Tag: California

Another Cafe.

Posted on by Mayowa Osibodu

I’m seated at a small table on the ground floor. My head is abuzz from coffee.

The room is warm. There’s the ambient sound of relaxed conversation around me, and in the distance I can hear the self-absorbed whirr of coffee makers.

I’m working on a Formal Analysis assignment. Some Statistics stuff. Statistical power, p-values, all that.

I think this cafe has a very interesting layout. It’s not such a large space in terms of ground area, but it’s got considerable elevation.

The ceiling is pretty high. High enough to allow for an additional floor of tables and chairs up in the air. This wooden storey lines the wall in an interesting U-shape around the room.

I tried working on the suspended floor. That was the first time I was here, I think. I spent a number of hours doing some readings and assignment stuff. I was seated at a cozy table along one of the prongs of the suspended “U”.

The setup felt immensely precarious to me. Walking along the wooden floorboards, they felt somewhat shaky. Like the entire structure was gently swaying from side to side.

I thought to myself, “This obviously can’t be indicative of a structural issue, because everyone seems pretty chill with it”.

It felt like it had been that way for like a number of years possibly. Like the sway was a part of the structure’s character or something.

I don’t know, what do I know about wooden structures.

It’s probably one of those structures that feel somewhat sketchy, but last for a pretty long time regardless.

I don’t know.

There were two waiters at the counter when I came in. One was a mixed-race black guy. Like, the sort of black guy that has hair with large curls, and dark-green eyes. He cut his hair short, but I could still tell from the texture. I thought he looked interesting.

There was him, and then this slim lady waiter- blonde I think. They were smiling and teasing flirtatiously with each other. Definitely having fun at work.

I’m currently typing at my computer.

There’s this Indian-looking guy sitting at the table to my left. He seems to be typing nervously on his phone.

I headed upstairs earlier, to see if I would come across a free table on the sketchy upper floor. I came across a classmate. She was also working on her Formal Analysis assignment. She seemed happy to see me.

I sat at the table and we spent a little time chatting while we worked on our assignments.

I think I’m gradually developing a crush on her.

At some point I realized I wasn’t really getting any work done. I was too distracted sitting with her. If I intended to get anywhere with my assignment, I needed to go sit somewhere else.

I fiddled with my computer for a bit, and then came up with an excuse to go sit elsewhere.

Now I’m making good progress with the assignment.

The Indian looking guy to my left- now he has someone else sitting across the table from him. His voice is a bit strained and anxious as he tries to communicate some ideas to his guest.

I think the new guy at the table is some sort of investor, and the Indian guy is attempting to sell him on a startup idea. I believe that is what is happening.

I keep working on my assignment.

It’s dark now. I’m like locked in- music streaming in through my headphones- vibing and working through the assignment questions.

Someone is standing next to me.

I take off my headphones and turn.

It’s the classmate. The one from upstairs. I think she’s done with her assignment. She lets me know she’s heading back to the dorms.

We smile and say our goodbyes as she walks out of the cafe.

Hm. Yeah.

Yeah. I definitely have a crush on her.

Image: Working on an assignment at the Chinatown branch of the San Francisco Public Library.

Muir Woods.

Posted on by Mayowa Osibodu

Someone’s coming up from behind us. Running.

We turn around to look.

It’s a tall American-looking guy. Maybe mid-to-late thirties.

He runs past us, wheezing very strangely.

I don’t understand the sounds he’s making. You’re also puzzled.

Is that a breathing technique? Some sort of extremely bizarre way to conserve energy while running through a mountain range?

I don’t understand. I have absolutely no idea what that guy is doing. It sounds like he’s having a medical emergency.

But he seems pretty fine. He’s running very vigorously – he doesn’t look like someone who’s likely to drop to the ground anytime soon. Which makes the situation all the more perplexing.

We exchange amused stares, chuckling under our breaths until he’s out of earshot. Then we make fun of him and ask each other what the hell his deal is.

We’re in the bus. Headed up to Muir woods. We’re going up this pretty steep hill – its a snaking winding road.

