Looking for Uncle Jesse: San Francisco

I took the BART from San Francisco Airport to the city.  The homes that the train went past looked the same, but each was a different colour.  I got the impression that it may have been the ghetto part of town.  None of the houses looked like the grand Victorian townhouses on Full House. 

When I exited the Powell subway station in the city, it was truly a moment of realisation that I had arrived in America.  I was faced with Bloomingdales, Nordstrom, Barney’s, Forever 21, Saks 5th Avenue, Gap and Urban Outfitters: all stores I had grown up reading about in Baby Sitters Club books and Seventeen magazine. 

I followed the street car track from the beginning of the line to Fisherman’s Wharf, walking up the steepest street I had ever been on in my life.  It felt like it was 90 degrees.  San Franciscoians must have the strongest calf muscles in the world.  The route took me through Chinatown, which made me feel that I was on the set of the Joy Luck Club, and a residential section of the city.  The apartments were all three-storey and each building on the street was a different colour – very cute.  I don’t think I was in the right area to see Full House-type houses though. 

Fisherman’s Wharf was tourist shop and tacky home decoration central.  There were a couple of stores that sold giant statues of animals and children.  This included a statue of a frog butler (he held out a lilly pad as a tray) and one of three gold dolphins jumping over each other.  Loved it.  I kept walking straight in the direction of the water and there it was – what I was looking for all along – Boudin’s bakery.  My mission for the San Francisco stopover was to eat clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl at Boudin’s.  The chowder was ordinary and bread was cold and not so great.  I’ve eaten better sourdough at Natural Tucker Bakery, Chimmy’s, Dench, Filou’s and Sugardough bakeries in Melbourne. 

The museum of old arcade games was fun.  I inserted a dime in the opium den machine, which made the figurines in the opium den set move.

The most American thing I saw was a pair of old blonde American twins who wore matching fur leopard print jackets and leopard print cowboy hats.  I didn’t have a camera with me, so tough, you are just going to have to use your imagination.

Grim Reaper on the plane: Auckland to San Francisco

I’m pretty sure I didn’t book a seat on a rollercoaster to San Francisco.  Half of the 14 hour flight was disturbed by what felt like one metre dips caused by turbulent winds, and when I told my friend about this later, he said it actually would have dipped to around 10 to 15 metres – the way the pilot flies the plane just makes it feel like less. I think the lady in my row was crying and praying for salvation.  On the plane I dreamt that the Grim Reaper was on board and touched the back of the heads of each person on my row to kill them.  When he touched my head I didn’t die, and the moment he saw that I was still alive I woke up before he had a chance to kill me.  Unfortunately the nightmare picked up from where it left off when I fell back asleep 30 seconds later.  I had to think myself out of the dream to avoid the touch of death.  I was too scared to go back to sleep, so I watched a movie.  Soon after I saw a man stand up from his seat to get something from the overhead luggage compartment.  He kept standing in the isle for awhile, and it was exactly in the same spot that the Grim Reaper was standing in my dream.  I watched him from the corner of my eye to see if he was going to pull out his shoe to bomb the plane, but we were safe.

Once at San Francisco airport I did several dim witted things that caused me to be the last person from my flight to leave the airport.  Firstly, I did not have the proper forms to depart, so I had to stand aside and fill them out.  I was given other forms on the plane to fill out before arrival, but the form I needed was not given to me.  If I was smarter I would have asked the flight attendant for it.  Then I filled in the form incorrectly – I wrote that the flight I was transferring to was the Air New Zealand one I was on, not the Air Canada one I needed to connect to.  I failed to look at my itenary to check.   Secondly, I thought that my luggage was going to be transferred from Air New Zealand to Air Canada, but I found out they wern’t when the customs guy asked where my bags were.  So I had to walk back past the carousels to collect my bags, which were the only ones left.  I would suck on the Amazing Race.  I would be in one of those teams who are so lagging behind that the producers have to tell us to quit, because everyone else went to the pit stop two days ago on a different continent.

