theperfect.mismatch

Congratulations Class of 2006! Friday marked the biggest reason for my trip out West. I had the opportunity to watch Maritess walk at her college graduation. She had taken up Visual Arts with a focus in Graphic Design.

The day began by waking up and getting dressed for their graduation. Soon after breakfast (in fact very soon after), Maritess’ family showed up. I spent most of the day hanging with Richie & Steven. Richie is Maritess’ brother and Steven is their cousin. When I first saw Steven, I noticed he was carrying a pretty big camera bag and realized he too was dSLR statusing with me. He had the Nikon D50. I was pretty impressed with the images from that camera, especially considering the quality of the stock lens.

After saying hi and asking how everyone was doing we began walking to the Church as seats were first come first serve. Even though the Church was only two blocks away, it seemed like it took forever as it was uphill (just like everything else is in SF). Finally after walking we re-grouped with everyone and stood on line to get our seats in the Church. Everything seemed to be great up until the fact that Mother Nature decided to throw some drops our way. When we finally met with Maritess’ mom and her auntie’s we found them all huddled around an umbrella with their scarves over their head (Taliban Style!) all hunched under one umbrella held by some random guy. It turns out the nice guy beside them also here for his sister’s graduation was nice enough to hold the umbrella over their heads from the rain. It was funny how this guy held the umbrella up for everyone. Steven was calling her their “PUH” just like P. Diddy has (Personal Umbrella Holder).

So the ceremony was nice. The speeches by the valedictorian and some other speaker were okay… not that interesting really. To make it worse, the woman announcing everyone’s name couldn’t speak English. Everyone had no idea when to scream / take pictures / go crazy. Anyway we made do with what we had and tried the best we could.
As everyone walked out of the church, we all took a MILLION pictures. In fact some of the people walking past us were calling us Paparazzi. Ahaha that’s right!
We all were then photo’d out, closed up shop and walked back to the car as we all hopped in to head to Caesar’s down in North Beach. It was funny as many of us thought that Caesar’s was a Chinese Restaurant when it was in fact an Italian Restaurant. It was nice to finally sit down and eat as we were all starving. A bunch of Maritess’ friends had joined us along with JC. For those who don’t know JC brought Maritess to the airport and were there to pick me up from my flight (Thanks again!).



Lunch went by and after driving around and taking care of some much needed logistics, we found ourselves at Rohan; even Richie! It was an asian themed lounge / bar / restaurant off Geary. The drinks were flowing and were pretty good with an asian theme to it (naturally!). However after some time it began time to take the drive back to San Jose.

The hour drive to San Jose went by quick with an unfortunate encounter with a nasty McDonald’s manager. So yeah, I can see how she’s a nasty lady as she’s about forty years old and is only a McDonalds manager ha... sucks doesn’t it.

Later that night we played poker and drank Heiniken Light. It really is light! It’s pretty good actually so if you ever get a chance, pick it up!

pixxies continues here...
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