How an awkward person makes love to a stranger

It is baffling at times, to realize how one has fallen in love with a stranger. Strange as it may be: it began on a sweeping fall afternoon, underneath the flaming maple tree as a gust of wind blew embers into the sky and your package out of your arms. The box took a small tumble, maybe bouncing once or twice down those steps before spilling foam nuggets across the lawn. I watched as you hurriedly packed everything back in and skittle off, nude pink stilettos stabbing into the asphalt.

I would not have thought anything of it, if not for walking by a few seconds later and finding a piece of paper stuck to the ground. Clearly you had dropped it during the incident, but when I picked it up and turned around, intending to yell out and return it, you had already disappeared long ago. I do not even really remember your face, or even the exact colour of your hair, which was only revealed as slight wisps underneath a red (or was it black? grey?) woven beanie -- was it a dark brunette or a light chestnut, straight or wavy, long or short?

It was perhaps wrong of me to tuck that letter into the inner pocket of my coat then, just as perhaps I am being punished for reading it now. I am not entirely sure why I did it, but in the moment it made sense. Maybe I thought I would run into you again.

I fell in love with the writer of that letter. The awkward but gentle curve of your letter "i", something I had always mechanically drawn as a perfect vertical, the way you connected the letters in "life"; these showed me a way of seeing the world I hadn't seen before. You wrote of beautiful places and ideas, to an anonymous recipient that I placed myself into the role of, introducing him to the beautiful person that is you.

I at least hoped the letter would give me an excuse to approach you if I ever did meet you again, in the off chance that I recognized you.

***
"I'm so sorry!"

These were the words you spoke to the bus driver that spring morning, scuffling through your handbag for your absent transport card and empty wallet. I looked up and saw the sun hit your apologetic eyelashes, and did a double take. Something impossibly familiar about you drew me to stand up automatically, ready to offer you my spare change.

"I've got it, don't worry."

The man behind you steps in and puts an extra ride's worth of coins into the driver's hands. I feel embarrassed and awkward, having stood up for no reason. The guy sitting next to me has already gotten off his seat, anticipating my need to exit to the aisle. I move into the path he paves for me, stepping off the bus as you turn to the change-offerer and thank him profusely, and by the time you have sat down together and have begun to exchange names, I had still yet to process what exactly had happened.

The bus drives away and leaves me at my premature stop; I arrive home 2 hours later.

***

I'm not sure how we ended up on the same path that winter afternoon, but the familiar tick-tacking of your nude high heels interrupted the music coming through my earphones and I knew it was you before I looked up. An orange umbrella obscured my view of your head, but the combination of that handbag and those shoes gave you away.

I thought the orange umbrella suited you perfectly, and smiled to myself silently. Orange was so outgoing and bright, and happy -- things you represented that I wished I had for myself. Yet it was also what kept me from you at that moment, keeping you hidden from my line of sight. I had been secretly wondering when I'd run into you again, partially convinced we were fated to skim our lives against one another's until we met officially, partially hopeless that the city was too large for it to happen more than twice.

I started to contemplate how I should introduce myself. I supposed I should just be direct, but there seemed to be something strange about a stranger approaching a girl in the middle of a deserted road professing his love for her. Then again, maybe girls were into that. I hadn't done this before.

A light cough blew a cloud from under your umbrella, and I watched you stop in your tracks next to the bus stop. You opened your handbag and took out a bottle of cough syrup, poured yourself a dose and put it to your mouth as I walked by.

I didn't have time for an introduction; I walked by without saying anything as I watched in slow motion the pink syrup disappear behind your lips.

***

Indeed it is baffling, to realize how one has fallen in love with a stranger. I wonder if I will ever see you again; I swear if I did, I would not waste what should be the last opportunity to meet you. If you're reading this, I swear I will keep our lives from continually blowing away from each other like curtains covering an open window in the night breeze.

But tonight all I can do is lay here in front of that window, letting those curtains brush over my face and swear I can almost taste your cough syrup on my lips, the ghostly mirage of a kiss that never happened.

Back in the Americas

Shots of San Francisco

Arrived in SF last Thursday around midday, and Tony came to pick me up with his mom (so nice!), and so began our adventures exploring the city. That day, we went out for lunch and had Pho close to his house, then we walked to his old middle school and were gonna walk a bit further but then a screw popped out of his glasses so the lens fell out, so we went home. Hahahaha pretty much. Then we went out to dinner with some of his family friends. I felt kind of bad like a random add-on but everyone was really nice.

