SF was where I met boyfriend J. We met for 2 days and amongst the movie backdrop of perfect sun, sea and mountains, we fell in love.
I have always protested to my friends: no no no I fell in love with the city before I fell in love with J.
But that’s really splitting hairs, in many sense the city is as symbolic a signifier as J is for that specific passage of my life.
I’m now in San Francisco for a week to celebrate boyfriend J’s birthday with him and am staying at my friends’ amazing downtown apartment at Embarcadero.
For friends who are earning less than me working in a pricier city, they are certainly living it up! Check out the view from their balcony:
That’s day 1 vista, the city’s charming even in a heavy downpour.
But day 2 vista was really closer to what San Francisco really looks like.
Isn’t it a winner? Check out super cool Colt Tower in the background, I love walking those narrow streets up to the tower, muy romantico.
It’s super weird staying in their apartment, waking up at 9am to watch TV while they rush out for work. I roam around the city, shopping, eating, meeting friends and come back to their empty apartment since they come back very late from work.
Being jobless is a real luxury, especially when you’re in San Francisco.
Weekend was spent drinking my hearts out in wine country Napa and Sonoma. Coming here to San Francisco has been wonderful – I get to surprise boyfriend J and also visit wine country again.
Californian wine captured the world’s attention when a bottle of cabernet sauvignon from Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars was judged to be the best in a blind tasting of American and French wines. Before 1976, wine drinkers regarded Californian wines as mass produced low grade wines from the New World. But the 1976 tasting proved that American wine, at least Stag’s Leap cabernet, can be as good as French, if not better.
And so that’s why they can charge at least $45 for a bottle of cabernet and still sell out their bottles every year.
The other vineyards also had similarly impressive resumes – Domaine Chandon produces wonderful sparklings, Pride with sparklings and Ridge with zinfandel.
Napa was a little too touristy for me – when wineries have designated spots for tour buses, you do wonder if the winemakers are more concerned with making the wine or selling it? Even their street side diners are glamed up and designed to squeeze out the maximum amount of tourist dollars from your pocket – check out Taylor’s Automatic Refresher in Napa. Anybody up for ahi burger?
We had the blue cheese burger with garlic fries -yumo!
Sonoma was alot more laid back and genuine to me – no tour buses and snotty wine pourers. Some wineries were so empty that we had private tastings with the winemaker. Also wine tastings in Sonoma are cheaper – usually $5 per tasting compard to the $15 in Napa.
What a bargain!
Check out the pinot noirs from Sonoma’s russian river region. Napa’s cabernets might get most of the attention but Sonoma’s pinots are also impressive wines as well.
California is truly wine country, I’m all wined out.
To the west coast to surprise boyfriend J for his birthday.
He’s such a sweetheart, I came up with a super lamo excuse for him to “get a package from a friend for me at the airport before she flies off for business.”
No questions, no protest, he said “sure”
He’s wonderful.
As the plane was going to land at Cincinnati for transit, I looked out and saw this golden band of water… the Ohio river?
When you’re jobless, you have way too much time and obviously you’re going to be online all the time.
And so I nearly spat out my dinner when I read the news that Heath Ledger of “Brokeback Mountain” is dead.
OMG.
Apparently his housekeeper found him unconscious in his bed with a bottle of sleeping pills near him. Nobody knows what happened to him yet, articles about it are breaking everywhere…. the New York Times,Towleroad, even Straits Times (!).
He was amazing in “Brokeback Moutain” and now he’s gone.
I spent the entire early afternoon looking at Singapore related materials, just a stream of consciousness wandering in the cyberspace. From my friend’s posting on facebook I stumbled into various video clips of theatre productions in Singapore and then I realised these clips were made by a budding Singaporean film maker and so I went to his blog and I realised that I know his boyfriend and so I quizzed a mutual friend if they were indeed boyfriends and so I spent the next 30 mins checking out his photos and then….
I realized I was home sick.
I seldom miss the physical landscape.
it’s always the intangible, emotional, metaphysical memories that bubbles to the surface.
One of the videos on youtube had a guy in it, someone I slept with a long time ago. I gasped when I saw him, it has been that long, he looked older… but he looked the same.
would he say the same? would he even recognise me?
