It’s one of those mornings. As I was getting dressed, I checked the Internetz to see when the next 9 or 19 buses were coming, and it went something like this: 3 min, 11 min, 54 min. Making the first one would be impossible, and the last one would get me to work way too late. So I had to try to make the middle one. Which meant skipping breakfast and running to the stop. Which meant I was hungry when I got to the office, so I stopped into the SoMa Coffee for a muffin. But I had no cash on me, so the dude behind the counter sent me down the street to the ATM at Ted’s Market… which turned out to be out of order.

Now, this part of town sucks for food options, much less banks and ATMs. So I wandered about 6 blocks north until I found a Bank of America branch.

Got my cash. Got my breakfast. Got to work.

Jeez.

I spent several hours on Friday unsuccessfully trying to install Parallels and then Windows XP on my Macbook Pro. I was able to get it up and running over the weekend through some inelegant workarounds, and today I found myself fully in the Office Space world that is Windows.

10 minutes before the departure of the last #5 bus from the downtown depot, I shut down my computer. Well, I asked it to shut down. Windows chose this inopportune moment to notify me that it needed to install 81(!) updates. It warned me not to shut down, or face dire consequences.

15 minutes later, updates installed, I was allowed to leave.

But I had to find an alternate route home.

Today on my way home from work, walking a couple of blocks in a bad part of town, I craned to see whether my bus was approaching. A SFPD cruiser pulled over to creep along beside me, and the officer rolled down the window.

“What are you looking for?” he asked me.

“What?”

“What are you looking for?”

Reflexively defensive, “Er… I was looking to see whether my bus… uh… I’m just transferring busses, and I was checking to see whether my bus was coming, to see if I need to hurry to the stop…”

“The 19 bus?”

“Yes.”

“Your stop is…”

And that’s where I turned away and just made for my bus stop. I think he was just trying to help, but I’m naturally on my guard in that part of town, and I assumed the officer was targeting me somehow.

In retrospect, I think he was just trying to help a guy who probably looked a bit out of place, and I feel a little bad for turning away from him while he was still talking.

My job has me traveling again already. This time it’s just to LA for a short project, so I can come home on the weekends. Seems like all of our new business is in SoCal all of a sudden.

Bizarrely, the client is a block away from my company’s LA office. A walking commute in LA?

Tonight, I was supposed to see my friend CC and possibly her crew of Singapore Airlines flight attendants, who are coincidentally in LA for the rest of the week. But she had other plans tonight, and I have to fly back to SF tomorrow. Anyway it’s ok, because next Tuesday I get to see John Vanderslice bowl!

/s

I had brunch at The Ramp this morning with my friend Bee. The Ramp has been my default Sunday post-laundromat stop for the past couple of weeks (and for the month of May, when I was last in SF). The weather has been perfect, and The Ramp offers some of the best outdoor seating in the city, right beside the water in China Basin.

But that’s part of what bothers me about the place.

If I owned a restaurant in such a perfect location, I’d want to make the dining experience as special as the surroundings. The prime plot of land deserves it.

Instead, The Ramp is furnished with beat up old wooden tables and worn umbrellas. This would be charming if it felt intentionally old, like a $150 pair of distressed jeans, but it just feels sort of half-assed. Worse, the place serves mediocre food and drinks – using plastic cups and cheap cutlery.

Their bloody mary is decent, but the plastic cup subtracts a couple of points.

It irks me that the place has no commercial incentive to improve. It does a booming business. It’s packed every weekend, and I’m one of the suckers – which in turn irks me even more.

Last week was the first week of the San Francisco International Arts Festival, and there are a lot of good things to see.

I saw three shows over the weekend, including one called Pandora 88 by a German duo calling themselves Fabrik Companie. The piece was a beautiful blurring of the line between theatre and dance, staged inside a box roughly 1 1/2 times the size of a refrigerator.

