My initial luck just proved to be that.
Just got off of a skype call with a friend in JingHong. Mark, -he says there is a few desirable positions for teaching English over there at the University. After the few past days here I think it is best I go and take one.
Seems the economy here has just begun to get worse, a bit late than the rest of California which is one of the worst in the country but it has arrived nonetheless.
After talking to the rest of the trades workers I know the signs as I have seen them before.
The last few days in the car have proven bad for me. I can't take the cramped situation any longer. My leg , if I want to keep it, will go gangrene if I wake up any more times with it completely blocked in vascular circulation . Yet I smoke cigarettes like a fiend as a relief from stress.
This all must end.
The jobs I had have all dried up. I live on that income and it will sustain me for bit until I prepare for departure to China.
I am so disappointed in this country and government that I can't bear to mention. The next round of administration as well won't do no better. There is simply nothing left to work with. It will take years for the Chinese to move factories over here and train our youth to work for them so we can sell them cheaply manufactured goods to pay off our debts owed to them. Their 'haves' will try to keep their riches as we have by keeping profits up by cost cutting and shipping all jobs over to third world countries like which ours is going to be in a few short years. Debt and loss floods to our window sills like lake Pontchartrain over flowing it's levies.
I go to teach the future of the world the language they will need to subjugate, buy Bently's and high end brand products.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Hill street blues
The project I am working on hill street is breaking my balls with stupid shit.
The AIphone/intercom/security system (from Japan) has five different low voltage cables that have been installed in the typical wire tacker low voltage way and it drives me bat shit crazy. It is fucking nice though. You can look at the fucker from the kitchen ringing your doorbell and ask your slutty daughter in her bedroom if that was the loser making her panties stick to the side of the laundry hamper.
The rest also sucks. I won't go on. Residential wiring even in homes worth 2 million clams is still bottom of the barrel any way you slice it.
I want 100+ horsepower three phase motors, assembly line robotics, machinery control panels with touch screen user logic controls... I want to open live electrical panels that threaten to burn my face off in fractions of a second with arc flash that is hotter than the surface of the sun =only if the air around me is ionized enough to do so... I want that $70 BONES AN HOUR to do so. So I can drink and whore with abandon.
Still my simple car's CV joints creak and rattle like teeth of a meth addict with his fingers slammed in a car door- to remind me everything is precarious right now.
I sleep in my car a few days straight and then hit a motel on mission street when I can't take it any more.
I am in one now, with maxed out credit and a pay check 10 days away. I have gotten another job though,- coming up. Powering up 2- 20,000 sq. ft. floors of sub-terrainian floors of freshly re-located blade servers that will ejaculate data all over the WWW. But thats in more than a week away. I get to use a little calculus to find 4th and 5th order harmonic loads on neutral returns back to the power company...yippie. It all gets cleaned up with capacitors the size of trash cans. Switching power supplies - they can even wreak havoc on your little home. Don't plug all your computer shit on one circuit. Just plug a cfl lamp into the same outlet (receptacle) as a laser printer and print out a sheet or two and find out why...
The AIphone/intercom/security system (from Japan) has five different low voltage cables that have been installed in the typical wire tacker low voltage way and it drives me bat shit crazy. It is fucking nice though. You can look at the fucker from the kitchen ringing your doorbell and ask your slutty daughter in her bedroom if that was the loser making her panties stick to the side of the laundry hamper.
The rest also sucks. I won't go on. Residential wiring even in homes worth 2 million clams is still bottom of the barrel any way you slice it.
I want 100+ horsepower three phase motors, assembly line robotics, machinery control panels with touch screen user logic controls... I want to open live electrical panels that threaten to burn my face off in fractions of a second with arc flash that is hotter than the surface of the sun =only if the air around me is ionized enough to do so... I want that $70 BONES AN HOUR to do so. So I can drink and whore with abandon.
Still my simple car's CV joints creak and rattle like teeth of a meth addict with his fingers slammed in a car door- to remind me everything is precarious right now.
I sleep in my car a few days straight and then hit a motel on mission street when I can't take it any more.
I am in one now, with maxed out credit and a pay check 10 days away. I have gotten another job though,- coming up. Powering up 2- 20,000 sq. ft. floors of sub-terrainian floors of freshly re-located blade servers that will ejaculate data all over the WWW. But thats in more than a week away. I get to use a little calculus to find 4th and 5th order harmonic loads on neutral returns back to the power company...yippie. It all gets cleaned up with capacitors the size of trash cans. Switching power supplies - they can even wreak havoc on your little home. Don't plug all your computer shit on one circuit. Just plug a cfl lamp into the same outlet (receptacle) as a laser printer and print out a sheet or two and find out why...
