Ch^H^H...Train of Thought

Apt10 takes on Washington DC

For Labor Day weekend, I took Friday off work to fly out to DC. The flight was okay, slept through most of it. Spent a bit of time reading weblogs I downloaded onto my laptop until the batteries ran out.

*Pictures are missing cuz I need to upload them, I'll add them in afterwards.*

When I landed at the Dulles Airport, Grace and Nick picked me up and we headed off to Tyson's Corner to eat at Lebanese Taverna. I ordered a chicken shawarma, one of the house specials. My sister ordered the beef and lamb shawarma. Nick ordered fish. The chicken was a little bit dry but that's okay because it was flavorful. The rice and yogurt sauce worked very well with it.

Afterwards, we went to my sister's place to rest for a bit, picked up Roger, and went to some bar/lounge. I was pretty tired from the plane flight, the music wasn't all that interesting (I think it was mainly salsa music), and so after getting a drink, we left to drop Grace off, get lost for like 2 hours, make 30 U-turns, listen to my sister swear like a pirate, finally drop her off and then go to Nick's place. So much for mom saying "don't keep your sister up too late before her flight to Vegas." By the time we got to Nick's, Grace was driving to the airport. :P

So, one thing about the east coast. The bugs there are freakin' huge and so's the bug population. There's spiders and dead insects all over Nick's apartment. The cicada that greeted us at the door? Like a inch wide.

Roger slept on the couch. Since he snores, I decided on a nice empty area (read: looked safe from bugs) in the walk-in closet. To noone's surprise, we all woke up around noon.

Saturday

Like old times, we had McDonalds for lunch. On the upside, since we were about to walk around and visit monuments, all those calories and stuff probably came in handy. Aside from the WW2 memorial, the front of The White House, and the large white phallic object, we also took a tour of the Library of Congress.

If you had to choose one place to visit in DC as a tourist, do the Library of Congress. The artwork is amazing and the amount of thought put into the layout of all the pieces shows respect for the geniuses they're giving tribute to while being educational at the same time. Oh, and do the free guided tour; they point out a lot of this stuff.

Example in mind: In the hallway with the Gutenberg Bible, the ceiling has symbols representing various professions and how they are related. Along with that, they separate the symbols out using the names of great minds in those fields.

Another example: In the main hall, on the staircases, sculptures of children doing various tasks represent all the fields that people gather knowledge in and that the library was built to share. A musician has a music book and some instrument. A electrician holds a phone handset. A scientist has a butterfly net and butterfly. A chemist is grinding something up. A philosopher is thinking. There's even a kid making wine.

In the big reading room, there are statues of people like Edward Gibson, Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, and Beethoven posing like they're doing their thing. And on some ceiling, there's a painting which highlights countries that contributed to knowledge as we know it. America stands for engineering. (Engineers, represent!)

After the tour, we were going to meet up at a bar with other Cal people who were gathering to watch the Cal vs. Sacramento State football game. That didn't work out cuz it wasn't being broadcast on the east coast. We went back to Nick's apartment to take a break and look up clubs in the area.

Apparently, there is a significant gay community in DC. This doesn't help us at all. In fact, I think that eliminated like half the clubs on Roger's guidebook right off the bat. In short, we settled on Club Daedalus (which we found online) cuz it wasn't outdoors (don't know what's wrong with outdoors), cuz the pictures on the web page didn't have more guys than girls (on the other hand, all the picture links were broken), and because it was Asian Night (which probably was the biggest deciding factor).

Now, Apt10 has always had a competitive spirit. We've tried seeing who get better grades, who has more friends on that AIM buddy list graphing thingie, who's invited over the hottest girls for any random reason, who can kill more people in computer games, and even shit as stupid as who can avoid getting pictures of political figures with phallic names taped to their stuff for the longest time. And now, the latest game is, well, who's got more game?

With this settled, we washed up, dressed up, and headed off to dinner. We go to dinner at Rosa Mexicano, a classy Mexican joint. To me, the place had a pretty nice decor, the food was decent, and really, the only problem was it was so freakin expensive. I think a dish with 3 small enchiladas turned into $20 or something silly like that. While the guacamole was fresh made, as in handmade as we watched, it was $12 for 1 avocado's worth. Their house margarita? I liked that. Blended nicely, pretty strong, and tasted pretty good. The problem was just that it cost way too much.

