Love on the Road III: The Couple

February 18, 2016

A series about the conversations you have and the people you love along the way.

There’s a market in Tel Aviv named Carmel,
filled with fruits and veggies and people galore.
I made a stop searching for something to eat.
Who knew that I was in for such a treat?

I sat myself upon a warm wooden bench,
at a stand that served a local tomato dish.
With spices rich and rare and precisely used,
just one taste and gone were my weekend blues.

A tap tap tap on my shoulder three bites in,
and I looked up from my large Shakshuka bowl.
I found myself staring at a small pink glass,
a small glass filled with alcohol up the ass.

The man spoke and told me his name was Avi,
and his wife was celebrating her birthday,
so why don’t I join them and take just one shot,
I said yes, of course, absolutely, why not?

There’s a rule about saying yes to one drink.
As you may or may not have experienced,
one shot turns into two shots turns into three,
and saying no is impossible, you see.

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Fiction, Love On The Road

Love on the Road II: The Taxi Driver

February 3, 2016

A series about the conversations you have and the people you love along the way.

I stumbled into the taxi at a quarter to nine in the morning. The past couple of days had brought lots of rain, but today it was all sunshine. My eyes were glued to my phone screen as I checked on my early morning emails and to do’s.

“Shalom. Dror Street please.” I wrapped my scarf around my neck a little tighter. Though it was sunny out, winter days in Tel Aviv still felt a bit chilly to someone who was conditioned to Los Angeles temperatures.

“You living here?” The driver was a older Israeli, on the heavier side and spoke with a deep voice that rasped when he pronounced ‘h’. He drove a battered down taxi van, one that looked like it had gone through many passengers and foreigners like myself.

“Yes,” I replied. “Well, just for a few months. I’m not sure.”

“Only months? Why!”

“That was my plan when I arrived.”

“Ah, yes you must live here! Tel Aviv is very nice.”

“Tel Aviv is lovely,” I started. “But —”

“You find a good man, get married and come live here.”

I smiled as I scrolled through Instagram, “That’s not what I came here for.”

“You find a good man. But not good looking,” he emphasized. “With good heart, but no good looking. You not eating him on a plate, why you need him good looking. You understand?”

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Fiction, Love On The Road

Love On the Road I: The Artist

January 28, 2016

A series about the conversations you have and the people you love along the way

In a bar in La Paz, Bolivia, he stood silently in the corner. His blue eyes scanned the drunken crowd, distant and cool. He was the only one not holding a drink.

We made eye contact a few times but broke it quickly and uncomfortably. I was standing close to him, hoping that he’d make a move. He didn’t.

We were finally introduced by his friend, who befriended me early on in the night. His friend walked away to get drinks after the introduction, leaving us to make small talk.

He told me he was an artist, which surprised me because he didn’t look how I stereotype as “artistic”. He was traditionally handsome, scruffy and had a vibe that said he didn’t give a shit.

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Bolivia, South America

10 Unreal Landscapes in Bolivia

January 8, 2016

1. The view biking down “Death Road” in La Paz, Bolivia.

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Asia, China, Travel Tips

What Dishes to Try When Visiting China

January 6, 2016

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In September of 2015, I traveled to China with my mom on a mother-daughter bonding trip. We went on a “free” tour through Shanghai, Xihu, Wuxi and Nanjing where half the time we went sightseeing and the other half of the time the tour bus took us to their partners to go shopping. We saw Beijing, where we climbed the Great Wall and rode a tobaggan down the mountain. We traveled to Qingdao, a beautiful coastal city where the beer Tsingtao, originates.

Most importantly though, we had a LOT of Chinese food. When you think of Chinese food from China, do you conjure up images of chicken feet or strange animal? I grew up eating some of these strange dishes and I sometimes miss them when I’m traveling.

Chinese cuisine can actually be divided into 8 different culinary styles: Anhui, Cantonese, Fujian, Hunan, Jiangsu, Shandong, Szechuan, and Zhejiang. Back in the U.S., most Chinese fusion dishes are cooked in the Szechuan style, but minus the bones and strange body parts.

My favorite dishes are of Cantonese and Jiangsu origin. The Jiangsu region is where I was born and where my family is from and the city I grew up in Los Angeles, called Monterey Park, had a lot of Cantonese food.

Here are some dishes I’d recommend trying if you ever get the opportunity or urge to have something different and delicious when visiting China.

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Inspiration, Travel Tips

If you need inspiration to go travel, watch this

December 31, 2015

“Only when I was out there did I realize there are some things no book or parent can ever teach.

There’s a certain peace when you’re on the road. You can only think about what’s in front of you, not what’s behind. There’s a clarity that’s, well it’s addictive.

Those far away placed I’d seen on television, read about in books – well, I knew they were out there. I knew they existed. But until you see it with your own eyes, until I smelled the smells, until I felt the sand between my feet, felt the warmth of the sun as it freckled my skin – well, you don’t really believe it’s real.

Only on the road do you grasp the simplicity of happiness. Then you begin to truly understand the beauty of company. You learn that having the best plan is not to have one. The best experiences are ones you don’t expect.

