REUNION, 3RD DAY
Last night, at 9:30 p.m., I walked on down from the hotel all the way to the AMC METREON 16. I did so because Fandango doesn't have any Thursday movie listing for this theatre at all. And I wanted to treat my cousin and his family to an advanced screening of CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER. What I learned was that Bill Gates reserved the theatre for the whole day! And I don't even think that he lives here in San Francisco. That was so selfish and inconsiderate of him to do so. I swear, some people with tons of money don't have better things to do other than to flaunt there enormous wealth at the rest of us, the 99%. We should do a protest, an "Occupy Microsoft!" protest.
Later, I went up and down Market Street looking for a newspaper dispenser which has free copies of The Epoch Times. I finally found one.
And with that taken care of, I went to the 7-Eleven near the corner of Sutter and Kearny Streets to buy a litre of 7-Eleven bottled water and a bottle of Kombucha Multi-Green drink.
It was at around 12:30 a.m. today when I got back to my hotel room.
And I stayed up until past 4:00 p.m. because I couldn't get on the Internet to do my blog right away because my free Wi-FI access was so slow! Using Dial-Up would have been faster.
I copied and pasted the following blog from my Facebook page which is why some of the paragraphs and sentences are not formatted correctly. And I am not about to waste my time fixing it because I thought copying and pasting it from my Facebook page would save me the trouble of having to write the whole thing all over again. But I'm just gonna leave it the way it is. Sorry ....
We stepped out of the hotel after 11:00 a.m. to go to a Chinese buffet for lunch. But, first, we went to
The Galleria on Sutter Street to check out the shopping center and the farmer's market's produce
items all displayed by assorted vendors. My cousin and his wife told me that the shopping malls and
shopping centers in the Philippines are much nicer looking.
I then took my cousin, Alan, and his family for lunch at a Chinese buffet restaurant near the corner of
Geary and Kearney Streets here in San Francisco, CA.
Then, we took BART Train to downtown Oakland. The outside area of the 12th Street BART Train
Station in Oakland has changed so much since I last visited this place back in August of 2002. It is
much nicer now. I didn't recognize the area anymore as it looked completely alien to me. I had to ask a
stranger to tell me where Broadway Avenue was just so I could get my bearings back. We
walked the stretch from 10th Street to 20th Street along Broadway Avenue.
We got back on BART Train at the 19th Street Station to go to Downtown Berkeley.
I told them that there used to be a parade here in Berkeley every last Sunday of September that would
wend from University Avenue to Shattuck Avenue which would have completely naked people ( except
for shoes ) join in the parade.But they don't have the notorious parade anymore. Darn it!
And I added that there used to be a UC Berkeley student that would walk on campus and the
downtown area and would attend all of his classes butt-naked. I think that he died of hypothermia one
cold winter night! Ha, ha, ha.
We went to the front entrance of UC Berkeley and sat in the semi-circular bench across from the
entrance. While we rested there, we hand-fed 3 squirrels who were expecting some freebies when
they saw my niece, Rosean, with a pack of Philippine brand saltine crackers in her hand.
Then, we went to the MacDonald's Restaurant on the corner of Shattuck and University Avenues.
There was an old white woman who probably hasn't showered in well over a year who just stank-up
the bathroom before we could get a chance to use it. And, when the stinky little old white woman
walked by me, I almost vomited.
When we got back to San Francisco, we went to the Westfield Shopping Center to do
some shopping. My nieces checked-out some custom I-Phone cases before they went to H & M to
shop for some clothes.
As we started walking back to the hotel, we decided to walk in the Levi's Jeans store nearby. It used
to be that Levi's were all made here in San Francisco. But a helpful and informative clerk told me that
it is all outsourced now to Los Angeles, CA, and to some countries in Europe, and to Turkey, also.
'Noticed that I didn't mention "Made in China"---Yay! Here are the pictures that I took of today's trip:
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I was gonna have us all catch a train at the Montgomery BART Train Station but I anticipated that the
train would be full by then. So, we just walked back a few blocks to catch a train in the Powell Street
BART Train Station. There were homeless men lying around on the subway floor.
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I tried my mini laser flashlight on the birds and the squirrels. I think that the birds could not see it. But a
squirrel approached me when I shone my laser in front of it.
-
-
We got off at the Powell Street BART Train Station and went to the Westfield Shopping Center. On
the way, I put a dollar in a street musician's guitar case.
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While we waited for my cousin's wife and daughters to get done with their shopping, my cousin and I stood outside on the sidewalk. There was a newspaper rack outside the store. I thought it an opportune time to finally try one of my Samsung Galaxy Mega's apps, a foreign written word translator. My cousin said to try the English-to-Cebuano ( our native language ) translation on a particular headline. The translation read: "Lapok ( mud ) Balay ( house ) Linog ( earthquake ) Nasod ( nation )." It read like how a Chinese would speak Cebuano! No wonder, my Samsung Galaxy Mega was assembled in China. Ha, ha, ha.
I would translate the above to this: Nalubong sa Lapok and mga Balay sa Linogon Nasod ( English: Houses are buried in mud ( i.e. mudslide ) in earthquake country.
I told my cousin that I should go and interrupt Bill Gate's conference--or movie-watching--and tell him to hire me to improve their foreign written word translator for English-to-Cebuano. Then, we both laughed about it.
*
I copied and pasted the following blog from my Facebook page which is why some of the paragraphs and sentences are not formatted correctly. And I am not about to waste my time fixing it because I thought copying and pasting it from my Facebook page would save me the trouble of having to write the whole thing all over again. But I'm just gonna leave it the way it is. Sorry ....
