Jack-on, Jack-off

Becoming mediocre at many things

[city-fish-blog]

Riding East vs West

I was able to snowboard on the west coast for the first time last week at Kirkwood Resort near Lake Tahoe and can finally compare my experiences riding on both coasts. For the purposes of comparison, I’ll be evaluating Kirkwood with Killington, considered to be the best resort on the East Coast.

Kirkwood Resort

It rained on morning of the first day, making the runs very choppy. Combined with the fog, even the bumpy blue terrain devastated me. Everyone I was riding with was at or above my level, so we mostly stuck to blacks throughout the weekend, which for me meant falling an average of 5 times per run. The most difficult run, which we attempted a few times on the first day, was a double black at the very top of the mountain. The fog was so thick that you could only see a few feet in front of you, and the start of the run was so steep that even experts were going down on just their heel edge. At least the snow was deep enough that falling didn’t hurt. The problem was if you weren’t careful you could fall all the way to the bottom without stopping.

The snow on the second day was much softer and deeper. We spent the morning exploring the back of the mountain cruising down some blacks. From the top of the mountain, you could hike in multiple directions and ride on less chartered terrain, where each fall would completely engulf our bodies underneath the snow. That morning was probably the best riding I’ve had in my life.

Kirkwood was much bigger and certainly had a wider variety of terrain compared to other mountains I’ve visited. Along with the standard steep terrain, we spent some time riding on moguls, deep powder, and halfpipe-like valleys, navigating through both rocks and trees.

There were relatively few visitors considering it was a weekend. We rarely had to wait in line for the lift and there weren’t many other skiers that got in the way of my riding, but that’s usually true for more advanced trails. Surprisingly, the food courts were packed, and there definitely seemed to be a shortage of cafes and seating. Not only that, buying food felt like extortion. I paid $35 for a burger, fries, and a coconut water for lunch the first day, and decided to scale back to just eating a burger for $16 on the second day.

I also wasn’t too impressed with the park features. There were a couple rails, boxes, and a few jumps, but nothing creative: just your standard setups. I did like that they had a section at the bottom with a large box and rail for practicing on, where you could walk back up to the top to try again immediately after hitting the features. It seemed like most people were here for the all mountain terrain rather than the park.

Overall, I had a great time in Kirkwood except for the moment where I had lost my balance after just finishing a run and fell backwards on my wrist, potentially ending up with a hairline fracture.

Killington

It actually rained the night we got to Killington, making it just as foggy as my first day at Kirkwood. The mountain opened up an hour later than usual, allowing the team to carefully groom the bumpy trails. The trails were much less bumpy than Kirkwood was on the first day, but a little more icy.

Killington is the largest mountain I’ve been on in the East, but it only had one peak compared to Kirkwood’s three. While definitely large enough for just a weekend, I would definitely get bored if I frequented the resort. There was also only one lift, the K1 express, that led all the way up to the peak, so we spent a lot more time waiting in line. I did enjoy the fact that the mountain was all connected and well intersected. From the peak, there were trails to basically every corner of the mountain, whereas Kirkwood felt like three different resorts with not much intersection.

Unfortunately, I was with noobs so we spent most of my time riding down blues and greens, but the lengthy trails made it enjoyable. The one double black I went down was much more manageable than the steep double at Kirkwood. It also punished falling more though, since overall the mountain was simply icier than those in the West.

Cafe’s were abundant throughout the mountain, including the very peak. There’s plenty of seating, and the food prices didn’t seem like a scam. Your typical burger was around $10.

The greens were super crowded, and some people annoyingly fall and stay in the middle of the fucking run for way too long. At one point, as I was racing down a green, I tried passing a crowd of people by riding along the edge of the run, unfortunately slipping off the run and hitting my head against a tree, cracking my helmet and concussing myself. Other than that, great trip.

Overview

Overall, my experience at Tahoe was a little better than Killington. Killington may have had more interesting windy trails, but Tahoe had a more diverse terrain. If you can, though, bring your own food.

[city-fish-blog]

Becoming a Wizard

As a Rodman Scholar, it wasn’t a coincidence that I lived with a bunch of nerds my first year in college. One such nerd, Josh, taught me how to play Magic, the Gathering with two of his starter decks that he made. I’ve played with both Yugioh and Pokemon cards in the past, and immediately became addicted to the game without even having seen yet how deep it could be. Chris, Adam, Josh, Dru, and I all either bought some cards or brought our old ones from home, and we started building kitchen table decks1 and playing against each other.

Magic was created in 1993 by Wizards of the Coast, and they’ve been printing new cards every 3 months. There are different formats that you can play in to keep the cards organized: Vintage, Legacy, Modern, Standard, and Limited, ordered from least restrictive (you can pretty much play with any card in Vintage with few restrictions and bans) to most restrictive (only cards printed in the past 1.5 years are legal in Standard). Limited is a special format where players open new booster packs2 and build decks with the cards they open. It puts everyone on the same starting ground in that they have the same chance of opening the same cards, but there is a bit of luck involved in opening good cards.

