Editing Blog/2024-12-31/End of the Year (section)

== February ==

One of the days in February there was this big deal downtown near where I worked and there were lots of PG&E trucks and police gathered around a smoking manhole.

[[File:PG&E issue on 3rd and Mission in SF.jpg|thumb|center|It was a big deal guys]]

That was when we'd just started playing mahjong and barely had the rules together: we'd play the Taiwanese variant that Julie's family played to start with. Eventually we got around to playing the Chinese Standard tournament rules which are somewhat more complex! (and I think more fun, but Julie wins most often at both)

[[File:Roshan's start with Mahjong.jpg|thumb|center|A crude start!]]

Our home there had a single parking spot that was quite tight. At the start of the year, Karen had been traveling a while and her car battery had run out. The only problem was that the only realistic way to get into the car was via the passenger side: which had no keyhole. The car was out of charge so the fob wouldn't work. So it fell to us to pop the hood with a tent rod through the few centimetres the driver's side would open before jumping the car (at which point it scared the metric Jesus out of us by going at full car alarm).

[[File:Popping the hood on an old Lexus SUV.png|thumb|center|Perhaps shouldn't have backed in]]

This was also when we first went over to see our friends Charles and Anne's child. Charles was sort of responsible around this time the previous year for Julie and me finally getting together because at our other friend Armaan's bachelor party he brought up Julie and asked whether or not we were dating. Panicking I said yes, and then had to inform Julie of this fact.

For Chinese New Year that year we went to see the parade, the favourite part of which for me was all the little kids from some school dressed as mahjong tiles. Adorable! Sadly I don't have a photograph of them.

[[File:Roshan at Chinese New Year 2024.jpg|thumb|center|Appropriate Clothing there from me]]

[[File:The Chinese New Year Parade in San Francisco in 2024.jpg|thumb|center]]

The parade was a nice event for San Francisco since it packed the city: something that isn't that common here since the pandemic and resulting WFH policies have left downtown looking like some liminal space representing an abandoned city built in the '90s.

[[File:Roshan and Julie - Chinese New Year 2024.jpg|thumb|center|Quite the crowd for SF]]

And then we flew to Hawai'i to stay at Julie's childhood home. We were visiting because her sister was getting married.

[[File:Julie, Roshan, and her uncle and aunt.jpg|thumb|center|Back at home for Julie]]