Things that might be decidedly odd…

Berkeley

While meandering around Berkeley this afternoon, it occured to me that it was about 10 years ago (give or take a month) that I first really visited Berkeley. Sure, once in high school I was here for an hour or so shopping at record stores, but it wasn’t until I was visiting prospective colleges that I came here for any length of time.

As I walked down Telegraph Avenue, I saw most of the same old haunts (Blondie’s Pizza, Amoeba and Rasputin, Shakespeare and Co., that vacant lot on the corner of Haste and Telegraph) and some changes (American Apparel, Walgreen’s, Chipotle, an empty Cody’s). I did some shopping, but only ended up buying two books at Shakespeare and Co.: Demian by Hesse (in German) and E.M. Forster’s Maurice. After more walking, I stopped for dinner at Bongo Burger on Euclid consisting of a Persian burger (grilled ground lamb sandwhich) and fries.

This trip has been different than any of the ones I took here last year. Because it was so last minute, I had little time to plan who I was going to visit and when. Obviously, people make plans in advance, so it comes as no surprise that I haven’t seen as many people for as long as I usually would. I’m fine with that though. It’s been such a relaxing trip where I’ve had a lot of time to just kick back and think.

I’ve come to the conclusion that it was probably a mistake to move away from here back in 2002. That’s not to say I can go back in time to change that decision or ever make things like they used to be. Those are clearly not options. It also doesn’t mean I’ve wasted the past 5 years. Living in different places has been a very valuable life experience that would be hard to give up. However, moving so much has caused me to reinvent myself so many times, that I feel like I’ve lost the richness of life I had when I last lived in one place for a long time (that is to say, here). Right now living in Seattle, I feel like I’ve become too one-dimensional. I feel like most of my friends and I have basically no common interests beyond being gay and enjoying conversation. Not that those are bad things to have in common–they’re just not enough on their own.

This all seems to tie back into my feelings of being in a rut right now too. I’m not sure where anything is going at this time. I generally like my job and where I live, but I hate my commute. I hate doing the same old shit every weekend. It’s all just getting frustrating and boring. I was hoping to make it to 21 months in Seattle. That would then mean it would be the place I’ve lived longest since being in the Bay Area. However, I’m not sure it’s going to happen. I’m getting the itch to move again eventhough I know it’s probably just a flighty desire to run away from my problems.

Ugh, I need real solutions.

Exciting Times

I arrived in Oakland on Friday night without too much trouble. Still, the bus driver on AirBART tried to rip me off by claiming I had only paid $2 (in quarters) of the $3 fare. After he realized I wasn’t going to be screwed out of another dollar, he let me on the bus. Friday night, I just kicked it with Kendra around her apartment. Saturday morning, I got up early and took BART into the city to meet up with Chris for swimming with the San Francisco Tsunami Swim Team. The workout was intense (I was breathing hard), but I was swimming in an unfamiliar lane in an unfamiliar pool. Still, it was pretty fun. Afterwards, we grabbed some brunch at Crapevine on Church with some of Chris’ other friends. One guy looked familiar to me and after some conversation we decided we must have seen each other around at Cal.

Last night I went to Kendra’s Donut Cancer Extravaganza in West Oakland. There were donuts, beer, chips, people playing Wii, people playing music and people just kicking it. Both Jenn and Aaron were there–I hadn’t seen either of them in at least 3 years. There were some other random acquaintances who were wondering where I had been for the last several years. There was also some guy who looked vaguely familiar who remembered me from college. It’s odd because that type of thing rarely happens to me in Seattle. It’s interesting though that other people I just saw around or didn’t actually know seem to remember me. Am I that memorable? Are they all just gay boys who remember because they saw me and thought I was cute? Either way, it’s sorta strange, but not unwelcome.

There was some musical entertainment late in the night. I actually got a lot of pictures on my camera, but I didn’t bring the USB cable with me, so their upload will have to wait until I’m back in Seattle. I did manage to snap a picture of Hello, It’s a Lumberjack Again with Aaron as a special guest with my cell phone though:

I also did some more moblogging on BART:

Long Bay Area Weekend

I admit it’s been a while since I’ve blogged, but I was busy traveling all over creation (that’s the bay area) with Jason, Sarah and other assorted characters.