First MTG Event

After a few months of casual Magic, we decided to checkout our local game store for the Mirrodin Besieged Prerelease3 event. We hopped on a city bus that took us to the mall and then walked another 10 minutes to get to the card shop. There were about 30 players that day, and the event would be 5 rounds cutting to a top 4 single elimination bracket. I somehow made it to the top 4 in my first official MTG event. In game 3 of the semi finals match I topdecked4 a timely Sunblast Angel at 1 life remaining to destroy all of my opponents creatures. The next turn, my opponent topdecked Kuldotha Flamefiend, sacrificing one of his artifacts to deal the last point of damage for the win, but luckily I was holding Soul Parry to negate the effect. I proceeded to win on the next turn. Since it was getting late, the opponent in the finals and I decided to split the prizes ($50 first place and 7 booster packs second place) evenly instead of playing it out. I’m pretty sure he would have beaten me too based on the cards we opened for our decks.

Discovery

There was a beauty in Magic when I moved from casual kitchen table player to semi-competitive local card shop player. I learned to build decks constrained to the standard format, started reading articles to keep up with the latest strategies and top decklists, and discovered drafting. Draft is a limited format where 8 players sit at a table with 3 packs each. Everyone opens the first pack, picks a card, and passes the rest of the pack face down to the left. We keep picking and passing cards until everyone has 15 cards, and then we repeat with pack 2 but pass to the right instead. Pack 3 is back to passing to the left. Players will build a 40-card deck with the pool of 45 cards they picked (usually only using 23 of them and playing 17 lands5). I loved the skill aspect to the format: knowing which cards work well together and keeping track of which types of cards the players next to you are picking (so you can avoid competing with them).

In our second year when we had cars, we were able to visit the game shop more often for their events. I also started playing online where I’ve spent hundreds of dollars over the past 6 years on the addicting and sometimes aggravating experience. Dru and I started building competitive decks and traveling to tournaments together.

Highlights

In my Magic career there are a couple of exciting events that I want to call out to.

Went 4-0 at my second official event and prerelease placing me in third out of 30+ players.

Eventually I started sweeping the limited scene at the local game shop, and they started paying me (store credit) to write strategy articles for them.

Went 6-2-2 at my first Grand Prix, barely missing out on day 2. I was with Adam and Dru during the event, both of whom dropped early on. Adam texted his girlfriend Emily "we want to leave but Lenny won't stop winning".

Beat Brad Nelson, a top pro player, on camera.

Played in a Modern Masters Draft release event with Dru in Seattle. We both were up 4-0 when we got paired in the 5th round with one round to go. We decided to intentionally draw, so we could take first and second place if we both won our last match. We ended up both winning and finishing at 5-0-1, the only undefeated players.

Went 8-1 at Grand Prix Vegas 2015 to make day 2. I ended up cashing in the top 200 of over 5000 players.

During my career I never made it onto the Pro Tour6, but perhaps one day.

Retirement

After graduating college and starting work, I’ve sold most of my cards and given up competitive magic. I will still occasionally attend prereleases, play in the office limited sealed league, and play online when there’s a fun set, but even though I love the game, I loved playing (and winning) with my friends from college more. Traveling to tournaments isn’t as fun when you’re alone, and I just haven’t invested time in making friends in the magic community in NY.

It also hasn’t helped that there’s a negative stigma towards the game. I think a lot of people imagine the typical Magic player to be a man-child who doesn’t shower and lives with his mom. While I have met players like that, they are definitely in the minority. My first two significant others haven’t really supported my playing either.

Perhaps one day when Dru and I are rich and retired, we'll pick up Magic for a year and try to make it onto the pro tour!

Casual decks usually not legal nor competitive in any format. ↩︎

Cards are sold by Wizards of the Coast in this format. There are usually 15 cards per pack. ↩︎

Prerelease is like a launch party for the most recent set of cards and happens every 3 months. The format is a limited sealed event, where each player opens 6 booster packs and builds a 40 card minimum deck to play with. ↩︎

Drawing off the top of your deck. It’s often used to indicate that a player was very lucky, since he wasn’t holding the card in hand. ↩︎

You’re given access to unlimited basic lands to put in your deck for limited events. Lands are used to cast spells in the game. ↩︎

Every 3 months, ~300 players are invited (merit based) to play in the most competitive event. ↩︎

[city-fish-blog]

Forced Humor

"Improv?... You?" my high school and college friends always ask when I tell them about my dabble in improv comedy. On the surface, improv seems to contradict all of my abilities and personality: I’m not known for my creativity, humor, or wit. It’s definitely something past Lenny would never have even attempted to try, and for good reason, as every week for a year I forced myself to attend the dreaded three hours of class.

My introduction to improv was coincidental. My roommate Dru and I both signed up for an introduction class since it fulfilled one of our requirements to take four Rodman Seminar classes before graduating. Dru was talented enough to make it onto the improv team, while I was rejected, the first sign that the hobby was just not for me.