On to Daedalus. It's small. Sure, it gets bigger if you want to reserve and pay for the VIP area. But overall it's not that much bigger than the average bar in downtown SJ. There's two separate bars inside, a lounge area, and a empty dance floor about the size of my living room. It's pretty dark, kinda smoky, and at 10:30pm, strange that there's not that many people there.

They're having free soco lime shots until midnight, so we got a round those. While waiting for those, Roger manages to get a good start chatting up the bartender and also ordered something else for himself. We survey the area, wonder why it doesn't seem all that much alive, and get another round. I also picked up an Incredible Hulk, as suggested by EJ. (By the way, EJ, it tasted nasty. For what was going into it, it was either badly mixed or you were totally fucking with me. But, oh man, I don't know if it was the taste or just that I took all my alcohol in 15 minutes, but I certainly felt it after that)

Now, as I stood there drinking, I tried to get a feel for the crowd cuz this place is totally different from, say, DNA Lounge or Suede.

Notes that may or may not generalize clubs and people on the east coast.:
- People smoke too much on the east coast.
- The guy who puked next to the men's bathroom needs to learn to run faster.
- It's nice that there's a guy who stands at the bathroom keeping the door open and hands your a paper towel as soon as you finish washing your hands.
- As a whole, the people that were there when we got there, looked like they all knew each other. In fact, there was a short girl who was really cute and was hanging out with at least 6 girls and 4 guys. This leads to....
- East coast girls, even when they're rejecting you, are somehow extremely polite.
For example:
Me: (somehow sees that she's not talking to anybody for a split second) Hey, mind if I buy you a drink?
Cute social girl who seems to know everybody: (tilts her head and smiles) No, but thanks.

Like, wow. "No, but thanks?" I don't think I've ever seen that one happen before.

Next example:
Me: (trying to approach two girls on the dance floor) *smiles and dances toward the one actually facing my direction*
Girl: *pauses for a moment, looks me in the eyes with an apologetic smile and puppy eyes, shakes her head a little* Um, sorry! *and proceeds to start freaking her friend*

Okay, so perhaps I read that one wrong. Considering how they look, guys would have been all over them. Yet not a single one was dancing with them.
But whatever, "sorry?" How often do you get rejected in a west coast club with "sorry?" Or even a word?

Over here on the west side, if a guy offered a girl a drink and she's not interested. They'll take the drink and then tell you about the boyfriend.
Over here on the west side, if a girl doesn't want to dance with you, she'll either just point and laugh and drag one of her friends between you two, or take a quick glance at you and run.
- Alcohol makes things easier only to a certain extent. I didn't drink all that much. Despite being rejected by the possibly-lesbian girl, I still felt pretty good. However a girl I tried to chat with at the bar seemed drunk enough that all I think I heard from her was "I don't feel so good" and "thanks." After helping her get a water, she kinda fell asleep at the bar. One of her friends came to check up on her and didn't seem to get anymore than a weak grunt. So yeah, little alcohol good. Lots of alcohol bad.
- Having the music so loud makes it really hard to hear even when you lean in close.

Okay, so enough notes. Roger really wanted me to post this. If I remember correctly, this is what happened:
Sometime later on, I approached a girl leaning against the wall by herself.
I asked if she would mind if I bought her a drink. She said she probably drank a little too much already.
I offered to get her some water, she said okay. I led her to the bar and got her a cup of water.
So after getting her some water, I asked what her name was and also introduced myself.
But with the music blaring, I had to ask her repeat that several times before finally being able to hear that her name is Cindy (okay, so I can't be totally sure how it's spelled but there arn't too many ways to spell a name that sounds like Cindy.)
Cindy then asked me why I wasn't on the dance floor. I told her that I was resting and that she looked like she'd appreciate a little company.
"Go dance. You should be dancing." "Dude, I just was."
And out of nowhere she grabbed my hand and we walked down the stairs back to the dance floor area near the bar on the left side.
As we started dancing, she asked where I go to school so I told her that I graduated from Berkeley and was out there to visit my sister and my college roommates. I told her I work for Apple since FileMaker's basically a branch of Apple anyways. With everything being loud and all and both of us a bit tipsy, it just seemed simpler to say. I found out she's a 3rd year studying biology at George Mason, and aims to be an orthodontist, which I think is pretty good.
Anyways, so after dancing for a while, one of her friends finds her and starts pulling us along to who knows where. I kinda forgot what exactly happened but I think she wanted to go the bathroom, and I get stopped by Roger and Nick saying they want to go back to the apartment. I tell them to wait a sec, at which they give me a wtf kind of look. I eventually find Cindy coming out from the direction of the bathroom, so I told her I was heading off cuz my roommates wanted to leave, that it was nice to her, and gave her a hug. And then I left with Roger and Nick in shock and awe.

