From kragen at canonical.org Tue Jun 24 14:58:59 2008 From: kragen at canonical.org (Kragen Sitaker) Date: Tue Jun 24 14:59:01 2008 Subject: my brief stay in the SF Bay Area Message-ID: <20080624185859.7AD691834D1@panacea.canonical.org> I came here because of a death; my friend Eric died a couple of months ago, and I came for his memorial service a week ago. I've been spending the time since then appreciating all the people who aren't dead yet. Today was the day I had planned to fly back to Argentina, but unfortunately a number of bureaucratic obstacles have lifted themselves up in my path. I could go back to Argentina, but I would probably have to return to the US to deal with them. So my departure is delayed until July 4th. I have had a wonderful time visiting friends and family here. Every day I see people I love whom I hadn't seen since last year, and it is wonderful. But my time has been fairly full. I've been very lucky in that friends and family have lent me a house, a laptop, a bicycle, and a cell phone while I'm here; without these, this level of activity would be pretty difficult. Some notable recent days: Saturday: I went to Bolinas to get the Magic Bus; we think selling it in San Francisco will be easier than selling it in Bolinas. It certainly won't be able to sell for the amount of money we've put into it (US$2200 of work late last year, US$800 or so when I rebuilt the engine, US$2000 to tow it across the country, etc. etc., plus the US$4500 that was its price when we first got it.) But maybe we can get some fraction of that money back. Monday: I made breakfast for one friend, lunch for another, visited the California Department of State, went shopping in Chinatown, biked several miles uphill, and traveled to Pleasanton on BART. Last Tuesday: Said goodbye to my cousin who's lending me his house, met a friend in Berkeley for breakfast, visited another friend to see her lab and pick up the cell phone she was lending me, rode over to San Mateo with the first friend, visited a company I used to work for, got a phone card to call Argentina with, met a third friend for dinner in Berkeley, went to a meeting of some friends in San Francisco to incorporate a nonprofit (shaving with a dry razor as I walked down the street to get there), picked up keys to a friend's apartment nearby, and picked up groceries for breakfast the next morning as I walked back to BART. I've somehow managed to keep my expenses relatively reasonable while doing this. As of Saturday, my average since arriving in the US had been US$14.14 per day, about 75% of which had been on public transit. I suspect it's gone up since then, largely because of the Magic Bus. Already, though, that's the same as the rent on our apartment in Buenos Aires. Some time this week I will need to drive to Modesto and look through a storage unit for bureaucratic reasons, which is generally an ordeal in the summer. I am hoping I can find an early-rising friend or two to join me. From kragen at canonical.org Sat Jun 28 21:00:53 2008 From: kragen at canonical.org (Kragen Javier Sitaker) Date: Sat Jun 28 21:00:54 2008 Subject: a few anecdotes Message-ID: <20080629010053.4213B1834D1@panacea.canonical.org> I've been staying in Oakland, taking care of my cousin's house and garden as he and his partner Becca visit family in New Mexico. The other night, I ordered a carnitas burrito from a taco truck in a parking lot at midnight, just after some Mexican-American teenagers who talked to each other in English but ordered in Spanish. They breakdanced in the parking lot as other people, middle-aged men with their toddler sons, young pregnant women with their young husbands or boyfriends. I felt very blessed to be there, under the flickery yellow lights with the smell of many kinds of grilled meat wafting out from the taco truck: lengua, carnitas, cabeza. The burrito was delicious; I ate it as I walked home. *** Today, as I watered the garden, two young women drove up in a van full of picnic supplies. They turned out to be next-door neighbors I hadn't met yet. I was watering the green beans, occasionally munching a succulent, sweet green pod. When I initially said hello, they didn't respond; I thought maybe they didn't speak English, so I told them in Spanish how good the beans were and offered them some. One of them answered in English and accepted a pod, but didn't like it very much. *** Yesterday morning, I left their house at 7:30 so I wouldn't be late for a meeting at HP Labs in Palo Alto at 10:00. I stopped at the 16th and Mission stop where I'd left Becca's bike the night before, with both wheels and the frame locked to a parking meter, in between all the other bicycles. When I arrived, it was the only bike left; the others had all left the night before. Nothing was missing from it, not even the pump and polyethylene water bottle. But I missed my connection at the 16th and Mission station, and I arrived at the meeting at 10:45. Unbeknownst to me, I had ruptured the rear inner tube riding it up to HP Labs, and I had neglected to carry a tube repair kit with me --- although there was one on the living room coffee table and one on the shelf in the bedroom. My friend Rohit gave me a ride to downtown with the bike, where I bought tire levers and a patch kit, repaired the tube, and broke the pump. *** The other day, I wanted to make capresse sandwiches to share with my friend Josh. I picked fresh basil from the back yard and cut up some tomatoes and mozzarella, but then discovered no bread. But I had made pancakes for breakfast with my friend Linley that morning. So Josh and I ended up having capresse sandwiches on cold pancakes made with vanilla soy milk, on a rooftop plaza in the new San Francisco Public Library building, accompanies with a garden salad from Ben and Becca's garden, with nasturtium flowers, oxalis, arugula, purslane, and I think a little mint, on top of some store-bought lettuce. *** One day, on the way "home", I stopped at the 16th and Mission station to buy a phone card. The $5 La Leyenda card I bought has provided about 45 minutes of talk time to Beatrice in Argentina over the course of more than a week. I called her immediately before leaving the phone-card store and talked for 15 of those minutes, because we hadn't heard each other's voices in days.