It began with the children’s games of tag, hide-and-seek and charades. Then it shifted into an outer-space motif that looked and felt exactly like old school video effects I remember from TV shows I loved as a child – Zoom, Sesame Street…

Toward the end, the piece became heavier and more dramatic. Like growing up.

In its final moments, one of the characters discovered a way out, and with the help of his friend he escaped the confines of the box, through a small hole in the ceiling. He looked around nervously for a moment and then reached down to help his friend.

His friend declined, and the stage went dark.

Since I’ve been back in San Francisco, I’ve completely neglected my blog. One posting every two or three weeks is not what I’m aiming for. It’s not like I’m lacking material. What I’m lacking is the proper state of mind.

As a foreigner in foreign lands, my mind was in a constant and hightened state of discovery. By virtue of the fact that I was new there, everything there seemed new to me. Even things I can empirically say weren’t new at all.

Despite a demanding client and a gruelling schedule, I was able to write something nearly every day.

The thing is, I’m still more or less a rookie when it comes to San Francisco living, and I experience new things here all the time. So, like I said, I’m not lacking material.

As evidence, I present a short list of the things I did during my first week back (a whole month ago now). All of them absolutely new to me (except Zeitgeist, an old favorite)…

Thursday (the night I arrived), I went to a Laughing Squid party at Albion Castle.

Friday, I met Blake for beer on the legendary back patio at Zeitgeist.

Saturday, I went to The Ramp with Amy for a big greasy breakfast of corned beef hash and eggs.

Tuesday, I met Blake and Jeff for a coupla pints and a hearty shepherd’s pie at The Liberties Pub.

Thursday was Cesar’s going away party at Lime.

Friday, I went to a benefit show at SOMArts Christy presented one of the solos from a piece she staged back in December. The dancer was a hip-hop specialist named Skorpio.

Plenty of material. I just need to find right mind.

My last post – about writing fearlessly and honestly – generated a few concerned emails, including one from my mom. And, folks, that’s exactly why I’m afraid to write fearlessly and honestly.

I’m certainly no Izzy, and I have no personal interest in the kind of life she leads (subtext: Don’t worry mom, I’m a good boy). I only appreciate her willingness to reveal everything. Compared to her, I’m practically a churchmouse (same subtext). And yet I still stop shy of full disclosure and honest reporting.

For one thing, I work for a living, and there’s a whole lot I’m not actually entitled to say about my job – the clients I’m working for, the projects I’m working on.

On a more personal level, if I describe someone who makes me laugh, for example, I’m afraid it will come off as condescending. If I talk about one aspect of someone’s character, or a friendship, or a relationship (like my recent reference to unhappiness), I’m afraid it will be taken out of context or seen as my bottom-line assessment.

I see the world in shades of gray, and I’m afraid of being viewed in black and white.

It’s early Friday morning in San Francisco. I can’t remember ever feeling so exhausted. Between fatigue and the rest of this time-travel head trip, I’ve hardly felt like myself.

I’m in San Francisco this week, and because I have tenants living in my apartment, I’m staying a hotel near Union Square. I thought it would be fun, but honestly it feels a bit lonely. I can’t put my finger on exactly why, but I think it has something to do with the fact that my familiar life, my friends, etc. are just on the other side of my window, while what’s on this side is the transient life I’ve been living for a few months now. I have an apartment in Singapore and a hotel room in my own city, which makes me feel a little off-center and challenges my definition of home.

When you return from an extended absence, you want things to be basically the same as they were when you left. There’s been a lot of change around here. Some good friends – very talented people – have left or are leaving the company, for example, and one friend in particular obviously feels differently about me than before. It completely makes sense; I just wasn’t prepared for it. So I’m feeling a little sad today, but life happens, and change happens.

My hotel tried to sell me a tour over the weekend. I told them I actually live in San Francisco, so now they probably think I was kicked out of my home by an angry girlfriend or something – especially since I told them I wasn’t sure when I’d be checking out. Anyway, maybe I should embrace the transient aspect of my trip and book the tour.