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San Francisco Treat

That's right, sports fans. I am blogging from San Francisco. Actually, I've been here since Thursday night. I've been delinquent in updating lately, I know, but with good reason. Moving from O-town to "the P-dot" (dont' blame me, I didn't coin the term) is quite time consuming.

But that's all done now, and here I am blogging to you from sunny San Francisco, a balmy 17 C. That's right. I said blamy. I left -20 in Ottawa, so anything without a negative sign in front of it feels pretty darn nice.

So, why am I here? I'm attending the American Society for Cell Biology annual meeting. Mostly, I am helping run the exhibit booth for my employer, trying to attract papers to our biomedical journals. It's going quite well so far.

I will try to write more later, but for now a few things I've noticed about the city:

Environment: Superficially, very clean. There are people constantly sweeping the streets and sidewalks. Sort of like Disney World.

Friendliness: With the exception of the woman at the TravelEx who wouldn't cash my traveller's cheques, it's very congenial. I dropped my scarf on the street twice ont he first day, and both times people drew my attention to it. The service staff at the hotel are all very helpful and friendly, and ridiculously apologetic if they take what they think is too long to serve you. They must run into some pretty obtuse customers I guess.

Time in SF before someone asked me if I was from Toronto: Less than two hours. When I finally did manage to find a bank taht could cash my traveller's cheques, the teller saw my Canadian passport and asked if I was from the T-dot. "No, I'm from Ottawa," I replied. "Oh. Where's that?" she asked. I just mumbled that it was about 4 hours east of Toronto, and refrained from adding that it was our nation's capital.

Cost of Living: Ridiculous. $2.75 for a 375 mL bottle of water, Aquafina, which is really just glorified tap water. At that price, I should be getting more mineral, less plasticky aftertaste.