Daisy Dukes, Bikinis on Top

11/7/10 - Edited with pictures!

I made my first ever visit to California this weekend - specifically in the lovely city of San Francisco. I've visited a decently-sized handful of major US cities before and have always remained steadfast in my belief that Chicago is the best and only city for me. But now I'm not so sure. Compared to Calgary, San Francisco felt like a slice of heaven - breezy, gorgeous heaven. Here are some highlights of my weekend:

* Staying at the gorgeous Sir Francis Drake hotel, located right downtown at Union Square, a hop and a skip from all the stores ever

* ...and so as a result, shopping shopping shopping! There is something about being in a new city that completely changes my take on spending money. If I'm in Chicago, say at the Macy's downtown I might see something and be like "meh". In SF that became "OHMYGOD I WILL DIE IF I DO NOT OWN THAT".
* In N Out. Oh god oh god oh god so good

Animal Style! Fuck yeah.

* Walking to said hamburger heaven and on the way, being scared out of our wits by a man dressed as some sort of creepy monster who burst out of a trash can as we walked by, to the amusement of many a spectating tourist
* Coming close to rolling down so many hills
* Meeting/talking to Bret Taylor, CTO of Facebook
* Going to AsiaSF, a fine-dining experience that involves you being served by beautiful, well-endowed, scantily-costumed Asian women. Think Victoria's Secret + Hooters - everyone's dream come true, right? Yeah, except for the part where you find out these girls are not women, but rather, men (mostly post-ops) who look damn fine in corsets. Dancing on tables, birthday shots off various unmentionable body parts, what's not to love!

Not a girl, not yet a woman

* Seeing touristy things, like Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Cliffhouse was not at all annoying/painful. The balmy 75 degree weather didn't hurt, either ;)

* Standing on a crowded bus at 3 in the morning, listening to the teen next to me asking everyone for a "surface". His friend, who was in a garbage can costume, surrendered his lid. Before I knew it, the kid was rolling a blunt and smoking right on the bus. Nobody complained - they all just opened the windows nonchalantly like they'd seen this a million times before
* Seeing friends, old and new, and making a bunch of new ones.

San Francisco, you have charmed me with your exquisite weather and beautiful people and impressive display of organic produce. In the words made famous by the governor of your lands, I'll be back.

Will update with photos soon. Gotta catch some shut-eye if I want to wake up tomorrow and hit the gym!

Reddit rules my world

A few months ago I'd blogged about the travesty known as Digg 4.0 and how I was considering making the switch over to its "rival", Reddit. Well, long story short, I did, and I am glad for it. Reddit is kind of like the quiet, smart, kinda weird lookin' kid in the back who usually goes by unnoticed until you get to know him. Then your world changes and your mind is blown and you wonder what you were doing with your life before meeting this person. Reddit can be a lot like Digg in that it generates and popularizes funny, unique, or inspiring stories - it just has a reputation for being way more elitist. But I've found that under the layers of pretense is a vibrant and soft-hearted core. Redditors have banded together and done some truly amazing, amazing things for causes they support - things I honestly never thought were possible.

One of the more recent acts of giving that may or may not have made me choke up ("why is there rain on my face!!") surrounds a 7-year old girl with Huntington's Disease who had already lost her mother to HD. Her neighbors - adults, mind you - posted pictures on Facebook of Kathleen and her dead mother with the grim reaper and with a skull and crossbones to get back at her family for not inviting them to share a moonbounce at a party soon enough. Key words: soon enough. It wasn't that the invitation didn't come, just that the text arrived late. This tiny little miscommunication led a grown couple to publicly mock and harass a dying 7-year old. They even hitched a coffin in front of Kathleen's house. A coffin, for crying out loud! I think this is one of those situations that can only be summed up by, "what the fuck is wrong with those people?"

But then, it branches out! Into choose your own adventure!

"What the fuck is wrong with those people? LET'S DESTROY THEM."

or

"What the fuck is wrong with those people? LET'S GIVE KATHLEEN THE BEST DAY OF HER LIFE."

Reddit went with the second option. They raised $17,000 in donations to create a perfect day for the little girl. Kathleen rolled up in front of a Redditor-owned toy store in a limousine that read "Team Kathleen", was greeted by a cheering crowd of volunteers, and got to pick out whatever she wanted in the store. The money went onwards to either Huntington's Disease research or to toys for sick children at the local hospital. As for her awful neighbors? Well, they've apologized. But nobody really cares about them  - the focus of the story really shifted from their heinous actions to a greater, anonymous effort to show Kathleen and the rest of the world that good, caring people do exist in this world. Reddit really took the high road here.

Someone is starting to cut onions again, damnit. But in all honesty, if you haven't already checked out Reddit, you really ought to consider it - cause dreams really do come true there! *cheesy exit music*

Cat, Clouds, Canada

I went home home for the first time in half a year. Nothing has changed much within the Fan Clan, except for my cat Mochi, who I am pretty sure doubled in size since the last time I'd seen him.

"Who's a big kitty! You're a big kitty!! Who wants a belly rub! Coo-chi-coo-chi-coo aw!!!!!!!!!!!"
- what I sound like when I am near him. Relevant XKCD.

He has the rather ridiculous habit of lying on his back at whichever spot is precisely most inconvenient for others to walk around. Belly up, paws splayed, always ready to party.

Mochi is actually Chuck Bass.

