Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Post Haste

So I know it's been a while since I updated this blog, I've been pretty busy working on these graduate school applications and trying to start a new life here. Anyway I finally got a laptop so maybe it'll make these posts a bit easier and more frequent, also I sent out my first application today and hopefully I'll have the rest of them wrapped up before I'm back in Jersey so I can just relax and chill with everyone.

The weather out here has been pretty nice, some of the leaves are just changing color now so it's almost like fall out here again. It can be anywhere from the high 60s to the high 30s and because of the fog rolling in off the bay it can get pretty cold at night. I haven't really been out that much but Berkeley seems to be somewhat like New Brunswick in that it is a city in it's own right but the university plays a large role in town. The one thing I don't like is that everything seems to close earlier, I guess since most of the events on TV are three hours earlier people just go to bed earlier too. I have yet to find a 24 hour store in Berkeley and most of the bars close around 12. Luckily the public transportation is pretty good and it's really not a hassle to go to San Francisco where there's more action. One thing I have learned out here is that you aren't supposed to call it San Fran or Frisco, the only acceptable names are The City or San Francisco. Also, people in the Bay Area love saying hella and I have to stop myself from punching them every time.
Arial view of our apartment
Kitchen
Living Room
Jon's Room
My Room
The View
So that's our new place. I know there's not much there right now but we're working on it, I've been keeping an eye out on Craiglist and trying to scoop up good stuff but it takes time. You can see from the arial view that there is a patio area on the roof, but when we first moved in the landlord said we were only allowed up there for special occasions like New Years and 4th of July because of the noise. The thing is our apartment is the corner one right above the patio so we can't really bother anyone but ourselves so we've gone up there a couple of times. The view from the roof is pretty sick because you can see the Golden Gate Bridge across the bay. Unfortunately the top of a tree is blocking the view from my window but maybe I'll just get drunk one night and decide to take it down. Also in case you were wondering the address is:
2033 Haste Street
Apartment 313
Berkeley, CA 94704

Chris Thai Cuisine
This is where Jon and I had our Thanksgiving dinner. It seems like instead of Chinese places Berkeley is full of Thai places instead. I know it's not the traditional Thanksgiving feast but we didn't really have any cookware yet because we had just moved into our new place that Monday. After dinner we decided to head over to Target and wait in line for the Black Friday deals, we didn't even have chairs at our place at that point so waiting wasn't that bad except that it got dropped down to the mid 30s and was probably the coldest it's been here in the past month.
Jon catching some ZZZs 
Our Haul
The following Saturday we decided to check out San Francisco to see if the nightlife was a bit better than what Berkeley had to offer. We decided to check out Union Square which I guess is their version of Rockefeller Center, they even had a skating rink and Christmas tree.
Union Square
We hit up a couple bars in the area and the scene was pretty good, there were definitely some misses but for just walking around and hitting up places randomly I think we did pretty well. We ended up spending a solid chunk of the night at this bar called Lefty O'Doul's and even though it was an Irish pub their rum selection is what blew me away by having not only Sailor Jerry's but also the Kraken.


Jon and I were sitting at the bar and this girl sat down next to us and I actually got her to take a shot of this stuff with us.

Last weekend Jon took me to a house party that one of his Chili's coworkers was having in San Francisco. It was good to see that people party pretty much the same way we do, with the added benefit that everyone smokes. It seemed like there was always a blunt and a bong going around and everyone seemed to have a rolled blunt chilling behind their ear like a pencil. I was a bit rusty but we were actually able to win a game of beer pong, the rules are a bit different but nothing too crazy.

They even had a half chihuahua half terrier dog but Kobe definitely came out a lot better than this one.

Anyway I'm about to land in LA so I gotta get off my laptop. Big ups to Google for providing free wifi for the holidays and I gotta say that Virigin is a pretty sick airline.