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
no routine
Sorry for not having any entries lately. Been busy at work and wondering about what to do about housing.
I finish around 5 pm and the day is shot. I am tired and just want to get back to a motel.
That's the source of the problem is the motels, taking $70 a day. It's a bad deal.
I did get a job though which is the most important thing. The next is to economize.
The job I am running is on a swanky Noe Valley house. It's worth about 2 million and is being held
by property investors. The slight remodel includes a lot of electrical, which is what the guy who hired me is all bout. There's only one major room change to wire, an added furnace, a sub-panel to remove and way too much low-voltage crap like A.I. Phones and built -in audio and networking. The house is
four stories and on top of a hill, which is odd for a place named for a valley. The problem is there is around 150 recessed lights that all need to be replaced as they were either installed wrong or modified improperly. I have two guys helping me. One named Pedro and the other Gary. The boss doesn't come around much and seems to really hate working- actually I think he hates getting out of bed.
Enough of that for now.
Gary is from Haiti and a skinny outgoing musician. He's an ass-chaser x2 and a really good young man. He lost most of his family and siblings in the earthquake yet seems to be holding it together or keeping himself distracted. He doesnt know much about electrical work but I am teaching him and he seems eager to learn.
Pedro is a nerdy technician type that's done many things. I don't have to do much with him but keep him busy. He's a perfectionist which is alright in my book, but leaves you absent minded at times in a can't see the forest for the trees kinda way. That's what I do anyway. It's either the big picture or the little picture to the core but not both at the same time please.
Point:
I told them I was going to sleep in my car. Gary said that's crazy you got to get a room and offered me his roommates at the end of the month. Pedro, on the other hand handed me a card key to one of the Marina bathroom facilities with shower. He told me,”you can take a shower there, no one cares and the parking lot is huge so sleep there. I did for two years.”
“oh”
“yes, I have another key for the Other marina too but not on me. Don't sleep in San Francisco in your car, the police seem nice but they are not” he said.
HE told me he also serviced boats and lived on one too for awhile. I love that and it's my preferred accommodation. His friend may have one to rent to me. That would be kick ass.
I need a month more of motels to save any kind of deposit.
After this, which was around stopping time I was going to drop Gary off at the Bart station. I decided
I would just take him home to have a look at his flat and the neighborhood. A real dive in nitty gritty part of Lakeside Oakland. If I were to wear khaki shorts today, which I do wear sometimes, I would have been killed there for sure. I am in possession of a ghetto pass somehow but its easier to read if I wear longer hair than I have now. I still may move there just to shake off Orange County a bit more.
Gary's place would do me fine and there's a Trader Joe's not too far away. I'ld save an extra $400
a month. Even with Bay bridge toll 5 times a week.
In a month a lot can happen. We shall see.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Worked Today
I did work today, it turned out well.
I got parking tickets though, which puts me ahead for the day, about $5.
Work tomorrow, explain more later.
I got parking tickets though, which puts me ahead for the day, about $5.
Work tomorrow, explain more later.
Monday, August 2, 2010
The old haunts
Well, I made into SF. The ride was nice until I got to Santa Cruz. What a friggin nightmare that place is. I spare you details. Don't go there is all I can say.
It's been a few days and very trying. I got spun out there for a bit and things were not looking good.
So no time or want to post.
I Have been here 3 days staying at dodgy motels in Daly city. It's money I don't have at 66 bones a day but I tried sleeping in the car last night and it wasn't going to work so i again checked into a dump of a motel that is run by Nepalese Immigrants. I like the place because it has garages attached to each room and can back my car into it and sleep without having to worry about crack heads stealing my tools. I could also jack the neighborhood wi-fi to check email and craigslist. People just don't secure their Networks- love it. The interior decors of the rooms are a strange fusion of art-deco and spanish revival painted over so much its hard to make out anymore. I told the guy who runs it his electrical is so out of date and in deep code violation and I could fix it all for free nights but he just shrugged his shoulders. In the two rooms I stayed in the smoke alarms were torn out with live wires hanging out of the boxes. Crack and meth smokers did this I can guess. I can imagine, however, if i told him my lights didnt work he would just come and build a fire in the the bathroom sink and leave the door open. Then again thats why I love the place so much.
I am dying to live there, the monthly rate is comparable to decent rooms in the city residences.
Such a dreamer am I.
