living, thinking and writing
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| PRACTICE living, thinking and writing |
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Friday, October 17, 2003 Weekend at North California My friend Jeff came to US for business trip and stopped at San Francisco for one day, so Bin and I drove North to meet him. It is our first visit to SF, the best city in the US. Bin was not too impressed, since parking is a big pain on neck to a driver. If we have trouble finding a free parking in LA, there is no parking at all in SF even we are holding 20 bucks and dying to spend it. How about that. To me, SF is the city confusing me most with movies. I mean it is as good as scenes in movies. Golden Gate Bridge against the sunset; clear sky and peaceful ocean; The sun sinks unto the sea at the horizon; beautiful crowds of people at every corner of the streets; life jazz singers sings blue in dim restaurants; swarm of hansome young marines in shiny whites packed on corner of Broadway and Columbus mingling with gorgeous girls; neon nights blended with champagne and perfume …could not be more cinematic. After seeing off Jeff the second day, we drove to Palo Alto for a pilgrim of Stanford. Finally, a campus resonates my vision of typical academic institution: red roof under blue sky and quiet like an abbey (their trademarked building is a church, by the way. It is not that it is scarce populated or lack of tourists. Maybe it just happens to be a quiet, lazy and breezy weekend afternoon. We took a bird view at the top of Hoover tower, San Francisco is not too far away, surrounded by SF bay and continuous mountains. Then we drove to Monterey. We stopped at Pebble Beach to watch sunset and sat by the beach of Carmel by The Sea to listen to the ocean wave under starry sky. Then we had the most breathtaking road trip ever since. The cragged and narrow high way 1 seems to lead nowhere other than the mystery mountains one after another, absolutely dark, no traffic at night at all. Steep cliff and roaring ocean are just under your wheels, but don’t look aside- the road is so winding that you would throw yourself into the sea at a blink. The never-ending winding trip lasts about 2 hour and we got so exhausted and scared. We joked that if a policeman stops us for alcohol check, we are most possibly walking in an S path. Then I realize maybe that’s where those Hollywood car chasing scene were shot, like “Basic Instinct” or “Catch a thief”. I should come back to check, but not at night again, I swear. I feel like loosing my head when doing descriptive writing in English. Feels like a baby that could not say complete sentence, but piecing together some broken phrases. Maybe I’ve been a graduate student too long. I am trained to write in boring way... Just an excuse. posted by lmeimei @2:38 AM| permanent link| | |
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