Restaurant Review: The Slanted Door

I visited The Slanted Door with Audra and Nika on Friday night.

This Vietnamese restaurant is located in The Ferry Building, a stunning setting with incredible views of the Bay Bridge out of large floor-to-ceiling windows. Entering the restaurant you sweep aside a large curtain to be greeted by the spacious (150 seating capacity) and atmospherically-lit interior, with a full and enticing view of the kitchen in the background (complete with massive flames).

The menu, which looks like it changes daily based on local produce, features a large range of Vietnamese and other Asian-inspired dishes - meat, seafood and a good selection of interesting vegetarian dishes. Food is served "family-style", meaning you order a selection of dishes and share them together (for three of us, our server suggested something like two appetizers and three entrees, but one and three of each was plenty). This is a relaxed and fun way of dining, and I like it!

We started with a "Vietnamese Vegetarian Crepe" - a thin pancake filled with tofu, cabbage and tree ear mushrooms. The idea was to slice it up then wrap the crepe in the lettuce, dipping it into a sesame/soy sauce. This provided no end of messy enjoyment and the mixture of flavours and textures was spot on.

We then had three main courses - Shaking Beef, Ahi Tuna and Spicy Japanese Eggplant. The beef was perfectly cooked and very tender, served with beautiful caramalized red onions and a ginger and lime sauce. The Ahi tuna was absolutely incredible, just lightly seared, still raw in the middle - a great contrast in textures, with a spicy ginger/soy sauce. But the eggplant was really the star of the meal - thin strips of eggplant infused with a subtley coconutty sauce - delicious. And I don't even usually like eggplant that much.

This is definitely food to be savoured and enjoyed slowly. Every bite was devine, with wonderful flavour combinations, clearly made using the best and freshest of ingredients available.

They have quite an extensive wine list, with a huge range of Reislings that apparently accompany the slightly spicy food very well. And indeed they do. We had the cheaper ($20) of the two half bottles they had on offer, a 2002 Kabinett Reisling from Selbach-Oster of the Mosel region of Germany, which was slightly sweet and very fruity and matched the food really well. They also have an exceptional range of beers and cocktails.

After a satisfying couple of courses, we were under the impression we were suitably filled up and ready to go... until we saw the dessert menu, with such irrisistable offerings as "E. Guittard dark chocolate pot de crème with espresso granité" and "Meyer lemon creamy cheesecake with huckleberry compote". All I need to say is that these lived up to the rest of the meal and you must try them.

The service was absolutely meticulous, with seperate food, wine and dessert experts helping us with our choices. The wine opening and tasting process was particularly impressive with wine bottle, cork and a candle lined up very precisely on the table after acceptance of the bottle! A bit over-the-top, but somehow managing to remain quite relaxed and light in mood.

A truly excellent dining experience. I will definitely be trying to make it back here!

For 3 courses and drinks, we spent about $45 each. Reservations are absolutely essential. You'll need to call at least a month in advance to get a table on a Saturday night!

Urban Snowboarding

"Grinding to the Golden Gate!"

Drew and I tried to go snowboarding on Sunday. But we're not talking about that any more. We ended up on Treasure Island, inventing the sport of Urban Snowboarding and getting some excellent pics in the process. Drew's video guide to Urban Snowboarding is currently in post-production and will be online soon! Stay tuned for some right good silliness.

Asian Art Museum

On Saturday, I went to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco with Audra and Nika.

We started with one of their temporary exhibitions - The Kingdom of Siam. This featured rare items from the Ayutthayan kingdom of what is now Thailand which prospered from the 14th to the 18th century. The kingdom was taken over by the Burmese in the 18th century, destroying much of the artwork of this period, making this stuff very rare. The exhibition included some interesting sculptures taken from temples and the like, but by far the best thing was the chests (the kind for storing things in, ok?). They had these huge chests with the most intricate drawings on them, mostly of very silly looking animals. They had "amusing rabbits", birds cheekily biting on plants, monkeys playing, dogs, fish, etc. all with the most ridiculous expressions. It was so funny!

Photo from Asian Art Museum

We also saw a lot of the Japan exhibition which has got me even more excited about going in the summer. They had a mock-up of a Japanese tea cermony, some really cool basket sculptures and some wood block prints the Edo
period (1615-1868) [pictured above]. The process for creating wood block prints is really interesting and produces a very distinctive looking painting. The artist first draws the outlines, then someone carves the outlines in wood, then the printer applies black ink to the block and makes an impression on paper. The artist then assigns different colours to each section, and the woodblock carver makes a block for each colour with raised bits where that colour is. So there is now a block for the outlines and a block for each colour, lined up by reference points in two corners. The printer can then print many copies by applying the colours to the different bits of wood and layering them on. Quite ingenious.

