I Have Thoughts That Need To Be Shared (a series)

– I don’t travel light. I feel like that’s a personal flaw – why am I incapable of leaving the apartment without taking a million things with me?

Also, I’ve clearly jumped on the Le Pliage bandwagon, and I sort of hate myself for it. Every girl and her damn grandmother owns one of these Longchamp bags, but it turns out there’s a perfectly legitimate reason for this: the bag is sturdy, lightweight, and fits ALL of my crap, including the big stash of fruits I’ve been bringing in to work every day this week.

The big stash of fruits is not pictured here, because it had all made its way into my mouth by the time this photo was taken.

 

– Speaking of fruits in my mouth, I put a banana in my mouth the other day, got distracted by work e-mails and then completely forgot that there was a banana in my mouth, waiting for me to eat it.

Take a second to picture that, and you’ll see why I was mortified when I realised what I was doing.

(And at WORK, too!)

 

– Sometimes I feel like a fraud: I’m only playing the role of the competent employee and responsible adult. I’m not actually a competent employee and responsible adult; I’ll get caught out eventually. Most days, I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. I tend to forget that I’m actually good at my job. Worse still, I tend to forget that I’m 26 years old and no longer need to ask for permission to do things, that my life is my own, and I am entirely responsible for creating the life I’d like to live.

It’s hard for me to not feel like I’m just playing a role, and that people will eventually catch on and realise that I really have no fucking clue.

I’ve been told that I need more self-confidence, and that I need to be less risk-averse. I’m working on it.

 

– I really fucking love that so many people have been saying this to me, in response to my telling them about my big scary goals: “Well, what’s stopping you?”

The answer to that question is this: “Nothing, really.”

I just need to get my butt into gear, and find some guts – a little chutzpah – in the meantime.

 

– Life would be a lot less expensive if I didn’t feel an irresistable need to keep learning new things. Learning another language and mastering the art of essay-writing are not cheap activities, unfortunately.

Having said that, I need to remember that at least I’m fortunate enough to be in a position where French lessons and writing courses are options available to me. Expensive options, sure, but it’s an investment in my future and the life I’d like to live, so there’s that. It boils down to this: less complaining, more belt-tightening. Just shift things around in the budget – pack lunch, drink less, etc. You have to find a way to make these things work.

 

– I tend to lose myself in a book – you could be screaming my name loud enough to wake the dead, and I won’t even look up. It doesn’t even register; I’m that absorbed in what I’m reading.

I found myself wondering the other day if anyone would ever find this endearing. Would anyone love me for this particular quality?

No one has, so far.

 

– I miss San Francisco.

What I Like.

I like where I live. It’s close to the city, but not in the city. It’s close enough to work (well, The Firm’s office, at least) that I can go home for lunch, if I want to.

I like going home at lunch: this generally only happens on the rare occasions when I’m working at The Firm’s office and not at the client’s, when work is a little bit slow and I don’t really have much to do, and when I haven’t already made lunch plans with anyone else. I’ll go home for lunch then; home, where it’s quiet and cool (usually, anyway), and I get to sit down at my desk and eat Doritos in peace. No health-conscious co-workers nagging me about my unhealthy eating habits at home, nope.

I’m actually trying to eat healthier these days, but becoming a Fit and Healthy Rae is a journey marked by baby steps rather than leaps and bounds; it is not an overnight change. I mean, Doritos are delicious, OKAY? And I am still mostly too lazy to cook dinner for one.

Anyway, I also like going home for lunch because it means that I get to read, or write, or even nap, sometimes. Sometimes I end up going home at lunch because I am in dire need of a nap.

I like wearing Havaianas during the commute to work on really hot summer days like today.

I like the feel of silk against my skin on really hot summer days.

Something else I like: the pressure that comes with participating in this self-imposed 9.37 Project. I decided to jump on Amber and Drea’s bandwagon: every day, at 9.37p.m. I stop to take a photo of whatever it is I’m doing at that very moment, and I share it on Instagram (I’m raihanaaaa on there).

