Prepare for dial-up laptop blog #2!
It turns out that mark gave the 1-866 dial-up number out to a few people, so something like 1/7 connection attempts succeeds. So, when I am able to connect, I'm motivated to stay on for a really long time and tie up my phone line. I apologize for any busy-signals, not that anyone's trying to call me or anything. Speaking of contacting me at my new location, I just found out that hannah has been holding her mail at the post office, so the numerous care packages of cookies and dried meats that have doubtlessly been sent won't be available to me until around the 5th of may, when hannah returns and collects her, and my, mail.
Today, I went on an interview, and walked around 'the city' a bit. It involved putting on clothing that I never wear under normal circumstances, and a 1.5 hour commute. I walked 1.5 miles to the BART, and then took a 40 minute ride to downtown. Then, a short walk. So, pain and death. But it could be worse, eh? I could be dying of leprosy on the surface of cold and airless pluto. Bad example -- that would be interesting enough to compensate, I think.
I had an 'adventure' yesterday, or 'a series of anxiety attacks', as I usually prefer to signify the referent. I jotted them down in my day planner last night, so I could blog them out later and tell the world of my hurt.
I had a dinner appointment in mark's place in berkeley at 7pm. I, as you maybe know, live in concord. Check out the distance on mapquest if you want. I had hannah's ford escort, the wheel of which was making a worrisome squeak. The other day, that same wheel almost fell off on the highway with mark driving, so I thought of that while it squeaked. Nevertheless, I wanted to drive the car over to berkeley as opposed to taking the BART, because I had laundry I wanted to do at mark's. I didn't want to shlepp a plastic garbage bag full of dirty clothes on the subway; I already looked enough like a bum.
I basically drove all over the northern bay area freeway system, exiting at strange places, driving around odd little suburbs and pipe-and-factory-ridden sections of oakland, finding gas stations at which to ask directions, and then getting back on the freeway. After it was all over, I'd stopped at three different gas stations, and made something like 20 u-turns.
Because I was concentrating on navigating around the bay area, I was literally almost killed by a car that very nearly t-boned me at something like 50 mph. It was the old 'mistake a two-way stop for a four-way stop' problem, and it fooled me into crossing a road when I shouldn't have. As I did, another car roared by literally a few feet in front of me. I didn't see him.
At a gas station in almeda (random suburb), I discovered that I'd forgotten my wallet when I endeavored to get a few bucks of gas, and maybe buy a comfort-coke. So, I paid $5 in change, and filled up a bit. I realized that had I been pulled over, it would have been an administrative headache. But I wasn't. I sat there in hannah' s car at the gas station, wallet-less, just thinking and crying to myself for about 30 minutes. I thought that maybe it had been stolen just then, from the parked car, while I was asking directions.
More u-turns, gas stations and highway turn-abouts later, I finally arrived at the traffic circle leading to some neighborhood roads, somewhere in which lay mark and wei's house. I drove around the circle 3 or 4 times, looking for the road noted on my directions. It wasn't there. In fact, the directions mark had given me were oversimple, incomplete and just plain wrong in places ('don't use mapquest! I know the route better!').
I decided to nose around in the berkeley neighborhood and take my chances. Somehow, miraculously, I found a road mentioned in my questionably useful directions. So, I got to mark's house and parked by the side of the road, after a 2.5 hour, unbearably stressful drive, during which I did a lot of screaming and crying.
When I got to mark and wei's place and latched on to their high-speed internet, I soon discovered that my email was non-functional, because my UNIX/email/blog-provider was installing some new software, and a few dependencies were made inoperable. So, I couldn't do the resume-related stuff I'd been planning.
Dinner was stuffed peppers and ice cream, and was good. Mark and wei are good company.
Mark and wei offered to drop me off at the north berkeley BART station on their way to a tennis court. As we left, I realized that my laundry was still wet. I had to leave it there, and planned to get it later, somehow. Mark gave me a farecard to use, since I didn't have mine -- it was in my forgotten wallet. Mark and wei left me at 'north berkeley' station, and I tried to enter the BART gates. The card mark had given me didn't work. I presented the card to the attendant,and he told me that my card had been demagnetized, that I could mail it in to redeem it, and that I'd need to buy a new one for $3.10. I didn't have my wallet, remember.