Moving on, and yes I know this is nerdy, but I have been pleasantly surprised by the epic cloud formations that drape across the Alberta skies. I have been told that even when the temperature creeps into the sub-zeros (Fahrenheit, mind you!), skies stay radiantly blue and clouds hang low and wide across the expanse of the city, huzzah!

And to end this post, here are a few pictures taken over the course of various flights:

Chicago, above and at ground level

Another Adventure Spawned from my Incompetencies

These events are not nice when they happen in real life. In fact, they are terrifying.  But they sure make for good blog material!

Here's what happened:

After work yesterday, I went straight to dinner with a couple of my colleagues. We went to Kensington, enjoyed a scrumptious sushi dinner, and washed it down with a bottle of sake. (I had three two-ounce glasses of it, so maybe the equivalent of a generous glass of wine). Afterward, we played pool for about an hour before meeting up with another ThoughtWorker and heading to a bar to see some bands play in its basement. We arrived just in time to catch the opening act, which I can really only describe as an old white dude, probably in his late 50s, acting like he'd swallowed a bottle of crazy pills that morning. His set was surrounded by candles. There was a purple paper-mache monster head emerging from a sheet of fabric behind him. He was wearing a shirt with a giant question mark on it. He was yarbling into the microphone, slapping his guitar and occasionally making a well-aimed kick to a bunch of chimes nearby, which clanged like the sound of bottles being smashed. I had to ask myself several times throughout his performance, "Is this real life?"

Anyway, that is not important. What is important is the fact that I offered to buy the next round of drinks, because that was when I made The Realization that my wallet was missing.

I immediately froze and thought I was actually going to have a panic attack - not of the usual Asian-ohmygodIgotaB-arm-flapping-and-high-pitched-squealing variety, but a full blown, legitimate, collapse-to-the-ground-clutching-for-air, P!A!N!I!C! A!T! T!H!E! D!I!S!C!O! A!T!T!A!C!K! I had a flight out early the next day to come home to Maryland and I kept going over the phone conversation in my head where I'd have to explain to parents and best friend that I would not be able to make it back after all. And be stuck in Calgary for the weekend with no money. And I'd die of boredom or starvation - I wasn't sure which would come first. Those three or four minutes of brooding were a real period in my life.

But then someone handed me a rum and coke and I downed it. As the warmth of the liquor rushed into my system I was able to relax a little and consider my options. There were only two places where my wallet could reasonably be: one, at my coworkers' suite where I'd dropped off my laptop, or two, back at the office. If it had been stolen at some point during the night, running off and looking for it now as opposed to later would not make much of a difference. We decided to stick around to see the show and then go look for my wallet afterward.

Fast forward to two hours later: it's one in the morning, the show has ended, and my co-workers are drunk as skunks. My own agitation has sobered me up and after we leave the bar I find myself clutching the steering wheel of a totally unfamiliar vehicle in a totally unfamiliar city in a totally unfamiliar COUNTRY with two gleeful, intoxicated men in the car with me. Oh, and have I mentioned that I am probably the harbinger of the stereotype, "terrible Asian female driver?"

A few precious snippets of conversation that came up as we drove towards the office:

"Rose, why are you so nervous? You need to calm down. Do you need a massage?"
"No."
"Why not? 
(I feel fingers on my shoulders, I hit the brakes and shriek)
"BECAUSE I HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE TOUCH ME!"

"Are you okay driving on the highway?"
"I"ve never driven on a highway before."
"You're kidding, right?"
(Pause) "Um. No."

"Do you have anything valuable in your wallet?"
"A couple hundred bucks."
"Anything else?"
"Two credit cards."
"Is that it?"
"No, I have all my week's receipts to expense."
"You can get those from your credit card statement. So you should be mine."
(30 seconds later)
"I uh, also have my social security card in there."
"A copy, right?'
"No, like the real card."
"Oh God."

We pulled up to the office at around 1:30 in the morning, retraced my steps, stole some other teams' candy, and found my wallet on the seat of my desk chair. Believe you me, I had never been happier to see that turquoise rectangle o leather. Nothing had been taken or tampered with, thank GOD. I drove home, ecstatic to have once again narrowly avoided disaster.

(The funny thing is, I drove considerably worse on the way back than when I was nervously heading to the office. I made big, deliberate happy swerves and swoops here and there that sent my drunk co-workers yelling in terror. We got back around 2 AM, took naps, and saw each other at the airport at 5 AM, looking like zombies.)

Now I'm back home the comforts of my real home, having spent a lovely evening playing guitar with my sister and eating delicious homecooked Chinese food. Weird to think that all this would not have been possible without last night's insane antics, eh?

Chess Night

Tonight we had chess night at the Calgary ThoughtWorks office. And by chess night I mean me sitting around with some pizza, some beer, and three nerdy boys - two on either side of me, the last lounging on the other end of the board looking smug as the three of us - Team World - struggled and bickered and muttered amongst ourselves in our combined effort to defeat the terrible tyrannical Team Isa.

I know I am not very good at chess, but the way these guys played made me feel downright lousy at it. I made some good points at times but too often my suggestions were too clumsy, too rushed. But no matter - playing chess with some of my fellow ThoughtWorkers was a remarkably fun way to spend an evening. I feel so much better about myself now than I would had I wasted that time watching Gossip Girl or clicking aimlessly around Facebook all night.

I'm looking forward to next Monday's game already and to my own improvement. Maybe one day I will get good enough to take on Team Isa by myself.

For now though, the score is:

World 1, Isa 0.