A few days or even weeks before your trip, tou take your empty suitcase, and put it somewhere conspicuous. Then, as you remember things you need, you throw them in the suitcase, one by one. By the time your departure date arrives, everything that you might possibly forget - is already in your suitcase.
Took a month off from blogging, but I find my return necessitated by a number of exciting and forthcoming events.
In order to make up for my absence, here's a small recipe for happiness:
1) Buy a pound of strawberries.
2) Buy some Straus Organic European-Style Vanilla Whole Milk Yogurt. Do not substitute another brand of yogurt, as European yogurt is liquid, not solid.
3) Dip the strawberries in the yogurt and eat.
4) Drink the resulting strawberry-yogurt blend.
This is one of the best things I've learned all year.
Coming up next: Asia! And a brief visit with a very special guest star!
It's been a while. Here's a rare photo of myself, posing with my friend Josh in front of one of my favorite locations in San Francisco: Dolores Park. I usually don't pose for "let's stand in front of the landmark with our beverages" photos, but Josh took someone's group photo, and she insisted on returning the favor.
I wish I had more to report. Huili and I are just about done with our final revision of Pillow Crisis for our friends at the studio. We'll see what happens, or we won't, depending on how quickly or slowly they respond. In the meantime, I am running over to the Chinese consulate to drop off visa applications for my friends and myself, attending regular planning meetings, helping my brother with internship applications in Los Angeles, and wondering where all the time goes.
Today I stepped outside, only to be greeted by what appeared to be a newly active volcano in the Hollywood Hills. Massive brown plumes rose in the north, slightly tinting the sunlight towards evening. It was apocalyptic to say the least. My cousin took this photo from his office.
Anyway, I'm back from San Francisco. A few things I did:
I took the train to Oakland today, stopped in Modesto and Stockton along the way, and will be visiting old friends this week.
I'm completely aware of this trip's lack of foreshadowing on the blog - that should tell you something about how full my life is these days.
Context is everything.
For the past few months, I've encountered a mysterious woman in the yoga studio who seemed vaguely familiar. She was older, distinctly European, with a piercing gaze. Eye contact with this woman was an unsettling experience because her gaze, intentionally or not, both implores and judges you with an acute sense of dramatic urgency.
As I'd look at her, I'd think: I know this woman from somewhere. And yet, for the life of me, I couldn't think of any context in which I would become acquainted with an older, European woman. What's worse, as we made eye contact, there was a glint of recognition in her eyes, as if she recognized me as well. Quite the conundrum.
Infrequently, I would enter the studio, make eye contact with this woman in the lobby, be slightly haunted and disquieted by the experience, and then promptly forget about her as I entered class. (I never spent any time pondering the mystery of this woman, as my focus in yoga class, is as always, yoga. But of course.)
Finally, it hit me: I knew where I had seen this woman before. The reason why my mind had failed to place her was because she was firmly removed from her proper context: a mysterious jungle island filled with supernatural phenomena.
My classmate was Rousseau. The crazy French lady from the television show Lost. The one who kidnaps infants and tortures people with electrical current. And the reason why I saw the recognition in her eyes was that she knew I had seen her on the show. Even though I myself didn't know that yet.
In my mind, my belief in her character and the universe she inhabited nullified the existence of the actress who portrays said character. And invalidated the possibility of her taking yoga with me.
My mind simply refused to recognize her because the island of Lost was REAL.
And it didn't hesitate to send subtle warnings about this woman, as if I were in danger of being kidnapped and tortured.
Context is everything.
Random ends:
After a few weeks of non-stop conference calls to Huili in London, the final Pillow Crisis revision is complete. Final, of course, doesn't necessarily mean final at all, especially in the case of Pillow Crisis. However, three things - the state of the project, my gut instincts and my growing loss of patience for all things pillow-related -- all tell me that this is indeed the final revision. It's time to write it up, kick it down the street to our overlords at the studio, and see what they think.
Planning a trip to Japan is my second means of employment, apparently. (And we haven't even gotten to China yet!) You can't really wing it in Japan, because of the lack of English speakers, and the fact that it is so goddamn expensive. The exorbitance of your trip calls for a compressed timetable, which in turn calls for very careful planning. I've just spent two hours writing e-mails and making phone calls to various party members, to confirm our plans as we lock ourselves into reservations (hotel, rail, Studio Ghibli!).