So, I called mark's cell phone. He didn't pick up. I left a message. I sat there, on the bench outside the north berkeley BART station, starting to get cold, not having any more ideas. I considered calling gorby in south bay, or maybe just my mom for some comfort as I froze to death. Finally, I re-approached the attendant and told him my story. He was sympathetic, and gave me an emergency voucher for $3.10.
I changed lines at mccarthy station. It's an outdoor station, and it was starting to get really cold. I paced, trying to generate heat. I got off the subway at concord station, and asked that attendant for some walking directions. He gave them to me, but didn't seem entirely confident.
I started walking in the dark, and asked a few people en route if they knew which direction was west. Predictably, I wound up at a gas station (i think that made four), where a trucker was filling the tanks. After talking to him, I was reasonably sure that I had walked in the wrong direction, and was now further from the apartment; it was close to 2 miles away now. At that point I decided to call a taxi, especially because my sandaled feet were getting bad blisters, just from the half-mile walk from the BART to that gas station.
I used my last $.50 at a pay phone. Of course the call didn't connect, and I lost my money. I burst out, 'I'm fucked!' as I passed the trucker at the beginning of a long walk. He took pity, and lent me his cell phone. I re-dialed the cab company, which didn't serve concord. They gave me a number for one that did, which I tried to remember for the next call. I remembered it.
I stood on the corner, waiting. When the cab arrived, I decided to wait until I got home before I told the cabbie that I had no money, and would have to get my wallet that was presumably inside, unless it had been stolen at almeda, which I thought was a possibility. When we got to the apartment, I told him the first part. He seemed ok with it -- I guess this happens a fair bit.
I couldn't find my wallet in the apartment. I searched frantically, trying to turn on hannah's weird configuration of lamps, unattached to wall-switches. At that point, I was certain my wallet had been stolen in almeda, while I asked directions and possibly had left the door unlocked (why didn't they steal the laptop? Why didn't they just take my whole bag? I didn't know. The crooks were crafty).
I went back outside and downstairs, and again attempted to rely upon the kindness of strangers.
'Why you call cab, you no have money, my friend?' said the arab driver. 'You give ID?' I had lost my wallet. 'You ask your friend (neighbors)?' I said I would try. I went back up the stairs, knocked on the door of the dark apartment next to mine, and waited for a few minutes. It was about 11:30pm on a weeknight, pretty well past the bounds of decent visiting hours. No-one came out.
I re-entered my apartment, searched more carefully, and found my unstolen wallet under a pile of clothes. When I went down the stairs, yet again, to pay the cabbie, I saw that he had given up and left. For some reason, I really wanted to pay him, maybe because I didn't want him to drive off thinking I was just another deceptive asshole post-adolescent bum, or maybe because I feared repercussions (I'd given him my apartment number).
So, I called the cab company, and explained. The dispatcher was really nice about it, and told me the cabbie would be back at the apartment in 1-2 minutes. I waited outside for him, clutching $10, for 10 minutes. He didn't show.
I re-dialed the dispatcher, and more or less yelled at the poor woman that I wanted to pay my cabbie. She told me that this time, she'd call me when he was in front of my door. She called after another 5 minutes or so, and I went outside. He wasn't there. I waited a few more minutes in the empty street, and finally saw him drive up.
The cabbie was grateful and probably quite surprised that I gave him his fare plus a 50% tip. If nothing else, I improved this sour old cabbie's view of human nature.
I went inside, and briefly thought I'd lost my wallet again before finding that I'd put it in my bag (my memory goes out the window when I'm under stress). Before bed, I tore mark's inaccurate driving directions into tiny pieces. Then, I furiously wrote up a draft of this blog in my day planner.
Before I close, I want to mention something that I like to call 'anti-mapquest technophobic mannishness', or AMTM.
'No! Don't use mapquest. Mapquest is always wrong! I know the route much better!'
Of course, NO ONE ever knows the route better than mapquest. And yet this phenomenon continues; people go on accepting the awful driving directions of others because others insist on providing them, and they ALWAYS turn out to be a great deal less accurate, efficient and complete than mapquests's. This is not to mention that mapquest gives mileages on particular roads, so the driver can literally 'fly by his instruments', and basically not have to keep an eye out for tiny little street signs in the dark. I'm not angry at mark at all -- I'm angry at myself for not recognizing an obvious instance of AMTM.
Finally, I played the guitar for a few minutes and went to bed. I had to get up for an interview less than eight hours later.
Where there's a will, there's a way.
