Our holiday parties are not so much about holiday spirit as much it is about playing cards. This might be potentially the most complicated game I've ever played.

Seashell pt 4

End of the world

Things I spotted around Fort Myers today. Great little town.


Death from Obesity.


Death by space vehicle/alien abduction. But on a more serious note, wtf?


"Ahhhh! The Big Pincher's got me!!!" Poor Jack holding onto his Rose's pincers till death do they part...So sadistic...and then so delicious...

Sea Shells pt3

So I kind of don't get it

It's so weird to me now that I'm grown up to see all of these public service announcements targeted at getting girls to want to be smart/scientists. I got this message pretty early on because I have a mom with a Chemistry phd and I knew many female scientists growing up (plus being Asian, you learn to equate smartness with success at a very young age regardless of gender), and it's really interesting to me that something that I have grown up with as a norm is like this underdog thing that other people see as a movement.

I started noticing this when everyone started sharing this Kickstarter project called GoldieBlox on facebook. I appreciated the toy for its clever business idea of targeting the totally untapped market of building toys for girls, but the toy itself didn't seem that creative/appealing (especially compared to legos!) and I don't see how the spinning blocks with too much pink is actually going to be fun to play with. BUT, it's certainly still better than another barbie doll with a new outfit.

Then today, I saw this picture on facebook

Does this image make sense? For the people who want to promote smart girl power, is it actually a good thing? Or does it ironically undermine the whole idea of being a smart? What if we saw a similar statement like "Smart Guys Are Rich" or "Pretty Girls are Smart", would it make ANY sense at all? I guess what irks me is that by trying to get girls to believe that being smart is an attractive quality the people who are in charge of it are employing the same rhetoric as superficial women's magazine (which I by the way do like to read at times) and reaffirms the belief that all girls should want to be pretty because it's a female priority!

The weirdest one I've come across so far is this video called "Science, It's a Girl Thing" made by the European Commission that tries to get girls interested in science by linking it to cosmetics! It's such a horrible concept! Girls are interested in cosmetics because ALL OF SOCIETY tells them that they should be from a very early age and that being pretty is all that matters. Isn't it pretty obvious that we're never going to get girls truly interested in science because they think it's going to make them pretty. Sooner or later, they're going to realize that it doesn't make them PRETTY but it will make them SMART. For me, being smart is an important quality ON IT'S OWN MERIT, so why don't they just promote that? I think "Smart Girls are Bad Ass MOFOs" would make for a better message.

Boston

I got to interview with a company in Boston this past Monday, and it gave me a good chance to hang out with Lily the night before! Lily was such a great host and took me around her neighborhood. This picture was taken at the adorable colonial inn that I was staying in. We had some hecklers and Lily was worried that they thought we were a Lesbian couple. LOL. At least we're being open minded and interracial about it!

Fun pictures

Some of my most interesting appearances in other people's profile pictures! A good LOLZ deserved!
Tacky holiday sweater party from junior year. From the tattoo on the hand of the eye-culprit, I know that this hand does not belong to Ray, but rather one of my suite mates. Courtesy of Ray's profile pictures.

Senior year Halloween with the Pony Club. We were all dressed as characters from the children's show Arthur. The group is clearly separated into two camps of great thinkers. Another picture courtesy of Ray's profile.


Picture courtesy of Lisa's profile pictures. Halloween 2012!


Picture courtesy of Megan's profile pics. I'm not really sure what happened to me during the last weeks of senior year, but I guess I looked like this!

The Capital building


The best part about Madison: Lisa!

Epic

Today, I interviewed with Epic, a healthcare IT company in Madison Wisconsin. I don't know if I'm weird or something, but I really ENJOY interviewing and today's interview which lasted from 9am-4pm was a blast. There were many tours and many meetings with different people. My voice quivered the entire time for my 10 minute presentation, which was a bummer, but I stayed pretty comfortable in case studies and the other interviews, so I think overall, it was positive! Keeping my fingers crossed!
Nari and Kim would LOVE this place. Even though they are a multi-billion dollar company, their company entrance reads "Welcome to the Intergalactic Universe" (or something like that), and alllll of their buildings are themed and decorated according to their theme! There was Andromeda (which was very astronomical), Heaven (really white and with angels and happy things like slides and babies and flowers), and even Dungeons and Dragons, etc.


