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Why would anyone want to enroll for an 8am Calculus section? I would leave the San Francisco Victorian flat when it was still indigo blue outside, as I boarded, the winter skies already turning to a familiar and perfect cobalt. This is what an overeager, fresh transplant freshman to Northern California, just-happy-to-have-gotten-accepted-to- the-University-right-out-of-high-school, 18-year-old would do.
The class and my grade in it suffered the repercussions of my early morning sleepy space out, accentuated by the long 1-1/2-hr Muni to BART and walk trek, combined with a healthy dose of ‘Trig and Geometry I get and love, but...Calculus?’ It is one of those subjects that you can’t breeze through on your love of math; it requires a cumulative and constant effort, and the discipline to study on a regular basis. Many things in Life can be loved if you devote a true and disciplined labor to pursuing them. Maybe the best things in Life require this devotion.
But 18 and discipline were not yet to be.
And I had not yet learned about the brown elixir that fuels civilization. In my near future would be 11pm cappuccino runs to Espresso Roma (yes, the original one on Bancroft and College, now Caffe Strada). There would be 1am pouncings on Kielbasas and Bratwursts at Top Dog to keep alert for the goofy, architecture project all-nighters ahead, with me and my classmates taking dance breaks atop the large, wooden drafting table expanses, jamming to Musical Youth’s “Pass The Dutchie,” turned on at full blast.
Here is a bit of numerology for synopsis: Lima is at 12º S of the Equator. At age 12, my family and I immigrated to Los Angeles, a whole 34º N, and by my junior year of high school I would be setting my sights for UC Berkeley and the Bay Area. I had spend a short lifetime of always following my brother Luis Héctor’s footsteps – basically educational stalking since Kindergarten. Two years my elder, he would see me saunter in to each new school, after he had already done reconnaissance and had reported back to me on the terrain and scary local wildlife: the student populations. Sometimes the shadowing of my brother would yield unexpected awkwardness, like having our exact and strict, Mexican Japanese Chemistry teacher, Rosa Nagaishi, announce to my entire class that I was going to be an A student because of my relation to my sciency, legendary brother, who had been one of the best students she had ever had. Sorry Rosa. Not happening.
His Alma Mater UCLA was out of the question. Luis and I were bored and tired of the following game, and serendipitously UCLA did not offer a Bachelor degree in architecture at the time. In the end, with my UC Berkeley admission letter in hand, I transplanted myself a cool 50 latitudinal degrees away from original habitat of Perú. Some days I wonder how much that messes with a person – your subconscious looking for the sun at a certain inclination and intensity of warmth and coming up empty-handed.
And on the subject of sun….My first excursion on the N-Judah was a direct shot westward on the Muni train’s line, being brought along by my sister-in-law, all the way to the west most point of San Francisco: Ocean Beach. I was prone to the impromptu narcolepsy of youth, finding any surface or sitting position comfortable enough for frequent naps, this time a peaceful face plant onto the open book that I was reading. That was the afternoon that I became the only Peruvian that ever got fully sunburned in San Francisco at 38 degrees latitude. The u-shaped red sea of skin on my back, exposed by the parabola of my bathing suit, stinging for the next two days.
My adventures on the N-Judah could be cataloged by the side-sights from the train’s ribbon of windows: the perma-crowd of cops at the donut shop on Irving in the Sunset District – living proof that the stereotype comes from somewhere very real; the first sushi restaurant that I ever tried, where my brother Julio joking with an obvious-on-purpose, Cheshire Cat expression, tried to convince me that the wasabi was guacamole; the both gritty and beautiful shock of finally reaching Market Street: above the underground, cheap souvenir hole-in-the-walls and cheesy adult shops on the outskirts of downtown giving way to column-adorned banks and elegant hotels in the Financial District.
I got to know the whole route well, west to east, even the western most parts that I would be forced to travel on days that architecture deadlines would have my eyelids droop and my head do the telltale bob. It is no fun to wake up at the last stop, by the mini sand dune of the Great Highway, when you are already supposed to be cozy in bed 3 miles away on Third Avenue.
