A Primer on Booking Adventures - Kona, HI (Part 1)

Booking adventures – where booking can be either a verb or part of a compound noun.

As a frequent flyer and also a lifelong Econ major, I can tell you that prices of flights can be really weird in a good way sometimes.
       For example, a trip from Boston to DC can cost around $450 which is equivalent to going from Boston to Iceland or to Puerto Rico if you book about a month ahead.
       DC to Austin and DC to Seattle are about the same price, even though one is almost double the distance.
       Portland to Atlanta on some flights can cost more than one grand and you might spend less going from Portland to Seoul, South Korea instead.

Economists love studying airlines because each flight route is a "market" that can be priced almost independently, so prices for different routes don’t always relate in an intuitive way as demonstrated.

Okay fine, flight prices are weird and separately, Hawaii is exotic, so you want to go, sure why not. Well you know what else is not intuitive – the Hawaiian islands. In fact there are several popular islands, and unlike most of the United States, you can’t drive between some of these cities, so booking a hotel on one island and a flight to another is a major no-go unless you have a way of being in two places at once or plan on swimming through the Pacific to get to your hotel for the night.

I am obviously speaking from experience here and had a panic attack over the fact that both bookings were non-refundable, yet useless to me if they weren't on the same island. It ended up working out, but just remember that Maui is not the same island as Honolulu is not the same as the Big Island.

On a random note, the airport in Kona is completely outdoors (and the terminal looks like the gift shop area right after you check into a theme park). They can do that, I guess.

These people look like they wanted to be in this picture.

PSA on New Blog Subscription Feature

As per requests and in consideration of the fact that I, *whisper*, backdate many posts such that I actually post less regularly than it appears (don't you dare tell me I'm overthinking things, again), I have developed an email subscription feature.

The account that collects the email addresses is mine, so no worries about spam. Everything is set up so that subscribing and unsubscribing works like every other email list.

Use the "Subscribe" box on the sidebar to sign up. You'll get an email ping on the day that I post and nothing else, simple as that.

If you subscribe, welcome, if you unsubscribe, it's fine - this is for you not me!

Small Quirks About Traveling and Birthdays - Salt Lake City, UT

Spending these past few weeks in the western states, there are several things I have learned that I have never thought to consider:

Firstly, my current location is at a high altitude and quite dry. I'm sure mountain climbers are well familiar with these challenges, but as a green traveler, by the end of the first day here, I was completely worn just from regular breathing and remaining upright. By the time I was in bed, I thought I was miserable, trying to intake oxygen but unable to escape the parched and enveloping air. As it turns out, this was dramatic as I became accustomed to the climate and resumed normal breathing by week two. (And now, why is home so humid?) I've never contemplated that locations could differ not only visually and spatially but also in the way that it physically affects you, even while indoors.

Secondly, time change. I understand the concept of time change, so the issue is getting the direction of change correct. Especially since I'm not on vacation and the time of day actually matters, it is deceptively unintuitive to keep track of whether to add two hours, subtract two hours, or do nothing because the clock is correct. More important yet, should I eat lunch during the lunchtime of the current or former timezone?

Lastly, I realized this week that this is the first year I will be away for work on my birthday. I was reminded of this by the lovely cake pops that were placed on my hotel bed at check-in.

In a way, it feels like a rite of passage as I join the ranks of business travelers who either impressively or unfortunately spend more nights in a hotel than at home each year. That's a subject for another day.

The thing is, I like to perceive myself as a highly practical person. In that sense, a day is a day is a day. For example, I don’t care whether I have celebratory dinner with my family on my actual birthday or if it's two weeks past.

I remember once in an Econ class in college. I’m sure I should have been paying attention, but was momentarily distracted by my inability to recall my own age. I think this occurred in March, or some month that was significantly past my birthday, and I spent a good several minutes trying to calculate from my birth year whether I was 19 or 20. I definitely settled on 19, which was totally incorrect, and I attribute at least part of this forgetfulness to the failure to celebrate age changes properly. The years all start to blend together.

