Sabbatical Day 22 (5.30.16) - Family Time in Florida

I spent the last two days in Atlanta visiting my youngest aunt. My grams is staying with her because her house is getting renovated. I arrived in Atlanta after a short flight Saturday morning and my good friend Sean picked me up. As soon as I stepped out of the terminal I felt the heat and pretty much started sweating immediately!

The last time I visited Atlanta was when I was 9. I had three distinct memories from that trip: 1) I was traumatized by the tram in the airport because I followed someone on the tram thinking it was my aunt. Got caught between the doors, then ended up riding to the next terminal crying. 2) It was the first place I experienced racism. I was at a Barnes and Nobles and a lady said something to me about being Chinese. 3) Atlanta is where I became addicted to Days of Our Lives. I spent the whole week on my aunt's couch and tuning into Days everyday.

It's been a great few days. The food is good, the beer is good, even the weather (during the early am and dusk) is good!

This morning we drove a good 6 hours to my aunt's beach house near Panama City, FL. I must have had low expectations because the beach is awesome! And the beach house is like a little vacation getaway. The younger generation went to the local Publix and bought so many groceries. We cooked a delicious feast and bought a good amount of alcohol. Looking forward to the next few days!

Sabbatical Day 9 (5.17.16) - ESL

My mom has been an ESL teacher at San Jose City College since her twenties. She's been trying to get me to follow in her footsteps for so long now and I was never interested enough to do anything about it.  When I decided to take a sabbatical and open the door to other careers, it made sense to explore ESL because I am moving to a foreign country with no other way to make money. 

It seems like my mom is really excited about it. She wants to give me all of her books and materials (she is also retiring next month). Yesterday, I met her at work so that we could carpool together to the mall and go shopping. She introduced me to so many people and mentioned that I was getting my ESL certificate. I'm getting a certificate online....I'm not sure if that's too much to be proud of. 

At first when I told her that I was taking a sabbatical, she wasn't too happy. She thinks we won't have enough money and that we aren't planning for our future. I hope by her parading me around she is feeling better about us traveling and trying something new. Even at 32 years old, I realize that I'll always be her child and she'll always be concerned about me.

Sabbatical Day 8 - Cravings

Not going into the office definitely has its perks. I like being able to cook dinner every night. While I was working, I would end up cooking in bulk so that we'd have enough food for several meals. Because of that, I really have no idea how to cook for just one meal!

On Saturday night we had a group of friends over and I decided to make spring rolls with shrimp. I love spring rolls! I was still craving them and wanted to make more but ran out of shrimp. As we are trying to use up everything we have in our kitchen, I had to make do with what I already had. 

I remembered that I had some roasted rice powder that I took from my grandma's pantry so decided to use that to make bi chay. This is a vegetarian version of bi (pig's skin). Well, I looked up a recipe for bi chay and of course I don't have all of the ingredients so I improvised. 

The recipe called for jicama, taro, potato, rice vermicelli, and bean thread noodles. Instead of jicama, taro and potato, I had napa cabbage and bean sprouts. I ran out of rice vermicelli so I just made do with bean thread noodles. (This is like an episode of chopped!)

I also tried to grill tofu with a tamarind sauce. The tamarind was very sour and I wasn't a fan but am determined to make use of the sauce again!

As it turns out, I thought I was just cooking for one meal for one person but I still made too much food. I was pretty full after eating two, but stuffed the third into my belly anyways. Luckily James was willing to take the last one off my hands!

Sabbatical Day 7 - B2B Experiment

Two years ago James and I did Bay to Breakers (B2B)with some friends. We walked from his place on Divis and Oak through the panhandle and to the edge of Golden Gate Park. On our way back, it was around lunch time, we had been drinking for hours and STARVING. Suddenly, we saw two ladies with cart selling egg rolls! We were so hungry we bought at least 10 eggrolls for our group-we didn't care what they cost.

Since then James and I always talked about how much money we would make if we sold food at B2B. This year, we decided to experiment and try our hand at selling Spam Musubis. People love Spam Musubis, right?

We found out this was semi right.

Before I get to the part where we sell the musubis, let me tell you about our process. The ingredients of Spam musubi include spam, rice, teriyaki sauce and seaweed.

Spam: We bought 4 Costco packs of Spam. Each Costco pack has 8 cans. Each can can create about 9 slices....that's 280 musubis. Woah! Luckily my friend Gina bought us a "luncheon meat slicer" and we were able to quickly and evenly slice the Spam to be musubi ready!

