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“What I liked about New York was the food took priority…In most American cities, dinner is an afterthought. In Orlando, my friends and I would almost never eat before heading out.  We’d get high, watch sports, and wait till 11pm to wild.  New York was different: dinner was the event…People follow the big fall openings, wait hours for cafe seating in the spring, or buy out their favorite courtyard in the summer…Restaurants are the gateways into New York’s neighborhoods…Somehow, food has become a social equalizer.

The biggest travesty in downtown New York is that you have to buy your lox at R&D then take the train up to Ess-a-Bagel to put together a proper lox, caper, red onion, cream cheese, on sesame or salt bagel.  We wish 2nd Ave Deli was still on Second Avenue, we worry about the old man’s health at Di Fara Pizza…But despite the misfires, overhyped opening, and super-restaurants that mar the landscape, New York is the best eating city not named Tokyo or Taipei, and we owe it to people Fresh Off The Boat…it’s an army of first- and second-generation immigrants that feed this city. I love the Knicks, I fux with Fool’s Gold parties, and I stay coppin’ kicks, but living in New York, it became clear to me what I loved the most was the thing I loved all along: food.” -Eddie Huang

Sneakers, hiphop, getting in trouble, food, and entrepreneurship all wrapped up in some of the best story-telling ever.  Probably in my top 5 favorite books of all time.

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The Importance of Being on Time

I used to never be late.  I was the guy who got to the airport 3 hours early for a domestic flight.  I would check in, grab my tickets, get sexually harassed by the TSA, and then spend 2 and a half hours roaming the terminals while eating $10 Chicken Mcnuggets from the premiumly-priced aiport Mcdonalds.

I always left early, whether it was for class or meeting up with friends. Because who knew what could happen on my way to wherever I had to go?  In today’s world, there are an infinite amount of things that could hold me up, such as:

1. Traffic

2. Explosive Diarrhea

3. Explosive Diarrhea while sitting in traffic

4. Meteor Shower

5. Getting hit by a stray bullet during a drive-by shooting

6. Taking a really long time to tie my shoes.

7. Taking a really long time to tie my shoes while having Explosive Diarrhea.

The possibilites are literally endless. Anyway, I lived the majority of my life making sure I was early to everything.  Then I went to college and started hanging out with mostly korean people. I learned about a new framework for being punctual. I refer to it as “Korean Time”.  This is the formula for Korean Time: 

Official-Agreed-upon-Time-of-Arrival + 20 minutes + GroupSize*2minutes = Actual-Time-of-Arrival

So let’s say, there was an event scheduled at 7pm for 8 people.  According to normal societal rules you are expected to arrive between 6:55pm and 7:05pm.  But on Korean time:

7:00pm + 20 minutes + 8*2minutes = 7:36pm.

I remember one time KCM planned a day-long mission trip to Mexico.  The announcement on the flyer said meet at Peterson Cul-de-Sac at 7am SHARP.  The “sharp” was in CAPS and bold font, so I could tell they meant business. I remember waking up late that morning at 6:50am.  I scrambled out of bed, brushed my teeth while putting on clothes, microwaved 2 pizza hot pockets, and ran out of my dorm.  I sprinted to our meeting point and arrived at precisely 7:04am.  I stopped to catch my breath (and finish up the last few bites of my delicious hot pocket).  I scanned around and no one was to be seen.  ”NOOO, they left without me!”  I grabbed my phone and dialed some of the staff members. Hoping they would have enough compassion to turn around and pick me up.

Later I found out that the majority of the people were still at home, and we didn’t officially leave until 8am.  That’s when I found out about this little game.  The early bird gets the worm? I was a sucker.

This past saturday our SG planned to eat brunch together at 10:45 am.  Now that I’m a veteran, I knew what that REALLY meant.  So I woke up at 10am and took my sweet time heading out the door.  However I didn’t account for the 2 subway transfers I had to make and also that I had to walk like 6 blocks to the actual restaurant.  Usually there isn’t any cell phone service in the subways, but there are little sections where you might get a couple bars.  As my subway passed by one of these sweet spots I got a couple emails/texts all at the same time.  Uh-oh.

This is when I started to feel super bad.  This message was so urgent they decided to sent it to our SG listserv. TWICE! I tried to appease them with an order of lemon ricotta pancakes for the table, but I ended up eating all of it, so that didn’t really work…

I (kinda) learned my lesson. I believe in respecting other people’s time. Now I’m going to make an effort to be punctual again. Esp if it involves hangry people and brunch reservations that are a really far walk from the subway.  Time’s a tickin!

