simpler times

2020 is kind of on fire right now, and 2019 and the magical architecture of CDMX, the movie-esque Oaxacan skies, the street tacos--seem so so far away from me now. I miss it. 5 days in Central America, reality suspended. Now reality invades and precludes every single one of my thoughts. There's a lot going on in my life right now, but this a reminder that reality suspends itself when you're with good company, when you're living life the way you want to live it.

Mexico, on film.

CDMX 
1/ Casa Baragan for a tour of an iconic architect's home
2/ Ono for coffee and pastries
3/ Expendio de Maiz for corn omakase that was $7/person

OAX
1/ For a stunning dining experience, try Enrinque Olvera's Criollo a munch easier table to snag than Pujol in CDMX
2/ Go to the end of the earth with a tour of Hierve al Agua 
3/ Lanni to pick up weaved goods & ceramics & beautiful crafts in general

we're fading

Summer's ending. I'm 25. Washington Square Park and the oppressive humidity of New York City, I bid you all adieu.

This summer was weird. In June, I was funemployed. I did pilates. I drank green juice. I used aggressive self care as a coping mechanism.

In July, I read books. I still did pilates. I got food poisoning. I was in Southern California. I got bit 7 times on the face by a mosquito.

In August, I started a new job. I hated my new job. I cried a lot. Who am I? Why am I here? I road the train to Beacon and picked blueberries.

In September, it was my birthday! Oaxaca is magical. I felt like I was at the end of the earth. I still cried a lot. I found spirituality via an astrology app and really reveled in Virgo season energy.

Fall's coming, I'm still only 25. I still don't know anything about who I am.

meet you in southern spain

España 2019

 

Southern Spain felt so freakishly familiar--the red roofs, the dry weather, the palm trees, the Spanish speaking populace--it was Southern California if you can get wine for 3 Euros that is. 

We did a quick 5 day trip of Mardrid-Seville-Granada. While we expected Granada to be cultural and quaint and Seville a touristy friendly city, it was really the opposite. 

If you're making a trip to Andalusia I'd highly recommend stops at these places:

• For the best frozen yogurt break in Madrid, stop by Rocambolesc -- founded by the pastry chef Jordi Roca, who was featured on Chef's Table: Pastry
• For a pleasent drinking experience try Pinkoko Bar in Puerta del Sol
• In Seville - the Alcazar is a must go, especially the outdoor gardens where you kind find peacocks roaming around.
• El Pinton in Seville, where we had a life changing mushroom dish. Also has a delightful interior featured in so many design blogs.
• In Granada -- one of the gelato places in the main part of town.
• The Alhambra, of course. Book an educational tour. 

money diaries

Hello friends! One of my goals this year is to practice better financial hygiene by tracking my spending on a Google Spreadsheet so I would have a clear idea of where my money was going and where to make adjustments. Albeit, I was in LA for the New Year so I decided to let myself live a little while I was home and didn't start until I was back in the city on the 6th. But! I did stick to it for the week of 1/6-1/13.

Here's what I recorded: a grand total of $309 spent. Below are the leading categories:

🚇Transit = $58 

🥐Non-Essential Food = $106

🌿Lifestyle Things = $70 

A few caveats, takeaways & explanations:

• I usually have my MTA Weekly Passes taken out pre-tax but I recently lost my wallet and lost the debit card I use for those purchases--hence they ended up being out of pocket
• The Uber charge for $24 was from JFK back to my apartment and this was after a $15 credit that my Amex Platinum card gives me
• I need to cancel AMC Stubs which adds $20 to things I consider "lifestyle" expenditures. Although I do watch a lot of movies, I got free AMC tickets for Christmas and should use those up first
• I purchased a $50 plant on a whim that I did not need and did not plan for

For the following week my goals are:

• Spend less on "non-essential food" purchases
• Plan out purchases, and don't spend more than $30 on any unplanned lifestyle thing 

Also fun tidbit--this week I ran out of toothpaste, floss, and some general cleaning products like sponges so I logged onto Shopyourway, a site that gives you points for your Uber rides. The points are redeemed for goods shipped to you or picked up from a nearby Kmart. Thankfully, there's a Kmart in the East Village (Cooper Square!) and I had around $40 in points to redeem for all of those things.

