San Francisco

The evening I returned from southern California, Joanne, who I met in Vietnam six moths ago, arrived on a flight from Las Vegas. Since I had last seen her she had made her way through England, Ireland, France, New York City, Miami, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Los Angeles, Colorado, Utah, and Vegas. She was in the final leg of her trip and had arranged to spend a couple days with me in California and then come out to Hawaii for a week or so to get nice and relaxed and tan before heading back to Australia.

She is the second of the people I met on my trip to have come and visited me. Mark, also from Vietnam came through Hawaii a couple months ago. That being said, all of you that I met on my trip and those of you who are old friends from the mainland are always welcome to come and enjoy the nice weather any time you like.

Armed with my Dad's car and a map of San Francisco, we headed into the city. Our first stop was the new De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. The completely new museum was finished in 2005 to much architectural controversy (I like it). One of the best features of the new museum is the 9 story tall tower which has a 360 degree observation deck on the top floor that you can go up to for free. It offers some amazing views of the central portion of the city.

After we enjoyed the view from the museum we made our way along to Clement Street in the Richmond District of San Francisco where we had dim-sum for lunch. Dim-sum typically consists of various types of meats and veggies wrapped up in dough and steamed. Lunch for two came out to about $5 and we were totally full.

After lunch we headed to one of the most recognizable structures in the world, the Golden Gate Bridge. Surprisingly enough, I had never actually walked out onto the bridge, so this was a new experience for me.


We only had so much time on the parking meter so we were only able to walk out to the middle of the span, but the views were amazing!



From the bridge you get one of the best vistas of San Francisco itself.


After enjoying our walk across the bridge we headed down to the north edge of the city to go to Fisherman's Wharf. The area is SUPER touristy, but we were able to accomplish two very important things. One, Joanne was able to continue her systematic sampling of every Ben and Jerry's ice cream flavor, and, two, we were able to check out the california sea lions at Pier 39. They are an exceedingly noisy lot, but they are great fun to watch as they jostle for position on the platforms and push each other off. A pinniped king-of-the-hill sort of thing.

After seeing some of the touristy sites in the city we headed out to the Mission District to meet up with my friends Dan and Emily for drinks and dinner. We started at The Lone Palm where we had a couple drinks with some of Dan's co-workers from the Nature Conservancy. I was a little surprised when one of them, who I had never met before, called me a liar when I told her that I was an archaeologist and that I lived in Hawaii. My job and place of habitation isn't that strange is it? After drinks, we headed out to a really good sushi restaurant. After giving Dan and Emily a ride back to their house because it was raining, we headed back to my folk's house after long day.

Sculpture

After returning to northern California I went over to the ranch side of the Djerassi Program and took a few photos of a couple of the sculptures on the property.

Architecture Research

On the morning of January 3 my sister and I headed out from McKenzee's house in Costa Mesa, who was kind enough to allow us a place to stay (Thanks Kenz!). Our destination was Hesperia, California, which is about an hour up Freeway 15 north of San Bernadino, and is home to the Cal Earth Institute.

The Cal Earth Institute is run by Nader Khalili, who has spent his architectural career developing low cost housing techniques using natural earthen materials. His basic goal is to develop techniques for building sustainable, environmentally friendly, affordable housing.

At the Cal Earth Institute he primarily works with superadobe. It is basically 8 shovels of earth/sand/dirt etc., a shovel of cement mix, and a can (the big 6 lbs kind) and a half of water. These ingredients are mixed up either by hand or in a small mixing machine and then poured into sand bags. The sand bags are then laid out into a parabolic dome shape with layers of barbwire between them. The end result is a structure that can be constructed for next to nothing. Once people learn the technique it is possible to build a structure large enough for a family of 4 in about 2-3 days. Because the structures are made from earthern materials they are very thermally conservative, meaning that if they are heated - even with a small heat source - they stay warm, and vise-versa in terms of cold. In addition, when the structures at the Cal Earth Institute were subjected to a hydraulic earthquake test, not only did they pass with flying colors, they nearly broke the testing machine.

The potential applications for these techniques are very far reaching. In places like Pakistan where they had devastating earthquakes this past fall, this technique has been used to build housing for people who had their homes destroyed. Jim Guerra, a man that my sister met with at the institute, is teaching the technique to migrant farm workers. He is also spearheading a push to get the structures approved by the State of California so that they can be built on farmers' lands, thus providing migrant farmers a place to sleep that is a lot better than park benches. Representatives from the United Nations and many other organizations have traveled to Hesperia to see the work that is being conducted.