Wood block print

One other really cool thing was a big boulder that had been sliced in half and polished to be slightly concave. Water was then pumped extremely slowly up the middle producing a thin layer of water on top and trickling down the sides, giving the top a mirror or glass-like appearance. You couldn't see the water moving, but when I took a photo you can see small ripples moving outwards from the centre.

I would definitely recommend this museum. Admission is $6 for students. That includes free tours and an audio guide too. It's closed on Mondays. The Siam exhibition is running until May 8th 2005.

San Francisco Tour Guide Extraordinaire

My friend Audra, who lives in Massachussets but was part of the Hermit's Croft crew (my Uni flats) in Edinburgh in first year, was visiting San Francisco this weekend, along with her friend Nika (who is Russian but grew up in MA). It was excellent seeing them both, and hanging out with a different people from usual was very refreshing. We did lots of touristy stuff, ate lots of superb food and I had very little sleep travelling to and from San Francisco every day for three days.

I think I did San Francisco proud in showing them around, and introducing Audra to the West coast where she'd never been before (sharing some of the organizational responsability with Nika as she was in the city at Christmas). It's funny that I've probably travelled around more of the States than either of them. Mind you I think Nika may have seen more of San Francisco than me. Maybe this is something to do with not wanting to do "touristy" things in a place where you consider home, or maybe it's just because it seems like we should be exploring the whole of the States in a year (which is obviously impossible).

Since we did quite a lot over the weekend, I'm going to write this as several entries - this one summarising the whole time then a detailed one for The Slanted Door restaurant and the Asian Art Museum.

Thursday

I picked up the girls from the airport on Thursday night. This was the only parking I had to pay for all weekend, which was a nice change as parking in SF is normally very expensive! At SFO, airport parking is $1 per 12 minutes, which makes parking at Millbrae BART often a good choice unless you're in a rush (it's free over the weekend, but I was in a rush on Thursday). Audra and Nika did very well to stay awake until 3am their time at a late-night Pizza place on Columbus. I think it was the 90s dance music that did it!

Friday

Friday night was one of the best dining experiences I've ever had, at a Vietnamese restaurant called the Slanted Door. Perfect food, meticulous service and of course, excellent company! After that we headed to the bubble lounge, which was very cool as usual. We nicked a reserved table, looked like we were meant to be there and spent the night sipping expensive drinks (except for my coke which was free) and having to sit closer and closer together to combat the loud music. Good strategy to get people to dance / buy more drinks / fit more people on the sofas!

Nika also has an irrational fear of toothbrushes!!! More precisely, the sound of other people brushing their teeth (my own is ok). It really freaks me out. She seemed to think it was quite normal and lots of people do, but I don't think I've met anyone else that gets so irritated by it. I couldn't find much on the Internet about it so don't know how many people experience this. Reply to this with your views on the subject!!

Saturday

Saturday was a most enjoyable and suitably touristy day. Started off at the fascinating Asian Art Museum. The "amusing rabbits" in Siam exhibition were the highlight, and the Japanese exhibition was also excellent. That deserves its own entry (and will get one).

Next up was the Alcatraz tour, which we had tickets too but ended up being about 15 minutes late (due to my dissillusions about the location of Pier 41). 511 and MUNI to the rescue though and we got a bus there, hopped into the standby queue and to our delight and surprise got on the next ferry. Apart from dubious subtitling on the intro video, the prison was remarkable to see and the audio tour (a concept I'm not entirely sure I like) very good with input from ex-"Correctional Officers" as well as prisoners. It certainly seemed extremely harsh - some of the prisoners there were kept in 24-hour solitary confinement for years on end. There were some great escape attempt stories too - the most notable documented in "Escape from Alcatraz" in which the inmates making fake heads to leave in their beds so as not to be missing from the head count. One thing we weren't expecting was the incredible plant life on the island. I think the word "lush" must have been used by Nika at least a dozen times! I don't believe it was quite as nice at the time of the prison though. Excellent value at just $16!

