Author: Kristian Golding

What can I say about San Francisco? I absolutely, without a doubt, positively loved it. A-friggen-mazing place. We stayed in a hotel which was about a one minute walk from Union square, more or less the centre square for San Francisco and we had the cable cars going past our window down in the street. Did I do a lot of walking? Hell yes! I was absolutely buggered from walking around but loved every bit of it. A nice change from all the flatness here in Florida.

We went out one night for some sushi and then went to grab a drink. Who would’ve thought that the first place we went to grab a drink happened to be a gay bar? No matter, the people there were bloody friendly and I stored my camera there for a while when we went to check out some straight places, with a gay guy as our tour guide of course.

I got a bit freaked out on the way home. My friends had gone home much earlier in the night (as to why, refer to my post: “The woman“) and it got to about the time where I had to leave the group I was hanging around with (read: nearly sunrise). Did I know my way around San Francisco well enough to find my way home? No. Was I a bit scared? Yes. Luckily I found Powell street after a bit of looping around and was just crossing at the lights across the road from our hotel when the lens cap from my camera fell off. A bum who happened to be walking alongside me picked up the lens cap and began looking at it quizzically. I said to him a couple of times “Mate, can I please have my lens cap back?” No response. I knew I had a $1 bill in my pocket and offered to swap it for my lens cap. We did the swap and by this stage I was out the front of my hotel and I absolutely bolted it upstairs. There were always a few people around the whole time I walked home, but I was still a bit freaked out in some points. Scary stuff.

We did the whole touristy thing, checking out Alcatraz, Fisherman’s Wharf and took a bus tour of the city. After staying in San Francisco for a little over 3 days I did not want to leave there. It was such a cool city. Ah well.

It also happened to be the city where I lost my iPod charger. I believe we all heard a clunk sound as we were packing the car to leave San Francisco. Upon reflection, that did very much sound like an iPod charger hitting the ground, even though we couldn’t find anything. I think that bum who tried taking my lens cap snapped up my iPod charger before we knew what the heck was going on.

To feel my pain, sing this to the tune of “San Francisco” as sung by Scott Mckenzie:

If you’re leaving from San Francisco

Please do take care

To not leave belongings there

If you’re leaving from San Francisco

A bum’s got your charger

And he couldn’t give a care

Bah! Screw writing anymore lyrics.

Pictures start here.

Err, thought it would be time to update my blog. Well, I’ve started up tennis again. Yah! I haven’t played a game since I got over here and now I plan to make it a weekly thing. I was missing it so, so much. The only sport I’ve been doing is the odd swim and I don’t do it often enough to get anything out of it. Anyway, it’s been good to get away from the computer for a while. I sit all day in front of one (which I hate doing… well, all day at least). I hate, hate, hate that part of my job.

Anyway, I thought it was pretty cool that someone had started researching Venus fly traps. I went on a rant about such stuff in this post a while back. The research discusses the mathematics of how the trap operates, but it still leaves open how the hell the plant *actually does it*. The research is here. I only hope I don’t look like that guy when I’m talking about Venus fly traps. Actually, I probably look worse since I’m normally intoxicated at the time.

Could you imagine how happy I was when I found this site? Oops, did I just link directly to Salma Hayek? Oh. Heh, they do talk about the famous scene in “From Dusk till Dawn”. Hats off. It takes quite a while to read through all the top 100 women (as voted by readers of askmen.com). I found it quite a good idea to have several pictures of each person. Noice. Enjoy guys.

Heh, happy Australia Day by the way. Geez, I nearly forgot. I don’t know how I could have, it was on the news constantly over here.

Pictures from the Bahamas are here, featuring guest appearances from the “grass-weed” guy and my brother doing something useful: carrying beer.