Here's a full breakdown of my spending for anyone interested:

goodbye to all that

"It is is less often said that New York is also, at least for those of us who came there from somewhere else, a city for only the very young." - Joan Didion, Goodbye to All That

As much as 2018 started as "the year of magical thinking," it ends, and so 2018 begins as the year of saying "goodbye to all that." A lot of things happened this year, most notably

• I moved to New York, I turned 24
• My family sold the home that I called home for the past 18 years.

Predictably in 2019 

• I return home to a new home
• I will turn 25
• I'll celebrate a year of living in New York

All of this just feels like some kind of cosmically aligned ending for me, saying goodbye to my early 20s, my childhood home, and I have to begin seriously considering, how I will say goodbye to New York.

Anyone that knows me knows that I very much lusted over the fictional symbolism of New York. I still do, honestly. It still makes me so happy to see the Empire State Building sticking out of the horizon on the way back from JFK (or Brooklyn..). But New York isn't a place I've ever considered living in for more than 2 or 3 years. So as I wrap up my first year, I have to start considering--at 25---what next? What do I do with the next 5 years? And it freaks me out, as my parens hit their mid 50s (my grandfather passed when he was 70), that I have only a decade or two left with them. For me this year is about wrapping up the loose ends of my early 20s, embracing a longer term, steady life full of mundanities unfathomable to 17 year old me. Mundanities that would upset the 17 year old me but the current 24 year old me really really really wants. 

it's easy to see the beginning of things and harder to see the end

2018, on film.

Seoul / Hong Kong / Paris / Porto  

fall (and other things)

Jess told me the other day that everything about me kind of fits into a mold except my fascination/obsession with kpop, which kinda adds a twist on it all. We were sitting at Dudley's eating french fries on a Sunday and I had to wonder, when did I become this person? When did I become so painstakingly normal that the most "particular" thing about me was that I was that I'm kinda into kpop (which like come on, is that even that exciting?)

And then I was having dinner with Annie and Kerry, at 10pm on a Tuesday (what kind of monsters are out past 9 on a weekday? fun monsters, which I am not because I am boring and work at 10-6pm where I get a steady salary) and Kerry mentioned that all Annie and I talk about is shopping and credit card points. We failed the Bechdel test.

So what is it about graduating from a top liberal arts school with an expensive humanities degree that leaves you incapable of having intelligent conversations as an adult? It has nothing to do with schooling, or how smart you are, I think--I think it's the adult part.

It's the fact that you work and put on this different self at work. Maybe you're lucky and your job is intellectually stimulating in a philosophical way (which is the intellectual stimulation I'm talking about, not like doing really hard math or thinking about how to make nested divs work or whatever) but I think for most of us, we don't get that philosophical intellectual stimulation because we're so tired all the time.

But I want to reframe this: I don't want to see it as something that has to be done, but something that needs to be done. Daily mental exercise.

• Start reading on the train again. For some reason I stopped (after having read 14 books in 3 months lol). But this is a necessity. And stop scrolling through Instagram on the train.
• Stay up to date with my Feedly, a tool that aggregates all your reading material across the world wide web.
• Stop listening to French music while in bed and online shopping. Restart your Podcast hours.
• Call some friends. Lydia and I had an hour long, bicoastal phone call on Crazy Rich Asians from what it is as a film (soundtrack, acting, the Mah Jong scene) to what it means for the larger Asian community. 
• Stop eating french fries frivolously at 4:00pm on a Sunday at overpriced Australian cafes and start being more productive.

I've also given some thought to picking up a part time job on the weekends, maybe at a cafe so I can meet interesting people and pick up some skills, or the front desk at a museum. But also the main motivation of the part-time job isn't really meeting interesting people or picking up skills but so I can fund my outrageous lifestyle habits. I guess some things are hard to change.

Also, as part of an effort to being accountable I will do a 2 week check in of the aforementioned action steps! 

xoxo

Khanh

twenty-four

 🎵hyuok - 24: finding true love and happiness

📍the wing - flatiron

Currently: I'm holed up at The Wing's Flatiron location, it's raining outside, and I'm wearing a Patagonia sweater. It's the second week of September in New York and with 23 and a recent trip to California behind me, I unfortunately have to report that the blissful fall weather I anticipated is missing in action.

