Tag Archives: travel

Food

Picky Eating and Overcoming the Fear of Fine Dining

July 23, 2014 Chuong Nguyen Leave a comment

I’ve been a picky eater ever since I can remember. I don’t like vegetables or most fruit. I generally don’t like green foods. I absolutely hate the fibrous crunch of lettuce, celery, broccoli—you name it. Going out to eat in my high school years with friends was basically me ordering a dish, picking off 50% of the contents, and eating what little remained, unless I was fortunate enough to find the one dish that wasn’t covered in a salad and coleslaw. So how did I fall in love with food? It seems unlikely, considering that I entirely hate a major food group.

My family went on vacation the summer after my sophomore year, and my mom desperately wanted to eat at this restaurant she’d seen reviews for. It was her birthday, and I was dragged along, slightly against my will. What was wrong with just going to the Outback for another Bloomin’ Onion and some of their ridiculously portioned cheesecake slices? What about their awesome dark brown bread they served with a huge knife running through it?

I didn’t know it, but I was about to lose my footing. Birthday dinners would never be the same for me.

I swooned after one bite of something utterly and impossibly amazing. One little piece of steak. It looked so sad on this large white plate, all by itself. I pitied it, put it on my fork, and put it in my mouth. What I tasted was this juicy, creamy, melt-in-your-mouth slice of heaven. Just barely crispy on the edges, but succulent all the way through, it teased every sense out of my feeble teenager mouth. It was heavenly, and suddenly Outback seemed boring, for peasants only. I was awestruck that something so small could pack such a punch, bring up so many wonderful food-related feelings. When the time came to order dessert, I decided to be adventurous and ordered something with fresh fruit. A raspberry “napoleon”: chantilly cream layered with fresh berries with crispy pastry tuilles in between. The order shocked my parents. I astounded them again when I ate bite after bite of my dessert (previously, I’d only been interested in artificial fruit flavors).

From then on, there was a small obsession with finding a perfect bite to meet that piece of meat. Now that my parents were not as worried about me finding something to eat on any given menu, we tried new restaurants. I was enjoying new flavors, but I kept running into all of these pesky vegetables. They were on every entrée, present as a garnish on every appetizer. Sometimes, they even made it to dessert, which disgusted and horrified me. About a year after the best piece of steak ever, my mom grew tired with me leaving half the plate behind. She told me, “Finish your plate or you can pay for your share of the food,”—and with those prices, I was horrified. When a dish was a solid week’s worth of earnings at my then-shitty-semi-retail job, avoiding the vegetables was clearly not worth it when I wanted to go to Disneyland over Spring Break.

So I put the piece of asparagus in my mouth, chewed briefly, and swallowed. And it wasn’t love. It was still mild disgust, but the idea of paying for something and not eating it (at least at a high price point) started to gall me. Bite after bite, frown after frown, the vegetables went away and the plate was empty. It wasn’t the worst thing ever, but it wasn’t something I’d choose to do on an everyday basis. My family found it entertaining, that I would break such a hard-and-fast eating rule for a fancy meal.

I’d like to say that day changed something in me, but it didn’t. I still don’t like greens, though I’ve compromised and started to enjoy some fresh fruit more often. The love of food, great food made with immense care, pushes me to keep trying new and exciting things. So I keep trying different restaurants with exotic menus and preparations. And I’ll have you know, I recently ate a large slice of cucumber with eggplant relish and didn’t throw a tantrum (or throw up).

Photo by Sara Slattery

Brainfood

Camera Tech

July 14, 2014 Kelly Danver Leave a comment

As the media is apt to tell us, we are living in a digital age where information is reduced to tiny pixels to be uploaded to a computer or social media site. That might be an overly detached way to put it, as the digital sharing we do every day truly can connect us to people we would never expect. We take pictures and video with our phones, and since technology has gotten so advanced, these are usually perfectly adequate for our social media needs. But for those who want to take their digital sharing to the next step (filming or taking high-quality photos and videos), there are a multitude of options available.

The Casual Photo Journalist

Smartphones these days take quality photos and can be a good replacement for a digital camera, but pictures take up a lot of memory—if you want to take a lot of pictures as well as short videos, investing in a point-and-shoot camera is the way to go. A point-and-shoot camera is exactly what its name implies: a camera where you can point it at something and take a decent photo with no adjustments needed. This kind of camera is perfect for those who don’t know or don’t care about the anatomy of a picture and just want to capture memories. These cameras can store up to 500 pictures at a time—sometimes more—and can record videos as long as 20 minutes. They are also getting smaller with better battery life and more memory space, making them the perfect travel companions. They are also great for kids who are just starting to use more sophisticated technology.

Some of the more highly rated point-and-shoot cameras out there include:

Canon PowerShot A-Series – This is a series of point-and-shoot cameras that range in price and power but provide an easy experience.
Nikon Coolpix Series – This series has a number of cameras under $100 with a variety of zoom ranges and different settings for taking pictures.

What you’ll find with a lot of these smaller cameras is that they are super easy to use. They have a lot of options for how to take your pictures or video without sacrificing too much quality, but the camera will always control how much light or focus the picture has. If you want to get more creative, you might want to invest in some of these bad boys below!

The Not-So-Amateur Photographer

For those who really want to dig into photography and experiment with light, zoom, focus, and a whole bunch of other variables, then investing in a DSLR is the way to go. A Digital Single-Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera is a fancy way of saying a powerful digital camera. These cameras pack a lot of punch.

First, their memory storage is phenomenal. Most of these cameras can have memory cards that hold at least 1500 pictures. You also get to control the operating parts of the camera, such as the shutter (which controls how much light goes in) and the shutter speed (which controls how long the shutter stays open to let light in). You can do some fun things with the focus of your pictures, as well as with the light. Now, if none of this makes sense to you but you want to use these more advanced cameras, doing some research or taking a short photography course (from an online learning site like Lynda.com or at a local community center) will definitely help you get the most out of your equipment.

There is some rivalry between the Canon and Nikon camps, but honestly, they are both super good at making cameras and it’s really a personal preference. This author is partial to Nikon, but that was after months of research and examination of my personal needs (as I write this, my Canon-adoring editor overlords are plotting their revenge!).

