exSQUEEZE me?!

ugh. ok, normally...I don't like to talk shit. Because I believe it just comes back to you in a much worse format. karma.

but SERIOUSLY?!?

Ok, so my PT non-office bookkeeping (independent contracting) job has a couple of "high-end" clients that we like to take very good care of. Because they are generally reliable with a good business model ie. cash flow. I've been handed two which is nice. And they both like me; the rapport is good and I "get" their businesses.

So basically, we have to go in to see one of our high end clients next week and I call him to set up the meeting. The Guy I Work For (TGIWF) tells me that his best day to do anything is Thursday. And that he has a couple of clients on Tuesday that he can't switch out. I say ok and set up a meeting with the client for Thursday morning. I email TGIWF and tell him that everything is set up for THURSDAY.

He emails me back and goes, "Great! I'll switch my Tuesday client to Monday. See you there."

um. EXSQUEEZE ME?

So I email him back and go, "Wait TGIWF...THURSDAY."

And he writes me back going, "Oh no, I can't do Thursday. I have clients that day that I can't cancel on. Can you switch to Tuesday?"

I send him back a pretty terse email saying that I'm confused and the reason I scheduled ANYTHING on Thursday was because of HIS schedule. In the meantime, I have scheduled my OTHER high end client for Tuesday morning. And you know who will have to do all the switcharoo footwork tomorrow at some point during her busiest day at the PT Office Job? You get a gold star if you guessed ME. I mean, this would not happen if he just scheduled the damn clients HIMSELF. It's pissing me off that not only did I cater my schedule to the one that he told me, he is too passive agressive to call the clients himself. Which means, guess who ends up looking like a dumbass when I have to call the clients to reschedule?

A for A-hole if you guess, ME AGAIN.
this is why I really don't like people. look, pick a friggin' day that works for YOU and tell me what it is, but if I have to try to change my schedule every thirty seconds to cater to your little whims then don't expect me to give you ANY respect.

Nopa

It's b-day season (yes, I know I keep harping upon this) which means seasons of EATING! So being a little linecook415 fangirl, I got my bestie to take me to NOPA last night for a b-day dinner.

NOPA stands for "North of the Panhandle" and while the storefront is rather discreet, inside the space is airy and well lit with a ton of windows (clerestories), open kitchen and a 2nd floor mezzanine that overlooks the main floor. There's also a large bar that runs the entire side of the restaurant, but separated from the ground floor dining area by a large wall. And a communal table runs in an "L" perpendicular to the bar along the front windows. If you're really special, you can score one of the four bar stools that are directly adjacent to the kitchen counter and get a free show while you eat.

Ok, for a friggin' Wednesday night, I don't know what sort of crack the chefs are doling out of the kitchen, but this place was packed! From the time we arrived until we left, people were rolling in and rolling out. And pretty normal people at that, people you think you'd probably like to hang out with. And definitely people who LIKE to eat. Plate after plate of the flatbread kept coming out of the kitchen and every chef and server I could see was doing what seemed like triple duty.

Amuse: spring pea puree with grilled crostini and sea salt

Pretty darn good, please excuse the heavenly aura effect - we were sitting in this great corner location that had a fantastic view of the kitchen (but also included some blindingly bright late afternoon/early evening sun rays). The brightness of spring peas on top of crisp crostini toasts was a good start to a b-day meal. You'll notice that the plating is pretty sparse, which is just telling to the simple California (American) cuisine served at Nopa.


Starter: flatbread with house smoked bacon, garlic confit, ramps and sweet cream
This bacon was AMAZING. Sweet, creamy and chewy - almost akin to pancetta, and sprinkled in judicious amounts so it didn't overpower the bread or the ramps, but enough so that I was mentally trying to find the pieces with the most bacon. One of the best things about all the food here is the BALANCE of flavors. Nothing overpowers anything else and the food is delicious and thoughtful. (I would eat a lot of this if it were available)


Entree: Roasted duck breast, English pea risotto, mint and parmesan with dressed dandelion greens
Again, the balance here was incredible. A simple roasted duck breast in it's own juices, served aside a simple (and LIGHT!) risotto that included mint and peas. I was happy to find that even though there was mint, but it didn't taste like a mouth full of toothpaste. And there was a LOT of duck! Enough so that even when I split the portion, I still felt like I had eaten my fair share.

The breast was supposed to be medium rare and it was a little north of that, but I guess with all the scares about raw meat, that's probably good. I'm so used to duck that's been glazed or served with cherry or other sweet/sour combinations that this was a change. Just the duck.

Entree: pan seared halibut with mushrooms, spring onions, favas and fiddlehead ferns.
What I love about Nopa dishes is their simplicity but also the choice of accompanying incredients. I'd never had fiddlehead ferns before and these were delicious! They had excellent texture; middlng tender/crispness and a new but also really intriguing flavor. Maybe celery like? And some citrus flavors. The fish was so incredibly white, but done to that quality where the flesh is still moist while being cooked all the way through. I think if fish had been done like this when I was younger, I would be more of a fan of cooked fish these days (which reminds me, I'll write my review of Farallon next week - WRECKFISH, get some) .

