Category: San Francisco

same same but different

in SE asia they have a saying “same same but different”. in fact one of the guesthouses in cambodia even was named that. i think that pretty much summarized today. i got up and all of a sudden was thrown into the same routine that i had faced day in and day out before i left. everything was falling back in it’s place. ugh. no more daily fun for me.

but then in certain ways things were just a bit off. a bit different and because of that everything seemed kinda weird to me. see, my company moved while i was gone to a new shiny 20 story office building. i drove to work as i always do *but* got off two exits earlier. i saw all the same people at work *but* some people had quit and were missing from the picture. i went to mexican food for lunch *but* it was baja fresh instead of unamas. all of these changes were slight and totally tiny yet for some reason they all made me feel a little on edge. i hated the daily routine, but it was even weirder that the routine was still there but not the same i guess.

back before i left, when i still worked in redwood city, i would eat lunch at unamas all the time and the cashier was this chick connie who was always really nice. now i’m working in foster city and drove to baja fresh to get food since it’s closer. on the way there, the jetlag hit me really hard and i walked into the restaurant feeling super sleepy and dazed and walked up… and gave connie my order. huh??! all of a sudden i felt totally confused. where the hell was i? did i come to the right place? was this even happening? am i dreaming? why does nothing make sense? it’s really hard for me to put it into words just what i felt right there. like something was terribly wrong. like i must be totally mistaken. like my sanity wasn’t right, or there was a glitch in the matrix. i dont know why, all of this flooded over me.

of course, the explanation was super mundane. connie used to work in redwood city, and now she works here. nothing bizarre about it. *sigh*. i need more sleep.

photos finally!!

so i’m finally posting photos from the trip. i’ve got tons. about 500 or so i think and they’re all at a fairly high resolution so it may take me a while to upload them all. so i’ll probly do like a hundred at a time.

i decided to use sony imagestation for the photos, because not only can you view the small preview version of each photo, but if you click on it, you can also see the full high-res version. also it’s cool cause people can comment on the photos as well. of course, like most photo services, you have to sign up (for free). the link to the first batch of photos is:
http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=4290734057

-vlad

back in the US

i got back yesterday morning and it was so very weird to be back. everything here in SF looks familiar and yet so unfamiliar at the same time. i feel like i’ve been away for years, yet not really much has changed around here. it was definitely really good to see everyone again. the first thing i had to do when i got back was to get a burrito from pancho villa. i had been craving burritos for sooo long and it was great to finally have one… especially one that was so good.

erica organized a party to celebrate my return and also to celebrate sharon’s b-day and it was a blast. it was so much fun to be able to party w/ everyone again. as the night went on, and people got more and more drunk, i put on some cd’s of music i brought from thailand. the 2 cds’s i had were las ketchup (the ketchup song) and a thai cd that had 2 tracks on it that i had heard about a million times in thailand. it was only 3 tracks altogether, but i just played them over and over in my room and soon everyone was in my room dancing and rocking out. it was so funny! i had totally expected people to think the music was too cheezy or lame or whatever, but people were psyched. also, i guess the ketchup song goes along w/ some kind of funny dance and tom knew it, so soon enough he had taught a bunch of people to do the dance and was just hilarious to see my room full of people doing it.
there’s a link to a video of the dance on this page: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/18/earlyshow/leisure/music/main526093.shtml
it was great… the songs for me totally brought back the excitement of thailand and it was cool to be able to share that w/ others. people ended up staying pretty late and i didnt go to bed till about 5:30am… and by then somehow out of the 12 bottles of rum i brought back from thailand, only 4 were left.

today i spent the day hanging out w/ joey, sharon, chearon, and jordie. got some indian food, checked out joey’s new place, and watched some movies. such a small world. i cant believe that joey, rob, and catherine all live just 3 blocks from me now. how cool.

right now i’m feeling really tired. not looking forward to work tomorrow. but… it’s been a really nice, fun, and relaxing weekend. honestly i thought my first weekend back would have been a lot worse and harder to deal w/, but i ended up really enjoying it. i guess i’m just lucky to have the friends that i have…

-v

red light part 2…

so the whole experience was all truly bizarre and probably would have been pretty unsettling if i hadn’t started to get very very drunk. i had gotten kind of a late start on getting there, and it turned out that the bar was about to close. it was at this point that one of the girls said that since the bar was closing, for some extra baht, her and the girl nund would “go downstairs”. eh? no matter how many times i tried to understand what was “downstairs” or whatever, i couldn’t get this girls english. this was the point that i should have just gotten up and gone home, but i was pretty trashed, and after repeatedly making it clear that i wanted absolutely no part in any “fucky-fucky sucky-sucky” or anything like that, i agreed. so the bar closes, the girls get dressed and we go downstairs… and out of the club. huh? apparently we were heading to a karaoke bar.

