The Crookedest Street

Circumstances dictated that I was not able to use my plane ticket from England to Malaysia in 1990. I had to further stay on in UK for a forthnight or so. I did not complain for it was a blessing in disguise since I was given the normal stipend.

I was in Leeds for six months attending two 3 months Short Courses at OEU of the University of Leeds. The two Short Courses were conducted concurrently. The first 3 months Short Course was the ELT Course designed for me to follow whereas the second 3 months Short ELT Course, a Teachers-Trainers Course, was especially designed for 6 Sabah teachers-trainers. Since I was tasked to lead the home trainers-trainers courses, I was especially requested to further stay on for the British Council sponsored Trainers-Trainers Training Course. That must have entangled my plane ticketing schedules so much so that I was given a paid holidays in the northern hemisphere for a good half a month. The real reason, though, was not revealed to me. I did not really want to know.

I decided to pay Grace a visit in San Francisco, USA. From Leeds I had to send my Passport to London for some important clearance. On the day I had planned to leave Leeds for London, I received my Passport through the post. I based myself in Earling at Fiona’s as I applied for my Visa and booked for my return air ticket. I had to go twice to the American Office to get my Visa. I had to line up as early as 3.00 o’clock in the morning and the queue was so long that it went around the outside of the big building. People queued on the road. When I came to the Officer in the building and presented my passport, I was told to come the following day. When I presented myself the following day, I was given back my passport with the appended Visa for multiple visits without much questions asked.

My return plane ticket on Pan Am was not immediately available but I was assured that it would be waiting for me at the airport the following morning. When I tried to collect it at the Pan Am counter at the airport the morning I was to leave, I was told to simply queue up for the boarding check and the ticket would be rushed to me as soon as it was delivered. Not all things was quite right for me that morning. An airport security personnel must have walked up to me and slapped a yellow self-sticking ‘security check’ sticker on my handbag without me realising it. A very professional non-intermediating check followed. I was very pleased to have talked to professional people of authority.

Very much later, when I narrated such happenings to my professional friends at home, they laughed and told me that in such a case I really fit the the role of a drug dealer, well-dressed, traveling light and alone. Whatever it was coincidence could happen.

Grace and friends were waiting for me at San Francisco airport terminal. Tiru, purportedly a student, a black, was the driver. Grace was surprised I took the Pan Am. One Pan Am went down in Scotland a few months previously. My first day in San Francisco was spent walking down the street, surveying, so to speak, the nearby down-town. I bought a few postcards to send to Jimmy Taylor in Leeds, England. I brunched alone at a Vietnamese Restaurant. The food was not appealing. A middle-aged foreign woman came to ask me for money, a donation. When I grunted my disapproval she literally ran away as fast as she could. I thought she was genuinely hungry or she was an illegal new-comer. In the evening Grace brought me to get a couple of jeans. She also brought me to see pictures, the latest in town. Everything in USA is done through the queue … the queue in buying of cinema tickets was so long that it started from well outside the cinema itself. When we settled down finally I asked Grace why there were so many beep sounds in the course of the conversations. It was my first time hearing so many beeps in a stretch of a few minutes. Grace told me of the American’s speech…so many words were used which might not be suitable for public consumption, e.g. swearing words, etc. On another evening Grace brought me to dinner. Typical in a busy place, we had to stand up outside to wait for a table vacancy. People waited to be seated. They did not simply grab a vacant seat.

Tiru had a car and he drove us to see the effect of the San Francisco earthquake in recent times. The road flyers which collapsed on each other, was still there to show to tourists. The timber fencing over a grassland was moved apart for about a couple of feet out of angle. We also drove passed the farm…the vineyard so famously featured on a TV series. We also went to the lookout of the Pacific Ocean to see the humpback whale from a distance. We saw a few curved up the distant water, sportingly waved its gigantic tail and really sprout water off its head. Near the look-out place, there was a pine tree which was peculiarly shaped because of the effect of withstanding the consistent strong wind blows. We also saw a mountain of cockles shells stacked for some purposes. I was also brought to see a group of some gigantic pine-trees by which a highway passed through.

During my stay in San Francisco I was still guarding my diet, just because of my diabetes. Grace prepared me one basin of salad. She kept it in the fridge and went to work before I was up for the morning. She rang the house at mid-morning to tell me of the salad. When I looked at it, I thought it was not tasty. It had all sorts of leafy things, including mushrooms. When I finally tasted it I found out it was not bad, in fact it was very good. The salad vinegar was the magic agent.

Grace brought me round to see the Japanese Garden and a closer look at the Golden Gate bridge. We took a few photographs near the bridge. We also took a tram-ride to the historical Fisherman’s Wharf and took another ride down the most crooked street of San Francisco…The Crookedest Street. Grace brought me for some snacks at a restaurant far up a tall building, not far away, perhaps, from her work-place. She paid for them using an in-house charge card.

I could not remember all the things I had bought, but I had a good luggage when I went back. Grace sent me to the airport and went back. She must have hired one of her friends with a car to take me to the airport. I arrived safely at Heathrow and based myself for the night at Earling. That evening we went for dinner, Mathew of KL, the heir to the Coca-Cola dynasty from the Island, Fiona and myself. I used my Travellers’ Cheque to pay for the dinner. It was a good dinner. The next morning, I headed for Heathrow for KL, nearly missing the plane. When I arrived in KL, I found out that I had missed my connecting KL-KK flight. I requested Departure to put me on the next available KL-KK flight. It was a good feeling to be accorded one’s wish. I thought it was because it was the last and a midnight flight. What more, I thought it was, again, not a capacity flight. At the airport taking the same flight was a workmate, Encik Hadis. We had not seen each other for a good six months. We updated each other of happenings in the office, in Sabah and of the Sabah political scene. It was Election Day in Sabah the following morning. When I arrived home and after a short rest, I went to cast my usual vote at St. Joseph’s Primary School in Penampang.