Oxnard --> DC --> Harrisburg --> NY --> DC

This week is a twofer. Feel kinda bad for missing my streak of writing every week. AGH!

The blog helps me remember a lot. I was riding the Megabus from NY to DC earlier this week. Zoning out, staring out the window and feeling kinda bad that I hadn’t written a post last week. I tried to think about what I had done the week I missed the blog post and realized that I could barely remember a single detail! An entire week of memories lost to the wind.

On the other hand I’ve written about some pretty mundane weeks to this blog and—despite the monotony—even those weeks still feel like a full week of memories.

This ties into my working theory on time where the more distinct memories you accumulate in a period of time the longer that time will feel. So the plan here is on my deathbed (hopefully 100+ years in age) I’ll read through every post of this blog and truly feel like I’ve lived a rich and lengthy life. Hope you stay in business that long, Squarespace.

Anyways… I write this from my bedroom desk back in Oxnard. Been all over the place these past two weeks.

We start at the week of June 6th.

This week I mostly prepped for my trip to DC. Besides prepping I continued my new habit of skateboarding to the local Starbucks which helped break up the restlessness from being stuck in the house all the time.

I also started reading Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro after hearing his name pop up a few times. I particularly like “Come Rain or Come Shine” where a foreign language teacher is invited to his friend’s house to save his friend’s marriage. It turns out he was chosen to save the marriage because he’s such a loser that the husband hopes to look good by comparison.

I also hung out with Yang and we watch In the Heights (fun watch for the dancing but the plot seems to go nowhere…).

Later this week I flew into DC to explore the neighborhood/see apartments with Harry.

I had the best tagliatelle I’ve ever had at Via Sophia. I also picked up one of my favorite/addicting East Coast snacks.

The next day we met up with Apollo and drive to Annandale to hang out at the Koreatown. We anticipated a solid Koreatown (maybe a lil worse than the NY/LA spots) and were somewhat disappointed. Annandale Koreatown turns out to be a couple of strip malls with a couple Korean restaurants sprinkled in. They do have a Gopchang Story which is a pretty fire intestine restaurant (not a huge fan of intestine but this is delicious).

Apollo was iffy on the intestine so we went to Kogiya for KBBQ (where we end up eating some intestine anyways…). Kogiya is decent but probably wouldn’t go out of my way again. NY/LA KBBQ is on a different level.

The next day Harry and I took the train to Harrisburg.

Harrisburg was chill. I got a final iced coffee at Little Amps coffee.

Wandered over to the Capitol where a Trump rally was going on.

Felt like this guy as the only Asian person in the crowd when they started crowing about Beijing Biden.

Final eats in Harrisburg included a meal of Carnitas Birria tacos at Taco Solo and some great Indian (Master’s Chicken Curry, Paneer Tikka Masala) at Nalan Indian Cuisine.

Goodbye Harrisburg.

Spent the next few days in New York.

Crashed with William W at his hotel downtown. Will was lowkey obsessed with going to the water and would suggest it at every event we hung out together 😂. Reminded me of our trip to Japan with Kelvin where we played a stupid game of rock paper scissors every time we saw a body of water (fountain, puddle, river). Loser would have to touch it no matter how dirty or inaccessible.

Hung out with some ex coworkers (Chris, Naveen, Pierce and Naveen’s girlfriend) at Eataly (also ordered a less delicious tagliatelle). I thought the dinner went well but we ended up roasting each other towards the end. As a newcomer to the group William thought we went overboard with the roasts (which might be true).

Met up with a big group of ex Berkeley/work friends the next day (Kelly, Reia, Jason, Nicole, and some of Jason’s friends) at Tsurutontan.

Afterwards Kelly, Reia, Will and I went to Decibel Sake Bar and drank a ton more. Ended the night at 99 Cent pizza in East Village which was unfortunately the only slice of pizza I had on this leg of the trip.

Following day met up with my team for happy hour at PJ Clarks. A bittersweet day with Ishan leaving the team. We drank a ton on company dime and ended up at Das’s family’s restaurant where he overloaded us with delicious, free mango lassi, saag paneer, chicken tikka masala and gulab jamun.

After walking off all those calories I met up with William and Daniel at Small’s Jazz which kicked us over to their sister club Mezzrow. The jazz started off mediocre. Some drunk guitarist who didn’t seem to completely press down on his strings when fingering the chords. A weird plucking technique where he’d pluck one of the notes super loud and shock us every now and then with the volume. His friends came onto stage later and the show got better.

Even then it seemed like they had never practiced together and were playing together for the first time. Some talented soloists that shined in their own moments but didn’t seem to get along with the rest of the band. There was a point in the show where the trumpet player and sax player had a solo battle where they tried to overshadow each other’s playing.

These three days in New York felt very eventful. Fun seeing everyone though. A few thoughts here:

So many people are moving into New York. Especially a bunch of Berkeley people
- Now that the pandemic is wrapping up (hopefully) people want a change of scenery and are shuffling all over the place
A lot of people seem to be moving on career wise for similar reasons.
There are rumors floating around that we might go fully remote… Wonder how that’ll affect my plans

Ended the trip back in DC. Got dinner with Apollo and Harry at North Italia where I got a pretty good bolognese.

Also went to Tatte Bakery several times for some delicious tomato flatbread and sandwiches.

We also wandered around Georgetown.

Stared at the sky for a while on our hotel rooftop. DC is so much quieter than NY.

And THAT’S ABOUT IT. Thanks for reading see ya next week.