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Dear Internet by Tina Fey

From PerezHilton.com/Posted by jerkstore on Wednesday, 1/21/2009, 11:21 P.M.

“In my opinion Tina Fey completely ruined SNL. The only reason she’s celebrated is because she’s a woman and an outspoken liberal. She has not a single funny bone in her body.”

“Dear jerkstore,

Huzzah for the Truth Teller! Women in this country have been over-celebrated for too long. Just last night there was a story on my local news about a “missing girl,” and they must have dedicated seven or eight minutes to “where she was last seen” and “how she might have been abducted by a close family friend,” and I thought, “What is this, the News for Chicks?” Then there was some story about Hillary Clinton flying to some country because she’s secretary of state. Why do we keep talking about these dumdums? We are a society that constantly celebrates no one but women and it must stop! I want to hear what the men of the world have been up to. What fun new guns have they invented? What are they raping these days? What’s Michael Bay’s next film going to be?

When I first set out to ruin SNL, I didn’t think anyone would notice, but I persevered because—like you trying to do a nine-piece jigsaw puzzle—it was a labor of love.

I’m not one to toot my own horn, but I feel safe with you, jerkstore, so I’ll say it. Everything you ever hated on SNL was by me, and anything you ever liked was by someone else who did it against my will.

Sincerely,

Tina Fey

P.S. You know who does have a funny bone in her body? Your mom every night for a dollar.”

I <3 sarcasm.

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“Let’s be honest. Our Instagrams aren’t the whole truth.  We come here and brag about how much we’re doing, with who, and how important it is.  We somehow neglect to document the filler (and it’s all filler) - the boring parts, the lonely nights, the walks of shame, the morning breath, the microwave dinners, the hours lost watching bad Netflix.  No, on Instagram, we’re all endlessly interesting and driven, philosophical dreamers, serial lovers, doing everything right with the right everybody, all of the time.  The whole truth is that Instagram is everyone’s personal highlight reel.  Don’t be confused or misled by the spotlight - after the scene ends, we all return backstage to the common thread of mundane habits. // All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players // Plus, if Instagram was telling the full truth, wouldn’t it just show us scrolling through Instagram all day?” - Bobby Hundreds

trueee.

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1. I just bought 2 books:

a. “Fresh off the boat” by Eddie Huang (owner of baohaus)

b. “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch (CMU comp sci professor who died of cancer at age 47)

I’m super intrigued by memoirs.  I feel like there is always something to take away from someone else’s life (especially if their life is cool enough to be made into a book).  Whether is be wisdom, inspiration, or just a funny story, I always leave with food-for-thought after reading about interesting people.

I also feel like reading about something that actually happened makes the story 1000% more interesting. It’s real life, yo.

2. I just came back from a friend’s wedding this past weekend. I’m super happy for them.  I feel like I’m growing up a little faster in NY, because alot of my friends are a bit older. Weddings are infinitely more fun when your friends are getting married, instead of some random distant relative who only invited you out of asian family guilt.

This weekend also got me thinking a bit more about finding my own lady.  I’m pretty bad at gauging my own needs and finding what types of people I complement the most. 

3. I want to go to a dodgers/yankee game. down???

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Last weekend I went on a ski trip with my company.  It was dopee. There was a fresh layer of powder everyday and the runs were like 1.5 miles long.  

After finishing up on the slopes, some of my co-workers went to return their rental equipment. I sat outside the shop waiting when I saw a mother leave her kid in a snowbank next to me.  

“Mommy, is going to return her skis. Stay here okay?”

 The boy looked up with a blank stare.  I’d like to imagine he was thinking, “Wtf woman, can’t you just take me inside with you? I’m calling child protective services on your ass.”  

As the rental return rush-hour started, more and more people would walk towards the shop, do a double-take, and take instagram photos of this poor chinese baby.

“Aww, look at how cute he is!!” 

“Hurry take a picture of me with him”

“Can we take him home?”

When this was all happening, I noticed that all the white people were staring at me too.  The asian boy sitting 10 feet from the baby.  Frick, these people probably thought I was his negligent older brother allowing his baby sibling to sit frozen in a pile of snow as a public spectacle. I could feel some of their judgmental glances melting into my soul. I had to think quick on my feet.  So I slipped on my sunglasses. Hah, Now they can’t tell that I’m asian. Crisis adverted. 

Anyway, the mom came back like 25 minutes later. And right before she came I overheard a couple.

“Honey, look! There’s the cutest little asian baby sleeping in the snow…”

“He’s not sleeping, look, his eyes are open.”

They weren’t.

