I've moved to China...

Chinatown. Six months in the wilderness, also known as North Beach which isn't a bad sort of wilderness, really, I've come up for air in Chinatown. What a difference a mere four blocks makes in San Francisco. I signed a lease on an apartment across from the Chinese Hospital on Jackson Street. I must be the first person in the history of the city to move to this district for more room and privacy. My arrangement suits me perfectly, though, and it seems now that all roads led here -- from my time in East Asia, to groundwork laid twice in North Beach acclimating to this quarter of town, and finally the persistence to hold out for a living arrangement that is long term, settled, spacious, light and engaging. Already, as in any of San Francisco's neighborhoods, I've discovered an entirely new layer of life in an area I thought I basically knew. The difference in each district between day life and night life can be extreme. Chinatown is often considered to be streets full of tangling humanity, but wend through the alleys in the evening and find a hushed but still exotic landscape revealing the unrushed Chinatown, an easy pulse, not entirely shuttered but happy to give over the bustling night life of its next door neighbor, North Beach, and rather retire at the end of the day while the city rushes about it.