We stepped out of the hotel after 11:00 a.m. to go to a Chinese buffet for lunch. But, first, we went to
The Galleria on Sutter Street to check out the shopping center and the farmer's market's produce
items all displayed by assorted vendors. My cousin and his wife told me that the shopping malls and
shopping centers in the Philippines are much nicer looking.
I then took my cousin, Alan, and his family for lunch at a Chinese buffet restaurant near the corner of
Geary and Kearney Streets here in San Francisco, CA.
Then, we took BART Train to downtown Oakland. The outside area of the 12th Street BART Train
Station in Oakland has changed so much since I last visited this place back in August of 2002. It is
much nicer now. I didn't recognize the area anymore as it looked completely alien to me. I had to ask a
stranger to tell me where Broadway Avenue was just so I could get my bearings back. We
walked the stretch from 10th Street to 20th Street along Broadway Avenue.
We got back on BART Train at the 19th Street Station to go to Downtown Berkeley.
I told them that there used to be a parade here in Berkeley every last Sunday of September that would
wend from University Avenue to Shattuck Avenue which would have completely naked people ( except
for shoes ) join in the parade.But they don't have the notorious parade anymore. Darn it!
And I added that there used to be a UC Berkeley student that would walk on campus and the
downtown area and would attend all of his classes butt-naked. I think that he died of hypothermia one
cold winter night! Ha, ha, ha.
We went to the front entrance of UC Berkeley and sat in the semi-circular bench across from the
entrance. While we rested there, we hand-fed 3 squirrels who were expecting some freebies when
they saw my niece, Rosean, with a pack of Philippine brand saltine crackers in her hand.
Then, we went to the MacDonald's Restaurant on the corner of Shattuck and University Avenues.
There was an old white woman who probably hasn't showered in well over a year who just stank-up
the bathroom before we could get a chance to use it. And, when the stinky little old white woman
walked by me, I almost vomited.
When we got back to San Francisco, we went to the Westfield Shopping Center to do
some shopping. My nieces checked-out some custom I-Phone cases before they went to H & M to
shop for some clothes.
As we started walking back to the hotel, we decided to walk in the Levi's Jeans store nearby. It used
to be that Levi's were all made here in San Francisco. But a helpful and informative clerk told me that
it is all outsourced now to Los Angeles, CA, and to some countries in Europe, and to Turkey, also.
'Noticed that I didn't mention "Made in China"---Yay! Here are the pictures that I took of today's trip:
 |
| It was bad enough that the most sleep that I could get today was 5 hours. But the road work at the intersection of Pine Street and Grant Avenue down below cut my sleep short even further! |
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| We dined here at the Jade Restaurant, a Chinese buffet restaurant, that I had a devil of a time finding practically a year ago today. |
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| This is outside of the Jade Restaurant after we got done eating. |
I was gonna have us all catch a train at the Montgomery BART Train Station but I anticipated that the
train would be full by then. So, we just walked back a few blocks to catch a train in the Powell Street
BART Train Station. There were homeless men lying around on the subway floor.
 |
| My cousin and his family were standing on Platform 2 in the Powell Street BART Train Station when I took this picture. We just missed the Richmond-bound train but the Pittsburgh/Baypoint train was well on its way so that we didn't have to wait long for a train. |
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| This is outside the 12th Street BART Train Station in Oakland, CA. This place is so beautiful now that I may just have to frequent it to familiarize myself with the new and improved area. |
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| This is the semi-circular bench just across the entrance to UC Berkeley. I had to ask a student to point us in the right direction. We rested in a shady area surrounded by trees which were populated by squirrels. The saltine crackers that we gave the squirrels will just probably end-up rotting their teeth and giving them gum disease. I think there is a future in Veterinary Dentistry. |
I tried my mini laser flashlight on the birds and the squirrels. I think that the birds could not see it. But a
squirrel approached me when I shone my laser in front of it.
 |
| This is the entrance to UC Berkeley. |
 |
| We had a quick fast-food meal at this MacDonald's Restaurant on the corner of Shattuck and University Avenues. It was here that I told them that there are a lot of crazy and homeless people here in Berkeley who were probably university students at some time that went crazy from all of that academic stress or became homeless because they were overwhelmed by their student loan debt! |
 |
| I took this picture of my cousin and his family inside the San Francisco/Millbrae-bound train. It's kind of blurry because the train was in motion. |
We got off at the Powell Street BART Train Station and went to the Westfield Shopping Center. On
the way, I put a dollar in a street musician's guitar case.
 |
| In this picture, my nieces are checking-out some custom I-Phone cases. |
 |
| These two pictures are of my nieces ( above ) and my cousin's wife ( below ) inside the H & M fashion store. |
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| These two pictures of my cousin's wife and two daughters ( above ) and of my cousin and his family ( below ) were taken by me inside the Levi's Jeans Store just a short distance from the entrance of the Westfield Shopping Center. |
While we waited for my cousin's wife and daughters to get done with their shopping, my cousin and I stood outside on the sidewalk. There was a newspaper rack outside the store. I thought it an opportune time to finally try one of my Samsung Galaxy Mega's apps, a foreign written word translator. My cousin said to try the English-to-Cebuano ( our native language ) translation on a particular headline. The translation read: "Lapok ( mud ) Balay ( house ) Linog ( earthquake ) Nasod ( nation )." It read like how a Chinese would speak Cebuano! No wonder, my Samsung Galaxy Mega was assembled in China. Ha, ha, ha.
I would translate the above to this: Nalubong sa Lapok and mga Balay sa Linogon Nasod ( English: Houses are buried in mud ( i.e. mudslide ) in earthquake country.
I told my cousin that I should go and interrupt Bill Gate's conference--or movie-watching--and tell him to hire me to improve their foreign written word translator for English-to-Cebuano. Then, we both laughed about it.
*
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