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13 Places to Eat Before You Die  by: Anthony Bourdain

Any seasoned traveler can tell you that the “best” meals on the planet are the result of an ephemeral confluence of circumstances. A table at the most expensive restaurant in the world does not guarantee a truly great meal. That said, if you’re planning on dying in the near future and want to knock off a list of final, glorious dining experiences, these places would make a very respectable binge. Start with one. Make a reservation today. Go on an empty stomach. Trust me: This is livin’.

1) St. John (London) If I had to die with half a bite of anything hanging out of my mouth, it would probably be the roast bone marrow in Fergus Henderson’s plain-white dining room at St. John. Scooped out and slathered onto a crust of toasted bread and sprinkled with sea salt, it’s simple yet luxurious. The menu is proudly English, a rebuke to anyone still laboring under the impression that English food sucks. Famously pork-centric and focused on traditional offal and game dishes, St. John is as wonderful for what it does as for what it doesn’t do: compromise. It specializes in good ingredients from “happy” animals that are treated with love and respect. Henderson has become a reluctant spiritual leader to a whole generation of chefs—and even the old-guard guys love to stop by for crispy pig tails, ham in hay, or a properly roasted bird. This is one of the truly bullshit-free zones on the culinary landscape. 

2) elBulli (Girona, Spain) It’s the hardest reservation in the world. And everything they say is true: It’s an adventure, a challenge, a delicious and always fun acid trip to the farthest reaches of creativity. Brothers Ferran and Albert Adrià and their team are the most influential and creative people working in food—and this surprisingly casual restaurant on a sleepy cove on Spain’s Costa Brava is probably the most important restaurant of our time. Love it or hate it, if you have the opportunity to wangle a reservation, do it. It’s like seeing Jimi Hendrix’s first show. Forget any preconceptions you might have. Is it good? Yes. More important—is it fun? Yes. Yes. Yes. 

3) The French Laundry(Napa Valley, California) 

4) Per Se (New York City) The best sit-down, multicourse, white-tablecloth meal of my life was at the French Laundry. And subsequent meals at Per Se, also run by chef Thomas Keller, were no less wonderful. There’s no better way to go than the full-on tasting menu, a once-in-a-lifetime marriage of the best ingredients, creative thinking, and high standards, along with the personal imprint of the most respected chef in the world. How can Keller be at both restaurants at once? It doesn’t matter. Pick one. Fast for 2 days, stretch your stomach with water the day of, and then see how they do it at the very top. It’s a level of perfection in food and service that few even try to approach. 

5) Sin Huat Eating House (Singapore) It’s grimy looking, the service can be less than warm, the beer is served in a bottle (often with ice), and the tables sit halfway into the streets of Geylang, Singapore’s red-light district. But the crab bee hoon—giant Sri Lankan beasts cooked with a spicy mystery sauce and noodles—is pure messy indulgence. The whelks, steamed spotted cod, prawns, scallops (in fact, any seafood available that day) are all worth having. Warning: It looks cheap, but it’s not. 

6) Le Bernardin (New York City) This is the best fish joint…anywhere. And it’s relevant and fun, despite its formal service and fine-dining ambience. The grand tasting menu is a stripped-down thing of relatively austere beauty. And whatever they’re doing this year or this month is always, always interesting. 

7) Salumi (Seattle) It’s a sandwich shop with a couple of tables, and a true mom-and-pop—even if they’re the mom and pop of famous chef Mario Batali. Anything cured, anything braised, any of the limited hot specials…in fact, anything the Batalis make is worth grabbing with both hands. 

8) Russ & Daughters (New York City)

9) Katz’s Delicatessen (New York City) Russ & Daughters started as a pushcart nearly a century ago, and it now serves some of the last traditional Eastern European Jewish-style herring and smoked belly lox, sable, and sturgeon. And since you’re close, walk down a few doors to Katz’s to remind yourself how pastrami is done right. This is what New Yorkers do better than anybody else. And here’s where they do it.

10) Etxebarri (Axpe, Spain) Victor Arguinzoniz grills unlikely ingredients over homemade charcoal: baby eels, imperial beluga caviar, oysters. (The fresh chorizo and prawns work, too.) Theoretically you can’t grill a lot of this stuff, but a handcrafted series of pulleys that raise and lower each item makes it possible. Eat here, and no one is eating better.

11) Sukiyabashi Jiro (Tokyo) The best sushi on earth? Maybe. Jiro Ono is more than 80 years old, and he’s been doing old-school Edo-style sushi his whole life. Every piece of fish is served at precisely the right temperature and the rice and seaweed alone are blackout good. Ono will ruin sushi for you from anywhere else. 