Beautiful holiday decorations against a Midwest sunset

Thanksgiving

What a party! And I got to play more 升级, brush up on my pool, and also hang out with my favorite 3 year old!

Getting dressed for our lunch picnic, apparently she told her mom that she wanted to 臭好几个美。 So CUTE. David and Ray both lurking in the back.


I found out that her favorite animals are all black and white. For example, pandas, penguins, and whales.

Today was one of those weird days that was really good. My mom and decided to leave school early to see a sand castle competition on the beach. It was so nice to feel the sand underneath my feet and to see some very creative Holiday-themed sand castles. #ChristmasinFlorida.

Then we stopped at this taco shack called Yo Taco! and had super gross not even Taco Bell status tacos. I've been crazy crazing Mexican food for a while (like carnitas and heavy sour cream with some rich guac yummm), but the tacos ended up being so disappointing that they reminded me of a worse version of elementary cafeteria food.

The rest of my dinner consisted of a stop at 7-eleven for a can of Dr. Pepper (I desperately wanted something to wash the taco taste from my mouth) and a king size Kit Kat bar, and as I was listening to Justin Bieber's "Love" blasting on the radio, everything just felt so perfect and great! I had one of those moments where everything felt "just right". The nasty tacos, the 7-eleven, the unhealthy snack food that I made into a dinner, and Justin Bieber on the radio all came together and culminated in this moment that was so totally authentically trashy (or as Chi called it, "Amurican") and made me feel like a million bucks!... Weird huh?

It made me happy like drinking hot cocoa by a fireplace (other things that could be added to make this moment even more perfect are PJs, a wooden lodge, maybe some Christmas music in the background, and a nice snowfall outside the window). Or it's like wearing a flowy dress on a summer night and there's a nice breeze but not too much and I'm standing under full moonlight and my favorite 90's boy band song comes on the radio, and it's so romantic that I can only think of how perfect the moment is and nothing else.

All this being said, I would like to eat better food in the future.

Shell series 2

Today, I added color to a shell that I drew, and it turned out not so fantastic. I sketched in pencil and then added color with colored pencils. I've been thinking about this for a while, but I can't figure out what medium to use. I thought color pencils would be nice because I have good control, but on the downside, the colors are limited and I can't mix them to get a range of colors. Back when I was in high school, there was this one kid who could make the most incredible and intricate drawings using a selection of colored pencils. All of us were blown away especially because he just decided to try his hand at art in his senior year (no big). Seeing his drawings perhaps has misled me into thinking that I could achieve similar results. Any medium suggestions? I'm currently thinking watercolor with pen outlines or chalk pastels that are more mixable?

Still being a tourist in my own town

Mom says ARRRRGGG!



What can I say, I'm a "female dog". Haha

Finally became house-wifey enough to try one of those online "craft" ideas.

Cambridge

I just came back from an interview in Cambridge and it was a great break from Fort Myers. It was the first time that I've been flown in/put up in a hotel by a company, and I felt very grown up! The interview itself went over just OK and I so desperately wish that I could have been more articulate. Interview aside, the trip was great, and I saw so many friends! I got a tour of Harvard Law from my high school prom date, and then my old counselor from freshmen year gave me a tour of the Harvard Business School. I am keeping my fingers crossed for a final interview with the impact investment firm--how often in life do you come across a job that is EXACTLY what you want to do? If there is a God out there, please help me! :)


I thought the Yale shirt with the question mark was pretty funny. Otherwise, so elitist...