Like so:

9.37p.m. on Sunday night: fixing lunch for the next day. I actually ruined this dish – my egg to cheese ratio was way off (dammit). 

I’m doing it because it forces me to become more mindful of what I’m doing with my time – my precious, limited time. There is nothing quite like knowing that the (mostly) faceless Internet is going to see exactly what I’m up to each night to really take the time to (sometimes figuratively) get off my arse and do all my things. And I do have a lot of things to do – working towards the big scary goals and all that, things that need to be worked on during the night after work and yoga, and trying to maintain a social life.

Also: chores. The laundry’s not going to fold itself, missy.

I’ve decided that I also like Sundays in Melbourne, particularly sunny ones (ha!) like yesterday. If you ever come to visit me, you should make sure to include a Sunday in your trip. We’d go to Queen Victoria Market to pick up the week’s supply of fruits and the odd vegetable or two (mushrooms are vegetables, right?). I’d buy you a lamb borek afterwards, maybe some doughnuts, which we would then take to Market Lane Coffee across the street, so we could wash them down with a lovely pour-over coffee, or maybe a latte. We’d sit by the windows and just watch people walk past, and talk about everything, or maybe just sit in comfortable silence together, lost in our own thoughts.

Later in the afternoon, after we’ve dropped the groceries off at my place, we could go to the Rooftop Bar and have a couple of cold drinks in the shade of a giant umbrella, watching the hipsters hanging around doing the same, listening to the ’90s music blaring in the background. You could order a burger and fries if you’re hungry.

Does that sound good? I hope it does. It’s not exactly a routine Sunday for me, not yet anyway. I’m really describing the perfect little Sunday I had last weekend. I’d like Sundays like that to become a summertime routine.

I like routines. (I also like breaking routines from time to time)

This is my daily routine: I stumble out of bed and into the kitchen, where I pour myself a glass of water, and down it while making myself some peanut butter toast. I eat said peanut butter toast while reading blogs and catching up on my Twitter feed. I wash down the toast and a multivitamin with a glass of milk, then wash the dishes, hit the shower, get dressed, and get out the door. I read a book on the tram into the city. First stop of the day: Brother Baba Budan for my coffee and some quiet writing time (although I should really make more of an effort to talk to people instead, sometimes). I’m often writing about the previous day, or writing to psych myself up for that day, or about the strange little thoughts that float through my brain.

Here’s a secret: sometimes, I am writing to God. It’s the only way I know how to talk to Him these days. As it turns out, I can’t stop wanting things. I want my life to turn out a certain way, and I need Him to give me a helping hand sometimes (and He is; sometimes these letters are thank you notes).

It makes me feel better to talk to Him.

(I know at least one guy who’ll be happy to hear that. I miss you, Boo.)

When it comes down to it though, I think it’s good that I still want things, all the big, scary things. I’d like to think that it means that I haven’t given up – on life, or on myself. I’d like to think that it means I’m still hopeful and optimistic – even if I cringe sometimes when I hear myself say these things. Drinking the optimism Kool-Aid, yep. And then I remember that there is nothing wrong with being hopeful and optimistic. You get what you project to the world. The things you love and want move toward you. I actually believe that.

Time to ‘fess up.

Here is my confession (or one of them, at least).

Sometimes, late at night – when the lights, music and laptop have all been switched off – I’ll lie in bed and think to myself, “This is it. This is all there will ever be. Just me, alone in a bed too big for one person.”

It’s a little embarrassing to admit this, but there it is: late at night, when my guard is down, when it’s just me and my semi-drowsy thoughts in that twilight moment before sleep takes hold, I fear that I’ll never have love in my life again. I fear that there is no lasting romance in my future, no happy marriage, no family of my own.

Not all of us are lucky enough to find love.

Not all of us are lucky enough to find love more than once.

Because here’s the thing, the really crazy thing (and I KNOW this is crazy): I’m superstitious enough to believe that life and the Universe may want to punish me for walking away from the man who spent eight years of his very young life loving me and putting up with all my weirdness, my passive-aggressive behaviour, my inability to adequately communicate what I want. I’m superstitious enough to believe that I’ll get what’s coming to me for walking away from someone who, by the standards of the culture and society I was born into, is a total catch.