12) Hot Doug’s (Chicago) This place convinced me the Chicago red hot is, in fact, superior to the New York hot dog. And it’s home to two great innovations in American gastronomy: the “foie gras dog” and the weekends-only practice of cooking French fries in duck fat. It’s proof that food doesn’t have to be expensive to be great.

13) Oklahoma Joe’s Barbecue (Kansas City, Kansas) People may disagree on who has the best BBQ. Here, the brisket (particularly the burnt ends), pulled pork, and ribs are all of a quality that meet the high standards even of Kansas City natives. It’s the best BBQ in Kansas City, which makes it the best BBQ in the world. 

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I can’t believe this is an actual invention. This was made so that when girls (or guys) with long hair eat ramen, their hair won’t go into the soup. 

I have 2 better alternatives off the top of my head:

1) tie your hair in a pony tail. to ensure no-hair-in-soup, you could stick your pony tail in the back of your shirt. boom.

2) tie your hair up in a bun.

But to be honest any alternative is probably better than wearing this pink butthole on your face.  I rather have all my hair dunk in the soup.  I rather starve.

Yesterday I chilled with some SG people.  We played the “most likely to” game.  There were only a couple rounds were EVERYBODY pointed at one person.  One round was, “Most likely to get tricked into a pyramid scheme” and I think everyone, including the waiters and busboys pointed at kelly.  Then it was “Most likely to get fired”, then everyone pointed at me.  Whattheheck!  Oh shoot, its 10:10am, I should probably get ready for work soon.

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“Just make Andrew do it.”

Being a team player never steered me so wrong.

I was a doe-eyed freshmen finishing up my first year at San Diego.  It was safe to say that I was having the best year of my life.  Living in dorms, having the freedom to do whatever I wanted, eating burritos everyday, and not having to ask my teacher every time I had to pee were some of the many reasons I loved college.

A big part of my college experience was being involved with KCM.  It was a christian ministry with about 150 kids. 85% of my friends were from KCM.  Actually like 1/3 of them only came out during sporting events or senior banquet, but I guess that still counts? Every year there is a tradition where all the freshmen and SG leaders go on a overnight hiking trip. And there was a set of activities that we did together to fellowship and bond with one another.  We played games, went hiking, cooked meals over an open fire, and finally we had a “Nature Fashion Show”.  

Each team had to run off into the wilderness, create an ensemble out of things found in mother nature, and then we had to put on a fashion show.  I thought this was the dumbest idea since Snuggie for Dogs.

Anyway, I obviously avoided being selected to be the “model”.  All was well until our team’s assigned model backed out last second.  Like literally before we started to adorn her with vines and branches, she insisted that this duty be lifted from her.  

“Just make Andrew do it”

And within 2 seconds, the rest of the team followed suit and before I could raise an argument I was being wrapped up in who-knows-what.  The whole process wasn’t too bad, and before I knew it this wretched part of the camping trip was over.

But I found out soon enough, the troubles from the “Nature Fashion Show” were just beginning. I came home and for the next 3 weeks I had all these red bumps and rashes growing all over my body.  I thought I had some zombie-flesh-eating disease.  But after doing some self-diagnosis on Google, I found out that I had contact with……. Poison Ivy.  Love. My. Life.

So those vines wrapped all over my body in the picture above probably weren’t poison ivy/oak/sumac, but they definitely rubbed up against some poison ivy as my awesome teammates pulled the vines out of some god-forsaken part of the forest. Long story short- I wore jeans and sweaters everyday in 80 degree SD weather, so my leprosy skin didn’t make other people vomit. The End.  

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I love documentaries. 

I love basketball.

I love stories about a group of friends accomplishing something together.

Even though I don’t like lebron, this movie was pretty great because it rolled 3 things I loved into 1.  It was pretty fun hearing the story of how lebron and his four best friends took over the world of basketball. It follows their story from a little gym on Maple Street in the city of Akron.  You get to go on the rollercoaster of all their ups and downs as individuals and as teammates.  

Before I thought lebron was just a monster who ate kittens and wanted a 1-hour tv segment dedicated to broadcast what team he was going to join. But now, he seems more like a human.  I would be down to be his friend.

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When I got my first DSLR (a canon xti) in highschool, I was berated by my friends and family.

“Eww, what kind of stupid camera is that? You’re probably going to forget about it by next month.”  

“Is that what you put your camera in?  It looks like you’re carrying a diaper bag.”  

“Why did you waste so much money on a camera? You could have saved Africa or something.”  

Despite all these words of discouragement I pressed on. 

