i left my heart, the threequel: part v
so in the spirit of not thinking about depressing things, i'm going to post about the final leg of my 9 week trip to san francisco! and about how overwhelmingly glad i am to finally be home, ahhhhh! if there's anything this trip has shown me, it's how much i don't want to be away from home. to be fair, that probably wasn't helped by the fact that the next three weeks were pretty low-key for me, and mostly spent playing studious housewife, alternating between studying my butt off for my online class (WHICH--ANATOMY IS SO HARD, OKAY, WHAT UP) and interrupting my studying to go out for lunch with my sister at her convenience. it wasn't all bad, but i guess it's hard not to go a little stir crazy when you're getting little to no human interaction for the major portion of your day--and the interaction you do get can sometimes be nauseating, to put it mildly.
let's just say if i never have to watch another couple make out on my fucking bed ever again for as long as i live, IT WILL STILL BE TOO SOON.
anyway. we went to check out the california academy of science one evening, during their nightlife events, and oh my god, i was bored to tears. it didn't help that my sister decided for the last two hours of the night that she was going to sit at a table making the most horrifically ugly felt machine i have ever seen in my life. and since she didn't have the courtesy to tell me she was going to take 2 hours to do it, i basically sat there and didn't do anything the entire time. felt machines are really not my thing. so, whatever, that night was a bust.
the night was such a bust, in fact, that i enjoyed the rest of my week doing exactly nothing much more than i enjoyed that night. i literally stayed in my apartment all day except for the occasional venture out for lunch with my sister, and the even more occasional venture out for dinner after dark. i believe i survived of three avocados, a box of ham, a loaf of bread, and a box of cherry tomatoes that week alone. it sounds depressing put down on my paper but i honestly didn't mind it that much.
i wasn't complaining when we started making plans for the next week, though. first up was burlesque night on wednesday! we got delightfully cheap tickets ($10 for vip treatment, which included getting to lounge on a bed, a flute of champagne, and a ginormous chocolate-covered strawberry, mmm) and headed down to supper club for the evening. the show was pretty hilarious, the dancing was just okay, the stripping awked me out - i am such a traditional asian girl at heart, i can't even - and the food was pretty delish, but the highlight of my night was definitely the waiter in the high heels hanging upside down from the roof for our entertainment, the dancing boys with the little tassles pasted on his butt, and the ridiculously hot bartender. i tweeted that night that i wish i'd left her my number and i still do, negl.
by far, though, my favourite moment of the night was one of the waiters taking my sister's drink order and giving me a conspiratorial, "she's a keeper!" i didn't have the heart to tell him no, i really know better than that, but still. a+ entertainment for cheap. there are more pictures of the awesomeness that went on that night here. the photographer was awful, and plenty of boobs are involved, so don't say i didn't warn you!
much better, and only slightly more expensive, entertainment came the next night, when my sister took me to see camelot at the sf playhouse. oh my gosh, i don't know what i was expecting, but it definitely wasn't the level of amazing we got! the singing was impeccable, the set was quite lovely, the songs were gorgeous, and the acting - at least on arthur's part - was wonderful. i got teary-eyed every time he sang to guinevere and it was written all over his face how much he wanted to be closer and how much he wouldn't let himself be because he knew she was in love with lancelot. and then gwen, being all disappointed when arthur wouldn't just let go with her, and all torn up because of her feelings for him and lance and *__________________* lance was the worst actor of the lot, and had, like, zero chemistry with gwen, and the ending was atrocious, but whatever--it was an arthur/gwen love story as far as i was concerned and i couldn't have loved it more. it's replaced les mis as the show with my second favourite musical numbers all round.
the next day was a food fest! it was a half day for my sister at work, so we went to city hall to try out the bacon bacon food truck. oh my gosh. oh my gosh. just thinking about it is making me want to curl up into a ball and sob in delight. i had the belly, which was full of ridiculously lush, fatty pork belly, and a runny yolk. oh my god i need another one in my life so badly. i had it again less than a week later, BUT I STILL NEED ANOTHER ONE. HELP.
after the meal i followed my sister to her ballroom lesson, and it was fine. her coach was lovely (and hot) and asked which of us was older. (i've been getting that a lot. it must be the new hairdo. which is awesome, because clearly, yeah, what i need is to look even more childlike than i already did, yay!) dinner was fine, too; we went to a mala place that my sister insisted was amazing - and it wasn't bad, but being out of asia for so long has definitely dulled her asian taste buds, i think, and then i got dragged along to meet a bunch of her other friends, but i was so exhausted by then that i really just wanted to go home and get some sleep. group socialising really isn't my strong suit, anyway.