But he wasn’t the right man for me. Staying with him would have been settling for ‘good enough’.

I have been made to understand that most girls wouldn’t have ended the relationship. They would have stayed. They would have settled for ‘good enough’.

I believed (and still believe) that I’m too young to be settling for ‘good enough’.

My fear, however, is that I will wake up alone one day and realise that I was absolutely wrong, that I should have settled for good enough.

So here I am, right back to square one. I am right back to where I was at the age of 18, when I said this to the boy who would one day become Boyfriend, and is now He Who Was Formerly Known As Boyfriend (are you keeping up?):

I love my life. It’s going rather well, if I do say so myself. I don’t want for anything.

It’s just that, it’d be nice to share it with someone, you know?

 

This is my confession. What’s yours? I’d love to hear about it – share in the comments, or shoot me an e-mail at raihanaaaa [at] gmail [dot] com. 

 

 

 

 

 

In which I give up my right to complain, and declare that sleep is overrated. Sort of.

I’d like to think that one day, I’ll be making a living by writing about whatever I want. Travel, the myriad frustrations of having to rely on public transportation, a passionate plea for all of society to please pile on the deodorant during the heat of summer, life as a Malaysian expatriate in San Francisco (HERE’S HOPING), my tendency to choose books over groceries when faced with a dwindling bank balance, the mess that is my underwear drawer, my overwhelming need to nail all the notes in each and every song I pick in karaoke, my love of pho. Whatever. I. Freakin’. Want.

One day.

Maybe.

Hopefully.

That day hasn’t come yet. (Well, duh)

And you know what? That’s perfectly fine. I’ve got a very long way to go still when it comes to writing. I’ve barely started.

Until then, I need to remember this:

My day job allows me to do all the things I want to do. My day job keeps me in books and nearly endless cups of coffee. My day job pays for drinks on Friday night and brunch on the weekends and silk dresses at Madewell (even if I had to wait until the store knocked 30% off the price of said dresses). My day job allows me to say “TREAT YO SELF” every so often – this fortnight’s planned treat: a Lamy fountain and ballpoint pen set that I should not be this excited about, seriously. My day job pays for yoga classes and French classes and long holidays at the end of the year.

My day job allowed me to say “Yes, okay, I’ll make a random trip down to Los Angeles just to hang out with a bunch of really cool girls!”

(Which I did, and it was awesome, and seriously, I need to live in the same time zone as these ladies)

(L-R: Drea, Amber and Lanny)

I am still learning all kinds of new things in my day job. Which is nice.

So I’m not going to complain…much. Yes. I will not complain too much – because saying that I will never complain EVER is pretty much impossible, COME ON. I’m only human, and I have only so much patience for the more frustrating aspects of my job.

(Hi, admin tasks! Hi, juggling separate sets of report review points from senior staff that contradict each other!)

There will always be days when I will find myself sorely tempted to sign up to a sugar daddy matchmaking service and spend the rest of my days as a lady of leisure. But still: I’m not going to complain too much.

Promise.

And I’m not going to get complacent either.

I’ll keep writing. Always.

This is my new mantra for the year: Sleep is overrated. Kill yourself at work, go to yoga, then come home and work some more on all your other fun stuff.

Ulp.

I’d like to think that 2012 is the year that everything starts coming together for me. This shift in perspective is one teeny tiny step towards that: appreciate more, complain less, and work my damn butt off.

 

 

 

 

In which I abuse the Shift key a lot and complain about the heat. Also, making like I’m a model and doing the windblown hair thing.

Hi, Melbourne.

I’m back at home, bitches. Back home and melting in this godawful Melbourne heat and ALL OF THE TRAMS WITH NO AIR-CONDITIONING.

All together now: “I MISS SAN FRANCISCO, DAMMIT.”