I say all of this half offhandedly, but of course, thanks in large part to the wonderful people around me, I’ve always managed to feel very loved year upon year. I don’t overhype the date of my birth, but I feel very fortunate when people celebrate a day that’s special specifically to me (and my same-birthday cohorts). 

People have been known to ask me cryptically but insistently what kind of cake I like, and I just assume that they’re interested in learning about my preferences. A week later, the exact type of cake shows up, and surprise – my housemates are celebrating my birthday. (2015)

A good friend comes to my house after I’ve had a day full of in-person birthday wishes from all my favorite people - it's the first time that college is in session on my birthday. My friend brings me a tall bottle of chai latte, because she’s younger than me and couldn’t buy alcohol yet as I was turning 21. I obviously love chai lattes. A long letter is attached, which I read and kept on the mantel above my bed until I moved from that apartment a year and a half later. (2014)

I’m not sure what will happen this year, but you know, it’s a long weekend, I’ve accumulated another year of life experiences, and in a way, I'm easily pleased: I need to celebrate only a small amount to be richly reminded that I'm thankful for the people who care about me and also to remember that I have to up my age counter by one once again.

A Stage of Development - Main Update January 2016

Recently, I’ve been wondering about New Year’s resolutions and why they’re so popular, to realize that it signals hope for change and provides a logical deadline of one year to accomplish your goals. Resolutions have never really worked for me because the Gregorian calendar timeline isn’t particularly motivational. However, insofar that each day of each week in life has its own mini-resolution, things have indeed undergone change and progression.

Speaking of all these plane pictures, I was on a recent flight in which it was nighttime and we were descending. As the plane dipped and turned, the pinpoint stars spun as if we were soaring through the cosmos, the sound of silence gracing peace to the anchorless motion. It was incapturable on camera.

In the past six months since I started this blog, one of the defining arcs has been that I have become more acclimated to my job, a point of focus in my life and a source of satisfaction at this step of success.

After new job training in the summer, my first project had all the ingredients of a great transition project to a post-college full-time job: it was locally-based with a small team, and was quite short. Still, in that period, I was surprised by two things related to change. One was how surprisingly challenging it was to manage change and how unfamiliar I was with it due to an apparently very stable past few years. The second insight was that despite an extraordinarily new environment, my internal self and preferences remained very consistent, even though one thinks they will adapt with the surroundings. Really, these two realizations funnel into one insight which is that I overestimated my ability to adjust, and in that process, I discovered myself a little more by noticing the parts of me that remained impervious to environmental shifts against the parts of me that did change.

After the first, my second project was in Boston, which was another good stepping stone in the sense that I have several good friends who moved to Boston post-college and their proximity helped me feel less displaced. Compounded by the fact that the burden of the travel logistics each week was fairly low, this was a good opportunity to acclimate to the travel aspects of my travel-heavy job. I leave out the several ways in which this period of time was not optimal, because the point is that I continued adjusting.

As an aside, Boston is interesting in that many things operate like a big city but it has a smaller city feel. It’s well-developed with good food options and an easy transportation system. The speed of the assembly line at popular lunch places is in my mind ranked one-two with the speediest cities in the country, based on anecdotal observation. On the flip side, the city isn’t full of steel and glass and the streets aren’t all packed and dirty, so one could conceivably describe parts of Boston as “quaint” if that isn't offensive to the Boston sensibilities.

Following the Boston project, I helped with internal work in an industry that I hadn't worked in before. This turned out to be a great way to take a temperature of how much I liked that industry, which is really the whole point of the first few years of consulting. There are lots of other points, but a big point is exploration.

Now, I’m on my third project, quite far across the country. As I become increasingly familiar with my projects and my company, my brain will continue to release more space to process new questions and new information, the themes of which will inevitably trickle into the next main update I’m sure.

In other random news, I rolled over most of my vacation days from last year because I still don’t really understand how to use them. The concept of self-selected breaks is foreign after a lifetime of schooling. Also I’m the kind of person who rarely spends my loyalty points from any brand anywhere, because if I spend them, it has to be darn worth the irrecoverable points. It's slightly irrational, but still, the same concept applies.

