Hong Kong in Heels

My feet hurt. I walk significantly shorter distances in Hong Kong so I convinced myself to torture my feet almost every day with heels. I am a flat shoe kind of girl. All sorts of cute shoes came into my life recently from scouring clearance racks and heels have taken over my shoe collection. Last night I was out for dinner and miscelaneous fun in LKF. The feet were fine at Azure on top of LKF Hotel. I got hit in the face with exhaustion while everyone danced around me. The EuroCup games take place at a rediculous hour in the Asian time zones. I woke up at 4am to catch the end of the Germany/Spain game that morning and was paying for it. The hour was almost completely unreasonable to wake up at, Germany played hard but lost the game and I was out late: all three of those factors felt obscene in my head at midnight. Had Germany won the game, I think I would have felt less tired! Ha! Anyway, we went across the street to a club and I almost went home at that point. But, W. grabbed me to have me at least get a stamp on my hand and then I could take off if I wanted to and still be able to come back. Well, with a stamp already on my hand and the Q. standing at coat check, I ended up in the club. It was the July 1 holiday the next day so we drank (straight from the bottle/service) and danced until the Queen and I escaped around 3am. We walked down the street to find an ATM and my feet were killing me. The slight wedge heel held up all day, but wasn't being friendly anymore. I think an apology is in order. I am sorry for torturing you- my feet- but you did look really cute.

Long time no blog. :)

I have been in India for the past few weeks- this is week 4 and a half and I really do like it here. It's not easy, but there is just something about this country that I just like and I can't shake it.

Since I landed, I have spent the majority of my time in two major cities, been in four minor auto accidents, visited the dentist once, worked more hours than I'd like to admit and have managed to almost forget to take my malaria pill every week.

Cities: Bangalore and Bombay. Completely different. It's the same idea as Minneapolis and NYC. Both are great, but different ideas about city culture. Bangalore seemed more 'close knit', or perhaps I just ran into all of the right people. My driver Mahesh (...sounds weird...'my driver'...he was the guy that drove me to work everyday...if you saw how people drove you'd understand why...) was super friendly and tried to teach me phrases in Kannada, told me about his brother and his new wife, and tried to show me what I should avoid. In Bombay, my driver seemed slimey...didn't show up on time and tried to lay guilt trips on me to get a tip. Bangalore is a good sized city, but there wasn't really too much to see. It's just a big city. I did manage to walk around and peek into shops without getting hassled by street vendors. Let me just say, I love that. I absolutely hate getting cat-called and hassled by street vendors. Here in Mumbai, when I took my first cab to work, I ended up paying double the fare. I also get hassled by every street vendor when I walk by because a 5'8" gal with short hair wearing western clothes tends to stick out. At the same time, there is just something about Mumbai that I can't get enough of. It's fast paced, brutally real and in your face. These are the same things I like about about NY. :)

Time to face reality. No one will necessarily speak about the reality of this city because its blatent enough not to. I pass through slums on my way to work. In NY, I will pass homeless people on the sidewalk, but entire communities living on the street is not something I encountered until I got here. It is one thing to think progressively and read about poverty, but it is quite another to sit in an airconditioned car with a driver holding my backpack with a laptop and a bottle of water inside of it and look out onto the street and see entire families sitting on the side of the road- sleeping, holding their babies and washing up.

I'll finish up this blog later. I need to get out onto the street for a while and away from my computer, which I've chained myself to for 12 to 14 hours a day since I landed.

I have been totally crazy/sleepless/confused/lost/lazy for the past few weeks. I would like to think it all started when I left for Malaysia, but it could just be my personality.

A. Before I left for Hong Kong and Malaysia, I had to pack up my desk because they were moving my entire group to the office downtown during the my trip. So, I ran around looking for boxes and making sure I remembered to bring everything I would need for my meetings.

B. Leaving for the airport became a bit of a pain in the ass due to the downpour that occured the moment I stepped out the door with my luggage. So, I dragged my luggage down the block trying to look pathetic enough for a cab to pick me up.

C. I landing in Hong Kong as well as Malaysia with no problems. But, during the week in Malaysia I can describe my schedule as attending meetings for 8 hours, doing some group activity and dinner for another five hours and then working in my hotel room for another couple of hours then taking a short nap until attending the next day's meetings.

