Afternoon Excursion…

With my day-long workshop cut short, I had the afternoon to explore San Francisco with Brenda.  We started off walking down Market and then Bush, looking for Chinatown.  Finally, the gateway appeared on the right, and we walked down Grant, peering in the antique, jewelry, and high-tech gadget stores.  It’s a beautiful place where I got a lot of pictures with my 35mm camera. 

We stopped in to a restaurant that had these lovely little closed off cubicals, kinda like confessionals, where couples could go romantically eat their squid tenticles.  We were seated in the open restaurant and were handed both Dim Sum and standard menus.  I love Dim Sum, but am not confident enough to order it.  Brenda had already eaten lunch.  She is trying to keep to the east coast eating schedule, so she ordered a spring roll and I selected some sort of combination appetizer platter.  The calamari was excellent, though I’m accustomed to the sliced circlets that you usually get here in the U.S.  These were whole squids, but I’m adventurous, and they were delicious.  The pork spring roll was very good as well.  The third item, however, looked too much like the shark fin that was advertised on the sign in front of the restaurant.  I didn’t finish that.

From Chinatown, we walk on down Grant to Telegraph Hill.  I surely wish that I could express to you how steep this hill is, and how many steps we had to walk up.  I’d love for you to be impressed.  I did pretty well, perhaps a little better than Brenda, who is very slim and fit.  But my feet hurt this morning.  It was well worth the climb.  You can see just about all of San Francisco from the top of Coit Tower.  But the best part is the mural inside of the tower that tells the story of this very interesting and beautiful city.

A high point of the afternoon, however, occurred as we were walking back to the hotel.  We were approaching a doorway, where two women were waiting to get in.  As we got to the point where we could see the door, it buzzed open and the women entered, revealing the sign that identified the company.  I was struck first by the logo of a hand, and then the name of the company, Second Life.  Being in San Francisco, I initially thought that this was some sort of new age something.  Then I saw in slightly smaller text, Linden Lab.  Wow!  I was standing at the door of Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life — and I was doing it in Real Life!  So So So Cool!  Sorry!  I’m easily excitable!

By the way, someone at the conference said that Second Life was now giving real estate to educators for free.  Is that true?

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