All posts by metag

Dating

2 dates, 2 Israelis, 1 bar, 1 Korean

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Until LA, I have rarely had bad dates. By bad dates, I don’t mean bad people. I mean nice people. But just that feeling of wow, I really need to escape so I can be back at home staring at the wall blankly for hours again because that would be so much more enjoyable. Sometimes, it takes a long time to not feel drained and then to recover from being drained.

I was actually excited to meet date #1. He is a cinematographer with some kind of military honor. We met at a wine bar within walking distance of both of our apartments. He was exactly as late as it took him to walk to the bar. I hate lateness. It was 8pm. I was starving. He had been in LA for 10 years, never killed anyone, went to art school in Israel, and now was a cinematographer verging on producer who taught classes at the American Film Institute. We drank 2 drinks and went to another bar called “Good Luck Bar.” I politely bid him adieu after that. I’m pretty good at the 1:1 conversation for the most part, especially with men. I carried it as far as I could. Then I went home and ate the remaining 5 slices of whole wheat bread at home and passed out. Continue reading 2 dates, 2 Israelis, 1 bar, 1 Korean →

Dating, Food, Life, Love (and other approximations), Music, Travel, Work

10 things I’m doing in LA

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My LA life is a mix of being an artist and business person. When you try to fit into so many different worlds and selves, it’s not the easiest thing to negotiate your identity and intention with yourself. Also, just logistically, it’s not the easiest thing to do. There are only so many hours of the day. Best practice in life seems to focus on just 1 thing. My deadline for starting to develop and act on that focus is May 8. Until then…

  1. Starting my consulting business
    Working with a partner I met through a mutual friend. We’re helping with brand, strategy, and business development, with some emphasis on fashion. We’re sort of working on a related tech startup too, but that’s a little less defined. I hope this becomes successful! I don’t really want to wait tables at California Pizza Kitchen, but I’ll do it if it means free pizza. Here’s us on set in DTLA last week:


Continue reading 10 things I’m doing in LA →

Life, Writing

Not writing…no, but actually writing

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This has been my longest hiatus from writing in this blog. Sometimes I wonder why I started this blog. Now that I’m back in the U.S., I feel much more circumspect about writing in it. What if the CIA finally responds to my application 10 years later and wants to interview me? Surely they will find this, and I doubt I would pass their stringent background check anyway. I wonder if my friends would tell them I was normal and stable… Hard to say which would take me down first. Anyway, these are some of the reasons why I almost completely stayed off social media for as long as I did. I thought one day I might actually have some kind of career–maybe not CIA but some kind of career like CEO of some public company–where it would actually matter. But now I sort of realize it doesn’t matter. My new existence seems to be writing from coffee shops for four hours a day, progressively learning how to be a human in the world (i.e., cooking, doing laundry, all that mundane stuff), and vacillating between applying for jobs and starting my own business. I thought about being an Uber driver, but since I can’t actually drive, that doesn’t seem like something that’s in my skillset. Barista, maybe barista! Continue reading Not writing…no, but actually writing →

Life, Travel

Returning to know

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I now have a natural repulsion to the place I’ve lived for all but 8 years of my life – New York. I remember the almost romantic feeling I used to have when returning to NYC from my travels, my sigh of relief at returning home as I easily communicated with the customs agents or saw the cityscapes whizzing by in the back of a yellow cab. Home. It was big, anonymous, always whirling. Yes, it was home.

When people would tell me they didn’t like the city much, I thought they were probably not particularly interesting (I used to be kind of judgmental…don’t judge). When my old boss Eric said he had to get out of the city at least every other week, I nodded but didn’t understand. I mean, what was the big deal? When my friends’ parents were always going to their country houses, I thought it was mainly for show and wondered how they could deal with such logistical hassles on a weekly basis instead of just walking around the corner for a bagel with cream cheese and calling it a day. Continue reading Returning to know →

Life

Boston had one plus (ok, two)

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Taking the train 8 hours from DC to Boston getting in at 1am was not the best thing I’ve ever done, but it also wasn’t the worst. I met my friend Lee, and we went to a Chinese restaurant in Harvard Square called Hong Kong. I ate a quadruple stack of scallion pancakes (plus #1), and a fried tofu dish – totaling an additional 1500-2000 calories at least to my count for the day. Well, it was past midnight, so I do wonder which day I would allocate that too. Either way, it’s not good. So far, 1 point in favor and against Boston.

The next day was mostly spent in a coffee shop with me thinking about business and book ideas. It was a day of dampness and dreaming.

