accident prone

I haven't written in such a long time. I was going to blog two Thursdays ago following my nasty accident, but I was so caught up in my homework and tending my wounds.

But, enough about the homework. To tell you the truth, I'm not really feeling this semester. Or should I say... I haven't really felt this semester. And by that I mean I haven't been enjoying myself too much. Don't get me wrong. I really love the courses and the subjects and the professors are great, but I'm not too fond of late classes and the idea of missing the bus ride (it comes every 40 minutes and the last bus is at 8.20 PM or something) haunts me whenever we get overboard with the time.

That was precisely what happened on the night I had my accident. I was fidgeting much in class because it was already time (7.30 PM) but we were still talking about our assignments. I really didn't want to miss my bus. I was tired and hungry and Thursday is the last day of school week so I was looking forward to a nice long weekend.

We got out of class at 7.40 PM and I hurriedly walked to the bus stop. It was freezing and my teeth were chattering and I cursed because it was 7.41 PM and that was when the bus was supposed to come and I didn't see any bus. So I thought I must've missed it. I braced myself to wait for forty minutes and decided not to wait in the library because I wouldn't be able to see it if it came. Instead, I walked to a nearby classroom (very warm and cozy and empty) with windows through which I could see the bus stop.

Just when I plopped my ass down on the chair in the class, ready to rub my freezing tropical palms together, I instinctively looked outside the window at the bus stop and lo! and behold, the bus was there. So I did my best Wonder Woman impression and ran. I ran and I ran and I ran and... I jumped over two stair cases. The first jump was quite a success. I wobbled a bit when I landed, but I thought, oh f*ck it, I'm going to jump over the other. So I did, and landed on the asphalt on my palms and knees like a little bitch.

My stuff was all over the place and I picked it up and ran to the bus. The nice driver apparently saw something on the ground and said that I had dropped something. I went out again and realized that I had forgotten my glasses and they were there on the ground.

Well, the bus was empty and I was the only passenger even when it arrived at the BART station, so I guess I was lucky. I suddenly felt stings on multiple parts of my body, namely my right palm, some fingers of my right hand, and my right knee. So I looked, and sure enough, I was bleeding. The right knee part of my jeans was torn and I peeked inside and saw that I was bleeding hard.

The bus ride was twenty minutes long to Lafayette BART station. Then I had to wait for about five minutes until the train arrived. The train ride took about ten minutes to Rockridge BART station. Then I had to wait for about fifteen minutes for the bus from Rockridge to the nearest stop from my apartment. The bus ride was about eleven minutes, and the walk was about seven minutes.

In the words of Plankton, let no one say I don't suffer for my art. Or something like that. And actually I don't suffer for my art technically speaking, but you get the idea.

After the jump, you'll be exposed to the gore fest that is my wounds. They're healing now. The one on my right palm is still raw but at least it's not bleeding anymore. My knee, on the other hand, suffered quite a deep gash, and since I can't stop walking (and dancing - although I've been restraining myself from doing floorwork), it's healing somewhat slowly.

But before that, here's some more Wonder Woman goodness. I personally prefer the theme song where the singers sing the whole song, but those other clips don't show Ms. Carter jumping around.

Perhaps that night before I jumped, I should've twirled so I could change into my Wonder Woman costume, huh?

To think I was interested in doing Parkour.

See my wound after the jump (pun intended)

nightmare

At 00:11 just now, I woke up from a nightmare.

Okay, here's a little disclaimer. I'm currently working on a horror story that takes place in Indonesia and I was watching Coraline before going to bed and feeling bloated after dinner. 

I am there with my friends and we're hanging out and I think we're in the studio during an open house and we have people coming in and trying a dance session. Then she comes in. There's something about her that's making me uneasy and right then and there I scream to my friends, telling them she's a specter, a ghost, a demon. No one believes me, but the woman seems to be offended and runs to where the elevators are (pretty impressive, huh? A dance studio in a fancy building with elevators! Yeah! But I digress), and stupidly enough, I run after her. 

Seriously, I don't know why I'm running after her, maybe it's to say I'm sorry? Maybe it's to shout and scream some more at her? I think it's the latter. Then she looks at me and I feel the strangest thing: I feel that I've seen her before and I feel that I've been in the situation before and in that previous situation, the spectress revealed her true face when her face was hovering just inches before mine and let's just say that it wasn't a very pretty face. Okay, I lied, it was a very evil and grotesque face with skewed yellow eyes and boy, I think I saw fangs too. 