I'm currently lying on the carpet in hannah's/my apartment, listening to 'bach organ favorites' on her little, egg-shaped stereo. It's cute and egg-like. Peter left for portland today, as he maybe should have done a while ago. He recently had a baby boy, his daughter is going through her 'terrible twos', and his wife has been somewhat left in a lurch, except that some of her family are there. But still, I guess he should be there too.
This means that I'm here, in concord, the furthest outpost of what can arguably called 'the bay area', all alone and languishing in some subsidized housing in the yellow light of domestic night-time. I guess tomorrow I'll call some of the temp agencies on the list I printed out at mark and wei's house the other day.
The internet connection here is pretty funny -- it's a 1-866 number that mark set up for his mother, that connects to a server at his workplace. Mark's one of these IT geniuses, and I have no idea what he's doing. Anyway, the upshot is that I'm connecting via modem at 24kbps. Not only that, but the connection isn't at all reliable, and tends to cut out unexpectedly.
Mark was good enough to lend me his mother's car as well as a bike (not to mention food, high-speed internet, company, etc). So, I think a strong-willed, assertive person would have no problem venturing out into the bay area and conquering this little crescent-shaped world. I think the best I'll be able to do is call some temp agencies, and hope I can get some jobs that aren't too painful to get to. Or, maybe other jobs.
I can't help but think of tales of 19th century entrepeneurs who arrived on ellis island with $10 in their pocket and turned it, over 5 years, into a multi-million dollar dog food cannery or something like that. I also think of gorby, who arrived here in 1999 via cross-country Greyhound bus, and slept in a san francisco youth hostel for months, working as a bike messenger.
I think the fundamental difference between me and these people is that they see life as an ongoing adventure -- a game of sorts, in which the consequences of losing really aren't all that dire. And I guess they're not, ultimately; the worst thing that's going to happen is you'll die, cold, hungry and sick, on the street. But I guess this is unlikely in america, and especially unlikely in america with a support network.
With a few fleeting exceptions, I tend to see life more as a never-ending and ruthless jungle full of spiked pits and angry natives (sorry -- indigenous peoples). Life, for me, is a constant struggle and series of anxiety attacks. I guess that this attitude is a combination of learned behavior and innate brain structure, like most things.
Most seem to have good, fluidly-reasoned ideas of what to do, and I sense that the normal, motivated person would have no problems getting a job here. Peter told me that the bay area is absolutely overflowing with jobs, and that it's very easy to get one. Ie, if you can't make it here, you can't make it anywhere. I think I'm just not one of those people who 'takes life by the horns', rushing out and making excited plans that are in sync with the pulsating internetwork of resource-exchange. I'd rather just sit around.
Another problem is that there are just too many options: temp agency? Permanent job? Gigs on craigslist.org (bypass the agencies)? Where in the bay area? I'm in concord now, but I might soon be in berkeley. This area is truly enormous, and it's intimidating.
I find myself asking people 'what specific thing should I do next?' I think this is a bad way to approach things, but right now I'm just too overwhelmed to do much else.
This evening I called everyone I know here: Peter as he was en route to portland, somewhere along route 5 north of sacremento, mark in berkeley, gorby in sunnyvale, and my aunt nancy in nappa. I think it wouldn't be too tough to get to nappa for a visit, especially if I have hannah's car, as well as an unreliable, slow, but nevertheless extant internet connection to check mapquest for a nice route from east bay to north bay. I hope I don't have to cross any bridges -- they creep me out for some reason.
There are many crane flies here, those freakish bugs that look exactly like giant mutant mosquitos. I was using mark's bathroom the other day when I saw the biggest crane fly I've ever seen, flapping against the tiled wall. I completely flipped out, leapt up off the pot, and emitted a few shrieks when it started attacking me. Really, it was just flying around in a confused way, but it was still a horrible experience. The worst part was when it flew between my legs while I had my underwear around my ankles. Terrible, terrible.
In reality, the things are sort of cute and pathetic, in a way. The adults of most species don't eat at all, having consumed all of the nutrients they need in their adult life while they are larvae. They're terrible, clumsy fliers, and are easily caught by birds and people. Their long, spindly legs break off very easily. So, they're these big, horrible-looking, totally harmless things, flying around with no mouthparts, looking for other crane flies to have sex with. But I don't care -- they still horrify me, and I kill them with large books when they get inside and flap against the wall, casting satanic shadows in the evening lamplight and making chilling noises of exoskeletal insect-parts scraping against the drywall.