The basic techniques are also being further developed so that through a combination of building methods, full scale houses can be built. The institute is about 80% of the way through completing a 2500 square foot house for a total cost of about $90,000. It includes three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a two car garage.












It should be noted the Hesperia is in the high desert at about 3700 feet and so it was really really cold. Especially for the weenie boy from Hawaii. I ended up hiding in the car, which was warm from sitting in the sun all morning and reading while my sister interviewed Jim about his ongoing efforts.

The trip to the Cal Earth Institute was extremely educational for me. I learned a lot about environmentally friendly architecture, but more importantly, I learned a lot about my sister and her interests.

Road Trip to Los Angeles

On January 2nd Ceara and I departed from northern California for a four day to trip to the Los Angeles area. Ceara was going to conduct research on her batchelor's thesis in architecture that she is working on so that she can graduate from Brown University this May. She got a $400 grant from her university to conduct the work, so she was able to rent a car and have money for us to eat. She is researching low cost housing on the U.S. - Mexico border for migrant farm workers. In the future she hopes to be able to help alleviate the problem of people sleeping in cardboard boxes, under bushes, and in metal culverts like they most commonly do today.

We departed fairly early in the morning in a driving rain storm and the car was soundly pummeled all of the way south until we got over the Grapevine, which are the mountains just to the north of LA. With some time to kill in the late afternoon we headed down to Santa Monica where we wandered around the 3rd street promenade. We walked out to and along the cliffs above the Pacific Ocean and we also went to Hennessy-Ingall, which is one of the largest architecture bookstores in the western United States. Unfortunately for Ceara, she is a poor student and could not afford any of the really expensive books that she liked. Fortunately for me we did not have a lot of time left on our parking meter which meant that we did not have to spend all afternoon in the bookstore.


After we hung out in Santa Monica we headed down to Costa Mesa in Orange Country on the southern side of greater Los Angeles to see my friends Ian and Linda. Linda was one of the very first people that I met at college and She Ian and I all lived in the same dorm freshman year, which is now nearly a decade ago. In addition to them my sister and I also got to see their new baby girl Lindsay who was about 11 weeks old when we where there. She is absolutely adorable and as you can see she has a full head of bright red hair that sticks straight up no matter how hard her parents try to get it to stay down. As the single batchelor that I am, it is a little weird to have friends my age already married. It is even weirder to have had two of them produce a child. There is this perfect little human that is 50% Linda and %50 Ian. I have not had much experience with babies and was quite pleased when I was able to hold her for a few minutes and she did not start screaming. That being said, I am very glad that she is not mine and I have no plans to have one of my own any time soon!

Out With A Bang...

Some of this story appeared in an e-mail or two, but I thought that I would share it with all of you.

So I had a rather rough last day of 2005. My friend Emily from college had been staying with my folks and I for a couple days before her scheduled departure back to Chicago where she is a graduate student. She was supposed to leave early on the morning of the 31st from the Oakland airport, which is about an hour and 15 minutes from my parents house with no traffic. Things didn't go exactly as planned.

There was a HUGE storm the night of the 30th-31st and so when we got up super early to head out to the airport in my dad's car we found that the road out from my parents house was blocked by a small tree that had fallen across the road. Mind you this is a single lane road that runs along a mountain edge with no rail on the down slope side and it was still dark and pouring rain at this point. We drove back to my parents house and got my dad and a chainsaw. My dad decided to drive my mom's car out behind us, but as he was backing out of the car port he accidentally drove the left hand side of the car off the driveway and down a hill. The car was sitting at an precipitous angle and so we called the whole thing off and went back into the house. Emily simply had to get another flight and chew on the consequences. This is just the way that things go when you live out here in Woopwoop. She managed to call the airline and get on the same set of flights the following day which was the 1st.

We all went back to bed for another 4 hours or so and then got up, and we glad to see that the car had not fallen down the hill. The power had also gone off while we had all gone back to bed. Dad, Emily, and I got into his car and headed out the road with the chainsaw to see if we could get to the end of the road and out onto the county highway. We found that an even bigger (1 m diameter) tree had fallen parallel with the road since Emily and I first tried to get out to the end of the road. To get out we had to set to work with the chainsaw de-limbing the tree to make enough space to get a car down the shoulder of the road. This took about an hour and a half. We then drove further on, cut off the small tree that Emily and I had first encountered, and then had to cut off two more along the way to the county highway. We picked up the newspapers and headed back in from the county road. (It is 5 km from the county road to my parents house.) We went over to the ranch side of Djerassi and got the ranch truck which is a great big monster dodge pickup truck and brought it back to the house. Using it and some chain we managed to get my mom's car back up onto the driveway.

