Year: 2004

dont ever rent from uhaul

for the last month, i’ve been slowly but surely getting ready to move out of my place. moving is always hectic and a major pain, so this time, i decided to get all of my stuff done way in advance so that the final day of the move would be a breeze. unfortunately, it didn’t end up like that. the whole day ended up being a total nightmare because:

uhaul never called us on saturday to notify us when our pick-up time would be. when we called them to find out, it turns out we can only find out from the SF regional office which is closed. we have to call the next day, set up a pickup time, and then drive to uhaul… to find a line w/ 50 people in it. the line takes 2 hours. after waiting in line, we get sent to the outside where someone is supposed to hook up the trailer we are renting to our truck. no one is there. we can’t find anyone to help us for the next half hour.

eventually, when someone does help us, we are told our truck doesnt have the right connectors for the blinkers and we have to go buy one… but no one assists us to tell us which connectors we might need. then, it turns out that only one employee in the whole place knows how to install said connector… but he is nowhere to be found. when we find him, he keeps avoiding us and walking away for another half hour. finally he says he can install it… for an extra 20$. ugh. we end up installing it ourselves, but now there is once again no one around to connect the trailer to our truck and we have to waste more time finding someone.

total time spent at uhaul: 3.5 hours.

after getting lost on the way home and stuck in traffic, i get home, we load the truck/trailer as fast as possible, and speed off to the storage place in Fremont. after a few minutes, caryn’s car starts dying. she has to pull over part way to Fremont at li’s house and ask for a ride. when we get to Fremont, it turns out the lady incorrectly wrote down when we needed to access our unit, and the box is buried somewhere in the warehouse with no access to it. after begging, the employee reluctantly gets our unit. we spend another couple hours trying to figure out how the heck to fit everything into the unit.

after that we dropped the trailer off at uhaul after hours (which you arent allowed to do since it might get stolen). this is now 5 hours from when we left the uhaul place. we still have no car since i just sold mine and caryn’s is broken so we have to get a rental.

finally, at 9pm… 12 hours after starting moving, we were done.. although there are still some odds and ends we want to pick up from SF. *sigh*. whatever you do, dont ever rent from uhaul!!

on a brighter note though, it’s now only 14 days till i take off on my trip!! tomorrow is my last day of work, plus, i get to go to burning man the day after tomorrow!!

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my poor car

i sold my car today. this is the first car that i’ve actually bought myself and i’ve had it for 5 years. it’s so sad to see it go. i definitely can use the extra $$ for my trip, but selling my car almost feel like betraying an old friend or putting your pet to sleep. not only that, but the car is only 5 years old and yet i only got about 1/4 the price of what i paid for it. i was hoping to keep the car at least until after burning man next week, but now it’s gone and i have nothing to get me to work or anywhere else. *sigh*

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bugs

i *hate* insects. they’re so damn freaky. i really wonder what kind of disguisting horrible things i’ll encounter while abroad. when i went to the dentist the other day, my dentist said that for everyone she knows who went to africa, the first thing they would tell her about their trip was how insanely huge all the bugs were. nice.

the reason i just thought of all this is cause randall found this photo in my thailand pics of a nasty spider that was in my bungalow. ugh. i also remember being kept up for hours one night listening to the ominous crunching sounds of a huge cockroach in my room. add to that mosquitos, sand flies, and weird grasshoppers. and still it’s all probably fairly benign compared to what i’ll see in africa..

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trolley

erica suggested that i rent a party trolley for my birthday this year, and that ended up being one of the funnest things yu could possibly do on your birthday. basically, it’s this huge san francisco cable car on wheels, and you can have it drive you anywhere you want to go in Sf while you get your drink on. you can have up to 35 people on that thing!! let me tell ya, driving all around the city in basically what amounts to a mobile party on wheels is such a blast!! seriously, it’s amazing that this kind of thing can be legal!

we first drove to twin peaks and checked out an awesome view of the city and we ended up blowing up a large firework up there. luckily the cops didnt bust us and the other tourists up there were startled, but not pissed off. after that we drove to the mission and went to Kilowatt. by this point pretty much everyone on board was super drunk. the last stop on our ride was this small bar in north beach, where we accidenatlly ended up leaving poor erica behind. oops!! i guess she ended up getting a drinking in public ticket too! a cop asked her what was in her cup, and she, to be sneaky, spilled it out on the ground and said “water”. unfortunately the cop didnt fall for it. doh!

all in all the night was a ridiculous amount of fun.

