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MISS YOU – Blink 182
Don’t waste your time on me, You’re already a voice inside my head…I miss you
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Blog post, 19 August 2007
Currently I’m riding along on a full Amtrak train from San Diego. It left at noon and I’m supposed to be arriving in Guadalupe around 9:45pm…I’ve never been on a train that’s been on time, so I’m assuming that I’ll be getting in closer to 10:30 or 11. Oh joy. Hopefully the trip isn’t too bad; I’ve never been on a train that’s remotely full before, and I had some hassles getting my ticket (WTF man…..its FURUKAWA not Surukawa….I mean…even if that’s how you were to pronounce my name, it would be written “Tsuru” instead of “Suru”. This will be the last time I reserve my ticket via phone.) but as Clark would say most of the people on the train are pretty Bougie and I don’t see/hear any small children, so it should be more pleasant than Thursday’s flight.
So, my trip to San Diego. I decided to come to SD one day in July when I was sitting around in Berkeley, absolutely hating summer studio, lonely, devoid of contact with friends outside of Wurster Hall, and complaining to everyone I could find that “I WANT MY SUMMER BACK!” I decided that after summer school, I needed to get the hell out of Berkeley and was persuaded to fly to San Diego instead of going home, getting my car, and driving to the Tofu Festival in Little Tokyo. The environmental impact of me taking a flight instead of driving probably wasn’t very sound…but I’ve only worked six weeks this entire year and money won out on this one. So that’s how I ended up on Southwest Airlines flight 659 last Thursday.
My trip did not get off to a very auspicious start. I woke up half an hour before I had to leave to the airport, stood in the wrong lines and got yelled at for it, set off the metal detectors at the TSA security checkpoint, and left my debit card at home…I think. God I hope I haven’t lost it again for the second time in a month – it pisses me off to know that I basically need someone to follow me around and make sure I don’t lose my shit all the time when I haven’t slept. I’m supposed to be semi-independent after living away from home for two years…supposed to be. The actual flight wasn’t horrible – no delays or anything – but there were several screaming little kids around and the guy sitting next to me was acting oddly. I think he was afraid of flying to a certain degree. I got in a little bit of sleep – 25 minutes worth, but it was energizing enough – and the flight was just long enough to get that “zomg please hurry up and get there already” feeling. I suppose I was a bit anxious to get out of the Berkeley mindset and have some fun.
A friend from high school picked me up from the airport and was waiting for me inside the airport – I assumed he’d just wait at the curb in his truck, but I should have known he’d be nicer than that. We cruised toward downtown, which is bigger than I had expected it to be. Perhaps it’s because it wasn’t foggy, but downtown San Diego seemed less…oppressively crowded compared to Oakland, even though the buildings were probably about the same height in both cities. It’s also a bit more modern. Professor Wright was right (no pun intended) – international style and modern architecture is shitty in Northern California. Maybe I won’t mind grad school at UCLA or (gasp!) SciArch as much as I had thought?
We ate lunch at one of the malls downtown – Horton Plaza - because my friend said I might be able to appreciate the ridiculous architecture. I wish I had taken pictures of the place. It was the most ridiculous, confusing, cartoony piece of postmodern-style design I’ve ever seen. It’s like being in Disneyland or Vegas and nothing is the right scale, the colors are loud and clashing. Ananya would call it CRUDE for sure and I totally agree. The only (and I mean only – we got lost and turned around three times while we were there) nice quality about it is the views it succeeded in framing. Nothing of the beach panorama sort, but it did do a nice job of showing off the surrounding area in a nice way; an international style building and one done up in a Neoclassical façade were showcased thoughtfully. The parking lot that was attached to it was a nightmare too; the “fifth” level started in the middle of one level and went up not one but TWO levels – making trying to find my friend’s truck quite a nightmare!
