was given a half-day tour of SF by former classmate who grew up in SF, whose knowledge of buildings and history of the city was pretty amazing. and i took the MUNI for the 2nd time in my entire 4-year stay here... the very first time i took it it was with tonnes of crazily-dressed folks (myself included haha, though i certainly wasn't as creative nor as outrageous as many strangers i encountered... ) to Castro on my first Halloween night and i totally thought it was like the BART and never really bothered to investigate its routes subsequently.... today we went to the more residential and less touristy places in SF... i was actually rather surprised how 'versatile' the MUNI was... how it emerges from underground tunnels, winds uphill and speeds on freeways alongside cars... well. at least i felt like a pseudo-SF resident for a few hours :P
in meantime, am still desperately trying to clear my room.... why do i have so much junk! also savoring my last 2 weeks or so and giving myself excuses to devour unfortunately highly fattening ice-creams, such as the heavenly Dublin mudslide....

this afternoon i resumed status as pedestrian cum bus-passenger... it was a little sad to see my Honda go, but also have to admit it was a heavy load off my chest! and though i got a cashier's check from the buyer, repeated warnings of fraud and reminder of how easily i get cheated by ppl from dad succeeded in making me somewhat nervous that check might not go through... but it did :) tmr my family leaves for Singapore... aside from the daily petty squabbles and some difficulty in adapting to the environment and food, have to say nothing really terrible happened. just have to mentally prepare myself for restricted freedom and some other compromises when i go home.... but will worry about those in 2 weeks' time. unfortunately, i've had SO SO much rich food the past two weeks (esp the past week!!) that waistline has suffered as a result. sigh. have to go on diet when i get home. though i dun forsee myself being too successful, considering how good food will be cheap and extremely accessible. oh well, perhaps when i find that i dun fit into the usual sizes when shopping for working clothes, vanity will motivate me hehe.

tomorrow afternoon i part with my dear Honda-- we've had the most unusual 'relationship'... i'm neither rich nor skilled, yet i drive a nice Honda Accord EX Coupe with a powerful V6 engine... of course it isn't super luxurious, but luxurious enough for a poor (ex) student like me who would prob never be able to afford something like that for a long long time after i go home :P it's alright; at least i ceng2 jing1 yong1 you3...
took it for a last long drive this afternoon in the brilliant weather... and though i meant to go to the lighthouse at the Marin Headlands, i stumbled across a mini gem of a beach at the Headlands... the water and waves were so beautiful... (the experience would have been more enjoyable without a certain voice nagging at me to put on my sweater haha) winds were kinda chilly, but weather was great. i'll really miss the combination of warm sun, cool winds and blue cloudless skies... and i've decided that i like the Bay Area the best (out of all the places i've been to in California) perhaps it's also cos i've done the most here; have had many happy moments and memories here...

feels good to be back in Berkeley :) a little regretfully, circumstances were such that i didn't manage to do the two things i most looked forward to the on this trip... too many things but too tired to pen down thoughts on trip tonight, so will just write about the (un?)eventful today... i somehow managed to misplace my driver's licence on the very day i needed it to board plane to Grand Canyon and so i had to accept consequences of own actions and stay back in LV... (a part of me wants to blame it on the front desk staff, but have to admit that lesson learnt is that you always have to take responsibility for your own things. this lesson a careless me actually somehow manages to unlearn time and again) sometimes you really wonder if things happen for a reason? but roaming streets, shopping, reading at Starbucks and having a little peace and quiet to myself wasn't that bad either :) and unexpectedly, family returned with nothing good to say about the outing.... er so... i guess though i felt sorry it didn't turn out well, i guess it was a small consolation too? :P

so the last hour or so was spent sitting at one of the Jackpot machine seats at the hotel casino and i think it's only when you really sit and really look at what's going on around you do you see beyond the bustle and incessant human traffic.... first, i was somewhat looking over a shoulder of a casino patron playing those $1 per play jackpots... i was somehow horrified how she just threw away more than $100 or so in 15 min or so.... of course this is nothing compared to those rich gamblers at the $1000 per play tables... but still! and all this money goes into the pockets of those casino magnates when it could be put to much better/meaningful use... (but of course, who am i to criticize what they want to do with their money...) i also encountered two working class individuals- bus driver who ferried me back to hotel from airport, who lamented that she has to work 6 days a week and is too busy to go on one of those GC flights herself, and a friendly (er.. maybe lonely?) Jamaican cleaner named Riggly, who was going around collecting empty beer bottles, sweeping and polishing the metal surfaces of jackpot machines... who instead of shooing me away started talking to me and saying how he gets to meet all kinds of ppl there (which i totally agree... you see ALL kinds of ppl) the staff at Rio is really pretty international (the staff wear name tags with their place of origin under their names) and so you get to see where they come from... the front desk staff are mostly American (expectedly), but the more menial jobs appear to be taken up by non-Americans... eg. cashier lady at convenience store was from Sri Lanka... i dunno. it just really reminded me of all the "invisible" immigrant labor taking up blue collar jobs in the US... haha just random musings. going to conk out now.