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the following conversation occurred with three random, white polo-wearing guys in the elevator of my GW dorm this afternoon. guy 1: does this elevator smell to you? me: it gets a little stuffy. guy 1: no, it smells asian. guy 2: yeah, not even like asian food... like noodles. it just smells like - i have an asian friend and it smells like him. guys: [agree] me: well, i work at an Asian desk at the State Department, so if I were you I wouldn't make comments like that. but i'll let it go for now... guys: .... uh, oh..... well, have a nice day. me: uh... you too... i guess.

wtf is up with the blatant racism here?

WMATA allows water bottles on metro because of the heat.

Bucket List...

Of things I have yet to do....

Chinatown Coffee Company - for their coffee & their beer

Go to another food truck or two - ideally: CapMac, Fojol Bros Merlinda & Red Hook Lobster Pound

Go to Sei

Survive the GRE

Make a trip to Super H Mart in Vienna (actually, I could make a whole day out of this... meals and all)

Go to Kramer Books a few more times. Go to Dupont Circle farmer's market one more time. Buy myself a yummy snack and a $.75 flower.

...to be continued...

it's great how everyone walks the same way on the sidewalks at certain times of day. towards work. towards the metro. towards the metro. towards home.

it's great how it's never really dark enough to feel dark, or alone enough to feel alone.

it's great to hear the subway whizzing past underground, even though i'm on the 6th floor.

i might actually miss this place. 2.5 weeks.

video from a new D.C. website, socialstudiesdc.com. kind of a mashup between livingsocial and a blog on D.C. culture. currently in beta.

if you want to make Asia your life.... great.

Assistant Secretary Kurt Campbell

i want good food & good people to eat it with. i'm sure there are plenty of "good food" options, but i'm struggling a bit on the second part. i also don't know what to do today. considering it's Fourth of July weekend you think there would be a million things for me to do. but there aren't. i don't really want to go to a museum or a Smithsonian where it'll be swamped with tourists. i was thinking of going to the Georgetown flee market, but its a long walk, and i'd probably be there for all of 15 minutes and then come back. part of me loves being alone so much, and part of me is getting really bored and tired of myself.

waiting for something exciting to happen.

Why...

i am convinced that more than half of the population of D.C. is in a relationship. if you count all the skeezy politicians, i'd probably interpret this statistic as "more than half of the D.C. population is in one or more relationships." tabloids aside, walking outside of my dorm and seeing an uncountable number of people holding hands (or at the very least, looking lovingly at each other) has started to make my stomach churn. i can't figure out why it seems more common for me to see a guy and a girl together than to see a group of guys or a group of girls. i can't figure out if its the touristy families, or the old retired people living in condos, or the show-off, stuck-up college kids who are adding most to this problem. everyone is at fault.

and yes, i have consulted people about this: it's not like this in Los Angeles. at least not that anyone has noticed.

and yes, i understand that i am still young, but i feel like i'm getting older faster than i can comprehend, and it's almost like i've missed something. like there's a secret to life that everyone else here knows and no one is telling me.

also, what's up with all the flowers and why is everyone buying them all the time? (i really believe it has nothing to do with the above topic, so why?)

a note on segregation.

mid-atlantic, 2011. somehow each race or ethnicity still seems to have their own separate place in society.

in my building, the overarching theme is: Whites and Asians are the diplomatic supervisors, African Americans are the secretaries and security guards, Latinas are cashiers in the cafeteria. there is very, very little divergence from this unspoken rule.

at any convenience store or fast food chain, the overarching theme is: anyone who still speaks a non-English native language can work there. African languages, Indian (Pakistani?) and Spanish seem the most popular.

i was going to say "chain store" but when I went to Barnes & Noble the other day, my cashier was definitely a white middle-aged male. why he wasn't working for the government, i don't know.

... today i saw a young, black man driving alone in his black Hummer. Rap music blaring. i'm pretty sure he did not aquire that large piece of luxury with a federal salary.

that's just not how this city works.

today.

Went to the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Snazzy.

Saw lots of stuff by George Ault, which was fantastic (http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2011/ault/)

Also saw a lot of paintings of presidents.

Also saw a "Folk Art" exhibit which was fun but did not contain as much American Indian art as I had hoped.

Also saw some cool contemporary art including the Electronic Superhighway by Nam June Paik, an immigrant to the U.S. from Seoul. (http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=71478)

Walked two blocks down the street to see the sights on my way to a different metro entrance. did not see much except McDonald's.