After Alcatraz, we set off to walk to China town for (illogically) some Japanese food, popping in to a Pet Food store on the way to get some presents for Sadie and Poppy. The store was just beside Dolores Park, which was teeming with people playing and lots of dogs. China town is actually pretty cool. There's a whole chunk of it I hadn't seen before with lots of markets and fish stores, away from the "trying to sell cheap stuff to tourists" bit. We got dinner at "Sushi Boat" which was extremely good value (great California rolls and Tempura sushi. Not great tea-topping-up service though)

China Bazaar next for the mandatory cheap-stuff-for-tourists souvenir shopping. There was some interesting stuff in there - a great book called "Feng Shui for you and your cat", and a spectucular "Chinese Wedding Bed". The book was so full of BS, but had some great photos. Apparently cats can detect and neutralize negative Chi, which results in them sleeping in warm and comfortable places and also sometimes the most bizarre places.

Well overdue, we went to Starbucks for Audra and I to get our coffee fixes for the day (Nika had her tea-fix already). They forgot to make my drink after I ordered it so I've got a free coupon for whatever I want (second free drink of the weekend woohoo!). I'm thinking 5-espresso-shot-mocha-latte-frappa-dappa-cinno with whipped cream, chocolate flakes and extra special attention to getting my name right on the order!

We then wandered down to the Metreon next to check that out, which involved watching the same Spider-man 2 clip twice in the Sony shop, playing some motion-sensitive games and browsing a cool book store. Then we were going to vaguely head to the Thirsty Bear where Drew was holding up the bar for AIESEC, being the sole participant at Sarah's latest social event (but seeming quite happy to be). But the power went out in the whole block, causing chaos on the streets due to lack of traffic lights, and Drew to be ejected from Thirsty Bear after one candle-lit drink.

So we walked past the Martin Luther King memorial, which is a just big waterfall - loud, oppressive and with a big flood around it. Not really a fitting tribute. After that we went round to Chieftans, one of two Irish pubs on Howard street with coloured Christmas lights outside it. This caused Drew no end of trouble finding us as he went in the wrong direction and found the wrong one. They've got good Irish beer, cliched Irish music and actual Irish staff.

It was really fun hanging out with Audra and Nika for a couple days. I will really have to make an effort to try and visit them at their side of the country before the summer. I'll try and co-ordinate this trip with when my friend and ex-flatmate James is visiting Audra in May and June.

Monkeys will rule Alcatraz soon!

Photos and full Slanted Door review coming soon...

Update: Alcatraz Pictures here

Statistically Improbable Phrases and the popularity of Legally Blonde 2

While looking for the Alias soundtrack, I spotted a couple really "cool" new features on Amazon.com:

Firstly, they have this thing called Purchase Circles. They create best-seller lists of CDs, books and DVDs based on where people live, what company they work for or what university they're at. The Alias soudtrack appears to be popular at Ohio Universities and in France. Sun Microsystems employees like Dan Brown, The Far Side, Battlestar Galactica and Legally Blonde 2. Apparently there isn't enough statistical information to work out what Californians as a whole like, but people in Newark, CA need to lose weight and enjoy buying CDs and DVDs about the Beatles.

The second interesting feature is SIPs - Statistically Improbable Phrases. Sounds like something from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy doesn't it? Here's what it is: For any book which has "Search Inside", you can view a list of phrases which appear in that book which are very rare across all other books. For instance, Dan Brown's Digital Fortress includes "mutation strings" and "her terminal" as SIPs. What an exceedingly useful feature!

Right, I'm off to buy the Alias soundtrack and run around like a spy for a bit...

The new powerbook and PSP-mania

clear_powerbook

Complete with transparent screen! (Lewis's next toy?)

His current toy (as well as just about everyone else's here) is the Sony PSP, which looks absolutely incredible. The quality of the graphics and the screen is phenomonal. I almost ran out and bought one but Drew stopped me which is good because I can't really afford one. Anyway, it looks like it only has racing and sports games on it so I'll wait and see if there are any good first-person or role-playing games. GTA might swing me. The fact it can play movies too! And wi-fi multiplayer and soon enough I expect Internet and e-mail. I am very impressed. Next paycheck methinks. It doesn't have a transparent screen though ;-)

It's sunny again!! Just in time for Audra coming. And I got a reservation at The Slanted Door (which was *hard* to get) for Friday night. I swear they always tell you they haven't got any then you just have to kind of say, "are you sure?", "please", "could you check again?" then wham! Out pops a table out of the blue. Hmmm, looks expensive though.