Because the power was out we made pancakes on a cast iron griddle that we placed onto the gas barb-b-que. We did bacon as well!

After I took a shower in the afternoon I was walking down the stairs and my mom's cat was hiding halfway down the stairs curled up again the vertical face of the one of the stairs. I did not see her and completely ate shit and slammed my back onto the edges of the really hard wooden stairs. They do not have any sort of padding on them at all. I now have a big bone bruise on my right shoulder blade and several large abrasions on my back. My right shoulder and right upper arm are really sore and it still hurts to do a lot of things. I also jammed several of the toes on my right foot and so I was gimping around. And the cat of course escaped unscathed.

Another big storm was supposed to blow in for the night of the 31st-1st so Emily and I decided that we had to get off of the mountain so that if more tress fell we would still be able to make it to the airport. So we headed down to San Jose where a bunch of our friends from college were going to be throwing a party. I was already planning on attending this party after Emily had left, but because of the storm she got to come to the party and I got to spend a little more time with her.

The party was really great and we all had a good time. Bob and Tina did a great job hosting and it was great to get to hang out with Dan and Emily (different Emily), Greg, Mike and Meghan, Dave, Chris and Katie (Congratulations!), and every one else who attended. I was going to take a bunch of pictures of everyone, but bringing out my nice camera while heavy drinking was occuring seemed like a bad idea.

Emily and I got up very early the morning of the 1st and I managed to get her to the airport and make it all the way back to my folk's house in one piece where I begrudgingly fed the cat, took two tylenol and two pepto bismol, unplugged the phone, and went back to bed for another 4 hours!

Rats on Stilts

As I mentioned in an earlier post there is a variety of wildlife that lives around my parent's house. I caught these six mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) having an afternoon snack just below the deck. The deer around here are as common and fearless as a rat - except they have long legs - and they destroy mom's garden.

O'Leary Logic...

The other day I walked into the dining room to find my dad writing on the wall with a pencil. I stopped and with a perplexed look on my face asked, "What are you doing?"

"Writing down the amount of water that was in the rain gauge," he calmly replied.

"You know, we do have this stuff called paper," I chided him thinking once again that my father is losing it.

"Yeah, but I might lose the piece of paper. I am not going to lose this wall."

I stood there, mouth agape, and realized that his logic was indeed sound.

Christmas Dinner

MERRY CHRISTMAS

We just got finished with our annual Christmas dinner. It was a wonderful evening with my mom's side of the family. Her brother Tim and sisters Maura and Rowan came. Tim brought his wife Jeanne, and Rowan brought her husband Bob and their daughter Olivia.


Because I am almost never here in California and Olivia is still really young (3 in Feb.) she does not really remember me and so she was a little scared of me. But we are working on that...


Ceara received a wonderful gift from aunt Maura and of course had to model it for everyone!

A Couple of Photos

Here are two more photos I have taken since I have been here in California.

The first is of sunrise this morning (don't even ask why I was up this early).


The second is my family and I. Dennis (dad), Catie (mom), Ceara (little sister), and some dork in the back.

My Folks' Place

In 1997, the summer between my senior year of high school and freshman year of college, my dad took the job as the executive director of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. As a result, my family moved from Boise, Idaho to Woodside, California. The Djerassi property is in the hills to the west of the 280 freeway and about halfway between highways 84 and 92, which cross the San Francisco Peninsula from the bay to the coast.

The house, which is on the property and comes with my father's job, is nestled at the base of a large hill with stands of giant redwood trees downslope. There are gaps in the redwood trees that afford incredible views out over the hills, which turn brilliant shades of gold in the early August evenings. Through one of the gaps you can even see the Pacific Ocean. The house is principally constructed from redwood and the back deck includes an especially nice barrel style hot tub that is perfect for a late night or early morning soak.

One of the most amazing things about living in a rural portion of the Bay Area is that the houses are really far apart. The closest house to my parents' is more than a half-mile away. This means that there are still numerous wild animals to be seen including rabbit, raccoon, coyote, fox, bobcat, deer, numerous birds of prey, and even mountain lion. The Djerassi property also has several fire roads and numerous criss-crossing trails which make for excellent hiking.

