Our Yosemite trip last weekend was awesome, we went hiking and went up to Glacier Point, which has one of the most amazing views in the world. I said I would blog about it, but I can’t really be bothered now to be honest. If it’s not fresh in my mind, then there’s no point. Here’s a cute picture though.

And one from Glacier Point:

Sometimes I wish I had an SLR to get better photos.

Anyway, what have I been up to since then. Well, this past weekend I was off work on Friday and Saturday. It was unusually warm both days, Friday it was so bad that I had to leave my room. I was working on some web design projects and got very little done due to the heat. I had windows open, doors open…just too warm to stay inside, so I went swimming in Fisherman’s Wharf. Unfortunately it was even warmer outside, so I stayed in the shade most of the day. I met up with Valerie after work and we went to North Beach for some authentic Italian pesto pizza and gelato. Pesto is a herb, by the way. Valerie thinks it’s a type of meat.

Saturday was just as warm. Myself and the girlfriend went up to the wharf again for a bit of swimming and lazing around. We had planned on visiting the Exploratorium but figured it was too nice a day to stay inside. I slapped on the suncream but I still managed to get myself burned. It was 36°C, waaaay too warm.

On the way back, we stopped by the French Music Festival. It wasn’t exactly crowded, proving that the Irish are more popular in SF (cf. St Patrick’s Day parade). We stayed to see Tete, or Monsieur Tete as I like to call him. He wore a hat, and was decent, but nothing special.

Finally we stopped in the Hilton to use their hot tub and pool before going back home. I found it difficult to get to sleep because of the temperature, so I left the window open and slept on top of the bed. Stupid weather, it was about 15°C in the morning, and I woke up with the sniffles. It’s crap to have sunburn while sick not acclimatised to the new weather. Spent most of last night in bed

I went to Yosemite with Cathryn, Ducky and Valerie last weekend. I actually wrote an entire post about it, but for the third time Wordpress has not saved my post after pressing save, so I lost the entire thing. I’ll write about it later.

Anyway, photos are up on Flickr for now, so check them out.

A few months ago, Subway introduced a special $5 price for all their footlong subs (except of course those premium subs that are really just a gimmick anyway). I am here to tell you that upon experience of this offer, it simply is not worth the hassle my friends.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been to some decent subways and the experience has been fine. My local Subway, at the Caltrain station, has been my regular lunch stop at work approximately 3 times per week since this offer began.

I blame this mostly on the staff. They’re all foreign workers, which I have absolutely no problem with. I do, however, expect that if you work at an establishment where the customer is going to give you specific parameters for creating their valued lunchtime meal, you should at least be able to understand English. Honestly, some of the people’s level of English comprehension is worse than those voice recognition telephone switchboards (”did you say ‘Technical Support’?”). Their training must be painful, assuming that is that they actually receive training.

Subway staff have 5 preset questions, and anything that can’t be answered in one of these 5 questions causes a lot of confusion. Plus, even if you answer the question, don’t expect them to remember your answer.

“Footlong Tuna on Honey Oat bread please”, I say.
“You want cheese?”, the response.
“Swiss, please”, I reply
“What type of bread”, the heavily accented girl asks.
“Um, Honey Oat…” I reply, annoyed somewhat that this is the second time I’ve answered this in 10 seconds.
“Toasted?”, she asks in truncated question format.
“No, not toasted”. This is actually where they get you - if you ask for it toasted, you get slapped with a hot food tax.
“What type of cheese?”

It’s a vicious circle.

By the time I’ve reached the end of the production line, I’ve got my sandwich, with lettuce because they guy has already assumed that I want it, and when I tell I don’t want it, he questions my judgement in sandwich fillers.

“You said lettuce, right?”
“No lettuce, I said!” comes my reply. Still he proceeds to wrap it up. Moron.

Ok, so it’s $5 dollars but the amount of work involved is enormous. I used to go to Subway almost every day and the guy there knew me, and what I wanted so it was quick and painless. Fortunately for him, he thinks independently and has found a real job. Sorry to offend any ’sandwich artists’.

Weekends are a different matter entirely. That’s trainee time.

2 people in front of me in the line. It takes 20 minutes to get my sub made. It’s still wrong, and he charges me the tax for a toasted sub. I point out his mistake, he doesn’t understand. Typical.

I checked out Quizno’s once, who are Subway’s main rivals. They take too long though, and are much more expensive. I hate Subway more though.

So this past week has been my 52nd week in San Francisco, 1 year as of June 6th. And how do I feel? Well I can’t believe it’s been a year, it doesn’t feel that long at all, but at the same time I know this place so well it’s like I’ve known it for years.

And if I’m being honest I’m quite looking forward to getting home. Quite a few of my friends have left to go back home already, so every day it’s getting harder to find people to do things with. By the time I leave there’ll be very few of my friends left so it gets quite lonely, but could be a good chance to meet new people. I’m most looking forward to going home to see old friends, family and lower monthly rent! Some days I feel like I definitely don’t want to leave, and others I miss things from home.

Speaking of friends, Cathryn and Ducky are coming to visit San Francisco this week. Will be nice to see them.