I flew into San Jose on Wednesday night and was greeted by Jason, Sarah and Jeff T at the airport. We promptly had dinner at a tasty vegetarian Indian restaurant in or around Santa Clara somewhere. The next day, Sarah, Jason and I drove up to Napa County and did the wine tasting thing. It was a beautiful day for it, although we did get a bit of a late start. We hit up a couple places including Casa Nuestra (which Sara Lee took me to 4 years ago) and Mum’s (for Champagne).

On the way back, we stopped at Muir Beach in Marin County, although it was fairly fogged in.

That night we had dinner at a Thai place on Geary and 24th in the city with Jason and Sarah’s old friend Tessa. For such reasonable prices, the place was very fancy with uniformed waitstaff and even a shoe attendant.

We spent Friday afternoon (late start) in Berkeley seeing the campus and other nearby sights, making sure to stop for lunch at Zachary’s with Jeff T. Later, we met up with Jeff T, his roommate Sushant and Ajith (former UNC grad student) for some food and beer over at Jupiter. There I met up with Robert and we all (Jason, Sarah, Jeff T, Ajith, Robert and myself) went into the city to hit up the bars. Robert and I drove while the others took BART, so we stopped at a party a friend of a friend of a friend was throwing over in the Mission. I talked to a couple guys about swimming before we had to go meet up with the rest of the crowd for the bars.

We started out at Moby Dick’s which was pretty crowded. Amusingly, Jeff T got a free beer from the bartender who must have found him cute. I’ve never gotten a free beer at a bar in my life and he gets one his in his first visit to a gay bar. Beginner’s luck? (; From there, we continued on to the bar formerly known as Daddy’s. Apparentlty, it has a new name and somewhat altered clientelle which disappointed Robert somewhat (”There was only one guy getting blown in the corner!”). We didn’t stick around too long before heading over to Badlands for some sweaty dancing. I managed to get my ass grabbed by a couple guys who weren’t bad looking, which I admit boosted my self-esteem a little. But it was definitely a fun place to dance with a good amount of guys who were easy on the eyes.

At that point, Robert and I drove the rest of the gang back to Berkeley before continuing on to Concord. Unfortunately, Jason and Sarah’s rental car got broken into some time while we were gone and their backpacks (mostly containing nothing but clothes) were stolen. Robert and I went to the Hilton in Concord to meet up with some of his old friends, one of whom was getting married the next day. On the way back into the city, we stopped at Jack in the Box for dinner (neither of us had eaten a meal since lunch) which delayed our arrival at Chris’ (a friend of a friend of Robert’s whose place we crashed at) to some time around 3:30 or so.

The next morning, Chris, Robert and I got some good brunch at some restaurant (I forget the name) full of gay men on 16th and Market. Apparently, Chris’ swim team meets up there after their Saturday morning practice. Chris made sure to invite me to swim with them some time when I’m down in the future. Hopefully some time I’ll take him up on that offer. After that, Robert had to go back to Concord for the wedding and I met up with Jeff T, Jason and Sarah back in Berkeley. We headed up to the hills for a bit and checked out the Little Farm in Tilden Park. I had to take a nap after that because I was so tired from the night before. After that though, we grabbed dinner at Cha Am in the gormet ghetto and then went over to Castro Valley to play some mini-golf. At that point, Jeff and Sushant went back to Berkeley and I went with Jason and Sarah back to Jason’s place in Santa Clara.

This morning, we got up and did some browsing at Barnes and Noble. I found a couple of interesting books on swimming, which I need to look into some more. It seems like it would be nice to have a book on proper swimming technique for reference. There was also a cool book on weight training for swimming. I’ve been thinking about adding some weight training to my workout schedule to mix things up a bit. It might be nice to target that towards swimming. After that, we went to Jeremy’s place where he was having a BBQ. Good food, good friends and good conversation for sure.