Last week, as I spoke with Huili over Skype, workmen renovated my bathroom. According to housing inspectors, cracked linoleum is a health hazard, which means freshly installed tile for me. My first gleeful thought upon hearing this news was, "This is like getting my bathroom floor cleaned for free!" Wrong. The renovation coated everything in a fine veil of dust, and I mopped the floor several times. The good news is that my bathroom looks infinitely more respectable.
Time for a lesson on the Dutch language.
A week ago, I grabbed a meal at the Fairfax Farmer's Market. In the old days, I would never do this for three reasons: traffic, parking, and crowds. But since I don't work during the day, I can just roll up, find plentiful parking, and claim acres of tables all for myself. Contrast this experience with the one experience by nearly everyone on Saturday afternoon.
So I walked to the Gumbo Pot, ordered a catfish po' boy, and didn't have to hunt for a table. The market was quiet, the sun was setting, the air was pleasant, and the sandwich was perfect. And I thought to myself, this is pretty much everything that I had hoped for.
That moment - the moment in which I recognize exactly how good my life can be - occurs to me frequently these days.
It's the first anniversary of A Very Big If, and I naturally do some thinking about exactly what kinds of changes have occurred in my life. The first one I could mention is the appearance of these moments of recognition and thankfulness - moments that were fleeting and rare when I was working a day job. The Dutch have a word for the quality of these instances - gezellig. The Dutch are proud of this word because it is uniquely Dutch, having no easy translation in any other language. Having a po'boy at a slow farmer's market on a perfect day is gezellig; being fed cold burritos from Baja Fresh at the office during overtime - not so much.
These are simple moments. After I finished my meal, I stopped in the book store and perused the remainder stacks. That would be another one. Here are some others:
Another post about getting back on the horse.
Wynton Marsalis was interviewed on NPR recently to promote his new album. Having always borne a grudge against him for his strident criticism of hip-hop, I was surprised to hear him sounding cheerful and friendly, as opposed to the stentorian and imperious presence I have always imagined.
During the interview, he leads the reporter into the former childhood bedroom of his sons; the reporter notes that the walls and ceiling - painted a "celestial blue" - are covered with several thousand glow-in-the-dark stars, and wonders aloud of the time and labor involved.
Marsalis relates the story of the stars: he told his sons that they would together cover the wall with stars, and they replied, "No way." But Marsalis insisted. Each evening, they applied a handful of stars together, the father and his sons. Time passes, and one evening, the last star is affixed.
From the beginning, Marsalis intended this activity to pose a lesson - about doing something again and again, one step at a time - until it is complete. He's didactic and moralistic like that. But as lessons go, it's not a bad one.
There's a big difference between covering a ceiling in thousands of stars, and just putting up a few stars every night. And there is also no difference.
Remembering that has made all the difference in my life and work.
Speaking of getting back on the horse, one of the evergreen challenges of my life right now is limiting the amount of time I waste on the internet.
I make it sound like I spend hours in front of my computer. I don't, actually. My life doesn't really allow it - I probably spend more time exercising than I do browsing the web each day. The problem is that my day has become so full that I need to cut weight wherever I can. The internet is the easiest cut to make.
I do have some experience at quitting the habit. A year ago, I made a competitive bet with someone; the terms were that both of us would go without frivolous browsing for a month - whoever committed the most transgressions would owe the winner fifty dollars.
Unfortunately, this was not a successful experiment. For reasons I won't go into, I had a vested interest in LOSING the competition. So each time my competitor would record a failure of willpower, I would offer up one or two of own. Some were legitimate, some were falsified. And since I knew I was going to lose, I figured I might as well get some browsing out of it. Things went downhill from there. In any case, I was out fifty bucks at the end of the month.
For the handful of days in which I managed to avoid the internet, though, my quality of life improved. My mind was clearer, I suffered from less hurry sickness, I opened books and read them. But I discovered that quitting cold turkey wasn't a good approach.
Quitting the internet is difficult primarily because the barrier to entry - a single mouseclick - is so low. Also because there is often a never-ending supply of new things to be clicked, even on a single site. And because other activities you engage in while seated at your computer - e-mail, shopping, blogging - transition naturally to a hazy and perpetual wasted state (see my first reason). If you work a job that involves a pc, it's even worse. There are many slow periods throughout the day, which encourages you to kill time, which slackens your browsing discipline (if it ever existed) considerably.
My new approach two managing internet time consists of several new techniques.