San Fran Day One
When I rolled into town I went immediatly to Mission and Silver, near Rob's and Mrs. Rob's place. I know it well so I saw the exit and hit it. I made it a point to not see them until I get my bearings rolling in the right direction here as they have a new kid and plenty else to fret over. I am eager though to visit but my mind is not at ease with my situation and uncertainty follows me and I can't shake it these days. Don't drag a slain deer into vegetarian's house is about how I'd feel about it.
It's the Glen Park stop on the BART Rail map. A place where it's posh to the right and far too real to the left, depending on which way you go when you leave the station. Literally a few hundred steps away from each other two w]very different windows that you can peer into can give you either over-paid homosexuals stuffing themselves with focaccia, beansprouts, avocado slices , free range-roast chicken washed down with the latest must-be-seen-drinking pinot wine, or you can go to Mission Street and see a whole other world with no Range Rovers parked in the street reflecting back at you in the window glass. Buses, trash, cigarette butts, poorly painted signs, alcoholics digging through the trash sucking out the last few drops of booze from discarded bottles but considerate enough to set aside a pair of shoes he found in there aside on the side walk for someone else to find.
I first went down mission to get my motel room and get cleaned up and hit the BART to get to a bar I found on a Christmas Day in 2003?? I don't recall but I loved the place and made it a regular spot.
Things didn't change there and it felt welcoming a place to relax and get real but I felt eager to see the other places and soon hopped a cab to get to Geary street to see the usual asian hostess bars.
These places I dreamt of for the two years I spent back in school and it did not disappoint. I stayed in the first place until last call saving the others for later days. The girls there were lively enough and since I could speak some chinese and traveled their country more than they I was able to keep their attention. It was fun enough for me. $35 cab ride back to the motel will keep me away from
doing that as often as I wish.
Day Two
I wheeled out to the East Bay , San Pablo, to visit KiKi's bar , a bartender I met years ago on Mission street. Like most, she liked to develop regulars and a lot of these bar hostesses like to cultivate followings, telling customers that are pleasant to show up at other places they may work at. She was fun, enough to drag even me out my a dark gloom I could remain in all night given no distractions. That's something I cherish to no end and I gave back. Happy as she is she'll get to drunk and have breakdowns, I don't know how many times she cried on my shoulder and how many times I had to close out the till count the money, tip her out, lock the door and get her ass home in a taxi when shit really hit the fan for her. She sometimes is right out of a Wong Kar Wai movie I swear.
She does fantastically well , however, she drives a better car and owns more property every single time I come back into town. ""Cash paid for S class Mercedes" she said, raising her arms in victory, That is this time around and she did it all by her own wits. I am proud to know her,5 years younger than I and I I don't even know if she finished high school. She has a new home that lies empty in San Pablo waiting for renters just remodeled by her new husband, a general contractor she found good use for I reckon. I think he only does work for her. So smart.
But Ki ki wasnt there, I sat in her bar and drank cokes as I had to drive back and learned she works the next day. The day was a bust for me. I drove in circles. Gave up on sleeping in the car and went to the shitty motor lodge dying for a shower.
Day Three
I awoke and checked Craigslist for work-nothing. I ate $3 worth of drive-thru garbage and headed back to East Bay. I did not feel good, dread and hopelessness chanted in my thoughts to drown out everything else.
It's been a few days and very trying. I got spun out there for a bit and things were not looking good.
So no time or want to post.
I Have been here 3 days staying at dodgy motels in Daly city. It's money I don't have at 66 bones a day but I tried sleeping in the car last night and it wasn't going to work so i again checked into a dump of a motel that is run by Nepalese Immigrants. I like the place because it has garages attached to each room and can back my car into it and sleep without having to worry about crack heads stealing my tools. I could also jack the neighborhood wi-fi to check email and craigslist. People just don't secure their Networks- love it. The interior decors of the rooms are a strange fusion of art-deco and spanish revival painted over so much its hard to make out anymore. I told the guy who runs it his electrical is so out of date and in deep code violation and I could fix it all for free nights but he just shrugged his shoulders. In the two rooms I stayed in the smoke alarms were torn out with live wires hanging out of the boxes. Crack and meth smokers did this I can guess. I can imagine, however, if i told him my lights didnt work he would just come and build a fire in the the bathroom sink and leave the door open. Then again thats why I love the place so much.
I am dying to live there, the monthly rate is comparable to decent rooms in the city residences.
Such a dreamer am I.