D. Just before leaving Malaysia I managed to get an awful sunburn. Awful. I went on what I thought was going to be a short and meandering bike ride which ended up being around 30 kilometers on the side of a highway dodging stray cattle. It was an experience and I think I would do it again, but would have liked to have been more forewarned.

E. I landed back in Hong Kong without my luggage. It was lost somewhere in between Malaysia and Hong Kong. During this time one of the baggage handlers hit on my boss and gave me his phone number. No luggage for 2 days.

F. During my time in Hong Kong the bridge in Minneapolis collapsed and my apartment flooded. I luckily called home to find out that everyone I knew was fine. But, I did return to my apartment in a disaster state. My landlord did pull all of the flooring out and put in new linoleum (why? probably really cheap because who in their right mind installs linoleum anymore?). But, the apartment was still messy from furniture being moved and bits of carpet and dirt stuck to the floor and spread throughout the kitchen. I am still cleaning up after this!

G. Back to the sunburn. I had burned badly enough to start peeling. Major peeling. It looked like some sort of nuclear side effect. This plagued me on the plane ride home- I am sure the passenger next to me was hoping and praying he wouldn't catch my surely contagious skin disease. And, I ended up buying a new dress to wear to the wedding I attended soon there after. I had to buy something that would cover up as much of my skin as possible because it was pretty yuckie. I carried lotion in my purse for two weeks.

H. Job. Omg. I have been in job limbo for weeks. And, it looks like I will stay in this limbo for another few months. I am actually hoping for a job that does not yet exist. Until this job can be created, I am more or less SOL. Either that or I need to start hoping something else opens up.

Good things have happened as well; got to hang out at a beach resort in Malaysia and visited the bustling metropolis of Hong Kong, got to see friends, finally received my visa for India, working on project most people in my position wouldn't get to touch, did half of my laundry yesterday... So, things aren't by any means terrible.

This is what happens to watermelons when they go bad...

Actually, this watermelon behaved itself and we made it sit in the corner with a bottle of vodka. That's just how we roll.

I spent this past weekend out of the city (yay!) between the Hamptons and Montauk. A friend of a friend's parents have a house out there so a bunch of us went and crashed there for the weekend, which was loads of fun.

The funniest part of the weekend was when two classmates of one of the people showed up. No one else knew them at all while the rest of us were all sort of in 'six degrees of separation' from each other since social networks tend to web us together. Anyway, the two newbies to the group were weird. The gal was ok- just a bit quiet. But the guy was just uncouth and loud. He was the epitome of 'ugly american.' He complained about the food- which he didn't help cook. Then, he expected people to serve him and bring him things. Everyone ignored him and kept on eating and talking and when he brought it up again, someone basically said 'Well, I'd walk in the kitchen and find it if you want it.' At that point he got the blatent hint and walked into the kitchen to get ketchup himself.

The rest of the weekend was halarious and I am more on the tan side of skin tone instead of translucent. :-)

Around the world...without the fun Daft Punk beat.

I may be going on a business trip. And, perhaps I won't. I've got about as much information on this as anyone does. The only thing that I do know is that I will be spending 41 hours on an airplane within a two week period. If we make it a three or four week period, you can add 3 to 5 more hours to that total. This number seems quite large since I get bored really easily. Even on my last flight out to California, I watched a marathon of Footballers Wives and still flipped through to the other channels just to see if there was anything else on. During all of this, I also had a freshly stocked iPod, two new magazines, a book and my laptop. What would I do with 40 hours of being stuck on a plane?

If I do indeed go, I can only hope and pray to sleep for 20 of those hours. That leaves me 20 or so hours. A couple of movies I guess? Maybe a few magazines as well? It might be high time to actually use the Korean book and cds and see if I can learn something. All in all, we'll see.

I think I am about as excited to go as I am not to go. Is that possible?

Lately, I have felt like I've been a step behind. I will concentrate on a couple of things and somehow everything else on my plate goes completely wrong. And, if I try to keep an eye on everything, I just end up going back to do things over again because they weren't quite right the first time around.

I wonder what it would take for me to pick up and move to Berlin? I was talking to M. last night about how my memories of Berlin are made up of certain people and places there. But, at the same time, I am not completely tied to those people and memories. For some reason, I believe it would be just as new, fun and exciting if I went there now and had some new experiences. I can dream, can't I?

There aren't enough hours in the day and I can't get my mind off of that. If I try harder, will things fall into place for me-a bit? I feel like I just need a break- either someone needs to cut me some slack or I need an actual break away from things so I can start again and see how far I can run with it all.