I read that in the tropics they can have abdomens that are 10cm long. I don't even want to think about this.
A friend of peter's took me down a hill in san francisco to look out over the pacific. We were surrounded by odd and unfamiliar plants, and they emitted a strange, pleasant odor not dissimilar to fritos, dirty socks, and that certain kind of asian rice, except a little sweeter and more floral. Peter's friend smelled overpoweringly of alcohol and cigarettes, so I tried to keep turned away from him.
California is very different than Maryland, plant and tree-wise. For one thing, there's absolutely no smell of flora in the air, even in the middle of a natural park. The one and only exception I've noticed were the dirty sock-flowers down by the pacific the other night. the countryside looks like a giant golf course, with smooth, grassy hills peppered with trees in little aesthetic clumps; it looks like it was designed by an interior decorator. Contrast this to Maryland, which is just out-of-control, in terms of geenery. It's dryer here, so plant life is aesthetic as opposed to oppressive.
Someone might be trying to call me here, which would be nice, seeing as I'm lonely in concord, so I think I'll disconnect from the internet while I type up this blog in microsoft notepad. But I have to do more than that! I have to yank the phone cord out of the laptop, and plug it back into the cordless phone (there's no splitter here). This is really quite an experience after three years of cable modem. But it's sort of fun, in a way -- analogous to camping out after spending a month in the hilton.
But aren't you creeped out by the fact that I can blog from anywhere? I am mighty. Also, I can edit candocanal.org from anywhere. I've done so on the west coast twice: once at peter's office, and once at mark's house, with only microsoft notepad and internet explorer (using it for both ftp and http protocols). I could even edit candocanal.org from here, if I was forced. I'd just dial up, grab the necessary pages, disconnect, edit the pages offline, check them in a browser offline, re-connect, and upload them. I feel like I'm back in the good ol' days.
I'm really quite nervous about the job situation. As I anticipated, 99.99% of listed jobs that I am qualified to do are restaurant, retail, or administrative assistant. Peter tells me of temp jobs that involve data entry and other semi-menial computer tasks, but I can't seem to find any. I'll give it another college try tomorrow. Also, hannah is moving out of this place in about two weeks, at which point I'll have to decide if I should follow her to a new apartment in berkeley and continue to live with her, get my own place (if I have a job by then, and can afford the 'move in' fee), or fly back to gaithersburg and get my car. So, I don't know -- it's all really up in the air at this point.
All I know is that I'm in concord, california, sitting cross-legged in an apartment with a laptop on my lap and bach organ music in the background.
Also, as I was reminded when I reached for the phone cord just now, I really hurt my arm the other day, dancing in my weird way at a club. Then, I made it worse at mark's place, doing yard work. Now, I can't even role down the car window. It's really pretty messed up.
So, here I am in the bay area. I can't think of much to say beyond that, although I guess I could detail my two environments here: hannah's apartment in concord, shared with peter, and mark and wei's house in berkeley.
It's been so long since I've blogged that I feel rusty and out-of-practice. Also, I'm in a strange new environment, as opposed to sitting in the black office chair, rolling on a thick plastic sheet indented under the wheels, in the corner of the living room, monitor perched on a dusty, filmy, crumb-littered, fake-wood computer table. To my right were blue wicker boxes and the wall. In front of me were the computer and another wall, on which hung black-and-white photographs of my mom and me, dating from the late 70s. To my left and behind me lay the expanses of my gaithersburg home, with my electric guitar/amp/pedals nearby to the right and the television nearby behind me. Somewhere off to my southwest was the kitchen, with it's improperly-oriented refrigerator door.
Now, I'm in mark and wei's office/study, typing up a blog on one of his two flat-screen monitors. With two monitors, I can devote an entire screen to a UNIX environment, and use the other for browser windows. It's a nice setup. For a few days now, I've been having dinner over here. Today, Peter left me here while he went into work (he goes in once a week or so), so I'm doing internet today, maybe for a long time if I can stand it. I've been looking on craigslist.org for pretty much all things (job, place to stay if need be, bike, amp, personal ads-browsing). All of these are discouraging, except for the amp -- I found one for $40, which includes delivery to hannah's apartment (or here, to berkeley -- I haven't decided which). I don't want to utterly encroach on mark and wei's house, but I think maybe it's understood that a social support network goes into action sympathetically when it's client first moves. Certainly they'd get annoyed if I spent all day here, blogging.