Having said that, it’s nice to be back in my apartment. It’s nice to know that I’m going to be sleeping in my own bed tonight. It’s nice to be able to zone out while taking public transport, because I know exactly where I’m going and I know exactly where this tram is going. It’s nice to know that I’ll be seeing my friends very soon.

What’s not so nice is logging on and checking all of the work e-mails (118 in total, only 20 of which were necessary and important), and discovering that I’ve sort of been left holding the [redacted client name] baby.

What’s also not so nice is the very thought of wearing corporate clothes in this fucking heat.

Kill me, please. Can I go back on vacation again?

And in other news: 

I bought groceries today. Groceries that require actual cooking. Which, you know, I hadn’t been doing any of until I got to New York and fixed a pasta dinner for myself, Elaine and Zak one night. (Trader Joe’s, I love you and your turkey bacon. That is all.) In any case, that was my first time cooking in about six months or so. Turns out depression leads to not wanting to expend the effort to fix something to eat or, sometimes, not wanting to eat at all. Who knew?

Hint: NOT ME. So I was continually bashing myself for something that was totally normal given the circumstances (“Eating out all the time is SO expensive. This is SO frivolous. You should be saving, you idiot, what is wrong with you?!”), and Doritos and chocolate chip cookies totally count as balanced meals when you’re depressed.

Just, um, don’t let it go on for too long. RECOGNISE WHEN TO SEEK HELP.

Anyway.

That’s all going to change this year. You know, because it’s a new year! And because I know that this trip has changed me for the better! Don’t ask me how – I have no idea; I couldn’t even begin to tell you how. I can feel it though. I started sensing the shift after a couple of days in New York, and this sense of change, of transformation, only grew stronger as the days went by, and I moved on to San Francisco and Los Angeles and Hong Kong.

I just think it’ll be a while before I fully understand  and am able to articulate what it is that’s changed.

However:

Here’s one thing that’s changed (and granted, it’s a tiny one, a teeny shift in perspective): I know now that I was completely and utterly wrong about being alone in this world.

You see, I used to keep saying this to myself, and to anyone who cared to listen. I’m on my own now. Family’s gone, the boyfriend’s gone. There is no safety net now; you’re on your own, kiddo. Better tidy up your life. BECAUSE YOU HAVE NO SAFETY NET, FOR YOU ARE ENTIRELY ALONE IN THIS WORLD.

(Say hello to my Brain Robots. Shush, Brain Robots.)

But then it hit me during this trip that this is absolutely untrue. How could it be true when I keep getting e-mails and tweets and text messages from my friends, telling me to have a blast in the States, to let them know how I’m doing?

My friends missed me while I was gone.

And then today, I walk into my apartment after a whole month away, and found this:

Chocolate chip cookies! Aw, Jillybean.

My immediate reaction was this: “How could I have EVER thought that I was alone in this world?”

Which, you know, is a nice change from my usual melodramatics.

So basically, no more “I am alone in this world” nonsense. Because I’m not.

And on a completely unrelated note, here’s a somewhat more tangible change: 

I actually only wanted a treatment and fringe trim today – my last splurge for a VERY long while, given I, um, totally overspent on this trip, and will soon be dipping into my meager savings and paying my credit card off in full for ALL of the travel expenses, fuuuuuck – but I don’t know, I think Michael the Hair God misheard me and next thing I knew, I was getting a full-blown trim.

Which is fine, really. I tend to let Michael do whatever the hell he wants with my hair, and it always works out.

Like so:

Windblown effect achieved by sitting right next to the fan, because it is really fucking hot right now, people.

I don’t know, I just sort of felt the need to do something semi-drastic before reality truly hits tomorrow (read: I’m going in to the office tomorrow). I couldn’t chop my hair off, because one of my superficial resolutions for this year (what, you don’t have any?) was to grow my hair out, and so a shaggy little fringe it was.

(The other superficial resolutions: wear eyeliner, and deny my Melbournian identity and wear less black.)

Although, given the heat out there? I’m mostly going to be wearing it like this, I think.

I actually hate having my hair in my face. Why do I always ask for a fringe again? I mean, smack me, seriously. I am so dumb, sometimes.

