Day 13: The Tourist

It was raining, but that was no deterrent! Here's what I did:

Sunny went house hunting, so although she and I left the house at the same time, we went in opposite directions. I went sightseeing. With my roommate Smitha, Rahul and his friend Sriparna. We went to the SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts) where we met Georgia as well. Sriparna brought her car and drove us around, which was very nice of her! Before getting to SFMOMA, we waited for Shailaja for a while, she came with us to the museum, but she eventually didn't come into the museum with us.

Anyway, Googlers get free entry, which was great! Turns out we can take one guest for free too, but we didn't know that and Sriparna had already bought her ticket :( The museum itself was pretty nice with some interesting stuff, but a lot of it all just went over my head and I ended up getting a little bored. Maybe I'm not arty enough, and I'm so happy that no artist was around to make me feel intellectually inferior. :)

Georgia left straight from the museum, but Rahul, Smitha, Sriparna and I went to Lori's Diner for lunch (remember the 50's theme place that Mrin, Sas, Gapa and I had been to last time?) :) Had awesome lunch and a mimosa each (except Smitha, who doesn't drink). Shailaja joined us too, and then Smitha and she went to Union Square to shop.

Rahul, Sriparna and I went to de Young museum where Paul was waiting for us. Paul had a membership, and he could take one guest - me, so Rahul and Sriparna bought tickets. Turns out Paul could take 3 guests and we ended up buying tickets (again) when we didn't need em!

De Young museum was really awesome. We first went to this tower that gives a 360 degree view of SF, and in the rain it was SO green and pretty! Fantastic view. And then we went to the Jean Paul Gaultier fashion display (he's a French haute couture fashion designer), which none of us thought we'd be too interested in but went anyway, and that grabbed our attention, to say the least. To begin with, the mannequins SPOKE! It was creepy - I was telling Paul that I would not want to be here alone at night - the mannequins were blinking, looking at us, smiling and so on. For so long I stared, wondering if it was actually people who were standing really, really still, but they weren't. In the end, we figured out that the faces were being projected on - but you would never be able to tell! It was pretty fascinating. And then we went and saw all the couture that was on display and it was pretty darn fantastic. For context, Madonna wore his design and made it famous - the conical boobs. So cool I say.

We moved on to the native American display, and so much stuff there was very close to Indian art from two or three hundred years ago... it's just hard to imagine how similar it is. They also had a map that showed Asia and America - they're next to each other on the other side of the world, which is easy to forget sometimes :P The map had a pictorial representation of all the wildlife found in the entire region - an entire wall of this map. Pretty cool. We moved on to some interesting historical section - they had pieces of a burnt Church hanging from the ceiling - which was a black Church burnt down by the KKK. And there was a model of a Cathedral built entirely with ammunition - very, very intense. Phew - we ran around the rest of the museum because it was closing time (5pm) and then stepped out into the rain feeling like we'd seen something very interesting :) Rahul and I agreed that we like History and Science museums better than Art museums. :)

We went to the parking lot and a plan to go drink at Zeitgeist was formulated there. Billy (who was not feeling well earlier), was already on his way there, so we went there and got some beers. Chris, Georgia and another friend of theirs, Al, joined us there. It was a big, happy bunch. Loads of fun, even though it was rainy and cold!

Then we went out to this Mexican place for dinner where Maggie and her boyfriend joined us, and Uma, who just landed in SFO from Hyderabad joined us. We ate so much food, and we were a huge, noisy group of about twelve people - it was pretty fun! Then Paul and Billy walked with us till the car and then Sriparna dropped me here and then the three of them took off to Santa Clara.

I walked in - my boots were soaking wet, my socks were soaking wet, my feet were soaking wet - I put them all out to dry in front of the thermostat :P

Spoke to Anishaa and Ma! :) It was nice although I was soooo tired. Sigh :) Nothing like family!

Sunny called me - she was at a party and driving back from San Jose. I told her to call me when she reached, because I'd be asleep. In an asleep-state, I went and let her into the building, and then I came back and slept off even though she was talking to me - I was so tired!