sandiego – Aditya Bansod

I went down to San Diego, my old stomping ground, for Memorial Day this past weekend and again today for work. I miss the laid back style down there. Over the weekend, people were so laid back, to the point it started to get my frustrated. Standing in line to order coffee was a three or four minute ordeal! Imagine my frustration.

A lot has changed down here since I used to live here. Downtown has Petco Park, a ton of high end condos, Gaslamp looks totally invigorated with swanky restaurants and hip LA-style clubs. It doesn’t top there, though. I went back to UCSD to see the Price Center Expansion that I had worked on in school, and it’s finally complete. Walking from the old Price Center (now “Price Center West”) to the expansion (“Price Center East”), it’s a striking difference. The old center looks so old and tiny, but then it was all we had. The new center is light and airy, with a ton of open space for seating and dining. Since it was a Saturday that we went, there weren’t a ton of people, but I could imagine how it’ll help reinvigorate campus life.

Last weekend a couple of us went down to San Diego for Austin’s bachlor party. Dan and I got in late on Friday and we managed to catch a late showing of Spiderman 3 (awful by the way). Saturday got started nice and early at 8am at Pipes, then we drove to Ramona and spent until about 4pm paintballing. It was my first time going and it turned out a lot more fun then I thought it’d be.

I didn’t get terribly bruised up thankfully although I did take quite a few shots. Austin’s right arm and back ended up blue and purple. We calculated given the amount of games we played and the amount of ammo shot, we had a 1.4% hit rate. Pretty pathetic showing on our part, but it was still a whole lot of fun.

After checking splitting up for a few hours in the afternoon our group reconvened in Gaslamp for dinner and barhopping. Downtown San Diego is quite a bit cooler than I remember it before. Lots of new bars, places to eat, condos, etc and totally happening. It was wierd to be back in San Diego; I havn’t been down in some two years or so, which made it even more interesting to see how things had changed, how things haden’t and to drive around. As Dan and I were going between different locations like Solano Beach, Del Mar, Gaslamp, UTC, etc it reminded us a lot driving between neighbourhoods in SF except that you have to reach the ones in SD by car and freeways. Being back down really brought on a sense of nostaliga, too.

Sunday we hit up Cody’s for lunch and then hung out with some of our friends in the Solano Beach area before we had dinner with Austin and then got on our flight back to Oakland. Great trip and I get to go back down in three weeks for the wedding (but not before Vegas with the old high school gang this weekend!). Pictures from the bachlor party are posted, too.