Side: Braised favas with fried almonds

This was the only dish that Kat and I were sort of "meh" about. There was a smokiness to the dish that started to get old after a while. It was all smoke and tomato. The way the dish was described, we thought the beans would have been shelled (which is a pain in the ass for favas, I know) and somehow lighter. This dish is more of a cold SF night dish vs. a Spring one. We did like the almonds though. Maybe Amy Brown can make almond bacon brittle?

One of the best thing about hanging out with friends at dinner is that you can talk about all sorts of stuff that's been on your mind. But it's very bad for being viligant about taking photos. So I did not get photos of our very good desserts. We had the sopapillas with burnt caramel sauce. OMG. Get this dish. Cause nothing says lovin' like FRIED BREAD with a butter/sugar sauce. The sopapillas were more akin to beignets - they had bready/custardey type innards instead of fried bread (like yau tiu, chinese donut) innards. Better yet, get the strawberry lemon verbena parfait which includes two sizeable scoops of creme fraiche ice cream and do the following.

1. Break open your sopapilla
2. Stuff the innard with a spoonfull of creme fraiche ice cream
3. Pour burnt caramel sauce over this
4. Dunk into your French press cup of Blue Bottle Coffee
5. Eat, savor and REPEAT til sopapillas are gone.

(if you get sad when the sopapillas are gone, remember that you still have the cognac pound cake from the parfait to eat with the remainder of the burnt orange caramel sauce)

The dining room here is REALLY noisy, so just be prepared that it will not necessarily be romantic, especially if you are seated next to a set of nouveau riche yuppies who will be intent on having a couples compairison conversation right next to you. (unfortunate, but they gotta eat too). Richie Nakano of linecook was there and I kept stealing glances over at the kitchen to watch him sort of scan the dining room. And here's my question: I wonder how many people are now populating the restaurant due to Nakano's rising web-presence (and his stint at Porchlight, podcast, blog, features on EaterSF and SF Weekly, Chronicle etc. he's sort of the new anti-Bauer) and does this annoy him or does he not care or is it a happy financial/gastronomical side-effect of his willingness to speak about food and what he does so candidly?

Anyways, check out Nopa if you guys are in town. Two thumbs up.

NOPA
560 Divisadero @ Hayes
San Francisco, CA
415.864.8643

gangaji

(reposted from a Facebook post)

Many people have trouble with the word love. Love, as most of us have known it, can be sentimental, potentially messy, and most definitely out of control. And yet, love is what we crave. There is often a love/hate relationship with the idea of love, most likely stemming from our experiences as children, when we loved helplessly. We projected love out onto our loved ones—our mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters—and at some point found our loved ones to be unreliable. We confused their actions with love and concluded that love was not trustworthy.

People are definitely not trustworthy, because in general, they are very busy protecting their story of who they think they are. Since they are mostly involved in their story, they can only give a certain amount of love before they start wondering, “Well, when do I get mine?” And since love has been identified as being connected with another person, this sets up a whole continuation of distrust around love.

But love is not a person. Love is the individual, collective, and universal soul. Love is God. Love is truth. Love is beauty. Love is peace. Love is self. To truly know yourself, to surrender to the truth of yourself, is to surrender to love.

Many people are aware of their resistance and want to surrender, but they don’t know how. The only actual barrier, however, is in not seeing the underlying story you are telling yourself about the danger of surrendering everything to love.

The degree to which you try to maintain the story about who you think you are is the degree to which you feel isolated from love—and, the degree to which you hold back surrendering everything to love is the degree to which you suffer. Until you realize, “I want truth, which is love, more than anything,” you will experience yourself as separate from love. Love is the constant. Love is not an aspect of truth. Truth, God, and self are aspects of love.

What is the worst that could happen if you surrender to love? What we seem to fear the most is the broken heart. Yet the very unwillingness for the heart to be broken is the broken heart. The tragedy and the irony is that in order to avoid a broken heart, people live in a state of broken-heartedness. In the willingness to have the heart be broken a million, trillion, zillion times, true love is revealed.

Most people are more afraid of having their feelings hurt than they are of having their bodies hurt. But the willingness to be hurt is crucial. Without the willingness to be hurt, there is no willingness to love, no willingness to die, no willingness to live, no willingness to be.

It is easy to see from your own life experience that no matter how much you try to run away from hurt, you still experience it. To stop the running, to turn and experience what is chasing you, open and unprotected, you have to be willing to be free.

Are you willing to be free?

Are you willing to trust love rather than your mind’s protection from hurt? If you are willing, then you will taste the possibility of living a life of love and conscious innocence. This is possible for everyone. Love is the teacher. If you are willing to surrender to love rather than trying to control it, love teaches you who you are.

