Longest workday!

For those of you who think that I'm in SF for a holiday, you couldn't be more wrong. Friday was my longest working day yet. Started at 830am and didn't finish till midnight. So a total of 15 1/5 hours including a couple of short breaks for lunch and dinner!! Phil and I continued to re-wire the control room and machine room the whole day. We pulled these thick and very stiff video cables, cut them to the right length, and terminated them (meaning putting the connectors at the ends). There was a lot of excess length before, so cutting them to the right length is the best way to clean up the mess. As Phil had a wedding to attend on Saturday and the whole system needed to be used on Sunday for a graduation concert for the school, it was imperative that we finished it on Friday. I crimped the connectors onto the cables until my hands hurt, in the very cramped space behind the racks in the machines room.
By 830pm, we had finished all the cabling and proceeded to test the system to make sure it works. There were some problems with some of the monitors and cameras that took us till about midnight to fix. Made some recordings to make sure that everything works as designed. Finally satisfied, with a much neater setup, properly wired up and most important of all, better quality pictures and more reliable performance. The proof will be in today as we shoot the graduation. Praying......

Spent a lazy Saturday morning in, resting and sending the laundry to the washing machine. Left for the Singapore-American Business Association picnic in Burlingame which featured Singaporean food from various Singaporean restaurants in the Bay Area including Prima Taste, Straits Cafe and Baba Neo. Met Alex Lee and his family there as well.
It was nice to get out of the cold in San Francisco and enjoy some time in the sun. However, yesterday was quite a hot day, which left us panting as we walked down the very nice main street of Burlingame. Popped into the Baskin Robbins for some ice cream and a nice cool drink.

After that, we drove into downtown San Francisco to do a little of the tourist thing - sightseeing. A Saturday afternoon in summer is not the best time to go sightseeing in SF. Seems like every other tourist is also trying to see the sights. It hit me when we reached the bottom of the hill and saw the long line of cars lining up to climb the road to go down Lombard street. Finally gave up and just went around the hill to see the road on the other side. Also went to Coit Tower, and lined up a very long time to get a parking space. Took a view around the place and Li Soon visited this self-cleaning toilet. It cleans the floor and sanitizes the toilet seat between each user. Cool. The only problem is that it takes a long time between users and therefore, a very long line outside the toilet.

Finally went to Chinatown for dinner and realised that the street parking is incredibly expensive. It's 25cents for every 6 minutes, so a 1 hour parking is $2.50. Used to be like 50cents or 1 Dollar per hour. Now wonder there were so many empty spaces, unlike before. Found a little restaurant called ABC where we had wonton noodles. Matthew really liked it and ate quite a bit. We'll be having leftovers for breakfast this morning.

Came back after a long traffice jam getting on the freeway, then sent the laundry to the dryer and later picked it up for ironing before going to bed, satisfied and tired.

Going to service at 11am today and Matthew's Sunday School at 10am. Then to help out in the graduation recording at about 130pm.