Snapshots

Wow, it sure has been a while since I last blogged.  Two very-close-together trips to California have accumulated a lot of “bloggable” material — so much that actually made me not want to blog.  You know, when you have so much stuff to do that once it’s over a certain threshold, you just don’t know where to begin, so you don’t begin.

Anyway, I better cut things short so that I can resume my regularly scheduled blogging habits…  This means I will include only the notable things.

So, I drove down to Seattle to catch the flight.  As I was crossing the border at 9:30pm, I was interrogated by the border patrol:

Patrol: “Where are you going?”
Me: “San Francisco.”
Patrol: “What for?”
Me: “Attending a conference.”
Patrol: “Of what nature is the conference?”
Me: “Ummm….” *crap, I didn’t think they would go this deep…*
Patrol: *Starts to get suspicious*
Me: “Spiritual…?”
Patrol: “Do you have an itinerary for it?” *still looking skeptical*
Me: “Hm, guess what, I actually don’t.  BUT I have the flight and hotel itinerary…” *hands it to the patrol*
Patrol: “Pop the trunk.”
Me: “Sure.” *Oh man, this has never happened to me before*
… a minute later …
Patrol: “What’s your occupation?”
Me: “Software developer…” *Oh man, this is only going to get worse.*
Patrol: “So you are going for 3 nights, and that’s all you’re bringing?” *points to the backpack in the passenger seat, since I had no luggage in the trunk*
Me: “Yup.”
Patrol: “Is there any reason why you don’t have a check-in luggage?”
Me: “Um, because it costs money now to have a piece of check-in luggage…?”
Patrol: “Bye.”

I suppose crossing the border in the middle of the night, by myself, with nearly no luggage, could be interpreted as suspicious activity…

Anyway, I don’t have that much to say about the conference itself.  The scheduling was pretty intense: 11 presentations squeezed into 2 days, and each presentation is 1 hour and 15 minutes long.  Four meals were included.  There were more than one occasion where I just wanted to skip a presentation, but I wanted to get all my money’s worth.  In total, there were over 400 attendees, and about 4 were Asian, and about 3 were under the age of 30…  I think the average age must’ve been 50+.  It was quite an experience.

After the conference ended, I joined Shirley and Jeff for some rainy San Francisco sight seeing, which occurred mainly in the car.  We took pictures of the Golden Gate bridge, drove on the famous lumbar street, snacked at Ghirardelli’s, and ate at Horizon’s.  It was a pretty relaxing day filled with some interesting conversations.

I stayed at Jeff’s for half the night, and he drove me to the airport by 5am in the morning.  That was a tiring experience.  After another 2 hour flight, I had to drive 2.5 hours to get back to Vancouver.  Commuting really isn’t fun.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 at 9:41 pm and is filed under Vacation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.