Hurt may feel like the end of the world, but it’s not. Hurt hurts. The degree to which you are willing to be hurt—not wanting to be hurt, but willing to be hurt—is the degree to which you are willing to love, be loved, and be taught by love.

Love can be your teacher, though it never teaches withdrawal from experiencing hurt. Other people are not the source of your hurt; the source of hurt is the fact that you love. Trust the love. If love is to hurt you, then let it hurt you fully. Let it annihilate you. Let your heart break open so that an even deeper love can be revealed.

Most everything we do is to avoid vulnerability. We dress up in grownup clothes and play at doing grownup work, in an attempt to escape the defenseless innocence associated with childhood. But innocence is not limited to children. It is possible for you as an adult to be consciously vulnerable and innocent. You can consciously hurt.

In conscious suffering, you are no longer fighting the suffering. You are consciously present in it. And if suffering is met as it appears, it is revealed to be not what you thought. Conscious suffering reveals itself as the Buddha, as Christ’s heart. But the intention in this is not to meet suffering to get rid of it. The innocent intention is to meet suffering as it is, even if it means feeling hurt.

True innocence is the capacity to directly experience what is here right now, without any demands that it look, act, or feel differently. Innocence is openness, the willingness to see and to trust, even if what appears seems absolutely untrustworthy. True innocence is not naiveté, nor is it delusion. However, it involves vulnerability. The willingness to be innocent is the willingness to be hurt.

This willingness to be vulnerable is what the term “spiritual warrior” really means. Vulnerability takes more courage than being cynical, strong, or powerful. It takes courage to be open, innocent, and willing to be hurt.

Let the whole world break your heart every instant of the remainder of your life. Then your life can be lived in service to love. This does not mean you stay in abusive relationships. It means only to stay true to that which is always true to you, and that is love. Anything else is a story.

If the story is never investigated, your whole life is lived on the assumption that the story is real, and that your heart, your soul, and your love need to be protected. But that assumption is actually a denial of your heart, your soul, your love.

The great good news is that love is free and it has not gone anywhere. In all of these aeons that you have been hiding from love, love is still here, it is still open, it is still waiting for your commitment, still waiting for you to say, “Yes, I give my life to the truth of love. I vow to let love live this life as it will, for better or worse, for richer or poorer.”

The love that you search for everywhere is already present within you. It may be evoked by any number of people or events. A mountain can evoke this love. A sunset can evoke this love. But finally, you must realize you are this love. The source of all love is within you.

-Gangaji

ritual

As with all sacred rites, the beginning of class is beautiful to watch. The dancers may straggle in and mill about, but they eventually assume,w ith frighteningly formal rigor, their customary place at the barre or on the floor. If a principal dancer walks in, they automatically shift places to give the star the center spot facing the mirror. Of such beliefs and traditions are rituals made. It's like going to church. We rarely question why we go to church, and we don't expect concrete answers when we do . We just know it feeds our spirit somehow and so we do it.

A lot of habitually crative people have preparation rituals linked to the settingi n which they choose to start their day. But putting themselves into that environment, they begin their creative day. - Twyla Tharp - "the Creative Habit"

Today's word: "God made me, so I am good."

on an up note.

On an up note:

First: Go visit Neil's blog (and vote for him in the Webby Awards!)
1000 Awesome Things.
In a world that sometimes seems determined to get you down (the boy doesn't call, they don't have bagel bites at Noah's despite their over-abundant advertising, you don't get your paycheck on time), there's nothing like reading about stuff that makes life AMAZING to get you to chuckle and feel better. And the descriptions are like reading your own version of Mystery Science Theater with your closest wittiest friends. Today alone on the main page are: putting potato chips on your sandwich (EPIC WIN), Squeezing through a door as it’s shutting without touching it, and a photo of Indiana Jones (drool) I think this website might just be a pretty secure antidote for mental depression.

Yes, suddenly you morph from Guy Walking To The Subway After Work into Indiana Jones In That Scene Where He Slides Under The Wall At The Last Second. Your hands stay clean, your strut stays mean, and you zip through that closing door and don’t look back, hoping it doesn’t nail an old lady in the face behind you.

AWESOME!

Second: this book that I just got at the bookstore
Twyla Tharp - The Creative Habit

There are so many creative "types" out there, but the best way to become successful in the community is not being a "starving artist" or a bohemian type, but just the gumption and will to be doing art on a consistent basis. Whether it be taking part in a class or show or just doing your own work, making art an everyday practice is more important than talent or producing 'significant' work. EVER.

Studies have shown that the best musicians in the world aren't the ones who are necessarily born with the most talent, but the ones who utilize their talents and practice every day. The equivalent of a full time job.

Third: Dinner @ Farallon for the Krantz tomorrow and dim sum @ Ton Kiang with Min tomorrow morning (please do not stalk me, yo). Looking forward to such good eats. Can I possibly pair it with performing or watching some live show?