Then it was time to go to the airport and return to Seattle. Whew, what a weekend!

The rest of the pictures are here.

Monday Morning

On Monday morning, I was still in Berkeley and had to get up early to catch my plane. In fact, I woke up at 6am, but managed to lay in bed until my official getting up time of 6:30. After a quick shower, some quick packing and some goodbyes, Jeff and I were on our way to Oakland Airport. Fortunately, my plane was on time and everything went very smoothly with the travel arrangements. It did take me a while to get from Sea-Tac airport to work though. I didn’t have time to go home, so I just headed straight into work by taking Sound Transit. I had to transfer in downtown Renton, which I must say was very boring. Fortunately, they had a newspaper box for The Stranger whose contents occupied me for a bit.

Work was fairly light today. Most of the developers seemed to be there, but in general the building felt fairly vacant. The cafeteria was very uncrowded. In fact, certain kinds of food weren’t even being served because they must have anticipated low turnout. On the plus side, traffic coming home even during rush hour was basically non-existant.

The Rest of my Weekend in the Bay Area

On Sunday, Lisa, Jeff and I all got up fairly late after our busy Saturday night. We met up with Jeremy for a late lunch at Vick’s (an Indian food place over in west Berkeley), which we ate at the Berkeley marina. After eating, we walked around a bit, but mostly out to the end of the pier. That really brought back memories of when Leanna, Beth (when she was in town) and I used to walk to the end of the pier at ungodly hours of the night when in college.

From there, we headed up to the Thousand Oaks part of Berkeley (as opposed to the city of the same name in Ventura County). We wandered around Solano Avenue before putting our names in at Zachary’s Pizza. The wait wasn’t too bad, although we did see some altercation between a couple of homeless people and some dude. The dude must have said something like “get a job” to the homeless people, because they quickly went ballistic and all parties were at each other’s throats. The pizza was good though. After Zachary’s, we drove up to Tilden Park to look at barnyard animals. I must admit I didn’t know such a thing even existed in Berkeley! Then we dropped Jeremy off at his car and the rest of us headed back to Jeff’s place.

Bay Area, Take 1

On Friday, I managed to leave work at a decent time to head to the airport for my trip to the bay area. Unfortunately, I’d forgotten to pack several things that morning and ended up going back home before catching the bus to the airport though. The flight was on time and everything went smoothly with BART to get to Berkeley. After arriving, Jeff, Lisa and I went to the asian food ghetto in Berkeley (Thai Basil specifically in my case) to get some food, since it’s one of the few places still open at that time of night. We tried to find a bar, but everything was loud or busy, so we just bought some beer (Jeff T. bought a 40 even) and went back to Jeff and Lisa’s place.

The next morning Saturday, we all eventually got up to grab some lunch and watch some World Cup games. Jeff T. got up early enough to catch the first game between England and Portugal. I didn’t but when I found out England lost, I had to call Kendra and ask her how her boys could have let her down like that. I then went over to Kendra’s after lunch and we watched the Brazil and France game. On my way there, I walked by a Brazilian pizzeria that was packed full of fans. On the way back out, it was sadly very empty. Kendra and I wandered around Telegraph. I was looking for some piercing jewelry (3/4″ 4ga circular barbell made of titanium). Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find any such thing, although one place came close (11/16″ though and I didn’t like the blue color).

Eventually, Jeff, Lisa and I headed into the city on BART, parting with Kendra who needed to spend some quality time with Dickens and Maud. We had dinner at some Spanish tapas place in the Mission then walked around a bit. At some point, we ended up at a bar called Zeitgeist, which is something like a hipster San Francisco version of He’s Not Here (a bar in Chapel HIll for those who don’t know). We then met up with some of Lisa and Jeff’s friends at a dance club called Majool. I thought the music was pretty heinous and the DJs seemed very unskilled. Plus, it was full of straight people who were all dressed in button down shirt and shiny dresses. Sometimes I forget how truly bizarre straight people can be. It did have a cool roof deck though with a view of downtown and the bay bridge. We then briefly went to Amnesia over on Valencia right before it closed.