The bus was pretty full when we got in, so we’re sitting on the steps. I’m recording some footage of the passing scenery through the transparent door. I recently bought this Chinese GoPro clone online, along with a soft bendy mini-tripod. I’ve been taking them around and recording footage on trips – I’ve got a considerable number of stuff from our recent time at Golden Gate park.

We’re talking about random stuff.

At some point we’re talking about Ivan. I’m telling you about stereotypes people from my tribe in Nigeria have about people from his tribe.

I’m not sure how we got here.

I’m getting nauseous. The hill is getting steeper. The road is getting even more winding.

I feel sick. Now I’m not talking as much. I’m just trying to stay conscious till the bus gets wherever it’s going.

We’re walking through some sort of grassy plain. The ground is largely flat, and the grasses are short.

There’s an installation by the road. It looks like a concrete stub – or maybe a rock. There’s like a plaque on it that says “You’re at soso point along the soso Muir Woods trail“.

You’re telling me about your friends back home. About how sad everyone was that you were leaving for college in the US.

You mention the letters they wrote you – the letters you opened up to read on the plane – you say they made you cry and cry because you missed your friends so much already.

At some point we come across some sort of shrub. It has some strawberry-looking fruits on it.

You pick a few of them and begin to eat.

I’m watching suspiciously.

What the fuck are those. I mean- they look like strawberries, but no way I’m eating some strange-ass fruit I randomly came across in the middle of some unfamiliar forest.

No one grows strawberries in the parts of Nigeria I’m familiar with, and so I honestly cannot tell a legit strawberry from some poisonous ambiguous strawberry-looking semblance of a fruit.

You’re saying something about them being real strawberries- between bites, with your teeth stained red.

I cautiously take some from you, watching for possible signs that you’re about to suddenly drop to the ground.

Hm.

She seems okay. I should probably take a few bites. Hm.

We’re at a bus stop. A random bus-stop on the way to Muir woods.

There’s no one else here. We’re chatting and teasing and kissing and generally messing around.

At some point I comment about how tiny your feet are compared to mine. I comment that I could probably fit your foot, complete with your entire shoe, into my shoe.

We try it, and to our utter surprise it works. My shoe completely swallows up your foot and your shoe.

We’re laughing, and taking pictures of you and your gigantic shoe.

Haha.

There’s this Black-American looking guy that recently joined us at the bus-stop. He keeps looking at me strangely, I don’t know why.

We’re at the end of the Muir Woods trail.

We spent some time at a beach. It was interesting.

You said we should throw some coins into the sea. That we’d come back to get them someday.

You said it was something lovers did. Like a custom where you’re from.

It didn’t make any sense to me, but I thought it was exciting nonetheless.

There was a Mexican couple at the beach. Mid-thirties likely. They kept smiling and glancing our way.

Now we’re heading out into some sort of clearing, woozy with excitement from the past couple of hours. We’re to get a bus somewhere close by.

There’s an information board by the footpath, that outlines the bus’s schedule.

We’re staring at it, tired smiles on our faces, ocean waves crashing against the shore in the background.

Hm apparently there’s one more bus that leaves from here this evening.

And it leaves —

Hm hold on, it leaves in —

Wait what?

It leaves in like five minutes!

WHAT THE??

WHERE IS THE BUS STOP???

WHERE IS THE BUS??

WHERE IS THE FREAKING BUS STOP??

Oh no we’re going to be abandoned in this place.

We’re going to be left here overnight to be devoured by bears.

We’re running frantically in the direction of where the bus should be.

WHERE IS ITTT????

Image: Somewhere in Briones Regional Park, San Francisco.

California Street: A Psychoactive Gift On The Fire Escape.

Posted on by Mayowa Osibodu

There’s this musician I’ve been listening to recently. A rapper.

His name is Tumi. I think his music is cool.

He’s from South Africa.

I’ve had his “I’m killing” song on replay for a while now. The song has some seriously dope vibes.

The whole Spotify thing is still somewhat surreal to me. Streaming songs on repeat.

That is something I probably would’ve never done about a year ago.

In Nigeria I always had to conserve my internet subscription. Internet subscriptions cost money, and so if I planned to listen to a song more than once, it made more sense to just download it.