The next day, I almost overslept because the room I'm staying in has no windows and I rely on the sun to wake up. I met a few of Tony's high school friends, we walked around a bit in the Sunset District, had lunch at a Thai place and went to Golden Gate Park where we just chilled in the sun for 2 hours, since the weather was so nice. Then, we went out to the coast and I saw the Pacific Ocean from the other side! And we went on a hike around the coast for the next 3 hours or so. There were far too many stars for my liking, but the view of the ocean was really impressive. We had Japanese for dinner, though the Japanese restaurant was actually run by Chinese people haha. There are a lot of Cantonese people in SF. After dinner, we went up Twin Peaks and got a really, really beautiful view of the city at night. So many pretty lights. I need a tripod. Still got 1 or 2 decent shots thought.

Saturday, it was sunny again so we planned to go for a hike up San Bruno after having Yumcha, which is the tallest hill in the area so it's where all the radio spires are. The road was less vertical than I imagined it, which actually made for a nice walk, other than being pricked in the leg every so often by overgrown blackberry thorns. You could see the whole city from up there, it was kind of breathtaking. We had dinner at a Hawaiian place which was really just a Chinese-American place. I had the most epic food coma I've had since post-lunch Year 13 Physics. Almost dozed off in the restaurant right there. We then had frozen yoghurt to counterbalance it (good logic I know). I really needed to go to the bathroom but some kids were causing trouble in the bathroom (clogging up the sink and overflowing it because they thought it was funny, til their Dad came in and yelled at them. Derp kids...).

Then, on Sunday, we'd planned to go to a concert in Golden Gate Park (Alice's Summerthing! Actually so many people were there) after having burritos in Mission, but then we heard that it was raining and decided to go downtown to watch a movie instead. We initially planned on watching Monsters' University, but it wasn't showing when we got there so we watched Fast & Furious 6 instead. I'm glad I got to watch it after all, and I'm kinda sad Justin Lin isn't going to be returning for 7. It'll be interesting to see what Mr Wan does to it though, hopefully not turn it into a shitty horror franchise plz. Anyway while waiting for the movie we walked around to Union Square and got our live band performance anyway, by a band singing swing dancing songs, got free samples from Ghirardelli's chocolates, and helped an injured bee back into the hedges after seeing it struggling for 20 minutes and almost getting stepped on countless times. After the movie, we met up with Dimiter for dinner, walked down to the pier where there was a pretty sight of the Bay Bridge over the water, stayed for a while and then went home.

Which leads us to today, I guess. I was pretty tired from the last few days of epic walking and the forecast said it would rain, so we decided to take it a bit easier. Tony and I went to the Academy of Sciences and just explored the whole thing for pretty much the whole day. I really enjoyed the rainforest exhibit actually, so many cool animals :) A plethora of frogs, for sure. And the penguins were super cute. I actually learned quite a bit (European settlers had a ~32000 year head start on the Native Americans in terms of settlement, it's kind of no wonder they were so much more technologically advanced), and also I wasn't aware that there used to be so many land bridges that people could just... walk over lol. And, idk why but my mind is always blown whenever I go to observatories or do astronomy-related stuff. It just seems that we are so small on the grand scale of things, but the only thing we can do to preoccupy ourselves is create problems for ourselves on our little planet and then spend our lives solving them. This was kind of amplified by the thought that we all came from one place anyway, so it's like we're just picking fights with ourselves when we should really just all get along. It's kind of interesting from a sociological perspective? Oh also I learned that starfish don't have a brain, heart or nervous system, but they eat by wrapping their stomach around things after they amble around and find something to eat, and excrete from a hole in their center and it looks gas-like. They're pretty cute I guess. O and jellyfish are kind of adorable. There are also such things as upside-down jellyfish, which I thought was a troll at first but I guess they actually exist???? Anyway after that we went to Crepevine and I consumed diabetes on a plate, and had a sugar hangover for the rest of the day (I swear I'm not the only one to get headaches after eating a lot of sugar).

Kiwi @ Science Museum! :D 

Tomorrow, we've planned to go see Monsters' University in the morning and haven't planned the rest of the day. It's supposed to be raining tomorrow as well. I still have to go down to Fisherman's Wharf, have some clam chowder and have some Ghirardelli's ice cream, and meet up with Zelin hopefully, before I go down to Palo Alto on Friday. I also wanted to go visit Alcatraz, but nobody told us that you had to book tickets in advance since they sell out so quickly =.= so too late.

