So I got back Sunday night from a fun-filled 3-day weekend in the Bay Area, home of my alma mater UC Berkeley. In hindsight, the weekend can be summed up quite simply by 3 things: 1) drinking, 2) eating and 3) watching bad football
I arrived late Thursday night and, in classic Yatin style, went straight to a bar with Manish and Aashish to meet up some college friends. Low key night, as I had been up for over 20 straight hours thanks to the time change, and was ready to fall asleep after the 3rd Grey Goose. Friday, however, was a much different story. Picked up Gaurav from "work" (wearing flip-flops and jeans), and then Anuj from the airport. Went to Berkeley to eat lunch at my #1 favorite Berkeley dining spot, Chaat Cafe. After scarfing down their famous (and reasonably priced) Chicken Wraps, we headed to the campus area to do some old fashioned reminiscing. Unfortunately, Friday was a holiday so campus and the streets were relatively dead for a Friday afternoon, but we made the most of it by hitting up Blake's (home of many college bday drinkfests) to grab a few pitchers before heading back to SF for a preparty nap.
After pregaming at Aashish's apt, we headed to a local bar/lounge for some serious drinking. I'm not gonna lie to you - I don't remember much, outside of randomly running into some friends I hadn't seen since college, getting a half-ass invite to an upcoming wedding (i'm guessing that one gets lost in the mail) and walking up those dreaded steep hills of San Francisco at 2am, hearing someone puking behind us and wondering who had drank too much (after finding out who it was, I will spare him/her the embarrassment). After post-gaming til 3am or so while watching Harold & Kumar, the thought of sleep - yes, even sleeping alone on a futon, was quite appealing.
Unfortunately, the sleep only lasted til about 745am, as we had much work to do before the Cal-USC kickoff at 1230. Arrived at Henry's, a famous bar in Berkeley, at around 930am - who says people in California don't know how to party? After making our way to the crowded bar, we proceeded to pound about 6 long islands in the next hour. Pretty good if I do say so myself. Henry's is a great pregame spot - very festive atmosphere, reasonably-priced and extremely potent drinks, and a nice outdoor patio setup. Too bad the Texas fans showed up, stunk up the place and generally ruined the fun as Texas fans have a tendency to do. Wanting to keep up our Long Island-inspired buzz throughout the game, myself, Manish, Anuj, Aashish and Ami put our teamwork skills to use and made a few "pocket" drinks for the road, and headed up to Memorial Stadium for the much-anticipated game.
The rest of the afternoon is blurry. So let's just skip it, ok? All I know is Cal's only TD drive was led by last year's backup fullback, who hopefully will be starting this Saturday at Stanfurd. All I can say to Joe Ayoob is I hope you are taking advantage of the fine education Cal offers, cuz you're certainly not gonna be Jeff Tedford's next first round QB.
Postgame offered another fine Berkeley meal, this one courtesy of Steve's Korean BBQ (as unfortunately the line for my #2 favorite Berkeley restaurant, Top Dog, was about 50 people deep). The highlight of the drive back was when my friend Ali did his standard Friday/Saturday night text asking "Plan tonight?" Already in a bad mood b/c of the game, this was exacerbated by his obvious mass text. So I decided to have some fun with it and texted back telling him to meet me and Anuj at Earth, a lounge in Manhattan. This made for some good laughs, as he was clearly confused as to when Anuj came to visit NY, and he seemed intent on meeting us at Earth. Unfortunately, Anuj had a rare bout of guilt, and ruined the plot by confessing that we weren't in town and, alas, it was not in fact Roopa's bday party at Earth.
The rest of the weekend was pretty tame, given the depression and hangover induced by all the long islands and crappy Cal football. A few drinks on Saturday night, an early wake up and trip to the airport on Sunday morning, and here I am back at "work" on Monday, obviously not catching up on what I missed on Thursday and Friday.
Labels: Travel