And just like in the previous encounter, now she's looking at me and she seems to be flying (or probably taking a huge and graceful step towards me - that makes me wonder why I turned her away from the dance lesson. She would probably make a good dancer) and her face is hovering just inches from mine and, yes, sure enough, she reveals her true face to me.

Her eyes become askew and her irises turn yellow. Not yellow like fire, but like the mold, growing off of a dead thing and invading its surface. She opens her mouth and I can see perfectly lined fangs. Yes, the fangs are so perfectly lined that when I'm thinking about it now, they may look a lot prettier than my own teeth. In fact, the fangs are the same size. They're not huge like a T-rex's or a shark's, but they're there, menacingly perfect. Two rows of perfectly lined fangs. Then she arched her lips and grinned at me, baring those sharp fangs. There's something demeaning in that grin. Something that says she knows me and she has my soul. 

I don't know what's coming over me, but my left hand flies on her face and I attack her, clawing her face. But then I wake up as my nails hit the wall  and the Venetian blinds of my real bedroom. 

I open my eyes for five seconds but they feel so heavy, the kind of heaviness that one feels after an abrupt and involuntary awakening from a deep slumber (no matter how ghastly it is). So I close them back and I am  sucked into the nightmare again.

I wake up in my room and although it doesn't look like my room in Jakarta, I know that I'm at home. I quickly get out of bed and bang on the other doors next to my room. My mom and dad are there and also my sister, but my brother's room is empty. I remember feeling relieved that my brother isn't there. And there I am, screaming and shouting of my encounter with a ghost. My sister believes in what I say but my parents remain skeptical, but then something happens and I'm not sure what. I think I come back to my room and find a box, then there's a box of pictures, and every time I look at it, the spectress comes and it challenges me with her eyes and her fangs, but I want to defeat her because I've seen her once and she got away. I want her to stop bullying me. 

I run through the box of pictures. There's a picture with only a silhouette of a woman, there's another picture that I forgot. And every time I do that, the spectress comes back and haunts me and I scream (because I'm a chickenshit) and my mom comes into the room and I'm determined to show my mom that the demon does exist and that the demon follows me. 

And I don't know why, but somehow, mom and I are in the bathroom and I grab the shower hose and begin to spray water all over the room and there's a spot that no matter how strong the spray is, the water won't reach it, as if there's an invisible wall there, and then I know, and my mom also realizes, that it's the demon and that she exists. 

 Then suddenly I'm back inside the room but my mom isn't there anymore. I rummage through the box of pictures again and found a paper box. Inside it is a hair comb, the one that sticks on the hair as an accessory and as I reach to grab it, the whole room turns black. Pitch black. I can't turn the lights on and I can't find a single light spot to fix my eyes on. But I feel her, I feel that the demon is there, and yes she's there, I feel her as a giant, standing right there in front of me as a dark red fog but with sharp edges. She just stands there, glaring a ray of darkness (this may sound weird, but her glare, the dark redness that emanates from her presence doesn't reflect light, as opposed to what colors do. As far as I know, colors reflect light, that's why we can see them and differentiate which color is which, but that dark redness is there and it seems to stand starkly in the pitch blackness).

She's a giant now, and she just stands there and I'm sitting upright in bed, still trying to flick the bedside light on but it won't turn on. I feel she's feeling satisfied that I'm now so terrified that if I shat right then and there my poo would be pale and white with fright. I feel like I've done something bad, like I've wronged her and that she deserves to do that to me, but at the same time, I also know that I deserve to be free of this mortal fear. So I begin to confront her. I don't know what's coming over me but I begin screaming and shouting to her, "You are nothing to me. I am stronger than you are. I am bigger than you are. You are nothing and you don't scare me. You hear me? You are nothing!" Strangely enough, it works. I can feel her energy diminishing as she becomes smaller. Then she seems to disappear. 