Nikon D Series – Nikon’s DSLR cameras range from the monster D4s, which have the ability to use 16 million pixels in one picture, to the modest D3000, a model that is perfect if you are just starting out using a DSLR.
Canon EOS series – These cameras, much like the Nikons mentioned above, have a wide range between each camera. The Canon 1D X has 18.1 megapixels and have a few less advanced models that is good for those who don’t need such a powerful camera.

With each DSLR, you need a few lenses to get the best quality photos. Unless you want to get crazy, a standard zoom and a telephoto lens work just fine. There are a few others that specialize in zoom or have a fish-eye, but those have a very specific purpose and may not worth the money unless you are seriously making a career out of taking pictures or you want to take those kinds of photos all the time.

The power of these cameras is unreal. In fact, they are so powerful that some people in Hollywood are using DSLR cameras to film small budget films and music videos—that’s the kind of quality we are talking about. So if you want to make photography a serious priority or hobby, I would look into DSLRs. I got my Nikon D5000 for my high school graduation and have used it on multiple trips, including my year abroad in Europe, and it was a fantastic experience. That said, my friends with regular point-and-shoot cameras also got some quality photos.

Overall, I would assess your needs, consider the amount of upkeep and effort you want to exert, do some research, and ask questions! Cameras are a great investment and can help preserve some of the best times. So make sure you’re using quality technology!

Photo by Rob Adams

Home

Mindful Road Rage

June 11, 2014 Mak Akhtar Leave a comment

Once upon a time, I drove around in circles in a Kaiser parking lot bawling my eyeballs out, thanks to an old man who had no a clue just how terribly he had impacted me emotionally. I had already spilled my morning smoothie, was running late to an appointment, and had a conference to prep for the next day.

Like everyone else, I was desperately searching for parking and finally found someone leaving fair and square. Unfortunately, I had to torturously watch a seemingly evil old man slowly steal my spot, pretending I wasn’t there honking at him, staring aghast at the injustice of it all. One last hand-on-the-horn-for-15-seconds only earned me the bird for my efforts to take back justice. And only resulted in the flood gates bursting open instantly. Once I managed to calm down, I tried to justify my overemotional reaction after reigning in my thoughts of how cruel and, well, fucked-up people can be. I was ready to get that old man and his little dog, too

Here’s something everyone can relate to: road rage. Just pure, unadulterated everyone-out-of-my-mother… fatherbrothersister’s-way road rage.

I don’t know what it is about people who drive like maniacs / fools / donkey riders in the tenth century… but nothing riles me up faster than being cut off by someone (read: idiot on wheels) who doesn’t have the decency to pick up the pace when they get in the lane that is rightfully yours. Isn’t that what it feels like? The thirty-foot space in front of your vehicle belongs to you! It has your name carved into it. I get so territorial and deranged; I start tailing them, revving the little engine of my not-so-souped-up two-door manual Civic and I’m so damn pleased with myself when I finally overtake the shit out of them, sneak over with a dirty look, and show them who’s boss. (Cue a war cry followed by your choice of ‘EAT MY DUST, SPARKY!’ or ‘JUSTICE!’ or ‘This is SPARTAAAA!’)

But what happens when you are desperate to be constantly zen like me? When you judge yourself every time you get irritated, because you have a reputation for being a meditator and working at a center for compassion? I’ve been doing that for nearly eight years now (the meditation bit; the compassion gig for two), and only in the last few years have I touched upon the tip of the iceberg of something I like to call “Mindful Road Rage.” The road is truly is the best place to practice mindfulness—and by that I don’t mean you start meditating while driving. (My old research professor says she ‘meditates with her eyes open’ for her grueling two-hour commutes—much to my horror for her safety.) What I mean is realizing your supremely bizarre emotional anger every time you feel wronged on the road, before you begin to act like that a-hole on the road yourself (everyone in a Beamer—I’m looking at YOU! Including my friend Ari. The stereotype is there for a reason…!).

Of course, as I was thinking of this article, someone (an idiot so to speak) cut me off and I had immediate road rage Tourette’s and cursed out loud in what is known as Unglish (Urdu English—the language would warrant too many horrified gasps and therefore will be withheld. My mother knows I blog, okay?)

So why does this matter? Why in the holy name of Thom Yorke’s exceptional dance skills would you want to be mindful about your road rage? Why should you and whose army care?

Well firstly, not everyone can be as special as you, driving like they’re Han Solo in the Millennium Falcon in an asteroid field. Damn these inferior X-wing drivers. But guess what? The only person whom this negatively affects is actually you. The person who just cut you off most likely has no clue. And it’s unlikely they’ll become a better driver because you go off blaring your horn at them. You’ll probably startle them shitless and make them more of a liability on the road.

It can also be hard to see a person in a vehicle as a human being with loved ones… I know I just see a damn box on wheels. Similar to how it’s harder to relate over a computer or phone screen: we’re wired to read body language and voice tones. So it’s easy to get caught up and be obnoxious. Perhaps the metal body surrounding them, like a Power Ranger on wheels, sucks a little bit of the humanity out of them? Bold and a little out there, but something to consider.

Another reason is… science. Our flight-or-fight response is best reserved for fighting off wild beasts. It hasn’t evolved to deal with first-world problems just yet because we change shit too fast and too well; evolution is a long process of trying and testing—not like fast tracking in the FDA. There’s nothing you can do to get rid of that damned stress hormone, cortisol, so when you amp up your stress response, you are literally creating conditions for chronic stress (which, over time, will seriously fuck you up—to put it kindly). The power of science compels you!

Let’s go back to that dastardly old man in that Kaiser parking lot. Once I finally wiped the sob-snot from my face, I thought, What if this man has a wife who’s dying in there? What if he’s coming in for his own regular chemo? People do douchebag things out of desperation sometimes. Perhaps this was something that didn’t matter in the grand scheme of what he was going through. Or you know, maybe he was just truly being a douchebag. But once you start to consider that you have not a damned idea about going on in another person’s story at that moment, it is in your best interest for your sanity to give them the benefit of the doubt. And that, ladies and gentlemen, will put some so-called a-hole drivers in a whole different perspective.