And in conclusion:

I don’t actually have a point with this post. I’m working on maybe 3 hours of sleep here. So there’s that.

Hong Kong: Halfway home.

“Heavy heart, joyful heart”. I’ve been repeating these words in my head for days now.

I’m writing this from Alex’s bed in Hong Kong, but Alex isn’t here – work forced him to Jakarta at the last minute, which negates the entire point of this two-day transit in Hong Kong. It was a little bit heartbreaking to walk into his apartment and inhale his familiar scent of cigarettes and cologne yesterday, knowing that we wouldn’t be sitting around that night, drinking and talking. I miss talking to him, dammit.

Not that I didn’t end up having fun in Hong Kong – I’m now convinced that when you find yourself thinking, “I really don’t want to be here”, you’ll tend to end up having a blast in the end. And I did. Said blast involved finally figuring out how to smoke things (shisha, in this case, relax!), bottles of wine, tequila shots, then attempting to sober up on spring rolls and a lone fish finger.

And then we ended up in a karaoke joint. I totally nailed ‘You Belong With Me’ by Taylor Swift, high-ish notes and all. I also have a weird desire to watch Armageddon now, after two (TWO) rounds of ‘I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing’ by Aerosmith. Look, that wasn’t my doing, but I guess I’ll go with it. I’m a team player, you know.

You missed out, Alex.

Anyway.

I’ll be on a flight back to Melbourne in roughly 12 hours.

I want/don’t want to go home.

 

San Francisco: Where all the food lives.

Bite

I am really very glad that I found Holly Burn’s blog, and I am really very glad that she put together a handy little guide to San Francisco that is, shall we say, very much skewed towards all of the food and all of the booze. I went to Bite for lunch today, after a stroll through Huntington Park and Grace Cathedral (where I thought a lot of thoughts about organised religion and the lack thereof in my own life), and oh dear God, the Gouda Good sandwich is very good indeed. Har har.

But no, seriously, it really is very good. Rotisserie chicken, gouda and – to paraphrase Holly – a peppercorn sauce made from crack cocaine itself.

Oh, look, I just made myself hungry again.

The Ferry Building

I’ve decided that, if I were a San Franciscan, my ideal first date would be to meet at the Ferry Building and spend some time together eating all the food in the sun, while looking out at the Bay. That place is ridiculous – how anyone can go there for the first time and not be paralysed by all the options is beyond me.

Yes, I was totally paralysed by all the options the first time I went there. I mean, this is where all the food lives! And I went on a farmer’s market day too (Thursday – also Tuesdays and Saturdays), which just made the dilemma worse – OH MY GOD ALL OF THE FOOD.

Totally worth a second visit. Which is me basically saying that yes, I’m going to be found there tomorrow. How early is too early to have oysters and wine?

(Screw it, I’m on vacation – it is NEVER too early for oysters and wine)

Red Door Cafe

The guy behind me in the line for Sunday brunch (who happened to be good friends with the owner of Red Door Cafe) summed it up perfectly (although I’m paraphrasing here – look, the coffee hadn’t kicked in yet at that point):

“This is such a San Francisco experience. Only in San Francisco, baby.”

Here’s how it works: you’ll get there, and you’ll have to wait in line for a table (don’t block the pavement though, or you’ll get run over by cranky old people). It doesn’t matter how early you arrive – the place only seats about 15 people, and you WILL have to queue. I turned up maybe 15-20 minutes after it opened, and I still had to stand in line for an hour. While holding a topless baby doll in one hand, and a jack o’ lantern-shaped mug of coffee in the other.

Yeah.

Oh, and while you’re waiting in line? The owner will interview you to decide whether or not you’re worth serving – and if you’re not, then he will totally turn you away. No, really. It’s awesome. HE is awesome, and fabulous and goddamn, honey, can we trade asses? Because you could bounce a quarter off his ass, which he’d shown off to perfection in a pair of short shorts. Which reminds me: I also want to trade legs with him. Anyway, yes, he’ll interview you, and baby, you’d better be nice/interesting/gorgeous/funny if you’d like to get in.