We left downtown and headed to my friend’s place near SDSU, and I really got to see how large San Diego is. The Bay Area seems to be so much more compacted! As it turns out, the housing stock in the Bay is also the same way; my friend’s room was nice, newly painted, and opened up to a huge backyard w/a nice deck and Jacuzzi. The actual room is probably a tiny bit bigger than the one that Kim and I share, and it had it’s own bathroom that was pretty large and actually had outlets in it (not something you normally care about…but you don’t live on Dana Street, now do you?). Oh, and did I mention it’s practically on the SDSU campus? I really love my new apartment, but it is definitely NOT new, probably not even up to code. I always feel like I’m living in my great grandfather’s place up on the mountain. I’d forgotten that college kids could live in places that aren’t substandard and old.
So yeah, you could say that I’m jealous of San Diegoans to an irrational degree in terms of their housing. AP once told me that it won’t matter if I spent a lot of money or a little bit of money in college, I’ll still have tons of fun either way, but once I get out….if I have any money saved up I would thank myself big time. So, I guess I’ll try to remember that every time I pass by Stadium Plaza and try not to wish I lived somewhere like that.
Okay I’m getting bored of blogging and staring out the window is somehow mildly interesting. I didn’t get to go frolic in the Pacific while I was in San Diego, but the train runs right next to the coast so it’s pretty to look at. I’m thinking that San Clemente would be a nice place to live…I wonder if I’ll ever live my beach-living fantasy. We went to Balboa Park which was pretty (the plant building was this gorgeous work of wood that somehow managed to look delicate but solid), but also boring because everything was closing for the day. Hung out at my friend’s for a while till we got hungry, so he took me to this really nice Mexican restaurant – mariachi band and the whole thing, a lot nicer than most of the hole-in-the-wall taco stands I’d seen around the city. I wasn’t sure how good the food would be since the sketchy places are usually really good, but it turned out to be delicious. My friend treated me, so that made the meal even better. I hadn’t had a real meal in, like, a week. One of my friends in Japan requested that I airmail him a taco…but the food was too good and I finished it all, so my apologies, Chris.
After that more hanging out, a shot or two of everyone’s favorite poison (the one synonymous with TJ), some high school friends came over (one lives at UCSD and the other near La Mesa) and hung out. We didn’t really drink enough to yield any effect, but it was a nice time and we talked about people from home, high school, and what everyone’s up to now. Pretty tame compared to what I was hoping for (and what everyone stereotypes the SDSU area for)…but life’s just full of disappointments.
FRIDAY
I woke up ridiculously late, late enough to miss the tour of the Salk Institute that I had talked my friend into taking me to; but somehow it didn’t seem like that big of a deal to miss. Lying around and doing nothing all day seemed like an okay thing to do; I still hadn’t caught up on the 40+ hours of sleep that I lost over studio in August, and hell I was on VACATION. The whole point is to relax, no? I always hated family vacations when we would just sit around and do nothing, but maybe that’s because I’ve been sitting around doing nothing in Nipomo with my family for the first 17 years of my life…
At any rate, the whole day wasn’t gone, and I was looking forward to going to dinner with one of my Berkeley friends that lives in El Cajon, whom I probably won’t see again until we meet up in Europe this spring. Unfortunately she forgot about a couple of obligations that she had, and basically triple-booked her Friday evening. Kind of a bummer, but I would live; one of the friends that I had met up with the night before had the day off of work, so I figured we could go eat dinner somewhere and wander around the beach during sunset. Then she calls and lets me know that she’s been called into work, so that plan was dead.
This is when I started to freak out, because all of my friends in San Diego were at work until at least 10pm; the friend I stayed with on Thursday had to leave in an hour to go home to Nipas for a family thing. I tried to contact everyone I could think of, but with no luck; so in the end I was forced to chill by myself at my friend’s place until 10:30 when a friend in La Jolla could come pick me up. I generally dislike having to mooch off of people, and I really don’t like burdening people like that, but what else was I to do? My friend was happy to come pick me up and reassured me it was totally fine, and I’m sure he was fine with it, but nonetheless I still felt badly.
