Paris at Night

It’s amazing how many things can happen in such a few hours. Elise and Eva took me on a Parisian night adventure. And I have to say…why is Paris so pretty? And so exciting?

The line 6 subway travels aboveground, crossing the river towards the Eiffel Tower. An accordion player snuck on board a few stops behind us, playing what in my mind was perfect Parisian music.

Dinner was ham and cheese crepe. Dessert was nutella and dark chocolate crepe. I learned how to pronounce crepe with their funny little r sounds in French.

NUTELLA.

 

On the streets in Cluny, we stopped by a candy shop. Why don’t these exist in America again? What amused me the most was the string candy and the egg shaped candy. “Don’t worry,” Elise assures me. The egg candy does not taste like egg. (It was just boring gummy taste.) String candy was delicious.

CANDY.

We walked down streets (Cluny?) where there were TONS of bars and restaurants. It was wonderfully bustling and busy, with lights shining and idle chatter filling the air. The restaurants are so pretty! Walking along this street, it’s easy to see how musicians and artists are so easily inspired by Paris.

We walked to Notre Dame, where a crowd was gathered around a firebreathing performance.

He went from simple firebreathing, to spinning fire around on strings, to finally spinning fireworks. The mini-starbursts in the air against the backdrop of Notre Dame…just breathtaking. No pictures, but I have the video!

On a small bridge, we passed by the strangest contraption ever.

It was part bicycle and part random parts just flying everywhere, blowing bubbles and gushing water from a small fountain and playing music. It was just strange.

The river was beautiful. Paris lights at night:

As we were walking towards to the Louvre, a HUGE crowd of skaters came rushing on the streets beside us. It looked SO FUN. Elise casually told me this happens every so often. Her little sister Eva and I were ecstatic.

They were preceded by staffers in yellow shirts, and followed by police cars. The crowd, when standing in one spot, took three full minutes to pass by. As we were walking, a bunch of skaters were just waiting at the side to join in.

At the Louvre, we sat in the entrance plaza. I tired to take some decent pictures, but alas my camera is not so brilliant at night photography. Here is the best that I could do:

Finally, we walked along a big street to come to the Arc de Triomphe. Some frantic picture-taking at the intersection:

It kind of works?

I feel like a ten-year-old, exclaiming and taking pictures of everything. Elise and Eva are very patient about it, thankfully. In Elise, I have found a fellow lover of long walks — apparently once she just took a six hour walk around the city! I definitely can’t do that in Florida, and probably not in Boston; there just aren’t as many things to explore. But in Paris, the sights and the atmosphere make me just want to walk around forever.

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Pura Vida!

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This is what everyone in Costa Rica say as a greeting, as a farewell, as a reminder to live each day to its fullest. It means “pure life,” and feels a hundred times more meaningful than the American equivalent of “woo-hoo” or “yeahhh!” I am convinced that because the Costa Rica people have this phrase in their every day life that it has also made them more efficient, happy, and fun.

 

Day 1:

We arrived, fuming at Spirit Airlines for charging $50 per second carry-on bag. Instead of being FREE, like any other airline does. Many people were tricked. Moral of the story: always check airline standards.

The flight was also 40 minutes late.

Day 2:

We trekked to a coffee plantation, where our knowledgeable guide showed us the coffee beans to the difference between good coffee and bad coffee.

Sadly this was all lost on my family since none of us drink coffee. Nevertheless, we happily bought a few bags of coffee with the most amazing aroma, and a bag of coffee covered dark chocolate that we devoured very quickly.

Our next trek were to the volcanoes, but sadly the fog covered everything. Fortunately, we experienced some beautifully spooky trails. Despite the Costa Rica summer, these trees appeared only as witchlike branches that stretched over the trail, allowing only a small lattice of sunlight to shine through.

In the afternoon we visited La Paz Waterfall Lodge, touted for being a great honeymoon location. (Mother teased me a bit about this.) The butterfly garden was the richest I’ve ever seen, anywhere.

There were also tons of hummingbirds. Adorable little things.

The waterfall trail was also the most amazing one I’ve been to. The winding steps took us to the side, then the top, and finally to the bottom of the giant waterfall.

Day 3:

We went white water rafting. No more words.

The ride was 4 hours long, going through a stretch of river 18 miles long. My sister, despite being too young for the adventure, was able to go through a series of happy coincidences. The tour itself was amazing, our guide being on the Costa Rica national team for white water rafting! They built up the rapids quit well, starting from easy level I and II’s to finally level III and IVs.

Day 4:

We went ziplining. The drive was a harrowing 1.5-turned-3 hours away, but the experience itself was amazing. The afternoon was followed by a river tour where our guide spotted monkeys from 100 feet away.

Day 5, 2am:

At the airport. Flight is delayed 40 minutes, again. Return home, collapse, and every…gets the flu.

All in all, it was an amazing start to the new year. Besides the mindless fun, I was opened up to yet another set of experiences that made me realize how lucky I am to be part of my family with my particular circumstances. It’s how my parents can arrange vacation time around mine. It’s how my sister is (mostly) obedient and fun to travel with. But most profoundly (maybe because now I have a job, and need to budget for things), the fact that we could pay for the trip — flight, hotel, tours, unexpected $150 in baggage fees — really struck me as a set of extremely fortunate circumstances.

