~ °Café de Terrasse° ~
The thoughts of an odd duck who sits alone in a night cafe, with a stylo in his right, a journal in his left, a valise under his chaise, a tasse on the table, and plenty of time to pass.
~ dimanche, février 22, 2004 ~
I had a heckuvan adventure yesterday... it was quite crazy! At 4:32 in the afternoon, I decided to take the next bus out of Davis to Sacramento. Kindof a spontanteous little decision there. So anyway, I tell ya, Sac is a weird place with odd people.~ lundi, février 16, 2004 ~
I attended a Karate convention... it was cool but man, those little 7-yr olds could kick my butt easily. I walked around downtown with my long coat trying to look all important in front of the State Capitol building. hahaha, fun stuff.
that city is alright in the daytime but come darkness, it's a whole different place- and a scary place at that. Ok, so at around 7:12pm, I was walking down the street and these guys passed me by slowly in a dark SUV... the dude in the passenger seat pointed his freakin finger at me... they stopped the freakin car and he came out! So I crossed the street quickly and then the homie started walking towards me. I pretended not to see but he kept coming closer and closer do I ran and when i ran, he freakin ran after me! I didn't think much of it at the time but I almost got freakin mugged! Wanna know where this happened? Right across the street from the Capitol building, next to the freakin Hilton!
So with that ordeal, I stopped walking the downtown streets and ended up in Old Sac. Somehow, I got myself caught up in a Mardi Gras celebration over there. It was pretty awesome to see all the beads and stuff. I ended up in a candy shop, where I spent freakin almost $20 on candy... I was a kid in the candy store.
So anyway, on the way back from Sacramento, the bus ride was like an hour long and I blame it on the bus driver who talked to me on the whole trip. And of all things to talk about, he talked about busses. Yeah, he knew everything there was to know about busses... he even pointed out busses and told me their features, their maximum speed, their maximum capacity, their prices, you name it and if it's bus-related, he knew it. It was kindof funny really, because he started pointing out busses going, "ooooh, that's a beaut!" haha... and he's also designing his own bus line... one that can go from 1 to 100mph in 4.5 seconds. See, that's what happens to you when you've been driving busses for 30+ years. PAUL, hahaha
That was the Great Sacramento Adventure.
~Benjamin 2/22/2004 05:31:00 AM
Today, err yesterday was oodles of fun. I haven't had soo much fun in a long time. Lillian, Stacey, Aubree, Danielle, Kevin, & I went to San Francisco for a whole day full of shopping. It was really nice to finally get out of Davis for a change... this was the first time I've been out of Davis since the service project I did in Sacramento last quarter.
We decided to amtrak our way down to SF so I had to get up at 6:12am. The problem was that the night before, Emil got us to play Axis & Allies until 3:21am. But still, I didn't sleep until 4:32am due to some minor incidents in the hallway. Anyway, so when we get to SF, we BARTed our way to downtown. That was pretty fun because I'd never ridden on BART before and boy oh boy, it was fast & loud... tr?s cool. Ohmygoodness, downtown SF is chouette! It's huuuge and popular! We started off in an 8-story mall and went outside. All the stores in classic architecture buildings... and the streets with thousands of people... reminded me of Europe. At this point, Finella, from home, joined our group. After a quick ATM run, we walked around a bit and ended up in Chinatown.
I love Chinatown, even tho it's not the cleanest-looking place, there is like a very strong cultural community there and it was huuuge! All the bakeries and shoppes, it was awesome... I don't know how else to describe it. I wandered a bit from the group to look at some pumellos and this guy started speaking to me in Chinese, something about the pumellos. I had no idea what he was saying so I just pretended and apparently all went well. Oh yeah, and we dim sum'ed for lunch... sortof... it was this Chinese restauraunt that prides itself extensively on their MSG-free food. We were all like, whatever. It wasn't that great but it was good... quite overpriced. So we toured around Chinatown for like, 5 hours and then went to Union Square. We went to Loehman's. While the girls were trying on whatever they could find, I was having my own fun. I really needed coffee at this point so I ran around and saw this big French flag beckoning me from 4 blocks away. It was the French Consulate's Office. Chouette. Then I found this French Caf? where everybody spoke French! like, EVERYBODY. It was the coolest thing- I never knew there were soo many Francophones in SF.
So anyway, I got my coffee and at this point, Vince arrived to join us in our great shopping extravanganza. I left with him to go help him shop for new leather dress shoes. Fun stuff.
Ok, this post is getting a bit long so I'll abridge the rest a bit. Eh, well, when I think about it, not much really happened in terms of what we did and stuff... we shopped the whole day, which was really a lot of fun. But I think what made this experience even more better was that I got to really hang out with my friends here. We all had oodles of fun. We dined in a 50's diner, spoke in accents, I stalked french people, and we all just got a chance to act stupid and smart at the same time. I'm sooo glad I had the opportunity to share this experience with them... they're really sweet people... well, most of them anyway... hehe, jk. We had a lot of laughs. It was very choutte being with them. I feel like I can open up to them a bit more and that is good stuff.
Welp, I didn't really buy anything (most of my shopping was for my eyes) except chestnuts. Mmm, I'm gonna roast them. Ooooh, Lillian, Aubree, & Stacey bought dresses for the Monte Carlo Night semi-formal. When we got back around 11:01pm, they had a bit of a fashion show in the lounge... and sheesh, I tell ya, they're beautiful... and i don't just mean the dresses either. Now I can't wait till 2 weeks. I need to go shopping again this weekened for some dress shirts and maybe I'll go to Sacramento or something. We'll see. It's been such a long, tiring, and shopping-packed day. I think I'm off to bed now before I fall over. Welp everybody, until next time, good night! =D
~Benjamin 2/16/2004 02:42:00 AM