Fourth: Doing voiceover work and getting paid for it. W00t! This might make the 4th time I have been paid via work related to Danno. I could do this people. I really could.

Fifth: Kicking ass on my grant writing. Warrenting a phone call from Mayabird telling me that it's good. Maybe I'm not as crazy about this career change idea as I thought. Now to get to building a budget.

Sixth: Having days off on blazing hot afternoons to spend it kicking back on the beach with your best friend. The sunset was INCREDIBLE. I had two clients cancel on Tuesday, so with record temperature highs, and the fortuitous phone call from my bestie - we took the entire afternoon to just chill on the hot sands, watch cute shirtless boys wakeboard, eat burgers and fries...some things just don't change, whether you're 3, 13 or 30. (which I am in a week...shit)

Seventh: my secret obsession with VH1's "Tough Love" - are you guys watching this at all? The greatest thing is that it's not a competition, none of the girls get voted off. This means they get to all be really supportive and loving of their crazy selves. But the blog is hi-larious. They just used a Pee-Wee Herman reference to talk about one of the contestants.

Just make sure your wish is European enough to suit her. You don’t want her to mekka-lekka hi mekka slap a ho.

ahahah. THAT is pure comedy people! I'm totally rooting for Natasha and esp. Jaclyn.

Ok, so this is the happy entry!

cardigan FAIL

dammit.
photos provided for reference
the other day, I went to Zara to get your basic, crew-neck cardigan. I found a perfect one in kelly green. but when I got up to the counter, there was a snag in the fabric. so the clerk at the counter was nice enough to get me another one. but apparently, I didn't check so closely.

because it's a v-neck.

do you fashionistas feel me? a v-neck does not serve the purpose this cardigan was supposed to. which was to basically cover up excessive boobage from low cut dresses and tops. more refined for the office and gamine classy, a round neck cardigan is more 50s while v-neck says 60s university grad student, i-stole-this-from-my-bf cute. but they're not the same thing. the round neck can be worn more formally.

pwned by a salesclerk.
thus spawning the most self-serving and useless blog post ever. heh.

goodnight moon

Gaaahhh...more boys who like emo music? what is wrong with meeee?!

I'd rather sit on my porch
Sitting by the light of the moon
Drinking tea
And whistling

Cause all I am is all I'll be
And that's quite enough for me

Photo via Unicornology

it's hot, get over it.

you know what's hilarious? how many of my SF friends on Facebook today were talking about "hot" it was. Um, 85 degrees is pretty toasty for us pasty ass Northerners, but that's like a regular day in LA no? So yeah, it was hot.

I spent the majority of my day writing a faux grant proposal from the comfort of my backyard. I love wireless.

I'd like to say I spent about 8 hrs writing it. But honestly, I spent about 2 hrs researching, an hour and a half editing, and about an hour and a half goofing around. So that's about 3 hrs of actual writing. I was still editing around 10pm. Then I realized
a) I'm not actually submitting this
b) I'm starting to make up details to a level of pathological precision
c) I'm trying to make these made up details fit into some sort of box of reality (which is ridiculous)
So I stopped, and I'm about to print the sucker. It's about three pages of actual proposal and 4 additional pages of notes. how do you possibly take something so huge and make it small and intimate and still meaningful?

I really wanted bun today. The Vietnamese cold noodle salad dish. My dad did one better by making us lettuce wraps and gyoza for dinner. Mmmm.

there were lots of good food from this weekend: friday night thai and oreo mint shake, saturday - boulange croissant, stinky cheeses, fruit and elissa's awesome dark chocolate tart THEN the 'Nine' cast party with lasagne, cured bresaola and prosciutto, salad and ricotta torta. I love the Bay Area and it's crazy cast of creative foodies.

I'll be back to being a better blogger tomorrow, right now this grant is zapping me of all creative writing skills whatsoever.

night blogosphere.

The thoughtful entry is in the middle.

Um, yeah...so I sort of love this list (via Gala Darling) today
The Different Kinds of People That There Are - a complete list
from the Stranger.com

Because it includes entries like this:

Old People Who Think Pigeons Are Their Best Friends

Listen, old people. Pigeons do not love you. Much like robots and the British, pigeons do not have the capacity to feel love. They only have the capacity to desire croutons. And when you spread infinity croutons across the grass outside MY house, for the purpose of making pigeons love you (WHICH WILL NEVER HAPPEN), the only result is infinite feces. I now have to walk upon feces-encrusted streets through a feces-encrusted world. Because of you and your delusions of pigeon love. Stop it.

It's sort of a million ways of awesome.
****************************************************
Have you ever sat down and realized how much that we as a culture are really REALLY into self-analysis? Constantly punching numbers, answering surveys, going to see therapists - all in the faint hope of finding out just one more modicum of information that we had previously failed to glean? We read self-help books in our quest to become better people...or maybe just different people. What makes us all think that there's something wrong with the way we are?

Or is it all just about finding out that we were totally fine in the first place.

