Ok so it’s been 3 weeks now that I’ve been living in San Franciscoand I’ve only just now got the chance to write-up all the cool stuff that’s been happening.
Take last Friday for example… I’m trying to live a greener life on this side of the Atlantic and avoid buying a car. So, last week my application for ZipCar came through. It’s a cool concept – get pre-approved and pre-insured and then hire car by the hour whenever you need one. What’s even better is there are tons across the city so when I picked up a Toyota Prius for the first time to trial the whole concept I only had to walk a couple of blocks. If you don’t know, the Prius is a hybrid petrol-electric car which means it decides when to draw power from the battery and when to recharge the battery from the gas. Inside it looks a bit weird with a push-button ignition and a dinky gearshift J Nevertheless, it was a comfortable drive with plenty of acceleration.
Ok, so fresh from the pleasure of the ZipCar experience, I headed over to the Mission district to meet up with Bill Scheinman at the San Francisco Buddhist Centre. After an hour of yoga (my first yoga session!) and an hour of meditation, my mind and body were calm and centred. What better way to finish the evening then than to get smashed on mojitos and sangria at a local tapas bar!
Tuesday was cool too. I got an invitation to the Bay Area Visual Effects Society Christmas bash and meet a great bunch of people almost all of whom seem to have worked with George Lucas at some point in their career J. My invitation came courtesy of Vicky at Ambient PR so I’m very grateful to her and Marjo at VES for allowing me to attend.
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Monday we saw Beowulf at the IMAX in 3D; Weds I saw No Country for Old Men at the Presidio on Chestnut.
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Also on Weds I complained to the Royal Mail about their SmartStamp scam: basically you can sign-up online but even though I’ve used the service for 10 months, I can’t unsubscribe online – now I have to write a letter explaining why I don’t want the service any more. Given that I did this back in November (although they claim to have not received the cancellation) and I’m now in the States it’s frustrating that I’ve first been billed an additional month and secondly that I have to waste time with these idiots. This “write to us to cancel” rubbish is what I’d expect from a dodgy Internet service, not the Royal Mail.
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Still, yesterday was Thursday and we took a day off to go shopping. Imagine our childish delight when we discovered that San Francisco has an IKEA :) And the café serves Swedish meatballs and lingonberries (does anyone else in the world eat lingonberries except the Swedes?). I couldn’t find any Dime (Daim) bars though… :(
