a heart wrenching moment later, that those days are over for now.