Going to the Mall

Wish I can say the past few days have been exciting but here's a few mundane snippets of my life back home.

Yesterday and today were Spare the Air Days. This means that it's so hot that driving your car makes the air pollution even worse than usual. So on some Spare the Air Days, all the public transportation in the Bay Area is free. I didn't know about this yesterday so I walked to Jack London Square and back. That's about a 45 minute walk. It wasn't bad though. I got to feel the glorious sun on my skin and read some travel books while drinking coffee.

So today I decided to take advantage of this free transportation and got myself to Emeryville. I wanted to go to that one mall with Micheals, CompUSA, and Pets Club. I decided not to follow the directions given to me by the transit website and promptly got lost. I hopped on a shuttle that was supposed to take me to where I wanted to go but I think I missed the stop. I just got off where everyone else got off and ended up in the middle of nowhere. This was when I realized that I wasn't in Deutchland anymore. Whenever I got lost over there, I would just stop by a bus stop or just walk along with the rest of the people on the street. Here however, there was absolutely no one on the street. In fact, one should be suspicious of people like me who walk instead of drive or wait at a bus stop.

When I finally found the mall, I spend some time at Michaels picking out scrapbook stuff. I want to make a scrapbook for the past summer. I've already ordered pictures. But for some reason, Winkflash decided to order only 233 of my 330 pictures that I uploaded. So I have to order again. Sigh. Anyhow, after this, I walked over to Pets Club, CompUSA, and Best Buy. Not as easy as it sounds. This is not a mall that was designed to be walked. You're supposed to drive from one store to the next. When trying to find CompUSA, I walked into an OfficeMax because you can't see store names from the sidewalk. Having lived in Berlin, I am starting to realize just how unwalkable American cities are. I have a bike but I've never ridden it in Oakland because I don't feel safe. Everything is so car-centric.