Since April 18 2012, I am for a second time in San Francisco to continue my work at the Mullins laboratory in the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), which was started last year in November. This time, the stay will be for four months, which made it necessary for me to obtain a visa. The process to get the J1 visa needed some patience, it took in total four months (including my passport being for 10 days with the post service somewhere between Chennai and Bangaore). Now I can better understand the hassle through which so many people have to go through, each time they want to travel.
Adapting to San Francisco life was eased this time by the fact that I stay in the same apartment and with the same people as a few months ago, the laboratory is the same as well, and the city, well, it is still this pleasant place.
During the first weekend, I visited a friend in Davis, where happened to be a Pic Nic day of the university. I took the train to get there and could watch the nice Californian nature while sitting in a very comfortable coach wagon with Wifi and panorama windows. Pic Nic day means that the campus is open for everyone, and each department prepares some attractions. The weather was beautiful and it seemed that the whole city (its not that big) plus many visitors came to see the various attractions. It was mainly about animals and farming, we saw a shepherd dogs competition, how to milk cows, nice horses, goats and so on. In the afternoon there was an awesome battle of the marching bands in a nice park area. But it was not a battle as such, the different instrument groups gathered at different spots in the park and played together. It was pure crazy fun (see pictures!).
The next weekend, I met with a couple of NCBS-Alumni, who work now in the bay area. We drove up north to the national park at point
Reys, which is a very nice spot on the coast. On the way, we passed a very nice nature including the rolling hills landscape that is the standard background theme of the Windows desktop (some might understand this). As soon as we reached the coast, the temperature dropped from 28C to 20C including heavy winds. The wind was so steady that trees were formed by its force. We went to the lighthouse, which was located down the shore directly at the water level.
While descending the many steps, we could see very nice stone formations, some were red and green colored from a microbe culture, others showed interesting patterns created by wind and water...you could feel the power of nature. As an extra, we even saw a whale spouting out an air/water fountain in the bay! Coming back home, we joined a little BBQ party at my place, which was done to celebrate fifth may (cinquo de mayo), which is a Mexican independence day. Unfortunately, my Indian friends had to leave on saturday evening. On Sunday, I saw by chance that the 24th and the Valencia streets were closed for car traffic, and I enjoyed wandering through these two beautiful streets filled with so many happy people. On some corners there was some live music, on others were information booths about social activities and at one spot, a bunch of tuned ultra-cool looking classic American cars were exposed!
In the late afternoon, I met a good friend from Berlin, who works in the bay area, to check out with him the beer garden called Zeitgeist. It was an interesting place with a nice garden, but the rock music was a bit loud for a relaxed conversation. We enjoyed the German beer. In the evening, I even discovered a nice gallery which opened its new exposition and saw a freshly burned down house! It was an eventful weekend!
Instead of a calmer start of the week, there were two more friends coming to San Francisco and I invited them to visit me in the evening. I know both from Paris, but they came independently and wanted (what a chance) go both to the Yosemite National Park. After a short discussion, we made the plan to rent a car on wednesday, to do a one day trip to this park. Sure, to make a 4 hours car ride to the site and to come back the same day, was a bit stressful, but it was worth it! We had beautiful weather and could thus fully enjoy the breathtaking nature of this park with its high rising mountains (up to ~ 3000m) and old forest including the giant Sequoia trees.
Because this year's winter was mild the Tioga pass was free, which goes up to 2800m and allowed us to have an astonishing view over the landscape! Besides that, it made so much fun to drive these curvy roads which were harmless compared to the serpentines in the Alps. The pass ended at Mono lake at the border of California to Nevada, and the first thing we realized when passing the imaginary border was that the road quality increased drastically! The landscape became more flat and we drove on a straight road in the pink orange light of sunset...and then we got back to the hills in the night! It was a great ride, using the brights to enlighten the pitch dark curvy roads and listening to electrifying music to entertain us. A couple of times, we saw a pair of reflective eyes or a couple of deer at the border of the road, but fortunately none of them jumped into our way. At 1.30 am, we parked the car and went home, relieved from the long ride, happy about the trip and a bit tired. I knew that I had to work the next day and that I had to bring back the car in the early morning, but I did not regret at all the trip.
My friends left on Thursday evening and on Saturday evening, I met another friend from Paris in a Club. She is actually in Los Angeles for an internship with an artist (painter), and came to San Francisco with someone who was DJing that night. While talking with her, I just realized how crazy the week was, and what a chance it was to have met so many old friends from Paris!
The bay area is really very attractive and active, so many things to see and to do...I am so lucky to stay here for a while.
to be continued...