One, designate a block of time to engage in internet frivolity, and firewall it. No stupid internet stuff outside of that block.
Two, conscious clicking. Ask yourself before you click whether this is really necessary.
Three, don't leave the computer on throughout the day. Shut it down. This increases the barrier to entry; if you have to boot up your computer to do something, you begin to ask if it's really worth it.
Four, write better e-mails. If for some reason, you are stuck at your desk with nothing better to do than, catch up with old friends instead. As a result of this blog, I am currently exchanging lovely e-mails with people I haven't spoken to in YEARS. And I'm even going to visit one of them later this month.
Do you know how I got such nice skin? Through the repeated application of seemingly futile effort. - Faye Valentine
One of the continual frustrations of this experiment is self-determination is the fact that one sets a million tiny goals, all of which seem entirely achievable, but are insurmountable taken as a whole.
I can read books, meditate, cook, clean house. I'm doing more of these things than ever; I just can't do them all at the same time. As I spin one plate, another comes crashing to the floor; I am running about three miles a day, but my kitchen floor is a mess. Reading more books (for pleasure and not research), in particular, seems to be a continually neglected task, although I've read more books than I have in years.
These small failures of mine are not an occasion for despair. After all, the cost of resuming a failed endeavor is very small. In fact, it's so small that it's actually much costlier to procrastinate and self-flagellate than it is to simply and immediately try again. Most endeavors are unlike winning the Superbowl, in that one can sustain countless abortive failures and still accomplish the task. Small steps seem futile, but they will cover the ground just as surely as a large one.
So I've learned to keep moving. And slowly but surely, the work is done.
Many of the offices are housed inside a backlot set, which means - for instance - that one must enter a 1920's police precinct station house in order to obtain an employee ID. The picturesque facade ends with the facade itself - the interior of the building is a typical and drab workplace.
Interestingly enough, there is plentiful signage outside regarding fictional police operations, but nary a trace of the true function or office of the facility. This deception is charmingly confusing.
So I walk into the human resources office at Sony, fill out some paperwork, and then ask about the salary.
The HR person looks over the forms submitted by my supervisor, and asks,
"You're a paralegal, right?"
For a brief instant, I think about it, and then reply with a straight face,
"Of course I'm a paralegal."
"Ok, good."
She then quotes me a salary that is thirty percent higher than the rate offered by my supervisor. You see, that's what paralegals make. She says she needs to clear the rate, and asks me to return the next day.
The next day, I return to confirm the rate, and she tells me that I've gotten another raise - an extra two dollars an hour. I'm now getting the upper end of the paralegal salary range.
I could get used to this. The most exciting thing about this is that I now get to tell people that I work as a paralegal. Robert Lo, Esq.
Do you have any legal questions? Please allow me to answer them.
In the meantime, all this paralegal money is going straight into the war chest. I've got a trip to Europe to pay for.
You're saying I have to wake up early, spend the bulk of my time in a morass of boredom and fatigue, and then come home only to find that the day is already spent and I can only muster enough energy to browse the internet?
What kind of life is this?
The job is no worse, really, than my last one. But I used to do this! This was my life! I even wrote a screenplay in these conditions!
Surprisingly, the best part about working in Culver City is lunch. When I worked in Westwood, I had a panoply of mediocre dining options. The only truly satisfying refection in the neighborhood is Pinkberry, but I've got one in Larchmont right next door to the yoga studio, so Westwood can safely cease to exist. Culver City is far less bountiful in the number of fine dining establishments, but we've got some real doozies here: Honey's Kettle, Santouka. They've even got a Famima!! here.
I've been on a real ramen kick lately, so allow me to address the matter of Santouka. I didn't try their trademark shio ramen, so I can't make a valid comparison to my current fave Atch-Kotch, but it would be very close. (The two are very different stylistically, so the comparison may be useless anyway. I ain't hatin' on you, Atch-Kotch. I got much love for you and your utterly asinine valet parking lot.)
Santouka is a Japanese chain which recently opened its first branch here in Los Angeles, inside the Mitsuwa grocery store. You put down less than ten dollars, and you get a humongous bowl of incredibly tasty ramen, an artfully hard-boiled egg, and a bowl of absolutely perfect rice topped with a traditional Japanese accoutrement. In my case, I chose the salmon roe.
Seriously? They could just charge me ten bucks for the rice and roe. It's amazing. I walked out of the place happily satiated, which is a regrettably rare occurrence with Japanese food. (It's not the taste, it's the portions.)