In high school and the early parts of college I was one of the only civilians to own a high end camera. I lugged that thing around EVERYWHERE. I carried my camera to class, to the basketball court, to cambodia, to lakers’ games, to bars, to work, to sleep, anddd you get the point.  At one point in college, I was regularly uploading 60 pictures to facebook. Everyday.  

Back then no one really carried around cameras.  And mobile upload was only used by the early adopters. So it was okay for me to blast facebook with a steady stream of photos.  But now, everyone and their mothers have a DSLR and a smartphone (smartphone = instagram).

So now, I have to be more selective on what content I upload and just as importantly, I have to be selective on when to upload my photos/videos.

Let me explain. If I upload photos or videos too often, the value of it gets diminished. It’s like eating a delicious steak. If you eat delicious steak like once every 2-3 weeks, it tastes…..well, delicious.  But if someone feeds you steak regularly everyday for year, no matter how delicious that steak is, your appreciation for that steak is going to diminish after a couple weeks.

Also for maximum enjoyment, you can’t upload photos or videos right after the event occurs. Let’s say your friends went to disneyland on saturday. If you decide to be an eager beaver and upload all those photos that same night, then well….you’re dumb. Because right after an event happens, people are fully aware of all the fun and not-so-fun things that happened that day. 

If you wait a week or so, all the fun things will be ingrained into their brains and all the not-so-fun things will be repressed into inaccessible parts of their subconscious minds.  When they click through the pictures a week or two later, they’ll remember all the fun rides, delicious turkey legs, and World of Color. PLUS, they’ll have forgotten about the long lines with smelly people, the stale churros, and the hundreds of dollars they spent on their annual pass (that they’ll probably use 3 times). So it’s a win-win situation.  I love win-win.

But as of right now, I’m on the other side of this problem.  I have unedited videos from like 9 months ago.  By now, people will just probably be weirded out by the fact that I’m uploading some ancient content.  9 months is a long time.  I mean if it takes 9 months for a piece of sperm to turn into a human baby, I should be able to edit and upload a 5 minute video in that amount of time.

Anyway, this long and off-tangent blogpost is my excuse as to why I’m uploading old videos.

P.S. Don’t try to click the image above to play a video.  It’s just a picture of a video frame.  You dumbo.

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So it’s been exactly 1 month since I started my job at Yext. I’m pretty sure some people think all I do at work is eat sushi and get new apple products.  That’s not true.  That stuff only makes up about 50% of what I do at my company.

Yext provides a platform for local businesses to sync up all their listing data online. Let’s say the burger shop down the street has a profile on Facebook places, yellowpages.com, foursquare, yahoo, and mapquest.  Instead of having to update each site anything something changes, our product ensures that your information will be up-to-date across 40 different websites. 

My official title is “Implementation Engineer”. Basically I interact with the engineers at our partner sites (i.e. yellowpages.com, mapquest, yahoo etc) and help them integrate our product into their website. So that our data will be displayed on their pages.

One thing I really like about this company is that everyone I work with is SUPER SMART. I was grabbing drinks with some of my coworkers and I casually asked what schools they went to. “Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, oh I just finished up at Harvard Business School.” Basically all the engineers are from either Carnegie Mellon or MIT which are in the top 3 comp sci universities. A majority of them also either worked or had offers from Google and Microsoft.

Yext works really hard to please the engineers. I’m by FARRRR the least technical out of all the engineers. But luckily, I get all the perks they get. Free meals, snacks, and drinks all day. Competitive salary and bonus. I get to come into work whenever I want (some engineers get into the office at like 2pm). We get unlimited vacation days. And we get special company-paid outings and trips.  But some of these things are exclusive only to the engineering team.

On my 3rd day at work, I made the mistake of asking some of my co-workers if they were going on the ski trip or the open-bar outing that night. “Ski trip? What ski trip? And what? There’s an open-bar thing today?” “uhmmmmm…bye.”

I’m super grateful to have the opportunity to work at a place like this. Especially as my first “real” job. I seriously do not deserve any of this. but I guess God provides even for a dirty little sinner like me.

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1. I just took some nyquil.  I have a sore throat.  It’s too freezing outside. It’s like 12 degrees. 

2. I really want a bike again.  Once the cold weather decides to get the hell out, I’m going to buy a bike.  Who else wants one?

3. This nyquil is really effing my brain up.  It won’t let me construct thoughts in my head.  Is this how kids in non-honors classes feel like? 

4. I really want some phils bbq.

5. There’s something about the nighttime that makes me wanna write something.  But I can’t right now.  Cause this nyquil is making me stupid.  Gnight.

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