For a change, am getting to eat out. The flavour of the day is on Clement Street in the Richmond District of San Francisco, more Central Asia backroad than gaudy in-your-face China Town. It is a packed eatery known as Burma Super Star. With the obligatory photos of aspiring leaders on the wall, and samosas served in curry sauce full of raisins on the table, the Bangladeshi waiter lets slip that the ownership is Sikh-related, and the?cooks inside are actually from Indonesia and Mexico. So we play safe and order a meze platter which pays tribute to California persimmons and imitation cheese, grilled with spinach leaves and pak-choy. Beats tandoori tikka curry in coconut gravy masquerading as Khao-swei.
We have spent the day running the tourist route in San Francisco. Helps to be an old timer here. Big waiting line for the cable car line at Powell? Bust it by going ahead one block and jumping onboard, like the locals do. Overflow parking lot running almost a mile away and needs shuttle access for the Golden Gate Bridge? Get there and back on a 28, which drops you right at the footsteps of the walking route and costs less than it does to park. Parking death inside the City? Log into the free parking lots at Milbrae and take the Bart to Montgomery. And there are Indians everywhere.
Gas (petrol as we know it) is close to 4 dollars a gallon. Public transport is beginning to make sense, though the locals sniff into your face when you tell them?about the?train and bus. And, there are more beggars?and aggressive ones at that?all over the place. A man claiming to be HIV+ is walking around the Caltrain Station threatening to spit on people if they don?t have mercy on him. At Fisherman?s Wharf, the public toilets would do the toilets at Churchgate and Ajmeri Gate proud; so filthy were they. And that was before the seagulls took a dump on your hair.
But Umrika is America, and California is the aspirational pearl, before and after the gold and silicon rush. Thanksgiving is the big festival here to mark the arrival of Europeans,?but less talked about are the archeological digs in the?Bay Area,?which remind you that it was the Ohlone people who were the originals here?going back to 4,000 BC.
So, what?s all that got to do with Burma? Just this?there are many words from the Ohlone dialect which resemble the language of the Mon people who migrated from somewhere into Burma around 1,000 BC. This makes for good migration talk.
And food.