Cable TV, internet, a few books lying around, and a comfortable couch made the time fairly pleasant, but the problem was I hadn’t eaten all day and there was nothing in my friend’s fridge besides some tequila, coke, and Gatorade. Being hungry sucks. So does High School Musical 2, which I had on while I was surfing the net until I just couldn’t take it anymore…because it was so horrible and contrived. And horrible. I spent the evening perusing this book that my friend had lying around, attempting to start a web design, and mostly telling some friends in Berkeley how I wasn’t having such a great time because traveling had been a hassle, I was inconveniencing everyone left and right, and now starving. I could have been doing the same thing I was doing at home in Nipomo (family went to Ventura for Friday night and Saturday) and nobody would have been bothered. It was an overall exciting evening…not. By 10:30 I had had enough of the whole “relaxation” idea, and was seriously wondering if it wouldn’t have been better to stay in Berkeley for the weekend.
After my friend got off of work, he took me back to his apartment on the UCSD campus and I met his roommates. Once again, I was a little bit jealous over the quality of housing my friends had, especially since it was University-owned. Why the giant matchboxes known as Units 1, 2, and 3 are still considered a good place to live is beyond me. We made our way to a movie theater not far from campus and watched the 11:25 showing of Superbad. Initially I wasn’t thrilled about going to see it (movies are hella expensive, and I had promised one of my old roommates that I was gonna go see it with her next weekend), but it was definitely worth my $9.50. Clearly everyone else came to see it for the same reason as me, because at one point when Michael Cera’s character was running away in a very awkward manner, the guy behind me exclaimed “Run George Michael, Run!!” The characters in the movie were overdone to a certain extent, but it was an entertaining movie that took my mind off of things, which is what I was paying for. I noticed that Michael Cera looks a lot like this guy that was in my AP stats class back in high school, and a couple of other people agreed with me.
SATURDAY
I spent Friday night on my friend’s couch in his common room, and once again woke up late. I have got to do something about my sleeping habits; going to bed past 2:30 and waking up at 10 is not really what I want to be doing this semester. I made plans to go to lunch with the guy I was staying with and two other girls I went to high school with, took a shower, and hung out with my friend’s roommates a little bit before heading to the SDSU area where we met up w/the girls. Guess what? They have a nice place to live too. That’s all I’ll say about it cause I know you got the point already. We went to this place....I’m not sure where it’s at. Somewhere between Mission Valley and Downtown. It was called Bronx Pizza, and it was fabulous. San Diego seems to have a lot of good eateries, and a lot of them are pretty cheap. SF has tons of great food…but damn it’s expensive a lot of the time and the portions are usually small. Silly fancypants cuisine….that reminds me though, I want to go eat at Butterfly Bistro in San Bruno SOON. Maybe when I hang out with an old friend who’s living in San Jose for the summer we can go there.
We proceeded to go back to my friends’ place, chilled and caught up on more stuff, and then everyone had to be at work by 5pm…so I went back to UCSD and hung out by myself again.
I’d kind of run out of timewasting internet activities to do, because the wifi was kind of slow (no youtubing!), so at one point I actually accepted a random IM invite from some guy on AsianAve. I’m not a fan of the site, but I was just that bored. He’s probably an okay guy in person, but I got annoyed when he asked what nationality I was and assumed I was white when I replied that I’m an American. I was then further annoyed when he asked what I look for in a guy, how come I was single, blah blah. Over IM it seems even more superficial than in person. Later I realized I was more disgruntled over all that though because I truly don’t know what I want in a guy. I want an ideal that’s been embodied in several forms of mass media: movies, tv, and especially music…or that’s what this book I was reading on Friday night informed me.
Luckily my friend’s roomies invited me along for dinner, which was very nice of them. We tried to go to some dining hall, but it had closed 20 minutes earlier so we decided to get into one of the guy’s Honda and go to some sushi place in La Jolla. I remembered when I was downtown and the friend I stayed with the first night pointed out a Japanese place and told me that if I wanted good sushi, that’s where it was at, and instantly wished I was going to dinner with him instead of two people that were pretty much strangers to me. I would have killed for a couple of hours to just have a real open and honest conversation with him.