But that’s not the case here in San Francisco.

There’s wifi everywhere. Our college dorms have super fast wifi and that’s just wonderful, but even out in the city free wifi is not hard to find.

That sort of access to the internet makes you see things differently.

Now if feels like my computer is really just a screen, a keyboard, and maybe some RAM.

And the entire internet is my hard drive.

Because you can access files on the internet so quickly- it’s almost like they were already on your computer.

I find all that really interesting to think about.

My roommate isn’t around. I’ve got the room to myself this evening.

I think I have some weed in one of my drawers.

A while back this Israeli guy was hanging out at the dorms. I think he was couchsurfing with an Israeli classmate or something.

I went to the patio downstairs to do something, and we crossed paths there. We got talking.

His first name was Roy.

His last name was literally something from the Bible. Like, the name of some fire-bending prophet or something.

People in Nigeria are generally very religious and so names from the Christian bible are very common. But physically meeting an Israeli guy with a Bible name made me see Bible characters as being much less otherworldly.

Like, these people in the bible were human beings. That clairvoyant prophet I’ve been hearing about in church since I was a baby, was just like this guy that’s smoking weed across the table from me.

They were all human beings, not surreal mystical characters existing on some esoteric metaphysical plane.

It felt like a very profound realisation and awareness.

Roy said he spent like the past few months working at a weed farm.

Sorry, a what?

A weed what?

I thought that was super interesting. I had never heard anything like that before.

He offered me some weed.

I took some time to weigh the situation.

I had class the next morning, and I didn’t want to be disoriented from the weed or anything.

I probably thought: I don’t know, I’m probably enough of an unserious student already. I don’t think I should aggravate my situation even more with some impromptu weed.

But he seemed like a really cool guy, and I felt like I would enjoy spending time with him.

I obliged.

We spent the next few hours smoking different strains of weed and talking about a bunch of different random stuff.

We talked about surfing, and about his time in the Israeli army.

He said the stress levels in the Israeli army could get very high. And that people relieved the stress in primarily two ways. Jerking off and fucking.

We talked about Fela Kuti.

Everybody knows Fela Kuti.

With a lot of people I meet randomly, whenever they hear I’m from Nigeria, usually Fela Kuti comes up in the conversation somehow.

Like, everybody knows this Fela Kuti guy.

At some point Roy would open up another small weed container and be like “This one. This one makes you laugh a lot. This one makes you laugh for no reason at all”, and he’d proceed to roll it into a joint.

It was a super interesting evening.

Surprisingly I did pretty well in class the next morning. It was a Formal Analysis class, and during my pre-class preparation I sort of independently came upon the concept known as “regression to the mean”.

I think it was “regression to the mean”. Some concept in Statistics.

I mentioned it in the course of the class, and was surprised to learn that it was an actual thing. Like, an actual statistical phenomenon.

That was really interesting.

Hm. Maybe I should smoke more weed.

Hm. Or maybe not.

Hm.

Tumi’s “I’m Killing” is still playing on Spotify.

Earlier in the day, I was playing the song on loudspeaker while I walked to the bathroom for a shower.

A classmate was walking by and she started nodding to the music and smiling at me.

I felt very good about that. Very very good.

I’ve had a crush on her for a while. But she doesn’t pay much attention to me. Or at least I don’t think she does.

She has a boyfriend. Some guy like that. Also a classmate. I’ve got mixed feelings about him, but generally I think he’s cool.

He can be kind of an asshole though. Everyone in the class generally agrees on that. He just has this persistent tendency to disturb and rile people up.

Hm, maybe I myself should begin to disturb everyone a lot more.

Maybe I should begin to play my music on loudspeaker, and make sure to bother everyone with it.

Maybe then my crush’ll begin to pay me more attention.

Hm, maybe that’s what makes her like that guy in the first place.

Hm.

Roy- the cool Israeli guy, he left me with some weed.

By “some weed”, I mean like three different strains. Or four even.

I’ve had them in one of my drawers for a while. I haven’t touched any of it since he gave me. That was like over a month ago. I’m not really a weed guy- I just don’t really have the space for it in my life.

