Karaoke to me is noise pollution.. oh no hang on, it’s not.. it’s torture.
After reading an article on PopSci, I’ve learn not to put the blame on those torture bringers. According to the article, it has been scientifically proven that they are sub-consciously unaware of what they are doing. Yes, they are in a distorted reality while doing their “thing”.
Here’s an excerpt:
After a number of acoustic tests, the researchers discovered that most of the singers who couldn’t follow a song’s pitch and timing fell into the first of two phenotypes: they were tone deaf yet blissfully unaware of it. The remainder of the poor singers had no trouble judging a proper note, yet were unable to hit it themselves, and knew it.
No itinerary today. Had Wanton noodles for breakfast at our favourite Chinese eatery, and we went to Embarcadero.
The Embarcadero is the eastern waterfront roadway of the Port of San Francisco. Bought a basket of strawberries from one of the many fresh produce stalls there. It’s probably the best strawberries I’ve eaten! Big, juicy and best of all sweet!
Seb found a perfect spot by the pier, overlooking Bay Bridge. We sat there for over 2 hours, doing nothing else, besides eating a beef pie and some Mexican food Seb bought.
Short day. I think we pretty much have San Francisco covered, except for places where we have to drive to get to.
After dinner at, guess where, our favourite Chinese eatery, we went back to our hostel to chill.. Maybe get some beer later.
Breakfast was at a Chinese eatery. First part - TOTALLY SUCKED. It’s so sucky that I will not even bother to mention it. Then Seb decided to order some proper food (dim sum), which incidentlly made our breakfast nicer.. Anyway, thanks Seb for the Birthday (Singapore time) breakfast treat! :-)
Rest of the day were spent shopping and touring (instead of attending session at the Conference). Seb and I each bought a very exquisite holder for our iPhones at Crate & Barrel. We then went to Westfields. It’s a shopping mall which kinda resembles our Paragon, with all the luxury brands under one roof. Besides shopping, I finally get to try Jamba Juice! After watching it featured many times on David Letterman’s show, I got to try it at last! Refreshing, fresh and great taste. Maybe I can bring the franchise to Singapore.
Seb then went back to the hostel to sleep, while I went to Alamo Square (again). I just love that park.. With some time left, I ventured further west to Golden Gate Park. Nothing much there besides being a park.
Evening time came and it’s time for the highlight of our trip - WWDC08 Apple bash! Great food, booze, weather and Barenaked Ladies! They are AWESOME! Wonder how much to hire them for my own party. The only thing lacking in the party was….. you guessed it, girls! Ultimate sausage (geek) fest. But heck! Seb and I enjoyed ourselves.
Breakfast today was Subway Melts. (If you noticed, our breakfasts are getting cheaper by the day.. That’s cos we are running out of money). After that, I headed over to Moscone West for my first session for the day - Controls, Views, and Animation on iPhone. Not too bad. Seb went to shopping instead and bought a pair of shoes from Aldo (nice buy I must say).
After lunch, we went to another session that was only added today - Push Notification Service. This new service from Apple is one of the major features in the coming release of both the iPhone 3G and Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). In general, it allows applications to send notifications in the form of badges, alerts and sounds asynchronously to the iPhones. Pretty impressive.
Deciding that we had enough sessions for the day, we took the Muni (Line 21 from Market St) to Alamo Square, to visit the Painted Ladies. Great view of SF from up there, nice cooling winds, adorable dogs running around, beautiful scenery - Awesome.
Dinner was at Mel’s Diners. I had Patty Melts, which is sort of a sandwich + burger. Seb had breakfast for dinner - Eggs, Steak and Toast. Afterwards, we headed back to Moscone for the Apple Design Award ceremony. It’s kinda like the Oscars for Mac OS X applications. This year they had 2 categories - Mac and the iPhone. Some of the winning applications were pretty impressive. A few of my favourites are: Squirrel for the Mac and AOL Radio for the iPhone.
Tomorrow’s the fourth day of WWDC08, which means it’s Apple Bash!!!!!! WOOOHOOO!!!
(My camera died while we were at Alamo Square. So no photos and videos until I get them from Seb’s camera)
Breakfast today was at a French bistro - Eggs, bacon, toast and coffee.
After breakfast Seb went sight-seeing while I went for a session at WWDC, which was totally boring..
After lunch, we headed out to the streets. First stop was Coit Tower. Basically nothing much up there.. Instead, the journey to Coit Tower was much more interesting. One of the many things that made me fall in love with San Francisco is the beautiful houses here. Walking along the undulating streets, admiring the architectures, enjoying the cool Pacific Ocean breeze… Awesome!
Next is a walk down hill to Lombard Street, the crookedest street in America. Been here last year already, so nothing exciting.
Fisherman’s Wharf is next.. Again.. nothing exciting here again. By the time we finished touring Pier 39, our legs were giving up, so Seb and I decided to take the Cable car back. Though I’ve been here last year, but I never took a ride on the cable car (Can you believe it?!). US$5 for a leisure ride back to the hostel - totally worth the money.
Just before heading back, we went to hunt for the World famous dish that is only available outside of Singapore - Singapore Fried Noodles. And we found it at a Chinese restaurant. The version we had had curry powder in it, quite tasty though.
Not plans for tomorrow yet.. Probably plan it over breakfast at our current breakfast haunt - Mel’s Diner.
First highlight of the day: Our awesomely big portion breakfast (and cheap too!). We each had 3 eggs, an 6 ounce steak, potatoes and 2 toasts for breakfast, beat that! After having that breakfast, I now fully understand why people call it the most important meal of the day.
Day one of WWDC08 only means one thing - Steve Job’s keynote! So he announced the phone that would beat the iPhone - iPhone 3G, but I’m not totally excited about it. Don’t really fancy the plastic back too. The only thing that hurt me is the $200 price drop - Come’on Steve! That’s kinda too much?!
Lunch was great. We had Thai beef salad. Refreshing and tasty.
Following that is the Mac OS X State of The Union. Sometimes it is also referred to as the Keynote address not seen by the public. I was much more amazed by the State of the Union than the actual keynote. During the session, Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, gave us a good overview of the new technologies in the next release of Mac OS X, known as Snow Leopard. If you do not know, there will be only 1 new feature (visible to most users) in the release. Most of the improvements are done on the innards of Mac OS X itself. Go here to learn more about Snow Leopard.
After that, we went to 2 more (boring) sessions before Seb got drunk at the Welcome Reception.
Tomorrow we’ll be visiting Coit Tower, Lombard St and Fisherman’s Wharf!