Day 3 was the day I met Ezra for lunch and coffee at Algiers in Harvard Square. We hadn’t seen each other in 20 years, but we had an extremely pleasant conversation about love, life, aspirations, and reflections on the days of middle school and high school. For some moments, we talked about Gabe, our friend / my boyfriend of sorts who had died 20 years ago… I held back some tears and explained that I sometimes felt that he was watching me. Continue reading Boston had one plus (ok, two) →

Food, Travel

Top things to do in Seattle

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Get put up in the Fairmont Hotel for 3 nights, all expenses paid, by getting a job interview with Amazon – didn’t get the job, but I got a sweet tour of Seattle life!

Okay, but seriously, some ideas for touring this city.

Sightseeing:

  • Pike Place Market: Visit this market and see fisherman throwing local fish around, sample and buy the chocolate covered cherries, and just walk around and enjoy the atmosphere. Grab some pastries and look out onto Puget Sound. Follow this up with a walk on the waterfront.
  • Space Needle: Iconic with great views from the restaurant on top.
  • Neighborhood Hopping: I think this is probably one of the more interesting things to do in Seattle. Walk around Capitol Hill and sit at Volunteer Park Cafe during the day or Liberties for drinks.
  • Alki Beach: Walk along the quiet shore at night and look at the Seattle skyline from afar.
  • Parks: Ballard Locks, Kerry Park, Elliot Sculpture Park, Discovery Park, Volunteer Park, Seward Park are some options.
  • Surrounding Nature: There is Mount Rainier. The Olympic Peninsula is beautiful, but you would need a few days. Port Townsend is supposed to be nice and one of the oldest towns in the area, older than Seattle. Check out the islands, such as Orcas Island.

Continue reading Top things to do in Seattle →

Life, Travel

Seattle was mostly rainy

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I got into the cab at “SEA-TAC.”

“Hi! This is my first time in Seattle.”

“Welcome,” said the taxi driver.

“How is it living here?” I asked.

“I’ve been here 18 years, and I’m used to it.”

“Is it always this rainy?”

“Yes, from October until April.”

“But every single day?!”

“Yes.”

“Oh, well it must be nice and cozy. You can stay in and relax instead of being tempted to go out and run around.”

“Or be depressed. Mostly depressed.”

“Oh.”

Life, Work

Tell me about a time when you…

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Oh fuck. How many more of these questions am I going to have to answer?

It was 10am. “Tell me about a time you invented an original metric, why you did, and how it impacted results.”
“Uhhhhhh….number of bagels eaten per hour? I like bagels. I am a carb championa.”

“Tell me about a time when you built something based on customer input.”
“Uhhhh, well I do like traveling to customers in sunny places, so I’ll listen to them if they’re in the right location.”

“Tell me about a time when you took action without any data.”
“Well, I once needed to get to Boston by midnight, so I immediately booked an Amtrak ticket.”

“No, now tell me about a time when you took action without any data, and you had no external emergency situation to push you to do it.”
“Heh, what? Well, I did eat a mozzarella sandwich this morning.”

“Tell me about a complex problem you solved with a simple solution.” “Uhhhhhhhh…FUCK, I so stupid.” Continue reading Tell me about a time when you… →

Life

Feeling vulnerable is…

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  1. Writing songs and performing them while sweating in front of a room of accomplished songwriters.
  2. Writing about your life and foibles in a blog.
  3. Telling everyone about your Amazon interview, even though it is highly possible that you won’t get the job, further confirmation of loser status.
  4. Signing up to lead a project for a non-profit in politics that you’re on the board of when you don’t know shit about politics.
  5. Cold-calling apparel manufacturers to see if they will let you come for a factory visit as market research for a startup in a space you know very little about.
  6. Emailing people you haven’t seen in 20 years to organize meeting up with them in DC later this week.
  7. Oh, and my most favorite most mortifying moment of my day – hanging a note on the building door of a guy you met while doing laundry and exchanged all of a few sentences with and whom you later saw in a coffee shop and ignored / hid from. Why yes, I’m a crazy psycho-bitch stalker. Thanks for asking. Now I can’t leave my apartment. Great.

Yup, these are some things I did today.

Oh yeah, and then there’s real vulnerability, which I’m not even close to touching yet…

Life

Butterfly tattoo

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When I was 16, I visited LA for the first time. I was supposed to be enrolled in a summer program at UCLA studying chemistry of all things, but I think I went to class three times max. This explains my middling performance in AP chemistry, which I took when I returned to school that fall. I think my mind exploded at the concept of mole and never recovered from then.