crap. so by “downstairs” they really meant going out somewhere. so, i’ve always thought it was so lame for dudes to pay some girl to kick it with them. it always struck me as pretty damn pathetic. and now, through no intention of my own, i wound up in that exact situation. i really wasn’t down w/ that, but i kind of felt like it was too late to tell them that i wasn’t gonna give them money now or whatever, so i figured i may as well go to the bar. so we hung out at the bar for a bit watching karaoke, and the girls did some karaoke, and it was fun hanging out and all… but i really couldnt shake the feeling that i was paying money for this and that’s fucked up.

and then things got weird. for some reason i guess nund was totally jealous of the other girl or something and they started hella arguing and pretty soon they were totally yelling at each other in thai. i couldnt understand what was being said other than small bits that the girl would translate for me. this escalated to the point where it looked like it was going to turn into a fist fight. at this point nund calls her sister and we all go over to the sister’s house where there is a long heated discussion. sheez. so i take the opportunity to pay the money, hoping to end it all. at this point, the other girl takes off, but nund wanted to keep hanging out so we drank some more beers and then went to go crash. once again i had to reiterate that i wanted no part in any “fucky-fucky” or whatever.

sheez. what a night. this definitely was one of the weirdest nights on my whole trip. it all just seemed so random. i felt kinda lame for everything that had transpired… but whatever i guess… i mean it’s not like it was intentional. and now what did this girl nund want? if i had already paid her? and why was she acting so crazy?

-v

TOKYO

wow, i never thought that my first journal update would be so soon, but now i have a few hours to kill at the airport so i figure i might as well make good use of my time.

yesterday and this morning were a total blur. running on hardly any sleep, i’ve spent most of my time in a daze and the thought that i’m really seriously going to a foreign country for a month and a half has seemed totally unreal. though i’ve spent the last several months totally looking forward to this, all of a sudden my last day has been filled w/ doubt, fear and anxiety. am i gonna survive w/out seeing any of my friends for so long?

this morning joey gave me a ride to the airport and after having breakfast w/ him and caryn, i went to catch my flight. of course, in typical vlad fashion, i didn’t get to the security check point until it was only 15 minutes to my flight. after waiting in the excruciatingly slow line, i began to realize that i would end up missing my flight if i waited any longer. so i talked to an attendant and got to cut to the front (shweet!). unfortunately though, my pants have enougfh zippers to kill a person, so the metal detector beeped when i walked thru it. as i waited for the guy w/ the wand to arrive, i noticed that my flight was leaving in only 2 minutes. CRAP! would i really end up missing my fight?? luckily after scanning my shoes etc, and running at top speed the fest of the way, i got on my flight.

the flight was uneventful other than me exploding yogurt all over the place. doh! and this brings me to where i am now. tokyo airport. it’s pretty exciting to be here. i think the finally everything is starting to feel more real, and the stress is going away. don’t have much to report about tokyo, other than the fact that i went to the bathroom (luckily to pee) and walked by a stall… and there was only a hole inside. no toilet. UGH. not looking forward to trying that out!

also, i’m already acutely becoming aware of the language barrier. for the most part people that speak english can be found, but do i decipher all the crazy signs i’m gonna see? also, i don’t eat beef or pork. how am i gonna get that across to people when i buy food? i bought soup here, and had to talk to 3 different people in order to ask someone if it was beef broth or not. maybe i need to get a photo of a cow and a pig w/ a big cross through it to show people? heh.

-vlad

Thailand.. the final frontier

it’s three days till i leave on my trip to thailand and i can hardly spend a waking minute without thinking about it. this month, as each day passed, my anticipation of going has grown day by day and now is almost unbearable. i cant believe this is finally happening. it’s funny, each time i talk to people that have already gone there, like tim or joey… i see this look in their eyes… a look that tells me that they are remembering one of the most amazing times in their life. i know that some day i too will have that look. i’ll have experienced all the greatness that thailand has to offer.

the thing about this trip, is that it’s really so many vacations rolled into one. it’s so many different experiences all bundled up into one tight little package. on one hand, i’m going to a tropical paradise w/ beautiful beaches, clear skies, and lush rainforests. on the other hand i’m going to a wild backpacker destination filled w/ exciting nightclubs, countless bars, and a party scene like no other. and on the third hand i get to experience a completely new culture unlike anything i’ve ever experienced… a land full of ancient temples and a simpler way of life. but even then, this trip will be so much more than a sum of all of its parts. besides everything that i see and do, it’ll be a chance for me to really test myself. to spend a month and a half away from family and most of my friends. half of this trip i’m gonna spend traveling on my own, and for a guy who’s extremely shy around people i dont know, this is gonna be a truly formidable challenge. Last of all, it’s also a chance for me to spend a lot of time away from anything that i’m familiar with. a time where i will not deal with the daily routine of the 9-5 job or the usual repetitiveness of every day life.

