All posts tagged: San Francisco

I’m lost

I have had this website for so long, and for a while it was fun, I always thought that it would become a business.. But then so much happened in life and I couldn’t quite find my direction. Right now the world seems to be falling apart, we are all struggling and the news are dark and darker; people’s worries are dark and darker. And it’s a lot. In the middle of it our business is wobbly and I am not sure if we will have the money for the next month rent of home, studio & storage space. I’m caught between countries, citizen of none of the places I have tried to build a life, everyone is overwhelmed; returning to my home country is as scary as not returning; staying and applying for citizenship where I am is as scary as not staying and applying. Everything scares me, everything is out of balance. And I feel very unmoored. The only way forward that I can see is to keep going. But as I keep …

2023 – I am a little late to arrive

But here I am. It is February 1st and the Chinese Lunar New year already started, too. Year of the Wood Rabbit. I want to say that I am not really an astrology person but then again: This is MY year! I was born in the year of the Wood rabbit and I feel like this is my once in a lifetime opportunity to have a really great year. Welcome to MY great year. I was thinking about what to share on my blog this year and aside from a definitely necessary focus on financial health I want to give my physical health more attention. One of my plans is to walk more and to bring YOU along every once in a while by sharing what I see on my walks. Since I live in San Francisco I figured that this might be something you, too, might enjoy. Let’s declare Bohemia alive (sorry to my friend who so rationally declared it dead) and let’s see if we can’t find a few small things to enjoy …

I needed some inspiration for my time here in San Francisco … sharing what I found with you

I found this little summary of places and interviews on the New York Times Vlog but perhaps my favourite discovery yesterday the photographer Noel Morata’s website, as it proved to be a treasure trove of ideas and inspirations. I love the understated feel of it, this is not a place for being ultra flashy and showy but there are so many pages to discover that I am having a hard time getting anything done as I leaf through and take his work in. http://travelphotodiscovery.com/san-francisco-views-to-die-for/  

Where can we go from here?

Our housesitting appointment is drawing to a close at the end of the coming week. We by chance got asked to take on another house-pet-sitting gig from the 1st – 4th of August and I said yes minutes before I found out that we likely have lost the (stationary) RV that we were schedule to move into that weekend. So that was a lucky decision. It leaves a rather big question, especially considering that this is the Bay Area with incredibly high rental costs: where do we go from there? We have a grace period of another 9 days or so before I really have no idea where we will go. I had this wild idea of buying a school bus as an art-workshop venue, I prefer to teach lessons and classes in small settings rather than bigger ones, even if I take a pay-cut as a result. I had come up with a school bus when I couldn’t think of anywhere where I could teach, especially with me being new to the area I just don’t …

Housesitting in San Francisco : View from Bernal Heights today

We are housesitting in San Francisco. The way this works is that we got connected with a family who went to visit family on the East Coast and needed somebody (us) to look after their cat, dog, home and plants during their absence. In exchange for our reliable housesitting duties we stay here free of charge. It is a fair exchange of our time for accommodation. We added up the time that we spend caring for the pets and if you paid somebody the hours that we put in then that person could pay rent on a pretty decent place to live. So while I regularly see the headline ‘how to travel for free & housesitting” in the same sentence on the internet it is not really ‘free’. It requires commitment and time that often can clash with other activities that you might prefer to engage in. For me for example it generally means that I can not go out and explore the city as freely as I naturally would because the dog needs attention every …

San Francisco Dreamers? Meeting Diamond Dave

Yesterday I walked past Pigeon palace, a building occupied by long term, rent control enjoying tenants, who are now threatened with eviction as the city’s building and construction boom is in full throttle over drive due to the seemingly unstoppable influx in Silicone Valley employees pressing on the local market. Really it is an issue that the entire world has some shared responsibility in. After all Silicone Valley provides the ‘toys’ that the entire world plays with on a daily if not hourly basis.. Day 3 in San Francisco 2015

When the dog and I saved a baby groundhog on Land’s End Trail, San Francisco

We are house sitting in San Francisco, pretty close to Land’s End Trail and with that pretty close to the edge of the world, or so it feels. The air is amazing here, the silence only broken occasionally by soft voiced fog horns. On a recent walk with the dog that came with the house, dog and I discovered a Groundhog laying in shock, exposed by the side of the trail. My theory is that another dog had previously dug the groundhog baby up and now it was petrified to move. Our house sitting dog pointed her gentle nose at the groundhog and then walked away, leaving me to scoop it up in my XL sized sweater sleaves. J and I took a couple of photos of it while I checked out if it looked hurt. And I then carried it to an area with deeper grass, just meters from the finding location, and let it walk off the little impromptu wooly nest that it had been sitting on. Groundhog baby walked without a limp …