San Francisco is one of those cities that is very hard for me to define. No matter how many times I visited the place (thanks to my stint in Berkeley, I had the privilege of living 45-minute BART ride away from THE San Francisco), I never felt like I got to know the city well. Perhaps it was my fault that I hardly spent a full day there just to explore – I normally visited San Francisco when I was meeting a friend or if I had to go there for a reporting assignment. But maybe it was the city’s ‘fault’, that it just had so many different things to offer.

In the end, I gave up that internal battle in my head and came to accept that it was just the way things were. Perhaps, San Francisco is just like that intriguing friend of yours who always shows a different side every time you see her. She’s not someone you are meant to figure out and fit into a box. She is just that, San Francisco, with its many facades.

She is as much the Victorian buildings that form the Seven Sisters…

As the skyscrapers at Market Street.

She is as much the hills that weave through the city…

As the touristy trams at Powell St.

She is as much the Cross at Mt. Davidson…

As the rainbow crossing at Castro.

She is as much the Ferry Building…

Along with its endless piers…

As the world-renowned Golden Gate Bridge.

Perhaps, deep inside, we are all like San Francisco, just that the city is so much more unapologetically so. We have our different sides, and we are not meant to fit into a box. We are not simply a journalist, or an accountant, or a daughter, or a girlfriend, or a traveller, or a sister, or a friend. We can be and we are all of those at the same time.

And if you just can see yourself like how others see you…

You will know that you are beautiful beyond words.