Tim, Wee Steve and I went to kick-boxing at lunch today. It was good to be doing something resembling martial arts again, although it's mainly just an aerobic workout and not self-defense or technique or anything. I'll try and keep it up though.

Neck-stretching skills

Reaching for Air

Among the amazing creatures I saw at the California Academy of Sciences on Saturday was the soft-shelled turtle. This little guy buries himself in the sand under water and extends his long neck up towards the surface to "snorkel" and take a breath. The notice said he has a "nasty temprement" - probably because they put the water up just a little too high so he has to get out of the sand!

After seeing this amazing feat of neck-stretching once, my Dad and I were determined to see how long he could stay under the sand and see him do it again. We waited a couple of minutes. A small crowd gathered (OK one family) We assured them that this was very cool and worth the wait. A couple minutes went by. Then a couple more. The family lost interest. But we remained vigilant. After a while we decided to take turns monitoring the tank while the other looked around the rest of the aquarium. The little blighter stayed under for a full 25 minutes!! Then he was up for about a minute and gone again. What a fulfilling existence!

We also saw some flashing glow-in-the-dark fish, some Nautiluses (Nautili?) (like squid but in big shells), some lungfish, an amphibian thing that was like a cross between a lizard and a sea-snake, with legs at the front and a tail at the back and loads of other weird and wonderful creatures. The information about each animal was very well-written and the sheer range of weirdness made this probably one of the most interesting aquariums to visit (better than Monterey). Go there!

It was really great seeing my Dad over the weekend. As well as the aquarium, we went to MOMA, had a very nice meal at a French restaurant (Rue Lepic, minus the romance!), shared the experience of a crap Jazz show, saw a totally over-the-top police escort with about 40 manic and enraged police motorbikes, spent quite a lot of time walking up and down hills and went for a walk near Stanford in the one hour of non-rain there was on Sunday.

I think I've actually seen my parents about as regularly as I do at Uni - it's been every 3 months so far. It just doesn't feel like quite enough, probably because it's not been at home with everyone together (except at Christmas). Anyway, my dad has convinced my sister to come and visit so she's coming in May!! Can't wait!

Excitement

Oooh, there's all sorts of excitement going on. Going out in San Francisco tonight for St Patrick's day. The plan is to leave at 6pm so we can get the BART there and back, but you know what we're like at leaving at a decent time. It just doesn't happen. I might just leave with whoever's ready at 6 (hopefully that will include me!)

Connie from MN sent us a gift pack of Paddy day stuff - tattoos, stickers, etc. so we'll be donning all that tonight and probably looking very silly. Thanks Connie!!

The other bit of excitement is my Dad's getting here tomorrow! Got his birthday present now, so just need to wrap it. We're going to be staying at the Marriott Renaissance hotel in San Francisco, which is a good job because it looks like everyone else is buggering off to Kirkwood to catch the last snow of the season without me. Anyway, the hotel looks very snazzy, with a free limo service to anywhere in the city during the week and coffee brought directly to your room every morning. You've got to love Marriott Friends & Family discounts! So on the cards for this weekend - Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Jazz Collective, and possibly a day trip or some wine tasting, although the weather seems to have turned crap and cloudy in anticipation of my dad's arrival.

More excitement! My friend Audra from University who lives in Boston is visiting next weekend, so I've got all sorts planned in the city, including a trip to Alcatraz, possibly at night.

Even more excitement - Marco and I are considering taking a few days off work next week to hit Cancun for Spring Break. It's the biggest college party of the year and everyone's telling me Cancun's the best place to go (including the lovely Cindy Taylor of Wild On). There's bound to be some good SCUBA diving down there too. This is a once in a life time opportunity to experience Spring Break - can I really turn it down?

Birthday Celebrations

Now that I'm not hungover I feel I can write a full and vibrant report of my birthday proceedings.

After work, Mark and I went to the park to play with the kite. Unfortunately there was the least amount of wind I have ever experienced in my life, and also the park was fenced off for some kind of maintenance. But we had a contingency plan - tennis. We played for about an hour, with Mark winning 7-5 (on my birthday - how dare he!) To be honest neither of us were playing particularly well but it was good fun nonetheless. Played again yesterday evening with Steve and Dec too and did much better, even getting a few aces in (mainly I think because I was using someone elses racket). Did get totally eaten my mosquitoes though, and I'm suffering today!