On another note, I started going to the gym about a month ago. No huge changes, but I can say that I am feeling a bit better, overall. More balanced? And, my clothes still fit. Haha! That's a real indicator. Really, I am feeling just a bit less self conscious...or perhaps just as self conscious and not as negative? Or, maybe it's because my clothes fit and I don't have to worry about shopping-spending money-worrying about spending money-etc. :-)

Still working out my plans for the next few months, that being travel for work and traveling home. I can't believe it's already June and I am planning my time up through October already. It's as if the summer is already gone and it just got here.

Report card time... I haven't written in a while and a quarter of this year is already behind me. In terms of my New Year's resolutions, I am not doing terribly well. Reading is ok. Exercising failed for most of the first quarter of the year, but I have forced myself to go for a run twice this week. However, my exercise doesn't nearly compete with the huge amounts of indulgent foods I have consumed in the past two weeks. Correspondence with friends? Not terribly good. Learning korean? Also not good. But, I did send an email today inquiring about a beginners class. Travel...I was in Arizona for a conference, that's it. So, the travel category is also not doing terribly well. I will have to give myself a solid C for my performance this quarter.

Hopefully I can do better next quarter!

I do wonder if it just my lifestyle here in NY. It is just not as conducive to my better habits. It is just so much easier for me to fall back into bad habits. I have learned there is a price for convenience in this city. Most of the time it is things like $10 sandwiches and $5 coffee. However, my lifestyle has lent itself to convenience and I am paying with long hours at the office, eating unhealthy food and not exercising. I need to stop this.

My keyboard is set to German.

At first, I did it to be quirky. But, it turned out to be a really convenient quirky setting. I use the German letters such as ä or ü far more often than I thought. There is one drawback though. I can´t seem to figure out where the 'at' symbol is. So everytime I need to use the at symbol, I switch the keyboard language back to English, make the at symbol and then switch the keyboard to German again. I figure it is a small price to pay for quirkiness.

I talked to my boss last week for the first time in months and I think I like us being in contact. Up until last week I enjoyed knowing that I had a boss, but that it never got in my way. Some people see their bosses almost everyday and that was never really necessary for me. But, I do find it really interesting to talk to her once a week now. Unfortunately, she asked me to think about what I want to do (when I grow up). This is the same question that gets thrown around at work functions, mostly because no one else knows what they want to be either. I can´t just answer 'I don't know...uh...ballerina?' A. I have no aptitude for it. B. I don't want to be one. So, Ì am going to try and come up with some tentative ideas before our next meeting and see if they can be grown into a job. Basically the point of doing my job is to put myself out of a job. Funny, right? But, it´s true. The better and quicker I can work on my projects, the faster I put myself out of a job. It has been the point of the job since I started and the reason for me to stay on my toes and shoot for the next assignment because if I set myself up correctly and play my cards right, I can do whatever I want.

On a completely different note, I might try to make bread today.´ We'll see if I make it out of the house, to the grocery store and back to my house again. Oh distraction...it always happens.

I am currently reading Not so funny when it happened. The book is unfortunately not so funny now, after it all happened. It´s a book of random travel stories, but even I have some funnier travel stories. Meh, what can you do?

Ich druck immer meine Daumen darauf.

I have been feeling a real pull to travel, lately. I talked to a friend of mine in Germany a few days ago and I feel like I am a world away from everything there. It´s as if I have been ´away from home´ and I have to work to keep up to date. I do not understand how I can be homesick for a place that I didn´t grow up in, and yet wish I could be there all the time.

I started subscribing to podcasts of the news in DE so I can at least hear German on my train rides to and from work. I feel it is an improvement from not hearing German at all. And, the woman I talked to about German classes on the Upper West Side never sent me the brochure and registeration like she said she would. Work has been a bit crazy, though. So, I don´t know if I would have made it anyway.

In relation to my New Years Resolutions I´ve got this podcast thing going, and I am reading Harry Potter auf Deutsch. I don´t know if I can read it fast enough or if I´ll even finish. But, it made it´s way into the competitors circle so I´ll see how it goes.

