SF

Have been in San Francisco for Semicon for a week now. Land of the free and homeless... I have been put up in Holiday Inn on Market Street and I hate this street. Its San Francisco downtown and because of leniency shown by this city to the homeless who harass pedestrians who walk on this street, things are really bad. The county encourages homeless from all over US to stay in SF. I think this is so wrong... Many of them need to be institutionalized or should be encouraged to earn a honest living rather than being fed for free. Things are so bad that peeing on the streets is legal and the city hall spent 1 whole week considering if they should prosecute ppl for defecating in public. This city is eternally smogged and seldom can one get a clear view of the golden gate. Besides this we had a lot of fun.

Jeff and Ed are here with their wives. We dined on the top floor restaurant of Hilton on Sunday and that was great. 46th floor dining has a charm of its own. On Monday we decided to get a quick drink at Mark Hopkins' 18th floor bar (This bar had a really good ambiance and is the most famous bar in SF) and headed off to Les Joulin for dinner. It serves french cuisine and live Jazz. On wednesday we decided to try Kan Zaman which is a highly rated Hookah bar and restaurant serving mediterranean food. Ed and I were really excited about smoking the hookah. :) We were in for a surprise when suddenly out of the blue a belly dancer started gyrating to the tunes of some arabic music. Shish Kebabs, Mojitos, Hookahs and belly dancers... now thats a great combination :) . Kan Zaman(means "in older times" in arabic) is located in the Ashbury-Haight section of the town where the hippie(free love) movement first started in the 60's which made SF the city we see today. Tommorrow is my last day in SF and we might do something nice.

I spent the weekend with Ankur and Sumera. They did really treat me well. We went to a sports bar to catch the WC semifinals and Ankur treated me to an authentic Bengali fish dinner which I really liked. Things have finally worked well for them personally after a long struggle and I wish them all the luck for their future.

Adios