Saturday, January 29, 2011

Day 101 - Su Hong

Thought of the day: It's a beautiful day in the bay area.  This morning I biked with my dad through parts of Palo Alto, Los Altos and Mountain View.  The income disparity in the bay area was clearly visible on our route - we didn't even need to leave the peninsula to see that.  As we biked on, the neighborhoods with nice houses and well manicured lawns slowly morphed into neighborhoods with tiny houses and even tinier yards and sometimes the yards were so cluttered with stuff that they looked more like roof-less, wall-less living rooms than some leisurely outdoor space.  And then along the University Avenue, there's the infamous 101 divide between Palo Alto and East Palo Alto,  and crossing the freeway would take you from a neighborhood with picturesque homes on large lots into a neighborhood that's bleak and dangerous.  I heard that it was even more extreme in Oakland, where an urban ghetto and a neighborhood with multimillion dollar mansions were just a few blocks away from each other. The sad reality is that there are still so many really bad areas in the US, tough places to live in and even tougher places to grow up in.  As my direct relatives and close friends are all living in the better places now, it's easy to ignore or forget that reality and pretend that bad places are things for the movies instead of where real people live.

Photo of the day:
Lila sat next to a fire cracker decoration in Su Hong Chinese Restaurant.  I must admit that I have not been able to find a restaurant in Colorado offering Chinese food nearly as tasty and authentic as some of those in the bay area.  The food alone, in addition to spending time with my parents, is worth a trip to the bay area!

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