thankfully, that was the last bit of socialising i had to do. we spent the next day at the movies, watching despicable me 2 - okay! - red 2 - less okay! - and girl most likely -- OH MY GOD MY FEELINGS ABOUT THIS MOVIE COULD FILL A BOOK. it was so much better than i thought it was going to be, for starters (although okay, i'm not goign to pretend that was a high bar or anything), and fucking darren asdiojslkgndhoigjf OH MY GOD JUST - HOW IS ONE HUMAN BEING SO HOT AND PRECIOUS AND ADORABLE ALL AT THE SAME TIME. THERE WAS SHIRTLESS DARREN AND GUYLINER DARREN AND SLEEPY DARREN AND ADORABLE PUPPY DARREN AND I WENT TO YALE DARREN AND I JUST SPENT THE WHOLE TIME WITH MY HANDS PRESSED TO MY MOUTH LIKE FUCK OFF DUDE AND THEN HE WAS SASSY DARREN AND PRETEND DATE DARREN AND DARREN BEING AN ASSHOLE IN FRENCH (FOR A GOOD CAUSE) AND THEN THEY SAID KNN OUT LOUD WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS FILM. HOKKIEN SPOKEN ON AN INTERNATIONAL PLATFORM I LEGITIMATELY NEVER THOUGHT I'D SEE THE DAY.
so. yeah. um. anyway. my parents flew in to san francisco the next day, yay! my sister and i enjoyed a lovely little breakfast together - last meal just the two of us! - before going to pick them up something for lunch. i was beyond thrilled to see them and to finally not be alone with my sister and her pda-monster of a boyfriend (but this is a happy post so we're not talking about that particular nightmare). we had to leave them to settle themselves in at the apartment not long after, though, because we'd gotten tickets to see chance at a little theatre nearby. the signing was magical, as they were at all the other little performances we went to see, but everything else was a big hot mess. the acting was strange, and the direction stranger still. i hope they tweak it a little, because it could be so powerful if it wasn't trying so hard to be deep and meaningful at the same time.
ANYWAY. i went to the zoo the next day, HUZZAH. i felt bad about doing it since i'd planned to cover the zoo on saturday so i'd have more time to spend with my parents, but they were off to look at furniture anyway, so i didn't feel too guilty. the san francisco zoo isn't particularly amazing, or big, or have the biggest variety of animals, but it's a really nice zoo to walk around, not too expensive, and the animals are active enough that i had a good time despite being there on my own!
some days i genuinely feel that there is very, very little in this world that would make me happier than scooping animal manure out of enclosures in the zoo and getting to cuddle the big animals every day. but those days rarely last. i like my air conditioning too much.
anyway. the day after that, i was supposed to go and get the rest of my tattoo finished! yay! or not, since it was probably one of the most painful experiences of my life. i was so happy to have it over and done with though, hiding it from my parents (after tynislove spilled that i had a "secret" meant a lot of lying and evading and i really did not have fun doing that). but anyway in the morning i took my parents to a strip club - ha ha ha, yes - that was supposed to have a fantastic buffet spread for $5. i realize how stupid this sounds written down but YELP IS USUALLY PRETTY TRUSTWORTHY, OKAY. not this day, though. not this day. it was dark and hard to see and the food was pretty awful (but it did only cost $5) and my dad seemed a little too interested in some of the girls working the pole. but we left soon enough (and the bouncer at the door was all, "the family that plays together stays together!!") and because the food had been so unsatisfying, i took my parents to the senor sisig truck nearby.
UGH THAT TRUCK IS THE MOST DELICIOUS THING I SWEAR. i could eat it all day every day, right up until someone brings the real thing into town. nothing beats actual sisig done right let's be honest. i took the leftovers to my sister at her workplace, and after she sat with me for a bit, i passed the rest of my time till my appointment watching the trishaw riders at pier 1 not find anyone to ride their trishaws. then i trotted off to the parlour, where i was told my artist was running late with another client and would be at least another hour.