My roommate commented that she would start keeping track of the good vs bad weather days a year in New York, and if the bad outweighed the good it would be time to move. I'll let everyone know the verdict.

Despite this, I'm convinced that the radical New York weather (when it's hot it's unbearable and you can't wear anything that would make your sweat visible, when it's cold it's frigid and biting--also, bomb cyclone) makes the good days that much better?

Recently:

• I just got the AmEx Platinum card because of its 100K bonus, Uber Credit, lounge access and have become one of those people who will not shut up about how great their credit card is.
• Attended a NYFW show for designer Taoray Wang. No where as glamorous (lol hello we were in the 3rd row and my name on the guest-list was Angela-Guest-3) as it sounds but just being around during NYFW is soooo exciting. Street style photographers causing traffic jams, being shuttled into shows, the Evian water bottles! I think 15 year old me would cry. 
• I'm thinking about doing a blog on all of The Wing's NY locations (and LA and SF once they open??) since so many people (like 3 of my friends) are asking about it. 
• Just paid a $70 parking ticket I got in LA while buying an overpriced almond milk-cold brew-chocolate protein-cordyceps smoothie from Moon Juice. Poetic justice for my financial indulgence? 
• Also really really into cooking/dining/food lately because I just finished Alice Water's biography.
• My family's visiting in October and I'm pulling together an "Asian parent friendly" guide to NY eating. Will share. 
• Eyeing these Moncler boots for winter. Also obsessed with browsing TheRealreal lately (Michelle if ur reading this can ur dad hook it up?? lol)

That's it so far. Here's filter-less September, in square format.

     

everything i read this month

 📖the making of a counterculture cook - alice waters

📍manhattan

In 1999, I move from Vietnam to a suburb of California in July, turned five and started kindergarten that September. That amongst other things including sharing one bedroom and mattress with my family of four--in a house occupied with my extended family of aunts, uncles, newborn cousins--made for a tumultuous time in my life.

It's no wonder then that this entire summer I spent reading books from voices of the diasporas around the world. For immigrants, both our imagined community and actual community (family) are core to our existence. In these stories: maternal sacrifice and resilience, found families, the escape from choicelessness and dissatisfaction--literally if you're a first generation anything these stories will click almost uncomfortably close to home and realize this is why I am the way I am. (spoiler alert in these reviews)

somewhere in brooklyn

 📖leavers - lisa ko 

📍dumbo, brooklyn

Hi, and welcome to my blog which I'm writing in Brooklyn on a Saturday evening.

I planned to leave Manhattan on July 27th on a short one hour plane ride to Montreal, away from the summer rain that made subway rides more hell-ish than usual. But of course, because Mercury was in retrograde what was supposed to be Montreal ended up being Jess' living room, where I turned up at 12AM that night.

I planned to write letters to Leslie--we would orchestrate a site along with other grand schemes we concocted over a spontaneous Rich Table dinner. We'd call it 8 hours apart because that was the time difference between Nairobi and New York City, and we'd talk about how different these places were from the 626, where we both grew up, or San Francisco where we met. I wrote one letter and shortly forgot about it.

At 23, nothing ever goes as planned I guess.

Now I'm here, in DUMBO, my home in between homes. Overlooking an Instagram hotspot and so close to the bridge that I mix up the sound of my airconditioning turning on and the trains running across East River. Today marks month 2 of being in New York.

Things That Haven't Changed:

• I'm still restless and aggressively trying to convince friends from around the world to take trips around the world with me
• I still don't call my parents enough
• I still cry while reading books about the immigrant experience in public places
• I still walk really slow
• When I walk north and see the Empire State Building, I still stop and try to take a picture of it

Things That Have Changed:

• I can no longer stand walking for more than 15 minutes to get ANYWHERE, when I used to consider 30 minute bus rides a thing of convenience. 
• I no longer find New York's humidity unbearable 
• I don't like eating avocados, because the New York avocados just aren't as good as the California ones 

So this is an attempt to document me. Me in New York, the city of my adolescent dreams (I think if you told 12 year old me that I'd be living in New York, she would cry), what changes and what stays the same. In addition, I'll post pictures of what I spend money on, the books I read and love or hate, and gossip about everyone I know. Hopefully this goes as plan.