The fact is that everyone else on the road, your fellow earthlings, are just trying to get where they’re going, just like you are. They need to put their needs before yours, just as you put yours before theirs… and it’s going to happen again and again and again. You can’t change that, but you sure can change how you feel about it, and it’ll benefit not only your own well-being, but also the chaotic mess that is the phenomena of driving and traffic. You can even take it a step further by making it your random acts of kindness for the day or an easy way to be nice. You can’t change the situation, but you sure can change your thought process about it.

Now when you want heads to roll on the freeway, either play nice to boost your own good karma or choose wisely from Carlin’s incomplete list of impolite words, take a deep breath, and drop it immediately, so that no drivers, including yourself, are harmed in the process.

Big Mak standing by…

Photo by Rob Adams

Travel

A Night on the Paris Metro

May 23, 2014 Nidhal Ben-Romdhane Leave a comment

When someone mentions the Fourth of July, most people think of fireworks, barbecues, and good old-fashioned American liberty. However, my last Independence Day was nothing like the relaxing image of beers and hot dogs that we usually think of, and I’ll never forget just how different it was.

I had landed in Paris and been there for a few days—just enough time to check out the Louvre and Notre Dame, but nowhere near enough time to know my way around the city. Since I was staying with my cousin at the time, I hadn’t had a chance to meet many people… leading me to solve that problem the way I solve all my problems: with the Internet. If you haven’t heard of Couchsurfing, it’s an awesome website where people look for hosts wherever they’re traveling and others can host travelers to make new friends! There, I discovered meet-up happening at the Parc des Buttes Chaumont for a wine and cheese party. I figured wine and cheese was close enough to hot dogs and beer, and I ended up taking a ride on the metro to meet up with these travelers from all ends of the world.

My first mistake, of course, was forgetting to charge my phone—I had no way of finding out where exactly in this enormous park to find the meetup. After some various interactions with French people and an interesting conversation with a drug dealer, I finally found the promised land of wine and cheese and settled in for a nice relaxing evening with travelers. Unfortunately, the park security didn’t agree with our plans that night and we were kicked out because the park was closing shortly after.

Our night was just beginning, so we didn’t let this stop our Fourth of July celebrations. As we were walking to the metro to get back to our temporary homes, someone yelled that we were all going to take a train to the Seine River and finish our wine and cheese party along the water. From here, the night escalated. Somehow on our way to the metro, another Couchsurfer procured a giant speaker box. Not even your run of the mill boom box, we needed a dolly just to move it. Naturally someone connected their phone to this thing and suddenly this wine and cheese picnic had just turned into a traveling rave.

Now, here comes the part that would have never flown in the United States. Our picnic group took over an entire subway car, and all of a sudden we had turned this public transportation service into our own personal night club. People were popping open bottles of wine, shooting champagne corks into the group, and dancing their asses off. What was going to be a fifteen minute ride to the river turned into us taking over this train for about two hours.

This whole time, I was having the time of my life, but there was a little part of my brain that was freaking out just a little bit. We were drinking in public, creating a huge disturbance, and confirming the stereotypical image of tourists in Paris. I couldn’t help but think that the night would end up taking a turn for the worst once the authorities got involved.

But they never came. When we reached the first stop, everyone who wasn’t interested just got off and went into another train car. By the end of our metro rave, we actually ended up with more people than we started by accumulating random Parisians who felt like partying for a while..

We ended up getting off at the river once the trains stopped running and decided to just keep partying until they started up again at six in the morning. (This of course led my cousin to freak out since I had no way of contacting her. Whoops!) After about twelve full hours of meeting new people, dancing all over the city, and drinking heavily in public, I finally got on the train again and reacquainted myself with my bed.

It was probably one of the most memorable nights of my life, and will always be the kind of Fourth of July I could never experience in the United States.

Photo by Meggyn Watkins

Travel

127 Hours (and then some)

May 19, 2014 Kyle Martirez-McIntosh Leave a comment

At some point, everyone takes a road trip. Sometimes, it’ll be something indulgent and last minute, like the time I got dragged to Vegas on two hours notice and had to sleep in the lobby once we got there, while my friend was in our hotel room with a hooker on Easter morning. Or it’ll be poorly planned, like last Valentine’s Day when a drive up the coast ended pulled over and huddled in a tent during a 40-degree rainstorm. But I think, to truly qualify as a “road trip story,” the story has to focus on what happens on the road rather than at the ultimate destination. In that case, there’s only one road trip story I know.

In the winter of 2009, I was preparing to move from New York to Los Angeles after landing my first job out of college. As with any entry-level job, the pay wasn’t very much, nor did it come with any relocation money. Seeing the predicament I was in, my dad came to me with an idea: road trip. He offered to rent an SUV and drive me across the country for some family bonding with him and my sister as I moved to LA for the then-foreseeable future.

The plan didn’t exactly thrill me. But, understanding my reaction requires a little background on where I come from: my parents have lived in different cities since I was five, making me very independent; I don’t like tight spaces, particularly with company; and I don’t talk to my family that much. Add in the fact that my dad scheduled enough stops to stretch the drive to nine days, and clearly this trip went against every survival instinct I have.

Going into the trip with a relatively fatalistic attitude, I figured my one chance at maintaining sanity would be to document the entire experience on video. What initially seemed like a fun way to kill time in the car and keep my friends abreast of my progress soon devolved into my dad nicknaming himself “YOM” (an acronym meaning “Your Old Man”) and my sister commandeering the camera to give shout-outs to my ex-girlfriends.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzCqWX0qUho

Things degraded further when we passed through Columbia, Missouri, home to my father’s alma mater, where he serenaded greater Missouri with his college fight song. A jaunt through Frat Row brought the introduction of the term “wench’s lost and found” turning the trip into Norman Rockwell’s worst nightmare set against the plot structure of Heart of Darkness.

Another unforeseen complication of sharing the car with my dad and a girl seven years my junior, was music choice. My dad had settled into the typical middle-aged obsession with John Mellencamp, Fleetwood Mac and Billy Joel (because the minute you hit fifty, those artists somehow become palatable), while Rachel would routinely snap on a pair of headphones and belt out top 40 hits in the backseat.

Agreeing on what to listen to is one of those things that starts out as a minor quibble, but after five days of listening to the same CDs on repeat (our rental car didn’t have an iPod dock) I was not-so-secretly considering stabbing my own eardrums to avoid hearing “Jack and Diane” for the 753^rd time.