At that point, we were having confusing disagreements about how to get home. In the end, we caught an airport shuttle (10 of us total) van for $75 which seemed like a pretty good deal all things considered.

Ex-Students

I was talking with somebody probably about a month ago about how there are probably even former students of mine somewhere at work. Well, I seem to have (partially) confirmed that. On the Cal alumni mailing list, some guy posted about a need for interviewers for some sort of alumni scholarship. I responded that I might be interested in helping out. The guy who sent out the email recognized my name and sent back a response asking if I used to be a TA for CS61B with Paul Hilfinger. Turns out, he was in the class I TA’d for back in Fall 2001. I don’t think he was properly one of my students, being that during that semester I had just one evening section with only a handful of students. However, I was also the head TA, which meant pretty much all the students were aware of who I was being that I oversaw the grading of all assignments (wrote solutions, “autograder” code, rubrics, resolved disputes, etc.).

Anyhow, it looks like we’re grabbing lunch tomorrow, which should be cool. The bad part is that I can’t place a face to the name (I’m so bad with names), but I do vaguely recognize the name. Hopefully, tomorrow all will be revealed.

Moving Update

Yesterday (Friday) I began my journey towards Seattle stopping in Berkeley that evening. First, I met up with Jeremy at the Berkeley Rose Garden. From there, we headed over to Kendra’s place and met up with her there. We sat and chatted for a while before Joe joined the three of us for dinner at Barney’s (which I had never been to before). After that, Jeremy headed back to the south bay to attend one of Alice’s HKN parties. Here’s a parting shot of the two of us:

Joe, Kendra and I then went to Gilman to see a show. We arrived in time for the third (of five) band, which I didn’t find particularly interesting. Of course, we made the obligatory visit to the liquor store on the corner of Gilman and San Pablo. I didn’t buy anything but Kendra and Joe bought 1 liter bottles of Dr Pepper which they went to drink on the train tracks.

Apparently, you can’t bring bottled beverages into Gilman any more because too many people were bringing in concealed alcohol or something. We caught a good chunk of Pansy Division (15 years of gay pop punk).

At some point, we ended up outside because it was so smoky inside. Fleshies played in the background, but I think the three of us were tired. We headed back to Joe and Kendra’s where I crashed out on a futon. This morning I got up and chatted with Kendra some more while she cooked some good vegan pancakes for brunch. I finally got out of Berkeley at around 12:30, which was a bit late of a start.

All the Berkeley pictures are here.

Right now, I’m staying at a hotel in Salem, OR. Despite the late start, I got in a good day of driving today. Seattle’s about 220 miles from here, which means approx. 3-4 hours tomorrow depending how I drive.

The last few days I was in Seattle looking for a place to live, I went over to the REI flagship store and wandered around while taking pictures. Those pictures can be seen here.

Resting Overnight

This evening I made it back to San Clemente (where my parents’ live) after an uneventful bus, flight and drive. Tomorrow, I need to get up at a decent hour to get my things together and begin the journey northwards. My plan is to stop in Berkeley tomorrow night, have dinner with Kendra K and Jeremy (others too are welcome) and then go to Gilman for Punk Rawk Joel’s birthday show featuring Fleshies and Pansy Division. After that I may crash at Kendra’s or get back on the road for a couple more hours. We’ll see, but either way it’s going to be a long day!

Memes are dumb but informative

After seeing Lisa list all the places she’s lived (very impressive), I decided I might as well too as a means of reflection:

• Anaheim, CA (11.5 years)
• San Clemente, CA (6.5 years)
• Berkeley, CA (9 months)
• San Clemente, CA (3 months)
• Berkeley, CA (2.5 years)
• Bayreuth, Germany (5 months)
• Berkeley, CA (1 year)
• San Clemente, CA (1 month)
• Saarbrücken, Germany (1.5 years)
• Berkeley, CA (3 months)
• Carrboro, NC (1 year and counting)