he was, and my phone was dying, so that didn't make for the most interesting wait, but i got through it, and then--well. i don't know what possessed me to do a tattoo around my thigh, but those two and a half hours in the tattoo chair were the most awkward of my life. i was touched in places i'd never been touched before (although chris was wonderfully professional about the whole thing, and his hands were amazingly warm, js). i basically had one foot on the floor for support and the other spread wide, propped up on the couch so chris could get nice and comfortable between them. if it was weird enough when we were facing each other, it got worse when i had to lie on my stomach, still pretty much with my legs spread one on the couch and one on the floor, and chris in between them. if i could got a dollar every time the other artists and clients alike walked past us all, "man, that looks comfortable!" i would have enough change to pay off maybe half my tattoo bill. fun times.
on top of that, there was the pain. i've never thought of myself as having a particularly high pain threshold before, but i've definitely always been on the stoic side, and it was SO HARD NOT TO CRY/SCREAM/THROW A PUNCH THAT DAY. i got a ridic amount of kudos from my artist and the other artists, though, for keeping still the entire time, and after chris shared a story about his girlfriend (aka my first choice tattoo artist) sobbing as he gave her a tattoo on the back of her thigh, i felt pretty badass, ngl. also pretty stupid, because who subjects themselves to this voluntarily? and why would you do it more than once? but it's over now, and that's the last time i'm going near a needle for anything other than vaccines (probably).
and also it's turned out swell, so yay!
i think chris and i were both genuinely stoked about how the design turned out - especially with the infinity anchor, which could have turned out so cliched and just... didn't - and i have never felt like my skin was in safer hands.
so right after that i hobbled over to where my family was having dinner - 20 minutes away, i am a trooper, just saying - and sprung the tattoo on my parents while i gulped down my main course. my dad said, "oh my god," and my mom launched immediately into a line of hysterical questioning about the safety/legitimacy of the parlour/needles, but they calmed down pretty quickly. par for the course, then!
it was all pretty much forgotten by the next day, though, when i opted to stay in to a) rest my aching thigh and b) get more studying finished, while my parents went to check out even more home furnishings.
thursday i decided i had to take my parents with me while i relived the awesome that is a meal at bacon bacon, so that's just what we did. seriously, how do you look at that menu and not start desperately craving every single item on it? i don't know, because we demolished our meal in record time.
also i guess because we were at their sit down location at brick & mortar music lounge, wwe got to meet jim, the owner, who sat down with us for a bit and had a lovely little chat with us. he's just awesome, as were the rest of the wait staff, and i wasn't even surprised because someone who comes up with the concept of bacon in EVERYTHING cannot be anything less than a stellar human being, i mean, come on.
as if that wasn't excitement enough, my sister and i had tickets to see justin timberlake and jay-z on their legends of the summer tour the next night, whoop! my parents went for a quick day-trip to portland, so we didn't feel too badly about leaving them behind. it took ages to get there, but it was all worth it when we saw what amazing seats we had. unfortunately, they were only amazing for as long as the concert didn't start; there really aren't "good seats" in baseball arenas except, i don't know, the mosh pit right in front of the stage.
but anyway, the concert was a BLAST. i didn't know at least 45% of the songs, because this was a serious collaboration and i know pretty much none of jay-z's repertoire but OH MY GODDDDD, JUSTIN. he blew my mind. i expected a good performance and okay vocals and instead i got an amazing show and better than okay vocals! score! the staging was crazy, just choreographed bright lights and colour and energy and asodjsoigjdg i swear it felt like justin played every instrument on that stage at some point. what is he even. and the arrangements. what the fuck. i wasn't always pleased with his song choices but goddamn, every time he does something live i feel like i haven't heard it before and it's fucking AMAZING. how do you even do that. all my feels, i can't even fucking deal.
unfortunately, i didn't get most of it because our view of the stage was legitimately terrible and i was too busy bopping around and screaming whenever he came on (and then sitting down and watching my sister play candy crush whenever jay-z came on, no lie) but i did get the little segment of him doing new york, new york, and a little bit of forever young at the end. holy shit, that audience. how fucking batshit. if only every concert was that electrifying.
i wish i could say our post concert experience was just as amazing but the truth is the layout of the arena is so ridiculous that we were stuck on the shuttle bus just trying to get out of there for, like, an hour, and then when we did finally manage to make it onto the muni, it was so packed that the doors closed on my sister before she managed to get out at the station that i got out at, AWESOME. it was 12.30 in the morning in a fairly sketch neighbourhood, so suffice to say i wasn't happy about that. thankfully, my sister managed to make her way back to me and then her boyfriend came to pick us up, so all in all, i'd say it worked out okay.