But this evening I’m especially free. And I’m kind of in the mood.

I go get some.

I think smoking in the dorms could set off the fire alarm.

I heard something people do, is to head out onto the fire escape to smoke.

I’ve always thought that was kind of exciting, but I’ve never really given it too much thought.

But this evening I seem to have a lot of free time, so I find myself actively contemplating it.

I’m on the fire escape.

The night is dark, and California street is glittering with electric lights.

The air is chilly.

Tumi’s “I’m killing” is still playing in the room.

I light up a joint.

At some point I hear giggles.

I turn my head to the right, to understand what is going on.

There are two smiling faces in the window.

It’s Jakob and Fiona. They’re on the bed in the next room. They both look very excited.

Fiona opens the window and calls out my name. We all spend some time exchanging thrilled pleasantries- They from the warmth of the room next door, and me from my chilly spot on the fire escape.

We laugh and talk for a while. We’re all very excited to interact in this exhilarating situation.

At some point they close the window and return to indulging in their enviable romance.

I proceed to take a few more puffs at my joint, feeling accomplished to have scored some “cool guy” points in the books of two people I admire.

Image: View down California street on a random night.

First-Time Surfing at Pacifica.

Posted on by Mayowa Osibodu

I was at this surf shop. That was a number of weeks ago. I’ve had this curiosity about surfing for a while- I think it’s an interesting activity.

I was talking with the guys at the shop. There were interesting-looking boards everywhere. They had a number of overhead television screens where I could see live footage of some surfing locations. I could see the live waves and weather conditions and stuff- it was all very interesting to look at.

The attendant mentioned Pacifica as an interesting surfing location in relatively close proximity. I noted the name. It would be interesting to check it out at some point.

A while before that, I met this couple at an ice-cream shop in the Sunset district in San Francisco. They had a number of surfboards in the cargo bed of their pickup truck. I struck up a conversation with the guy about surfboards and surfing. He mentioned that I could get pretty good surfboards at Costco for a ridiculously cheap price. They were made of a different material, but they were still pretty good. That was interesting to learn. At some point they offered to pay for my ice cream. I didn’t argue. They were nice. Nice people.

I am at Pacifica. I am at the beach. I took a number of subway trains and then some buses to get here.

I’ve started trying the surfing thing. I’m definitely not doing a lot of things right. I’ve just been getting bashed by the waves over and over and over. I actually didn’t even go through any tutorials or watch any surfing videos before coming here. I just felt it wouldn’t be all that much of an issue:

It’s water. And then there’s a board. And you’re moving about on the board. I skateboard already and I’m pretty alright at that, so how difficult could this possibly be.

Bruh, it’s been difficult. I got past the torrent of waves once. Once I got far enough into the water to turn the board around and face land. It was a strange experience- seeing land from the perspective of someone out in the water, with nothing but a surfboard to hold on to. I felt somewhat unanchored and adrift and disoriented.

The next step was to catch a wave. At that time, I didn’t even know what the next step was. From watching everyone around, I just knew I needed to get into the water, past the waves and then surf back somehow.

There was this guy next to me in the water. He was giving me some directions:

Lie straight on the board, grip the edges with your fingers, let your toes be at the the very edge of the tail end.

It felt very strange. Learning to swim during weekend visits to a Staff club swimming pool back in university in Nigeria, the issue with being in the water was learning to be comfortable off your feet. Off your feet and on your stomach or on your back or however- just not in the upright position that an entire life of experience existing as a being on land, has made you an expert at.

Following that guy’s directions, it felt like I was unlearning another sort of comfortable position. Now I wasn’t putting my trust in my hands and my legs to keep me afloat and propel me through the water- no. My feet were to be be stuck together- immobile, at the end of the board- my hands were to grip the board for a while before I began to paddle. Somehow I was supposed to put all of my confidence in this piece of plastic to keep me afloat and balanced astride the pulsing swells of belligerent ocean water. It felt weird.

The guy giving me directions had a very deep and resonant voice. He looked very Chinese, but sounded very American. Exactly like one of the San Francisco college staff. Exactly like Mister Wang. The familiarity actually helped me feel more at ease, out in the water on the surfboard.