Got to entrance & realized that people were crowded far behind the escalators because some homeless guy was tweaking out and standing in one place on the moving escalator doing the robot. the policeman seemed a little hesitant to do anything without backup. i could only imagine all the poor people stuck at the bottom of that escalator that couldn't just go a different way. i, personally, did not feel like getting shot or stabbed or tweaked-out on today, so i walked the two blocks back up the hill to the other metro entrance. -_-

Realized that Metro always is and always will be delayed on weekends and that even if you're only going 5 stops you should probably start about an hour ahead of time.

It's cloudy here and it will be all week. I don't know if its the weather that is making me feel headache-y, or if its tension, or walking, or what. I like the walking though. The walking is good. My legs can go for miles, and even when the soles of my feet feel numb, i know i have probably seen more area and spanned more ground - alone - than any of these other people with families or significant others or best friends.

despite feeling strangely alone sometimes, there is something to be said about being able to pack up and go anywhere in this city that my heart desires at a moments notice. to be able to move from one painting to the next without feeling like i'm dragging someone along. to be able to sit and drink coffee by myself in a room full of other people who are also alone. there is something to be said about freedom, and i think the nation's capital is an appropriate place.

random.

Pigeon in middle of busy street. Taxi driver stops. Gets out. Picks up pigeon. Carries pigeon to sidewalk. Gets back in taxi. Drives away. All during green light. There should be a taxi driver of the year award.

Guy on bluetooth falls of curb because he is not paying attention. Classic.

"Welcome to the Federal Government." The correct answer to everything.

D.C. Rule #1: Cross the street when you're not supposed to. D.C. Rule #2: Act classy, wear collared shirts. D.C. Rule #3: Drink a lot. Just not at one time.

Seeing lots of people I know from Pitzer. Also seeing people I know from my Korea program last year.

lots of Trader Joe's. almost too much Trader Joe's. never thought i'd say that.

"Baltimore is D.C.'s messed up little brother... he's fine but he keeps too many knives under his bed."

Words I Must Eliminate from My Office Vocabulary

Awesome

Stuff

plusmn

iam-avisitorhere-blog

guineapiggies:

plusmndc:

Woodley Park, Washington DC

More D.C. piggie graffiti!

so much metro the past two days. i love it. well, i don't love the cost, but i like the whole actually-being-able-to-go-places thing. it's pretty snazzy. yesterday i went to Columbia Heights to Target. Oh boy. this morning, i went to Dupont Circle for the farmer's market. bought strawberries, croissants and apple butter. yum. also went to Kramer Books, which is amazing. i could have bought half the store if i was rich. instead, i just bought one book -- "The Third Jesus" by Deepak Chopra. It'll be an interesting and enlightening read. Also found a book called "The Cheap Bastard's Guide to D.C." or something like that... it basically tells you where to find all the free food/alcohol/music/performances you could ever desire. this is great because, of the many things that i've learned while being here, the two most important are that: 1) D.C. folks like to drink and 2) D.C. folks also like to seem really classy. unfortunately, the only way i will ever be classy is with free classy things. i'm a poor college student, after all.

also in Dupont Circle, i got a free brunch at Scion (which is an AMAZING brunch cafe, but their service really sucked today... good thing I had my book and wasn't in a rush!). They had great food though, and I see myself going back there MANY sundays this summer simply because they have good food & they acknowledged that the service sucked and gave me my brunch for free. woopie.

came back, dropped of aforementioned groceries. took the metro to U street. went to Hana Japanese Market (thanks to Nick Miller for suggesting it!) & bought lots of noodles and microwavable rice for lunch this week. Much cheaper than trying to buy fancy salads at trader joe's, not that i don't love trader joe's. but seriously.... being a poor college student means i need to eat cheap lunches, too.

all in all, today was a good day. still struggling with the lack-of-friends thing, but working on it. it'll get there. eventually.

i thought this last year & i'll think it again. the metro is magical. from seeing the headlights to standing so close that my hair blows in the wind and i'm momentarily blinded from the hundreds of faces whizzing past me, it's an adrenaline rush. why has los angeles not caught onto this public transportation thing yet? it's brilliant.

these days...

i walk a lot so that i feel less alone.

there are so many people and i want to know all of them. but somehow i end up knowing very few. i want to change myself.

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