And then there were the human interactions. There was the cute guy that boarded near Kezar Stadium. He smiled and started talking to me – I think something very mass-transity like whether the jarring of the N-Judah was making it hard to keep holding on to the steel tube over our heads. He transitioned the conversation somehow and smoothly to birth months, and then asked me: So you are a Cancer of….1958? My brain did not register at first. 1958, what? And then I fritzed in realization: birth year! That was my sister’s year. It had been his wishful thinking. He was 30. At 18, the difference was unfathomable. 12 years is a LOT. I so wished I could be what he wanted me to be – to have those extra six years under my belt and be my sister’s glamorous age of 24. The disappointment in his face was palpable, and in that moment I went from potential date to good friend material. Years later, I realized that he was my first brush with the workings of the cliché “What’s your sign?” premise but because of his sincerity the pick-up line red alert did not sound. We kept in touch a little; he even invited me over to his house once to have an authentic homemade meal by his new, age-appropriate Indian girlfriend, in a ‘let’s be nice to the little architecture student’ effort.
And I remember the Chinese women. Chinese women, boarding around Montgomery and Powell, were my moveable fan club. I was a hugely prolific knitter on the Muni and BART trains – passing the time with pastel yarn and half-completed sweater parts flowing over my lap. These older women could not help it. They would inevitably want to approach me, talk to me, inching their way to sit across from me. They would ask me about my projects at hand, with their loving eyes in a virtual, maternal embrace. Today, at 50, I get it. I imagine what they saw in this industrious 18-year-old sitting on the public transit system.
The N-Judah helped me find my center away from the warm blanket of being someone’s daughter, or someone’s sister - no longer needing my hand held. It was a sweet and not too jolting transition into my womanhood. As my dear train rolled on, I was open to the world. Academic universes were unfolding across the Bay at UC Berkeley, and on the way people were dashed in my path to reveal my true instincts in any given situation and allow me to be.
Forging ahead, and no longer following, the future would be all mine.
Rock on on top of your workstation!
Pass The Dutchie – performed by Musical Youth
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOVioZGnE7E
The class and my grade in it suffered the repercussions of my early morning sleepy space out, accentuated by the long 1-1/2-hr Muni to BART and walk trek, combined with a healthy dose of ‘Trig and Geometry I get and love, but...Calculus?’ It is one of those subjects that you can’t breeze through on your love of math; it requires a cumulative and constant effort, and the discipline to study on a regular basis. Many things in Life can be loved if you devote a true and disciplined labor to pursuing them. Maybe the best things in Life require this devotion.
But 18 and discipline were not yet to be.
And I had not yet learned about the brown elixir that fuels civilization. In my near future would be 11pm cappuccino runs to Espresso Roma (yes, the original one on Bancroft and College, now Caffe Strada). There would be 1am pouncings on Kielbasas and Bratwursts at Top Dog to keep alert for the goofy, architecture project all-nighters ahead, with me and my classmates taking dance breaks atop the large, wooden drafting table expanses, jamming to Musical Youth’s “Pass The Dutchie,” turned on at full blast.
Here is a bit of numerology for synopsis: Lima is at 12º S of the Equator. At age 12, my family and I immigrated to Los Angeles, a whole 34º N, and by my junior year of high school I would be setting my sights for UC Berkeley and the Bay Area. I had spend a short lifetime of always following my brother Luis Héctor’s footsteps – basically educational stalking since Kindergarten. Two years my elder, he would see me saunter in to each new school, after he had already done reconnaissance and had reported back to me on the terrain and scary local wildlife: the student populations. Sometimes the shadowing of my brother would yield unexpected awkwardness, like having our exact and strict, Mexican Japanese Chemistry teacher, Rosa Nagaishi, announce to my entire class that I was going to be an A student because of my relation to my sciency, legendary brother, who had been one of the best students she had ever had. Sorry Rosa. Not happening.