I am back on land. I’m jogging along the beach. There’s this very tall bearded guy I saw taking a break from surfing earlier. I thought he looked interesting. He is sitting on the sand with his board and with a group of people.

Somehow we strike up a conversation. I think I start by complimenting his beard. We begin to talk. His name is Simon. He’s German. He’s here with his girlfriend and a number of friends. His friends also happen to be coworkers at a startup he founded based on some work he did for his PhD in Germany. Interesting. The company was recently acquired by Apple and they all moved to the US from Germany. Interesting.

We keep talking. His PhD had something to do with graphical processing and parallel computing. We talk about that a bit. I mention some Machine Learning Consultancy I was engaged in, in Lagos Nigeria- it involved building Computer Vision software to process real-time traffic footage. We keep talking.

At some point they want to go have lunch. I come with. We go return our surfboards and wetsuits. They are all so tall- the guys. They are like six foot seven. One is even taller than Simon. Like six foot nine. I’m like six foot two, and generally that’s considered pretty tall. But hanging out with these guys makes me feel like an insect. Like an excited, chattering insect.

And I actually like it. I like hanging out with very tall people- it makes me feel like a baby who is surrounded by adults capable of handling whatever problem comes along. It makes me feel very safe.

We are having lunch.

I mention that I’ll be spending the next semester of college in Berlin. Ahhh, they say. Berlin will be fun. The Oktoberfest is coming soon. I should make sure to indulge in the vast variety of sausages Germany has to offer. And the beer. I’m going to enjoy the beer.

I actually do indulge in the sausages. In the next few months. Currywurst. Bratwurst. A number of different “wursts”. I’ll take one at a small sausage kiosk after emerging from a quick autumn dip in the chilly water of Krumme Lanke, while contemplating the anxeities involving my college enrolment and the ambiguity surrounding my general future.

We keep discussing over lunch. At some point Simon’s girlfriend makes a comment about Khal Drogo. Something about Khal Drogo having a large penis. Or at least having a larger penis than Simon. He looks hurt. It’s not a lasting impression- it’s just a brief flicker of discernible discomfort/pain on his face. I think that’s very unfair and inconsiderate of his girlfriend. I wonder why she would say that- obviously primarily to spite him. We keep talking.

In about thirty minutes I’ll be in their car- Simon and his girlfriend. It’s a very small car. First I’ll wonder why such a large guy drives such a small car. I’ll also wonder why a considerable number of people I’ve met in Silicon Valley drive such moderate cars. People in Nigeria with much less money drive such extravagant vehicles. The roads can be remarkably terrible, and people spend hours in traffic, but somehow there’s still a lot of prestige associated with the sort of vehicle a person owns.

People are somehow capable of spending so much money on individual luxury, while the communal welfare is generally deplorable. In the most affluent parts of Lagos you’ll see like a $70,000 Porche wading through knee-deep muddy water pooled in cavernous potholes along the road. I don’t understand it. I don’t get how such an aesthetically dissonant experience could still be perceived as luxury- it superlatively bewilders me.

In the car Simon and I will talk about relationships. Relationship issues. I’ll talk about my relationship. The major issue I’m experiencing is maintaining the desired level of intimacy with a partner who is on holidays with her family, on a different continent. Simon’s major issue is that he’s meeting other people he would like to date, but can’t because of his current relationship. I try to empathize, but I cannot completely relate. Simon and his girlfriend have been in a relationship for fifteen years. I have absolutely no idea what that feels like.

And maybe that’s why his girlfriend makes snide remarks about his penis. Possibly to hack at his self-esteem by undermining his sexual capabilities, in a bid to reduce the likelihood of him exiting the relationship to date someone else he’s interested in.

We’ll talk about a number of other things in the car. He’ll describe how he broke a personal speed limit while driving on the Autobahn. Interesting.

We are done with lunch. We head to the counter. They offer to pay for my meal. I do not argue. I am with the super-tall adults who are capable of handling whatever problems come our way. I am the safe and excited chattering insect baby. They pay for our food and we head out to the car.

Image: That afternoon.