About two years later, as I was recovering from a fractured fibula and aching for some human interaction after being stuck indoors for 3 months, I signed up for an improv class at the Magnet Theater. I couldn’t do anything beyond walking, so any sort of sports1 was out of the question.

The magnet theater offers improv classes from level 1 to 6. Graduating from each level simply requires attendance up through level 4. Once you finish level 4, you have to apply to get into level 5. Once you graduate from the program, you can start trying out for their house teams which play2 every Wednesday.

For the next year, I slowly completed level after level, and even tried some of the other classes Magnet offered such as musical improv and storytelling. I usually dreaded going to class but often came out of it energized and excited, happy with my performance that night. Overall, I found that many of the pillars of improv are applicable to real life.

Yes, and is the most important rule of improv. You accept what your partner gives you and build on top of it. No one likes a party pooper, and you’ll experience more in life by leaning yes to new experiences.

Judgement will only hurt yourself. Yes you should be supportive of your scene partner and shouldn’t judge their decisions, but more importantly you shouldn’t judge yourself. This was a skill I struggled with, as I’m constantly evaluating the decisions I make, both in improv and in life.

Questions are not the best way to progress a scene. Nor are they a great way to impress a date. Actually the only time you should be asking lots of questions is probably during an interview, and interviews are awkward. From improv, I’ve learned to take comfort in saying what’s on my mind to contribute to conversations, rather than asking them a laundry list of questions.

Take your time when setting the scene. Many beginners will rush through the scene and it will look sloppy. In improv, your actions are as loud as your words, so it’s important to spend some extra time making them intentional.

I never made it to level 5. Actually I took level 4 twice and got rejected from 5 both times I applied. It was clear that I wasn’t ready for the next level and that’s when I stopped doing improv. I did get to perform on the main stage for a paid performance3, though, so I’d say my career in improv was a success.

My usual go-to activity. ↩︎

Improv is a game and the performers are "players". The verb for improv, is therefore “play.” ↩︎

It was a diversity show. The audience was small, and everyone else was clearly better than me. ↩︎

[city-fish-blog]

Hiding in the AC

Visiting family back in China leaves quite a mixture of feelings. Suffering through 40 hours of round trip economy travel in order to reunite with all of my extended family for a week. Saying hello to each and every family member and then saying goodbyes a week later. Being force fed delicious food during each meal from every relative and family friend that wants to impress. Sitting in boredom in the AC with all my cousins, uncles, and aunts playing mahjong and card games to death because it’s too hot to go outside.

Attending my cousin’s (dad’s older brother’s son) wedding this year made the trip especially emotional. He, his new wife, and my uncle picked me up from the Changsha airport and we began our two hour drive to Hengshi, the countryside where both my maternal and paternal grandparents live. I immediately regretted sitting shotgun, as my uncle weaved in and out of traffic, honking every half minute, and shouting obscenities at the other drivers while maintaining a perfectly normal conversation with the rest of us. 

We stayed at my paternal grandparents house that night, playing mahjong before and after dinner... and when we woke up the next morning. My uncle, cousin, and cousin in law had to leave for Changsha to prepare for the wedding, leaving just my family and grandparents. Luckily, my maternal side family were planning to pick us up after lunch to go hang out with them.

The downside of having both families live so close to each other is that they always fight to spend time with you, sometimes unreasonably so. My paternal grandmother is always asking us to stay at her place, or to eat with them before leaving. After the wedding in Changsha, she asked us to come back to Hengshi before leaving in two days. I understand that she wants to spend time with us, but it’s difficult to enjoy that time when there’s nothing to do there. I think the rest of my family would agree that they have more fun on my mom’s side, with four aunts and five cousins to play with.

At their house I end up playing mahjong with my grandparents, tractor (Chinese card game) with my aunts, and simple card games like Kemps with my younger cousins. There may be more people my age to play with, but I still get sick of being holed up indoors.

We made out way back to Changsha. My rich uncle spared no expense, and booked 12 rooms in the Meixihu five star hotel for close friends and out of towners. My family was generously given two rooms. 

Hunan weddings require the groom (with his close friends and family) to win the bride from hers. We stormed to her hotel suite, faced with puzzles such as “What’s the bride’s passport number?” and “When’s the bride’s mother’s birthday?” If we couldn’t answer, we had to bribe them with red envelopes. Eventually, we got into the room, and had to complete three more challenges. The groom had to sing, we had to dance, and finally, we had to find the bride’s shoes hidden somewhere in the suite. 

The wedding itself was spectacular and emotional. Mandarin has a certain elegance to it, and listening to the eloquent words from my cousin and uncle brought tears to my eyes. Everything happened very quickly, though, without the American traditions of an extravagant cake or DJ and dance floor. We finished our lunch, took a couple pictures, and everyone retired for the afternoon.

Right after the wedding, my maternal side wanted to take us white water rafting in a mountain three hours away, so we quickly packed up our things and checked out of our rooms. While going down the elevator, they decided that it wasn’t worth driving 6 hours round trip to spend just one day in the heat. Since we already checked out, we decided to stay at a nearby hotel, which is much cheaper than the wedding venue hotel. I stopped by my uncle and newly wed cousin’s to say goodbye, since they were leaving the next day, and they insisted on us staying another night when they heard about our changed plans, so we checked right back into our rooms and unpacked our stuff. Ridiculous. 