Anyway, back to my birthday: After tennis, I was greeted by a BBQ ready for me at the hotel (thanks Steve and Lewis!). Some eating, lots of photography and me stuffing my face with cake ensued. Then everyone realized they were drinking which almost scuppered plans for going into the city. But Marco came to the rescue and fought through his tiredness from his weekend to take us on a rollercoaster ride through San Francisco (almost literally - I think all four wheels left the ground while "rallying it" over a fantastic hill on Fillmore Street). After searching around for somewhere for a while, we gave up and just went to Delerium again. It was pretty quiet but was nice just having a few drinks there with Steve, Drew, Dec and Marco (including of course, the inevitable Fernet (?) and Ginger Beer :-) They had Family Guy on the TV and there was what seemed to be a girl with a beard there, which was a bit odd. So quite a low-key birthday, but really good anyway. I'm really thankful to be staying out here with such a great bunch of people.

It was my first birthday without family, which was a bit strange but is an idea I expect I'll have to get used to. I don't much like missing an entire year of my family's birthdays though.

Dad coming to visit on Friday!! We're going to eat good food, go to a jazz concert and maybe go on a day trip somewhere. And stay in a posh hotel.

New Blogs

My flat-mate Mark has put up a nice concise collection of photos of our time in California, taken from a selection of all our photos, and organized as a set of blog entries. It's quite a good summary of all we've been up to, although it obviously misses out anything Mark's not been at (New York, Santa Barbara, San Diego and Ice Fishing - quite a lot!!): Mark's Photo Collection

Also new on the Blogosphere: Andrew (another Sun trainee from Edinburgh), starting off with a good review of our SCUBA diving weekend: Andrew's Blog

A turning point? Nah!

Well, I've reached the age where you switch from wanting to be older to wanting to be younger. The big 22. It's not so scary though. I have no plans to grow up or become more mature or anything like that just yet.

It's a beautiful day here in the Bay Area. Opened my curtains to blinding sun at about 9am after a (very much needed) good night's sleep. Had a leisurely breakfast at the hotel then opened my (few) presents. Mark, my flat mate, got me a 6ft stunt kite, which I'm going to go and try out at the park after work. Thanks so much Mark!! It's a really excellent present. You've been a great flat mate over the past 8 months.

I also got an awesome Red Hot Chili Peppers CD from my parents - Live In Hyde Park which I've been listening to all day. It's from the same tour that I saw in Edinburgh with my sister last summer just before coming out to the States. It's a superb live album. I also got a very silly book - Stephen Appleby's Normal life, and a few other bits and pieces. Stephen Appleby is a brilliant comic strippest who drew my all-time favourite comical illustration - "The Infinite Subtlety of Cat Expressions". It was a set of about 30 drawings of cats experiencing different moods, but always looking almost identical (except, I think, for "Asleep" and "Pretending to be asleep" which had closed eyes. It was up on my fridge at home for about 10 years (might still be there?) and always cracked me up.

After breakfast I watched the Star Wars trailer again (woo!!) and walked to work with the sun shining down on me and blossom flying from all the trees. Spring has officially begun. And it seems California does Spring very well indeed!

Tonight - BBQ, 24 and San Francisco.

Skills

All scuba'd up!

After a weekend of diving in Monterey Bay, I now have the following skills:
- Mask clearing skills
- Regulator retrieval skills
- Bouyancy control skills (almost)
- Shore entry and exit skills
- Buddy share air skills
- Emergency ascent skills
- Underwater navigation skills
- Chasing sea lion skills
- Getting attacked by a crab skills
It was an excellent weekend of diving anyway. The weather was dissapointing after all of Declan's hype, but the diving was all good. By the second day I was feeling pretty confident under water and it was really fun wondering off with just Declan on our final dive. Managed to get my SAC (surface air consumption) down from 50+ to 32, which shows I was more relaxed and controlled. We saw all sorts of cool stuff (mostly thanks to Dive Master Tom showing us) - anenomes, starfish, big fish, small fish, colourful fish, spiny crabs, big vicious Dungeness crabs, sea slug things, lots of kelp, some coral and a sea lion. It's so much fun exploring underwater and just hovering watching life go on down there! We also went out on Jeff's boat and saw some sea lions, otters and a pod of dolphins (very cool) and had an encounter with some BIG waves.

Thanks to Jeff (our barking instructor) and Tom and Andrew. If anyone wants to do an Open Water certification, I would definitely recommend Captain Aqua's.