we had a nice, chill day planned for saturday, and did a little bit of shopping before we went to see 50 shades the musical. DON'T JUDGE ME IT WAS A PARODY AND IT WAS HILARIOUS. we couldn't leave without buying a copy of the cast recording *_________* we had an amazing, even our parents had a laugh. amazingness.
more shopping was to be had after the show - at least for me and my sister, because our paernts were too wiped to join us, and i wound up getting, oh, a trillion pairs of new shoes. okay, it was three pairs, but that might as well have been a trillion for all the shoes i already have. they were so adorable though, and my willpower just isn't that strong D:
also this dress was too adorable to not buy, i mean seriously. SERIOUSLY.
so we were in pretty high spirits when we headed to dinner that night at a nearby (highly-rated) restaurant called roka arok. the food was fine, not great, and the service was even worse; we were served a dish incorrectly at one point and no one bothered to apologise or try to rectify it or anything - but we were determined to overlook it and enjoy ourselves anyway. especially when the manager came out afterwards and really, really sincerely tried to make it up to us (via discount) when we told him about the crappy service. even better, right?
NOT RIGHT.
the waiter who'd been serving us all night - who, okay, to be honest, was the only person aside from the hostess who'd been a total a-hole that night - approached my sister as we were leaving and threw a $20 bill at her. he was all, "if you didn't like my service i don't want your tip!" which, what the fuck, dude? YOU COULD TRY APOLOGISING FOR BEING RUDE AND IMPATIENT AND FUCKING UP ORDERS ALL NGIHT INSTEAD OF ATTACKING A TINY LITTLE ASIAN GIRL!? i mean, my dad was right there, if he'd genuinely been that upset he should've picked on somebody his own size at least. better yet, he shouldn't be in the service line at all, fuck's sake. i was out the door by the time this happened, or i would have shoved a plate in his face. how is that anywhere approximating acceptable behaviour?!
i don't think any of us were sad to be leaving the next day. to be leaving my sister, maybe, but san francisco's charm has worn off a little bit for me. we had a lovely dimsum brunch, and then spent the day packing up before having an early dinner at a nearby vietnamese restaurant. i'm going to miss my apartment, but i can't pretend boarding the plane to the sight of this was unwelcome:
all i can say is i've never slept so soundly on a flight in my life. (except that one time i was flying from montreal to new york to catch my connection to london. but i hadn't slept the entire night prior to that, so i don't know if that counts.)
OH and i watched iron man 3 onboard. and it didn't suck! colour me surprised.
let's just say if i never have to watch another couple make out on my fucking bed ever again for as long as i live, IT WILL STILL BE TOO SOON.
anyway. we went to check out the california academy of science one evening, during their nightlife events, and oh my god, i was bored to tears. it didn't help that my sister decided for the last two hours of the night that she was going to sit at a table making the most horrifically ugly felt machine i have ever seen in my life. and since she didn't have the courtesy to tell me she was going to take 2 hours to do it, i basically sat there and didn't do anything the entire time. felt machines are really not my thing. so, whatever, that night was a bust.
the night was such a bust, in fact, that i enjoyed the rest of my week doing exactly nothing much more than i enjoyed that night. i literally stayed in my apartment all day except for the occasional venture out for lunch with my sister, and the even more occasional venture out for dinner after dark. i believe i survived of three avocados, a box of ham, a loaf of bread, and a box of cherry tomatoes that week alone. it sounds depressing put down on my paper but i honestly didn't mind it that much.
i wasn't complaining when we started making plans for the next week, though. first up was burlesque night on wednesday! we got delightfully cheap tickets ($10 for vip treatment, which included getting to lounge on a bed, a flute of champagne, and a ginormous chocolate-covered strawberry, mmm) and headed down to supper club for the evening. the show was pretty hilarious, the dancing was just okay, the stripping awked me out - i am such a traditional asian girl at heart, i can't even - and the food was pretty delish, but the highlight of my night was definitely the waiter in the high heels hanging upside down from the roof for our entertainment, the dancing boys with the little tassles pasted on his butt, and the ridiculously hot bartender. i tweeted that night that i wish i'd left her my number and i still do, negl.