They put me up in a hotel called "The Inn at Harvard"


A Turkey?/Peacock? spotted crossing on the streets of Cambridge. I couldn't figure out if it were wild or someone's escaped dinner.


The Turkey-Peacock had second thoughts about crossing after cars refused to treat it as a legit pedestrian.


I thought this was pretty cute, though I couldn't figure out why it said New York Life.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

I've never been a fan of reading Shakespeare plays in high school (though performing the role of Lord Capulet in Romeo and Juliet for 9th grade English was pretty fun), but I have got to hand it to movie makers, they DO manage to make these plays into pretty stand-out movies. Last night I watched A Midsummer Night's Dream (the one with Michelle Pfeiffer), and it was indeed very beautiful and enchanting, as the name suggested it that it would be. I caught some of the zingers and clever banter, but methinks it could stand on aesthetic merits alone. The plot line was so-so, but I might also feel indifferent to it because I've seen it performed too many times in ballets or whatever random context.

Much Ado About Nothing (the one with Emma Thompson, Denzel Washington, and Keanu Reeves) was the first Shakespeare movie that I was totally blown away by and I still regard it as one of my favorite movies. I don't know which one I should watch next (any suggestions?), but good thing there is a Shakespeare section in most libraries!

Painting

Trying to channel my energy into a more productive outlet than gossip girl season 5. I haven't painted in a while and so today, I put myself to the simple task of painting from a picture. For my subject matter, I chose a stamp from the collection "Earthscapes" that I mentioned a whiles back.

I thought a blown up stamp would be a good pop art project that'd fit well with my enigmatic collages and Marilyn diptic. I was torn between making the painting an abstraction and adding detail, and ended up doing both and making it look really messy like this. Next time, I'll try to stick with one idea instead of half-heartedly doing both...

Music update

Bridgit Mendler, some Disney actress who I've never heard of has released an album that I've grown very fond of. My favorite song on the album is "Hurricane", but the single "Ready or Not" is pretty good too. The songs are super catchy and are like a cleaner version of Katy Perry. Even though this album is probably targeted towards tween girls, it speak to me and I like it! Am in the tween girl marketing category? Who knows, I certainly do like Justin Bieber so it is a possibility. It's not often that I find a whole album that I like, so I highly recommend this one! I hope she'll make it to the top of the music charts--her songs are certainly catchy enough to do it.

Halloween!

My first year ever not participating in door to door trick or treating activities. Felt like such a grown up handing out candy and being all cool. Kids are so rude sometimes, and didn't even say trick or treat! They just come up to you with their bag open! I had a really great time handing out candy to cute kids in costumes. Looking at the crowd, I do regret trick or treating in high school a little bit. Even though it was great fun for my friends and I, the people handing out candy clearly only have an interest in seeing cute babies walk around and are not interested in high school kids at all.
Does that look familiar? Oh yeah, that's right, I totally brought back the water bottle hair-do. It was pretty well received by the trick or treaters, and many girls even asked me how I did it!

A pair of witches with my mom

Cute cupcake

Kinda cool!


I saw a few lady bug costumes and now I really want to be a lady bug for Halloween next year. They are SO cute!

Saturday party

Our youngest guest came dressed in costume!

Thinking about Financial Services

Lately, I've been trying to reconcile my new-found interest in working in financial services. In college, it had never crossed my mind, but now, a financial services firm, State Street, has become my top choice for the next step. In fact, just to participate in State Street's final round interview, I gave up an offer at a marketing consulting firm. Some of you guys might find my new path funny or strange because you probably never thought I'd go into finance. Truth be told, when interviewing for a financial services firm and one of my interviewers asked me "what do your friends think you'd be doing after college", my immediate answer was, "well, not financial services...*nervous chuckle*". I'm not sure if that was the best answer...but anyhow.

So why now? And what about sustainability?