As soon as I can't see her anymore (although I can still feel her presence), I try to turn the light on again by flicking it like a madman, but it still won't turn on and I panic again. Then in a split second, I realize that I'm dreaming and the only way to get out of this is to wake up, and so as the last resort, I jerk my head strongly to the right and there I am inside my room. My real room. The lights are turned off but the street lights seep through the blinds into the room and for a moment after the pitch blackness of my nightmare, my darkened room looks like it's filled with flood lights. 

Now I'm here, writing about it, ignoring the grammar and the structure and the cohesiveness (because it is a dream and I'm narrating it using present tense) and I'm just hoping that it's just a dream. 

I'm really hoping that it's just a dream. 

cali

I can't believe I'm back here in California. I can't believe I'm back here in my apartment, listening to my neighbor upstairs playing guitar in the middle of the night (something that I quickly avenged by Skype-ing loudly with a friend). I can't believe school is starting tomorrow.

To be perfectly honest, I'm here for the dance. But don't tell my mom.

If I'm not too lazy (I still have the jet lag to blame), I'll be posting the pros and cons of being here, of pursuing a chunk of my dreams far away from home, far away from the comfort, safety, and certainty of a city I call home.

However, I have to admit that when I boarded the BART train from SFO to Rockridge a few nights ago, I didn't feel like a stranger.

Perhaps it was the ultimate surrender. Or, the jet lag.

Yeah, I think it was the jet lag.

the year 2011 in review

January 2011: Arriving in San Francisco, CA for 5 months of unknown future with EF

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February 2011: Playing hooky from school and taking American Tribal Style® General Skills, Teacher Training 1 & 2 at FatChanceBellyDance® thus fulfilling a very, very large dream

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March 2011: Experiencing Spring Break and more rain in California (AKA: Nothing much happened but I just put something in here anyway to fill in the void. And I think the photo is pretty).

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April 2011: Receiving an acceptance letter to the Creative Writing - Fiction MFA program at St. Mary's College of California, thus fulfilling another large dream.

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May 2011: Playing hooky YET AGAIN by going to the most awesome dance festival on Earth: Tribal Fest!

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June 2011: EF Graduation and flying back to Indonesia

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July 2011: Being tattooed for the first time (AND DEFINITELY NOT THE LAST!)

and

July 2011: Teaching FatChanceBellyDance® format of American Tribal Style® for the first time

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August 2011: Flying back to California

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September 2011: Starting school

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October 2011: Performing with BlueDiamondsBellyDance, student troupe of FatChanceBellyDance®, at Tannourine Restaurant.

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November 2011: Performing with BlueDiamondsBellyDance again, this time with live music by Helm. Also at Tannourine.

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December 2011: Finishing the first semester at St. Mary's College and dancing at a surprise party for the proposal of a dance sister (Photo courtesy of Aaron Suedmeyer)

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Well, so I guess it has been a pretty good year. I don't have a list of resolutions for 2012. All I know is that I'm just going to focus on dancing and writing.

And... Probably having flatter stomach.

See you next year and Happy New Year!

really?

Quite a few oddities and stupidities happened during the time I was absent from posting entries unrelated to school work.

I know, I know... Posting assignments from school is a cheap way of making sure something is still being posted here. However, this is my blog and I reserve the right to be cheap lazy posting whatever and whenever I want. I am an artist, damn you!

Yep. I'm reminded why I didn't want to get a job in advertising agencies. It's the same mentality over and over again. The mentality of an artist. The mentality of being high and mighty. The mentality of (thinking of) being superwitty, supercynical, superknow-it-all with that smarter-than-thou attitude. I am pissed, but I will persevere. Albeit with being silent and hiding in the dark. Like latent disease.

On to school work! Last week, I had Saturday and Sunday off since there was no dance class nor dance conditioning class. I had a submission to be critiqued coming up and I felt imperative to imprison myself in the barricade of my little apartment and just write. I lived like a hermit. I ate little, I didn't shower. The new vacuum cleaner that I just bought was lying there in its uselessness. I will have to clean up my apartment this morning.

The reason why I felt it was necessary to cram myself up from Friday to Monday, was because my submission would be a long one (it was 69 pages at that time). We are required to submit a big chunk of work (around 100 pages and more) two weeks before the actual reading and critiquing session. My classmates and I have been handing out stories of ten pages or fifteen, and we are always given one week to read and write our critique. With the length of my submission, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to turn it in a week or two weeks before.

