Where I set my thoughts to far off destinations: Stanford: "I wish I could go back to college, life was so simple back then" Avenue Q

Hello all - sorry it's been so long since my last entry! I've been run off my feet.
I'm currently sitting in a lovely cafe in a shopping centre in Palo Alto - the home of Stanford University (will be catching up with my Perth friend Lauren very shortly (I hope). This shopping centre is like nothing I've ever seen before, well not as far as shopping centres adjacent to universities are concerned in any case. So far I've seen Louis Vitton, Zegna and more
Still I suppose when annual undergrad fees are hitting the US$36,000+, one would expect people with significant sums of money to be present. Luckily, for a mere three dollars I was still able to purchase a hot chocolate which is roughly the size of my head. I am pleased. The campus here is just amazing - what other campus do you know that has a Rodin sculpture garden? I was particularly impressed by the casting of his Gates of Hell (which I believe I may have seen in the Rodin exhibition in the NGA quite a few years ago now) - and wandering around the campus made me quiet nostalgic for undergrad life (not like I'm not carefree at the moment, I just loved undergrad). The sheer number of facilities and faculties here is pretty damn impressive. I think I passed a building advertising the faculty of Slavic languages. It really makes the range of what is offered in Australia (well some unis I can't comment for all of them) pale in comparison. So, I have a few days to make up!

However, before I start on the fun I'm having in SF, there were a couple of things I forgot to mention in earlier posts but will now because they are cool (to me at least). Due to my adoration of mountains and my attempts to be vaguely competent at begginer climatology, imagine my delight when I saw the rain shadow effect occuring! This happened twice, once in death valley where I saw the clouds get divided and streak off in varying directions because they mountain peaks of the Panamint range wouldn't let them continue as normal and in Owen's Valley where we saw the Sierra Nevada holding back, all along their range, some pretty nasty looking clouds (apparently that day in Yosemite they got about a foot of snow). It just looked incredible. See australia, this is why there should be some serious tectonic/volcanic activity. Everything would be much cooler, if slightly more dangerous.

SF: "If you're going to San Francisco. Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair"
- Mama's and the Papa's San Francisco
Dear contemporaties. I am sad to say that as of today the 12th of April, your humble narrator has been in San Francisco/Bay area for a total of six days. During these days, at all times, she has failed to wear a flower in her hair.
Well an early start saw me grab a lift with my friend Paul (a fun little 17 year old (that you'd never guess was younger than 23)) to Merced. We wandered around, drank bad coffee and then almost missed the train because of poor signs and the sneaky sneaky fact that the tiny town of Merced has two train lines. Very deceptive. But on the train I went and off Paul went back to Yosemite. Unfortunately my day ended a lot better than Paul's did - I heard from him about two days after he had dropped me off; he'd been driving around in Yosemite and his car slipped on ice and flipped off the road into the forest. The poor thing now has a broken pelvis, femur and his face is a bit messed up due to the fact that his car is old and lacked air bags. The paramedics couldn't believe he was in one piece as his car was completely destroyed. He's going to be fine, is in good spirits, but it's going to take a while to recover totally.

Anyway, the rest of my day was great. I met my first SF host Walee who was just delightful. I dropped my stuff off at her place which was located on the edge of the city centre and a region called the tenderloins (it used to be a butchery district) and headed down the road to the Asian art gallery which had amazing snuff bottle collection (chinese), Indoneasian daggers and Japanese minature carvings (for fun) and samuri collection (clothing, masks and weapons).
After this I caught up with another friend I'd made in yosemite (he was up there with his parents), a fellow originally from Montreal now residing in SF working as a 3d animator. We went out to a lovely asian-fusion place in Haight-Ashbury (there are very distinct suburbs in SF, moving one block along can feel like stepping into a new city entirely) which is where the hippy movement was born and aside from there being a conspicuous smell of pot in the air, it was lovely. Bumped into some of Gab's friends as well (also animators who work for Tidbit? Titbit? I can't remember the name, but they are famous for convincing George Lucas to do something in Jurassic Park that was revolutionary. Anyway they were lovely and had just finished working on the 3rd twilight movie! (At first I was very impressed, but in all fairness every second person you meet here either seems to be working at adobe, at google, at twitter, at bit-torrent (yes they do some things legitimately), facebook or at some small start up company.

Anyway after dinner, we went to pick up Gab's little whippet (it doesn't like being left at home) and Gab gave me a really nice tour of SF in a convertible - not a bad way to see the city and in any case " Cruisin' round SF with a whippet on my lap" has a nice ring to it

I was planning on writing a lot more right not but I have to meet up with the lovely Lauren Hallett so you all will have to wait for more!

Stay tunred for
Day 2 - Exploratorium (us and everyone else), wandering around Presidio. Clothing optional beach. Gum trees everywhere (planted with Monterey Pine and Cyprus to make the park look bigger, now a big weed problem surprise surprise) cemetery, sculpture and inspiration point. CS meet up!
Day 3 - Zip lining hilarity, Chinatown, Coit tower and Alcatraz
Day 4 - Golden Gate Park, the gayest place in the world (seriously), a non David Lynch moment
Day 5 - Frolicking on Angel Island, how America is oddly proud of the wrong things
Day 6 - On a mural mission in "The Mission", getting soaked and bananagrams.

(Day 7 is today in Palo Alto :) Miss you all - new photos up!
B