Rice: We made about 20 cups of rice. Our rice cooker (we call her Susie) can luckily make rice in 15 minutes with her quick cook function. We made about half the night before.

Seaweed: We've made musubis before where the seaweed wrapped around the entire musubi. We decided not to do that since we saw the pictures on the Spam can that only showed a strip of seaweed. We assumed that each sheet of seaweed could wrap 4 musubis.

Teriyaki Sauce: This was made the day before-a mix of mirin, soy sauce, and sugar.

Sunday morning we wake up at 8 with the intention of leaving for B2B at 10. Let me tell you, musubis take way longer than we thought! We thought we could 280 musubis but by noon, we only had 150!

By 12:30 we were at the Panhandle ready to sell. There were so many people we didn't know where to start! We ended up standing in one spot for a few minutes with the thought that people would come to us.

Didn't happen. So we chugged a few beers and walked around to different groups of people soliciting our musubis. People either had no idea what a musubi was, they were "vegetarian", or they were SUPER excited to see us. One girl actually questioned us why they were warm. Rice and meat should be warm....not cold. And they were fresh! Ugh. I found myself having to bite my tongue a lot.

End of the day, we sold about 100. We still made a profit after the materials which was great.

They unfortunately didn't sell like the hotcakes we thought they were and we didn't make as much as we thought we would.

Would I do it again? Heck yes. At least now I know how to efficiently make musubis and who to target when trying to sell them.

Sabbatical Day 6 - Happiness

I want to piggyback off of yesterday's post to talk about happiness. I think everyone wants to live a happy life. It rings so true to me that happiness isn't a destination and it's a way of life. I think whenever you feel unhappy it's good to step back and re-assess. 

I think it is hard to explain this especially to my parents and James' parents. They're worried that we aren't planning for our future because they can't fathom taking a break and traveling. Of course our parent's generation cannot understand that because of how they were raised. 

I see it that we are planning for our future. If I didn't decide to step back and re-assess now, I could definitely keep working and I could definitely be OK for a while. But once we started a family, I'd always wonder what it would have been like had we lived abroad. The worst thing I would want is to resent my family, resent my child for what we could have done. 

Yes, I'm not making money. But I'm investing in myself and I just doing that makes me happy already!

Sabbatical Day 5 - The Ws

I think I'd like to dedicate today's post to explaining my sabbatical. There are a lot of reasons why I wanted to take this time off. 

1) I've never lived outside of the US - I think living away from what I know can give me more perspective. I know I lived in New York, but that was still in the US. For me, living abroad will take me out of my comfort zone.

2) That biological clock is ticking

3) I am confused in my career - I love my coworkers. I love them so much I think I spend more time with them than I do James. They're smart, hardworking and amazing people. My confusion about my career comes partially from my own insecurities, being frustrated by a few things about the company, and simply feeling unsure that my job is the right path for me. 

To talk about my own insecurities more I'm one of those people where feedback and other people's perception very much gets to me. If I get the feeling that someone does not think I am doing well, I definitely don't use that as ammunition to do better...instead I do worse. On the converse, if I get the feedback that I am doing well and I feel like I am, I will continue to try to do well. Most of the time, I know it's all in my own head but I can't help but let it get to me. It's something I absolutely need to work on.

Frustration about the company. I understand that every company and every job has its issues and I'm ok with that. What I'm not ok with is a combination of the issues and how they affect me doing my job.  As I am writing this, I'm thinking now that my frustrations come because I expect too much from my employer. I think that's something that may be instilled in me too! Because I work in the US, and because I work in employee benefits in the US. It makes so much sense now. I really need more perspective.

Feeling unsure that my job is the right path for me is also for a few reasons. I've never been good at anything. I don't have anything that I'm passionate about. I just fell into this industry and thought that I wanted to go down this path of consulting. One of my worries is that it isn't sustainable.  Going back to that biological clock, I'm worried that when I do have a baby, there will be no work life balance. 

I've had a lot of internal struggle throughout this whole process. Feeling like no one understood where and why I was feeling the way I did. Feeling like I couldn't talk to anyone. And then James introduced me to the Alchemist. I remember reading this book in high school and it not having any meaning for me. When I started reading the book this time, it meant something completely different. Long story short is that this boy goes searching for a treasure which he believes is his personal destiny and ends up on a journey. The journey takes him away from his home, out of his comfort zone...literally away from everything he knows. When he reaches his destination, he finds out that his treasure was actually back at home. The problem is, he wouldn't have discovered that without going on his journey. 