Regardless, I finished the draft. Then, proudly and happily, I shot an e-mail to my professor, Lysley Tenorio. I wrote that I had crammed myself in and was finally done with the submission and whether I should turn it in on Wednesday, October 12 to be critiqued in the next two weeks, November 2. That's right. I wrote "two weeks".

Mr. Tenorio replied to my e-mail, saying that two weeks would mean turning my draft on October 19. He told me take time with my draft, to cut out any unnecessary scenes and edit out things.

I was flabbergasted. I replied to his e-mail, sheepishly saying that clearly, my mathematical genius had eluded me yet again (I was being ironic, as if you couldn't tell).

Nevertheless, I'm happy I still have time. I can't say I'm doing a good job with cutting and shortening the draft, though. It's actually expanded into 72 pages of double-spaced, 12 pt. Times New Roman.

Oh, and to help me with my writing, I bought tons of books about cats! Can you guess what my submission is? I will try my best to review all of them.

Now another topic: public transportation.

I'm happy with BART and AC Transit is sufficient. Let's talk about the latter first.

AC Transit here in the East Bay is the equivalent of Lamorinda's County Connection, in that there's always a seat for everyone. The good thing is that, well... there's always a seat for everyone. The bad thing is that it means not many people use the public transportation. Therefore, unlike the SF Muni buses which are always full no matter what hour or what day, both AC Transit and County Connection's services are somewhat limited.

The AC Transit bus, the one that goes from the bus stop near my apartment to Rockridge BART where I usually start my BART ride to SMC or FCBD studio, arrives every half hour. I've missed the bus more than I care to count as it just wheeled pass by me when I was still a block away. That means I have to either sit and wait for another thirty minutes or walk six blocks to another bus stop that is passed by a bus line that arrives every fifteen minutes.

Apparently, as is evident in the picture to your left (or above), AC Transit won the 2006 National Best of the Best Award, whatever it is. Now, don't get me wrong. There are nice AC Transit bus drivers who will acknowledge you coming in and paying your fare (I use Clipper Card. The fee for each ride is, oddly enough, USD 2.10. I don't feel like fumbling around to get the ten cents). There are those who are also nice enough to reply to your thank you when you hop off.

Then there are the jerky drivers who make you know that they have the worst job in the world and that your very presence on the bus is only making them feel more miserable.

Now, on to BART.

I like BART. There have been news written by some New Yorker about the unsanitary conditions of BART and Muni. Ha. Their subways and buses aren't exactly clean.

Still, after reading the article, I felt compelled to try not to sit down. At least not for a while. Commuting from Rockridge to Orinda/Lafayette and to 16th Street and Mission is a long voyage. I have to sit down.

The picture to your right (or above) has a spelling mistake. Can you guess which word? The photo was taken at Orinda BART station on Tuesday, October 4, 2011.

Just tonight, as I was coming home from FCBD studio, the stations after I got on were swarming with Cal fans. You know, the blue and yellow team of Berkeley or something. I don't really know.

Anyway, those Cal fans were pushing and shoving their way into the train cars. I was sitting happily in my seat (thank goodness), and we heard screams as people pushed others to get into the train. I'm telling you, I was reminded of Jakarta where people are rude and impolite and can't even form a proper line.

Then, the BART operator tried many times to close the doors but he couldn't because people were still jamming the doors. Then finally, he succeeded. We saw that there were still many people being left behind at the Civic Center, Powell, Montgomery, and Embarcadero stations. It was around 9.30 PM.

When we arrived at 12th Street Oakland Station, the Cal fans had decreased in numbers, as they had hopped off along the way. Still, there were some who stayed. And then, again, the BART operator seemed to have difficulty in closing the doors when we finally heard him saying, "Please keep your heads inside the train. It's much safer that way."

We all laughed. Some ignoramus felt like being killed.

This particular BART operator is just amazing. He's the guy who always reminded us to keep the seats near the door for wheelchair users and the elderly because "A) it's common courtesy and B) it's the law." and to not put up our feet on the seats nor the windows because, "It's a karma thing."

I promise that if on my last day (or night) in California, he's the one operating the BART train, I will have to tell him how much he's made me laugh.

That's a photo showing an advertisement at the 16th Street & Mission BART Station.

