may 18, 2007 - Tracy

Start:

May 18, '07 4:00p

no credit cards and minimal dollars, so my shopping plans for today have gone pffft! will just stay here, wait by the phone, try to transfer pics from cam to laptop and pack after lunch.

may 17, 2007 - Santa Rosa

Start:

May 18, '07 4:00p

We were supposed to have some shopping done with Jane and Fat (Gerry's wife is Fatima) back at Tracy but I was in Sta. Rosa with Kaiyen. We pored over our high school yearbook and spent some time chatting in the morning, went out for a Vietnamese brunch.
Proceeded to Armstrong Redwoods then the Charles M. Schultz museum (Snoopy baby!). Took more pictures on the way back to Sanfo from the other side of the bridge.
Poor Roehl had to wait for me at the BART station...and I ended up the day with losing my credit card wallet. Chalk it up to either lack of sleep, exhaustion or old age :-(

My bad...pulled out the card case which contained the phone card to call Roehl only to find out 45 minutes na sya pala sa station...waaah....kawawang Kuya Roehl..ayun, if he accepted my offer na kumain kami for dinner, ma notice ko sana nahulog or nawala yung cards ko...(hehehe..kasalanan pa ni Roehl ngayon)..

Well, c'est la vie! Things could have been worse...

may 16, 2007 - walkabout Union Square, Chinatown and kainan!

Start:

May 16, '07 01:00a

lunch with Bong at Cheesecake factory in Macy's facing Union Square...libre ni Bong yung lunch!!!..thanks heaps Bong! I bow to you (you don't know how rare it is that Bong treats people to lunch..hehehe, so I count myself honored)

walking tour all the way to Chinatown, Cable Car Museum, Grace Cathedral, and a cable car ride from Powell St/Market St to Beach St (Cannery).
grabe lakad...and I had to go walk back down to Powell St para makasakay ng cable car..hehehe...
dinner with Kaiyen at Grubstake where I had my first Portuguese meal...and a burger too (well 1/2 and 1/2)...
sleepover at Kaiyen's house at Santa Rosa - an impromptu decision which resulted in my ending up with nothing except the clothes on my back that night..hehehe...Kaiyen was the perfect hostess, providing everything up to sleeping clothes..

may 15, 2007 - escape from Tracy into Alcatraz

Start:

May 15, '07 01:00a

jogged down Embarcadero to Pier 33 due to delay in BART trains
Alcatraz-bound
Pier 39, with ultimate goal of Ghirardelli Square
dinner at Applebee's with Lala, Louie, Roehl, Ronette and Jerry...perfect margarita!

may 14, 2007 - back in time at Haight-Ashbury

Start:

May 14, '07 01:00a

resked dinner with Bong to another time due to timely meeting with Choie
Choie's house for breakfast, then Haight Street with Choie and her daugher Isobel...where aside from the Red Victorian, dropped by Amoeba (we were on a discovery tour coz we walked!)
went back to Choie's house, fell asleep, got up and had
dinner with Choie's family and Roehl (durog na daw si Jerry)..
feel asleep..going to Tracy

may 13, 2007 - napa valley and six degrees of separation

Start:

May 13, '07 01:00a

Napa Valley
along with Roehl and Jerry did some wine-tasting and had an impromptu picnic on the grass...crashed into Choie and her family (Glenn and their kids) by some twist of fate
Robert Mondavi winery and V. Sattui winery
Vietnamese dinner (takeout)

may 12, 2007 - arrival in sanfo/toury tourista

Start:

May 12, '07 01:00a

roehl and jerry picked me up some freezing hours later :-)
lunch at Ongpin for good ole Filipino food
whirlwind tour..at random now - Twin Peaks, Golden Gate, Palace of Fine Arts ?, Presidio, Lombard Street (drive-by shooting, literally but more on that later), Pier 39 (clam chowder and sourdough bread) etc.
got ensconsed in Roehl and Jane's house in Tracy

Serendipity Sunday? Mother's Day too...

Tracy, Sanfo at 02:42 am PST

I just couldn't go to sleep without posting a short note on the amazing day I had on Mother's Day here in San Francisco.

Let me just jabber on and on before I fall flat on my face since I have a 6:15 am appointment yet.

