simpliest of solutions

After a night of drink-coping to subdue the pain of a gut punching lost to the nuggets, and yet another playoff-less year for the warriors, i found myself in one of those morning panics. I had somehow awoken at khai house in San Jose and had to find my way back to the city to work (I would have called in sick, but I had called in the previous two days, and it was also the day of my scheduled 3 month review). Deciding that the easiest way was to hop onto the cal-train at freakin 7 in the morn, and take it straight to center of the machine at embarcadero, walk a few blocks, and work in the same clothes I had slept in, partied in, and morned in from the night before. It just sucked. I wanted nothing more than to sleep in, not think, and avoid responsibilities at all levels.

Made it to the station to see the other passengers getting on, had to buy a seven dollar ticket with my credit card for a minimum of 20 bucks, and sprinted onto the train as the conductor yelled out "last call." Found a seat, put on my [ipod], only to have it die on me 3 songs into the trip. It was somewhere near Palo Alto that I realized my car needed to be moved for street cleaning purposes, and that my plan to take the train straight to work wasn't going to happen. Switched over at the airport to the bart, and took that close to home. Walked a mile from the bart to my home, moved the car to the other side, washed up, changed, and got onto the muni. I had completed the mass transit trifecta: caltrain, bart, and muni, all within one gloomy foggy morning. Needless to say, I was already late, and had called in guessing to my boss that I would be in an hour late.

It was on the muni that i sat behind this old lady.

She was one of the many old ladies that take the muni everyday. I can always judge how fast the K will be by counting the number of old people on the train. The more old people, the faster. I'm not sure why this is a fact, but it is, try it. I think there's a correlation with old people's morning proactivity (yes, i made this word up from proactive) and muni's morning mass shuttling.

Everyday, there's at least 5-7 elderly Asians on a train. On that day however, she was the only one. It felt like a dubious sign that I would make it to work later than the hour late I had asked for.

But then a strange thing happened. The sun came out. The freaking sun came out, lit the right side of the land, and also, the right side of our train, warming everything and everyone.



Right in front of my eyes, in what seemed like slow motion, the lady pulled out a baseball cap, guided it over her thin white hair, and turned the bill side ways to block the sun.

Somehow, that made all the difference, and what was potentially an epically horrid day became a great day. Her, turning that hat, made me smile, and twisted me back into what I've always known to be true: Asians grandma are hardcore blood gantsa at heart, and that even through the gloomiest of days, the sun will shine eventually, and even that arrival can be dealt with by the simplest of solutions.