Sylvia's Journal

After a last swim in our hosts’ swimming pool, we made a visit to a Korean/Asian section of San Diego, had a pho lunch and explored the large Korean supermarket. Then it was time for goodbye and we ‘lyfted’ our way into the center of things yesterday. It was good we were in the suburbs while the big ComicCon (conference) was going on with hundreds of thousands of people who had flown in to enjoy/see and be merchandised all things comic (popular arts according to the banners on the streetlamps). 

The Lyft and Uber people were having a field day even though the electric scooters and bikes  were competing with their business and became a bit of a traffic hazard. Our Lyft drivers have been great – we learned about the Chaldeans from Iraq (“why would I ever wanted to go back there?”), the conference from Dani who seemed to be half Vietnamese half Filipino (we didn’t ask), we dragged up our Lebanese and sang along with a Fairouz song with Mike Mohammed, our Palestinian driver who grew up in Lebanon. Why would one ever want to rent a car (in a city), when all these great characters are there to converse with?

We ambled along the curving paths in the Japanese Friendship garden of Balbao Park, Axel with his cane and me with my sore ankle, we made a sorry pair – elderly some would say, ughh. Befitting this label we went for the early bird dinner at the Fishmarket restaurant right at the harbor where we sampled and compared east coast and west coast oysters. After a coffee and gelato in Little Italy we had a superb foot massage around the corner of our hotel to tend to our sore feet. 

And now I am having a seaweed (picked up at the Korean market), dark chocolate and coffee breakfast in our spacious downtown hotel room while Axel completes his sleep. I am attending a refresher session of the zoom-delivered C-IQ training on how to ‘humanize’ conversations. If I get one of the gigs I am hoping to get in early September, facilitating a meeting with several very highly placed people from different walks of life, I have to know how to do this and so a refresher is in order.