In which case, what becomes our life purpose then? It's the rare human being that doesn't come to the conclusion that their work (or whatever they spend the majority of their life doing) becomes who they are and a reflection of spirit, but that doesn't also take the time out to go back and look at who they wanted to be and if that work is who they want to be. I think that's why, sometimes, we need to fail. We need to face hardship and obstacles, because they make us step back from routine. They are the little blips that we need to take care, but they can also give us pause for reflection. If we are NOT happy with what we're doing, sometimes all it takes is talking it out to make those things - our own ability to speak and to put our thoughts into words, while to some often seem limiting, are necessary acts to help our brains and psyches concretize our own ideas.

From Owen Kelly.net - the three reasons to keep a diary:
keeping a personal diary is a useful exercise, for several reasons:
it encourages self-observation;
it provides a challenge;
it helps us to better digest the experiencing of our lives.

By writing down our thoughts, we ask so much of ourselves. Not only to be able to put our thoughts onto paper in a tangible form, but also asking kindness of ourselves later when reviewing. Lately, I've found myself participating in the facebook wide phenomenon of writing, answering and posting survey notes. The questions range from everything from 'What is your favorite pizza topping?' to 'What would you like to do with your life in 20 years?' While I know these questions are awfully personal, at the same time, even though there is nothing that compels me to answer them but my own ego, I answer most of them candidly and mostly make them private.

And I guess, I wonder if I need to stop. Is that much self-analysis really worth it? Or necessary? I mean, I even know my Enneagram number (in fact I discussed it with a client the other day) and I used to know my Myer-Briggs thingey, but I need to retake the test. I check my horoscope and know my rising sign and moon signs. I CARE when Mercury is in retrograde. I know my Chinese and I used to know my Vedic signs. Is all of this too California woo-woo for y'all? I'm not crazy, at least I don't think, but I wonder why knowing all of this stuff about myself makes me feel...significant.
*************************************

New White House Pup! (of course he's black, didn't no one tell you?) Bo-bama? Bo Obama? Boob-ama? Didn't anyone tell Michelle and Barack you cannot name your children or pets or any other animate or inanimate object you are planning on owning with a name that ends in the same letter as the first letter of your last name? Where's that damn etiquette social secretary lady when you need her?!? It's a very cute puppy though. Portugese water puppy!

oh also? the Wu-Tang clan has started a new online chess and urban social network. It's called wuchess.com. I just like to keep you all informed.

knock, knock! jesus is here.

currently: sitting in the middle of the freshly vacuumed and febreezed forest green carpet.

the oversized and inadjustable desk chair, which really is little more than an additional surface on which to stack clothes has been exiled to the hallway. leaving an expanse of space. it feels nice. like there's room to breathe. more room would be better - but slowly love, slowly. rome wasn't built in a day, nor cleaned in a year.

the star lantern that fabala got three of us for christmas in different colors is now hanging above. purple and beautiful and exotic looking, in place of the dusty white one from a t-labs show that i don't even like very much. well...it was good then, but this is now.

producer budget sheets are all 3-hole punched and in a binder. bills are paid. new trader joes was awesome. blueberry tea, chai, brownie mix, mac and cheese, enchiladas, vanilla granola. tastee. got a bonus today. wow. didn't really remember what those things were about.

and this feels good. neat and clean and organized, if still a little cluttered.

point break live was awesome. so was sushi and it's tops! afterwards. three good ones in a row, maybe it'll be a pattern. being purposely vague right now. out with the old, in with the new.

happy eastre.

Advice to 15 year olds.

Um...so why did I not get this damn advice when I was 15? Crikey! It all makes sense now! And yes, ladies out there who are underage and reading my blog for some reason, be the NERDIEST girl you can be right now. Because, later, you will figure out how to use eyeliner, and someone will take you to get your eyebrows waxed (if you email me and you live in the Bay Area, I will take you or at least refer you to my genius eyebrow/facial lady), you will learn about fashion, and you won't care about starving yourself to lose weight, but you will care about hydration and proper nutrition and working out.

And you will become hot.

And then you will be nerdy and hot. And this is quite possibly the best combination ever. Because once guys find out that not only are you hot, but you have watched every episode of Family Guy ever, worked at a comic book store, that you can eat 4-5 slices of pizza because you climb and belay with the best of them, that you have mastered C++, Photoshop, and the theory of Relativity? And you are kind, intelligent, independent, compassionate, gentle, funny, and good at what you do and take care of others?

They will leave their stupid, superficial Paris Hilton bimbo babes for you. I'm so serious. Do it.

heaven help my heart I

iguessthatscool:merricat:thebackdoor:anewsky: secretsthatsell: typewriterblues: unicornology

just got involved in one of those long ass facebook status posts about how it's a strange unbalanced phenomenon where completely awesome people will be in relationships with: immature, dysfunctional, clingy, depressed, self-destructive, obsessive-compulsive, ugly, jealous, maladjusted, elitist, contriving, manipulative, combative, stuck-up, arrogant, self-righteous, prejudiced, mocking, hurtful, angry, mean, selfish, annoying, superficial, suicidal, evil, anti-social, dramatic, self-aggrandizing, soul sucking partners.

and yeah, it sort of makes me depressed because I am constantly working on being none of those things and i'm still single.

but then I remember...for all the non (bad-category) people that are involved with (bad-category) people...they CHOSE that.

so really...who's the fucked up one?