Basically, don’t forget to bring your sense of humour and adventure when you go to Red Door Cafe.

I managed to get in by telling him about what I’d done in the wee hours of New Year’s Day (no, I’m not telling YOU). Oh, and I was there alone, so there was that. As he put it, ”Are you alone, honey? Oh, I’ll take care of you. I can’t turn a single girl away, you’ve got enough drama going on already.”

Um. He’s not wrong, I guess. See: FEELS ALL THE DAMN FEELINGS, ALL OF THE TIME.

Ooh, that reminds me: the words “Honey, I don’t need to smoke pot to feel, I already feel all the damn feelings WITHOUT it!” may or may not have also come out of my mouth that morning.

Anyway. He sat me with a very pretty 14 year old girl who’d been left to her own devices that morning (“My mom’s still asleep, and my sister’s out somewhere with her friends, and I was really hungry, so I just hopped on a bus and came here.”) As it turns out, she and I are kindred spirits – her favourite thing to do in a new city is to eat her way through it.

And yes, eating with a 14 year old who’d JUST started high school last fall? Way to make me feel old. I have to give her credit for being able to hold a conversation with a 26 year old though. She was a sweet thing.

Oh, and the food? AMAZING. I had the Mexidilla (I think that’s what it was called), and it was a party in my mouth. Well worth the one hour wait.

Also, the owner gives you a hug when you leave. I really liked that.

Foreign Cinema/Tartine/Bi-Rite Creamery/Mission Cheese

Look, you know what, I’m not even going to try – just go to the Mission district and, well, eat your way through it. Just go. I can’t even describe it. Seriously.

And in conclusion: 

If anyone asks where all my money went on this trip, the answer is “My stomach.”

San Francisco: Lessons learnt.

San Franciscans are a warm and friendly bunch, even the hipster baristas at the cool coffee shops.

San Franciscan boys are generally really cute.

(Hello, dark-haired boy in plaid whom I spotted from afar at Sightglass Coffee Bar and Roastery today)

(Sigh)

There are more dogs in San Francisco than there are children – this is, by far, my favourite bit of trivia about San Francisco.

Being told that you do not look like a tourist, not at all, will NEVER get old.

There are a lot of homeless/crazy people in San Francisco. You learn very quickly to avoid eye contact (“Bitch face: ON”) and to very casually give them a wide berth when you encounter them on the street. And speaking of homeless/crazy people, the Tenderloin is an interesting neighbourhood at 9.30 in the morning. However, it is quite obvious, even to an oblivious person such as myself, that interesting will tend to become terrifying at 9.30 at night. AVOID.

511.org will tell you how to get to places. nextmuni.com will tell you when the next bus is due to arrive at your stop – just remember to tap ‘OK’ when it asks to use your current location.

It only takes about two days to get a rough idea of how the city is laid out – San Francisco is not a large city, after all – and to be able to determine, without the use of a map, where you are in relation to the apartment in Lower Nob Hill.

(I walked back home from Cafe de la Presse on Friday night without looking at Google Maps, huzzah!)

What I haven’t figured out yet, however, is how to stop vacillating between feeling ridiculously happy (how could I not be, when I’m spending my days wandering around this amazing city?) and then, a few hours later, sinking into the depths of an unexplainable sadness. I was at the 16th Street Mission BART station earlier, and I found myself wanting to cry (and no, it is not THAT time of the month, thank you very much). Thank God for years of practice at repressing nonsense like that – nobody likes a crying tourist, even one who doesn’t look like a tourist.

Maybe it’s the full moon – I’ve had quite a few yoga instructors tell me that all kinds of personal madness can ensue during a full moon. Yes, let’s chalk it up to that. It’s just the full moon. This will pass.

Taken in the Mission district, possibly my favourite neighbourhood in San Francisco. 

 

 

 

 

 

San Francisco: Cynic.

cynic

noun
1. A person who believes that people are motivated purely by self-interest rather than acting for honourable or unselfish reasons.
2. A person who questions whether something will happen or is worthwhile.  

