Ballooning!

Stop being so evil - an SF muni vignette

An exciting night for theatrics this evening on the 22 northbound.

"Stop being so evil," said the woman to the driver, "I don't have any money for fare."
"Then get off the bus."  The driver was already angry.
"All I've got is a check, and I can't put that in the machine," said the woman, shrugging.
"If you don't pay, you can't ride."
"I'm riding this bus!" the woman points at the floor.
"I'm getting the police."
"That's fiiine -- my family is the police.  They know me."

The driver storms off the bus and walks away (hypothetically to hail the law).

"Does anyone have 50 cents?" asks the woman to the bus.  The other passengers look around, a few check their pockets.  There's no response.

Several minutes go buy.  The woman continues to ask for help paying the 50 cent disability fare, but it seems no one is simultaneously carrying change and willing to help.  Some of the passengers get frustrated, "I have to get home, she needs to get off the bus."  A debate breaks out about whether the disability fare is indeed 50 cents.  It is.

Finally a hero emerges from the back of the bus with a whole dollar and delivers it to the woman.  The bus breathes a collective sigh.

Several more minutes pass and eventually the driver returns.  The pair resume their previous argument.  But wait, this time she has the fare! Things should be resolved very quickly.  The fare, however, does not emerge from her pocket.  Wide-eyed disbelief from the other passengers turns to laughter.  How funny!  We were all duped!

Another helpful passenger feels this may still be but a misunderstanding, "But you have a dollar.  It's in your pocket.  You can pay now."

"Does anyone have 50 cents?" the woman reverts to her previous plea.  Paying extra fare is not an option.

"You have a dollar?" asks the driver, catching onto what happened during his leave.

"Ohhh NO.  You're not taking my last dollar!"

"Her last dollar," chimes in the bus, indicating with eyes and fingers the forgotten hero who frowns and pleads again, "can we just go?"

There's more, of course, but in summary:

• money is flung (source: woman, target: fare machine and/or driver)
• convenient municipal laws are invented (fares must be placed in the fare machine by the riding party and no one else.  Thank you driver.)
• charity is repaid (with interest!) to the original hero (source: sympathetic passengers)
• the police eventually arrive and remove the woman

In defense, this rider was completely cashless.

Eating WELL in Singapore

Part III
I am completely impressed with Singapore, and it's not just the food.  Well, much of it is the food.  After all, the food is incredible.  Hainan chicken has been a favorite for a while.  Before I knew its name, some coworkers introduced me to this dish at a hopping joint 5 minutes from Mori Tower.  But in Singapore, Hainan chicken has reached the level of perfection.  We got a chance to try two versions -- the first from a stall in Maxwell's food court, and the second from Golden Mile Thien Kee Steamboat (a Chinese restaurant, not in fact a steamboat).  Both were incredible, and very likely stops 1 and 2 next time I find myself in Singapore.

Besides the food, though, I fully appreciated the deeply international feeling one gets from Singapore even during brief stints of exploration.  Signage is nearly always quadrilingual (and sometimes nearly philisophical), and it was exciting to hear the diversity of languages mingling on the trains.  It's not completely unlike something one might experience on muni, but it seems to me conversations in Cantonese or Spanish (even in the Californian context) are still considered foreign.  On the other hand, it almost seems hard to consider any language foreign in a country where four (English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil) rather than one are classified as official.  This is, of course, a foreigner's perspective, and a 2-day visitor at that.

Eating WELL in Bali

Part II
We enjoyed quite a few delicious meals in Bali.  Favorites were at Ubud's Cafe Batan Waru (the fried duck and chicken noodle soup) and Ibu Oka (famous for its suckling pig: the picture of which was a bit too intense to post, but the meal itself was certainly a highlight), and the immense seafood feast on the southern side of Jimbaran.

A sweet chili sauce seemed to appear at nearly every meal, and added great flavor without completely overwhelming the dish with spiciness.  I'd love to figure out how to make this, but suspect--as with most awesome sauces--that it's more difficult than it looks.

Eating WELL in Saigon

Part I
It turns out that pho lives both indoors and out, but the rain in Vietnam was light and infrequent enough not to interfere too much with the all important eating.  We in fact only had a couple of meals in sit down restaurants in Vietnam -- the good stuff could be found most anywhere, and cost around 2 US dollars.  Most impressive, I think, were the bahn mi sandwhiches, made with french bread that tasted just-baked, even after midnight.  We never did spot a bakery, however, so the source of this freshness is still a mystery.

Thankfully, pho lives indoors

The thick fog that descended on Alamo square tonight seemed like a good indicator that our trip far far away was coming at a pretty good time. I sort of liked the idea of a misty kiss farewell--one for the road as we escape, for a bit, to a sunnier part of the world.

Google weather wasted no time adding a dose of reality.

Dogpatch dogs

My coworkers and I have many times walked past these absurdly fluffy dogs passing their day on 3rd street. The first time I got a glimpse of the mechanism behind this fluffiness, however, was during Allegra's brief introduction to the dogpatch neighborhood.

Man blow-drying dog #1.



Allegra inspecting dog #2 post-blow-dry.



And for the record:

Dogpatch was named for the stray dogs that used to hunt for food among the meatpacking factories, which have since been converted into live-work lofts. (source)

Ah.