Job tips from Actors

So...listening to NPR's Planet Money the other day...a podcaster brought up the topic of, "survival jobs". I'm very curious as to why so many people thought of a "survival job" as a new concept. Do we really have an entire generation of workers who have
a) never worked outside of the industry in which they are interested/trained in
b) never worked part time or for minimum wage
c) never worked strictly for money
???

That's why so many of the "economic" suggestions, tips and topics have been making me snort in disgust lately. These are the things (brown bagging lunch, walking or taking the bus to work, giving up activities and eating out) that people have been doing for YEARS in order to save money. And, in fact, the things that my parents have been doing all their lives, mostly out of personal preference, but also because they trained themselves, as starving teachers, to live without. But the authors of the podcast brought up that it's an actor concept. The typical waiter/bartender/delivery person job is flexible enough for a professional actor to go on film shoots, rehearsal and auditions. But has no one else taken these jobs because they needed to pay rent? Really?

My work path started when I was 16. Since then I've taken several jobs and was really good at them too, but only one of them has been in architecture. And the money became freedom. I think it used to torture my parents quite a lot when I would go out to eat, shop or take my insanely pricey voice lessons. The latter is totally justified; I have a second career that pays, I've met people via that second career that have helped me get back on my feet, and in 2008 - the year that sucked - the only thing I was successful at was theater. And the first two, have been cut way back. To the point, where I've literally told friends how much money I had in my wallet so that I could keep an eye on my spending.

What was very thoughtful, but not necessarily heart warming for the NPR podcasters to bring up, was the topic of the glut of people now taking on "survival jobs" pushing out and displacing people who take these jobs as their livelihood positions ie. real jobs. It's the same as the virtual upending of the Mission in San Francisco (the district) of the native workers who established themselves and built an entire community for the hipster invaders who decided that living in the seedier area of town was a better use of their time and money and dirty Chuck Taylors. And on the other side of the table, was the absolute arrogance of people who refuse to take jobs that are "beneath" them.

At lunch with two classmates last weekend, the two former architects/drafters both professed their astonishment and admiration for my new bookkeeping position. The outlook on the architectural profession is not good people. In fact, it's quite horrible unless you're interested in working in institutions (which I might be) like libraries, hospitals, schools and factories. Yeah, my training is all in commercial retail - because for the last 15 years...that's where developers' interests have lain. What was surprising is that neither of us was interested in taking a "survival" job. In fact, they seemed proud to have turned down positions they felt were beneath them. My point, is that sometimes a "survival job" turns into more opportunities than you could ever have dreamed of.

In many ways, actors have a lot to offer in the way of career advice these days.

1) Don't try to cling on to any job or any idea you have your career too closely. As people like Madonna have shown - your flexibility, evolution and willingness to embrace the new will be key to keeping you alive in many new industries. These days, think of expanding and adjusting rather than sticking to what you know.

2) Drop the act. Arrogance and stubborness and pride will get you nowhere in today's work world. Humility and a willingness to learn will get you far. Yesterday's personal assistant is today's star on Broadway or movie set.

3) Work hard, research your new job role the way you research a new character. Be willing to take direction, but also make sure you bring something to the table.

4) Diversify. TV, commercials, modeling, movies, stage and print. Fashion and cosmetic lines. Endorsements. A lot of actors do it all including their "joe job". If you're an MBA, but have always had an interest in teaching - take a weekend job coaching or helping run an afterschool program or a youth program at a local community center. You never know when a second job turns into a second career that you can turn to in times of trouble.

5) Keep learning. Actors are always going back into their coaches to adjust, rebuild and enhance their skills. Plus it keeps your brain active. They're always reading new plays/scripts, adding or building upon talents like dancing, playing an instrument, writing or surfing.

6) Build your team. No man is an island and most successful actors have: an agent, attorney, personal assistant, trainer, life coach/therapist, business advisor and style/image consultant. (and a bevy of press agents, hairdressers, make-up artists, dressers, drivers and housecleaners/nannies) While you probably don't need to put any of these people on retainer; if you want to move up, you gotta spend some dough to make dough. Taking new head shots or creating your reel can bring in more jobs and is a great investment. Make some calls, consult some experts.

7) At the same time know when to save your cash. Roth IRAs are great for non-taxed savings. And there are several other funds you can invest in that are similar. There are some great CD options out there now as well as money market funds that you can "store" your money in. Actors are notorious for knowing how to live cheaply, but after a while-you find you have a nice little cushion to put aside for a rainy day.