Some time between Tosca Cafe (house cappuccino, full of brandy) and Cafe de la Presse (poulet roti, table for one by the window), I became a bit of a cynic.

I still don’t know what the hell it is I’m looking for here, but right now, I no longer really believe that I’ll find it.

San Francisco: A jumbled up mess of contradictory feelings.

I haven’t really been sleeping well lately. I keep waking up every few hours, and I can’t really get back to sleep – deep sleep – no matter how exhausted I was when I went to bed.

This has been going on since about halfway through the New York leg of this trip.

San Francisco hasn’t been any different. I woke up at 5.25 a.m. today and couldn’t get back to sleep.

So here I am.

This is what I want to talk about: there comes a point on any extended trip abroad when loneliness and exhaustion start to take over, when everything feels overwhelming and you start craving – longing for – home. Home, familiarity, comfort, routine. My own bed. My own apartment. Knowing where everything is. Knowing that you can just pick up the phone and talk to someone who loves you, who’ll talk you off whatever ledge you happen to be standing on.

There comes a point when you just want someone else to take care of things.

The problem is that I don’t have that luxury. I chose to travel alone.

Yesterday was my first day in San Francisco. It was a ridiculously beautiful day, my favourite kind of day – clear skies, a crisp chill in the air, the sun beating down on my back, my hair glinting in its light. I was feeling pretty, and I guess it showed: I was flirted with, in quick succession, by the man selling cable car tickets (I’d asked him for directions), a vendor selling a monthly newspaper to aid the homeless, and a guard at the Embarcadero station. This is worth mentioning because it never happens to me in Australia. I had gone to the Ferry Building (didn’t get lost, too, woot!), where I was nearly paralysed by all the food options, and exchanging excited tweets with Drea about all! the! food!

There was a really cute boy behind the counter at Acme, where I’d bought a rosemary roll, and I don’t know, was he checking me out? Whatever. I bought my breakfast at Cowgirl Creamery (oh, cheese, how I love you) and ate it while sitting in the sun, looking out at the Bay.

iPhone photos only for now, because my camera died while I was at the Golden Gate Bridge. I KNOW, RIGHT? I should go recharge it, like, uh, now. 

Feeling blissfully, recklessly happy the entire time.

Falling hopelessly in love with San Francisco.

Remember this: the Ferry Building. Eating breakfast in the sun. The Bay Bridge in the distance. Seagulls.

Remember.

And then I went to Pier 39 to look at the sea lions, and God knows what happened, but I started feeling so lonely and homesick then.

I hate admitting this: I’m lonely.

Right now, in this very moment, I am lonely. All I want to do right now is to go home – or rather, Bella’s home – and crawl into bed, and just stare at the ceiling for a little while.

I am in a beautiful place, in a beautiful city, I am enjoying the sun on a beautiful Californian winter day, and I am lonely.

I’m trying to shake it off.

Shaking it off involved randomly deciding to hop on a cheesy bus tour of the city’s sights. Um. Yeah.

I saw the bridge though, which was nice.

I made a flippant joke, later that night, about it having everything to do with just how touristy the place was, but that’s not the whole story, I guess. I’m chalking it up to a kind of travel fatigue. Like I said, there always comes a point on any extended trip when everything feels overwhelming, when exhaustion – the exhaustion of making sure that you have all your shit together – becomes almost unbearable. I’ve felt this way before, after all: two years ago, on that last day in New York, about to fly to London, when the key got stuck in the door of the apartment building in Greenwich Village and, in that moment, all I wanted to do was go home to Melbourne.

Feeling this way is entirely normal.

This, too, shall pass.

Going to Four Barrel Coffee later in the evening helped. That place is just so much like Melbourne; walking in was immediately comforting.

Same old, same old, but in San Francisco

And I’d just like to stress this: that despite the loneliness, I was feeling so incredibly happy to be here, in this city that’s fascinated me ever since I first discovered Maggie and Holly’s blogs. I’m falling in love with this place – how could anyone not, really? I want to move here. I feel it in my bones: I want to move here.

I just don’t know how to make it happen.