Now back to the Cal fans.

Apparently, so many of those creatures study in UC Berkeley. Well, it's not a surprise, really. I mean, they do sport the familiar blue and yellow insignia of Cal.

Anyway, I found a throng of students who obviously just came home from the very same game and they were waiting for the bus. This bus is the only night bus that will take me near my apartment and it shot straight from Rockridge Station to UC Berkeley where many of those fans live.

We hopped in and they began talking so loud and cheering and things and then we passed by Safeway and one guy cheered for "More beer! More beer! More beer!" and the other students went along until the lady driver grabbed her mic and told them to be quiet because they were on a public bus and not everyone on board was a student of UCB. The mob said sorry, but the same guy looked around and pointed that only few were not students until his friend scolded him and said it didn't matter.

One girl (an Asian-American. Geez, why do Asian-American girls have to be so damn irritating? They always seem to wear the skimpiest, sluttiest outfits when even their Caucasian and African American girl friends wear normal clothes. They always seem to be the loudest too) obnoxiously said to her friend (they were sitting near me) that the bus was a public place and so they had the right to exercise their freedom of speech.

Obnoxious and appalling. Thank goodness my stop was right after that. I am so glad that don't go to UC Berkeley.

That was rather ironic because as I was sitting on the bus one day, there was this poster on the back of the seat of a missing Asian girl. Her name is Michelle Le.

Well, that's it for now. Phew, I've blogged quite a long post, eh?

the perfect pasta

I love pasta. I really do. What can I say, I love carbs! Carbs give me my curves... Okay, I'm probably delusional.

However, I had an epiphany just last night. I said to myself, "I'm going to make a garlic bread!" not unlike the way Ms. Vida Boheme (RIP Patrick Swayze) told Ms. Noxeema Jackson and Ms. Chichi Rodriguez that it was going to be a say-something-hat-day nor the way Mrs. Dalloway said that she was going to get the flowers herself.

So, I did.

There was no pestle and mortar, so I had another epiphany and decided to chop the garlic into fine, tiny pieces (thank goodness the IKEA knife was not sharp, otherwise I'd have lost two fingers), then dumped them into a little glass, threw in a lump of vegan butter, and mixed them together with spoon. I spread a bit on a slice of bread.

Next came the pasta. I put the pasta into boiling water and after about 7 minutes, I threw in the spinach (washed, obviously). After approximately one minute, I took the pasta and spinach out of the water. When I was cooking the pasta, I fired up my frying pan, put in the garlic butter until it sizzles, then I threw in the mushrooms. After the mushrooms were golden, I put in the pasta and spinach, sauteed them a bit, then put in the sauce, some tomato slices, and stirred some more. The timer in the little oven went "ding" and I saw the garlic bread, all toasty and ready.

So, yes. I just cooked, and I loved it. Who knew?

There's nothing better than a delicious and satisfying meal on a warm, lazy Saturday.

such is life

"Happy birthday, Ma," my voice trembled across the long distance line. This wasn't the first time I felt homesick on my second long trip to California. It had merely been two weeks and I was already longing for a hot tropical weather, a traffic dead-lock, and idyllic excursions with my felines. The fact that I wasn't home for my mother's birthday seemed to put even more weight on my already hunched back.

These past two weeks have been rather strange, to say the least. I was merrily walking on my weekly grocery trip to WholeFoods and when I crossed the parking lot (on a crossing that was meant as pedestrian crossing, obviously), a woman in an SUV said this to my face (she had her window down), "I had put my blinker on and I was politely waiting for someone to cross the road and somebody else stole my parking spot! So thanks a lot, Asshole!"

Needless to say, I was stunned. I still couldn't figure out if she was directing her anger to me or to another driver who took her spot. Must be someone from Los Angeles.

Another time, I was on the BART Train, on my way to dance class, and I had put on my earphones and played the music on full blast (I know, this was my mistake) and I was reading James Joyce's Dubliners. To cut the story down to the gist: don't ever do this. I learned the hard way and had a guy with a bike make everybody on the damn car look at me as if I were some kind of an inconsiderate asshole. Out of confusion, I said "thank you" instead of "sorry". English has never been my first language.