While much of the road trip was obviously spent, well, on the road, we interspersed a few visits to family across the country. An additional oddity of my family is how well everyone gets along. On the surface, that sounds like a banal statement, but when you consider that my parents have each been married three times, and literally everyone gets along, the strangeness comes to the fore. In Chicago, we stayed with the sister of my dad’s third wife; in St. Louis, with the parents of my mother (my dad’s first wife); in Kansas City, with my aunt; and closed the trip by having a guys’ weekend in Vegas with me, my dad, and my mom’s third husband. Throw in the fact that my dad gleefully recounted the story of my birth before an audience, and my seven years in therapy starts to make a lot more sense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncZPrJo0IhY

Even though we had planned out some of our pit stops ahead of time, the first night of the trip proved just how little forethought had gone into the rest of the drive. We pulled into State College, PA, home of Penn State, during a blizzard, the day before winter graduation and on the same weekend as the statewide high school wrestling finals. In short, we couldn’t find a hotel room to save our lives. Little did I know this would become a recurring theme for the rest of the drive.

Later, at the halfway point of the trip, we ran out of gas because my dad ignored the low fuel warning. And we had the same problem again in a particularly desolate stretch of Utah where there isn’t a gas station or cell service for over 100 miles… In both instances, we had to depend on our hitchhiking abilities to get us to and from the nearest town with a can of fuel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWgRUh8LmjA

After the Utah incident, the trip got a lot smoother, thanks to the milder winters out west. By January of 2010, I was settled into a new apartment in Los Angeles, downright blissful in the belief that I’d never have to take on such a daunting move again, not realizing realize that I’d bounce between coasts again in 2011, 2012 and 2013, taking on the drive by myself each time.

And while driving cross-country by myself didn’t produce as many stories, at least I got to pick the music.

Photo by Sara Slattery

Career

Adventures in Freelancing (Pants Optional)

February 24, 2014 Alyssa Kurtzman 4 Comments

I never thought I’d miss desk chairs.

I was fortunate enough to be one of those people who started working immediately after college. A yearlong internship panned out—the television company with which I’d been interning took on a $45 million project during my last semester, and rather than train new coordinators, they just started paying me once I graduated. I started at $500 a week, which at the time felt like legit riches, and then got bumped up to $600 a few months later.

Although I was only supposed to contract for about 5 months, I ended up staying as an employee for more than a year, during which time my incredible boss/mentor rallied tirelessly to get me put on salary, but to no avail. I tried to move laterally in the company, toward one of the creative jobs that were more along the lines of my degree, but nepotism reared its fugly head and I was passed over for any new positions.

So, I found myself with no chances to move within the company and no full-time prospects elsewhere. I did cry, once—in the comfort of my own breakfast burrito—and no one noticed except the waiter, who (bless him) wordlessly handed me a mimosa. After a few sips, I pulled myself together, considered my skills and connections, and shifted my mindset to freelancing. Fortunately, thanks to the proactive work of my now-former boss, I spent almost no time searching for jobs. She put me in contact with a few company connections, all of whom I reached out to immediately and pushed to set meetings up with. During these meetings, if there were even an inkling of a suggestion of a task mentioned, I said yes. Always yes. I agreed to everything from working a private school charity function for a producer to managing the marketing for an upcoming indie film. I can’t stress enough how important it is to say yes. If the task is basic enough that they’re asking a relative stranger to do it, and it doesn’t involve a Hazmat suit, it’s probably something you can figure out how to do. I consider myself a lifetime double student at the universities of Google and Your Local Public Library.

So I got a backup laptop battery, switched out my unlimited MetroCard for a pay-per-ride and, before I could put on my comfy slippers, I was juggling five different freelance gigs. And I do mean different. I spent my days alternating between cutting Flavor of Love highlights (yes, the VH-1 masterpiece), to pulling stills and sound bites for a TV show’s digital board game, to frantically researching Photoshop layer-masking for a website’s design after having promised I had the adequate skills to do it.

The Money

Let’s talk about the fun part of freelancing: getting paid!!! Negotiating a pay rate is not as tricky or as terrifying as you’d expect. Before that process begins for you, ask someone in a similar field about the rates they charge, both when they started and now. When you go back to the employer, don’t be afraid to aim higher than you think you should. If you’ve gotten this far in setting up a freelance position, they’re unlikely to slam the (e-)door in your face. They’ll either say yes, or they’ll counter with a lower rate. From there, feel free to negotiate away; I found that agreeing on a rate within a couple of emails saved both of us from any potential resentment.

Here’s another thing about quoting a rate for your work. Come on—lean in for this one—I’m going to type in italics to invoke whispering: If they’re hiring you to do some extra work, eight times out of ten they don’t know how to do it themselves. They probably don’t even know what the typical rate is. Don’t take advantage of people, obviously, but don’t be afraid to upcharge based on your own experience (whatever that may be) and to make it worth your while. Like I said, I promise that an employer won’t turn down your services, then tell all his/her friends not to hire you, and then hack into your OKCupid account to declare you a huge, pompous, money-grubbing asshole if you quote a rate that’s too high.

What’s less fun than negotiating a rate is chasing after employers for money. It’s not necessarily that you didn’t do a great job, or that the employer is a bad person, or that the project is necessarily a total go-nowhere scam running out of the back of a souvenir shop. (I repeatedly stress not taking this stuff personally, because it’s very easy to let happen, especially if you’re working alone most of the time and away from the regular, conversational feedback of office life. A year of freelancing left me more sensitive to criticism than Joffrey Lannister-Baratheon.) It is simply not your clients’ top priority to give you their money, regardless of the job you did. So don’t be afraid to bring it up kindly in an email or make a phone call, regularly, to make sure it happens. No one is going to worry themselves as much about your payment as you are. Be your own #1 get-money-get-paid advocate.

The Routine

Throughout my time freelancing, it was hard to regulate some semblance of a routine. I would work late until I fell asleep with my computer in my lap, and then I would wake up the next morning, grab my computer from my bedside, and start working again. The sheer number of deadlines made self-motivation easy; the trickier task was turning my brain off from “work mode.” Imagine getting to your office at 8 am and leaving after midnight every day. Even if you’re only committed to eight hours, you’ll probably find yourself working ahead just because you’re in that environment. When I was working from home, there was no differentiator, especially when “home” was a teeny tenement apartment with no common spaces.