These are the tough issues that we contend with in the adjustment to adulthood. Onwards and upwards to the next six months.

Laughter Around the House

Lately, I’ve had more free time than usual and you know what that means: shenanigans.

I have a hair-trigger sense of humor inherited from my mom. My dad’s jokes, sad to say, set the bar even lower. All in all, I’m not equipped with the greatest foundation for comedic judgment and I think that my brain has resorted to sorting things haphazardly into either of two categories, the hilarious or the unbearably stupid.

For example:
Kristen Bell, career Youtubers, Keegan Michael Key – hilarious.
Big Bang Theory, SNL, Minions – stupid.
You see?

     

My father and mother, represented in the most accurate way I can think of, which is Peanuts form

With some extra creative energy to spare, here are a handful of ways I have made myself laugh recently as well as other accidental things I have stumble across.

Love note to my sister Katie along with the Fedex package I sent her:

        

Reading old yearbook notes:

“Dearest Faith,
[etc. etc.] Thank you for all of the Calc help (aka cram sessions during Psych). It seems like every time you helped me out, you would correct yourself the day after…”

“Faith,
[etc.etc.] My greatest regret is not being able to trip you with my lanyard. Me and Nick wasted an obscene amount of time trying in class.”

Accidentally purchasing this tiny perfume on the right, thinking it would be ten times larger:

Other items of this size: eye drop bottle, chapstick, dandelion fuzz ball

Bonus clip of our Roomba vacuum cleaner turned mom-approved house pet, "Googoo", in action:

Well done, Googoo, very thorough

Credit for design resources: oddhearts@deviantart

Previously On...: A Compendium

Recently and delightfully, I've been able to stay current on my panel of shows, or certain favorites at least. As this Golden age of television marches on, I have curated a small list of shows that fall within my very specific and disparate tastes. Included among the ranks are:

The Good Wife:
Having been a loyal follower since Season 3, I am satisfied that it is now Season 7 and the writing is still so quality. The episode titles follow a palindrome pattern – one-word titles in Season 1, two in S2,... up to four in S4. Then S5 titles go back to three words, and if you do the math, we’re now at one-word titles in S7. Will there be a Season 8? Nobody knows.

                                                             The Good Wife in One word: JuliannaMargulies
                                                                                             Two words: Legal drama
                                                                                            Four words: Not cheesy  Not easy

Limitless:

I stumbled upon this flipping through hotel tv channels one night, and my power of intuition told me within minutes that I liked it. It’s a new show and a little rough around the “snappy” dialogue edges but right up my alley for brilliant, above-the-norm main characters. What can I say, there was a hole where White Collar used to be.

Better Off Ted:

A Netflix show that ended a few years ago, the super dry humor is amazing and everyone I recommend this to love it. I like Portia de Rossi who plays the corporate shark archetype Veronica, who is laser focused on the bottom line though is occasionally forced to contend with unfamiliar concepts like empathy or humility. So close, Veronica, yet so far.

Scandal:

I still haven't decided whether Scandal is artistic and culturally progressive or if it’s so dramatic it’s trashy. I just like that they talk fast and I hate that I never get to watch it live while all the actors are live tweeting.


Other good shows if you’re looking for ideas:
Madam Secretary – if you like capable characters and strong female leads
Sherlock – if you are a human being; next season airs at the beginning of next year, finally!
Mindy Project – if you like hilariously confident female main characters
Lie to Me – if you have Netflix and like procedurals as much as I do. I seriously have the longest list of both good and moderately acceptable procedurals (Standoff, Psych, Numbers, House, Scorpion, CSI Cyber).

Shows I’m looking forward to:
Heartbeat – with the actress Melissa George (who played guest characters on several shows on this list) starring as, yes, the grand synchronization of a female lead in a procedural dramedy
Younger – season two of an unusual plotline, starring the naturally talented Sutton Foster

I kind of want to say that I need something else going on in my life, but wouldn't that get too real.