That summer was an expansive one in many respects. My best friend was a rebellious girl from Miami named Julie. She has a tough girl vibe but came from a prominent and wealthy family. She was stunningly beautiful with short, spiky, dyed black hair and soulful light-light blue eyes. Her normal attire included striped button-down shirts, chokers, and long shorts with a chain hanging off on one side. There was the remnant of a gunshot scar on one of her upper arms. I’m not sure I ever got the full story on that. She was way too cool to be in my program. Continue reading Butterfly tattoo →

Life

No means yes

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Sometimes, and often, when you say no to something, what it really means is saying yes to something else, even if that something else hasn’t been defined yet. It is about leaving things open for the possibility of good rather than filling it with mediocre.

The hard thing though is identifying the good. There isn’t really a foolproof “process” for doing that other than being self-aware enough to know when things feel right and going with that instead of listening to the voice of reason that might push you towards things that seem like good opportunities.

So do the research. Check and cross-check. And then, once all is said and done, go with what feels right. It’s the only thing that’s ever worked for me. Everything that looks good but feels bad ends up looking bad at some point too.

Dating

Sorry, men from the Bay Area – I’m out

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“You’re 1 mile away,” he wrote. I had just opened Tinder, and this should have been a telltale sign of major laziness. He was unattractive and didn’t seem like a great person, but I also thought there wasn’t a lot to lose from meeting up. He worked in real estate tech, lived in Oakland, and was in LA for meetings to fundraise for his startup.

I was flexible in timing, so we agreed to meet at 8:30pm. At 8:29pm, I entered the beergarden (ahem, biergarten) Loreley in West Hollywood, the LA outpost of the beergarden in NYC I had loved since my college days.

I opened Tinder. “I’ll be 10 minutes or so late. I’ll get in an Uber soon.” OR SO????? SOON????!!!! Continue reading Sorry, men from the Bay Area – I’m out →

Work

Aspiring aspirations

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“Maybe I should just be a waitress. I’m seriously considering it,” I texted Jon.

“Aren’t those jobs really hard to get in LA?”

Sigh. Probably.

“From GM to waitress.”

“Yeah that would be funny.”

“I’ll write a book about it.”

“Why don’t you just sell haircuts on the street? That was lucrative for you.”

Love (and other approximations)

Floaty

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When I was 14, I used to get letters in the mail every day from my boyfriend Gabe who lived in San Jose, CA. In response, I dutifully snail mailed long letters back to him, replete with professions of love and probably some immature doodles.

“I feel floaty,” he would write back.

I don’t know if this was a form of first love. I seemed to always be falling into intense passionate love scenarios, probably dating back to kindergarten if I had to guess. In any case, not to belittle it because it was real.

We talked on the phone (landline) almost daily. This was on top of our handwritten communiques, which traveled between San Jose and Massachusetts, arriving every three days. I know we would both run excitedly to the mailbox every day to see what we had written each other, the drawings and cryptic encoded love euphemisms that would be on the cover to evade parental monitoring.

I met Gabe at a summer camp called Center for Talented Youth (always referred to as CTY). The criteria was passing a certain score on the SAT. Looking back, it seems preposterous that we as 6th graders took the SAT, but that’s what happened without even my real comprehension of how or why. I remember entering that room full of big kids and sitting down in the back, filling out bubbles in number 2 pencil. Do people still do that? I’m pretty sure my brain wouldn’t be able to handle thinking electronically, so I’m glad I grew up in the age of number 2 pencils and non-adaptive test-taking. Continue reading Floaty →

Family, Life

∞ Conversations with the Dad ∞

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Conversation Type 1

Dad: “Grace-soo. How are you?”
Me: “I’m good.”
Dad: “Call me.”
Me: “Okay.”

Dad: “You okay?”
Me: “Yes.”
Dad: “Okay.”

Sometimes I would try to say something real, but this was always cut off with… “OK.”

Me: “How are you?”
Dad: “Good.”
Me: “What’s new?”
Dad: “Nothing. Okay, bye.”
Me: “Bye.”

Decades passed by with us only going through the motions of this one conversation, not veering off-script. I wondered why we even bothered to call each other.

Our conversation diversified a bit after my mom left, and I would go visit him for my max 24-48-hour visits.

Conversation Type 2

Dad: “You hungry?”
Me: “No.”
Dad: “Eat this.”
Me: “No, I’m not hungry.”

Conversation Type 3

Dad: “You need to get married! Have a baby. Make a family.”
Me: “No, I’m good. I’m never getting married.”

Repeat ad infinitum