His Alma Mater UCLA was out of the question. Luis and I were bored and tired of the following game, and serendipitously UCLA did not offer a Bachelor degree in architecture at the time. In the end, with my UC Berkeley admission letter in hand, I transplanted myself a cool 50 latitudinal degrees away from original habitat of Perú. Some days I wonder how much that messes with a person – your subconscious looking for the sun at a certain inclination and intensity of warmth and coming up empty-handed.
And on the subject of sun….My first excursion on the N-Judah was a direct shot westward on the Muni train’s line, being brought along by my sister-in-law, all the way to the west most point of San Francisco: Ocean Beach. I was prone to the impromptu narcolepsy of youth, finding any surface or sitting position comfortable enough for frequent naps, this time a peaceful face plant onto the open book that I was reading. That was the afternoon that I became the only Peruvian that ever got fully sunburned in San Francisco at 38 degrees latitude. The u-shaped red sea of skin on my back, exposed by the parabola of my bathing suit, stinging for the next two days.
My adventures on the N-Judah could be cataloged by the side-sights from the train’s ribbon of windows: the perma-crowd of cops at the donut shop on Irving in the Sunset District – living proof that the stereotype comes from somewhere very real; the first sushi restaurant that I ever tried, where my brother Julio joking with an obvious-on-purpose, Cheshire Cat expression, tried to convince me that the wasabi was guacamole; the both gritty and beautiful shock of finally reaching Market Street: above the underground, cheap souvenir hole-in-the-walls and cheesy adult shops on the outskirts of downtown giving way to column-adorned banks and elegant hotels in the Financial District.
I got to know the whole route well, west to east, even the western most parts that I would be forced to travel on days that architecture deadlines would have my eyelids droop and my head do the telltale bob. It is no fun to wake up at the last stop, by the mini sand dune of the Great Highway, when you are already supposed to be cozy in bed 3 miles away on Third Avenue.
And then there were the human interactions. There was the cute guy that boarded near Kezar Stadium. He smiled and started talking to me – I think something very mass-transity like whether the jarring of the N-Judah was making it hard to keep holding on to the steel tube over our heads. He transitioned the conversation somehow and smoothly to birth months, and then asked me: So you are a Cancer of….1958? My brain did not register at first. 1958, what? And then I fritzed in realization: birth year! That was my sister’s year. It had been his wishful thinking. He was 30. At 18, the difference was unfathomable. 12 years is a LOT. I so wished I could be what he wanted me to be – to have those extra six years under my belt and be my sister’s glamorous age of 24. The disappointment in his face was palpable, and in that moment I went from potential date to good friend material. Years later, I realized that he was my first brush with the workings of the cliché “What’s your sign?” premise but because of his sincerity the pick-up line red alert did not sound. We kept in touch a little; he even invited me over to his house once to have an authentic homemade meal by his new, age-appropriate Indian girlfriend, in a ‘let’s be nice to the little architecture student’ effort.
And I remember the Chinese women. Chinese women, boarding around Montgomery and Powell, were my moveable fan club. I was a hugely prolific knitter on the Muni and BART trains – passing the time with pastel yarn and half-completed sweater parts flowing over my lap. These older women could not help it. They would inevitably want to approach me, talk to me, inching their way to sit across from me. They would ask me about my projects at hand, with their loving eyes in a virtual, maternal embrace. Today, at 50, I get it. I imagine what they saw in this industrious 18-year-old sitting on the public transit system.
The N-Judah helped me find my center away from the warm blanket of being someone’s daughter, or someone’s sister - no longer needing my hand held. It was a sweet and not too jolting transition into my womanhood. As my dear train rolled on, I was open to the world. Academic universes were unfolding across the Bay at UC Berkeley, and on the way people were dashed in my path to reveal my true instincts in any given situation and allow me to be.
Forging ahead, and no longer following, the future would be all mine.
Rock on on top of your workstation!
Pass The Dutchie – performed by Musical Youth
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOVioZGnE7E