San Francisco Trippin'

I'm sitting in front of my laptop on a fold out bed, in Newark, CA, where I just paid $5.95 to access the internet for 24 hours (about 25 cents an hour). To make the situation slightly uncomfortable, I am tonguing the loose tissue from the roof of my mouth as I had just burnt it earlier.

My morning started at 6:45am as my brain decided to wake me up 15 minutes before my alarm (stupid brain!). I finished packing and got ready, then picked up our rental car for our family trip out to Northern California. My parents had to go for a wedding in Hayward and so my brother and I decided to join them, but instead of the wedding, my brother and I decided to go to San Francisco. We decided to take the longer, yet well-worth scenic route, and planned a stop in Solvang. Solvang was very nice and clean, all that was missing was some snow. We stopped by a jewelry shop so that my mom can look at their selection. The lady-worker kept mentioning that the jewelry's expensive because they're hand-crafted by Native Americans! So can you imagine how expensive they'd be if they were hand-crafted out of Native Americnas? Cha-ching!!!



We were on a time crunch, so we had to eat and leave as soon as possible. We went to a popular breakfast/brunch place there called "Paula's Pancake House". Their food was great and good enough for my picky parents to eat.

My Omelette


Everyone's Food


About two hours away from our destination, we had to stop for gas, and while waiting I saw a great opportunity for a picture of my parents, so I ran to the car and busted out my flash unit and umbrella.



My brother and I dropped off our parents at the wedding and we headed to San Francisco. We were pretty hungry and walked around a lot looking for somewhere to eat, but most of the places were closed and if it was open, it didn't look too appetizing. We gave up and got back in the car and headed to the banquet hall of the wedding and saw a Jack in the Box a few hundred feet away. We ordered our long-awaited food and as soon as my teeth bit into that stuffed jalapeño, the fire temperature of the jalapeño burnt the roof of my mouth.

Thanks for reading and if you're reading this through your email, please click on the "Cloud Cuckoo" link to see the full content with the pictures I've added.

The Lonely Lady

It was winter last year when I first encountered the lonely lady and I've had two additional sightings since.

I met up with a group of friends last year at BJ's restaurant for appetizers and beer, so we sat at the high tables of the bar. Across from me were the booths and that's when I saw one of the saddest sights I've ever seen. There was this old lady hunched over her food, sitting alone in the booth, asleep. I felt bad catching other people staring at her, but I was obviously guilty of this as well. I don't know how else to explain it, but it was absolutely depressing on so many levels. I had a billion thoughts simultaneously pass through my mind trying to figure out what led her here, alone and asleep.

I imagined the lonely lady when she was first brought into the world, her parents at the hospital as her mother is holding her newborn baby daughter, smiling, envisioning a bright future, a great life. She learns to walk, learns to speak, goes to school, plays tag, makes friends, vacations with the family, graduates, falls in love, and fast forward all that to this very moment, where she's sitting alone and asleep. I could be wrong or right about her past, but I'll never know, and I'll always wonder.

I saw her at In-N-Out once before and I saw her again tonight and again, she was sleeping both times. I glanced at her table and saw an empty tray with scraps, a newspaper, a ziplock bag full of items, and hand sanitizer. I'm happy to know she eats, that she can afford to eat, and that she keeps herself busy reading. On my way out she was awake, packing up, and cleaning the table, so she's either considerate or has o.c.d. or both.

Now I know I can be totally wrong about everything and that I shouldn't even pity her, because she could be absolutely happy the way she is, but again, I don't know if she is or isn't. Even though she seemed like the loneliest person there, in a crowd full of teenagers and adults lost in life, the lonely lady was definitely not the loneliest.

I Know, Right?!?!

Anybody else notice the uprising popularity of the phrase, "I know, right?". It's so subtle and contains everyday words, that it can easily swoosh over your head, but once you start noticing it, you start looking at these people differently and think, "are you a zombie cult member!?". I want to grab these people by their shoulders and start shaking them, yelling, "WAKE UP! IT'S ME, MUSTAFA!!! STOP SAYING THIS SHIT!" (slappy slap across the face for you zombie cult member).

If you use this phrase, it doesn't mean that I don't like you, but I do wonder about the day you caught the I-Know-Right?-Disease (IKRD). It's usually said with a smile and it has the same arrangement of musical notes.

Such a random blog...
...I know right?

A Love Lost

I’m back on the market ladies, yay! (Sarcastic twirl with my index finger followed by a roll of the eyes). The way I feel right now is the way the lady with the sideburns, and basically everybody at table nine felt when Adam Sandler sang, “Love Stinks” in the Wedding Singer.

My heart aches throughout the day, but peaks before I sleep and when I first wake up. I’ve dealt with physical loneliness the last two years being in a long distance relationship (thank you for being there, right hand) and now I’m dealing with mental loneliness.

I decided to share this with you all, because in some form or other, you know how I feel. It sucks doesn’t it? I’ll be fine in the end, it’ll be a learning experience, mountains will collide, birds will poop out rainbows, blah blah blah, I know.

I was totally one of those people in a relationship that looked at a struggling couple and thought, “Must suck for them, they need to be more like us, right honey? Honey? Where are you!???” Now I’m one of those that I criticized, shit!

I’m staying positive and I’m not beating myself up over it, I’m just beating up other people over it, so it works out perfectly. The hardest part are the little associations that remind you of them. True story, I got really sad putting on my shorts this morning, like super duper sad, because I remembered when I went shopping with her to buy those shorts, so here I am standing in my room with my shorts half way up to my knees being really sad and in my head I’m thinking, “I should be laughing right now”, but instead I just stood there looking like a rape victim (that’s a messed up metaphor).

Joking aside, I am already learning a lot from this break-up and I’m learning to put myself first before anything else. I don’t know what the future will hold for me and Lara, but I know we will be in each other’s lives for sure.