Down the Rabbit Hole

  I had an exam in the City in mid-March and brought my meal-prepped lunch. So I hopped into a lift that brought me to Salesforce Park (for the first time). It is a garden 70 feet above ground, suspended over three or four city blocks in the East Cut neighbourhood. It is a sight for sore eyes after being on the BART and walking on San Francisco's concrete trails under the shadow of the tall buildings of the Financial District. Salesforce Park reopened in July 2019, a few months after I finished studying in the City . In fact, the construction site for the Transbay Transit Centre (on which the park is found) was under construction while I was a student at UC Berkeley's SF campus. And that is why I didn't get a chance to see it earlier. Walking along the paved path in Salesforce Park reminded me of my visit to Singapore's Flower Dome . The park is rich in greenery, with the path lined with plants and grass-covered hillocks. Since it was (literally) the last day of winter,

Donan has recently become fascinated with dinosaurs. He has been asking many questions about the differences among various groups of dinosaurs, what they ate, and where they lived. Because of this interest, I thought it would be an excellent idea for him to see the dinosaur exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences.  When we reached the front door, an enormous dinosaur appeared and freaked us out. Donan didn't want to see the rest of the exhibit anymore.  In contrast, I didn't see the same fear and worry when Donan and I went to the animal exhibit in the Blackhawk Museum. He was enthralled by the dinosaur skull and paused to see the videos of ankylosaurs. 

Solano County's Health and Social Services (H&SS) has a committee preparing for the Public Health Day sometime in May. I attended the first of its meetings, and I found the committee organisers to be very friendly. It did help that they prepared a check-in activity to make everyone at ease: "loteria". When they first mentioned it, I thought we would play the lotto. However, I learned that Loteria is similar to Bingo. We were each given one card with several drawings and Spanish words. We were also given a handful of beans. One had to put one bean to each drawing on the card to win the game. Players would place the beans on their cards as the game master mentioned the word or showed the photo he/she had drawn from a deck of photo cards.   My Spanish is limited to numbers and a few objects... I am not able to string words into a sentence just yet. And so, I heavily relied on the photos that the game master showed to the group. It was a fun activity, albeit short (about