by far, though, my favourite moment of the night was one of the waiters taking my sister's drink order and giving me a conspiratorial, "she's a keeper!" i didn't have the heart to tell him no, i really know better than that, but still. a+ entertainment for cheap. there are more pictures of the awesomeness that went on that night here. the photographer was awful, and plenty of boobs are involved, so don't say i didn't warn you!
much better, and only slightly more expensive, entertainment came the next night, when my sister took me to see camelot at the sf playhouse. oh my gosh, i don't know what i was expecting, but it definitely wasn't the level of amazing we got! the singing was impeccable, the set was quite lovely, the songs were gorgeous, and the acting - at least on arthur's part - was wonderful. i got teary-eyed every time he sang to guinevere and it was written all over his face how much he wanted to be closer and how much he wouldn't let himself be because he knew she was in love with lancelot. and then gwen, being all disappointed when arthur wouldn't just let go with her, and all torn up because of her feelings for him and lance and *__________________* lance was the worst actor of the lot, and had, like, zero chemistry with gwen, and the ending was atrocious, but whatever--it was an arthur/gwen love story as far as i was concerned and i couldn't have loved it more. it's replaced les mis as the show with my second favourite musical numbers all round.
the next day was a food fest! it was a half day for my sister at work, so we went to city hall to try out the bacon bacon food truck. oh my gosh. oh my gosh. just thinking about it is making me want to curl up into a ball and sob in delight. i had the belly, which was full of ridiculously lush, fatty pork belly, and a runny yolk. oh my god i need another one in my life so badly. i had it again less than a week later, BUT I STILL NEED ANOTHER ONE. HELP.
after the meal i followed my sister to her ballroom lesson, and it was fine. her coach was lovely (and hot) and asked which of us was older. (i've been getting that a lot. it must be the new hairdo. which is awesome, because clearly, yeah, what i need is to look even more childlike than i already did, yay!) dinner was fine, too; we went to a mala place that my sister insisted was amazing - and it wasn't bad, but being out of asia for so long has definitely dulled her asian taste buds, i think, and then i got dragged along to meet a bunch of her other friends, but i was so exhausted by then that i really just wanted to go home and get some sleep. group socialising really isn't my strong suit, anyway.
thankfully, that was the last bit of socialising i had to do. we spent the next day at the movies, watching despicable me 2 - okay! - red 2 - less okay! - and girl most likely -- OH MY GOD MY FEELINGS ABOUT THIS MOVIE COULD FILL A BOOK. it was so much better than i thought it was going to be, for starters (although okay, i'm not goign to pretend that was a high bar or anything), and fucking darren asdiojslkgndhoigjf OH MY GOD JUST - HOW IS ONE HUMAN BEING SO HOT AND PRECIOUS AND ADORABLE ALL AT THE SAME TIME. THERE WAS SHIRTLESS DARREN AND GUYLINER DARREN AND SLEEPY DARREN AND ADORABLE PUPPY DARREN AND I WENT TO YALE DARREN AND I JUST SPENT THE WHOLE TIME WITH MY HANDS PRESSED TO MY MOUTH LIKE FUCK OFF DUDE AND THEN HE WAS SASSY DARREN AND PRETEND DATE DARREN AND DARREN BEING AN ASSHOLE IN FRENCH (FOR A GOOD CAUSE) AND THEN THEY SAID KNN OUT LOUD WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS FILM. HOKKIEN SPOKEN ON AN INTERNATIONAL PLATFORM I LEGITIMATELY NEVER THOUGHT I'D SEE THE DAY.
so. yeah. um. anyway. my parents flew in to san francisco the next day, yay! my sister and i enjoyed a lovely little breakfast together - last meal just the two of us! - before going to pick them up something for lunch. i was beyond thrilled to see them and to finally not be alone with my sister and her pda-monster of a boyfriend (but this is a happy post so we're not talking about that particular nightmare). we had to leave them to settle themselves in at the apartment not long after, though, because we'd gotten tickets to see chance at a little theatre nearby. the signing was magical, as they were at all the other little performances we went to see, but everything else was a big hot mess. the acting was strange, and the direction stranger still. i hope they tweak it a little, because it could be so powerful if it wasn't trying so hard to be deep and meaningful at the same time.