To my parents, who have worked so hard these years. Pura vida!

Note: My favorite example for the limits of language on culture is the Australian Aboriginal people the Guugu Yimithirr. They do not have words for left and right. To refer to directions, they use the cardinals directions of north, east, west, south. They will turn east when navigating, and leave their keys on the southwest corner of the table.

HR vs Tech

My first day at DreamWorks started with a company-wide toast from CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg to the release of Madagascar 3. He welcomed the presence of an LA Laker Pau Gasol (who drove a Porsche to park in the front), wore the rainbow Madagascar 3 clown wig, and encouraged all to indulge in the company-provided champagne. It was quite an exciting start to my experience at DreamWorks.

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LA: First Impressions

There’s something about having too much free time that makes me less productive than if I had too much to do. I’ve been incredibly lazy while at home for the last three weeks, playing games with my sister and plain just playing games (Dragonvale…so many dragons hatched). But now that I’ve started work, I’m actually more inclined to do all these side projects that have been neglected in the three weeks of more than enough free time to complete them. This blog being one of them.

Thanks to the amazing chivalry and kindness of a good friend, I managed to arrive safely in LA despite flying into an airport that was a good 45 minutes away from the actual city. After settling into my sublet, my friend took me to Griffith Observatory to see the city. I was greeted by the lovely afternoon fog.

My friend pointed to the different areas we’d driven through while going from the faraway airport to the grocery store to where I was living…but since he pointed at every single direction it was a bit of a pointless exercise.

I really love all the mountains here. Florida is far too flat.

On Procrastination: Or How I Wasted 1.5hrs by Making an iPad Case

It’s funny how desperate the find gets for relief and change from normal routine under the stress of college and readings and impending psets. Today, my mind decided it wanted a new case for my new iPad. Inspired by the recent library sessions, I thought, hey! A book would make a perfect case for my iPad! My library buddy was not impressed. In the tones similar to when he tells me how my latest internet discovery was on reddit weeks ago, he shook his head and flatly said, it’s been done. You can buy tons of cases like that on Amazon!

Undeterred by this lack of enthusiasm towards my latest idea, I kept it in the back of my mind every time I pulled out my iPad to do a reading. Until finally, I had one reading too much, and my tired mind refused to fuse morphemes into meaningful sentences.

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Startup Fair

Was so fun today. I loved talking to all the start-ups, even if I wasn’t too interested in joining any of them. These are people who are truly passionate about their work, their projects — I’d love to find my passion and do the exact same thing.

Expectations

Somehow we started talking about expectations.

It started off playful, of course, with silly name-calling and ridiculous accusations that neither of us really meant. I don’t remember how we got to it, but things turned serious and he said you’ve met all my expectations so far so of course I asked him what were they?

His answer came after a short, weighted pause, and surprised me in being less a list of expectations, but a list of characteristics that described me. I didn’t buy it at first. No one perfectly meets every expectation on someone’s list! I could name you three things immediately why he’s not my girlhood image of Mr. Perfect.

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Disgrace

“You are a disgrace to the Eastern Time Zone”
-T.Kolasa, after I woke up at 1pm to respond to a text he sent at 9:30am.

On Spam

So I manage quite a lot of websites for different clubs on campus using WordPress, including Harvard Wushu. Of course, I don’t really go in and moderate these websites too much, just once every so often. To my surprise, one day after logging in there were 300+ comments.

Wow, I thought. Wushu suddenly got really popular!

Then I actually read through the comments, and realized most of them were spam. In fact, all of them were. What amused me greatly was the content of the spam. I must say I’m extremely impressed by the thought and detail you put into these spambots, and it saddened me that these wonderful praises of the non-existent writing on the wushu website was alas, only a script. If only I could get actual comments like this on my blog!

Some highlights:
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Playing with kids is the most understated cute quality in guys ever

There is something brilliant about this relationship in not only how happy he makes me feel; but also in how much fun it is to share him with those close to me. Never before have I been so eager to introduce someone to my friends and family.

Our dinner with my blockmates, my family at school, was the first affirmation of this new feeling. Not only did I feel fantastically loved by my friends (an entire panel, judging my prospective boyfriend?) but the way he fit perfectly with their sense of humor and ridiculousness was an extra bonus that delighted me to no end.

Telling my parents about him was also, surprisingly, not a chore. I had always thought I’d dread the talk, but it came so easily, and I even shared stories about him that made my mother laugh, which I took as a rare, subtle form of approval.

Last night, my sister and I were making origami while he was hanging out online. He started playing with my sister, making silly faces, bouncing around like a 5 year old. Then he started asking her Quiz Bowl questions, and we spent the next two hours, the three of us, geeking out on obscure facts from middle school, high school nerd competitions.

That’s it, said my heart to my mind. Thats what I want do every night.

Fall Colors

I am having problems processing all the happiness right now. This weekend was amazing in so many different ways. Good company, good scenery, exciting events coming ahead…loooove it. ♥

On Friday, my business board went out on an outing to beautiful Blue Hills, where we hiked among the falling leaves. The colors were absolutely stunning.

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