Back to the salt mines

All work and no play makes one a dull boy indeed, and as I felt the rustiness slowly creeping in from sheer volume of work, my wife Babes and I decided on a  15-day sabbatical in the United States with some family members from my side. If you missed my B&L columns for two weeks in a row, now you know why. And since it was a respite, I deliberately did not bring my laptop along lest I be drawn into work during this much-deserved vacation.

Our destination was San Francisco, where my brother Rey (Star business columnist, Bizlink), and his wife Evelyn have a comfortable condo unit in a quiet side of town.  The medium rise residential building is on Cleary Road, a short walk away from St. Mary’s Cathedral which is a modest tourist destination.

Life in SanFo is so nice and easy that many people refer to it as God’s Country.  Admittedly, this visit is a first for me and my wife, and with our almost two-week stay in the city, we find it a most accurate second name.  It is definitely on the other side of the yardstick, opposite of New York City where life is not only brisk, it is almost apoplectic. Don’t get me wrong, we enjoyed the iconic sights of New York, its shops and food joints, but everything considered, my top choice in the US is now San Francisco.

It is the height of summer in the US, and without much background on the city, we brought along light sweaters for nights out. Temperatures were actually within the 16-degree centigrade, but with the wind chill factor, it felt more like 12 degrees which our light sweaters couldn’t handle. They don’t call this Fog City for nothing, and almost every day, we could see the fog descending heavily, even as the sun shone brightly. Still, it was great weather all day and all night long, and this, along with the easy lifestyle of the people who live there, makes it one great city.

Of course, the outlets made the day for my wife, and we visited quite a few of them. What is it with wives – they can’t seem to have enough of what they prefer to call as retail therapy. And what is it with Pinoys who go the US – they can’t go home without a truckload of pasalubongs for virtually everyone back home. These range from frozen food products like steaks and dips, to interesting and novel household cleaning products, and of course bags, shoes and clothes.

Every day was a culinary journey for this foodie family.  One day it would be a Japanese joint, the next day it would be Vietnamese, the next day Chinese, and the next Korean.  There are so many Asians living here, and as one can imagine, there is a proliferation of specialty restaurants as well. One sushi outlet had a circular bar where small color-coded sushi plates loaded on small boats went around and around, propelled on the water by air pumps.  You simply pick out the sushi plates you fancy and pile up the small plates.  The food servers charge you based on the color of the plates.

For our group of six, which included Rey’s children RG (an eligible licensed pilot) and Ina, an Ateneo Developmental Studies student, we counted a total of 23 sushi plates which set us back about $160, excluding tip.  By the way, tips tilt more towards 15 percent here now, which is a bit hefty.

The Vietnamese restaurant offered huge bowls of a variety of noodles, all with fresh vegetables and/or wag yu or angus beef slices.

At the Korean restaurant, we were served by young Koreans who were obviously very well educated.  Here we had an overload of barbecued meats.

What really took our breath away though was Ray’s Crab Shack where they serve Louisiana-style shrimps, crabs and mussels cooked in a special sauce that smells of spices and garlic. The servers give you plastic aprons and disposable gloves and the sea food is served separately in thick plastic bags, all soaked in the aromatic and strong tasting sauce which we thoroughly enjoyed. It could be messy eating, but Rey and I decided to discard the gloves and plunged headlong with bare hands, something we do not do back home. It was a great experience!  To be sure, the food did not come cheap, setting us back over $200, including tip for our group of six, but it was quite an experience which we had to do again just before we returned to Manila.

We went on a nice long drive to Napa Valley too.  Unfortunately, wine tasting for most of the stores here is no longer free, but this is one nice town with gentle people, but being a valley, the heat was quite overwhelming. What I found curious was the absence of colored people – we did not see a single black person on the two trips we made here.

We also went on a side trip to Las Vegas where another brother, Eddie, a retired economist from the UP community, lives with his wife Racquel. It was the worst time to visit Las Vegas we were told, after the fact, and indeed the heat assaults you as you get out of a building or a car, the heat was unbelievable even for someone who lives in a tropical country. The dry heat does not leave you exhausted, but still the heat was highly uncomfortable. Evenings were cooler, and we enjoyed walks to the Planet Hollywood, for instance, not a long walk from our hotel.

We stayed at the Bellagio Hotel for five days, which was a comfortable enough stay. As soon as we entered our spacious room, we removed all the drinks from the mini ref and put in place our newly-purchased drinks. Too late, we were told that when you lift those drinks out of their designated slots, a sensor registers this on the hotel’s central computer. One is automatically fined $50 for this, apart from the cost of whatever you may have consumed! Luckily we were able to charm our way out of this predicament.

One of the nice highlights of our Las Vegas trip was a visit to the Mob Museum, which housed a thorough collection of all mob-related affairs, from the original brick wall where powerful mob bosses were gunned down in the infamous Valentine’s Day massacre, to the courtroom they recreated where mob bosses were sentenced.

Everything was related to the visitors either through an audio system or visually through a large screen. One intimately knew of Bugsy Moran and how Las Vegas started, how the Prohibition Era cultivated corruption and crime, and how dedicated Federal agents paid with their lives.  Indeed, a highly interesting visit worth the trip when you visit to Las Vegas.

Now that we’re back, it’s time to buckle down to work, make up for lost time and work out enough reasons to merit another sabbatical next year.

Mabuhay!!! Be proud to be a Filipino.