I'm Back Like Backstreet!
So the new apt is still full of boxes lol.
I went to Lucky last night for cigarettes and the cheapest bread I could find and saw mostly new faces for the baggers (what I did there for a year and ten months), but a few who were there before me were still there. Whenever I came across someone I knew, I'd say "hey" or something to get their attention, then do the Dora stare until it clicked in who I was. After the initial few seconds to make the connection, I ended up holding up everyone for a few mins apiece. They were all excited to see me. Once you work together for five days a week for almost two years and then you move to another city and disappear for three...
Had the local friend I usually hang out with over here yesterday. It took all our money to move and then the movers tried to rip us off (it may have been an honest mistake; one spoke only Mandarin and the other spoke too little anything I know for me to really communicate that much to him and the company that contracted out to them, everyone we spoke to there seemed to be English only) so we've been living off pocket change. When I was texting her directions, I told her we might not have enough to eat. A fairweather friend offers to not visit and be a financial burden. A true friend comes anyway and orders pizza.
As for my run, I forgot to take into an account how not flat Oakland is. It's nothin compared to SF, but Berkeley is super flat except for one part, and I'd been running along San Pablo, which is generally flat and completely throughout Bkly.
On my new course there are three uphills. Small inclines, but even a small one... So I run down Int'l and around the lake to 14th St and back. This is still 2 miles, but with the sudden addition of uphills, I couldn't keep the extra .6. I tried on Mon. and didn't make it. Not yet.
Lake Merritt is always at any time of day and in the evening, too--as long as there's light outside, runners circle its continuous path...and they're all faster than me...I am so slow...
All in all, though, I am just so fuckin happy to be back in Oakland. Berkeley is pretentious, full of hipsters, rich students sent by kyouiku mamas, homeowners who are children of homeowners, charity-for-show churchwomen, people who think weed is harmless,etc. It's a pretentious town full of people who characterise the Real World as where only junkies and criminals live. Most ppl there think the entirety of OAK is like Inner West Oakland. It isn't. This is mostly an immigrant neighbourhood full of people who are honest and hard working; who don't shove anything down your throat, but would love you to shop in their store. Practical and economical people who could care less if you smoke whether they do or not. The exact antithesis of ppl like my room-mate who bought brand name diamond stickers from some Polish sounding jeweller to adhere to one of her fifty pairs of sneakers. People who'd WTF at it like I did. In short, people that I can easily understand, even if I don't speak Cantonese.
It's good to be back.
I went to Lucky last night for cigarettes and the cheapest bread I could find and saw mostly new faces for the baggers (what I did there for a year and ten months), but a few who were there before me were still there. Whenever I came across someone I knew, I'd say "hey" or something to get their attention, then do the Dora stare until it clicked in who I was. After the initial few seconds to make the connection, I ended up holding up everyone for a few mins apiece. They were all excited to see me. Once you work together for five days a week for almost two years and then you move to another city and disappear for three...
Had the local friend I usually hang out with over here yesterday. It took all our money to move and then the movers tried to rip us off (it may have been an honest mistake; one spoke only Mandarin and the other spoke too little anything I know for me to really communicate that much to him and the company that contracted out to them, everyone we spoke to there seemed to be English only) so we've been living off pocket change. When I was texting her directions, I told her we might not have enough to eat. A fairweather friend offers to not visit and be a financial burden. A true friend comes anyway and orders pizza.
As for my run, I forgot to take into an account how not flat Oakland is. It's nothin compared to SF, but Berkeley is super flat except for one part, and I'd been running along San Pablo, which is generally flat and completely throughout Bkly.
On my new course there are three uphills. Small inclines, but even a small one... So I run down Int'l and around the lake to 14th St and back. This is still 2 miles, but with the sudden addition of uphills, I couldn't keep the extra .6. I tried on Mon. and didn't make it. Not yet.
Lake Merritt is always at any time of day and in the evening, too--as long as there's light outside, runners circle its continuous path...and they're all faster than me...I am so slow...
All in all, though, I am just so fuckin happy to be back in Oakland. Berkeley is pretentious, full of hipsters, rich students sent by kyouiku mamas, homeowners who are children of homeowners, charity-for-show churchwomen, people who think weed is harmless,etc. It's a pretentious town full of people who characterise the Real World as where only junkies and criminals live. Most ppl there think the entirety of OAK is like Inner West Oakland. It isn't. This is mostly an immigrant neighbourhood full of people who are honest and hard working; who don't shove anything down your throat, but would love you to shop in their store. Practical and economical people who could care less if you smoke whether they do or not. The exact antithesis of ppl like my room-mate who bought brand name diamond stickers from some Polish sounding jeweller to adhere to one of her fifty pairs of sneakers. People who'd WTF at it like I did. In short, people that I can easily understand, even if I don't speak Cantonese.
It's good to be back.