It’s been pretty miserable in the city the last fews days.

This photo (from the SF Chronicle) was taken on the campus at Berkeley (where my girlfriend now studies). It’s been pretty heavy rain for a few days now, I got soaked on my lunch break and we now have a leak in our office right beside my desk. Excellent.

So what is there to do about the city when inclement weather forces you to retreat to the sanctuary of indoors? Aside from the mundanity of going to work (six days a week at the moment!) there is plenty to do keep bored students occupied.

On Sunday the weather let up a little so I ventured out to do a few messages. My first stop was at the fantastic little shop called ‘You Say Tomato’, which is a British style cornershop that sells all British food. I bought Ribena, Weetabix and a bag of Dolly Mixture and paid the handsome sum of $23.00 for all of it. I believe the cashier was Dick Turpin.

Conveniently, Guitar Centre is only a few blocks from there so I spent several hours testing their new stock of Mesa’s. I have also fallen in love with a Taylor acoustic guitar they have there. It’s not cheap, around $2800 but it is quite possibly the greatest acoustic guitar sound I’ve ever heard. I went a stage further and plugged it into a little Fender acoustic amp and was blown away by the clarity and response from the guitar.

In the evening I did some baking. Yes, even guys can bake. I’m actually recognised as a great chef with my friends. My shepherd’s pie was a great success and all subsequent dishes have been the envy of many. Valerie and I baked a Bailey’s cheesecake using a recipe we found online. It was quite easy to make but unfortunately we didn’t have a blender and we got the proportions of some of the ingredients wrong so it came out looking a little brown and tasted only of Baileys. It wasn’t terrible, but not as good as we’d hoped. I think we’ll try it again this Sunday. I can steal a blender from the kitchen in my office for the day.

Tuesday night was good fun. I got a group of people together (including my new Korean roommate Sid and his buddy Ringo/Pingu - I can’t remember his name) to go to a Karaoke bar. Personally, I’m a terrible singer but I really have fun at Karaoke bars so I came prepared with a list of possible songs. Unfortunately we were competing for stage time with a birthday party and 2 strange but funny guys who sang the Spiderman theme song and other bizarre tracks. This meant that my performances would be limited so in the end I performed Any Way You Want It, by Journey, as a duet with Valerie and a solo performance of the Wilson Pickett classic, Mustang Sally. I have few photos which I’ll dig up and throw up here soon.

The rest of the week has been fairly quiet and uneventful. I have a report for university due in for next week which I need to make a start on. I also found out today that Pixar, the Disney-owned animation studio responsbile for Toy Story, is located in Alameda which is right across the bay between Berkeley and Oakland. I’m going to call them to see if they’ll show me around some day. There’s so many businesses located here. Bebo is on 2nd street I think, and the Wordpress guys are just a few blocks from where I live.

And just while we’re on the subject, what does everyone think of Apple’s new Macbook Air? Personally, I think it’s overpriced and quite rubbish really. I’m a big fan of Apple and stand by a lot of their technology but this one just sucks. Ohhhh, it’s thinner than a regular Macbook…big deal. It doesn’t even have a CD Drive! You have to buy an external one to use with it. Ditch the hype and get yourself a Macbook Pro.

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