A minority among minorities....

What a wild day, today I'll go a little off topic. Today was a complete social day and as a result I had to Mooch a ton of rides to achieve my social ends. Here are the stats:

Weight: 188 lbs (quit snickering, what were you thinking Kilograms, yeah right)
Miles Swam: 1 - 1.2 (depending on how much of a straight line I went in and how much the bouys moved on the course. Today, I participated in my annual open water swim relay, the Manatee 2 x 1 mile relay, quite a crazy race, 34 minutes is my guess until official results come out).

Miles Mooched:
- 40 miles to and from Quarry Lakes
- 80 miles to and from concert (Ozomatli)

Today, I went and danced to the sounds of Ozomatli, perhaps one of the best concerts I have ever been to, and definitely the best concert I have been to at Stern Grove. The place was rocking and a dancing, I think I may have burned as many calories dancing as I did swimming earlier during the day. It rocked that much. For an encore, Ozomatli went into the crowd and climbed onto a rock by the mixing board and closed the day with a percussion jam. The crowd was out of control, screaming in unison with the trombone singing the theme to "Sesame Street" and other rocking favorites. Imagine that scene from the second Matrix movie where Morpheus is motivating people, with flashbacks to one of the shittiest sex scenes in movie history, or maybe the Ewok celebration in Revenge of the Jedi. People swaying to a pulsing beat and being transported. I'm lucky I have a voice left.

Even more odd, was that the cute blond (To Anyone who make pick up the next reference, there was no intent to add to my Queue, my queue is quite well serviced) next to me said "Salud" to me when I sneezed, and I remarked to her that someone said the same thing to me earlier when I sneezed while walking, and was that her? She replied, yes it means health in Spanish. I said did you know that in Chinese when someone sneezes you say, and she cut me off by saying "yi bai sui" and I was floored. (It means one hundred years, as to live to a hundred years, or combining with the Spanish theme, perhaps a hundred years of solitude?) and I said what do you know how to respond to a sneeze in every language, to which replied "Wo Xue De Han Yu" which means I studied Chinese. She happened to live in Beijing for a few years. And we chatted about our China experiences. And how the Chinese had a hard time interpreting the transliteration of her name "Nina" which could be interpreted in many ways, some rather pedestrian. Random. She ended up translating some lyrics that were in Spanish. Very sharp person. It's been nagging me, but I think I have met her before.

We later went to Nopa, a pretty decent restaurant in the Western Edition, where my car(e)less existence continued to be a topic of discussion. Very few people live without cars, and among those, the vast majority are cute asian women. so I am a minority within a minority. I will not be able to rely on a lot of guy friends to drive me around, so time to talk about cars. People all have opinions about which car to buy, it is actually a safer bet than sports to get a discussion going, since contrary to conventional wisdom, women can talk about cars just as much as men can. They have as many opinions, if different ones about what a car should be.

My social life is predicated on having a car...sad but true. Probably outside of NYC there is no other option. Oakland is looking more real.