Top 8 Things I learned in 2010 (Part I)

IT WAS QUIET IN THE OFFICE for the past two weeks, so I took the opportunity to strategize my plan for the next year and I took the initiative to talk to a few senior managers to understand opportunities, direction of the business and the team, and to ask for advice on where I should be headed with my career going forward. In the mean time, I spent a great deal of time contemplating on the bygone year, and here are a few thoughts I’d like to share with you.

1. The best conversations happen in the ladies’ room

Well I am not sure what’s going on in the men’s room I don’t typically spend a lot of time there, but I would imagine talking in the men’s room to be quite awkward and embarrassing. It’s surprisingly not the case in the ladies’ room. In fact, many of the most important conversations I ever had throughout the year all happened in this seemingly constraint space, including how to get onto the women network events committee, who to talk to for international travel visa arrangement, which MD is going to be out for how long so I should schedule my meetings early, and etc.

I guess one of the reasons is some of the days people are honestly that busy so the only time they have slightly some freedom to take a breeze is when they go to the bathroom. And I’m not sure if it happened to you too, but a lot of times I feel I keep bumping into the same person once I run into her once in the bathroom. At actually the line I’ve used the most was: “hey I’ve seen you around on the floor, but my name is D, which group are you in again?”

すごいですね：Japanese Human Beat Box at Union Square!

Yay, so this is my first iphone video recording, and my first youtube upload!  This Japanese guy was simply amazing, and this was just one of his many astonishing routines. I was lucky to have witnessed this with my own eyes at Union Square and I kept saying to myself, there are so many people out there doing things so interesting and so different from what we’re doing, but most of the cases we are not even aware.

Be curious, because life is still full of surprises.

I feel you, New York

I am back to New York, finally.
I pulled myself out of the couch, and smacked myself into the bed.
It felt comfortable. It felt like home.

I probably never missed New York so badly before.
I hastened my breath to breathe in more fresh air.
I couldn’t wait to log onto facebook.
I could check wenxuecity and all the other gossips again.
I went to Chipotle three times this week.
I can use my credit card to pay my cabs now!

I’m looking at playbill for new Broadway shows again.
I’m watching Lie to Me, Gossip Girl and Big Bang Theory on PPStreem again.
I’m back on track with my daily routine (getting off from work at 11pm)
And my office phone had 16 messages for the period I was gone, and 28 missed calls.
And I have 3 client meetings, 2 final pitch calls, 2 monthly reports and an annual questionnaire this week.

And I am thrilled.

Dating in New York: Did you set your bars too high?

There are a lot of single men in New York. Good looking, well-educated, capable, fun, and single. You know what we have more in New York? Good looking, well-educated, capable, fun and single WOMEN.

There are many reasons and even theories developed surrounding why it is the case as it is today. But it all comes down to this question: what do you want to get out of your dating life and/or your relationship?

If you consider these factors separately, it is obviously not that hard to find someone who is 25-32, who went to a top 20 university (just think about how many Ivy leaguers there are in the city), who has a 100+ paying job, who is at least 5’9, who knows how to play an instrument, whose parents are not separated, etc…

The hard part is: you want a combination of everything above, and there are 48 other items on your extended list.

All The Right Moves

I went to OneRepublic‘s concert this Wednesday. They are doing their world tour and only stopping in NY for one night. Ternimal 5 is crazily remote from everything else in the city and it is like a broadway show theatre except that there are no seats! Well, there are a few seats on the 2nd and 3rd floor but either you get there super early or you are some sort of secret VIP.

But I had a blast, like in a big club. I was there for 3 hours and actually OneRepublic didn’t show up until the last hour. They had Alpha Rae as the first cover band and one of the guitar players (I’m 99% sure he’s Japanese) was so into it because he was shaking his head the entire time like crazy, but he’s absolutely beautiful. And Sarah came out for another hour and her songs are cheerful and energetic and she’s definitely not afraid of cracking jokes and drinking on stage, knowing nobody down there has ever heard about her, probably.