San Fran Day One
When I rolled into town I went immediatly to Mission and Silver, near Rob's and Mrs. Rob's place. I know it well so I saw the exit and hit it. I made it a point to not see them until I get my bearings rolling in the right direction here as they have a new kid and plenty else to fret over. I am eager though to visit but my mind is not at ease with my situation and uncertainty follows me and I can't shake it these days. Don't drag a slain deer into vegetarian's house is about how I'd feel about it.
It's the Glen Park stop on the BART Rail map. A place where it's posh to the right and far too real to the left, depending on which way you go when you leave the station. Literally a few hundred steps away from each other two w]very different windows that you can peer into can give you either over-paid homosexuals stuffing themselves with focaccia, beansprouts, avocado slices , free range-roast chicken washed down with the latest must-be-seen-drinking pinot wine, or you can go to Mission Street and see a whole other world with no Range Rovers parked in the street reflecting back at you in the window glass. Buses, trash, cigarette butts, poorly painted signs, alcoholics digging through the trash sucking out the last few drops of booze from discarded bottles but considerate enough to set aside a pair of shoes he found in there aside on the side walk for someone else to find.
I first went down mission to get my motel room and get cleaned up and hit the BART to get to a bar I found on a Christmas Day in 2003?? I don't recall but I loved the place and made it a regular spot.
Things didn't change there and it felt welcoming a place to relax and get real but I felt eager to see the other places and soon hopped a cab to get to Geary street to see the usual asian hostess bars.
These places I dreamt of for the two years I spent back in school and it did not disappoint. I stayed in the first place until last call saving the others for later days. The girls there were lively enough and since I could speak some chinese and traveled their country more than they I was able to keep their attention. It was fun enough for me. $35 cab ride back to the motel will keep me away from
doing that as often as I wish.
Day Two
I wheeled out to the East Bay , San Pablo, to visit KiKi's bar , a bartender I met years ago on Mission street. Like most, she liked to develop regulars and a lot of these bar hostesses like to cultivate followings, telling customers that are pleasant to show up at other places they may work at. She was fun, enough to drag even me out my a dark gloom I could remain in all night given no distractions. That's something I cherish to no end and I gave back. Happy as she is she'll get to drunk and have breakdowns, I don't know how many times she cried on my shoulder and how many times I had to close out the till count the money, tip her out, lock the door and get her ass home in a taxi when shit really hit the fan for her. She sometimes is right out of a Wong Kar Wai movie I swear.
She does fantastically well , however, she drives a better car and owns more property every single time I come back into town. ""Cash paid for S class Mercedes" she said, raising her arms in victory, That is this time around and she did it all by her own wits. I am proud to know her,5 years younger than I and I I don't even know if she finished high school. She has a new home that lies empty in San Pablo waiting for renters just remodeled by her new husband, a general contractor she found good use for I reckon. I think he only does work for her. So smart.
But Ki ki wasnt there, I sat in her bar and drank cokes as I had to drive back and learned she works the next day. The day was a bust for me. I drove in circles. Gave up on sleeping in the car and went to the shitty motor lodge dying for a shower.
Day Three
I awoke and checked Craigslist for work-nothing. I ate $3 worth of drive-thru garbage and headed back to East Bay. I did not feel good, dread and hopelessness chanted in my thoughts to drown out everything else.
Friday, July 30, 2010
In Big Sur
spent the night at Pismo State Beach.
Its killer, you can drive on the beach for miles set up a site and
fuck off all day. It was heavy marine layer so it was nice
The subaru is all wheel drive thanks to that i could cruise the beach.
It Reminded me of Vietnam a bit. I ran into a man buried up to his axels in the sand
so he hopped in the car and i gave him a ride back to his campsite he asked me if I was an
electrician and I said yes but looking for work and taking the long way up north.
He rattled off some names of websites to work off-shore and over-seas. South America he
prefers. "for gettin the ladies" ah a fellow whore monger. strangeness already.
So I am in Big Sur . I found a couple little forgotten parks and imagined Henry Miller shagging groupies there. I took photos but wont post them yet.I am in a cafe in big Sur and its costing me
big money. I dont think I will camp here , actually and head for a drunk night in SF. Dangerous!
Maybe I will go to big Basin before that or maybe not. I got stuck in rush hour on the way
out so it was 2 hours of hell to get through L.A.
I had a cat nap at a wayside rest stop just north of Santa Barbara and slept well, but realised I have too much shit in there to get away with inner city car camping but I got a plan for some fake window tinting to black out the windows. we'll see
.gotta go post some photos later
Its killer, you can drive on the beach for miles set up a site and
fuck off all day. It was heavy marine layer so it was nice
The subaru is all wheel drive thanks to that i could cruise the beach.
