I missed the storm while having fun at SF!

I have posted my photos to SF on my Picasaweb. It was an awesome trip. The Rheumatology board review lectures were much more superior to the ones in New York last year. I stayed at the very expensive ($250/night) Stanford Court at Nob Hill. It's next to the scenic cable car intersection on Powell and California and waking distance to Chinatown. The lectures were at the hotel ball room.

On Thursday night I went out to eat with my colleagues Heather and Snow at Chinatown. I found the food at Chinatown to be way overpriced - easily 2-3x the prices in LA. On Friday night I went out with Heather to eat at Marche at Ghirardelli square, which was quite expensive too, but worth it compared to Chinatown. The restrauant overlooked the bay and Alcatraz.

My girlfriend Ivy flew in late Friday night, so she came directly to the hotel. The next day, after my half day of lectures, we went out to tour San Francisco. The hotel gave me two complementry 3-day cable car tickets, so we rode the cable car! It was Ivy's first time. The cable car was bumpy and jerked hard. At one time we had to stand on the side of the car. It was quite an experience! Ivy and I toured Fisherman's Warf and had a plate of fresh cocktail prawns. We rode the Blue and Gold fleet to see the Golden Gate Bridge. Later we had clam chowder at Boudin's and then for dinner we had sushi at Chinatown.

We walked a whole lot on Saturday. I'm glad I have Ivy, who puts up with all that walking. I even got blisters afterwards, but her feet seemed totally fine.



The whole trip cost around $2000. I hope to get reimbursed for the full amount. My next trip is October 24-29!

While I was at SF I was freaked out about Hurricane Ike because my flight back to Columbus on Sunday would transfer at Dallas. Luckily Ike rolled through Dallas on Saturday, so my flight was not affected. However, Ike rolled through Columbus Sunday afternoon in the form of wind storm. So by the time I got back Sunday night, there was wide spread power outage. The wind was reported to have gusted >70 MPH and it blew down a lot of trees.

I had to throw away $30 worth of food from the fridge. Walmart and Target were totally out of flashlights, and the only things left were scented candles. Good thing I had flashlights already, but I still had to buy candles to save on batteries. Power slowly came back for the street signals and street lights, but I didn't get my power back in the apartment until 3 days later (Wednesday afternoon).