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…
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:
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.
I don’t miss meat. The last meat item I ate was a chicken parmesan sandwich I ordered while drunk and crying at a Lower East Side deli. Even more pathetically, it was eaten, still drunk and crying (maybe even verging on sobbing), with only the street lights flickering through my apartment. I woke up the next day to 1/3 of a chicken parmesan sandwich on my couch throw pillow, crusty from the overnight exposure. And that’s the last time I ate meat.
I think it was December 2015 when I was at Kripalu, a retreat in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. I had taken my sister there for her birthday, and we rotated from class to class, from downward dog to mapping out our intentions for the year ahead. I was so stressed out that over the course of those 2 days, I had 5 massages in addition to the regularly scheduled programming.
There was an astrologer on site, and I booked an appointment hoping she would have some answers to help guide me out of my predicament. Predicaments, I suppose. It should have been plural. Continue reading Vegetarian, verging on vegan→
The day was spent grazing, gymming, and then at a startup event.
Some eats (minus the massive amounts of summer rolls from street vendors):
Breakfast pho, Pho Hung
Eating spring rolls at the McDonald’s of Vietnam, Mon Hue chain
Best dollar ever spent! Post-gym BBQ meat and sticky rice stop
Tomidaya dipping ramen – SOOOOO GOOOOD
I ended the day in a co-working space, at an event hosted by 500 Startups and the Canadian government. The panel discussion was interesting, but it left me wondering about how this startup scene was going to be fueled in Vietnam and what it would actually end up looking like. The chit chat networking session after the event made me realize I need to craft a better story about what I’m doing with my life. Explaining that I’m a nomad without an agenda doesn’t really go over very well. Blank stares. I could see the thought bubble over peoples’ heads, “Oh, you’re not important…or are you? I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” Silence. “Excuse me. I’m going to have a beer.” Dismissed.
My second day is Saigon was spent mostly out of Saigon. We embarked early in the morning on a motorcycle tour with the tour company OneTrip. It was a well-curated day led by our student guides. One of them, Long, had just finished a year of Survivor style (well, maybe a bit less dramatic and more manageable) trekking around Vietnam.
The day began whizzing around the streets of Saigon with the rain drizzling on us. Surprisingly, it was not as bothersome as I would have thought. It was a Sunday, and I was grateful that traffic was more muted than it would have been on a weekday.
We stopped for a misty breakfast. Our guides pulled out Vietnamese bahn mi sandwiches, giving us the option to have pork or egg. We opted for pork (ah, the vegan life was temporarily over). First, we were served a shot of iced green tea, as is customary. We watched our Vietnamese coffees drip into their vessels, and I drank mine black as the rest dumped some milkiness into the fresh brew.
After eating only Thai curries for 3 weeks, I’m happy to have some variety in hippie expat community of Srithanu on Ko Phangan, Thailand! Here’s some of what I’ve been eating (minus the loads of cashews in my bungalow). This post is for you, Lux, since you hate all the contemplation that’s been going on in my recent posts.
Being vegan in Korea isn’t easy. Even kim chi contains some fish. The request for “no meat” is literally translated into “no beef.” The correct way to request things would be then to ask for “no beef, no fish, no pork, no chicken.” And to further clarify, “vegetables only.” Even then, there may be a sauce laced with fish or some non-vegan element.
I had a vegan visitor for the weekend. It isn’t impossible to be vegan in Seoul, but it takes some work (and a number of trips to Itaewon, the foreigner neighborhood). Continue reading My vegan weekend in Seoul→
My time in tiny Jeju island off the coast of Korea was extremely good – emotional in many respects, overly stimulating at times – but an experience I will always value.
I unearthed some Korean language skills, saw some beautiful sights, made many new like-minded friends, had a love story, drank a bit too much. In this journey I’m on, it’s enriching to meet people who think or see the world in a similar way.
I arrived in Seoul on Monday, and I am loving the energy here. The street foods, the cafes, the art, the culture. I love being a hermit and feeling the vibes of a busy city while leading a very boring, un-extraordinary existence.
I loved watching a block of honey turned into thousands of honey strands the other day! A few indulgences here and there… Check it.
Thank you for the good moments. It is amazing when people converge in a location. I’ve had so many people tell me they’re in London or coming to London. Thai feast at Patara, Indian feast at Dishoom, and chilling at the London Edition. It feels good, guys!
Two days ago, I started this 3-day military diet. It wasn’t a gesture of unkindness to myself. Rather, I wanted to bring some of a meal plan discipline to my life. All of this was further spurred on curiosity. Can you really lose 10 pounds in 3 days while eating hot dogs and ice cream? F’real???
On day 2, I woke up at 5am and had breakfast at 6am, which made the prospect of a long day of calorie-restricting pretty daunting. I told myself to try to stick to it, but by the end of the day, I was exhausted, dizzy, and cranky. It just wasn’t worth it. My happiness was not a good trade-off for this diet, so I gave in and ate until I felt somewhat normal. I still lost 0.9 pounds. 3.6 pounds total in 2 days is not bad! Continue reading 3-day military diet: Day 2→
My time in London is about being alone, diet, exercise, thinking (the right way), and wellbeing. One of my goals is to lose some of the weight I’ve gained over the past 2 years.
A while ago, I was researching diets and came across the 3-day military diet. Apparently, it’s all the rage on Pinterest and other social media sites. The idea is that this calorie-restrictive diet allows you to lose weight quickly while continuing to eat a balance of your favorite foods like ice cream. There is a set meal plan for the first 3 days, and during the following 4 days, you eat anything but stick to 1500 calories per day.
On the diet front, I completed day 1 of the military diet yesterday. I lost 2.7 pounds on day 1! A lot of that is water, I’m sure, but potentially not all of it.
Departure day arrived. One of the Italian families wrapped up with the kids and nanny and left on a 6:20am ferry. We were the next to go at 9:55am. We agreed to meet the third group, leaving Marettimo at 11:50am, in Trapani for lunch before heading to the airport.
Trapani is a cute town and was at one point the heart of the trading network stretching from Carthage to Venice. We spent the first two hours walking through the Old Town and along the coast talking about life, progression, careers, love, self-improvement, and the ways we limit ourselves. Cuore a cuore, if that’s something people say in Italian.
Then we met up with the group at Osteria La Bettolaccia, one of these Italian slow food restaurants. It was…AMAZING. Last meal in Sicily.
Bufula mozzarellaAmazing seafood couscousSeafood and eggplant busiate
My musings on life, travel, and (I suppose eventually) work. Just trying to balance left and right brain, the urge to do vs. be. Easy stuff.