More SCUBA Photos

Film Review: Robots

Oh dear.

I knew outright this was going to be bad (after seeing some pretty un-funny trailers) but somehow Lewis convinced me to go. I thought I'd give it a shot.

And I didn't like it from the very start. The jokes were mostly unfunny and mostly crap one-liners which I suspect were taken from other films. The story was very predictable and offered no surprises or suspense. The whole film just didn't flow very well and I found it kind of annoying. OK, some of the contraptions they came up with for Robot City were pretty cool and there were occasional funny bits (the lampost death scene springs to mind) and Robin Williams added a bit to the film, but overall I'd say it was very poor (much like Ice Age). Maybe it's just targetted too much at young children. Nowhere near the same league as any Pixar film. I feel bad even comparing it to them.

Anyway, the trip to the cinema wasn't entirely wasted. Not at all. Because I got to see *the best* trailer for Star Wars: Episode III. It looks absolutely incredible. This is what Star Wars is all about. This will piece everything together. Anakin turning to the dark side, the Republic turning its back on the Jedi, the formation of the Empire. It looks totally stunning. I am *extremely* excited. I've got that feeling back from when I saw the first trailers for Episode I. When I saw the words scrolling up the screen again. When yoda unveiled his light sabre. When we saw the clone army marching onto the ships. Whenever I hear the Star Wars music. I really am a sucker for the Star Wars universe. Hmmm. I wonder if I can get a Storm Trooper costume for the premiere in LA? :-)

WOW - this was actually the movie theatre premier of the full-length trailer!! (today, before Robots. NOW I am really glad I went to see Robots) It was first shown yesterday on TV during the OC. It can be downloaded from www.starwars.com but you have to pay. It will be available to all on March 14th!!! MY BIRTHDAY!! WOW. Although the large screen version will still only be available for members. I expect it'll be all over the net though.

Sorry. Enough about Star Wars now. I'm going to get carried away.

Hello Nomadlife!

Hi everyone!

I am a trainee in the San Francisco Bay Area, from Scotland/England (depending on who I'm talking to), working for Sun Microsystems for a whopping entire year!

The lovely people in Minnesota introduced me to Nomadlife, and I've been writing a blog for a few months now so I thought I might as well stick it up on this excellent community you've got going.

So here I am. I'll be transferring all my old posts from Livejournal to this blog so you can read a bit about what I've been up to over the last few weeks/months.

This weekend (tomorrow): my first SCUBA diving experience in the ocean. Stay tuned for tales of my adventures under the sea!

Get Golden 2005

It's on.

April 22nd-24th.

Yosemite National Park.

The biggest Bay Area AIESEC event to date. Book your flights now!!

(ideally plan to arrive in the Bay Area on Thursday evening, or anytime Friday would do too)

5 miles!!

I made a "todo" list for this week, and after just one day I've already accomplished 3 of the 8 items, so I'm feeling good about that:

1. Book a hotel in San Francisco for my Dad and I when he comes to visit next weekend. I wanted to get the super-grand-looking Marriott at Union Square, but unfortunately the friends and family rate (roughly half-price, just for speaking nicely to the hotel staff :-)) was no longer available so that was a bit pricey. Instead, I booked the Stanford Court Renaisance Marriott, which is atop Nob Hill and looks even nicer. Will probably be totally OTT. Apparently it has a really great restaurant though. Other plans for my dad's visit: go see some Jazz, go to MOMA again, go for a hike/walk somewhere. I didn't really organize much for my parents last time they visited as they had a car and kind of did their own thing so I feel I should be a bit more pro-active this time. I also noticed that I've not got enough Marriott Rewards points to stay in *any* hotel for 2 nights, but will save them up for Hawaii in July.
    
   
2. Get on Sun's case about not being paid yet. Well, by paycheck arrived and I paid it into my bank so that was relatively painless. Sun payroll are difficult to deal with so I'm glad that sorted itself out.
    
   
3. Go for a run. Now that it's light in the evenings (until about 6.30) I want to start taking advantage of this. So yesterday Declan, Tim and I went for a run after work. Our setting was the Coyote Hills, about 5 minutes drive away, with the sun setting over the bay as our backdrop and legions of mosquitoes and noisy frogs to drive us on. It was a good run, with some very steep hills and more distance than we had planned - 4.9 miles in total, which took us just under an hour. All good practice for the Bay to Breakers run through San Francisco in May, which I think is about 7 miles, and definitely involves hills. We also discovered a running path that goes across the bay, so that's the next one I want to do.
   

