My heart exploded at 17:28PDT 2014-03-29 at Valencia and 18th when my daughter told me this is the best day of her life and for a moment I understood what it might feel like to be like one of my friends who are Good Parents. I spent the weekend in San Francisco with my 10 year old daughter Kiran. On the Saturday we took the CalTrain to the city and a tram to the Marriott Marquis where we checked in early into our room with a wonderful view over the city and shared some tuna tartare for lunch. We took the F tram to Castro and hiked up to the Randall Museum where we heard a wonderful performance by the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra where we had front row seats and were treated to music by Mozart, Bizet, Seal, Angry Birds and The Police. We then took an Uber over to the de Young Museum where I had pre-booked tickets for the OKeeffe special exhibition and Kiran was especially taken by the petunias (she bought a poster). We then suffered 2.25X surge pricing on Uber to get over to Dandelion Chocolate (small batch foo foo chocolates made on site) in the Mission where we sampled several chocolates and bought two as presents for Susan for UK mothers day which was on the following day. As we waited at the intersection of Valencia and 18th Kiran told me what she thought about the day and I was the usual emotional cripple and made no response (I am sure there is a country song about this). We then went to my favourite restaurant in the USA -- Commonwealth -- and devoured a tasting menu surrounded by stick insect 2X/3X Google/Twitter/Facebook hipsters (Ive never seen a child in this restaurant). She wore her special Punjabi-purple Monsoon dress which she had packed especially for the dinner (in the photo she is wearing a wee white cardigan over it). After dinner we took BART back to the hotel and swam in the pool and then she wound down with the Disney Channel while I went to the top-floor bar (amazing city view) to meet Steve Hand and others for drinks. Sunday started with a room service breakfast in bed (at the insistence of the princess) followed by yet another swim and then we headed down to the Ferry Building and I bought yellowfoot mushrooms for a risotto that I would make as a mothers day treat for Susan later on and then we took the MUNI bus 1 up to Pacific Heights and had a lovely lunch at Jane (they even had gluten free treats for me). We scoured the neighbourhood boutique shops for a nice silver necklace that Kiran wanted to buy Susan for mothers day. However, everything was far too swanky/trendy for us so we went to Geary and took the MUNI 38 bus downtown and found just the right thing at the very dependable Nordstrom (think John Lewis -- but at a bigger scale). I tried on a XL shirt at Club Monaco which was still too tight for me and I cursed myself for being drawn to this clothes store that is clearly targeted towards young thin Chinese folk and hipsters and not delusional old fat bastards like me. The daily routine of work, making dinner, loading the dishwasher, night time routine, rushed bedtime stories/songs passes by in a blur to me and I dont feel that I am living a life -- I am just executing a schedule. To have a few moments without the usual distractions with my girl was wonderful pleasure and briefly I felt like a rich man.
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 04:38:53 +0000
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