But there were numerous advantages! I could work in my pajamas (although to avoid the inevitable self-disgrace, I usually didn’t), I could do my laundry and grocery shopping in the middle of the day when there were no lines. I worked my gym schedule around the TV Guide for the channels I could watch on the treadmill. My conversational skills didn’t exactly flourish, but my work and home lives were the most efficient they’d ever been.

The Location

At one point, I decided to take the phrase “working remotely” to heart. With some extra cash from one particularly lucrative job, I moved to an apartment two blocks from the Mediterranean Sea for a few months while I continued to cut, edit, and write content for various clients. Wake up, work over breakfast, bring lunch and write on the beach before it got too hot, come home, work through dinner, go out with new roommates. And, of course, go on the occasional adventure. I realize that not every freelance job can be done from across the globe, but if the stars align accordingly for you, then get your ass out there.

Hanging Up The Slippers

Before I knew it, a year of freelancing had passed. By then, I was working part-time in the office of a client, a social media/entertainment startup, who now needed me on-hand for a few hours a week. I was also bartending a couple times a week, more for the social interaction than anything else. I felt both exhausted and also, strangely, unaccomplished; unless you’re looking at freelance gigs cumulatively, it’s easy to feel like you didn’t contribute greatly to any one project.

Not long after that, the part-time office job asked me to come onboard full-time. After weighing the decision, I decided to hang up my slippers and come back to office life. I would miss the freedom of scheduling my day, and I would miss indulging the weird idiosyncrasies I had developed from being alone most of the time for 15 months (like talking to myself excessively and eating certain foods with a knife only). Ultimately, the most alluring prospects were the regular, decent salary, a stake of equity in the company, the comfort of a desk chair (so much more ergonomic than the headboard of my bed), and the chance to interact all day with humans who weren’t appearing on a daytime talk show.

Am I glad I made the switch back to a one-job-only, 9-to-5 life? Yes. Do I miss the flexibility? Yes, every time I get a low-airfare alert for some exotic city, or try and elbow my way to the only rust-stain-free dryer at the laundromat at 7:30 in the evening. On the plus side, I have more regular in-person human interaction; I’m finally starting to get out of the habit of what I call ‘speaking in email,’ ending all spoken office conversations with “Best, Alyssa.” And I don’t have to chase anyone for a paycheck—it lands nicely into my checking account twice a month.

Is It For You?

I don’t know that I would recommend freelancing as a full-time job to everyone. I think it’s worth trying, especially if any of the above perks seem attractive to you. And oftentimes, they can lead to a steadier position, as in my case.

If you’re thinking about jumping on the freelance train, it’s worth having some money saved up, in case the jobs dry up or in case an employer is dragging their feet to give you your first paycheck. There’s always going to be some lingering awareness (and there should be, if you’re responsible about your bank account) that there will be periods of low income in addition to times where you’re flush with cash. Retail copywriting, for example, is heavily sought after from October to December, but unsurprisingly, work dries up after the holidays. So as tempting as it is after a well-paid gig to head to Serendipity 3 for a celebratory Frrozen Haute Chocolate, it might be worth saving some of that cheddar for a rainy day. If managing your money with some Scroogery isn’t something you think you’re capable of, then maybe freelancing isn’t for you.

Of course, starting to freelance isn’t always an all-or-nothing decision. You might be working one full-time position when someone asks you to take on a project. Then that may lead to other projects, some concurrently, until you have to consider whether it’s enough money and consistent work to quit your day job for. If so, and if you don’t LOVE your day job, then I say get out of there! Be free! Spread your self-sufficient wings! And when that day comes when you’re called back down to Earth for another permanent position, you have to make the decision for yourself: Just how much do you love eating oatmeal with a knife?

Photo by Meaghan Morrison

Travel

I Was a Eurail Stowaway

January 31, 2014 Liz Kerin Leave a comment

During the winter of my senior year, I carefully scheduled my classes just so in order to have my college experience culminate in an awesome, once-in-a-lifetime, double summer study abroad program. It was going to be the best. I’d be doing a writing program in Florence, Italy, followed by a French-language intensive in Paris. Because I knew I’d want to do a lot of sightseeing on my days off, I purchased a Eurail pass in the States before I left. It wasn’t cheap, but I was told that it would save me a lot of money in the end instead of buying train tickets in Europe.

Cut to about six weeks later—I’m preparing to leave my program in Italy for Paris. I’d been using the Eurail pass around Italy over the past few weeks, taking day trips to cities like Venice and Siena. It seemed to be working just fine, so I figured I’d use it for my overnight train from Florence to Paris as well.

The day we were scheduled to leave, however, a friend of mine cautioned me that certain trains, specifically the overnight ones that went longer distances, wouldn’t accept the Eurail pass. I did a little research online and sure enough, he was right. This particular train wasn’t going to take my pass. I’d need to buy a ticket, and I’d need to do it quickly: every student in our program would be embarking on a mass exodus from the dorms at 5:00 that evening. We were being officially kicked out and would be unable to re-enter the Florence campus after 5:00, thanks to the way NYU had engineered everyone’s student visas and their wack-a-doo liability laws. It was a whole thing.

When I went online to buy my train ticket, it was unclear whether this train was being run by an Italian company or by a French company. The train I wanted to take showed up on both of the lines’ websites. I decided to roll the dice and purchased the ticket from the French website—I barely spoke any Italian, but I at least knew a little bit of French, so I figured I could (sort of) read the fine print. I bought the ticket, packed my bags, hugged all of my new friends goodbye, and hopped into a cab to the train station.

There had been a public transit strike in Italy while I was there (I later learned that there was a public transit strike in Italy at least once a month), so the train was delayed at least four hours. I waited. And waited. And waited. Stopped people watching when the people stopped doing anything worth watching and read my book. And waited some more. I couldn’t go back to the dorms, so I just had to sit there and hope that eventually I could get out of Florence

Finally, the train pulled up. I was exhausted and bored and starving for something resembling lunch… or dinner… or anything, honestly. I noticed that the passengers boarding in front of me were all holding tickets purchased from the Italian website. When I presented my French ticket, I was met by puzzled, mustachioed frowns and a lot of muttering in Italian.