Then just last week, I witnessed seven police cars busting one sedan. The picture only shows three police cars, but I have two videos of it on my Facebook (I have edited the setting so you don't have to be my friend first). It was right under my window (I happen to live on the second floor of an apartment building). At first I thought it was just some crazy guy yelling on the streets but the shouting kept going on and as I looked out of my window, I saw police cars lining on the streets, their siren lights were on but no sounds. It started at around 2 AM and it took more than an hour to get everything cleaned up.

I found a latex glove lying around the next morning. Do police officers get tickets for littering? I guess not.

Then finally, I received my 12-inch frying pan from Amazon. It is just the right size and I went straight to making sauteed tofu, mushroom, and broccoli and much to my dismay, I realized that the kitchen in my apartment does not have an exhaust fan... Or a door. So, everytime I cook, the rest of the apartment smells like the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant. I had to spray deodorizer afterwards and just open the window.

I've found a perfect solution to this issue (as well as to my diet issue): I will only cook heavy meals for lunch and eat sandwich for dinner. Therefore, I don't have to worry about sleeping with a heavy scent of sauteed tempeh with soy sauce around me.

It has, indeed, been a rough week. However, I'm sure others have had worse. Like the Irene for example.

Well, such is life.

el cheapo

Apparently, this apartment did not come with a steel contraption that is used to hold plates and pans and forks and whatnots to dry; and after a few days of being cheap creative, I finally decided to just purchase one and live free from fear of breaking the free IKEA plates and bowls by putting them on this:

Ingenious, I tells ya! That's not all, though. Usually there is a plate and a bowl on the empty space on the right. I can use the space between the metal bars to hold the plate up.

Now it's like this:

Not too shabby, eh?

Yesterday I went to SMC for the whole registration thing and I finally received my little schedule, and yes, it's... little. For this semester, I only have classes on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Classes begin on 1 September and end on 15 December. After that, it's Christmas and New Year break. There is a January term, but I had prior commitments so I'll just return to the US in February... 2012. Yes, we're inching ever closer to the end of days.

Also, I was told that the SMC student card was good for a free bus ride... Except for graduate students. Upon hearing the sad news, El Cheapo in me died instantly.

the b*tch is back & the joys of flying economy

Yes, people, I'm back.

Some notable things:

One search officer at Soekarno-Hatta airport in Jakarta attempted to speak English with me. I could only assume that he thought I was Singaporean or Malaysian or whatever. When I showed him my wrist weights (I had to put the bloody things in my backpack since my suitcase was overweight... AGAIN), he asked if I was a boxer.

On the airplane from Soekarno-Hatta to Changi Singapore, I found myself sitting with one father and his son. I sat next to the son (around 15 years old) who dozed off and I realized he looked like a skinnier, Chinese version of Taylor Lautner. No, I don't have pictures to prove it, so you might as well accuse me of lying.

I got wedged up in the front row seat of the economy class for the whole trip from Singapore to Hong Kong and Hong Kong to SFO. Next to me was an Indian family with a baby who cried all the way. Thank goodness for SQ's in-flight movie selections: I watched Kung Fu Panda 2, The Princess & The Frog, Battle: LA, and Rio (FINALLY! I love that movie) and also the British comedies The Vicar of Dibley and Come Fly with Me (with David Walliams & Matthew Lucas of Little Britain). The vegetarian meals were so-so but they did give Magnum Classic (not too shabby) and my favorite Haagen-Dazs Cookies & Cream.

I was reading the delightfully morbid Notes of A Native Son by James Baldwin (a book-reading assignment from SMC) when a Chinese man with garish ensemble (red jacket, yellow t-shirt, pink sweat pants, yellow shoes, topped off with colorful LeSportSac fanny pack and one pink small suitcase with Hello Kitties and another red small suitcase with My Melodies) set himself down next to me.

He said, "Indonesian?" and I replied, "How did you know?" (mind you, he was boarding the plane from Singapore to Hong Kong). He answered, "You have Garuda (a bird - the Indonesian national symbol) all over you." (This is figuratively speaking - I didn't wear anything with the Garuda emblem on it.) Then we chatted for a bit about his son who went to USF and transferred to UW. Right.

