Currently Lost in the Fog

It's July in San Francisco which basically means a scarf and coat are all mandatory items for my "summer" wardrobe. While everyone else in the rest of the country are sippin on lemonade, licking ice-cream cones, and perfecting their golden tans poolside, or even better, ocean-side, us San Franciscans are bundled up, sipping hot-chocolate, and wearing gloves--watching the fog slowly roll in and overtake our mini metropolis. Gloves in July! It's cold, I hate it, and I've found myself caught in a perpetual state of daydreaming about blissful days spent in pristine, crystal-clear water and on unblemished beaches in Maui (or Goa, or Tortola, or Barbados ... ), sipping on mai tais (or pina coladas, or margaritas, or coronas ... ) while perfecting my sun-kissed glow. That's an impossibility in San Francisco. If you're lucky you'll have one nice day out of a week where you can maybe go to the park and sit there for an hour drinking Pabst with other hipsters clad in obligatory tapered jeans and wayfarers before it gets too windy and you find yourself in your wool coat again, saying "What happened? It's fuckin' freezing." Don't forget your parka--you're going to Dolores Park! You know that quote, by Mark Twain or whatever, about his coldest winter being summer in San Francisco? Well, let's just say he wasn't kidding.

Enough about being cold. I'm a writer, currently, residing in San Francisco but as the title of my blog states, I'm a vagabond of sorts, a self professed traveler who wants to write her way around the world. I grew up here in the bay but I've traveled to, and lived in, a number of countries that have only wet my appetite for more exploring. My last stop was Tokyo where I spent seven months living, learning, eating, teaching, writing, and drinking my way through Japan. I learned the true meaning of claustrophobia on the subway daily, I ate the best sushi of my life, made some amazing friends, saw some fat dudes wrestle, and learned a lot more about the land of the rising sun, and non-coincidentally, also the homeland of my ancestors (I'm half Japanese half Indian). I can't say my Japanese is a whole lot better than when I left, but I can say I'm a whole lot wiser (kinda). It was hard to return from such an amazing experience, but circumstance, and love, have a way of bringing you back home time and time again. Before that I did a stint studying Spanish in Barcelona, which was by far, still to this day, after twenty-five years on this planet, the most fun I have ever had in my entire life. I was just a wee-one at twenty-years-old, hopped up on adrenaline (and probably other stuff too), downing vodka-naranjas seven days a week, and acting like a total wasted asshole running around the Barrio Gotic, club hopping until seven a.m. with my amigos. In the midst of my trashed moments, there were sober ones too, and believe me the whole experience changed my life for the better. Even after five years, there's not a day that goes by that I don't yearn for Barcelona and miss it like I miss my soul mate. Why can't a city be your soul mate?

My next stop on the globe: South East Asia. I'm writhing in anticipation and need to save up a good 4,000 bones before I leave on that jet plane ... but once I do, I'll be roaming all over Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, back to Japan, and on to India. The countdown is on. I'm planning to freelance write while I travel and hopefully, make it back to San Francisco in one piece. Hopefully ... I won't break any bones or contract malaria or the Plague (knock on wood, now). Did you know they still have that shit in Cambodia? It's true. Denny my travel partner (and partner in crime) is in charge of the "boring" planning--you know, learning about weird diseases, laws, visas etc.--and as he memorizes his hundreds of pages of printouts from the world wide web, he sporadically educates me about these types of things. He's a scientist; that's his forte. I'm supposed to plan "the fun stuff," but we all know, I'm not a planner, more of just an adventurer and a traveler. More of a go with the flow type of gal. Ok, ok maybe a bit of a lazy ass too, but regardless of my idiosyncrasies this trip is going to be a writer's wet dream. My wet dream.