The conductor, and some guy who I guess was his supervisor, examined my ticket. “We… do not know,” the conductor said in broken English and handed the ticket back to me. “No French ticket, we don’t speak it. I’m sorry.”

“Wait, so I can’t get on?” my jaw dropped. Where the hell was I supposed to go? “This is a ticket, for this train! I paid! See, here’s my receipt!”

I pointed furiously at the proof of purchase on the bottom of the ticket. More frowns. More Italian grumbles.

I stood there, weighing my options: I had to find a way onto this train. I was alone in a foreign country with nowhere to stay, and if I didn’t arrive in Paris the next morning, NYU would probably sound the alarm and call my parents in the States to tell them I’d disappeared into thin air. It’s worth mentioning here that I did not have a cell phone. My American phone didn’t work overseas, so I’d been relying on phone cards to call home in the dorms and I was out of minutes. It was after midnight, I had no idea where the nearest not-seedy hotel was, which meant wandering around the city alone in the middle of the night with my two enormous suitcases in tow. The only number I had for my destination was a New York phone number and it was a Sunday. I needed to get the hell on this train.

I heard people shouting something like “Andiamo!” from the back of the train, urging the conductor to get a move on. I was holding them up. The conductor’s supervisor (or whoever the heck he was) mumbled something in Italian that probably meant something like “I don’t have time for this, you deal with it.” Then, he walked away, leaving me alone with the conductor.

The conductor was this skinny guy with a bushy, unkempt mustache that looked like a caterpillar. I think his name was like… Giuseppe? Or Gironomo?

“We go on the train,” Gironoseppe finally said. “You stay with me here. We go to Paris. Yes?”

“Oh, thank you, thank you so much!” I practically threw my arms around Gironoseppe. Thank God.

He took me to his quarters, where he ordered me some food and some wine. I was like… okay. I’ll eat. But I needed to figure out where I was going to stay for the night. Like, I definitely wasn’t going to stay in the conductor’s sleeping chamber, right? Right. The guy was friendly enough, telling me about his wife and son who lived in Rome at his mama’s house, along with his two brothers and their wives and kids. He also kept telling me to drink more wine, which I politely refused. It had been a rough night, but not quite rough enough to get drunk in such close quarters with an utter stranger.

After we finished eating, Gironoseppe pulled an extra pillow and blanket from the closet and told me I should try to get some sleep. At that, I stood up, and concocted a story about a group from my NYU program who were also on the train and might have had an extra bunk in their sleeping compartment. This guy was probably well-intentioned and courteous and all of that but, like most girls, I’d been taught to trust my uh-oh feeling. So I picked up my two monstrous suitcases and peace’d. Sorry, Gironoseppe, I hope you understood. I mean, the Italians have to be at least vaguely familiar with the terms and conditions of Stranger Danger.

I made my way out into the hall, trying to find a spot where I could sleep/sit/while away the next eight hours ‘till we arrived in France. My ticket didn’t have a bunk assignment on it (which probably should have been an early warning sign that something was wrong with it. Oh well, too late now.) I wandered over to the dining car, and it was deserted. So I folded up my sweatshirt like a pillow and curled up on top of my suitcases. I’d just crash here. I’d make it work.

About an hour later, I was awoken by a kindly young British woman. I think I dreamed for half a second that Mary Poppins had come to rescue me (though maybe she just sounded Poppins-like and magical because I was so relieved to have an English-speaking female address me). She asked me why I was sleeping in the dark dining car all by myself. I explained the situation to her and she laughed, saying that there was plenty of space on the train. In fact, there was an empty bed in her compartment. I guess being a young female who spoke my native tongue was enough to win my trust. So, once again, I gathered my bags and I moved. This was becoming one of the longest nights of my life, and it was about to get longer.

I stayed in the bunk that Mary Poppins was sharing with her friend, and I managed to get a little bit of shut-eye. But just before dawn, our train lurched to a stop. And it stayed there, stopped where it was, somewhere on the border of France and Switzerland, for seven goddamn hours. I prayed that my French RAs weren’t the types to fly into a panic and tell my parents they ought to make plans to have my body shipped back to New York. I knew I had a lot of phone calls to make as soon as I got to Paris. Boy, oh boy.

Luckily, my NYU-in-Paris wardens weren’t the panicky types, and although I didn’t end up checking into my room until 9:00 that night and had to bathe in the dorm’s tiny, communal closet with an overhead faucet that passed for a shower, I’d never been more relieved. While everybody else was checking out the bar scene in the Latin Quarter and making new friends, I was upstairs, sleeping like a baby, resting on my stowaway laurels. I might have gotten a lively little anecdote out of the whole ordeal that I can kill with at social gatherings whenever studying abroad comes up. But, next time… I’m definitely taking a plane.

Photo by Andy Sutterfield

Travel

Our Mixtapes: Soundtracks For a Sane Commute

January 30, 2014 Kelly Danver Leave a comment

When I was in middle school and high school, I was the queen of mix CDs. I made mixes for my friends and family, for car rides, and just for myself. It was, and is, one of my favorite pastimes. Choosing my favorite songs to find what tracks went well together was fun and challenging. Now, after years of practice, I think I’ve gotten pretty good at it (or at least my mom thinks so).

I find the process of creating mixes cathartic and important because, in my humble opinion, music makes everything better. Workouts, walks, studying, traveling, or just lounging about, music can bring you up or bring you down depending on your mood and what kind of day you’ve had. Because of this, I have several go to playlists and songs that I use when I am commuting to and from work or other places to either get me going or calm me down after a rough day.

To honor this, and hopefully give you lovely readers some cool and maybe new music, I have put together some of my favorite songs for a sane commute.

Like a Boss

These songs I feel are for a day when work didn’t crush your soul but instead made you feel like you were actually contributing something to the world. Go figure. They are upbeat but slightly melancholy in their own individual way. (Hey, you had a great day, but you still have to get up tomorrow…)

1) “Don’t You Evah” – Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

2) “Sister” – The Black Keys, El Camino (Ohhhh, this is a fancy live version!)