You know, out there on the road, you meet many others, just like you, wandering, looking for something to call their own. But when you find someone that walks with the same rhythm, well, it’s pretty hard to describe. It makes you see time in a different light. Everything becomes more precious. Things come and go quicker than you can count the days.

You realize that home is a fleeting thing. That with the right people, home is any place in this world.”

“Wanderlust”, Directed by Lloyd Lee Choi

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Creativity, Life Lessons, Travel Tips

What I learned from traveling for 6 months

December 29, 2015

I traveled for six months through South America, Asia and now in the Middle East. I often get the same question about what I’ve learned so far on my travels. What have I taken away from my travels so far? Well, I’ll try to distill it down.

On Travel

There are places in the world that aren’t as dangerous in person as they sound in the media. For instance, Colombia and Israel are amazing countries to visit, even though in the media, Colombia is depicted to have been rattled by the drug trade and Israel by war.

Bolivia is way underrated as a country to visit in South America. The landscapes and jungles there are incredible and the best part is, they are not filled with tourists.

Chinese and Japanese cultures could not be more opposite.

Bali is a place where beautiful people from all over the world swarm. It probably helps that you have to be in a swimsuit all the time.

People from other countries travel by themselves around the world at a much younger age than people do in the United States. And there’s definitely way more of them too.

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Creativity, Life Lessons

I challenge you to take a month off this year

November 15, 2015

We’ve all heard of gap years before college, but adults need sizeable breaks too!

Gap years have proven to be highly effective for motivating and re-energizing students in between their high school and college years. It completely makes sense why when you take a look at the benefits. Research has shown that students who take a gap year perform better in school than students who didn’t. The former return more mature, self-reliant and self-assured than their counterparts.

Benefits from a gap year:

Recharge your brain.
Ignite creativity.
Meet new people and experience different cultures.
Get a better sense of what you want out of life.
Have interesting stories to tell.
Feel excited to go back to learning.
“Grow up” a little bit more.
Realize there are much larger problems in the world to solve.
Understand you have serious first world problems.

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Creativity, Life Lessons

A note to my fresh-out-of-college self

November 11, 2015

It’s now been about 4 years since you officially graduated university. In these last 4 years, a lot has happened. You will break up with your boyfriend, you will move to a new city with no clue of what you’re doing, and you’ll take a big risk one day by leaving that same city with big dreams to travel the world. Sounds kind of crazy right?

Somewhere in those four years you will also lose your creative drive. You’ll suddenly become extremely insecure in your own abilities. You will doubt your opinions and stop voicing them because you’re worried what others will think. Don’t worry. You’ll get it all back one day and you will want to start creating all the things. And that’s a whole other issue separately.

During those four years, you will have a lot of questions. Questions I wish I could answer now for you, but to be honest, I have no answers. I only know this.

Follow your hunger.

And no, I’m not saying go eat a cheeseburger. I’m saying pay close attention to what your emotions tell you.

Over time, you’ll begin to form an idea of who you are. You’ll start to understand what gets your heart pumping and you will have to dissect your reaction to those moments.

You will feel really excited and nervous to quit your job and you won’t know why. You will obsess over every tiny detail on a new project and stay up late to finish it because you can’t get it off your mind. You will look through other people’s work and obsessively want to be as talented as them.

Guess what?

These are the moments that point you in the right direction. These are ‘pass go, collect $200’ moments you’ve been waiting for.

These are signs that you are hungry: hungry for expression, love, creativity, adventure, passion, experiences, and meaning. You are hungry to create, hungry to be part of some larger movement.

Follow these signs, not blindly, but with a little faith. Some of the paths you walk along will diverge and you’ll have to make some tough choices. Some of them will abruptly end, causing you to backtrack to find a different one.

But trust that as long as you constantly check in and ask “does this excite me?”, “does this keep me up at night?”, and “do I want to share this with the world?”, you’ll begin to find the right paths.

You will not have gotten your life together in the way you might have once imagined, but damn, will you have made a real attempt at living it.

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Bolivia, South America, Travel Tips

How to take the perfect Salt Flats perspective photo

November 2, 2015

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The salt flats in Uyuni, Bolivia, commonly known as Salar de Uyuni, is definitely one for the bucket list. Travelers go to Bolivia specifically to see this world wonder and also to take those famous dinosaur photos you see all over Instagram.

I went in August on a 3 day tour around Uyuni to visit the salt flats, lagoons and volcanoes. Bolivia has some of the most stunning natural landscapes I’ve ever seen. We climbed on eroded boulders in a desert named after Salvador Dali because it resembled the deserts in his paintings. We saw a red lagoon, an alien-like massive body of water covered in red algae and pink flamingos. We stopped at so many stunning volcanoes I lost count. Salar de Uyuni, though, was the main attraction.

There are two different experiences you can have of the salt flats. The first is to go during wet season, usually between November and April, after a light rainfall when the ground turns into a reflective mirror.

The other time to go is during dry season, between May to October, when the salt flats get no rainfall and the ground crystallizes into an endless, glittering white landscape.

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