here are some photos of the party trolley night

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another birthday down

last friday i turned 28. surprisingly, this year i really couldn’t care less about my bday. back when i was younger, i looked forward to my birthdays like crazy, then as i got older, i kinda started dreading them… but this year, i just didn’t really care one way or the other. birthdays are just weird. you’re taught from a very young age that your birthday is your own little special day and that it’s so important and a huge deal, but as the birthdays lose their significance. sometimes you dont really do anything to celebrate, while other times you try to go all out, but you can never recapture that incredible feeling you had when you were little and your birthday came. i did want to do at least something though, so this year Elena and i decided to have a trolley party for our bdays. i’ll post about that in a separate entry though…

anyways, my birthday started off pretty mellow, just hung around the house and packed. eventually, caryn came home and we went to lunch at Ebisu. i wanted to try something new since it was my birthday so i tried the amaebi. it’s raw shrimp, and they server the shrimp heads deep fried on the side. honestly, i can’t really say that i liked them all that much… they were ok, but kinda weird. i think w/ the heads you’re supposed to eat the whole thing including the little eyeballs, but i just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

after stopping by the health dept to get more vaccines for our trip (fun!), we drove down to mountain view to have thai food w/ my family. my family isn’t very adventurous w/ food, yet they agreed to go to thai food because i wanted to. they also drove to Max’s to buy me a low-carb cheesecake because that’s the only desert i could have. it never ceases to amaze me how my family is totally willing to go so out of it’s way to make me happy all the time. it really means a lot to me how they try so hard. my mom is so distressed about the fact that i’m leaving and it really sucks to make her so upset, but i think she understands that going on my trip is something i really really want to do.

one of the highlights of my bday was on the next day actually. caryn got us a reservation at this high-end Vietnamese place called the Slanted Door. i’ve wanted to go there forever, but you can’t go unless you make reservations some time in advance. after eating there, i can totally see why that places has such a good reputation. the food was sooooo good. every little thing we ordered was incredibly delicious and the presentation was really cool too. i was so glad to finally go there!!

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bittersweet

moving is always bittersweet. on one hand there’s always the anticipation of something new and exciting, but on the flip side, there’s the sadness of leaving something that’s been a large part of your life. today i started packing stuff away so that i can put it into storage. it really sucked. i’m trying to throw stuff away as much as possible since i’m such a packrat and i acquire so much junk… but it’s super hard for me to part with pretty much anything. *everything* has some kind of sentimental value to it. each thing i throw away pains me a lot. but i gotta do it.

it’s a really odd thing to think that all the stuff that i do pack, i wont see again for a whole year. usually when you move, you put everything in boxes, and then take it out the following week at the new place, but most of my stuff is going into storage. i keep trying to imagine what it’s gonna feel like a year from now opening up these boxes again and peering inside at the life that i left behind for so long. how am i gonna view all my possessions after spending a whole year w/ just a backpack to my name?

but it’s not just throwing away my possessions that makes me bummed. there’s so much more that i’m leaving behind than that. i’ve lived here for about 2.5 years, and i’m really gonna miss this place. i totally love this house, and i love SF. plus, i’m really gonna miss my roommates. i’ve been living w/ erica for about 5 years. that’s *such* a long time. it’s gonna be so bizarre not to live w/ her anymore. i’m really gonna miss being able to see her all the time.

it’s weird… everyone always says how every cloud has a silver lining… but the same usually applies in reverse. most good things have a dark lining. for every good thing you get, you usually have to give something up.. whether it be money, time, or whatnot. this rtw trip is definitely gonna be an incredible once in a life time experience, but at the same time, it’s rough that i’m gonna leave pretty much everything and everyone that i hold near and dear behind…

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weekend

the weekend was pretty fun.

had bomb thai food on friday night w/ caryn and tash. after that we saw Bourne Supremacy which was really good. i had seen the first one the night before and liked it, but this one was even better.

saturday caryn and i drove up to sac to hang out w/ jamie. that was really really cool. haven’t seen her in ages, plus brian and kare were there and i haven’t seen them in ages either. we all spent the whole day drinking drink after drink and hanging out. i miss hanging out w/ those peeps. back in the day we’d kick it almost every single week….

sunday caryn and i went to go see a play called “i love you, you’re perfect, now change” with her mom and sister. the play was really cool and super funny. although, seeing as we were there w/ caryn’s mom and sister, i felt pretty weird when they made several jokes about sex and going down on people. doh! afterwards, caryn and i went down to SJ to play bocce ball w/ some peeps. bocce ball is way fun. this is the first time i’ve really played it on an actual court and i had a really good time. i totally wanna play again. also, this was sharon’s last day in california, so i wont be seeing her again for a year. *sigh*. although, at this point, i really wont be seeing pretty much anyone for a year!

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it’s the little things

i was walking though albertsons today when this old foreign guy motions me over to him. looking inquisitively at the price for tomato soup, he asks me in broken english “10 for dollar?? this mean, each 40 cent??”. i shrug and nod and the guy’s eyes light up. he literally giggles like a schoolgirl at this point and starts pawing can after can of soup into his cart. wow, the soup sale really made his day. i guess sometimes it doesn’t take much.

when i left the store i saw the guy checking out…. the only thing he bought was 10 cans of tomato soup.

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hugs

so it turns out apparently that i give pretty much the worst hugs in the world. well, maybe not the worst, but i hear that joey and i tie for worst place. maybe i need to join some kind of support group…

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