The Day I Took A Day Trip To SF

What do I like about San Francisco? Everything! The people, the food, the weather... It's very lovely here. This is where everything and anything goes and people down really think too much about it.

Homeless people? Check.
Crazy evangelicals? Check.
I love the hobos. They're really quite harmless actually (unless they actually come up to you and start screaming jibberish with a bloody mouth, that's when you should run in the opposite direction; it happened to me yesterday).

One thing you need to know about California is that public transport here is nothing like what we get in Singapore. It's definitely light-years behind our EZ-Link and one-bus-every-5-minutes system. There's a reason to that though.

It has been rumored that during the fundamental development years of public transport, car companies bribed the government to keep it a "car culture" here. So maybe that's why most people here have to drive to get around (and also why cars are so cheap compared to what we get in Singapore).

Yesterday was the first time I took public transport in the US. My friend Ben drove me and his cousins to the nearest BART station (the Bay Area equivalent of the MRT), where we boarded a train to San Francisco. As you can see in the photo on the right, the ticketing machine is not so different from Singapore. The only difference is that if you don't have exact change for the tickets, it'll dispense a card with the extra credit that you can save for use on a subsequent trip.

Here are some photos before, during and right after the train ride.


And here's a short tour of the SF ferry terminal (I apologize for looking so haggard).

Here's where we went for lunch. When we arrived, there was already a snaking long queue outside the diner. According to my very reliable sources (ie Ben and his cousin Marcus), this is the go-to place for burgers at the ferry terminal.

And I was not disappointed. After queueing up for nearly 20 minutes under the hot, hot sun (yes it's actually hot in the day when you're under the sun), I was finally able to order my brunch which was a huge meal consisting of:

1) Wisonsin Sourdough - With grilled mushrooms, bacon, cheddar cheese, mayo & BBQ sauce on grilled Model Bakery sourdough

2) Garlic Fries - fries tossed in garlic butter & parsley

3) A giant chocolate milkshake

With my orders taken, I paid and was given this peculiar looking device. Call me a FOB (fresh-off-the-board), but I really haven't seen anything like this before. I only found out later that it works like a pager and is used in most major self-service restaurants in the US. This is how it works: When your order is ready, the device lights up and vibrates, and you'll just have to go over to the counter to collect your food.

Here's my lunch (or at least a semblance of it). Unbelievably delicious. On a side note: My appetite has become insanely huge since I got here. I think the weather may have something to do with it. The cold weather + my metabolic rate = nightmare for my waistline. Thank goodness I brought my running shoes here. I've never enjoyed running more!

After lunch, we walked around quite a lot to walk off our very heavy lunch. It's almost dinnertime here so I'll let the rest of my photos do the talking. Enjoy!

PS: Guess who I bumped into at a random Urban Outfitters outlet?

MJ!!!!!! :D (We didn't take a photo together, so I'm using a really old, pre-makeover photo when we first got into the Top 24. Haha...)