Back to work, my co-worker who just left had to do an exit interview before she was officially done. And, she told me I needed to watch it because the HR lady told her that 10 out of the 10 people she interviewed that day all said that they did not have a life-work balance there. I can totally see how that can happen. I live it. But, moreover in NY I´ve noticed I hang out with my co-workers here more than I have anywhere with any job I´ve had. Even as an intern, I was able to get all of the interns together once to go out for drinks and that was it. Once. So at least in NY, we get all up in each others´ personal lives and work invades life and life invades work. At the same time, I really like what I do and I never thought I would ever be able to say that. I am really luck to do what I am doing and I think every once in a while how I really got a lucky break. The timing was right, the job turned out to be fantastic and I get to meet and work with some of the most facinating people around the world. At the same time, when will the luck run out? At any rate, I am going to ride this luck as long as I can and see where it takes me.

I am getting old and I don´t travel enough. That is the quick and dirty. If you don´t have time to read the rest of this post, you more or less know the whole story with my first sentence. If not, keep reading.

I am getting old. For the past few months, I always thought I caught a glimpse of a random white hair when looking in the mirror, but could never find it when I tried to investigate it closer. Well, this weekend I found multiple white hairs. I am old! I made various promises to myself over the past few days- to eat better and organic food when I can...to drink more water...to sleep more...to do yoga regularly. I am hoping this little concotion of life altering methods will help curb or at least postpone my white hair. But moreover, the white hair is simply an indicator of my stressful and work-focused life.

After meeting A. a couple weeks ago, my aspirations in Germany started to creep up on me again. I have started thinking about grad school, timing and locations in Germany as well as what I want to be doing in 10 years. Overall, I have come to no conclusions. That is to say, I want to live in Germany again. I constantly fear my German skills are slipping, but I don´t have any sort of advanced skills in my job which would help propel me in any sort of direction if I went there. So, grad school would definately be a consideration since it would give me a visa to go and stay there as well as a purpose and degree for being there. But again, no real direction as to what I would study. I´ll consider all of this for the next few years.

That all sort of leads into my not traveling much. I do little bits of traveling here and there, but I haven´t been on an adventure in a while. Like a real proper adventure where I hop on a plane or train, end up somewhere and wander. The world is too big for me to stay in one place. I need to move. I thought about going back to Germany for a couple of weeks. Perhaps, I´ll consider that. We´ll see where the year takes me.

Hannover

One of my co-workers, M., had two of her German friends in town last week and I managed to hijack them shortly after finding out about them. Last Monday she mentioned how they where in town, so I met them as she was leaving the office. On Tuesday morning I asked her if we could hang out and her response? ´That would be great! I don´t want to hang out with them!´ Um...what? Turns out she had a cold, was really tired and just didn´t feel much like going out. Plus, she didn´t actually know these guy very well. They happened to be friend of friends of hers. So, I gave her my number to pass onto the boys and we arranged to meet on Wednesday after work.

We meet and I received the standard question of how and why I speak German. For me, I feel as this is the one story I have told more times than any other story about myself. I went through an entire year´s worth of this question while I was in Germany, in addition to starting my job and working with the German team who were also suprised I knew German. So, I explained the story in short and we hit up a bar. It was really funny to talk to them because this was their first time in NY and in the US, so their observations were funny. We met up with some of my other co-workers, so we were speaking in English with them, but every once in a while A. would stumble on a word and I was able to translate it. (It is almost always the other way around! I felt über-proud of myself!) We then hit up another bar down the street, and this being a Wednesday night, we left by 2am. Girl has got to work in the morning, right?

We made plans to meet the following night around 9 or so in Midtown, and we hung out at an Irish pub, again with many of my co-workers. So, by the end of the night, a few of the Mädels here were convinced that German guys are fantastic. But, it was a fun two nights for me because I was able to speak German whenever we weren´t talking to my co-workers...or I was able to translate when we ran into hang-ups.

The whole thing made me completely homesick for Germany, though. Every once in a while I will just feel like I am missing something. Sometimes a bit of schnitzel and german music will cure it. Other times, I just have to wonder when I´ll go back next.

So I am looking for a new book to read since finishing A Long Way Round. I went to the Taschen book sale last night after work and they didn't really have too much that interested me. Either they sold out of the good stuff early, or they didn't have a large selection. Oh well. Email me if you have a suggestion!

A Long Way Round was actually a great book. I was a bit skeptical since it was written in part by Ewan McGreggor- the actor- but it was actually a fantastic experience to read about. Since then, I have become completely obsessed with Mongolia. I really want to go to Mongolia some time and visit a Ger and walk around on the dunes and visit a place which hasn´t been invaded with Starbucks. In essense, I am looking to visit the anti-Manhattan. I get enough of Manhattan Monday through Friday with ocasional weekend visits. Its about time I start thinking about where I might end up next. Alaska? Its not that I want to leave the hustle and bustle of the city, I just need to change things up from time to time to give the city its dicotomy from the rest of the world.