The one minor catch to the house is that it is a ways from civilization. It takes about 30 minutes to drive the 14 miles of VERY twisty roads to get to the 280 freeway. From there it is at least another 10 minutes to the closest grocery store. This has proven to be a surmountable obstacle with a few minor changes of habit and a bit more planning. It is possible to get to San Francisco in about an hour for day trips to museums, shopping, and restaurants.

Christmas Trees and Christmas Parties

I have been here in California for three days now and it is wonderful. Sleeping till noon. Eating out of an everfull refridgerator. Soaking in the hottub. Spending quality time with family and friends.

The first real activity of my trip came Saturday morning - ok so it may have been Saturday afternoon - when my dad (Dennis) and I went out to get the Christmas tree. Since my parents live out in the boonies where the redwood trees grow like weeds we usually selectively thin the groves each year by one tree. It should be mentioned at this point in the story that for most years my mom (Catie) and little sister (Ceara) have stood on the back deck and supervised my dad and I. This particular year my sister was not back from college yet and it was raining, thus keeping my mom indoors. Unable to find a single tree that we liked, my dad and I focused our efforts on an old trunk of a tree that was growing parallel with the ground and had died out at the end. Growing straight up out of this portion of the tree were four small trunks. They were all rather skinny and none of them had all that many branches...

Before long my mother was standing on the covered portion of the back deck inquiring why there were three trees laid out on the hottub cover. My dad and I enthusiastically explained to her that if we tied the three of them together with bailing wire and duct tape we would have a nice big full tree with plenty of branches to hang all of our ornaments on. At present I am fairly certain that my parents have the only 12 foot tall three trunked Christmas tree in town. Maybe even the state, if not the entire country. Now that it is all decorated it looks fabulous. Hell, Ceara hasn't even noticed its uniqueness yet.

Saturday evening I attended Dan and Emily's (different Emily from Julie's sister) annual Christmas Party. All, well, almost all, of my friends made it and it was really great to get to catch up with all of them. For the most part people are doing the same things that they were the last time I saw them in May, but a few people have changed positions within the companies that they are working for and other have moved on to entirely new things to pursue other interests.

We also conducted our traditional white elephant (yankee swap) gift exchange game where everyone brings a wrapped gift and they are opened one at a time in a randomly determined order. Gifts are stolen from each other according to the rules and eventually everyone goes home with a gift. Some pleased. Some not so pleased. This year I really wanted the nerf dart guns, but I wound up with the new release of Office Space on DVD. I think that I came out ahead seeing as how all I brought was a gift pack of Hawaiiana touristy stuff.

Christmas in California

I am headed back to my parents house in Woodside, California for Christmas this Friday the 16th. I have managed to get three weeks off from my very generous boss at work. For those of you who are reading this who are not already familiar with where my parents live, Woodside is on the San Francisco Peninsula about half-way between the San Francisco and San Jose. My parents live up in the hills to the west of the 280 freeway.

I am very excited to be heading back to California. I haven't been there since May 2005 and looking forward to to seeing all of my extended family and my friends from college. I will be attending Dan and Emily's annual Christmas party, spending time with Emily (Julie's older sister), as well as traveling to southern California with my little sister to assist in her architecture batchelor's thesis research. While I am in SoCal I am going to get to see more friends from college and Linda and Ian's new daughter, Lindsay.

Another highlight of the trip is going to be my Mom's big opening in San Francisco on the 7th of January. She primarily does collage and she has a whole bunch of pieces that are going to be displayed in a gallery. My family is very excited and we are going out to support her.

As usual I have stocked up on chocolate covered macadamia nuts for everyone. I hope that this will be enough...


Since I am traveling, look for more posts in the coming month...

Random Pictures

Here are a few more pictures of random things from my trip. I hope you enjoy them.

The south entrance to Preah Khan Temple at Angkor, Cambodia.

A REALLY big centipede!

Monks heading home for the day on the river taxi in Bangkok.

A giant jar full of snakes in a restaurant on Cat Bah Island, Vietnam.

Motorbike parking in the Old Quarter of Hanoi, Vietnam.

Street Food

One of the reasons that SE Asia is so cheap is that it is literally possible to eat for $2 per day. This is accomplished by eating at street stalls, carts, bicycles, and even baskets. Entire restaurants were carried around by old women in two baskets suspended from the ends of a bamboo pole.

A restaurant on the back of a bicycle in Cholon, the Chinese section of Ho Chi Minh City.

While I did eat at street stalls in all four of the countries (Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Malaysia) I went to, I can really only compare the first three since I was only in Malaysia for three days and only ate at one street stall.

