I left my heart in San Francisco

Okay, actually, no, I didn’t. =) I did, however, have a great time there recently.

(Yeah, another one of my very late posts. But hey, at least I'm starting to catch up! =) )

I had to go there to attend a particular training course that is not being given very often, and which isn’t being given anywhere near the Philippines (it was either I take the course in San Francisco or I take the next one in the UK in March. Clearly I couldn’t wait that long).

The training course was just three days – from Nov. 29 (Wed) to Dec. 1 (Fri). I arrived there on Tuesday, a day before the training, at around 8am. I got to my hotel at around 9am and it is located in Belmont, right next to the Oracle HQ (it’s a really nice HQ actually) and a mile away from the training center where I would be taking my course. Check-in time is supposed to be 2pm, but since my room was already free the receptionist (who happened to be a Filipino named Mike) told me I could check-in already and in fact I could still have the complimentary breakfast. Cool right?

Well the thing was, the hotel I was in wasn’t a really good one. It was more like a serviced apartment – there was no mini bar and no room service. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Except for the fact that my hotel was located in the middle of nowhere. I mean, there were no convenience stores or groceries anywhere within walking distance, and there weren’t any restaurants either!

What it did have was a selection of delivery numbers and menus. I guess this hotel really caters to people who are staying in that area for a fairly long time and who most likely have a rental car with that would allow them to drive to restaurants or C-stores. As I had no car, I really had no choice but to keep ordering food in! I kinda wished I had stayed in one of the company-preferred hotels in the Bay area. One of them was actually located right in front of Fisherman’s wharf and it would’ve been a fantastic place for me to be in. Unfortunately, it was several miles away from the training center and I would use up way too much of company money on taxi rides so I decided to look for a hotel in Belmont instead. And what a decision that turned out to be! I ended up stranded in the middle of nowhere! Haha! Okay, it wasn’t all that bad. The room was pretty spacious and I got a lot of TV channels, and the breakfast was decent.

I overestimated how cold it would be too. I checked the weather report and it said San Francisco would be 9 degrees Celsius. I couldn’t recall how 9 degrees felt like so I thought it would be really really cold and as such brought two sweaters and two thick jackets with me. Naturally, when I got there, I realized that I didn’t need all that (check out my pic below, I was just wearing a shirt). I could’ve saved a lot of space in my luggage if I didn’t bring all those ‘winter clothes’ with me.

Okay now I started off saying I had a fun time in San Francisco and all I’ve done so far is rant hahaha. So let me tell you the fun stuff:

HIGHLIGHTS

#1: I got to watch One Tree Hill on the new CW! [SPOILER ALERT!!!] And it was a really cool episode as well, probably my favorite episode ever. Mainly because after four seasons, the Ravens finally win the State Championships! Of course, there’s a lot more going on in the episode to make it quite interesting, but you weren’t really sure how the game would go and if they ended up losing like they did in the season 1 play-offs, it would have been quite a disappointing finish.

#2: I spoke to Weng on the phone for more than an hour! Earlier that week, I sent her a quick email saying I was in SFO and asking if she might by any chance be traveling to SFO (in which case we could meet up). I left her my hotel details and my room number and on Thursday night she calls me. There was quite a bit of catching up to do and it was great getting to talk to her again.

#3: I got a new digital camera for myself and for my mom. Why did I need to buy two cameras? Well, both batteries of my old Sony digicam were completely dead – they don’t charge anymore – and being an obsolete model, I couldn’t find the batteries anywhere. Also, the Canon that I got my mom in early 2005 stopped working – the service center said there was damage in the optical mechanism and that fixing it would cost - P15,000! Can you believe that? Anyway, since my mom and I won’t be able to share a camera this year, I figured I’d get one for each of us. I ended up getting the Sony W100, with a 2Gb memory stick for myself and 1 Gb one for my mom (I’m sure to take a truckload more pics than my mom and she won’t ever come near 1 Gb of pics).

#4: I had lunch with Ron. I met him a couple of years ago when I paid Mike a visit in Stanford. Recently, we started working on some project together (along with Mike and a few other people). He works in Oracle which as I mentioned is right next to my training center so I thought it would be cool to have lunch with him while I was there (oh and FYI, he actually thought I was 26 years old haha that is the youngest age anyone has ever guessed me to be it’s so cool. =))

#5: I met up with Ray and Joy. They were living there because Ray was studying at Stanford. On the weekend, they drove from Stanford to Belmont to pick me up at my hotel. We drove to the city where I had to get something from the Academy of Art University – my friend Tricia is taking a virtual course there and won a discount card from Borders so she asked me to pick up her card for her. Ray and Joy then took me to the Cliffhouse, a restaurant located right on a cliff. The ambience is great, mainly because you get a fantastic view of the bay while dining.

The food here though isn’t really very good – or at least the food we ordered. In fact, Joy was so disappointed with her Grilled marinated Breast of Chicken Sandwich that Ray was thinking of complaining about the food. We of course decided against it. We headed out the resto after lunch and took a few pictures with the bay in the background. (Funny moment: when we stepped out, I made a comment about the trees in that area being awesome. I was looking at the trees when I heard a woman’s voice in Joy’s general direction ask out loud “do you wanna head there?” and I blurt out “Not really.” Joy and Ray look at me with this weird trying-to-force-themselves-not-to-smile look which made me realize that it wasn’t them who asked if I wanted to go there hahaha I couldn’t stop laughing after that.)

 

We then went to the Legion of Honor museum but just to take pictures (it’s a really good museum and I need to make sure to go inside and spend time in it the next time I am in San Francisco).

After that, we get stuck in the most horrendous traffic jam I’ve ever experienced on our way to the Great Mall in Milipitas. Joy and Ray were planning to go to Beijing in December, and as it gets really cold there (a lot more than SFO), they needed to buy heavier-duty winter clothes. We split up while at the Great Mall and I end up buying myself a red-orange fleece jacket from Nautica (it was on sale and the price was a steal).

Factor in to all this the really good training course that I took then clearly the pluses outweigh the minuses by a whole lot. =)