It’s just really amazing that it’s really happening. Actually, this vacation is gonna be the prefect finale for what has been a really really great year for me. it’s weird… i actually started off this year with a promise to myself that i would do something amazing like go to thailand, and that this year, 2002, will be a good year for me. and i was so right. so much has happened. I finally moved to SF which has been something i’ve really wanted to do for many years now. I actually did something artistic, and build a huge art car w/ my friends that turned out a million times better than any of us could have imagined. i got to go back to Russia where i was born and where i’ve longed to go for as long as i can remember. and now to top it all off, i’m going to thailand. fucking incredible.

-vlad

Incredibly Strange Wrestling

Wow, it’s been a long time since i’ve been to an event as wacky and out of control as this one. The whole thing is basically this mock wrestling match between all these totally insane wrestlers. It’s kinda hard to describe just how funny it is without pictures.

some matches:

these two dudes dressed up as a boy band fighting against santa and his crackhead elf. through the whole thing the boy band guys are doing these wacky dance moves while fighting, and in the meantime santa’s pants are falling off and the crackhead elf is staggering around on stage.

rasputin, this tiny 3 foot tall bearded old man, versus “the sheik of physique”, a huge 300 pound fat guy in a sheik costume. and not only that, but the referee for this match was a guy in a giant hotdog outfit.

and there were a bunch of other totally crazy matches. one of the guys wrestling was
macho sasquatcho, a guy in this crazy furry big foot costume. they also had this dude “el homo loco”, this wacky flamboyant guy wearing a tutu and humping his opponents to death when he got “flaming mad”. his cheerleaders were these girls called the “man-haters” who would go around making out w/ random girls in the audience. some of the wrestlers would actually jump from the second story of the dna lounge down to the ring below. and “injured” wrestlers were carried out of the ring by gorilla paramedics.

i dunno.. basically it was all just nuts. oh, and then there were the tortillas. the ad for the show asked audience members to bring tortillas.. so basically the whole time while this is going on the audience is throwing tortillas like crazy. tortillas are flung at the wrestlers, the announcers, the audience.. everywhere! pretty soon the wrestlers are wrestling in huge piles of tortilla scraps. by the end of the night there was tortilla covering every single inch of ground in the club.

-v

nonstop…

this ended up being one of those kind of weekends where every night is filled with alcohol and fun.

friday night: went to go see christophe’s band, Hoegaarden, play on Haight street. i didnt really know what kind of music they play or what to expect, but they ended up being hella good. afterwards i went to Fake at the cats club. other than the 10$ cover and some lame catty drama, fake was pretty cool. one the menu that night: vodka drinks followed by beer followed by whiskey shots followed by more vodka drinks followed by long islands.

saturday: wake up at 2pm and contemplate how unwise those drink selections were. amidst the throbbing headache, decide not to drink anymore for the rest of the weekend. 5 hours later after driving around w/ joey helping him look for a place to live, we start drinking again. went to tom’s party and had hella fun there. some random things that happened were: people pouring apple pie shots down other people’s throats, huge hookah w/ cherry tobacco, kevin’s friend being so drunk that he pissed in the bathtub… twice, jason’s jesus mask, joey ending up missing somehow and getting locked outside, yan clearing the dance floor by playing neil diamond, and caryn running around wearing not one but 2 different halloween masks at the same time.
on the menu: sake then vodka shots then vodka drinks then beer then rum drinks.

sunday: wake up at 2 pm. once again regret the mixing of different kinds of alcohol. amidst being nauseous i decide that this time i *definitely* wont be doing any more drinking this weekend. sunday night, sharon came over and after drinking some wine and beer (sheez… i never learn!), we go to check out “Incredibly Strange Wrestling” at the dna lounge. i’ll write about that more in a separate post, but both of had sooo much fun. i just really love going to events that are totally out of the ordinary.

and that’s it.

-v