NRP Planet Money Podcast & Blog

the next era

Serious question guys and gals.

My birthday is coming up in less than a month. Can I get this?

Bamboo and silk dress by Econica on Etsy

the fabric is bamboo and cotton blend and the flowers are silk. but it's $95.00. But I'm turning 30. And I just got a new job...

it's just...you know...gorgeous.

Kumar goes to the White House

THIS is why I have the biggest crush on Kal Penn like EVER!

The foo’ is leaving ‘House’ to work in the WHITE HOUSE. Literally! He’s part of the Obaminstration! I’m so super excited for him, one of the reasons I’ve actually developed the crush is because of all the YouTube videos of Penn speaking out at young political rallies and of all of his campaign work. He’s smart, well-informed and wonderfully forward thinking.

Penn's Exit Interview from House on EW.

I've been thinking about [moving into politics] for a while. I love what I do as an actor. I couldn't love it more. But probably from the time I was a kid, I really enjoyed that balance between the arts and public service. I went to a performing arts high school, but I still took a bunch of those dorky political science classes. It's probably because of the value system my grandparents instilled in me. They marched with Gandhi in the Indian independence movement, and that was always in the back of my head.

Dude, I never knew the Kutner character on tv was supposed to be from Fremont and went to UC Berkeley. I fucking love Kal Penn!

come home

busy weekend.

but still had the time to purchase and read this:
Nice to Come Home To - Rebecca Flowers
(yes, even I am suseptible to chick lit)

here's Penny's guide to purchasing a book. Pick up something that appeals to you. Title, author, whatever. Open to a random page. Read a sentence or a paragraph. If that paragraph makes you want to read more, open to another completely random page. Repeat. If you are fascinated every time, then it's time to get a copy.

“Beautifully written, with wit and heart to spare, NICE TO COME HOME TO tells the story of two sisters as they wrestle their way through relationships, one with too much sense, the other with too much sensibility. Prudence is fully alive, and so fresh and funny and warm that I heard the echoes of her interior voice long after I had closed the back cover. Rebecca Flowers is Jane Austen gone mod, and I can’t recommend this hopeful and endearing tale strongly enough.”

How interesting to find that Flowers meant her book to be an updated intepretation of the Austen classic, 'Sense and Sensibility' - thinking back on the novelization, I can definitely see the modern translation and have to admit that Flowers does a good job. When I picked up this book at West Portal Bookshop the other day (support your local brick and mortars!) I didn't want to like it. But everything about its packaging called out to the essential girl in me that spends hours twirling around sweet smelling Anthropologie in outfits that I can't afford. The soft peach accents, the appealing clothes in varying shades of green, the swirly text...I don't why I can't admit my own proclivities towards stereotypically cliche "girl" things. Why being an "intellectual" means I only drink black coffee, wear pilled sweaters and eschew anything specifically marketed towards my preferences. That saying that you like reading, "Bridget Jones", "Running in Heels" and the like means that you're somehow weak or silly.

But without a doubt, "Nice to Come Home To" hit every requirement of the book selection checklist. I went back to the book three times, thought about it as I kept perusing the store. Every time I opened it up, I wanted to finish the chapter. It's also been the first time in a while where I nearly rushed home to try to finish this book. Every chapter, written from Prudence/Elinore's point of view was like a piece of really good pizza. Completely satisfying, not overdone or too cheesy, just perfect. I think it helps that Prudence is the sensible one; playing the part that so many of us "good" girls find ourselves fufilling. The clean-up crew, the shoulder to cry on, the sensible, the practical, the reliable - and yet with all of our own needs, yearnings and dreams.

And that was the biggest appeal of the book. So often, the manic pixie is that dream girl that everyone wants; but deep down - it's the good girl that the dream man has been waiting for. She is tenacious, kind, caring and soulful. And she has a goodly amount to teach everyone, if only people would just listen. But it was Flowers' descriptions of Pru that made me connect fairly deeply with the character. The one who is afraid to let go, will and can get sucked into relationships that are nurturing and lightgiving one moment and completely dangerous and foolish the next. So Pru learns to make her own choices and in the end, won't deny her emotions of love but also allows admitting them to bring their own consequences.

"For a long time, she'd thought the whole problem was about finding love. She'd thought that, once she'd found it, she'd basically be done. Set. Good to go. Funny, how until just now, she hadn't put it all together. All love ended, somehow. One way, or another."

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on another note, i got a new job! i'm working at a 4-yr old startup. it's SOO nice to be back in an office and not only that, for quite possibly the first time in my life, an office where nearly everyone is my age and less than 1/3 of the employees have kids. dot com yuppies! so excited. i may end up causing more trouble than help, since i love to chat, but i'm going to try to keep it to a minimum and may bring in my ipod or something to help that situation out.

In other news: I have to pay my parking ticket now. Thanks Obaministration.

lunch

Isn't it awesome to admit that eating fro-yo with raspberries and mochi for lunch is an imminently sensible and adult thing to do?