Out of all of my New Years resolutions, the 'exercise more' resolution has been...uh...lacking. I´ll see if I can work on that one a bit this weekend.

So, a couple of nights ago I went out with some of my co-workers. We all started out at the first bar and talked at random about our own office politics, living situations and where we wanted to see ourselves in a few years. A fraction of us ended up at another bar for 'one more drink.' Mary started to chat up this guy but ended up talking with his ugly brother so she walked away. Me and the new girl were talking about random stuff on the other corner of the bar and Mary comes up to us followed by the ugly brother. He starts rambling on about his sales job and at one point turned around to have us check out his ass. Yeah, there is no need for me to be checking out some balding/middle aged dude's ass. I used that moment to glare at Mary for what she had gotten us into. Another gal from our group on the other side of the bar looked at us and I shot her a glare as well and she got us out and away from ugly brother just after he announced he was married. Um, yeah.

More next time.

Don´t Speak! I might laugh!

I was at a party last Saturday night where I met a Latin teacher. A. I didn´t know public schools could afford foreign languages anymore. B. I didn´t know public schools would have anything more than spanish or maybe japanese to offer. C. Who meets Latin teachers? Definately a first for me. To set up how strange it was to meet a Latin teacher at a party was to hear about his extra curricular activities. Namely, being a brass player in a No Doubt tribute band. Not kidding. When my friend caught wind of this character she asked what his ´musical influences´ were and I almost laughed in their faces. The strange nature of this conversation didn´t end with his response of Tribe Called Quest (he couldn´t think of the name of the group, just a name of one of their songs). A little later he talked about the old days when he used to work at a toy store and described a Barbie shoe fountain. Yup. Even thinking of the whole situation now, I am speechless.

I came into work on Monday and smelled something strange. Luckily, I was not going crazy. There was some sort of gas leak going on and our entire building smelled like gas. Not too fun and a little scary because as children one of the mini-lessons you get in school is that when you smell gas, tell someone and leave the area as soon as possible in case something ignites and blows everything up. Well, we couldn't all just leave because the gas leak was coming from outside and filtering into the building. The funny thing is that they sent around an email in the office saying to stay in and not to go outside and smoke. Despite this, a whole load of people were standing outside and smoking before they went in for the day. Go figure.

This weekend I finally went to the Met. I headed out of my apt. on Saturday morning and had to walk immediately back in to change because it was 70 degrees outside! Unbelieveable weather. I met up with Maura who came to her door in a sweater and carrying a coat and I stood there looking at her with a crazy face in my tshirt. She went back in to change.

The Met was cool. And, I'll certainly have to go again since it is a rather large museum. I think my favorite things were just some random pieces- one of them was by John Singer Sargent called The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit. But the exhibit itself was packed since the exhibit is ending soon and because it was a Saturday.

I am on my way with my top ten list of resolutions. I finished A Good Year last night and it was ok. It´s a quick read that feels like a weekend getaway. You read it, glad you read it and wished there was a bit more going on with it. Nonetheless, it took your mind off of things for a while. The book certainly made me want to leave and do something different for a while. Live somewhere where the idea of living was just different than what I am currently used to.

I´ve been in NY for almost a year and the way of life here is definately different than in the Midwest. Here, I feel as if my days run as if I am on a schedule. Even if I don´t plan to do something and randomly decide to get a drink or take a walk, it was just one more activity I fit into the day before the next day began. Fill the days.

The weather in NY right now is crazy. It´s still warm and it´s January. I think I am enjoying it.

My New Years Resolution Progress

I started reading A Good Year last night. But, I bought the book so that went against my financially responsible resolution. But, I did buy the book at a going out of business sale. So, it wasn´t too bad. I have bringing my lunch to work lately, so that goes to my financially responsible resolution. I have been trying to walk around more after work, but it can get a bit hard because I usually want to head straight home. And, I am hoping to visit a museum this weekend. So, I´ll update as soon as I do any of that.

Yesterday I removed a few weeks worth of newspapers from my desk. I usually pick up a paper on my way into the subway and set it down on my desk when I get to work. And, they will pile up for weeks until I decide I have no room for anything else.