 

 

 

 

 

Melbourne to Auckland

The beginning of my trip was indicative of the entire journey: fucked.  I stood behind a lady and her baby in the queue to check in.  Shit, that meant I was probably going to be sitting near them on the plane.  The moment I approached the check-in desk I asked the attendant if she could put me at a window seat away from the baby, and she said yes.  Then the computers went haywire – it must have been my metallic heart that caused the disruption.  I stood at the desk for about twenty minutes until the computers were fixed, and in the meantime, the check-in queue grew to about 200 people. 

At the departures entrance, I was stopped by an angry looking old lady.  She told me to place my carry on luggage on the scales, because she complained I was carrying too many bags (I had a trolley bag, a handbag and a laptop) and too much weight, not only around my stomach.  My carry on luggage weighed around 19kg, whereas I was only allowed to bring on 7kg.  I thought she would be lenient since my body weight equalled to a bit more than the breakfast she ate that morning, but no, she barked at me to turn around.  I felt embarassed as the poor smugglers on Border Security.  Distraught, I dragged my luggage away and sorted out what I was going to take on the plane with me, and send the rest of my things using an excess baggage service.  That cost $350.  Fuck.   

When I returned to the departures section, I only had a handbag and laptop with me.  There was another guy working at the door, who greeted me with a big smile and only asked to weigh my handbag.  That was only 3.5kg, but with the laptop combined it would have been 8.5kg.  Had I known he was only going to weigh my handbag and cry “Oh that’s all, you could have put more things in your bag!” I would have put more in, especially a book I needed to review on the plane but decided to send it with the excess baggage service because it brought my combined carry-on weight to over 9kg.

Going through customs was even more traumatising.  There is a stupid rule in place that passengers can’t carry on liquids over 100ml.  Technically all of my liquids were under 100ml, but because the labels on my bottles and tubes said they weighed over 100ml, I had to throw them away.  New Proactiv cleanser – gone.  Proactiv toner – gone.  Toothpaste – gone.  Water – gone.  KMS shampoo and conditioner – gone.  That was nearly $100 thrown away.  I was not looking forward to being dehydrated, dirty and smelly on the 30 hour trip, and it also meant I wouldn’t be able to clean up at my 10 hour stopover in San Franciso, nor when I get to my room in Toronto.  I would have to drag my smelly arse to the shops after landing in Toronto, and also find a place that sold Proactiv and KMS.  FUCK.

The lady who issued me my boarding pass must have been deaf because SHE GAVE ME AN ISLE SEAT BEHIND THE BABY.  The isle is the worst place to sit because you can’t sleep.  I don’t want to face towards the isle because I don’t want people to look at me sleep or for my drool to drip in the isle and cause the flight attendants to slip.  I can’t sleep with my head pointed towards the middle chair because that would mean having to lean against that person.  Sure, the middle seat was empty, but I still couldn’t rest my head comfortably.  My brain must have lost a critical amount of brain cells lately because I couldn’t figure out how to lower the seat either, even though I’ve been on planes a gazillion times before.  I was worried that the silver button inside the arm rest was the one to call the attendant, but I eventually pressed it after ten minutes and it turned out to be the right button.  I begun to worry about developing a brain tumor, because I had been making incredibly stupid decisions over the past few weeks, and if I am sick it’s surely not the right time for me to move overseas.  How will I even write a good job application or succeed in job interviews if I’ve become incapable of processing thoughts in my head? 

Interviewer: What are your strengths?

Me: Uh, em, ah, like, what was the question again sorry?

Interviewer: What’s your biggest accomplishment?

Me: Can’t remember.  Ah, getting to this interview?  *nervous laugh*

All the flight attendants on Air New Zealand were middle aged males.  They were the polar opposite of the glamorous flight attendants I’m used to having on Malaysian Airlines and Qantas.  I wonder if these guys had been flight attendants all their lives or if it was a mid-life career change.  One of them looked like an older version of Steve Sanders, who I find creepy looking but it was enough for me that he resembled someone from 90210.  That was the only highlight of my Melbourne – Auckland trip.