And aren't you glad you're listening to your inner child when you do so?

And now for something completely different. The following post is copied verbatim from my friend Nicole who recently volunteered to be laid off from her job as Business Reporter for the Boston Globe in order to save the job of another co-worker who needed to stay in the Boston area. I am so absolutely floored and humbled by her beautiful decision. Nicole's Facebook note has been re-printed here with her permission.

Why I volunteered to be laid off from The Boston Globe

-Nicole Wong, Business Reporter for the Boston Globe til 3/31/09

I know. It sounds crazy, or at least a bit naive, given the worsening recession. But really, my decision to volunteer for a layoff -- so a coworker who needs to remain in Boston more than I do can continue working as the Globe eliminates 50 newsroom positions, or 12 percent -- was rooted in the past few years that I spent reporting in-depth on unemployment.

When I covered the workplace beat in Silicon Valley between 2005 and 2007, I heard so many stories of hardship from people who were unemployed or underemployed. I spent hours listening to the agony of a former small business owner who took a temporary job at a home-improvement superstore at a 90 percent pay cut and then faced age discrimination as he tried to launch a new career. I ate french fries at Wendy's with a music-duplication technician who was postponing marrying his longtime girlfriend for as long as he was unemployed. And I sat at the kitchen table with a semiconductor researcher-turned-automotive technician who had drawn a second mortgage on his home after being laid off three times in six years, whose wife fell into depression and developed an outbreak of scabies, and whose elementary-school-age children knew their family was going broke.

Their stories of strife have lingered in the back of my mind. It's tough being out of work. And even tougher when you have a family or mortgage to take care of.

I happen to have neither.

And I happen to have been extremely fortunate whenever I've needed to find a job.

My Footprints In The Sand (in Florida!)

God has just truly blessed me time and again by sending an amazing employer swooping in -- even offering a position that was even better than my previous one.

Reporting on travel for the Globe has been a blast. I've enjoyed the opportunity to shoot and edit videos for our website, make guest appearances on local and national radio and TV shows, and tell my friends and family that I was inhaling smog, eating insects, and fiddling with a gas mask canister all for the sake of the stories.

So while the job market deteriorates, I have faith that it will eventually work out for me. Because it always does. And I suppose if it takes longer this time around, maybe I'll draw upon the other in-depth reporting I've done -- on airlines, hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions slashing prices to ride out the recession -- and take advantage of the extra time to explore more places.

So that's my plan! If you can call it one. There are a few more details in this email I sent to my colleagues yesterday:

I was hoping I'd get to be the one who breaks the news to you that I've volunteered to be laid off from the Boston Globe in order to save the job of a reporter who has less seniority than me and who has greater needs to stay in the Boston area due to family commitments and other obligations. But who am I kidding? This is a newsroom!

This wasn't an easy decision to make. I've loved working with all of you, learning from all of you, and having fun alongside all of you. I've loved covering the travel beat for the past 1.5 years, and I would have loved to continue reporting on that here for years to come. But I realized -- after weeks of talking to worried coworkers and overhearing them fret to whomever happened to be on the phone -- that at least it should be less of a hardship for me to find a job since I'm more mobile than my colleagues who have spouses, kids, mortgages, and more. (This is probably the first time I'm relieved to not even have a boyfriend or a house!)

I know some people will worry that I don't know what an awful job market I'm jumping into. Rest assured, I know it's dire. In the hours before I confirmed to the Globe that I still wanted to volunteer for a layoff, I was at a conference watching a senior economist from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and two travel industry researchers explain charts forecasting how much deeper we'll slide into the worst recession since the Great Depression. And I've interviewed countless unemployed and underemployed people over the past few years while covering workplace issues in Boston and Silicon Valley, which was still suffering from the job losses following the 2001 dot-com bust. It'll definitely be tough. But I'm excited about exploring all kinds of full-time -- and, in the interim, freelance -- opportunities across the country (so please let me know if you hear of any!). And I think I'm off to an encouraging start, since I've signed on to a small project helping edit and write a book on business. Maybe this will be a good time to write my own book, too.

I have faith that this will somehow all work out, eventually. It definitely helped that I came to this decision while on vacation a few weeks ago on what was hands down my best trip yet, and one that surprisingly kept getting better and better every few days. I realized that's been the storyline of my career and my life: They keep getting better and better, often in ways I couldn't have imagined and at times when I least expected such blessings.

With that, I'm off to pursue the next great adventure! Thanks for reading and please keep in touch with me through the contact info below.

Best,
Nicole C. Wong

Explorer. Storyteller. Experience Architect.
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Email: nicolediscovers@gmail.com
Twitter: @nicolecwong
Resume: www.linkedin.com/in/nicolewong

I don't have to tell you guys what an incredible person Nicole is, you can read it for yourself. Please contact her if you think you can help or just to send her warm and kind messages. This is our generation - long may it reign.