12:25

I come home usually once every two weeks, taking BART to the Dublin/Pleasanton station, then wait to be picked up. It would be much more convenient if BART went all the way to Tracy, but from what I've recently read, that will probably not happen, though they might extend it to Livermore. This is my second time visiting home. I had to wait a bit longer at the station. I spent some of the time reading, but a good amount of it just wandering around thanks to a bug. I was sitting and reading when my finger felt something rough. I tried flicking it off and saw that there was an earwig on my finger. At the same time, I felt a sharp sting and realized that the damn earwig pinched me. I was more surprised than in pain, and flung it off. Bug incident aside, it was nice being home. It was a bit tricky gauging what to wear because it is a lot colder in San Francisco than here in the central valley. I brought a sweatshirt along, but only wore it until I got in to Pleasanton. It has been ni...

Today after work, I stopped by San Francisco's Chinatown. I haven't been here, or any other chinatowns for that matter, for quite a long time. I started walking over along Montgomery from downtown. San Francisco's financial district never ceases to intrigue me. It is really something walking among the skyscrapers and fancy architecture. Passing the office buildings of a couple of banks, I reached California Street. A few blocks further and uphill, I started to see the distinctive Chinese-stylized buildings and the crowded street-level stores. Chinatown has certainly changed from what I remember. I remember the last time I was here, the area seemed to be a lot grittier. It still has the characteristic grittiness, but it seems like many more gift and souvenir shops with exotic looking sculptures and jewelry and nicer restaurants have cropped up. I was trying to find grocery stores. There was a reason why I came here for a grocery store rather than just go to one that ...

Late nights and early mornings are things that I am quite familiar with. My sleep schedule for the past two years has generally made me a comfortable acquaintance with the early hours of the morning, whether the cause of my insomnia is unfinished work or unfinished thoughts. Sometimes the stillness of these early hours are a time of reflection for me, especially as I spend these times alone. Of all the emotions that surround me at this time, the one that finds me the most is a sense of longing, especially as quiet comfort of reminiscences play in my head. It is during the late nights and early mornings that I miss those closest to me the most. On such nights, I just let my mind smile and replay until sleep finally finds me.

It takes about forty-five minutes to walk home from SFSU. I took the M-line bus a few times, which takes much less time, but recently walked more often to save money. The walk isn't really that bad. I've gotten more or less used to walking a few miles, as long as it does not take too much time. It is a good work out after all. Entering the Ingleside Terraces. From campus, I go through the Ingleside Terraces, a relatively affluent neighborhood. The houses here are pretty nice, and are not all packed right next to each other like those in the area around here. It is pretty quiet today. The fog tends to make everything more still than usual. The fog makes everything quiet and still. The sidewalk underneath the trees (and sometimes power lines) are always wet. This is because the trees and power lines are raining. Yes, the trees and power lines are raining. The fog condenses on the leaves and wires until enough droplets collect to drip down. The trees are raining. I ...

For this semester, I am taking two classes at San Francisco State University, Databases and Bioinformatics, as I am doing my internship. It is slightly interesting to see how a different campus operates, such as student web services for one. SFSU has a online system called iLearn for courses to post material and for students to submit assignments similar to the Classes v2 system, which we use. The campus is small and quite nice, tough the architecture isn't too interesting. There is a lot of grassy field, which we don't have as much. The bookstore is somewhat bigger than ours, and was better stocked in art supplies and stationery. What is also interesting is that there is this terrace on top of the Cesar Chavez Student Center that you could go up and see a view of the whole campus. Today, as it commonly happens in San Francisco, we had a dense fog sitting around. From the top of the terrace. One thing the bookstore here has that we don't have is an electronics secti...

This semester is a bit different from the others. I have taken a semester off and am doing a software development internship at an online advertising start-up in San Francisco. I spent a few weeks towards the end of summer and right before the beginning of my internship looking for a place to live. I scoured Craigslist, visited a few places that were either too expensive or unsatisfactory. During my last tour, I stopped at a Starbucks near Daly City, about to settle for a windowless room carved out of part of a garage, and went through the listings one last time, and found a promising room for rent near Ingleside. Interestingly, the landlords only spoke Chinese, which was not a problem. I visited the place, and was glad to find that the house was clean and neat, and the room was brightly list and priced reasonably. I moved in a few days later. I've been to San Francisco many times throughout my life, but never really thought about living here. Normally accustomed to driving, ...