So a good start to the week. Also made a start on my tax return with Declan and Mark. It seems reasonably simple to fill in ourselves without having to pay some company $100s to prepare it. I should be able to get all my Federal tax back which will be great, although I'll have to pay UK tax on my return. But first I need to harass Payroll about why they think they've paid me an extra $8k (i.e. housing and relocation expenses twice). Oh joy. I just love being redirected between 3 different companies to sort this out.

Captain Aqua

SCUBA diving class began today! Declan, Lewis, Steve & I are all doing our Open Water Certification, which involves a 3-day intensive course this weekend and diving trip at Monterey next weekend. So after spending an inordinate amount of money on our equipment - mask, fin, snorkel, booties, gloves, and then a bag to carry all that in, we settled down in a (very cold) room to begin our instruction. Our instructor, Jeff (aka Captain Aqua), is quite a character and seems like a very good teacher. The 3 hours went surprisingly quickly. He told us some great stories about what people do when they get "narked", which is basically when you go a bit silly due to too much Nitrogen in the blood.

Tomorrow we get to go in the pool! But only after the 'dreaded' test that Lewis has been revising so diligently for. I don't know why - it's multiple choice and involves simply filling in the blanks from sentences taken *directly* from the book we've just read. Can't wait to get in the water with all my new toys anyway!! Good night's sleep required first though.

CEC Friday

Alex and Max
Originally uploaded by Spanner Dan.

Friday we were allowed to come in late! We really owe Ed one (or several) for letting us come in at 10pm Fri/Sat/Sun! I don't think I would have survived the weekend otherwise. We were mainly finalizing the setting up in preperation for the presenters coming to rehearse in the afternoon. It all went smoothly and I think I was very professional and helpful. So after a reasonably easy day, it was the welcome reception at the Hilton, for all 3000 or so attendees. According to Sun's drinking policies, we had 4 drinks tokens each. Of course, we did manage to procure a few extras and by the end of the night were carrying in 6-packs of unopened beer from the bar to our staging area/party room. We left with about 4 Sun goodie bags each, some hilarious photos of Andrew cycling and muchos beer :-) Apparently the interns do much the same every year. That's another one up on the Hilton anyway!

That evening we went to Delerium on 16th and Valencia. All the ingredients of a good night out - cheap drinks, good rock music, lots of dancing and lots of people! Best club we've found in SF so far in my opinion.

CEC Thursday

Alex resting
Originally uploaded by Spanner Dan.

Thursday was a very long day, spent mostly carrying out the infuriating and painfully slow process of jumpstarting (downloading and installing) all the computers at the conference, with the only entertainment being the winding up of various people over the walkie talkies.

We finally got to the last 3 machines, in Declan's corner of the building, and I gave up my duties of managing things from our makeshift command centre to go and give him moral support along with Wee Steve. By the time it got to 99% on the last machine I was very excited, jumping up and down on chairs and updating everyone on the radios. Yes!!!! Woohooo!! Finally. 100%. SHIT. Ow. My leg is not supposed to be going through that chair, and my walkie talkie is not supposed to be crushed against that other chair. Oops.

Anyway, it was over, and time for a drink. Me, Mark, Declan met up with Laura and her friend Nick and had a quick pint in Jillian's (there goes my $100 food budget) followed by showers for Declan and I, Carl's Jr. (eugh), a quick pint in Chieftans then on to a "really good" club called Club 1015.

Sidenote: Why in San Francisco can they not think of better names for clubs than just the number of the street it's on? There's Club 1015, Suite 181, 111 Minna. Have some imagination people!!

Anyway, Club 1015 wasn't great. It was expensive to get in, and was playing very very loud techno music, which I am certainly not a fan of. Laura completely hated it too. Declan was dancing like a maniac and Mark was complaining it was too quiet. Not that anyone could hear anything except the throbbing of some crappy, repetetive beat. OK, so I didn't like it much.

Laura needed a taxi home so I hopped in as well to be dropped off on the way, but accidentally told the driver the wrong hotel and ended up at least 10 blocks away. Pretty silly considering the club had only been about 3 blocks from my hotel to begin with. Somehow, miraculously, I found my way back home. Hmmm, maybe I am getting to know my way around the city finally?!