A Motivating Factor

Even when things get busy, I usually manage to fit one or two episodes of TV watching on the weekends. You always make time for the things you like to do, and I definitely like to stack up the pillows on my bed on a weekend, turn the bedside lamp on, and settle in for a good story about my character peeps solving their world-changing problems time after time. So when it's 10:30pm on a Tuesday and I'm still at work, the version of myself in TV-watching position is what I imagine when I envision the light at the end of the tunnel.

Though TV is typically an evening activity, what happened near the end of a recent trip was that I got too tired and unmotivated for exercise in the morning so decided that as an incentive, I'd put on an episode of some good show whenever I went to the gym.

(Side note: I've always wondered how people can watch the news while exercising. It sounds like a double whammy situation. As my Econ professor would say, just stick with the single whammy. I recall recording this joke on the margin of my Econ notes in college. Yes, good times.)

I ended up playing Scandal while "speed walking" on an inclined treadmill every morning the final week of that project, which, though is concessionary and barely exercise, still made my days better. I'm convinced. At any rate, it took two and half mornings of gym time to watch through a single episode of drama, not to mention it got awkwardly tricky when certain scenes came up. All in all, it was a fairly unsatisfying viewing experience, but was surprisingly effective at getting me out of bed.

Tricks of the trade for ya, although I don't recommend sharing with your Soulcycling coworkers the fact that sauntering in front of your laptop-turned-TV is your new favorite way to work out. You just won't win.

One Food Item Only

Question #14 on the 50 Facts About Me tag asks If you had to eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Given that I eat this particular thing once or twice a day already (unless I run out of it), I am super inspired to answer this question – it's the delicious, nutritious Greek Yogurt with Berries.

Here, let me show you:

Components:

  Huge dollop of Greek yogurt, plain or honey

  Blackberries

  Raspberries

  Blueberries

  Roasted Pecans


Triumvirate of Food Objectives Achieved:

  Protein

  Fruit

  Sweetness


If you're using plain yogurt, you can add a spoonful of raspberry preserves or lemon curd.

    or    

For interesting texture and to join the superfood bandwagon, add the miraculous chia seeds. (DL on chia seeds: Add water, wait, stir. Gelatinous and a little earthy-tasting. Loads of fiber and other things.)

A quick Google search has revealed to me that there are no set questions to the Facts About Me tag. The tag is just 50 facts that you share about yourself, so actually there is no defined question 14. But anyway, I shared that one fact and now you know.

Was That Really Intermediate Level? - Charlotte, NC

I have a handful of bruises to show for last weekend's adventure. Under no circumstances will I take pictures of them, though I strangely always want to take pictures of bruises and tan lines.

Charlotte is quite nice. Someone made a good point that since the U.S. is only a couple hundred years old, there's only so much culture that has developed in each city, especially compared to places like Berlin or Beijing.

However, I can be easily entertained, so several good meals and a few points of interest make for a solid weekend excursion, which is exactly what happened.

The Great Outdoors Created by People
Unanimous opinion across travelers' guides agree that one certain wilderness park is the best location for fun in Charlotte. Essentially, the park built a man-made whitewater course and strung a series of "ropes" courses high up in the trees within this medium-sized outdoors area. My travel companion and I spent most of Saturday running around inside it, and while I'm still a little confused why this national park, which shouts "mountains" to me, was built in the middle of North Carolina, which shouts "beach", I fully concur with the experts on the quality of entertainment. It was super fun.

We did rafting and a lot of ropes courses, the latter of which constitutes of myself in a harness connected to a steel guide wire above me. I inch across taut wires, ropes or wooden plats hung at foot level between trees and poles, and the goal is to get from tree to tree through segments of varying balance-difficulty. I'm pretty sure all of my bruises were from this one course where wooden beams hung vertically from a wire above. The 2-by-2's are installed with grips you see on rock walls, so like a precarious monkey, you climb from beam to beam going sideways until you reach the tree at the end. That was Intermediate difficulty. Like, what.

But also, we ziplined, and I think that was a fair reward.