ANYWAY. i went to the zoo the next day, HUZZAH. i felt bad about doing it since i'd planned to cover the zoo on saturday so i'd have more time to spend with my parents, but they were off to look at furniture anyway, so i didn't feel too guilty. the san francisco zoo isn't particularly amazing, or big, or have the biggest variety of animals, but it's a really nice zoo to walk around, not too expensive, and the animals are active enough that i had a good time despite being there on my own!
some days i genuinely feel that there is very, very little in this world that would make me happier than scooping animal manure out of enclosures in the zoo and getting to cuddle the big animals every day. but those days rarely last. i like my air conditioning too much.
anyway. the day after that, i was supposed to go and get the rest of my tattoo finished! yay! or not, since it was probably one of the most painful experiences of my life. i was so happy to have it over and done with though, hiding it from my parents (after tynislove spilled that i had a "secret" meant a lot of lying and evading and i really did not have fun doing that). but anyway in the morning i took my parents to a strip club - ha ha ha, yes - that was supposed to have a fantastic buffet spread for $5. i realize how stupid this sounds written down but YELP IS USUALLY PRETTY TRUSTWORTHY, OKAY. not this day, though. not this day. it was dark and hard to see and the food was pretty awful (but it did only cost $5) and my dad seemed a little too interested in some of the girls working the pole. but we left soon enough (and the bouncer at the door was all, "the family that plays together stays together!!") and because the food had been so unsatisfying, i took my parents to the senor sisig truck nearby.
UGH THAT TRUCK IS THE MOST DELICIOUS THING I SWEAR. i could eat it all day every day, right up until someone brings the real thing into town. nothing beats actual sisig done right let's be honest. i took the leftovers to my sister at her workplace, and after she sat with me for a bit, i passed the rest of my time till my appointment watching the trishaw riders at pier 1 not find anyone to ride their trishaws. then i trotted off to the parlour, where i was told my artist was running late with another client and would be at least another hour.
he was, and my phone was dying, so that didn't make for the most interesting wait, but i got through it, and then--well. i don't know what possessed me to do a tattoo around my thigh, but those two and a half hours in the tattoo chair were the most awkward of my life. i was touched in places i'd never been touched before (although chris was wonderfully professional about the whole thing, and his hands were amazingly warm, js). i basically had one foot on the floor for support and the other spread wide, propped up on the couch so chris could get nice and comfortable between them. if it was weird enough when we were facing each other, it got worse when i had to lie on my stomach, still pretty much with my legs spread one on the couch and one on the floor, and chris in between them. if i could got a dollar every time the other artists and clients alike walked past us all, "man, that looks comfortable!" i would have enough change to pay off maybe half my tattoo bill. fun times.
on top of that, there was the pain. i've never thought of myself as having a particularly high pain threshold before, but i've definitely always been on the stoic side, and it was SO HARD NOT TO CRY/SCREAM/THROW A PUNCH THAT DAY. i got a ridic amount of kudos from my artist and the other artists, though, for keeping still the entire time, and after chris shared a story about his girlfriend (aka my first choice tattoo artist) sobbing as he gave her a tattoo on the back of her thigh, i felt pretty badass, ngl. also pretty stupid, because who subjects themselves to this voluntarily? and why would you do it more than once? but it's over now, and that's the last time i'm going near a needle for anything other than vaccines (probably).
and also it's turned out swell, so yay!
i think chris and i were both genuinely stoked about how the design turned out - especially with the infinity anchor, which could have turned out so cliched and just... didn't - and i have never felt like my skin was in safer hands.
so right after that i hobbled over to where my family was having dinner - 20 minutes away, i am a trooper, just saying - and sprung the tattoo on my parents while i gulped down my main course. my dad said, "oh my god," and my mom launched immediately into a line of hysterical questioning about the safety/legitimacy of the parlour/needles, but they calmed down pretty quickly. par for the course, then!
it was all pretty much forgotten by the next day, though, when i opted to stay in to a) rest my aching thigh and b) get more studying finished, while my parents went to check out even more home furnishings.
thursday i decided i had to take my parents with me while i relived the awesome that is a meal at bacon bacon, so that's just what we did. seriously, how do you look at that menu and not start desperately craving every single item on it? i don't know, because we demolished our meal in record time.
also i guess because we were at their sit down location at brick & mortar music lounge, wwe got to meet jim, the owner, who sat down with us for a bit and had a lovely little chat with us. he's just awesome, as were the rest of the wait staff, and i wasn't even surprised because someone who comes up with the concept of bacon in EVERYTHING cannot be anything less than a stellar human being, i mean, come on.
