My dad had Veterans Day off, so I took off the day as well. There was talk of driving all the way to Monterey, but before long, San Francisco became the destination of choice. The primary reason for going up north was to visit TECO (“Taiwanese Economic and Cultural Office”) and resolve some paperwork under my dad’s name; the reward for tagging along was lunch and city exploring.
The morning of, I called TECO to make sure the office was open. (Google Maps showed Friday hours as 9am to 4:30pm, but Mom had a suspicion that they would be closed due to Veterans Day.) To our dismay, the recorded voicemail revealed that the office had been shut down due to COVID; these days, everything had to be done by mail.
After hearing the news, Dad decided there was no point in going and cancelled our trip. I was briefly given the opportunity to come up with a South Bay alternative, but couldn’t come up with anything on the spot.
The day ended up being strikingly similar to a normal workday. I responded to chat messages, helped several engineers with tasks, watched Vesper (2022) and walked 21,838 steps around Cupertino / West San Jose. Near the end of the day, Mom lightly teased me about wasting a vacation day, but I was nonplussed. Even though I did work, being officially on break made things more relaxed.
PS: Dad and I visited the Creekside Farmers’ Market; we learned that the construction closures are no longer a thing and that the market will stay open the rest of 2022