I’m glad I stayed to spend time with my dad’s side of the family. A couple of the cousins on my dad’s side that were only in town for the wedding were leaving the next day, so it was my only chance to spend time with them. My mom’s side of the family may have more kids and people to hang out with, but my dad’s side of the family has more cousins my age. We’re all working adults now, and it’s rare that we have the opportunity to be all together in the same dining table. As with most of my conversations with relatives in China, ours quickly turned to comparing salaries, cost of living, and making bets on who’ll be married next.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, as the people who were visiting from out of town slowly trickled away. Eventually, I left too.

[city-fish-blog]

Pretending to be a College Student

I went back to UVA for outreach/recruiting/branding this past week and got to relive my unhealthy college days.

2/4

I flew in Saturday morning, and bribed Kevin, Lydia, and my brother to dine with me at Cafe 88, my favorite hole in the wall place. It’s run by a retired Chinese lady who I befriended during my time at school. The owner remembered me and we had a brief conversation before she cooked up her signature dish for us: beef noodle soup! Yum, tastes like home. She even gave us a free appetizer on the house... can’t let a frequent customer go hungry!

Saturday night, I made Lydia drive me to Cookout, my go to place after a late night playing magic with the hommies.. They’re notable for being open extremely late, and selling cheap burgers/fries and fancy milkshakes. You can get a burger, drink, and two sides for just $5 (better quality than McD, too), but the best part are the customizable milkshakes, where you have the freedom to mix and match any kind of topping ever put on a milkshake and create your own monstrosity. I always get banana + peanut butter + oreo, but the possibilities are endless.

2/5

On Sunday I got to play volleyball with two different groups. The first group was a bunch of Chinese grad students I met during my forth year who played pretty casually. While I’ve gotten much better over the past couple of years, they’ve all stayed relatively the same, and have added new members (a.k.a noobs). The game was a little slow paced, but it was still humbling to revisit the origin of my passion for volleyball.

I also got to play with my friend Emmelyn and her friends. Emmelyn’s sister Lydia was actually the one who first taught me how to play. Since I’ve left, they’ve built up a group, mostly from CSA, of competitive players, two of whom are on the men’s club team. It was the most fun I’ve had playing volleyball recently, a friendly low stakes yet competitive game with lots of cute asian girls to impress.

I dragged my recruiter, Grace, to Peter Chang’s Grill that night. As one of the best Chinese restaurants in Charlottesville, Chang’s Grill was frequently used as a celebration dinner. I remember treating my friends here after signing my offer at Google. It had my favorite dish in all of Charlottesville, the Bamboo Flounder Fish, mainly because I have not been able to find this dish at any other restaurant other than one of Chang’s establishments (he has multiple). 

2/6

I ate breakfast at Bodo's Bagels, which is advertised as having New York style bagels, but it’s better than any bagel place I’ve visited in NY. To be fair, I haven’t gone to that many bagel places in NY, but there’s a joy in stacking all my favorite ingredients on an everything bagel: turkey, bacon, lettuce, avocado, and freshly made eggs.

I chilled in Rice Hall that afternoon before our resume review session and blended in as a college student. Rice Hall was the place where I got shit done. I spent the afternoons between classes and sometimes even on weekends there working away at problem sets and coding assignments.

Grace ordered a gross of cookies from Campus Cookies, one of my many midnight cravings, to give out to students during the resume review. I think I ate half a dozen that afternoon.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. We ended up eating at a lot of fancy restaurants that I would never frequent as a poor college student, but I gotta make use of the $75 per diem that Uncle Sundar gives us.

Notably missing from this trip are the many toxic activities that immature past Lenny wasted time playing: Magic the Gathering, Super Smash Melee, Halo, and Runescape.

[city-fish-blog]

Social Climbing

I started bouldering at BKB Queens a little over a month ago, replacing some of my typical, more toxic, weekend activities. I’ll often climb on Friday nights or weekend mornings when past Lenny would have been out partying and sleeping in.

Climbing passes my social utility evaluation with flying colors.

1) It combines fitness with problem solving, which are two of my favorite activities. I love the rewarding feeling of finally solving a difficult problem after detailed analysis of technique and numerous attempts. They reset the problems at BKB queens often enough that there’s always new routes to try.

2) It’s a great place to meet people as well as socialize with the friends you go with. Already, you have something in common with the people you meet, and it’s very easy to introduce yourself after asking for or giving help on a certain problem.

There’s lots of downtime to socialize while you let your muscles recover so it’s a nice way to catch up with friends without having to grab drinks or food. Burn calories instead of consuming them! Conversations tend to be less awkward because you can just start talking about a specific problem.

3) There are a lot of pretty asian girls who climb here. The better I get, the more tone and stronger I look. Enough said.