It´s New Year´s so I feel as if I should tell everyone what my resolutions are. It will make them more ´real´ or less easy to break, perhaps?

Top Ten List of Resolutions

1. Exercise more
2. Eat better (less junk food and candy and more good quality food)
3. Practice German (self study or a class if I can get into one)
4. Travel to someplace new and out of my comfort zone
5. Learn some basic Korean
6. Stay in better touch with friends and family (send one piece of corresponence per month in addition to phone calls and emails)
7. Read 13 books in 12 months (not overly ambitious, but they´re my resolutions so I can do whatever I want)
8. Be more financially responsible (save, not spend!)
9. Volunteer
10. Visit museums in the city

I haven´t blogged in a very long while and K. gave me some crap about it while I was at home. So, here you go....

While I was at the airport coming back to NY, I decided to get a Mint Condition from Caribou since I hadn´t had one this visit and because I wouldn´t be able to have one for at least another few weeks because there´s no Caribou in NY. (Bou to that!)

So, I´m sipping on the Mint Condition and who do I see? Kevin Sorbo from the Hercules TV series. Except I couldn´t remember his name or his TV character when I saw him...so I just kinda stared at him while he walked by. In my head, all I could think was ´Xena Warrior Princess....no that´s not right...Xena Warrior Princess...shoot...it´s not Xena...´

Other than that, my flight back wasn´t too eventful.

There's nothing I dispise more than all things 'fabulous.' But, I had a strange weekend of fabulous- here and there. My friend Y. came out here for some interviews, so we hung out during the evening with M. We tried to show her all of the things we thought she should see and we sort of succeeded. She saw Times Square at night, Chinatown and Little Italy, the village and well, Queens. But, we totally succeeded in finding places to eat. The first 'fabulous' place we happened upon was this middle eastern restaurant. We randomly went in and got lunch. When we went to pay the guy who worked there asked Y. where she was from. When she answered 'Japan,' he pulled out this Japanese magazine where his restaurant was featured, along with a photo of him and his restaurant. Ok, not too fabulous. But, fabulous enough. Later in the evening we had dinner at Otto, a Mario Batali restaurant. It's really good and reasonably priced. But, nonetheless fabulous. At least, all of the people who eat there tend to think they're fabulous. This morning, as Y. and I were walking to the train, we decided to stop at this cafe we went to a couple of nights ago. The cafe has already become my favorite place. They have fantastic cappuccinos/coffees as well as hundreds of thousands of calories worth of yummy desserts. As we walked out of the cafe I saw that they were the cafe/bakery that made the wedding cake for the wedding in 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding.' Fabulous, or what? Even though this cafe has it's bout with fabulousness, I still feel compelled to go there because my love for pasteries and coffee is far more true and strong than my disposition of fabulousness.

Ah...two weeks and counting until my trip to San Diego. I am more than excited to get out of the cold city and onto the warm beach. I'm going for this conference for work, so I'll only be with work people. A couple thousand work people, to be not so exact. Aparently, they do this every year. My work basically reserves a resort, flies us all out to it to hold a conference. Yeah, we have to learn and network. Understood. But, from what I've heard from everyone about this conference- it's basically MTV Spring Break. You really have to buckle down because everyone goes crazy. The company is very much a 'work hard, play hard' kind of company and this will be my first concrete piece of evidence of it. So, we go to meetings all day, but everyone hits the beach and goes out for the rest of the time only to get up early for meetings the next morning. I'm glad I'm still in that college age range, otherwise I don' t know how I'd handle it.

Ah…finally, a journal entry.

Everyone should come go to San Francisco. I managed to see a great deal of tourist attractions- the common, the kitschy and the interesting ones. My favorite had to have been in the Haight & Ashbury neighbourhood. A guy walked down the street dressed in a white summer dress and running sneakers and carried a ‘protest-esque’ sign that said ‘Lighten up baby I’m a chicken.’ But, the one factor tying his whole deal together was the chicken noises he made as he walked down the street. “Bock…bock…bock…”

The other interesting activity I took part in this whole weekend was listening to people’s conversations. Ok, not everyone’s conversations, just the conversations of German tourists. A. They happened to be everywhere. B. I consider it learning because I am hearing the German language and identifying words I am not familiar with. In general, it wasn’t all that interesting. No one said anything too strange, gossipy or about me. I should have just talked to them…but, at the time I decided against it because you can’t talk to people you’re eavesdropping on. Next time…