as if that wasn't excitement enough, my sister and i had tickets to see justin timberlake and jay-z on their legends of the summer tour the next night, whoop! my parents went for a quick day-trip to portland, so we didn't feel too badly about leaving them behind. it took ages to get there, but it was all worth it when we saw what amazing seats we had. unfortunately, they were only amazing for as long as the concert didn't start; there really aren't "good seats" in baseball arenas except, i don't know, the mosh pit right in front of the stage.
but anyway, the concert was a BLAST. i didn't know at least 45% of the songs, because this was a serious collaboration and i know pretty much none of jay-z's repertoire but OH MY GODDDDD, JUSTIN. he blew my mind. i expected a good performance and okay vocals and instead i got an amazing show and better than okay vocals! score! the staging was crazy, just choreographed bright lights and colour and energy and asodjsoigjdg i swear it felt like justin played every instrument on that stage at some point. what is he even. and the arrangements. what the fuck. i wasn't always pleased with his song choices but goddamn, every time he does something live i feel like i haven't heard it before and it's fucking AMAZING. how do you even do that. all my feels, i can't even fucking deal.
unfortunately, i didn't get most of it because our view of the stage was legitimately terrible and i was too busy bopping around and screaming whenever he came on (and then sitting down and watching my sister play candy crush whenever jay-z came on, no lie) but i did get the little segment of him doing new york, new york, and a little bit of forever young at the end. holy shit, that audience. how fucking batshit. if only every concert was that electrifying.
Click to viewi wish i could say our post concert experience was just as amazing but the truth is the layout of the arena is so ridiculous that we were stuck on the shuttle bus just trying to get out of there for, like, an hour, and then when we did finally manage to make it onto the muni, it was so packed that the doors closed on my sister before she managed to get out at the station that i got out at, AWESOME. it was 12.30 in the morning in a fairly sketch neighbourhood, so suffice to say i wasn't happy about that. thankfully, my sister managed to make her way back to me and then her boyfriend came to pick us up, so all in all, i'd say it worked out okay.
we had a nice, chill day planned for saturday, and did a little bit of shopping before we went to see 50 shades the musical. DON'T JUDGE ME IT WAS A PARODY AND IT WAS HILARIOUS. we couldn't leave without buying a copy of the cast recording *_________* we had an amazing, even our parents had a laugh. amazingness.
more shopping was to be had after the show - at least for me and my sister, because our paernts were too wiped to join us, and i wound up getting, oh, a trillion pairs of new shoes. okay, it was three pairs, but that might as well have been a trillion for all the shoes i already have. they were so adorable though, and my willpower just isn't that strong D:
also this dress was too adorable to not buy, i mean seriously. SERIOUSLY.
so we were in pretty high spirits when we headed to dinner that night at a nearby (highly-rated) restaurant called roka arok. the food was fine, not great, and the service was even worse; we were served a dish incorrectly at one point and no one bothered to apologise or try to rectify it or anything - but we were determined to overlook it and enjoy ourselves anyway. especially when the manager came out afterwards and really, really sincerely tried to make it up to us (via discount) when we told him about the crappy service. even better, right?
NOT RIGHT.
the waiter who'd been serving us all night - who, okay, to be honest, was the only person aside from the hostess who'd been a total a-hole that night - approached my sister as we were leaving and threw a $20 bill at her. he was all, "if you didn't like my service i don't want your tip!" which, what the fuck, dude? YOU COULD TRY APOLOGISING FOR BEING RUDE AND IMPATIENT AND FUCKING UP ORDERS ALL NGIHT INSTEAD OF ATTACKING A TINY LITTLE ASIAN GIRL!? i mean, my dad was right there, if he'd genuinely been that upset he should've picked on somebody his own size at least. better yet, he shouldn't be in the service line at all, fuck's sake. i was out the door by the time this happened, or i would have shoved a plate in his face. how is that anywhere approximating acceptable behaviour?!
i don't think any of us were sad to be leaving the next day. to be leaving my sister, maybe, but san francisco's charm has worn off a little bit for me. we had a lovely dimsum brunch, and then spent the day packing up before having an early dinner at a nearby vietnamese restaurant. i'm going to miss my apartment, but i can't pretend boarding the plane to the sight of this was unwelcome:
all i can say is i've never slept so soundly on a flight in my life. (except that one time i was flying from montreal to new york to catch my connection to london. but i hadn't slept the entire night prior to that, so i don't know if that counts.)
OH and i watched iron man 3 onboard. and it didn't suck! colour me surprised.