In general, I’ve found that most of my sporty activities (volleyball, weightlifting, climbing) are decent ways to be productive and social. The only problem is that my body only has so much capacity for physical activity each day. I’m trying to maintain at least one physical activity (and sometimes two) every day, but there are Saturdays and Sundays where I’ll climb AND play volleyball and still have time to kill...

The other issue with climbing is not enough of my friends do it...

[city-fish-blog]

Genuine

A friend, S, told me that she values people who are genuine when it comes to choosing friendships and relationships. She’s someone who is very genuine right off the bat, whereas I, like the rest of us, am more guarded about how I behave during first impressions. 

As I become more comfortable with a friend or group of friends, my guard drops in favor of “genuineness,” and that’s when the future utility of social interactions finally presents itself. I realized that I enjoy and crave the genuine relationships and interactions the most.

A good example of this was my experience at work. When I first started working, I was cautious of the things that came out of my mouth to avoid offending coworkers and HR consequences if people took me too seriously. Over time, I’ve loosened up, especially now that most of my teammates understand my sense of humor, and I started really enjoying the interactions with my teammates to the point where I consider some of them good friends. There are, of course, a few coworkers who are more sensitive to my humor, but it’s impractical to please and befriend everyone.

Perhaps a solution to my improving my social strategy involves reducing the time it takes to become genuine.  Non-genuine interactions with people are a waste of time and I would benefit from failing faster on certain relationships. People who are offended by or judgmental of my true self would be bad investments of my time and energy anyway.

I will try to meet more people like S.

[city-fish-blog]

Social Strategy

NYC is a social city and we are social creatures with limited time on this planet. I want to discuss social strategy to maximize utility over our short amount of time in life. Let’s start with the goals of attending social events:

Present utility. Enjoying the activity or the company.

Future utility. Making new friends/connections to improve utility of future social events.

Improving mate potential, both casual and long term. I put this in it’s own category since it’s so important to me and kinda fits in both categories above.

I had very few friends when I first moved to NYC, and to maximize future utility, I said yes to pretty much every social opportunity, sometimes to parties where I only knew one or two people. There was also the perception of high present utility since I convinced myself that going to bars and house parties with strangers was fun, and that every now and then, I would meet single girls. Looking back, there were a couple problems with this:

The future utility I gained was very low. I ended up going to a lot of events where I didn’t form any lasting relationships.

Going to a bar or party provides less present utility than sitting at home playing a game or dicking around on the internet. I would suffer from FOMO, but that’s an irrational fear that I need to overcome.

I made a lot of acquaintances, but not many close friends. I used to think that I preferred breadth in friendships over depth (this is a separate topic in itself), but now I’m questioning that preference.

Eventually, I decided that my current strategy wasn’t great in maximizing social utility, so I started embracing my inner introversion; I decreased the quantity of activities with low present utility such as going to bars and house parties where I didn’t know many people. I went from saying “yes” to every invitation to saying “no” to almost every invitation. Instead, I spent the free time I gained working on self improvement in terms of career, fitness, and hobbies. Nowadays I spend a lot more time working, hitting the gym, and on volleyball/improv/reading/writing than I did a year ago.

I don’t think I’m happy. Sure, self improvement is great, and in a year from now I’ll forget about my present sadness and take pride in how much I’ve grown, but does it have to be that way? I enjoy the time I spend on self improvement, but there are different flavors of happiness: a sense of excitement and fulfillment in growth, but an innocent and fleeting joy in spending quality time with friends. Over the past couple of months, I’ve turned into someone who’s forgotten how to have fun for the sake of having fun.

I need to rethink my social strategy moving forward. 

[city-fish-blog]

Baller Class Experience

I was fortunate enough to fly business class for the first time from NYC -> Guangzhou -> Sydney recently. Here’s my experience:

Check In

I got to the airport with the recommended two hours before international flight to spare. Silly me, I forgot that ballers have a special line for them, while all the peasants have to wait around an hour to check in.

I sped through the line in about 10 minutes and headed to the lounge with over an hour to kill. The lounge was crowded and kind of noisy but had a decent selection of food: soup, fried rice, hummus, chicken/tuna salad, vegetables/fruits, liquor, beer, wine, soda, and clean bathrooms. The free Wi-Fi was too slow to do anything interesting, though.

Boarding

I’m in the first group to board. As soon as I sat down and starting taking off my shoes, the flight attendant came over and showed me a bag for them with flip-flops to wear. She also takes my jacket and hangs it up in the back somewhere.

Before the peasants board, we’re asked to order food for the flight. I had no idea business class had extensive multiple course meals rather than the small microwaved peasant dishes.

Flight

I slept okay for the first half of the flight. I’m just slightly too tall to lie down completely comfortably, but it’s still infinitely better than trying to sleep upright. The blanket and pillow are much thicker and comfier than the peasant class equivalents.

The bathroom was much larger than I expected, and included mouthwash and air freshener.

Food was good if you compare it to peasant food, but only average compared to restaurant meals.

