Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Dude where's my home!?
I was living in New Orleans with my best friend Kana and we had this huge hurricane come through our city and it wiped everything out! What a shock!
Well, we got relocated to Houston, Texas, but then were given orders to leave so the Astros baseball team could continue with their NBL series without interuption. Imagine how guilty I felt when I realized we were intruding on America's pastime!
Luckily, Mayor Gavin Newsome was quick to respond with open arms and invited us displaced refugees to San Francisco. What a nice guy, and kinda cute from what I've heard. I heard he just got divorced to his super powersuit media moguless too. Watch out Gavin here I come!
http://www.sfgov.org/site/mayor_page.asp?id=34355
Anyway, we didnt hear anything about him paying for our ticket there so we dug into our $3,000.00 savings and shelled out for a Greyhound Bus ticket. We figured it would be the cheapest way. We found a one way ticket on the Greyhound homepage $134.00 each! I guess buses have gotten more expensive! Well, thanks to the internet we looked up a couple of online travel discount sites and found a ticket by way of United Airlines for $119 on orbitz.com. This was quite a surprise! Cheaper ticket and less travel time. What a bargain.
Well we finally arrived in San Francisco and the disaster relief aid we heard about turned out to be empty promises from an outspoken mayor that couldn't deliver. Imagine our surprise when we found out we just traveled hundreds of miles for political spin. We felt duped.
http://www.sfweekly.com/Issues/2005-10-19/news/smith.html
But like the feisty Americans we are, we persevered. Without any friends here in town we turned to the friend of the world, the internet. On it we found the FEMA website and immediately signed up for housing assistance. We also called the Red Cross and pleaded our case to them. They gave us a $2,000 stipend and refered us to a hotel we could stay at, the Mission Hotel.
http://www.google.com/local?hl=en&lr=&q=mission+hotel&near=San+Francisco,+CA&sa=X&oi=locald&radius=0.0&latlng=37775000,-122418333,16614594375364817685
This place was amazing! Talk about disaster relief. Somebody should have called the disaster cleanup crew on this place! There were babies crying in the halways while their mothers were asleep with their pants around their ankles. Don't aske me why. It's foggy outside everyday and not a working heater in sight. The whole neighborhood was a disaster. We didn't know it but we were relocated to the worst neighborhood in town! A few days before we got here we heard about a guy getting shot down the street.
http://www.ktvu.com/news/5105033/detail.html
Well, I guess we couldn't complain. It was better than sleeping on astroturf. Now that we had some kind of home the next order of business was securing a stable income. The guy down the hall told us about this site called craigslist.org that was supposed to be really good for locals so we were back on the net looking for work. A few weeks passed and we were getting low on money. We begain to realize there were already lots of people looking for work and most all of the people ahead of us in line for an interview were already more qualified or had a friend who could serve as a good reference. What to do...
Finally after weeks of searching I found a job at the Stonestown Mall at a chain botique store for men and women. I was so happy and proud of myself. Imagine my surprise when some of the people I talked to called me a "retail whore" and a "corporate maggot." People in this town sure are uptight sometimes. Anyway, I'm just happy to finally have a job and it really is satisfying to know that there will be some steady income from now.
I looked at my finances and with the monthly rent of the hotel being $300.
The monthly expenses, such as groceries and entertainment being $500.
And my monthly paycheck at $8.50 per hour for 40 hours being $1360 minus taxes, I think I will just be squeezing by!
That's great news because I should hear back from FEMA any day now about the assesment on my house back in New Orleans that got totaled. I will be out of this dump and back on my feet in no time!
YEA!
Well, we got relocated to Houston, Texas, but then were given orders to leave so the Astros baseball team could continue with their NBL series without interuption. Imagine how guilty I felt when I realized we were intruding on America's pastime!
Luckily, Mayor Gavin Newsome was quick to respond with open arms and invited us displaced refugees to San Francisco. What a nice guy, and kinda cute from what I've heard. I heard he just got divorced to his super powersuit media moguless too. Watch out Gavin here I come!
http://www.sfgov.org/site/mayor_page.asp?id=34355
Anyway, we didnt hear anything about him paying for our ticket there so we dug into our $3,000.00 savings and shelled out for a Greyhound Bus ticket. We figured it would be the cheapest way. We found a one way ticket on the Greyhound homepage $134.00 each! I guess buses have gotten more expensive! Well, thanks to the internet we looked up a couple of online travel discount sites and found a ticket by way of United Airlines for $119 on orbitz.com. This was quite a surprise! Cheaper ticket and less travel time. What a bargain.
Well we finally arrived in San Francisco and the disaster relief aid we heard about turned out to be empty promises from an outspoken mayor that couldn't deliver. Imagine our surprise when we found out we just traveled hundreds of miles for political spin. We felt duped.
http://www.sfweekly.com/Issues/2005-10-19/news/smith.html
But like the feisty Americans we are, we persevered. Without any friends here in town we turned to the friend of the world, the internet. On it we found the FEMA website and immediately signed up for housing assistance. We also called the Red Cross and pleaded our case to them. They gave us a $2,000 stipend and refered us to a hotel we could stay at, the Mission Hotel.
http://www.google.com/local?hl=en&lr=&q=mission+hotel&near=San+Francisco,+CA&sa=X&oi=locald&radius=0.0&latlng=37775000,-122418333,16614594375364817685
This place was amazing! Talk about disaster relief. Somebody should have called the disaster cleanup crew on this place! There were babies crying in the halways while their mothers were asleep with their pants around their ankles. Don't aske me why. It's foggy outside everyday and not a working heater in sight. The whole neighborhood was a disaster. We didn't know it but we were relocated to the worst neighborhood in town! A few days before we got here we heard about a guy getting shot down the street.
http://www.ktvu.com/news/5105033/detail.html
Well, I guess we couldn't complain. It was better than sleeping on astroturf. Now that we had some kind of home the next order of business was securing a stable income. The guy down the hall told us about this site called craigslist.org that was supposed to be really good for locals so we were back on the net looking for work. A few weeks passed and we were getting low on money. We begain to realize there were already lots of people looking for work and most all of the people ahead of us in line for an interview were already more qualified or had a friend who could serve as a good reference. What to do...
Finally after weeks of searching I found a job at the Stonestown Mall at a chain botique store for men and women. I was so happy and proud of myself. Imagine my surprise when some of the people I talked to called me a "retail whore" and a "corporate maggot." People in this town sure are uptight sometimes. Anyway, I'm just happy to finally have a job and it really is satisfying to know that there will be some steady income from now.
I looked at my finances and with the monthly rent of the hotel being $300.
The monthly expenses, such as groceries and entertainment being $500.
And my monthly paycheck at $8.50 per hour for 40 hours being $1360 minus taxes, I think I will just be squeezing by!
That's great news because I should hear back from FEMA any day now about the assesment on my house back in New Orleans that got totaled. I will be out of this dump and back on my feet in no time!
YEA!
