San Francisco - Day Two

My second day in San Francisco was spent largely in Chinatown. I really enjoyed it there. I woke up early. Did a little work, took a jog up in Nob Hill, took a shower, had breakfast (eggs & toast), and took off for my morning in Chinatown.

First I walked through the Financial District to familiarize myself with the building where I would have to go for training later in the evening. Walked up an angled street on the North side and ended up SMACK in the middle of Chinatown. I played a bit in a few music and movie stores checking out some new stuff. I spent a while reviewing some teas in a pretty sizable tea shop on the main street and ended up in a few clothing and style stores. Most everything was imported and cheesy. I was really hoping to run into something authentic. A few items scattered here and there were certainly nice, and I picked up a couple of Pashminas for my mom and sister (Stephanie) for Christmas. There were some interesting toys, wood carvings, and southeast asian cooking stuff I would have loved to buy. Another store had some truly fantastic art done with glass-blowing which I really liked, but the price didn't match my idea of affordable.

After China Town, I met up with Dugh (obviously with an H), who works at Viz Media. They're a major Japanese entertainment distributor outside of Japan. I got a tour of the Viz facilities. Pretty awesome. The Naruto stuff was everywhere (though I like Naruto, I "really" like Prince of Tennis and Hikaru no Go). After the tour some really cute women sightings inside the building, and a short net session on Dugh's MacBook, we headed out to lunch.

And to IHOP it was. We both like IHOP and he wasn't up for anything fancy for lunch so we went somewhere mutually agreeable.

He covered my foodstuffs which I am very grateful for. :P Dugh and I walked back to Viz and split up there after a decent conversation the entire time regarding politics and many other things. Dugh's personality was a good match with mine. I think we'll get along very well for a long time. Here's to years of fun friendship. If only I could get out to S.F. to see him and others more often.

After we split up I ended up taking a different route back than I had taken there and ended up walking up this really evil hill on the North side of Nob Hill. It killed me. But I loved it! The angle on the hill had to be between seventy-five and eighty degrees! I stopped at this cute little corner grocer at the top of the hill to refresh myself and then tailed it back to the hotel for a little rest before taking the trip back to the financial district for class at 6:00. I didn't eat dinner Monday but I didn't really care.

The class was good. We covered a number of aspects of Search Engine Optimization (the class I was taking). From what aspects of a site that search engines (SE's) look at and how they weigh to what to avoid when targeting your design. I'll have a full post on this class later. But for now, that should be it for this entry. My post doesn't do justice to the great time I had in Chinatown or the feeling I had walking up those HUGE hills in Nob Hill. Take it from me, that I am still in love with San Francisco. We'll see how I feel in the summer as our lease comes up.