Joseph and I did the fob mob's first day trip today. We hear of other people going on day trips up to the mountains, or days on the beach, but we havn't done anything ourselves. Of the few people that were still in town, joseph was the only one who didn't have some other conflicting obligation.

I woke up at 730, and picked joseph up at 845. We got gas, and then started our long trip towards san francisco. The trip was normal, and time went by quickly as we passed marine world, bridges, and toll booths. We then got off the freeway and arrived in downtown san francisco, where free parking is non-existant. Driving around aimlessly for a while, with me looking for parking and joseph trying to read the tourist map, he finally called Ben and asked him about parking. Ben told us to go to Pier 39, for 5 dollar all day parking. We took forever trying to find our way there, with the hills and one way streets, and finally we arrived and discovered it was actually 8 dollars, but that was only for people who arrived before 9. We paid 12 dollars for parking, and I sqeezed into a tight space without hitting the car or the pillar.

Joseph and I took everything we needed, and started on our way of walking around san francisco with no objective in mind. As we walked towards the middle of downtown (towards chinatown), we noticed a sign showing "coit tower" to the left, so we walked uphill towards the tall scenic tower. The walk there was pretty hard, but finally we arrived to discovered there was a large fee for going to the top, so we settled with taking pictures with the statue, enjoying the view, and walking around the tower. On the way back down the hill, we saw a drinking fountain for you, your kid, and your dog. A few blocks and crosswalks later, we found ourselves suddenly in china(town). The culture there is quite different. Everyone's short, so we were giants, people don't respect the crosswalk signals or lights, and babys dangle in weird positions on their mother's backs. There was only two or three long streets (cross streets too) that had a lot of major chinatownism.

Most of the stores had nothing that interested us. There wasn't many street vendors selling fake merchandise like in mexico or china. We finally found a store with something that actually interested us: fat, sharp katanas, and a ton of them.

We pondered and pondered, but finally left without buying any deadly weapons. As we walked back up to the main street, we saw a "chinese playground" with lots of equipment. Joseph noticed a see saw, or teeter totter, or whatever they're called, and we tried that out for a while. The playground area for adults was inside the building, where they played ping pong. When we were done playing, we walked up to the intersection, and then joseph started laughing at the chaos in the intersection, with chinese people swarming across everywhere. Weird named things and stores: Munchies paradise, and good luck stone.

By the time we were on the main street again, it was past noon and we were starving. We went into a random bakery, and joseph got a bbq roll while I got two fluffy things with vanilla on the inside and coconut on the outside. After eating them, we were both still hungry, so we kept looking for food places, until we found You's Dim Sum. There we discovered the joys of bbq buns for 50 cents each. We each spent a dollar on two each, and they turned out to be the most awesome things, with soft fluffy outside, and warm bbq porked inside.

Loaded with dim sum, we started going towards fisherman's wharf and pier 39, stopping to rest a bit at the park. Pier 39 is a dock with tons of small stores and random things to see. There were mood rings, life guards, seals, tourists, and prisons on water. We left, rested a little, sat with seals, watched some breakdancers, met brad pitt and yao ming, and then walked over to a different part of fisherman's wharf, a place with more small stores and street vendors. We found a sunglasses imitation seller, and we bought 2 and got one free. Hot, huh?

Not much happened after that. We watched a street performer robot dude, then walked back to chinatown looking for knives (and switchblades), but there were no good ones joe could buy. We ate dim sum again for dinner, and then headed back home.

Some low quality video clips I took:

Performer at Entrance of Pier 39

Tourists Watching Sea Lions

Breakdancing on Fisherman's Wharf

Joseph Strutting Across Street

I got rejected from Berkeley. I'm at peace with it though, and will probably go to UC Davis 100%. If I had gotten in, I would have seriously considered it, and there would be a good chance I might have gone, but God has closed this door, so I'll walk through the other one.

Alp made it into the paper, and got a whole article written about him, including a fat, color picture. When joe or I are in the paper, our fat pictures of the past have mostly always been in black and white.

Alps Article Today

Congrats Alp, and joseph for having your name show up in the article.