I arrived here on Saturday but I have been so busy that I have not posted any additional photos or wrote any replies/emails etc. since I left Cincinnati. I fully intend to of course, so no worries..however let me just recount this wondrous tale -

Roehl and Jerry, both my colleagues at good ole "House of Sara Lee" way back in the 1990's settled here in the US. There were other system supervisors which passed thru this company before, during and after my time..but these two, along with Louie were the ones I had more interactions with...between the three of us...we had lost track already of the number of sleepless nights, database errors and fixes, countless reinstallations, cabling and other very exciting nocturnal activites at the branches (all related to IT, mind you!...well okay..might have included a drink or two *grin*)

Today, Roehl and Jerry gallantly accompanied me to Napa Valley. Our first stop was at the Robert Mondavi winery where I had my first ever glimpse of an honest-to-goodness wine- making facility. I was googly-eyed and bushy-tailed at the sight of all the wonderful rows of wine bottles and other expensive memorabilia..and then they dragged me to the second one - the V. Sattui winery, whose wines are "exclusive"! i.e. they are not sold at the stores or shipped outside of USA.

After "oohs" and "aahs" on my part over the facility and the wine cellar, we chose to postpone the wine-tasting till we got our bellies to stop moaning.We had to satisfy our hunger and we sat down on the damp but verdant green grass under a sheltering tree where we happily munched on some italian sausage and pizza margherita and enjoyed a refreshing reisling (off-dry) and some sparkling water...

Some very necessary strategic picture-taking tasks followed. And finishing our humourous reminiscing about the different people we had known at Sara Lee and where they were now working, living or how they were doing, we then stood up to brush off the dampness and grass to get started on the wine-tasting.

There I was sauntering lazily after them when I heard the most surprising sounds in that place - the vigorous calls of - "Cat!" "Cat!"...

Since I don't know anyone in Napa Valley and the only few people I knew that well in Sanfo happened to be with me at that time, my eyes turned as big as saucers when I turned back to face cautiously a table near where we were previously sitting - only to see this tall and pretty, impishly smiling woman say succinctly the word -"Choie!".

I was utterly dumbfounded..and I think my mouth was hanging open for all of 2 seconds when she added for good measure - "Multiply Choie!"....and then...like pieces of a puzzle, everything started to fall in place...

Yes dearies, I bumped in Choie, who happens to just be part of my network here in Multiply...thanks in part to Boboy (hugs to Hugzone!). We never met in person but have only exchanged posts and comments here in this site. Of course, Bananaking offered Cyfunk's services when I wrote I was going to Sanfo (ah..he is a man after my own heart, that BK69!) hehehe..

Thanks in great part to Choie's photographic memory, she was able to match my face to the pictures I've been posting here at Multiply and to figure out that I was the Cat she had torn sheets and sheets of paper for a couple of times *grin*

I don't have that talent for picking faces from the crowd...and so if it were left to me...Choie and I would have emulated Evangeline and her belowed..and we'd have been just like "ships passing in the night" (apologies to Longfellow for this abuse).

 

What are the chances of this happening? With so many wineries here at Napa, and with so many people going to visit it today...how could we have ended up to meet each other in this fantastic place?

But the tale does not end there, my good friends.

This tale truly exemplifies a song snippet which goes this way "its a small world after all!".

Get a load of these snippets of info -

Boboy was my classmate at AIM. He became my connection to Choie.

Jerry and Roehl and I previously worked at Sara Lee (direct selling arm of the multi-national which got bought by Tupperware).

Jerry works with Chevron. Roehl works with Philips (ok, some changes there, but essentially his email address is still Philips). And I? well...let's just still keep it a secret, okay? Permit me my supersitious idiosyncrasies...call it the comfort of the old... 

Glenn, who is Choie's equally charming and kind-looking hubby (well he certainly suffered thru my girlish excitement and trills of pleasure over this incident but never once gave me a glare hehehe)...is currently working in a building in the same compound as Jerry which is Chevron's campus, a stone's throw away in fact from Jerry's building number (take ur pick from A to Z)...

Not only that, but he also worked in Philips but back in the Philippines. See his connection to Jerry and Roehl?

When we mentioned that we came from Sara Lee,  Glenn lets go of the name Maciel Sunga...and its quite familiar to us...so we all chimed in unison that we knew of her. Choie then calls Maciel who confirms this.

Now what are the chances of 5 people meeting up on that sunny, wine-tasting day in Napa and getting connected this way? My goodness, if we had also been able to bring Louie and Bong with us...who knows what mutual friends and acquaintances we may have shared?

And yes, I'm now going to sleep coz I have said and written my piece .....(drools over the pillow).