It’s one of my favorite times of the year as the Major League Baseball season started a few weeks ago.
I’ve always been a huge baseball fan. Each year in March, all baseball players come back to work and get ready for the upcoming season through Spring Training, mostly in Arizona or Florida where it’s warm.
There’s something really special about Spring Training. It’s when you have minor leaguers and veterans competing to make the big league roster. Every team starts with a clean slate and the hope of an entire fanbase thinking “this might be our year.”
After casually talking about going to Spring Training over the years, I finally made it to a Spring Training game in Surprise, Arizona this year. I got lucky that I was scheduled for a work trip in the Phoenix area and couldn’t pass up the opportunity.
It honestly felt like I was making a trip to the holy land, something that every diehard baseball fan has to do in their lifetime.
As I strode up to the stadium, I couldn’t hide my excitement. It brought me back to when I was eight years old.
Every day after school, little Stanley would wait impatiently for his dad to get back from work with the newspaper. I would immediately grab the sports section and flip to the baseball box scores, where I would meticulously read through the stats from the previous day’s games.
Remember, this was pre-internet, so TV and newspapers were all I had to work with. And the sports segment of the news only came on for a few minutes, so the newspaper was my baseball bible.
Most people are surprised when I tell them that my favorite sport is baseball. Many think it’s boring and ask me why I like it so much.
When I was younger, I didn’t even play little league (insert something about the high cost of youth sports). I just played in a free summer Junior Giants league run through the city police department. But there was something about the strategy of the game, the multitude of stats, and the anticipation with each and every pitch that pulled me in. The homers, the strikeouts, the steals, I loved it all.
I was hooked and have rooted for my hometown Giants ever since. Baseball was my sport.
Back to now, walking into the Spring Training game, I was as wide-eyed as when I was a kid stepping into my first baseball stadium. It was everything I ever wanted: the crack of the bat, the chatter in the crowd, the smell of the grass…
Dreams of my eight-year-old self finally came true.
Whenever I go a long time between hiking trips, I feel like I start to lose my connection with nature. This gets especially tough when work gets busy and all that time indoors in an office gets me a little stir crazy.
I’ve been in a little one of these funks lately, but with a few days off before starting a new job, I decided to use that time to get out into the woods!
So off I went with a friend to Yosemite National Park on a Wednesday and Thursday in March and it was fantastic.
The only other times I’ve been to Yosemite have been during the busy summer or a holiday weekend, when the park is packed with visitors. This time was completely different, as you can imagine with a midweek March visit.
For one, there was still snow on the ground in Yosemite Valley, though it was sunny out. The snow made for an different, but beautiful landscape from what I was used to seeing in the summer.
And because there were barely any other people there, it was amazing to take in the sights of Half Dome, El Capitan, Yosemite Falls, Mirror Lake, and Bridalveil Falls, without all the crowds competing for photo ops.
There was a nice quiet everywhere, other than the occasional rustling of leaves or the constant crunching of rocks and snow as we walked.
We hiked all along the Valley Loop trail and for most of it, we were the only ones hiking. It was just me and my friend, and the calming sounds of nature.
Even the animals (those not hibernating) seemed more chill. We saw a herd of deer casually strolling along the side of the path one day, and also saw a coyote walking around and laying in a snowy meadow, seemingly without a care in the world.
I’m happy that I went on this little trip on short notice. It definitely fulfilled my nature fix for the time being and was a nice recharge before diving into the next work challenge.
I’ll be coming back for you, nature!
Last year‘s fight of good versus evil in America rages on. With all of the xenophobia, racism, and gaslighting, this year has been draining. It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the White House in the coming year and what will trickle down into society as a result.
This year, I feel like I’ve been fighting myself as well. It has been a year of ups and downs, and overall, just trying to find myself and figure things out.
I turned 29 in the summer and began the last year of my 20s. Time has flown by and sometimes it’s hard to not feel like it’s passing me by.
Ten years ago, I couldn’t have predicted this is where I would be. I would’ve never guessed I’d live in Wisconsin for a third of that period, or that a majority of my jobs would take me all over the country for work. I’ve learned so much and grown so much during that time.
But right now, I’m not quite sure where I want to go next. A part of me wants to find a well-paying job and settle down in the Bay Area. A part of me is excited to maybe live somewhere else for a few years. A part of me wants to go off the grid and explore the world.
Many people probably face these sorts of mid-career crises, so I shouldn’t feel alone. I did try some different things. I pursued some jobs that seemed interesting, but for whatever reason didn’t work out. I was accepted to Columbia Business School and turned them down.
I’ve been excited and I’ve been deflated.