Vietnam, by far, had the best street food. The was an infinite variety and it changed from city to city. Each region and town had its own specialties. Dishes ranged from fried pancakes with shrimp and pork in them in Hoi An to cold noodle soups in the vegetable markets of Hanoi. In Ho Chi Minh City, which experienced heavy American influence during the war, it was possible to get a Vietnamese style sandwich. There are also a variety of mysterious things wrapped in banana leaves which have been steamed. I have no idea what most of them were, and most of them didn't taste all that good anyway.

Thailand, unlike Vietnam, has numerous curries which can be selected and poured over rice. There is also the ever present pad-thai and spring rolls. Thai bar-b-que is also very common and cheap as well. In southern Thailand fried chicken is also very common, particularly at railroad stations where you have just enough time to hop off the train, buy something, and jump back on before the train leaves again.

Cambodia is an interesting blend of Thai and Vietnamese. There are the curries, but there are also lighter dished more typical of Vietnam.

In all three countries smoothie stands have become very common in response to tourists. There are a variety of fruits from the normal apple and banana to more exotic things like dragon fruit. Fruit, ice (some places even have "safe" ice), and condensed milk are blended thoroughly. The smoothly is then put into a plastic bag which is sealed shut with a straw sticking out of it using a rubber band. This bag is then put into another plastic bag that has ice in it and handles so that you can carry your beverage. It really is a genius system and an excellent mid-day snack for about $0.20.

On of the most important things to know about eating street food is how to pick where to eat. They all appear similar at first, but a closer inspection is a must before deciding where to eat.

1. Are locals eating there? The locals know the best places to eat, just like you do when you are at home.
2. How clean is the place? Remember that cleanliness is a relative concept, so don't expect Martha Stewart's kitchen, but just check to see that there aren't flies all over the food.
3. Is there active food preparation going on? Don't eat at places at 4 in the afternoon where it looks like the food was originally cooked at 9 in the morning.
4. If there are only tourists at the stall, do not eat there.
5. If there is not a sign with a price, negotiate the price first. Expect to pay a little more than the locals, but do not get completely ripped off.
6. Take it easy with the chili sauce. It is a lot stronger than you think it will be.
   
7. Take pepto-bismol. It can't hurt.

Finally, here are a few photos of some of the places I ate on my trip...

Bar-b-qued pork (I think) wrapped into a spring roll on a side walk in Hoi An.

Cao Lao, the fried pancake things in the font, at a food stall in the market in Hoi An.

Mystery drinks in the Ben Thanh Market in Ho Chi Minh City.

A soup stall in Bangkok.

Fried crickets, meal worms, and other unidentifiable bugs... (Bangkok).

Speaking of bugs...

Here are those spiders that didn't taste so great (Phnom Penh).

Silk

Hoi An in Vietnam is famous for its tailors as well as the architecture which was a result of the large Chinese trading guilds in the 18th and 19th centuries. Because there are dozens of tailors, shop[s often try to find a gimmick to get you into their shop. One of the best I found was a place that produced its own silk and had all the steps laid out so that you could see the entire process from start to finish.

The process starts with silk worms. The silk worms are placed in large flat baskets with chopped up mulberry leaves. The worms stay in the basket for about 19 days eating and they grow to about 2 inches long and are as thick as sharpie marker.


After they worms have reached full size they are placed onto a frame full of mulberry branches and the worms spin a silk cocoon and go to sleep to turn into moths. They stay on the branches for about 4-5 days.


After the 4-5 days the cocoons are divided into two groups. The first group is put into cages and allowed to fully mature into moths. These moths eventually lay eggs, which serve as the next generation of worms to continue the process. The other group of cocoons are taken into another room to collect the silk.


15 of the cocoons are placed into water that is kept at exactly 82 degrees. Small threads of silk are removed from each cocoon. These 15 threads are combined into a single thread and this thread is wound up around a large spool. This is the hardest part of the process and the women who do it are very skilled. They have to turn the machine at just the right rate to get the 15 threads to form a single thread and to insure that the thread cools enough by the time it gets wound onto the spool so that the threads do not stick together. The 15 cocoons can make a single thread more than 500 m long.


Eventually the threads of silk are taken to another room and put on a loom and turned into silk fabric. It can then be dyed and made into just about anything you can think of.

Color

I took these photographs one morning while Mark and I were wandering around Hanoi's Old Town north of Hoan Kiem Lake.