After much thinking, I've actually reconciled the whole bit quite well. I went into Environmental Studies to be a productive problem solver. However, in the summer of 2010 (when I was in Turkey working for a semi-governmental environmental consulting firm), I had the realization that while I had great motivation to tackle sustainable development projects, the usual end-points for environmentalists were non-profits, think tanks, and government jobs, which didn't come across to me as being all that effective. Yes, people were motivated in bringing about a greater good, but their influence was weak. To realize a true difference, they relied on persuading someone else to make a change and could not be direct drivers of change themselves. Corporations (and also wall street) on the other hands have enormous influences. If I want to be a productive problem solver, I can't be stuck at a place that doesn't get things done and I can't work at a place that doesn't try to solve the problems I want to solve either.

I then sought to combine my interest in sustainability (the answer to a problem) with business (an effective vehicle to deliver the solution). On this track, I started working at the Yale Office of Sustainability to calculate the financial returns on their investments in sustainability. I was also thinking along these lines when I decided to start building my own social enterprise, Sprout, with Ray and Mike. A social enterprise that addressed environmental and social issues was the perfect vehicle for me to both tackle the problems I wanted to solve while being effective.

Now that Sprout is a thing of the past, I've arrived at a new crossroad...and I'm quite excited about the direction it might take me! Regardless of whether or not I will work in financial services in the upcoming year (aka, whether or not State Street will hire me), the whole job search process has allowed me to brainstorm many options that I haven't realized existed before.

The new idea is: what about sustainability and finance?

Sustainability is becoming more and more connected with the role of the CFO. In hard economic times, investments in energy efficiency and other cost-cutting "green" projects have found a niche with CFOs who can claim to doubly reap the benefits of cost-savings and better corporate image. Lately, CFOs have also begun to make sustainability a strategic investment in ways beyond cost-cutting. I am not aiming for one of those CFO jobs, but I think there is a potential niche in the future for those who can occupy the dual realm of sustainability and finance. One potential opportunity is sustainability related investing (like what I did at the Yale Office of Sustainability). Investments are still made on the basis of profitability, however, the only projects considered are limited to ones that are considered socially-good. Just today, I've received the offer to do first round interviews from one such impact investing firm, New Island Capital--and I'm pretty psyched! Maybe they'll hire me. :) There are also more traditional investment possibilities such as forest resources, other natural resources, energy, transportation, etc. A skill set in finance becomes a vehicle through which I can serve the purpose of sustainability.

Instead of thinking of finance as a bad thing (an opinion that was no doubt influenced by my days of working for a mortgage consultant in the summer of 2008--the height of the US housing bubble burst--and the collapse of the world's economic system in my first few days of college), I've come to understand finance as the allocation of capital where it is needed. The people who work in this industry are like firefighters, but instead of delivering water, they deliver money, and instead of fighting a natural disaster, this disaster is usually man-made.

Finance isn't a bad thing in of itself, it just has a poor reputation in the US because it is poorly regulated and have all the wrong incentives in place. Give any industry the wrong incentives that encourages corruption and a lack of accountability, and they'll surely become "bad" too. For example, if doctors could receive generous paychecks from from pharmaceutics companies in the form of prescription "commission" and suffer no consequences if a patient found the drug to be ill-prescribed, the bad incentives and lack of accountability would also make the medical profession "bad", even though the inherent services of a doctor--that of treating patients for a disease--is good. I'm sure this is happening in some form in the US, but it's especially acute in China, which is why I never want to go to a Chinese hospital. ever.

So this is my inspired rant after watching the documentary "Inside Job", which was really well made (and also narrated by Matt Damon!). It's a much harsher, convincing, and entertaining condemnation of the current financial system/the players involved than the other documentaries I've watched on the topic (such as "The Meltdown" and "The Flaw"). Of the three, I'd definitely recommend "Insider's Job" which was more informative and had interviews with some of the important characters. You also finish the film really wishing someone would eff up Goldman Sachs who seems to have made money off selling risky stocks to pension funds and then profited when it came to light that the loans were bad because Goldman Sachs got themselves insured. You also kinda hate the fact that all the CEOs/big fishes got to keep their big bonus checks even though their companies went bankrupt (no accountability, sigh).