Two things I got from this book are: I'm not alone! Also, very cliche but it's about the journey not the destination. I'm trying to hold onto this as I travel and experience as much as I can. Maybe taking a break from work and life for a bit will make me realize that my career is where I'm meant to be.

This quote is something I got from Grey's Anatomy which I think relates very well: "Sometimes you just have to go with your gut. And maybe, maybe that'll take you to where you were meant to be in the first place."

  

Days 3 and 4

I am writing this post on day 4. Yesterday we spent our day at the Korean Consulate (we also learned that embassies are only in the country's capital. Locations in any other city is called a consulate!). It was interesting because it felt like a glimpse it what my life will be like once we arrive in Seoul. Which is, me following James around while he speaks to people in Korean for us.

After we left the consulate, he mentioned something to me which I thought was interesting. We went to the consulate because we needed to know what type of visa we should get. When he tried asking the lady who was helping us and was very nice doing so, she wasn't helpful and would just give him instructions. She didn't try to give him any additional information or assistance and go above and beyond. Once he was a little bit more forceful and asserted himself, she then gave him more information.

Super annoying that someone is like that. Our visit to the consulate ended up being longer than we thought it would be!

Random thought, but things just take so much longer than we think! People are asking me what I do all day, and usually I can get one big thing accomplished a day! I guess that goes back to my first post, though. So I should be happy that I did accomplish that one thing. Yay me!

Day 2 - Peanut Butter Jelly Time!

On Sunday I went to South Bay to see my family for Mother's Day. It turned out to be a crazy day because my grandma's kitchen is going to be renovated and they needed to clear everything out of the house and we ended up clearing out her pantry. This wasn't any old pantry...it was what I call a "hoarder's paradise". Prior to clearing out the pantry, my aunt Cindy emailed the whole family asking them to play a game. The game was to guess what the oldest expiration date was in that pantry. My guess was 1993.....and I won.

That's crazy, isn't it? To have canned food that expired in 1993?? Upon my return home I started thinking about our trip and how we would also have to clean out our kitchen and fridge. I obsessively went to the fridge to do an inventory of the food and realized we have way too much peanut butter and jelly. So on Monday evening, I decided to buy two loaves of bread and proceeded to make about two dozen sandwiches for the homeless. 

I knew I was going to a workout class this am in the Mission so packed all the sandwiches with me plus some extra yogurt we had. I walked from the 24th Street Bart to my class looking for people to pass out sandwiches to (the bag of sandwiches was heavy!). Granted it was 9:30 am, but there was no one! 

As I continued to walk I first of all noticed how different the Mission felt in the morning. It was really weird to be out when the streets were so empty. I did keep looking for people and found that there weren't that many homeless people out and if they were, they were walking with their things. I felt afraid to approach them so kept waiting and didn't pass out any sandwiches until after my class when I decided to walk from the Mission to the FiDi. 

The first person I felt comfortable with giving a sandwich to was a man on Market and Octavia who had a sign and was asking for spare change. He gratefully accepted the sandwich. As I kept walking, I found that I felt more comfortable giving food to anyone who had a sign, or was asking for spare change. Thankfully, most everyone I approached took the food. The few exceptions were:

-The second guy I gave food to - he was great he said "Bless you for the offer and bless you for the sandwich."

-This man lying on the side of the street that I offered food to - he reached out for the food, then said no thanks and laughed because he's going to McDonalds. Some guy gave him $20!

-A man organizing his things right on Market and Fremont - I tried to offer him some food and he just waved me off!

I feel good that hopefully some more people were fed today. I would like to do this once a week and conquer my fear of approaching people.

Sabbatical Day 1 - The long awaited sabbatical finally starts!

Today is day one of my hiatus from working life . I saw an inspirational quote today on IG which said " This is your Monday morning reminder that you are powerful beyond measure, that you are capable of pretty much anything you are willing to work for, and that you could change your life TODAY."

It seemed very fitting that I read this quote today. I woke up charged and ready to do a bunch of things. I'd been anticipating this day for weeks...no, months! I planned to meditate, write this blog post, go to a workout class, make lunch, then spend 3 hours on my TESOL certificate. (I even blocked time on my calendar for all these things). But of course just like life, my day didn't go as planned.

I did get to most of those things eventually so it was definitely a reminder to myself that:
1) It's ok if things don't always go as planned
2) Be grateful and proud of myself of what I was able to accomplish - and to stay positive!

As I revive this blog, I'm hoping to document my time away from work and my travels. I don't want to write that it's going to be this amazing experience and that I'm going to be changed from it. I want to keep my expectations low, but also want to just be in the moment and experience this very special time that I decided to take.