Oh also! Exciting news, I applied for this thing a while ago, forgot about it, but I was accepted! So I'll be spending 4 days in Chicago in the beginning of August :) I'm actually pretty excited haha.

Another banal post about my slice of winter

I feel like self motivation is so difficult lately. Even though I'm doing all the things I need to, I often feel unwilling to do things/just not in the mood to move. An example of this is in the mornings, where I'll wake up at a random time between 7 and 11am (there is no pattern at all, regardless of when I sleep) and I just don't want to get up and face the day. My heart beats noticeably irregularly quickly (compared to when i woke up before I came back, and it feels like something heavy is sitting on top of me and it's somewhat uncomfortable). I open the blinds to pump myself up for the day, and I'm even about to get up, but then my mom sees the light from under my door and comes in to tell me to get up, and I feel like shrinking back under my covers again. I'm not really sure why this is. I'm also seemingly continually thirsty. Maybe I'm not getting enough Vitamin D.

It's not like I've done nothing these last few weeks though. I've been here for 2 weeks and a bit already, getting ready to fly out on Thursday, but it feels like it's gone so slowly.


1) Went back to my movie watching rampages. Saw star trek, the great gatsby, the internship and will watch hangover 3 tomorrow. I really wanted to see fast and furious 6 but the first time I planned to do it I was too tired and then the second time I was already late to a 21st birthday party and I didn't want to leave early because it would be rude.

2) Actually I'm pretty glad I stayed for that 21st, though I didn't know many people there I feel like I got to know the birthday girl better from the speeches and I finally got to watch Kozo Komatsubara perform, and I met a few new people. I also learned some pretty nice thing about faith and friendship.
3) Working on a painting for the house of the sunset. still not done, not sure if will get done, I'm starting to doubt myself. From a while ago tho:

I've done a bit more than this now

4) Unpacked my boxes and went through my old stuff, I have too much stuff gathered from over the years... I threw a lot of it out.

5) Read 191 chapters of Bloody Monday because I was wikipedia surfing and ended up going from American History to Anthrax and felt like reading about politics and biological terrorism. I was disappointed because the rest of the scans aren't up and I couldn't finish it in the end. During these 3 days, I had dreams about Russian spies. It was pretty exciting.

6) Played some starcraft and tried to get better with not much avail, but I'm familiarising myself a bit more with gameplay. Felt like it after watching WCS finals. Having nothing to do at home will tend to do that to you huh.

7) Went back to school and gave a mini talk on US university applications, caught up with some friends and saw old teachers. Some were really nice to see, others barely remembered me it appears, I guess I know who to go back and see in the future.

8) Applied to two other mini programs, not sure if I'll have much of a chance but I guess no harm in trying. Actually I'm pretty proud of myself that I made myself get off my ass and actually finish those applications. I avoided them for many days.

9) Went into uni and saw some friends and attended some lectures in their last week. It was good to see everyone, the place seems the same though. It appears to be a pretty static place despite everyone moving up and out into the greater world. Especially glad to catch up with some friends I didn't actually spend much 1 on 1 time before I left, so I got to know them a bit better.

10) Going to sit my full licence test tomorrow. Not sure how it will go. Hopefully I pass. I'm kind of nervous though, I don't really know what to expect and not sure if I'm good enough since I haven't really driven much over the past year.

11) Baked cakes! It was fun. I guess if you follow recipes things tend to come out fine. Cheesecake was pretty simple and also noms. I'd like to make it again sometime.

12) Went swimming with my mom a few times, I haven't actually stepped in a pool since the beginning of 2011, where it was a 50m swim test for dragon boating, and before that I hadn't swam since the beginning of 2009. So it's pretty crazy. I'm an absolute snail. My muscles really aren't suited to being in the water.

At least the fall foliage is kind of pretty. On that 1 tree among the other 99 evergreens in Cornwall Park. And on days where the sky is blue (an astounding total of 3 over the time I've been here)

I can't think of anything else huge right now. Actually I was planning to blog for a while but couldn't find the motivation for the past week. That's how bad it is. I can't help feeling that it will get better when I get back to summer though. I'm 90% sure that I have some form of Seasonal Affectedness Disease. I always tend to feel like this during the winter. Every single June period in NZ for the last ~6 years at least. 

Welp, it's not like I'm not doing stuff, which is good. I've had a lot of fun with people lately as well, and I've enjoyed spending time with people I haven't seen in a while. It's just some part of me feels not quite completely satisfied right now, that's all. I'm greedy I know haha.