I've had the best food I've ever ate in my life (I made it to Chow this morning (e:ajay)! also for dinner we went to House of Nanking, which was ludicrously good imo and let the chef/owner/dictator choose the menu), I've been smoking the best Cali has to offer, I've been taking in the great weather, visited City Lights, I've spent time in the Mission, the Castro, upper/lower Haight, Noe Valley, Cole Valley, the Presidio, North Beach, Chinatown, went to the top of Buena Vista Park, went on an 8-hour pub crawl - SF your drinks are fucking cheap for the rent you make people pay. I feel like I'm forgetting things but I've had the absolute best time I've ever had in a city I've traveled to for work. If it weren't for the seismic juju you'd be perfect. I can't really even summarize it effectively so I'll just say thank you SF for being good to me - I've never had a better and more positive introduction to a city. I can't wait to check out the Ferry Building and the cafes in North Beach. I'm not sure where I felt more at home, but I think I was most comfortable in the Haight. SF you have decent political discourse at night on KGO too!

I don't know what I'll do but the places I'm auditing this week are Chinese-owned garment makers. We had to hire a translator because none of the workers speak English, but the lady we hired seems really nice. I got my feet wet bumping around using Muni. I got my weekly pass and I'm good to go - the F line is a block away and will be my main way around until its time to go home. So, for now here is a handful of pictures... if things continue as they have I'm going to get a great picture of the Golden Gate Bridge and maybe maybe maybe I'll go to the top of Coit Tower or the bar in Sir Francis Drake Hotel for some pictures. I take all the credit for the great weather!



City Lights Bookstore - a bit of a pilgrimage for me... I draw a lot of inspiration from the Beats.



Cool and famous - me and the sign!



Haight Ashbury - the district and the corner. This is the view from my friends' front step.



710 Ashbury St. - the Grateful Dead house. I felt bad for the tourists who took pictures in front of 610 holding up peace signs.



Haight and Waller St. - and my buddy Jonas who had no idea he was going to make a cameo in my blog tonight.

I made some pretty savvy purchases as well. I went to Amoeba and got my dad a copy of a movie called "Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony", which is a documentary about the freedom music of South Africa and how it sustained the soul of the black population during Apartheid - it won the 2002 Sundance Viewer's Choice Award and African music, which my dad loves, is at the center of the whole thing. I think it was better than getting him a blue-ray copy of The Aviator.

I also got three packs of different rolling papers, which I let my boy Jonas choose for me. I picked up a shoulder bag from the army navy surplus on Haight - the store in Buffalo is 10x the size and did not have what I wanted and this store did! I also bought three books at City Lights - a copy of a book by Simon Winchester (at the suggestion of my friend Anna's brother Andrew) called "A Crack In The Edge Of The World," which is an account of the quake and fire in 1906 and how it has impacted American history. The pictures make you realize how foolish it was for humans to have settled on this peninsula. City Lights also has its own publishing arm and I felt strongly about supporting their efforts, so I picked up a copy of The Yage Letters, which is constructed from letters between William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg describing to each other their experiences monkeying around with strange native American drugs. Also on the suggestion of Anna, since I told her I like short stories, I picked up a copy of "The Elephant Vanishes" by Haruki Murakami.

Whenever the people in the office are irritating you, remember that you saw this -



Yeehaw!

1953 - 2007



Seeing this sort of thing deeply saddens me. Despite her somewhat seedy and allegedly corrupt past she had the important things right, and for a country that needs an inspirational anchor I'm afraid that they've now lost their anchor. I'm also afraid of a catastrophic, violent, extremely bloody backlash occurring as a result of this assassination. We have a satellite office in Pakistan and I worry about the safety of our colleagues there. This is a terrible event.

SF peeps:

The auditing gods (and my boss) have smiled upon me - three audits popped up within San Fransisco to be completed and the company is going to send me, starting ideally on the 7th of January. Given that everything works in my favor, I'll likely be in San Fransisco starting the weekend after New Year's Day to sample the local flavors before I actually have to work.

If all audits are within San Fran city limits I am wondering if its wise at all to rent a car. I suppose I won't really know until I see the exact location of the facilities I will visit, but if its easier/less of a hassle to get around using public transport I'd really like to know where I could find a resource about the public transportation system. Gimme some pro's/con's. I'm told San Fran is only second to NYC in terms of population density, so I am assuming that taking a car around SF is a major hassle.

In either case I'm looking forward to visiting my friends there, since they just announced their engagement. How sweet of an opportunity is it to be able to congratulate them and take them out for a drink in person?

Canada has the fucking bomb candy. Before I get into that however, I have to mention something. I had to go to Brampton, aka Bramladesh, on Tuesday for a day trip and before I crossed back over I stopped into the duty free. Guys, if you didn't know, they now sell bottles of absinthe for 69 bucks a liter - I couldn't believe it! I had to know if this was legal so I asked an employee. Apparently this stuff may have less of the wormwood in it, but as always and to sneak in a weed analogy, you better smoke the schwag when you can't get your hands on the sticky shit. In any case, this is apparently a totally legal brand to bring over the border after visiting the duty free... if you are so inclined.

What shouldn't be legal, however, is the ridiculous assortment of alcoholic chocolate that they stock in there. I brought back a 100g Swiss Grand Marnier truffle bar. Its enough to make a grown man cry my friends. This stuff is like individual bits of chocolate glory. If glory could be made into candy, it would be like this. I also saw some Cuervo stuff, various Canadian maple candies, other truffle bars including Mumm, Jack Daniels and a thousand other things. I didn't see any Kinder bars, which was total bullshit. They had a candy bar called Mr. Big, which was literally the size of my forearm. I can't figure out why it is that Canadians don't have teeth rotting out of their mouths en masse. Then again, anybody that ate this stuff on a regular basis would be bowling ball shaped and rotten teeth would be the least of their problems.

The booze seemed a tad expensive, but they had a great set of Johnny Walker ultrapremium blends - 4 separate bottles in a case. $200. If I had $200 to utterly and completely waste I'd be a Johnny Walker Blue Label drinking mofaka! The flavored Smirnoffs were a good deal though - $14 a bottle. It seemed to me that the scotch bottles were $10 more expensive than they should have been, and it had nothing to do with the exchange rate, which incidentally is now slightly back in our favor. The beer selection was poor and too expensive. The only thing I was even remotely tempted to buy was Alexander Keith's - the rest of the selection is commonly available in Buffalo. I think you'd be better off trying one of their government-run beer stores if you wanted a better selection, but remember - the Canadians take it in the pooper and beer is generally more expensive to begin with. You better want that beer bad. Actually, now that I really consider it, screw the beer altogether.

They had a respectable variety of tobacco available. Last week I snuck back a Cuban and enjoyed the everliving hell out of it while watching the Bills crush Miami. Of course, there are no Cubans available at the duty free, but they had a decent variety of cigars at reasonable prices. Where Canada loses the plot are with its cigarettes - I've found that Canadians are proud of their smokes but they are like smoking sawdust wrapped in construction paper. They are horrible... I have no way to be polite about it. They make Indian cigs seem high quality in comparison. Feel free to look and be amused at not only their price but the Canadian penchant for graphic pictures of black lungs, etc. that they put on the labels.