WTF is going on

Yesterday had to be one of the most bizzard 24 hr period during my five plus years in San francisco. What you see here covering the side walk on polk street last night was not snow, but hail. It was about a 10 minute down pour of white pebbles. With this and the fact that my home was almost burn to the ground...... I will not be surprised by anything right now.

not your typical monday morning

Most of the residents in my building got waken up this morning a little bit early (~5:30). Not sure what caused it, but the unit below the one across the hallway from mine had a fire. I woke up to screaming people, broken window ..... I managed to put on a coat and shoes before bolting for the door. The elderly lady whose home the fire originated is in the hospital, we all hope she is okay. #38 (the one across from me) is not habitable right now, most of her shit were trashed as well. #48 has a large hole in the ceiling, created by the fire fighting dudes to vent the smoke during the fire. The common area of the building look like a war zone, the whole building smell like, well, it smell like it was on fire for a bit.

my unit is largely intact, everyone at work said I smelled like I have been camping and had not showered. I hope they restore the power by the time I get home. I think all of us who call this old building on Powell home feel a little tired right now, but very very lucky indeed.

.........

this is exactly what I feel like saying to every person who try to talk to me today

happy chinese new year

my favorite time of the year, when I was a kid, by far. it is a holiday all about excess, eat, drink, gamble, fire works, fight with your family, oh yeah. my grandmother use to make this braised pork belly with dried bamboo shoot that was probably the best pork dish I ever had. sadly, non of my relatives know exactly how she did it. Attempts to recreate it has not been successful at all. I think I am going to hit my head against the wall now, so I will pass-out and stop thinking about grandma, and the pork.

chinese new year is actually sort of like christmas, but skip the presents, people just give kids cash in red envelope instead. And it is not a holiday associate with some dead guy's birthday. did I say it was my favorite time of the year.

pain

about a week ago, I hurt my tounge eating pizza. I was obviously drunk, and I can't tell you what happened exactly, but about a 1.5cm by 1cm area worth of skin on my tounge was missing. I think I have fairly high tolerance for pain, I have had multiple oral sugeries, and each time, I got through it with very minimum help from pain killers (some of my friends love the leftovers). But this was something else, I went about four days without anything, and it just healed very slowly. I don't care what people say about how tissues in your mouth supposedly regenerate faster than any other tissue in you body, it didn't happen to me. For one thing, it is moving all the time (I eat a lot and talk a lot), and it is always covered by liquid, how a wound is going to heal under that condition? I can't describe how much it hurt.

in a way, I think I was getting punished for something, I can't really pin-point what exactly I am getting punished for, however, there are just too many possibilities.

delfina petite

on a sunday a few weeks ago, I had a early dinner at the pizza place opened by the people of delfina restaurant (right next door) in the mission. It was one of those sunday that drinking started at like 12:30pm with a couple bloody marys and just went down hill from there, fast. I think delfina is a perfectly fine neighborhood restaurant, but like a couple of other places in the mission I like, it has just gotten way too much press, hype and frequent by yuppies. Prices are inching higher, it is all but impossible to get a table not at 5:30pm or 9:45pm unless you call a couple of weeks before. All that makes this small pizza joint even more enticing. No reservation allowed, you walk in and put your name on the chalk board, it actually feels like a neighborhood place. I am not the biggest fan of pizza, somehow, I have been eating a lot of them lately. The pies here were perfectly okay, but what I like the most were the array of small and extremely simple appetizers, like the spicy cauliflower with capers (soup and salad too). There were five of us, so we tried just about everything on the small menu. Nothing was spectacular, but at these prices (not cheap, but with what every other place is charging in the mission, not that bad), it was fine, and perfectly enjoyable. This sort of casual and relaxed dinning should really be common place in this neighborhood (like front porch), but it seems these days, pretension and all the fucking yuppies are getting in the way.