Layover

We didn’t stop by a gate, so they shuttled us to the airport from the plane. The peasants had to take the standing bus while we got a VIP van to pick us up and take us to the terminal. I think the only benefit was that we got to sit, and had the perception of special treatment.

Transferring to the international flight was much faster since I was in the sky priority line. They only had two kiosks and one was specifically for VIP. Sucks to be poor.

I had 3 hours to kill, which wasn’t long enough to leave the airport and explore, so I chilled at the VIP lounge where they served breakfast and other goodies.

The second leg of my journey was similar in experience.

Closing

This experience really opened my eyes to the privileges of being wealthy. The rich are treated with dignity and respect, while the poor are treated like second class citizens. Sure it’d be great if everyone treated everyone else with respect, but each person has a limited amount of time and energy. After this experience, I don’t ever want to fly economy class again internationally.

[city-fish-blog]

Sydney Thoughts

I was fortunate enough to visit Sydney for work recently, and here are my unorganized thoughts about the city.

1) Sydney is relatively clean for a city, much more so than NYC. There’s no garbage on the streets, even though there’s not that many public garbage cans. No one jaywalks either, so I assume that people generally follow the laws here.

2) There’s a lot of Chinese people and orientals, and the Asian food is great here. It’s surprising to see a Chinatown that’s very clean because traditionally in the states, Chinatown is the dirtiest place in the city.

3) Sydney is much smaller than it looks on Google Maps. Most of Sydney is suburbia, and the high rises are only found in the city center and along the train station.

4) The bus system is okay, but most people have cars, which means traffic can be bad. They’re working on building a tram system to combat this.

5) The weather is great during the day (tshirt and shorts weather) at this time of year but it gets cold AF at night, especially when it’s breezy. I’ve had to carry a jacket with me when I go out during the day to prepare for nighttime.

6) I’ve seen multiple oriental woman white male couples.

7) Sydney is on a hill, so the elevation varies across the city. This makes walking confusing, since sometimes you have to take random stairs to get to the neighboring street. One of my nights walking back to my hotel, Google Maps told me to walk into a mall, go to the third floor, walk out the back to the parking garage, go up to the 5th floor of the garage, and exit out the front of the garage to the street where my hotel was on.

8) There’s a lot of bars that are advertising “VIP rooms”. Apparently, these are just places with pokies (gambling machines), which are very popular in Australia. The government doesn’t allow bars to advertise having pokies, so instead they use the term “VIP room” where they give you free drinks and food for playing.

9) Everyone is super friendly. I collided with someone on the street and he made sure I was okay and unhurt. Servers are generally pretty friendly. The guy at the gym asked me where I’m from and gave me a tour of the facilities, making small talk.

10) There’s a curfew law. Bars aren’t allowed to let patrons in after 1AM due to recent violence in the Red Light District late at night. However, the patrons are allowed to enter the casino at any time because money.

11) I don’t see that many attractive people on the streets. Much less attractive than NYC on average. The quality on Tinder is also lower than NYC.

12) Minimum wage is $17, so everything is pretty expensive, but there are still homeless people on the street. Not as much as NYC though.

Overall my experience has been great and I could see myself living here. There are so many asian girls and the accent is so hot...

[city-fish-blog]

Switching Bodies

I’ve become more of a health nut over the past two years in NY. A lot of the changes I’ve made were spurred from being single and my desire to have a more successful dating life, but it takes more than motivation to make big changes.

There’s a lot of material out there on men’s fitness: plenty of different diets, workout routines, and lifestyles to try. Motivation without direction would have me trying a new diet/workout every week. Luckily, my old roommate, Kang, gave me direction: “Just do the starting strength program.”

According the the book, Switch, the third requirement (after direction and motivation) for change is shaping the path, changing the environment so that the change is encouraged. My coworker John and I started the ritual of going to the gym three times a week in the afternoon. Over the next three of months, I saw drastic improvement. My bench went from 95 to 135, and my squat and deadlifts both went from 135 to 225. Unfortunately, I then broke my ankle playing volleyball and was out of commission for a good 4 months.

I’m at the point now where I’ve built up a respectable amount of muscle, hitting 1 rm of 225 on bench, and ~ 315 for both squat and bench. I started plateauing, and realized I needed a new direction. My current roommate, David, has been starving himself for the past couple of weeks to get his abs back for his Vegas trip, and it looked effective. While I don’t plan on doing anything as drastic as blacking out during workouts, I decided to focus on a new goal: getting a six pack before the end of the year. I’m attacking this from three angles: cutting fast carbs with my coworker Frantz, counting and cutting my caloric intake with David, and doing HIIT at the end of my workouts with John at the suggestion of my trainer Scott. Going through these challenges with other people to both hold me accountable and encourage me to follow through has been a blessing. I would not have gotten nearly as far without them. Oh, and shoutout to my ex’s, all the girls who have turned me down in the past, and all the girls who have recently admired and complimented my physique. I wouldn’t be anywhere without your motivation.

