Work Hard, Play Hard

Working 9-5 hasn’t been bad, especially because I’ve been fortunate enough to balance out the work with fun stuff!

Wednesday after work I met my newfound Berkeley friend, and he gave me a tour of UC Berkeley’s campus. The campus is so pretty (but very hilly!) – I really like how Cal has its own campus and then a separate little college town, whereas Harvard Square and lots of big roads run directly through Harvard’s campus. The weather has also gotten much nicer – the rain stopped and now it’s 68-71F and sunny. Much better! We stopped for dinner at this pizza cooperative (owned by the people who work there) called Cheeseboard. They serve only one kind of pizza per day (all vegetarian) and it’s apparently very popular. The line went way down the sidewalk, but because there’s only one thing to order it moved very fast. We ate on the grassy median in the middle of the road outside, because that’s apparently the Berkeley Hipster thing to do. (Don’t worry, Michael – I’m not going to go hippie on you!)

Thursday is apparently Berkeley Bar Night (as in a big group of the Pixar interns all choose a bar in Berkeley to congregate at, which is very convenient for me to get to see Kevin and some of the other interns who are more new friends). This week we were joined by a Harvard hapa who graduated last year (and whose cousin is one of my closest friends at school!). As this hapa left the bar, one of the (Asian) Pixar interns was overheard commenting, “I hope my babies look like him.” Flattering, yes, but perhaps a bit creepy.

This past Friday was probably one of the most fun days I’ve had since I got here. Alisa, Polly, and I all met up for lunch in Downtown Oakland at a farmers’ market. We got some delicious tamales and (perfectly seasoned and moist) rotisserie chicken. We walked over to a nearby park and sat in the sun while we ate. Alisa had to run off to work, but I was lucky enough to get some quality girl talk in with Polly J

some weird performance art outside of Alisa's office. the theme was about slowing down

After work I took BART into SF’s Mission District to meet up with other girls in the Seneca (the social org I am a member of – www.theseneca.org) I was SO excited and SO happy to see them! I’ve always had a tendency to have male, more so than female, friends (maybe because of my brothers?), but I realized that I really really missed having girlfriends around all the time.

we looked at the goodies at Tartine's but wanted to save our appetites for dinner...

We went to Morac, a Moroccan restaurant/lounge that Polly recommended. We shared some really delicious entrees, my favorite of which was the za’atar chicken. (I don’t think I’ve ever had Moroccan food before. It might have also tasted really good because I haven’t been eating meat here, except for the infrequent times I go out to restaurants.) After dinner, we hung out and caught up over cocktails. The consensus was that the Que (a cucumber drink) was the best. I liked that the drink had texture because every now and then you’d get some little cucumber seeds.

After dinner we still weren’t ready to part ways, so we headed to a tapas place to share some sangria. The place was in the Haight, which is apparently a very desirable neighborhood, but I personally didn’t get what was so great about it. It didn’t seem that nice to me, but I guess that’s not the point… the point is that it’s the Haight. Whatever!

Marianna stayed over Friday night and we walked around Berkeley a bit in the morning, then I spent the day lounging around (plus going for a run to compensate for those cocktails… yikes) and catching up on thesis stuff and Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution TV show. And Gossip Girl…

Saturday night Kevin came over and we cooked dinner (I’ve gotten him hooked on nian gao). Then we went to listen to Dispatch (a band). They were playing at the Berkeley Greek Theater, and while we didn’t have tickets, we heard that you could go up on the hill behind the theater and listen. It took us a while to figure out how to get around behind the theater, but once we did it was really fun! We could hear perfectly, although the stage was too low for us to see anything besides the lights. The weather was perfect (thankfully not too cold like it had been last week)!

It’s crazy how quickly weekends seem to fly by…