I so want to go back to Singapore for a Chinese New Year visit. I should but I can’t.
I’m such a sucker for reality shows. And makeovers. And hot guys
A reality tv show about hot guys being made into supermodels?
Perfection.
I was initially quite skeptical of Bravo’s new ripoff show “Make me a supermodel” since it’s such a wannabe me-too challenger to Tyra’s fab “America’s next top model”(ANTM).
But Bravo being so smart, decided to go one up in appealing to their gay audience. Not only have hot male contestants but also have one hot male contestant how’s gay!
Brilliant.
I mean, look at the guy. How hot is this gay supermodel wannable from Chicago? (why I didn’t meet such hotness in Chicago when I was there? I don’t know)
And thankfully beneath that Abercombie & Fitch hotness lies a soul – he’s actually quite funny and down to earth in the show. And it’s wonderful that he doesn’t make a big deal of his sexuality, being gay is just part of his personality. It’s important but it’s not that important.
This week’s episode has him revealing his crush on another contestant, Ben, and it’s great that there’s no dramatic “I just want to tell everybody that I’m gay” moment. And also kudos to Mr. Prison Guard straight guy for being graceful with the attention.
Awwwww…….. *heart melts*
So until ANTM comes back, I’ll be watching Ronnie every week.
Every gay boy needs his action figure superhero, even if he comes in glitter and tight shorts.
Fancy watching a movie about a teenage girl getting pregnant to get me all revved up. But I just fell in love with the movie at the start, I always know if I will hate or love a movie after the first 5 mins.
I knew this movie was great instantly.
Aside from the accolades the movie has garnered (all true – brilliant acting, witty witty script, lots of heart), I really fell hard for this movie cos it brought back so many memories.
Memories of watching tons of awesome movies and getting so happy about them. It was alot easier to get happy then… a kickass movie was enough, seriously.
Now I’m thinking about buying 1+ million USD houses, starting my company, having a kid blah blah blah. All these adult stuff right? Ironically all these “achievements” I have been planning has been really getting me down.
I don’t think I was really happy in 2007. Everything was about waiting. Waiting to save enough money. Waiting for my visa to come through. Waiting to see if I liked my new job. Waiting for the economy to tank so that I can buy a house cheap.
Waiting is no fun. Quarterlife crisis is a real bitch.
Living is. I missed having a little joie de vivre.
I had tons of fun this afternoon. And I’m reminded my life can get all screwed up and things will still be alright. No visa, no job, no nothing?
I cannot believe I used to pay $2 USD for a teeny weey itsy bitsy biscotti.
Its insane because biscottis are really easy to make!
For me, I always thought biscottis are pretty sophisticated treats paired with a strong cuppa of coffee. This is especially true when I’m faced with a mouth watering array of flavored biscottis – I used to frequent this wonderful biscotti store in Pittsburgh that had more than 25 flavors, I had a tough time trying every flavor within one summer.
But really, stripped of all snazzy cultural connotations, biscottis are really nothing more than….
Thats right, biscuits. Buttery flour based confectionaries called biscuits.
Okay so the italians know how to do normal things sexier and biscottis are more interesting than a tin can of danish butter biscuits. But I kinda lost my illusions about these finger sized treats and decided to try making some today.
And I’m happy to say my first batch of biscottis turned out really well.
I’ll get some of my friends to be my guinea pigs this weekend but they sure look like some tasty biscuits to me.
For anybody interested to make their own italian biscottis, I used this recipe.
Days are long when you don’t have anything specific to do.
As I’m waiting for my new H1B work visa to come through, I’m temporary jobless and hanging out at my friend’s pad in Chicago.
Wake up. Eat breakfast. Decide what to do for the afternoon. Watch some daytime soap to look at shirtless hunks and feel fat. Watch a few movies at the cineplex. Come back to make dinner. Watch new episodes of Project Runway/Ugly Betty/Amazing Race. Sleep.
I don’t know how housewives can do this for their whole lives.
It’s a nice change for me for a few days but I can imagine how tedious it would be after a week.
TV makes even boredom look sexy – I don’t think being a Desperate Housewife is as sexy/glamorous/intriguing ABC makes it out to be.