I’m currently at 12% BF at 195 lb, so I’ll probably have to cut down to around 185 lb while maintaining my muscle mass. Here’s to cutting a pound per day for the next 10 weeks. Wish me luck!

[city-fish-blog]

Throw Away Your Junk and Stop Buying Shit

I’m in the middle of moving, and I realize I have accumulated a lot of junk I don’t use over the past two years: clothes I’ve only worn once or twice, gifts from friends that I don’t use, supplies for random hobbies I never committed to, and so on. When I first moved here, I thought I would be hosting apartment parties a lot, so I wanted to have nice furnishings, but at my age, apartment parties aren’t really a thing and at the end of the day, no one gives a shit that they got drunk from a nice wine glass rather than a solo cup.

It’s all a waste of time, money, and space.

After the move, I’m going to throw out or sell anything I don’t wear or use regularly. My advice for people who are going into college or real life is to

1) Find a furnished place if possible. It’s so nice and cheap to be able to pack your stuff into a couple suitcases and go. Paying a little extra for furnishings is probably cheaper than the cost of moving everything every year or two.

2) Find a style you like and stick to it. I wear a v-neck t-shirt with pants or shorts pretty much everyday now. Mark Zuckerberg wears the same grey t-shirt. Steve Jobs wore the same turtleneck everywhere. There are more important decisions in life than deciding what to wear in the morning.

3) Keep track of where your money is going. When I started using Mint to organize my monthly expenditures, the amount of clothing and other random junk reduced dramatically. Monthly budgets made me rethink whether or not I was going to use or wear something I wanted to buy more than a couple times.

We live in an age of consumerism. Let’s reduce the amount of money big industries make from selling useless shit to us one step at a time.

[city-fish-blog]

Gotham

Last year, I went to a dance battle in Flushing to watch a friend of mine, Ben, perform. When I got there, Ben was sitting by himself, waiting and warming up. He had moved to NY recently so he didn’t know anyone in the community. Throughout the competition, he started getting a lot of attention for his unique style and picked up his own little fan group. Ben ended up placing in the top 8, but earned the respect of his opponent and everyone there. By the end of the competition, there were tons of dancers coming up to him to congratulate him on his performance and chat with him about his style. He went from being a nobody in the community to making tons of new friends in a single day.

Now at the time, I had been in NY for less than a year, and I had been struggling to make friends and find my own niche group. I realized that day, that if you’re as talented at something as Ben is at dancing, you can go anywhere in life and quickly become accepted into the niche community there. You’ll be able to make friends wherever you go, and can always be surrounded by people who share your passions. I wanted to achieve that level of talent. I wanted to be part of that kind of community.

So I signed up for a couple of beginners dance classes over the next couple of weeks, but it really wasn’t my thing. The classes were really fast paced and there wasn’t much time to get to know the other students. I was also lifting and playing volleyball every week, so it was hard to invest more physical energy into dancing.

Volleyball was something I played casually in college, but wanted to play more of when I moved to NY. I would commute long distances to play with strangers in open plays. Even though I didn’t really get to know any of the other players, I still enjoyed and looked forward to playing each time. Eventually, I found this gay-friendly league in Chelsea called Gotham. My first open play experience was amazing. Everyone was super friendly, welcoming, and supportive. I was really surprised because at other open plays, people can get a little mean when you make mistakes, but that never happened here. I also learned a lot and got tons of helpful tips in my first open play at Gotham.

Two weeks later, I tried out to join the league for their regular season, where captains draft players and teams play a weekly matches. For the first couple of weeks, I was very guarded. My team usually went to a nearby bar for drinks after games, and on the days I went, I didn’t say much. I think part of me was afraid that people would find out that I’m straight and wouldn’t accept me anymore, but obviously that was ridiculous. Later, I found out most of them guessed I wasn’t gay within minutes of meeting me. 

Slowly but surely, I opened up more and made some close friends in the league. My game also improved dramatically over the next few months, and friends from the league even started invited me to play at tournaments with their travel team.

I recently went to Baltimore with a pretty well liked team, and on the second day, we were playing our third elimination match against another NY team. Whoever lost that match would be knocked out of the tournament.

I was on fire, and I felt invincible. I believed that as long as I got a decent set I could put the ball away, getting it around any opposing blockers. About halfway through the match, I started hearing cheering. We were starting to get an audience. Our other NY friends were watching the match and they were cheering for us! They were cheering for me! This was the first time in my life I had non-teammates cheer for me during a game.

Usually at the end of these matches, each team huddles and shouts “Good game <city|team|them> and us!” before high fiving the other team, but after we barely won this match, our opponents skipped all of that. They just came over to give us hugs, congratulate us and wish us the best of luck. At that point, I broke. I couldn’t handle the buildup of emotions anymore, and ran off before anyone could see me cry. 

We ended up losing the next match, and I still couldn’t control my tears, so I unfortunately I think the other players assumed I was crying because we lost, but oh well. We spent the rest of the tournament watching and cheering for another NY team, the same team that cheered for us earlier that day. They ended up placing 2nd, and even though I wasn’t part of the team I felt so much NY pride.