It's a shame I don't make it out to Centinela that often. Here's hoping that Santouka opens a branch in Hollywood. Same to you, Famima!!
That's right, folks. I'm hanging it up and going back to the office grind of the wage slave.
For a week, anyway.
Sony Pictures needs some help finishing one of their movies, so I've gotten the call to come in and clean house. I'll be working the good ol' nine-to-six for the rest of the week, helping the Sony people sort out the movie's ending credits.
I will even have to abide by a dress code - collared shirts and non-sneakers! That will last all of one day - just enough time for me to make a positive first impression - and then it's right back to the t-shirts and the badminton shoes.
Which movie, you ask? Some direct-to-video thing about a guy who gets bitten by a spider. Yeah, I don't really get it either.
The good news is that only about twenty people worked on the film, so sorting out the credits should be no sweat!
Apparently, one of Flickr's image caching servers is acting up and so the service is randomly displaying other people's pictures instead of my own. This is actually kind of amusing, if you look through this blog's archives. Apparently, I hang out with ravers now. The issue should be fixed momentarily.
Today I did something fairly unprecedented: I awoke before the crack of nine in the morning. Unfortunately, this is going to be a repeat occurrence in the coming week (more on this in a bit.)
Today the reason for rising early was that my yoga instructor was having a birthday party/charity event at a yoga apparel store in Beverly Hills. You see, my instructor has an endorsement deal(!) with the store, and serves as their spokesmodel. In fact, if you see an ad for yoga clothing in the alternative newsweeklies, chances are you're seeing my instructor flamboastin' on Rodeo Drive. Inside the store, they have erected a pantheon of Los Angeles' greatest yoga instructors, comprised of banners depicting the instructors performing poses in front of LA landmarks and listing their institutional affiliations. The effect is not unlike the retired jerseys hanging from the rafters of a basketball stadium.
Anyway, it was quite the event. My instructor led a class, while the children of Beverly Hills stared at us through the windows. Meanwhile, the store employees chopped up coconuts at my instructor's request (she loves her coconuts), and an adorable chihuahua puppy wandered around the room, crawling on people's backs . This puppy noticed that everyone was holding downward-facing dog pose at the beginning of class, and decided to show everyone how real dogs do it, which caused a total cute meltdown, effectively shutting the class down for a few moments.
More good news.
Looking at the early numbers, it appears that the state of California has given me the very generous gift of allowing me to live here FOR FREE. That's right - all those important and expensive social services we utilize daily as citizens of this fine state? I'm not paying a dime for them. I'm in the VIP, yo!
Also, because of my radical change in income brackets, it appears that the federal government was just a tad aggressive in withholding my income, and so the largest refund check in my short financial history is en route posthaste.
It's way too early to start talking about South America, but let's put it out there:
Next Spring.
Another word on my trip to Asia.
I thought I might address the question of the potential impact of a month-long trek in Asia upon my financial timetable. Japan is obviously a very expensive place to visit, and three weeks in China are not exactly cheap. Does the trip cut the tenure of A Very Big If short? That is, will I go broke more quickly as consequence of taking this vacation?
The answer: absolutely not.
Let me explain exactly how under budget I am. I am so under budget for 2006, that my financial surplus can not only sustain the damage of one overseas voyage, but two. Not to mention the looming increase in leisure spending that has previously been alluded to.
Looking at the accounting ledger, it's as if the trip simply doesn't exist. And yet the tickets are in hand, and the backpack has been pulled out of the closet.
It's way too early to start talking about Europe, but let's put it out there:
Autumn.
Valentine's Day is just around the corner, and here is some lovely advice from the master... of Guitar Hero.
Rob: and there was this girl playing guitar hero
Rob: anyway, Kevin walks me into the room, introduces us
Jon: ahh
Jon: gotcha
Jon: haha
Jon: that's awesome she plays guitar hero
Rob: she's better than me but that's not saying much
Jon: how do you know shes better than you
Rob: because I watched her play
Rob: she even beat Kevin
Rob: and Kevin killed me
Rob: yeah, she likes Iron Man
Jon: thats cool
Jon: but i could DESTROY her
Jon: i play expert only
Rob: yeah
Rob: but for me, I don't want to beat girls at guitar hero
Rob: that's not my primary goal
Rob: good for you, though
Jon: haha whatever dude
Jon: you beat her, you win the key to her heart