U.S. National Whitewater Center

Food, Food, Food

      

     

Smelly Cat Coffee Shop; BBQ and fried corn; Cookie Butter Latte; The Crispy Crepe brunch

Chilling on Sunday
We looked on Groupon for activities, of which they had plenty... on every day but Sunday. Since most things were closed, we wandered around different neighborhoods, stopping by a Latin American street festival uptown for example.

Despite the fact that Charlotte felt a little small, I was impressed by the remarkable variety of unique skyscraper designs within the central district, which added a certain quirk and interest to the city. This is synecdochic of my takeaway impression generally: that Charlotte seems to be a scaled-down city done well.

    

Uptown; Transit system

“There is No Typical Week In My Life”

I have a proposition for myself, and it is that I will buy and enjoy one fruit tart pastry each and every week that I am on a travel project. There are no conditions and no quid pro quo. I'm not even obligated to have a fruit tart if I didn’t want one that week, although I’m not sure what unusual event would cause that circumstance to arise.

Side note, speaking of quid pro quo and other words or phrases that one might look up, I recently watched an episode of the Good Wife and had to pause it twice to look up new words until I gave up and went on inferring definitions. Side-side note: I am so delighted by the commencement of TV season again.

As I was saying, this is paradigmatic of a personal tradition, a bakery-sourced tartlet on a weekly consumption cycle. Quite frankly forming such a habit is otherwise meaningless but for the theoretical relief that there’s one less decision you have to consciously make during the week (and one more certainty you can bank on).

To give you a snapshot of my current weekly traditions and activities, here’s the set-up. Mindy Kaling’s most recent book has a chapter one chapter outlining her day-to-day activities by the hour. A highly engaging, fly-on-the-wall read. This series illustrates what a recent week looked like for me, as I break into my new rhythm.

Main Post | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday

"There is No Typical Week In My Life" - Monday

Monday

Morning 4:15am: I wake up way before sunrise to fly out to work. Sometimes, my mom has prepared something for me like a fruit salad. It’s very cozy when I get to carry away something homemade - the very real perks of living with my family. By the way, ‘living with family’ seems to sound better than ‘living with parents’.

5:30am: The Uber that takes me to the airport has a leather dashboard that gently gleams against the still-black morning. I'm not quite ready to wind up for the day, so I take it easy and interchangeably think quietly or read the New York Times daily briefing on my phone. (Interesting fact: the New York Times features most consistently among the papers that the "most successful" people read regularly. I did a background check on the NYT before subscribing.)

6:20am: I’m in the back of a long line through TSA, trying to deep-breathe away the bubbling freak-out over being late for my flight. I get through with time to spare as always, because the line moves faster than what I fear. Sometimes however, my belated boarding sticks me with subprime real estate in the overhead bins for my luggage.

9:30am: I get breakfast in the office this morning and also every other morning, which is a healthy habit I'm happy about. Fruit, greek yogurt with granola, oatmeal, Naked juice, or potentially a granola bar - something from that list. I’ve been known to grab a cheeky fruit tart while I’m at the bakery to save for later and there was that one time I bought kombucha tea, only to take a sip and put it away because it tastes like alcohol (it’s non-alcoholic, but fermented, and the classification may or may not be a fuzzy subject).

Evening circa 7:30pm: At some point in the evening, I leave the office and go back to my hotel room. I’m usually hungry, but it’s Monday so it’s also a relief/chore mixture to have to unpack. I also want to respond to any personal texts or emails I hadn’t seen from the day. There’s a bit of triage going on here where I have to order Postmate or Seamless food first because it takes time to arrive. But I had texted a couple people on my ride to the hotel, so I’m in conversation with one of them now. And this reminds me that I should message someone to move a hangout from tomorrow to Wednesday, so I better text them before I forget.

8:30pm: I stalk my Postmate via his moving icon on the map until my food finally comes. The food is never what I expect but I’m hungry so it’s fine. It’s always my own fault to order from an app where I can’t see any pictures and furthermore to order from a different restaurant each time because I like to try new things. The food is still fairly good and I can't complain.

Main Post | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday