After years of playingwiththe 1 Second Everyday app and watching people do true video compilations with 365 seconds from their year, I was finally able to do my own video to look back on the year.
I’ll admit that this is still not a true 1 Second Everyday, as some of these seconds come from the same days, but my COVID spiraling that kept me at home also kept me very… stagnant for much of this year, and I would find myself with days having passed and not finding myself having done anything noteworthy. It was a creative challenge for me to try to find brief moments of beauty and interest in the more mundane parts of my life, but I think the result is a more calm meditation on the romanticization of the every day.
Happy Chinese New Year! 新年快乐! 恭喜发财! 万事如意! 狗年吉祥! I hope the Year of the Dog brings you happiness and prosperity.
I have been very off my resolutions as a result of those health issues I had been dealing with earlier this month, so the Lunar New Year is another shot at a fresh slate to get my life back on track. Valentine’s Day was also Lent, but I don’t know what bad habit I really need to completely abstain from this year. I may try to add something instead of eliminating something, maybe meditation, but we shall see! I’ll be mostly focusing on my resolutions from earlier in the year. For example, I still haven’t purchased stamps for all that snail mail I said I would start sending. BUT I have started collecting mailing addresses and sending eCards in the meantime?
Anyhow, this is very delayed but here’s a 1SecondEveryday compilation from when I celebrated the new year most recently in Hong Kong 🇭🇰
I had so much fun in Hong Kong and it feels so familiar even though I only visited once before, 15 years ago. It’s a city like no other and one of my favorites, despite the frustrations of seeing Chinese and English everywhere but being unable to communicate with Cantonese-speaking-only folks. The city is super vibrant and has an incredible energy that I absolutely love. The food scene is so good that I only remembered to get an eating video right before we left, as the rest of the time I was too busy cramming the food in my mouth.
I hope you are having a great 2018 so far, for those observing, I hope Lent is going well, and I hope the Year of the Dog brings nothing but good things to you!
New Orleans has been at the top of my list of American cities to visit for quite some time now, so when I learned last year at RubyConf that the conference would be going back to the Crescent City, I was thrilled.
My time in NOLA was a bit of a whirlwind but I enjoyed the rich culture of the Big Easy. It is a city that everyone says lives up the hype, so here’s my 1 Second Everyday video recap of my time!
I have the wonderful opportunity to do a fair bit of travel but there are a lot of American cities I still have yet to visit and I hope I get the chance to see them. I’m excited to share my little slice of New Orleans soon!
Hello, it’s been a while! I am recovering from my short hiatus, a bunch of travel, and the news cycle, so let’s just jump right into it:
Ben and I spent Labor Day Weekend in my home city of New York for what has become an annual visit. The trip began as they always do: in Union Station in Washington, DC where we finally bit the bullet for some pre-lunch meu Bojangles. (Previously, we always hesitated to get Bo’ because our bus always leaves before the breakfast menu ends, so we weren’t able to order the dinners. I recently tried to boneless Chicken Supremes and discovered they are super tasty and easier to eat on the go! So we were able to enjoy delicious fried chicken after all.)
During the bus ride up, we discovered that the dinner plans Ben’s college friends made were earlier in the evening (the original reservation was before we even arrived), so we immediately caught a cab to our hotel, spent forever checking in, and took another cab to dinner, where our reservation was pushed back because half the group was also running late. (Review: One UN New York hotel)
The view from our room included the nearby Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building
We had a great time at dinner at Natsumi Tapas (review), catching up with old friends we hadn’t seen since last Labor Day or since graduation, and celebrating a recent engagement in the group. (It’s a group of Ben’s friends from college, and they are trying to make it a tradition for us to hang out every Labor Day weekend in a different city. We were invited to visit New York to celebrate the engagement, and Ben and I had already planned to be there for that weekend so it all worked out!)
From dinner, we split up to get ready for a night at the club before reconvening to pregame. The pregame was not what I was expecting at all, from how I remember pregaming with this crew back in college. Upon walking in, a terrible instant-film photo was taken of me and we were sat down to play Avalon: The Resistance, which is a super fun game that is kind of like Mafia but set in Arthurian legend and with no dying, aka everyone can keep playing to the end. Before we knew it, it was time to head out to Hotel Chantelle, where our friend once drunkenly tried to chill with Jeremy Lin. He got thrown out of the club for harassing him, but he clearly had a good enough time to come back! (I hated the DJ though, as I mention at length in my review.)
In my bad-DJ-induced late night crankiness, I decided that if I had to endure such bad DJing and have had to pay for it, I deserved a dollar slice of one of my favorite foods of all time: New York-style pizza. So, in the rain, after going back and forth about whether or not I actually should go out for pizza at 2am, Ben graciously accompanied me to get dollar slices of pizza a few blocks from the hotel. We trudged back to the hotel, in the rain, holding cold slices of pizza, which I ate real happily while watching The Help on TV.
I didn’t take that many photos on day 1, but I started playing with the 1 Second Everyday app, so here’s a few seconds from this day!
Where would you recommend for clubbing nights in Manhattan? I’ve never really gone clubbing before Labor Day weekend, but I hope if I go back I get a better DJ!
Do you like the 1 Second Everyday app? I had a lot of fun with taking tiny clips and letting an app string them all together for me. If you like this format, please let me know! It’s a really different way for me to document versus taking photos.
Sip of Starrshine 