I am glad to report that State Street, the financial services firm that I want to work for, has remained relatively clean in this industry.

Happy Birthday Hilary!

Just blogging and wishing a happy 65th to my girl Hilary Clinton. I've narrowed down my girl crushes to like 3 people, and Hilary Clinton is definitely on the list (the other two, in case you're curious are Natalie Portman for Leon and her awesome SNL short and Tina Fey, who never fails to make me laugh. I love Emma Watson too because her pixie cut is so cute, but she hasn't made me laugh yet). In celebration of Hil's birthday, I'm posting a few links that other people have created because they love her too!

Textsfromhilary.tumblr.com

A video titled "Bitches is the New Black" by Tina Fey.

And 65 Reasons Why We Love Hilary!
Oh yeah, and I promise to finish reading your biography someday.

movie watching

What's an unemployed person to do when they're not applying for jobs? Watch netflix of course. I've only recently gotten into it, and I'm not sure if I'm a fan of the service ...something about instant demand doesn't work well with me. I like that I used to "work a little" for my movies and my TV programs, such as remembering to tune in on the day that it premiers so that I can catch the episode online for free, requesting it through the library's inter-loan service and waiting a week before I rode my bike to the library to pick it up, or at least driving to the nearby redbox to get it. Netflix is like constantly having a large pizza in your house, and then suddenly, you're binge eating because it was there and you weren't really thinking. We've never really had cable as a kid (maybe like for 2 years), and I kind of like not having the option of "instant" tv. Or maybe it's been so long since I've been idle that all things idle make me feel a little bit bummish.

Or maybe I'm thinking about all this, because the movie that I watched on this lovely Monday afternoon when everyone else was working, studying, or being otherwise productive was about a 30 something year old man who stilled lived at home. It's called "Failure to Launch", and pretty much the plot revolves around said man-child and his parent's attempt to get him out of the house by hiring a "professional" lady friend to seduce him into accepting adult responsibility. The side characters were hilarious and I really loved Zooey Deschanel's aggressive/adorable character.

Birthday celebrations!

Happy birthday mom!

Changing the title, but it's still about 1-800 contacts

I was so impressed with 1-800 contact's customer service that I have to blog about it! First of all, they have a guarantee of beating any competitor's price by 2% (good idea!), so I called, and within 1 ring and NO AUTOMATED MESSAGES, I was immediately connected with an operator who then worked out the deal for me. Because I ordered there like once 5 years ago, they had all my information automatically on file and it was the quickest/most efficient customer service I've ever had! I'm truly impressed.
Anthony mentioned that this post sounds like a spam post
It kinda is, but, it was good service, and after waiting on the phone for like forever with some other companies, I thought it was well deserved.

Butterfly Estates

What's not to like about getting into a room filled with butterflies?

Queen Butterfly


Koi pond!


Butterfly throne

Beach Wedding

While lounging this past weekend at Clam Pass Beach and waiting for the sunset, we also got to watch a beach wedding take place. It was so funny because quite a big crowd gathered to watch the wedding and people who were located fairly closely like us, even turned their beach chairs and towels towards the wedding to get a better angle. I guess everyone likes to participate in happy occasions. Some people even took out their phones to record the occasion. I just snapped a few pictures, and I have no idea why someone would want to record a wedding that they're not even invited to...

Little beach goer going about his business

mini golf

Interestingly enough, Fort Myers is abound with mini-golf courses. We went on a family outing to this pirate themed mini golf course with live alligators! It was my mom's first time playing and we had a lot of fun!

Santa Barbara

Erika's wedding. I really liked that both her and Peter walked down the aisle at the same time and that they were accompanied by both parents.

Natalie and Julia!

Nari, my lovely host, striking a ballerina pose in the SB courthouse. Look familiar?

View from the parking lot rooftop