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Past the third anniversary of our arrival, I am feeling tired of living in rented homes. It just does not feel the same. Boxes upon boxes sit silently in the garage gathering dust, un-opened for over three years. I don't even know what they hold anymore. Sometimes, I suddenly recall something I used a lot back in Singapore but have not seen for a long time and there is sadness. Like a family without anchors. I want to have my own place where my things are where they ought to be and where I don't feel like I am keeping someone else's home and not my own.

And I want my children near.

The heat wave this week has not helped. Triple digit temperatures that makes the house too toasty, like an oven.

We sweltered and burned in the bleachers yesterday at the AT&T Park watching the SF Giants lose miserably to the Chicago Cubs. The sun beat down mercilessly. The boy was the first to seek relief standing in the shade, then the girl and finally, I surrendered and abandoned our seats to stand behind the lines of people walking back and forth getting their drinks and food. We made our ways to another part of the stadium but had to suffer the constant onslaught of smell of frying onions and security guards keeping us in check,

Standing was tiring so eventually, when the sun had lessened its intensity, we made our ways back to the bleachers to a crowd of young men and women drinking a lot of beer and carpeting the steps with peanut shells from a big bag they brought to the game. Meanwhile, the group of UBC grads (East Bay alumni) that I was supposed to socialize with at the game and which I had basically ignored all afternoon because of the unbearable heat, decided to call it a day and left en masse. And I watched them leave silently vowing never to trust the alumni with getting me any more tickets to any game. I could have gotten better seats from the company or cheaper bleacher seats than what I paid to support the alumni. Or maybe I was just unsociable. They were all so young and all Chinese.

After the game, we made our way back to the ferry terminal and took the ferry ride back to Alameda where we embarked, to return to Berkeley and East Bay. To a house still warm from the day's bake.