Jennifer and Surya do SF!

So as you can gather from the title, Jennifer and I spent the day in SF today!

It was a fun trip, though at the moment we are exhausted. Jennifer appears to be falling asleep (well she incoherently insists that she isn't) and I am sore from sleeping incredibly funny last night and carrying around a gigantic purse today (Jennifer thinks it doesn't qualify as a purse) but in any case, here I am chronicling the trip for you! Aren't you special?

Our adventure started this morning at 9:24 when we caught the Caltrain to San Francisco. We sat across from a couple nearing middle age and the only exciting about them (well from what we observed) was that the woman kept asking him how he was doing, almost once every five minutes.

After our fairly uneventful ride, we arrived in San Francisco (near Townsend St.) and promptly discovered that we probably should have worn long sleeved shirts and possibly pants instead of the t-shirts and skirts we had put on. We did have sweaters, but they were of the very light and cotton variety. Much to my surprise, I discovered that the N-Judah couldn't be caught from Townsend anymore and we had to take the train into the Embarcadero first! I realize that this doesn't make sense to many of you non Bay Areans, don't worry our day included more than just public transport.

On the shuttle to the Embarcadero we met a man in his 50's wearing a teal polo with a popped collar, but was otherwise very classically Californian. He struck a conversation with us and got to talking about college (he went to BC) and ranted about Bush and the state of the world, like I said, very Californian. He also told us (and this was at once reassuring and scary) that junior year was the best year of college, that our 20s were when we'd pretend to know what we were doing but really have no idea who or what we are, and that being 20ish was one of the most hopeless times of our lives, though he did say we'd have fun with it.

After that we caught the N-Judah and rode it to 2nd Street where we got off to go to the Golden Gate Park. On our way there, we ran into a doctor from UCSF hurrying along in his scrubs, and I asked, in my usual awkward yet friendly manner, "on break?" and he replied that he was moving his car and engaged us in a friendly discussion of the weather and the fact that it was cloudy on the side of Potrero Hill that we were on but warm on the other side!

Then we found ourselves in the park and upon seeing a sign for a carousel I immediately insisted we take a ride. We hurried past lawn bowling greens (can some one please explain to me how those work?) and came to the carousel and for $1.50 each got to take rides and have the entire ride to ourselves! Jennifer had a bit of trouble finding a horse she liked and switched midway through the ride. I was quite content with my dark red Zebra though the ostrich looked tempting.

After the exciting ride we worked our way to the Conservatory of Flowers where we wandered around from room to room enjoying the 85 degree interior where our flimsy sweaters were taken off and we oohed and ahhed at a variety of tropical, aquatic, orchidy, potted, and carnivorous plants. Oh, we also ate some grapes.

Post Conservatory, we walked to the infamous Haight-Ashbury area and had lunch at a small but delicious Thai restaurant. The food was good, but far more interesting was the guy next to us who claimed to have been the original creator of the new facebook atrocity, iLike. He claimed that some company wanted him to work on that under them but he didn't want to move to Seattle and that some other idea of his worth 20 million was stolen by some other dude...He also claimed that the guy who created Facebook is a douchebag in real life. Don't know whether we should believe him. He also talked, rather loudly, about crying women and tequila shots....Errr? It was very entertaining and we ate in almost silence and listened to him ramble instead. He also claimed that the chances of him having gotten lottery tickets three times that were one away from the winning number was less likely than him being the second coming of Jesus. I have no idea how he calculated that, neither does Jennifer. Any of you math majors want to take a stab at it?

After that we wandered around the Haight and into several vintage shops where we proceeded to have fun with hats. Photography was unfortunately not allowed at these stores, though we did sneak one picture which will be making it's debut on facebook soon.

Then we caught the L-line downtown to Union Square and went into the Westfield shopping center. We entered and were immediately fascinated by the computerized mall directory which was called the "iDirectory"....it was incredible, really. You selected (from a touch screen menu) the name of the store wanted and it showed you in an animated manner how to get there. Then we took the spiral escalator up to H&M and shopped around and tried on many things. The only real purchase was a hat. It apparently was a day for hats.

After the H&M we went down to the swankiest food court either of us had ever seen. Not only did this place have actual restaurants instead of fast food places, it served its food on actual China and had people in white shirts and black vests and black pants bussing your food court tables.....errrr....? Jennifer and I indulged in some gelatto and people watched.

The real gem of the people watching that happened all day was this boy who looked like he was about 12 in a white Ralph Lauren sweater, slightly short brown pants and a grey hat that was sort of like a newsie hat talking a kid who looked like he was 13 or 14 in a blue and green striped shirt and dark glasses. It was like a meeting of the preppy street urchin and the nerd, and all of a sudden the 12 year old busts out this buisness model and pitches it to his equally young friend. Jennifer and I were shocked and horrified at this child who was talking about very complicated things. We may have witnessed the foundings of the new worlds youngest buisness moguls. At one point a kid who looked like he was slightly older (our age or close) walked in wearing the trendy semi emo kid not quite sort of hipster outfit and was introduced by the 12 year old as his boss. We were still amazed.

After this, we caught the bart and passed out until we reached Millbrae where we thought we'd be catching the caltrain again. We get there at 7:53 but the next train isn't until 8:49! So we head to what we thought was a diner across the street.....turns out it was a semi fancy Italian restaurant and neither of us can read. Apparently our parents are paying for our Amherst educations so that we can misread the word dinner. After a fairly awkward conversation in which I confusedly asked the waiter if this was a diner, we left in a awkward embarrassed hurry and headed across the street to the real diner and got some mozarella sticks and coffee/tea so as to avoid the cold winds outside. We were done with pretending that we were warm. At the end of our snacking Jennifer discovered that in our embarrassed rush out of the not diner, she had forgotten her nalgene so we ran back and asked, again quite awkwardly, for the bottle, grabbed it, and had a repeat performance of our awkward leaving.

We went back to wait for the train and happened to run into some British woman in a very skimpy dress punching her husband (?). We waited for the train and got on when it came.

On the train we had fun discussing some books and such. We had a fairly interesting conversation about happiness possibly existing only in retrospect. Here's a question for you: Would you rather feel absolutely happy about something in the present and then be unhappy about it later or the opposite, be absolutely unhappy about something in the present and then be happy about it later in retrospect? You don't know the way you'll feel in the future when the situation is happening, and the feeling of the present is shorter while the later is longer. Both of us went with the second option which sparked a conversation about happiness and retrospect.

After this train ride we got to the station where my dad picked us up and then we came back to my house and ate and took long hot showers (separately) and now are lounging in my room.

It was quite the day. We ran into several interesting characters, rode every form of SF public transport (except the Ferry and the historic Cable Cars) and ate a variety of foods. Many pictures were also taken, which will be posted shortly.

And now, this is Surya (and Jennifer's muttering) signing off.


Uh yeah that was a lame ending, sorry. We are tired.


I guess to go with the hat theme, a question. If you could be any hat, describe your hatty self. Color, shape, purpose and some random detail. GO!

Also answer the happiness question. And with these two questions I have provided you with both intellectual stimulation and silliness, go me.