3) “Lies” – CHVRCHES, The Bones of What You Believe

4) “Jackie, Dressed in Cobras” – The New Pornographers, Twin Cinema

5) “Forever” – HAIM, Days Are Gone

Adventure Awaits

These songs are for a great day that also happens to be a Friday or the start of a vacation. They have great beats, are pretty positive overall and are fantastic for singing along. Who cares if they see you mouthing lyrics? You get to sleep in tomorrow!

1) “Drove Me Wild” – Tegan and Sara, Heartthrob

2) “In Your Light” – Gotye, Making Mirrors

3) “All of the Lights” – Kayne West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

4) “Santa Fe” – Beirut, The Rip Tide

5) “Forever Yours” – Alex Day, Forever Yours

6) “Fearless” – Taylor Swift, Fearless

Down for the Count

These next few songs are for the defeated. That might sound a bit melodramatic, but sometimes that’s the only way I feel after a long and arduous and probably really stupid day. They are sad but beautiful, and hopefully they can serve as a reminder that you just have to keep doing you. So plug in your head phones, and let the world fall away.

1) “Orange Sky” – Alexi Murdoch, Away We Go Soundtrack

2) “No Cars Go” – Arcade Fire, Neon Bible

3) “Bella Donna” – The Avett Brothers, The Second Gleam

4) “Perth” – Bon Iver. Bon Iver

5) “The Story I Heard” – Blind Pilot, 3 Rounds and a Sound

6) “The Gambler” – fun., Aim and Ignite

7) “I Know What I Know” – Paul Simon, Graceland

8) “Right as Rain” – Adele, 19

Photo by Remi Coin

Travel

Time Stamped in a Different Time Zone

January 29, 2014 Shilpa Rao Leave a comment

This February will mark my two-year anniversary of booking a one-way ticket to Bangalore, India, ultimately leaving New York and my friends behind to chase a newfound interest in helping women’s rights abroad.

A lot has changed since the nights I spent in New York drunkenly crying on my bedroom floor, chain-smoking Camels to temper the taste of feeling pathetic, frustrated, and directionless in my mouth. Full disclosure: I listened to the entire Drake album on repeat for months, too.

And, yet, this March marks my return back to the U.S. to pursue graduate school. Though my intention behind the move was to donate my skills, the reality is that I took more lessons from India than I dished out.

India has gone above and beyond in delivering the unique experience that I desperately craved, but Frommer’s did not tell me how to handle spending the night in a lodge run by an oiled down 12-year-old boy, sleeping on a blood-stained bed sheet. Women’s interest blogs did not guide me on how to hitchhike on a 16-year-old’s motorcycle to get away from a group of leering men that started following me out of the gym. Expat groups did not tell me that before I even started my first day at work, my colleague would be kind enough to invite me to his daughter’s first birthday with the rest of the team.

But I don’t want to focus on the lessons of humility, patience and sanitation that I’ve learned from moving abroad. It would be trite to remind you to eat only cooked food or observe the local attire. I don’t have photos albums of sepia-filtered temples or me doing the downward dog on the beach. #princessjasmine

All those things could be learned and recreated from a Lonely Planet forum or even a short-term visit to a foreign country. What I have experienced from being away from the U.S. is something that no amount of literature or conversation could have prepared me for: transience.

The life of an expat can be inherently sad and lonely. Unless you moved abroad with your family or plan on settling long-term in a new place, you immediately realize the implications of having a time-stamped relationship with your host country.

Almost everything in my current life has a clear expiration date, except for ironically, the milk (seriously, why doesn’t it ever go bad here?). I meet a fellow expat and, by the time I learn his last name, I also know his departure date and what airline he is flying. The takeaway? Always fly Emirates.

I find investing in these friendships exhausting because I wonder if I made any stable or consistent connections in the last two years. Are we all rushing into fake intimacy because it is better to be slamming shots under the guise of friendship than it is to be the lonely girl at the bar ordering white wine…. again?

Or can six months of friendship be a solid enough foundation to keep the momentum going for years to come? After all, those six months were littered with experiences like holding my French friend’s hand in the ambulance as we rushed to the emergency room to avoid a potential splenectomy. Or sitting behind my Australian friend on a scooter as we navigate a new beach town. And then I remember that our home countries are scattered all over the world. Our unifying thread is the time we spent in India. I don’t look for lifetime friendships in everyone I meet, but when I met you on Saturday and I know you leave in three weeks, I can’t help but ask, ‘Why bother?

Those restless nights in New York made me desire something else, but only professionally. I never questioned whether my personal life would turn into a revolving door of faces and names, nor did I imagine that I’d spend consecutive months with someone to never see them again. In essence, I took everyone for granted.

But this transience, she plays dirty. She’ll make you feel crazy and stupid until you are desperately refreshing Kayak for a good deal home. And just when your third bout of diarrhea hits from eating at the alleged five-star restaurant in the Sheraton and you’re stuck at home missing your friend’s goodbye party because a cab strike prevents you from physically attending, she comes over, sits on your lap, and gives you the ride of her life: Oh, a group of you guys are going to Goa this weekend? Sure, let me pack really quickly. Dinner at the Taj? Good thing I’m driving by RIGHT THIS SECOND.

Maybe she isn’t soo bad.

After all, transience has also shown me the beauty in expat life. The constant merry-go-round of people in my life has forced me to enjoy each outing, each dinner, and even each bathroom trip for what it actually is. There is no false promise of the next hangout or a future trip. As corny as it may sound: moving away has forced me to actually live in the present.

And as you enjoy the third round of sangria at Sunday brunch with a group of people who you met three days ago at a some guy’s house party who is moving back to Canada next week, you also realize that life’s truest moments are those you spend with your fellow transient strangers. There are no guards up when talking to each other or feelings of shyness to cut through because you literally don’t have the time for the initial, get-to-know-you-slowly, game. The second you realize that all you have are mere seconds to get to know someone, you stop sizing each other up and down and approach with more confidence and acceptance: commes des F down, we’re just doing dinner.