There was an L&L Hawaiian Barbeque next door, and it reminded me of the time I went to the L&L in San Pablo with the Luau guys. Things have changed a lot since then. These guys weren’t too bad though and we had some semi-awkward but interesting conversations. I didn’t know what to order so I took one of the guy’s advice and ordered the Hawaiian Roll. It was alright, but it had crab in it and I don’t care for crab (esp. the fake kind), so it wasn’t as good as it could have been. The presentation was nice though, and the salad one of the guys got was HUGE and smelled really good. The other guy had spent part of his summer in Japan, and we talked a little bit about Japan. Of course, it made me wonder what the JET kids were up to. I probably came off really weird to these guys cause I spent half the evening thinking about other people and remembering memories, instead of living in the moment with them. I tried to shake it off though, and we went to Ralphs to bug my friend who works there. After picking up a book on Vodka (one of the guys decided he’d like to become a bartender, haha) we headed back to the UCSD campus. Instead of partaking in a game of Risk, however, they had to get back to studying Chemistry because they were both still in summer school. I guess the stereotypes about UCSD weekend nightlife is true…I would be a completely different person if I had gone to school at UCSD! SD’s not all bad though; everything is less than 50 years old most of the campus is newer than 15 years old, and its close to the beach. It’s car friendly too…which is good, because the campus is waaaaaaay spread out.
After my friend got off of work, he informed me that some of his friends were having a party that we had to go to. We also got a call from our friends at SDSU that we’d seen in the afternoon, and were invited to one of their co-workers for a bit of fun as well. We went to the UCSD party first, where I didn’t know anyone. It wasn’t too awkwrd though; I knew their type – most of them were student body senators, RAs, tour guides, or otherwise affiliated with the university, so I just tried to pretend I was with the ASUC crowd. One of the guys I met looked like my friend’s little brother…it’s weird how familiar looking people pop up all the time. After a tall screwdriver we ventured back to SDSU area, where I met my friends’ apartment-mates. I took way too many pictures because it apparently gets easier to take pictures when you’ve got some Captain in you. We laughed about a bunch of stuff, talked, and had a generally good time, and I definitely got my drink on.
SUNDAY
At some point I went back to UCSD with my friend, and I woke up at 10am again…too late to go have one last meal with my hs friends. I was disappointed, but more worried about getting to the train station and all that jazz. At the expense of NO breakfast of any sort, I arrived at the station about 35 minutes before my train was scheduled to depart. The station was FULL of people – something I’ve never seen at Amtrak – and I had a hard time getting my ticket, so it’s a good thing I got there early. I said thank you and goodbye to my friend, got on the train, and hurried to find a seat on the “standing room only” train. Critique of the train: It’s slow, but at least you’re not sitting in traffic and it’s a more enjoyable way to spend 8 hours than if I were on a plane for 8 hours. Seeing all the beach towns between the OC and San Diego was nice too. The food was way shittier than on the Capital Corridor trains, and I have a feeling the interiors hadn’t been redone as recently as the CC trains. Plus, there’s no freakin internet!
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This is the first trip that I’ve taken where most things were un-planned. I did that on purpose cause I didn’t want to have to rush and fit too much stuff in. Lesson learned: planning SOMETHING out is a good idea. Oh well though. I definitely forgot about school, got out of the fog, and was able to relax amongst friends and new acquaintances. Spending time with my high school friends made me realize all over again how alone I get to feeling in Berkeley. NOTHING replaces these people…I almost wish I hadn’t been in such a hurry to get out of town and off to fancypants school two years ago. I wonder how much of that mentality - the academics – was pushed by my teachers and family. Is it possible I’m a victim of the stereotypical asian parents too??
I also spent a good deal of my alone time trying to insert myself into different lives – or rather, a massively long game of “what-if”. I did this after my first trip to Cal Poly, and concluded that there was no way I’d have liked it as much as Cal. Could I have been happier in San Diego? Probably not. But damn that grass on the other side is so green….
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