I had never felt this way before, and for the first time, I realized I had been unconditionally accepted into this loving community. I finally found for myself what Ben had experienced a year ago.

[city-fish-blog]

Vegas

My trip to Vegas was a lot of fun, and I’m glad Dan invited me. I wanted to write some thoughts down so I don’t forget it, since it’s starting to get hazy.

Timeline: -9pm: Land and check into the hotel with Kush. -10pm: Gamble -12am: Clubbing at Hakkasan w/ Ingrosso -4am: Treasures Strip Club -6am: Gamble -7am: Sleep -10am: Gamble -11am: In and Out -1pm: Wet Republic Pool Party w/ Tiesto -4pm: Sleep -7pm: Gamble -8pm: Dinner -10pm: Gamble -1am: Clubbing at Surrender w/ Diplo -4am: Spearmint Rhino Strip Club -7am: Sleep -11am: Checkout -12pm: Chilling at the pool -3pm: Caeser’s Palace Buffet -5pm: Attempting to sleep at the pool -7pm: Gamble -8pm: En route to Airport

Clubbing

Clubbing in Vegas is not so different from clubbing in NYC, except the clubs are a little nicer and bigger. The first night we had tickets and had no trouble getting in before midnight. The second night we got table service through a promoter. It was my first direct experience with a promoter, but I felt like we got ripped off. He told us the table would be $1500, but it ended up being $2500 and we also had to pay him $500 and tip the club bouncer $300 in order to get the better table.

I did get a bit of attention from a couple girls, which was nice. 

Strip Clubs

Both times, we were tricked into having a promoter set up a limo to take us to the club. Each time, we had to pay $40 as cover, which went to the limo driver and promoter. If we call the clubs directly and order a limo, we wouldn’t have to pay cover. 

I enjoy throwing one’s at the dancers and getting $20 lap dances, but the private “VIP” rooms are not worth it. You’re only up there for 15 minutes and getting blue balled like crazy. The $20 lap dances are worth it if they stripper lets you touch her, but you have to not get sucked in to going upstairs with her. It’s a good idea to be picky and wait until you see one you like, talk to her for a bit. Also, when she asks if you want to go directly upstairs, instead of saying no, it’s better to keep it up in the air so she gives you a better lap dance.

Gambling

I gambled a lot this weekend, playing variants of BJ and some craps. I tried free bet and BJ switch, but both of them aren’t worth it in my opinion. They give you an edge compared to normal BJ, except for the fact that dealer pushes on 22s instead of busting, which happened a lot. Even though I made some money playing the variants, I prefer to stick to regular BJ.

For whatever reason (maybe because it was my birthday weekend?), I was running super hot. I counted cards occasionally when I was playing by myself, but stuck to socializing when gambling with friends, so I was mostly just extremely lucky. I ended up winning ~$1200 total. I had the hottest streak in craps and made everyone a good $200 in that run.

Wet Republic Pool Party

The pool party was alright I’m sure it would have been more fun if I drank or rolled, but I was already super sleep deprived from the day before, so it wasn’t the most fun. I did notice two things, though:

1) There were a lot of fit muscular guys and a lot of pretty girls talking to said muscular guys. I need to work harder. 2) I don’t have very many fit friends. I was probably the most fit of all the guys there. I need to make more fit friends as well to have a good influence on my health choices in the future. As they say, you’re the average of the 5 people closest to you.

I was too chicken to even flirt with any girls. Maybe if I was fit I would have approached, but I also need to practice approaching more and become more accustomed to being rejected so I have the balls to approach girls with my shirt off, regardless of how I look.

[city-fish-blog]

Defaults

Defaults are shortcuts we use to relieve stress in life. At least for me, I have default places to eat, sites to browse, and things to do. In New York, however, I crave for a default friend.

A significant other fills the role of the default friend extremely well. It’s great having someone who you can spend time with on the whim. Someone whom you can always adventure and explore with. Someone to watch the latest movie or try the new restaurant in town with. The downside of having the significant other as the default friend is losing two pieces in life at once when the relationship ends.

[city-fish-blog]

Cripples have lives, too

A few years ago during my first internship, I asked a lot of my coworkers what they were looking forward to, and the answer was usually their next vacation. While they might not have answered the question in the way I was expecting, this way of looking forward to something so far in the future seemed depressing. I hoped that I would never fall into a similar cycle of the pain of work followed by the pleasure of vacations. Everyday should be exciting. Every week should have a new adventure.

Well, I failed my past resolves. The last time I really enjoyed myself was over two months ago, the day before I broke my ankle. I haven’t been excited about anything as much as just having my life return to normal. I missed going to the gym, playing volleyball, dancing with my friends, and so many more things I couldn’t do with a broken ankle. I could have picked up new hobbies, cocktails, cooking, reading, etc, but instead, I wasted my time browsing the internet, watching tv, and playing video games. I wasn’t living.

Sometimes, life tests you with these hardships, and while I’ll make it out alive, I don’t think I succeeded. I’ll just have to work twice as hard when I’m recovered.

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