Now, I’m contemplating what profound insight to leave you with because my boyfriend just came home. I’m watching him change from a suit into a t-shirt—not because I’m completely creepy (well, okay, that too), but to take in this moment, because we may not be together after March, when I return home and he stays in India. He is an expat, too, from New York. I guess I really couldn’t leave New York behind.

This is when I want to slap transience for her loud mouth taunting, for filling me with doubts and “Why bothers?” We may be tragically time stamped. That ticking clock may force me to really—no, really—spend time with him here. But that’s all any of us ever have: today and an uncertain future. So I’m here now, today, with my own departure date. And all it took to appreciate this moment was to leave everything in my past.

Photo by Henri Legentil

Travel

Let’s Ask: Yeah, I Lived in a Castle

January 28, 2014 Lisa Frye 1 Comment

Once upon a time, wicked far away, I totally lived in a castle. (Yep, sure did). It was part of a semester abroad that took place in the Netherlands, most of the time, and included a once weekly romp out into the EU, except for that jaunt we took to Croatia. It’s one of those things I’ve done in my life that, when mentioned in casual conversation, usually garners a “wait what!” followed by a slew of questions. So, to set the record straight and to shed some light on the topic of studying abroad and living in castles, I’ve compiled a number of questions that have come up over the years (and a few that have not—but seemed really basic) and I give to you my most honest answers:

“Oh, you studied a broad? What was her name?”

Very funny. This is a serious article, thank you very much.

“Did birds in tiny bonnets and mice with teenie jackets help you clean the place and get dressed in the morning?”

Only on Tuesdays…

“How? Why in the world did you end up in a castle?”

I attended a private college in the Boston area that had, many years before my attendance, acquired the property. Moat included. The inside had been remodeled to accommodate dorms and classrooms. Over the years (I’m fuzzy on the facts here), the school started relying on the support of the town’s two local dining establishments to feed the 80-some students. The facility was so limited, and the burden on the restaurants to great, the school started including a Eurail pass in tuition so that the students could leave the country in order to get a well-rounded meal on the weekends. Expensive. Awesome. Tomato. Toh-mah-toh.

But, wait, that’s not what you asked. I ended up there after weighing my study-abroad options. It was basically a no-brainer. I could go to Los Angeles, where I currently reside, and live in a luxury apartment or I could go to the Netherlends and live in a castle. It wasn’t a tough decision. It was also not a tough application process…

“What is it like to live in a castle?”

Well living in a castle is kind of a lot like living in any other old stone building. Come to think of it, it’s a lot like living in a concrete or wood building. Sorry to disappoint with this one, but it was basically a really adorable quaint old building. It creaked a lot and the bathrooms were strangely designed. The electrical circuiting was sensitive, the kitchen was reminiscent of a stone hobbit home, and aside from the ghosts, it was a lot like most apartments in Boston.

I’m only kidding. Boston has ghosts, too.

“Wait, there were ghosts?!”

Yes, of course. Her name was Sophie and she had a whole room in the castle named after her. Sophie’s Lounge. I did not ever meet Sophie, probably because I’m a nonbeliever and I wouldn’t waste my time with someone like that if I were a ghost. My roommate, Jess, still maintains that Sophie used to open our door in the middle of the night. Where some see a building settling, others see the handiwork of the dead. We may never know the truth.

The closest any of us ever got to Sophie was our friend Rachel. Rachel was Skyping in Sophie’s Lounge one night when her Skype buddy stopped speaking for a moment to let Rachel answer her friend—a girl who was standing behind her. Funny thing is, Rachel was completely alone in the room and not seen or heard another person the whole time she was Skyping. The friend absolutely insisted that there was a girl standing over Rachel’s shoulder.

Very. Creepy.

“Was there a tower room? Is it drafty?”

Yes, there was a tower room and, no, it wasn’t mine, but I did sometimes sleep in the extra bed in the tower room because I had friends in there. Also, a word about tower rooms: romantic on the pages (of epic novels), impractical in real life. Where’s a princess to keep her rectangular desk? In the center of her round room?

“Was it dangerous? What’s the worst thing that happened to you while you were there?”

The worst thing that happened to me was a far cry from the awful things that happened to other people. I got my camera stolen and that sucked a lot. Pickpockets are amazingly slick. Point for you Venlo, Netherlands. But the worst thing happened to almost everybody except me and my roommate, in a little town called Dubrovnik. Now, don’t mistake my story here. Dubrovnik is a lovely place full of smooth pebbly beaches, as much gelato as you can stand, Game of Thrones sets, and some really, really old walls. I would go back in a heartbeat. That being said, our trip out to Croatia was a field trip involving all 80 students together and we spent a week being thrown a number of the curviest curve balls.

The start of our journey left many among us blessed with either a terrible flu bug, or food poisoning, or a plain old case of the travel voms. So, on our way from the airport, we stopped many a time on that bumpy dirt road so that one of several students could well… you get the picture.

A couple nights in, we’re in downtown Dubrovnik at a small pub, I think all 80 of us are there, and my roommate, a Gatsbian partier, had overdone it. She required an escort home at the tender hour of 8 pm and so up the hill we went. We made an early night of it, but in the morning at breakfast all of our friends who had stayed at the bar were black-eyed and split-lipped. Apparently, as small groups left the bar and slowly made their way back to the hotel, a gang of Croatian teenagers attacked each one. Roundhouse kicks to the face and all. I still to this day thank Jess for being a drunken space-case that night.

Lots of other terrible things that did not happen to me happened to the people I was with. I did not pass out from dehydration and hit my head on the night table, I did not get stung by sea urchins while swimming in the Adriatic Sea, I did not get electrocuted by a ladder in a water garden, I had no moped accidents, and I spent zero hours acquainting myself with the Croatian healthcare services. I did, however, wake up during the earthquake.

“Would you recommend studying abroad?”

Yes times a million. But with a caveat: from my own humble experience, and from what I have gathered from those that have been shared with me, if you are looking for a rigorous course load, choose a more intensive program or one that offers classes from the native universities. Or maybe don’t study abroad.

The highlight of my program was the opportunity to travel every weekend to a completely different country. I took a travel writing course, a literature class, and an ethics and philosophy class, allegedly (I showed up for class, the professor did not). So yeah, I’d advise you go immerse yourself in other cultures and build out your chotchky collection. Don’t over think it.

Photo by Michelle White