I'm sharing hannah's apartment with peter. It's quite a lot like gaithersburg, but not as precisely as I'd predicted. Everything is within sort of reasonable walking distance, unlike g-burg, which is spread out unbearably. Even so, I've borrowed a bike from mark and wei. Truly, I'm going to end up owing them big time, although I did a lot of yard work yesterday. I might even run outside today and do some more while everyone is at work.
Hannah's apartment is unconventional. It would be emaculately clean, except that Peter had been living there, and now I'm living there, so our stuff ends up cluttering the whole place. Hannah makes all of her furniture out of plywood, boxes, shelf-paper, velcro, etc, and there are things like dioramas of ripped-out calendar photos and big cheesy tapestries of little kids with horses everywhere. Hannah doesn't have a job, and so keeps herself busy with home 'improvement'. After x months of this, her apartment is more crowded than any one I remember seeing. One of the weirdest things in it is a little, cut-out picture of a burning fireplace taped to the microwave door. There's only one trashcan in the whole house, which is totally choked with houseplants. Toilet-paper was installed for Peter and me, but it's not normally used. The whole setup is sort of anti-feng shui.
But, it's warm and it's free, which is more than I could or should ask for.
Mark and wei's place is classy in a california sort of way, with windsurfing boards, power tools, a chinese zither, a piano and oil paintings sitting and hanging around a sunlit room in such a way that even an electric drill on the dining table looks like it's supposed to be there. Just outside there's a balcony, from which there is a truly unbelievable view of the bay area; it looks like something from a 'better homes and gardens' magazine. The golden gate bridge is across the bay and directly in front of the observer. At night, it's even more spectacular.
Now, I'm in mark and wei's study, which is full of a complicated and impressive network of computers, faxes, printer, tangles of wires, and flat-screen monitors. There are frightening books on the shelves ('administering SQL server 2000', 'quantitative methods for investment analysis', 'europe: a history', various books with chinese characters on them, 'perry's chemican engineer's handbook', 'lolita', etc). There's also a weight bench, kitty litter box, and miniature portable guitar here. A webcam stares at me as I type.
I've met friends of peter, met up with an old friend who is paranoid about being mentioned on the web, went to a club where I talked with breakdancers, and hung around in 'the city', looking at bike shops. The bike-shop-trip was made on my own: I took the light rail from concord to san francisco (~40 minutes), and from there took the trolley/bus/something to the bike shop neighborhood. After determining that fold-up bikes were expensive and stupid, I walked to haight-asbury, and was offered drugs, probably around 10 times ('green buds, green buds'). I walked through golden gate park and onto 'hippie hill'. Coincidentally, it was the 20th of April, and nearly approaching 4:20pm.
For those of you unhipsters, '420' is an all-inclusive marijuana reference, supposedly named after some city's criminal code for possession. To gauge an acquaintance's drug experience, one might say, for instance, 'what are your thoughts on the number 420?', or something along those lines. A question like that was mailed to me by some girl on match.com a few months back. I didn't answer.
At 4:20pm, the hippies and pseudohippies stopped playing frisbee and beating on congas, cheered wildly, and lit up. The entire hill was awash in pot smoke -- truly something to behold.
So, lots of things. It's amazing how long weekends last when one does things aside from sitting on the computer. It might sound like it, but it's still way too early to tell if this (temporary?) move constitutes an overall improvement in quality of life. The biggest problem ahead of me is certainly income.
Anyway, this entry should hold readers for a while. I don't know how often I'll get the opportunity to sit at mark's desk, alone and undisturbed, while he and wei toil away in san francisco. I should really do some yard work, and also browse the web for pages on medford, oregon, to which I might be moving shortly. It's crazy.
I spend enough time in one other environment to justify its mention: peter's truck. I've been shuttled back and forth, back and forth in a roughly 30 minute drive, from hannah's apartment in concord to the house in berkeley, in the cab of peter's beat-up red ford pickup. A white plastic cap (on which is mounted a windsurf rack) covers the bed, which is full of random stuff (camera equipment, blankets, pillows, food, etc). In the cab, Peter transmits music on his ipod to the truck's surprisingly-pretty-good stereo. The music is mostly familiar, my having heard it come out of peter's stereos for 15 or 16 years now.
Please wish me luck; I'm a west coast gangsta now.