End score:
Nick : 0 - But he claims to have been successful at fending off an airplane. (um...think in chinese.) And he's got a girlfriend already.
Roger : 0.5 - Definitely got to give him credit for chatting up the bartender.
Me : 1 - On the walk through the Metro back to the apartment, I kinda felt like a bit of an ass to forget to ask for Cindy's contact info. I mean sure, at first, I just kinda forgot cuz I didn't know the time, my roommates were in a hurry, her friend seemed anxious somehow, I don't live on the east coast, and I wouldn't be surprised if the drinks affected my judgement. What do you guys think?

Grace called when we got back, and I must say it was quite amusing to hear my sister in a drunken rant through the phone. Guess they're having fun in Vegas. Yeah, Roger, we know you'd totally ditch us for my sister and her 11 friends.

Megan also called. Dude, as the 4th member of Apt10, she knows us too well.
(totally paraphrased cuz I don't remember what was said)
Nick: We stopped by CVS today, guess what Roger bought?
Megan: Condoms?
Nick: How'd you know?

Nick: Guess what we learned about Hansel's sister.
Megan: That she's hot?
Nick: Well, yeah. But, Grace also swears like a pirate!
Megan: And that makes her even more hot?

Nick: We just got back from clubbing, guess what?
Megan: Roger didn't get to use his condoms?
Nick: ?! Yeah......we had a competition to see who could get the most chicks!
Megan: And Hansel won?
Nick: How'd you guess? You're no fun.

Sunday

Once again, we woke up late. We went to Ben's Chili Bowl for chili dogs and chili fries. It was pretty good. Afterwards, we got Slurpees at 7-11, and headed off to do some more sightseeing. Nick and I went to the National Museum of American History and Roger went to some art museum.

The exhibits we saw included one on old computers and tech although part of it was closed down. There's some really old stuff on display like an Apple 1, a IBM PC, a Xerox Alto, and other stuff. (Dude, we're engineers, we gotta pay our respects to this stuff.) We also saw the exhibits on trains, Julia Child's kitchen, cars, guns, various wars, light bulbs, and finally Polio.

I think I saw the ones on trains and cars before when I visited in 8th grade. Julia's kitchen was pretty cool. It talked about how she introduced wine to the Americans as part of a meal. And how to she used diluted BBQ sauce in place of real wine when she's on camera.

The guns were pretty cool. They also had a set of fully functional miniatures of guns and crossbows and other weapons.

The light bulb exhibit was pretty educational. Some of the early fluorescent lights were pretty weird without the phosphers.

The polio exhibit was pretty cool too. It talked about how it affected people, how the iron lung came to be, and how the vaccine was designed. Also mentioned the March of Dimes and the screw-ups during the deployment of the vaccines.

Afterwards, we met up, went back to the apartment, washed up and ate at Jaleo, a really good tapas place. Dinner was pretty cheap but very well worth it. Definitely a restaurant to go to if ever in that area. We were planning on going clubbing again, but it appears Sunday isn't a good day to go clubbing despite the weekend and we were kinda tired from walking around. Couldn't actually find any clubs that were open. So we decided to watch Infernal Affairs, another one of those Hong Kong cops versus Triad movies.

Monday

Woke up late again. Went to Ikea to eat (how did we come up with that idea again?) and then drove to the airport since I had to catch a flight home.

The flights were kinda sucky with a 3 hour layover in Salt Lake City. By the time I got back to San Jose, it was like 10pm and I had one awful headache. Drinking a green tea frappuccino on an empty stomach was probably a crappy idea too. Sure it tasted good but all that caffeine when I already had a headache couldn't have helped.

It was definitely a fun trip, next time they're either coming back to the Bay Area. Or we're going to Seattle and/or Whistler.

Posted by hachu at September 8, 2005 12:20 AM