It Reminded me of Vietnam a bit. I ran into a man buried up to his axels in the sand
so he hopped in the car and i gave him a ride back to his campsite he asked me if I was an
electrician and I said yes but looking for work and taking the long way up north.
He rattled off some names of websites to work off-shore and over-seas. South America he
prefers. "for gettin the ladies" ah a fellow whore monger. strangeness already.
So I am in Big Sur . I found a couple little forgotten parks and imagined Henry Miller shagging groupies there. I took photos but wont post them yet.I am in a cafe in big Sur and its costing me
big money. I dont think I will camp here , actually and head for a drunk night in SF. Dangerous!
Maybe I will go to big Basin before that or maybe not. I got stuck in rush hour on the way
out so it was 2 hours of hell to get through L.A.
I had a cat nap at a wayside rest stop just north of Santa Barbara and slept well, but realised I have too much shit in there to get away with inner city car camping but I got a plan for some fake window tinting to black out the windows. we'll see
.gotta go post some photos later
Thursday, July 29, 2010
leaving the OC
its 12 noon and the car is packed goodbyes said and hungover a bit from a good riddance party at the neighbors. I slept in my tent last night in the back yard as Jenny's grand kids had been staying over for
a few days. I am going to stop by at Silverio's for some magnetic signs to plaster on the car to pick up handy work or electrical. sure they will be lost soon. should be on the road before rush hour.
The plan is to get to the Ventura freeway before it jams up, get to Ventura and the Pacific coast highway and just head north.
The plan is to spend a few days in Big Sur. I have been many times and like it. It may be full of shit head campers but I dont mind . I refuse to take the arteries up to the bay area.
I am just writing this to let all know what I am doing and how. I dont have a lotta hope for the economy or its future . or my future for that matter. I am 41 and in seriously bad health and this trip kind of returns me too happier more hopeful youthful times when i was younger and traveling and had chances of a bright future. but here I am I am going back to retrace some steps and maybe tell that young fool I was that shit didnt work out so well and life generally is bleak. People had it hard all the time eh. I think of that poor frozen human hunter gatherer they found so well preserved in some receding glacier in europe. I had it easier for sure so I am not going to be bitter about where I am at, this aint no crying in my words here. lotsa bitchin' but dont take me as a whinging' get.
About the title....I'll explain more later but I am thinking about going back to this massage parlour near my house. Yeah , the usual rub and tug thing. There's loads of them around here. I went there when My kidney stones which i didnt know were kidnwy stones had my back killing me. I didnt really care if i got rolled over and jerked off or not but i got a great massage from a young well trained Vietnamese american girl. And I am just thinking.....it would be a great way to sign off on Costa Mesa, having a hand shandy from her. In any case i plan on a few episodes of this kind of practice to punctuate and evacuate phases of my trip. gotta get going!
a few days. I am going to stop by at Silverio's for some magnetic signs to plaster on the car to pick up handy work or electrical. sure they will be lost soon. should be on the road before rush hour.
The plan is to get to the Ventura freeway before it jams up, get to Ventura and the Pacific coast highway and just head north.
The plan is to spend a few days in Big Sur. I have been many times and like it. It may be full of shit head campers but I dont mind . I refuse to take the arteries up to the bay area.
I am just writing this to let all know what I am doing and how. I dont have a lotta hope for the economy or its future . or my future for that matter. I am 41 and in seriously bad health and this trip kind of returns me too happier more hopeful youthful times when i was younger and traveling and had chances of a bright future. but here I am I am going back to retrace some steps and maybe tell that young fool I was that shit didnt work out so well and life generally is bleak. People had it hard all the time eh. I think of that poor frozen human hunter gatherer they found so well preserved in some receding glacier in europe. I had it easier for sure so I am not going to be bitter about where I am at, this aint no crying in my words here. lotsa bitchin' but dont take me as a whinging' get.
About the title....I'll explain more later but I am thinking about going back to this massage parlour near my house. Yeah , the usual rub and tug thing. There's loads of them around here. I went there when My kidney stones which i didnt know were kidnwy stones had my back killing me. I didnt really care if i got rolled over and jerked off or not but i got a great massage from a young well trained Vietnamese american girl. And I am just thinking.....it would be a great way to sign off on Costa Mesa, having a hand shandy from her. In any case i plan on a few episodes of this kind of practice to punctuate and evacuate phases of my trip. gotta get going!
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