I think mostly, I’ve just felt uninspired. As someone who has always looked at life glass half full, this has been the hardest part. The not knowing and feeling behind, as more and more friends are getting engaged/married or finding great jobs and moving on.
But reflecting on it more, I’m grateful to have these life choices. I need to remind myself that life moves at different paces and things will work out in the end.
So 2019, I’m ready for you. Here’s to continuing chasing those dreams and maybe, just maybe, finally catching them.
I saw Crazy Rich Asians at the movie theater last week and came away inspired and proud.
I’m an adult now and all these years, I had never seen anything like it. Asian main characters on the American big screen. It’s the first Hollywood studio movie in 25 years to have an all-Asian cast. I loved being able to relate to many of the movie’s cultural values.
It’s hard to put into words how impactful this movie is. This feels like a big coming out party, even bigger than how Fresh Off The Boat felt for Asians on TV. Asians no longer just play the bit parts in movies and shows, but we can star.
Even though America is known as the land of opportunity, where you can supposedly become anything you want, I think society and perceptions play a big role in limiting how far minorities can go. As part of the “model minority,” I’ve grown up thinking my place is probably somewhere that I will work hard with my head down. It’s hard to break away from stereotypes and truly believe in yourself when everything you see and hear says differently.
Representation is important. It’s not something I thought of much before, growing up in the Bay Area. Living in Wisconsin was a shock and the thing I missed the most was diversity. Not just being around diverse people, but diversity of restaurants, diversity of languages, and diversity of culture.
I still remember my first time traveling back to San Francisco, arriving at my gate during my layover, seeing people of all different colors, and feeling at home.
I’m glad that Asian representation is slowly making progress. Hopefully Crazy Rich Asians will open the door for many more movies and roles like it.
Just got back from a quick four days in Tulum, Mexico!
Upon landing, we first went to pick up a rental car. One of the things I was debating when booking the trip was whether it made sense to rent a car.
You can read all about the many different scams and risks of driving in Mexico, but we decided to go for it since we would be driving about two hours from Cancun to Tulum and it would give us more freedom for day trips to surrounding areas.
Well, aside from one sketchy gas station interaction, having the rental car was really useful to conveniently get around, though many travelers use bikes in Tulum as well.
In the city, our home base was the Tulum Pueblo area. Here, we found our favorite taco spot: Antojitos La Chiapaneca. There’s nothing quite like walking over to the neighborhood taco joint and grabbing a plate of spit roasted tacos al pastor (pork) cut right off the rotating meat stick. Cheap and delicious.
We also got a chance to check out the Tulum Beach area, which was a short drive away and had a lot of hip restaurants and boutique shops along the beach. This is where all of those Tulum-inspired instagram posts are taken, which was kinda cool but overall we preferred other parts of Tulum.
Though we did have an amazing dinner and mezcal drinks at Gitano, a restaurant with a hip jungle feel and a disco ball spinning above palm fronds. We ordered a whole fish cooked in their wood burning oven that was great.
On one of our days, we visited the famed Tulum Ruins, an old Mayan walled city set above sea cliffs. The back drop was beautiful. After hiking around the ruins, we did a little snorkeling nearby and though there weren’t a lot of fish, we did see a couple giant barracuda and a handful of huge stingrays! It was awesome swimming right above as a stingray floated by directly beneath us.
Unfortunately all of the beaches were covered in unsightly and smelly seaweed during our trip… apparently this comes and goes depending on environmental conditions.
On another day, we visited Gran Cenote. Cenotes are natural water pools formed when limestone bedrock collapses to expose groundwater underneath. There are a bunch of these in Tulum, which sits on top of the world’s largest interconnected underwater cave system.
At Gran Cenote, we swam through a limestone cave opening where a bunch of bats constantly buzzed by our heads. That was really cool to me, though some people didn’t enjoy that experience as much haha. We also snorkeled and it was eerie to see the limestone formations underwater and where it dropped off into complete darkness.
On our last full day, we took a day trip to the little town of Bacalar, which was about two and a half hours outside of Tulum, near the border to Belize. There, we went on a boat tour of Laguna de Bacalar, also known as the 7 Colors Lagoon.
The name comes from the water, which was crystal clear and absolutely gorgeous with different shades of turquoise and blue everywhere you looked. During the boat ride, we also saw a pirate’s channel, an abandoned restaurant, a few cenotes, and a large bed of stromatolites. It was a relaxing way to cap off the trip.
On our way to the airport to leave Mexico, we made a quick pit stop in Playa del Carmen, which felt way more touristy than Tulum. Was not a huge fan of it, but the beach looked nice and there was a bunch of pretty cool art.
Adios for now, Tulum! I’ll be dreaming about those tacos for a long time…