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New Delhi, '98/99
San Francisco, '00
San Francisco '2000 (I)

Technically, I was in SF in 1999 as well. I left Singapore for San Francisco on 28 December 1999, for the trip of my life. It was an industrial attachment to the now-defunct 3Fusion, an Internet startup based in the Valley.

The 36-day itinery included a detour to the MacWorld Expo SF 2000 too. I was in San Francisco for only 3 or 4 of the days which I spent there. The rest of the time I spent in the far-flung suburbs some 50km off. :-P

Flying is a Torture
Flying across the Pacific was no joke. I spent a total of 33 hours in the air just flying to and fro, most of which I spent in much trepidation and apprehension over the safety of the aeroplane. It didn't help much that the seats in the Economy class were terribly cramped and that the cabin was packed to capacity with passengers. Best of all: I couldn't sleep on the plane. I was only too glad to step off the plane.

Fairytale Land (for technophiles :-P)
Being in the San Francisco Bay Area was really like being in a fairytale, especially for techno-freaks like me. The whole area was littered with offices of Internet startups and industry heavyweights. The office where we worked in was just less than a hundred metres away from the global HQ of Oracle, and driving down Freeway 101, you could see offices of companies of all sorts.

The Golden Gate Bridge
If seeing all the tech companies for real was like being in a fairy tale, then seeing the Golden Gate Bridge was even more of a fantasy come true. Having seen the Golden Gate Bridge so many times in pictures, photographs, and on television, seeing it for real was nothing short of breathtaking. It was such a breathtakingly huge and majestic structure, and stood towering into the clouds. Only pity was that I didn't manage to walk the whole length of the bridge because the strong winds proved too menacing.

San Francisco
San Francisco is a beautiful city. The font of the street signs gave the place a quaint, homely feeling. Despite the roads being horribly filled with cars, the parking being exorbitantly expensive and the weather being perpetually wet, it was a beautiful city. The low-rise homes in the residential neighbourhoods were just beautiful.

There were some interesting places that we visited too, like the famous Exploratorium, the winding Lombard Street and the Fishermen's Wharves. And the Palace of Fine Arts was an absolutely lovely place. :-) Nevertheless, I remember best the complicated, long, winding roads, and the luscious greenery everywhere. Haha.

Then, there were the antediluvian cable cars that plyed the busiest streets in downtown San Francisco. Curious, we went on a ride on one of them. Pity the wind coming head-on was so soothing that I fell asleep no less than 5 minutes after boarding the cable car. There was the Caltrain too, that was not unlike our MRT.

 
[Hong Kong's Chep Lap Kok International Airport at which we stopped over] [Hong Kong's Chep Lap Kok International Airport at which we stopped over]
[The Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco's coastline] [The Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco's coastline]
[The Cable Car of San Francisco] [The Cable Car of San Francisco]
[San Francisco's Caltrain from inside the station] [San Francisco's Caltrain from inside the station]
[The Palace of Fine Arts and me in the picture!] [The Palace of Fine Arts and me in the picture!]
[Me with the Oracle HQ in the background] [Me with the Oracle HQ in the background]



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