I was also being quite the eavesdropper observant and realized that unlike the characters in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club and my own private experience, there are children of Chinese immigrants who actually speak with utmost respect to their immigrant parents. All of the parents were mothers during my observation at Hong Kong Airport. I happened to sit next to a pair of mother and son on the flight to SFO - the mother, obviously a Hong Kong resident, spoke accented yet quite good English, while the son spoke English with American accent, but they went along well.

Finally, I managed to observe that those in First and Business Classes are pampered twats (I saw a five year old girl having her own Business Class seat and drinking Evian). If I could get straight As, I promise, I'll talk my parents into getting me a Business Class seat.

Then again, for a person who decided to take the BART from SFO to Ashby and then walk for 1 km to his apartment while carrying a backpack weighing 7 kg and dragging a suitcase weighing 24.3 kg just to save money (I managed to shell only USD 8.6 for the trip), I don't think I will fly anything other than Economy.

And it is also fortunate that tonight's weather in Berkeley is sufficiently friendly. Not too cold, not too windy. Just right. Now all I need is to eat just a little and sleep in my bed. A friend posted on her Facebook wall, asking about the details of tomorrow's BART protest and the delay that it would cause. I shall worry about that later.

little town, it's a quiet village

Remember when I complained about Santa Rosa and Sebastopol? (Geez, I use the same opening for the blog entry)

Well, I'm damned now.

Okay, probably not too damned, as I feel positive about going to St. Mary's College, CA.

Yesterday, I spent the whole day going to SMC. It took me approximately 42 minutes from Civic Center BART to the Lafayette BART (the train departed at 11.18 and arrived at 12 noon). There was nothing wrong with the BART ride. It was not uneventful - just flat and nothing interesting, really.

The first thing that I saw upon exiting Lafayette BART station was a hill full of white cross. That'll be somehow serenely eerie when I board the evening train home. Or probably not serene. Just eerie, and in a whole lot of sense, cryptic.

Here comes the good news: the bus ride from either Lafayette BART station or Orinda BART station right to the heart of SMC (how convenient) takes approximately 25 minutes. However, the bus comes every two hours on certain periods. I had to wait for a full hour.

"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore," said Dorothy to her dog in Wizard of Oz. I didn't have Kitty with me (my sling bag is broken and my tiny bag is... tiny... and stuffed to max) to share that feeling, though.

I guess the reason that the bus frequency is kept at minimum is because no one really rides it. When I returned from SMC to the Lafayette BART station, there were only three passengers, including myself. The two of them descended shortly and I was the only one left for the whole ride. I am relieved to know that my evening classes won't be later than 7 PM. That means I can catch the 7.19 PM, the 7.41 PM, or the latest, 8.21 PM buses to take me to either Lafayette or Orinda BART stations. Now I only need to invest in a watch.

According to Google Map, it is a 5.1 mile walk from SMC to Lafayette BART station (am I being somewhat pedantic by writing "Lafayette BART station" over and over again?). It's not that it's not doable. It's just that on some parts of the roads, no pavement is available. I got off on the wrong stop on my way to SMC, but there was a hiking and biking trail that I could walk on. I can't ride a bike. I know, I've tried, I just can't. I can rollerblade, but I don't think the path will be smooth enough to do it. During the walk, I came up with a brilliant solution: Segway! Although, you know, with the current Segway price (I heard it could come all the way up to USD 8,000!), I'd rather drive a car.

SMC was so peaceful when I arrived. It was the off-season I assume. Had I arrived in the Fall, I would have been freaked out with so many people. It's just amazing how I felt the need to be with people, yet crowd seems to make me feel uncomfortable. That's why I chose to live on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley instead of North Berkeley (YES, I'VE FOUND AN APARTMENT and have signed the contract! I'm moving in on June 15), because, in the words of Virginia Woolf in The Hours, "I choose not the suffocating anesthetic of the suburbs, but the violent jolt of the Capital."

Well, Telegraph Avenue is not exactly the Capital, but I hope you get the picture.

With the absence of the Clipper Card in the public transportation in Moraga, and the total uselessness of the said Card in BART stations in areas outside San Francisco, I won't be using it when I return. I've calculated the costs. It's much, much cheaper to pay for one-time bus rides and refill the BART card.

Now that everything is settled, I can't wait to go home.

Still, one more question ensues: I won't be living in San Francisco anymore; I wonder whether or not I should change the title of the blog and if I should, to what?