And just before I go, I’d like to make a mention of an awesome musician I came across a few months ago. His name is Goh Nakamura, he’s from SF and is an acoustic artist. I’ve had his songs stuck in my head for weeks now, so you should definitely check him out. This one song of his on Youtube (Embarcadero Blues) has over 1 million views. I would also recommend another song called El Camino which he recorded while busking. Finally, I absolutely love his cover of Just Like Heaven by The Cure. I’ve played it over an over, it’s great. He’s playing here soon so I think I will have to go see him and say hello.

So I was in Borders the other day, mainly to enjoy a magazine with a large hot Cocoa Trio (because I really hate Starbucks’ version, although it turns out Starbucks owns Seattle’s Best Coffee in Borders). I enjoy this past-time because the Cocoa Trio is flippin’ expensive, but at least I can read the entire magazine without paying for it. I see this as a good compromise - expensive beverage, cheap education. Anyway, on with the story.

I come across the new edition of Billboard magazine. I’m very surprised to see Third Day on the front cover, and after a few seconds notice that Brad’s not on there. Ah, he must’ve been somewhere else the day of the photoshoot, I think. But in the subsequent pages of the article he’s not featured anywhere. I didn’t really have the time to read the article, but I followed up on it later that night and found that he actually left the band way back in February.

How come I didn’t hear about that? I wouldn’t go as a far as saying Third Day are one of my favourite bands but they are certainly a band I continue to listen to and would buy their CD’s, so I’m quite surprised I didn’t hear about it sooner.

What’s even more interesting is the circumstances under which he left. The news article from the Third Day site stated:

“We appreciate Brad’s many contributions to the band’s career to date, including his work on our forthcoming album, but the time has come for us to follow our separate paths.”

ThirdDay.com

Ok, so if Brad decided to quit then the language would have been more like “Brad had decided that it is time for him to go his separate way”. The language tends to imply that this was a band decision, so I wonder if there’s any bad blood between them? Apparently he’s leaving to pursue a solo career, but the news article doesn’t mention that. I may just be over analyzing, and I’m sure it’s something that these guys prayed about a lot, but I would just love to know what happened and why an announcement wasn’t made before. And besides, his guitar solo face was the most entertaining part of their show.

I snapped this pic a few years ago at one of their gigs in Belfast:

I went last Friday night to see the new Indy flick, and I was obviously very excited about it. I’d heard good reports from some friends, and had just rewatched the original trilogy to get myself in the mood for the ensuing action. The producers kept very hush hush about the movie, and I only saw the trailer once before going to see it.

So I arrived at the movie theater (or ‘cinema’ as most normal people call it) and obviously didn’t get there on time. A bunch of people must have bought tickets for another movie and snuck in or something, because I got there and there were no seats left, barring two in the very front row. The front row is so ridiculously close to the screen that you can only see part of the movie, and it makes you sick, so I opted for the floor behind the first seating block. Not the way I’d planned on watching a highly anticipated movie. Indeed, by the time all the obligatory Kung Fu Panda trailers were over, my arse was fast asleep.

So the movie begins way more low-key than I’d expected. No trademark red and yellow Indiana Jones text, just boring type. The first few scenes from the movie are decent enough until you actually see Harrison Ford. That was a weird experience.

My goodness, he’s practically a grandfather. The white and grey hair, the trousers pulled way up like an old man, Indy’s trademark stubble that looks more like laziness than action hero. That for me was a huge disappointment. It was great to see Indie kick ass once again, but it’s just not believable for me that a guy of his age could be as invincible as he was even 20 years ago.

Yes, Harrison Ford is Indiana Jones and casting anybody else in his place would be a complete desecration of the franchise, but there’s a bit of a catch 22 here. He is Indiana Jones but he’s now too old to be believable. There were obvious scenes of stunt doubles, and the stunts he obviously did do felt like he was trying to prove he could still do it. In saying all that, he’s in remarkably good shape for a man of 65.

The actual movie wasn’t a far cry from the original three. Stereotyped Ukrainian-accented Cate Blanchett is the villain, looking to solve the mystery of a crystal skull they found somewhere in South America.

I didn’t care much for the special effects in the movie either. I’ve never been a big fan of CGI as I can almost always tell when they’ve bluescreened it and it looks totally fake to me. I’m much more impressed by old school techniques where the action was real and that sense of danger made the movie all the more exciting. I grew up watching those ‘behind the movie’ shows where it shows you how they did all the stunts and the set up to get the perfect shot. Now it’s easy as pie, stick a blue canvas behind it and hire a bunch of nerds to get the same effect. A lot of the big scenes in this movie were obvious CGI, which I was very disappointed about considering the reports stating CGI would be limited.

Indy’s romantic interest from the first movie makes an appearance again, which was cool but the rest of the storyline was a little dull and frankly lacked the imagination of the other movies. By the end of the movie my arse and back were getting very sore and I was beginning to, dare I say it, get a little bored of the movie.

Overall, for a standalone movie it’s nothing special and by far the worst of the 4 movies. I can’t help but feel they should have just left it be, as the only reason I can see for making this poorly written spectacle is for the undoubted financial gain for the studio. That said, if you’re an Indy fan then I expect you’ll be disappointed but you have to see it to complete the series.

Actually, the funniest part of the night was leaving the movie theater. Sex In The City had just opened for the weekend and there was a huge line of girls all dressed up just for the movie (with reluctant boyfriends and a ton of excited gay guys). There was even security guards to maintain order. How sad.