Why Modern Dating is hard, part 1

Before the advent of dating apps and the social network, people went on dates, but it was really hard to know more information about your significant other's previous dates. Sure, you may know their name, and you may have a friend of a friend who knows them and swears you're way better, but there was no way to instantly look them up and swipe through all the profile pictures. 

I was going to a party at my significant other's friend's house, and was looking through the event page, just to see what people had said. And I ran into a post by one of the girl's who my SO had dated. And yes, like the jealous, slightly insane person I am, I did look through her profile picture, to see the girl that had captured his attention for a few weeks. 

Do I feel better? No. Was it useful in any way? Definitely not. Could I have done this before Facebook? Nope. 

Now granted, before Facebook I wouldn't have known that she was also invited, and so I may have run into her at the party and had an awkward moment there (irrelevant in this case, since she couldn't make it, but still true). But the possibility of avoiding an awkward encounter doesn't make up for the fact that forever now when I get invited to another event hosted by this friend, I'll be scrolling through the guest list to see if she's there. 

Ignorance is truly bliss, folks. "They" weren't wrong. 

Silent Disco Yoga at a Winery

Before you roll your eyes at the title of this post and exclaim something about how this is the most millennial thing ever, I agree with you. It's very yuppie and it really misses what yoga is about. That being said, it was a great experience.

Yesterday, a friend and I went from work to Bluxome Winery, where Julie, from Outdoor Yoga SF (link here) was holding a silent disco yoga class. I had never been do a silent disco anything - all I knew about this was that there were headphones involved - so I didn't really know what to expect. Turns out, it's exactly what you would expect. You were given a pair of headphones as you walked in, and then you were free to put your yoga mat wherever there was room. I think there were probably around 40 people there, although I was at the front of the room (not by choice, I was late, and that was the only place in the room for two people), but the room wasn't crowded. I say room, but it was a very large open space, probably where there are normally tables and people drinking wine, exclaiming about the finish of a certain pinot noir.

The yoga itself was alright - it was a Vinyasa-style yoga, but I didn't quite enjoy it as much as I do other types of Vinyasa yoga (it focused a little too much on sun salutations, and not enough on other poses). That being said, I did enjoy having headphones. Having Biebs play at the end was kind of weird, but most of the time, we were listening to calm piano music. It also, weirdly enough, gave me a chance to really focus on myself, since the headphones also seemed to be noise-cancelling. Suddenly, I was no longer worrying about whether I was breathing too loudly. Instead, I was actually focusing on the poses, and seeing if I really could push myself deeper into a move. This, however, might also have to do with the fact that at work, I listen to music while trying to concentrate, so my brain thought that music time = concentrate on whatever you were doing time.

At the end of the 1 hr class, we did get one glass of wine each. I picked the Sauvignon Blanc, and it was actually really good. They were also giving out protein bars, so we grabbed those as well.  My friend and I ended up chatting on our mats, well after the lesson had ended, and so it was a nice end to the yoga class - most times, you're rushing out of the studio because there's another class coming in.

Overall, I enjoyed this experience. Would I do it again? Maybe. It was a little pricey, but for a yoga class and a glass of wine, it might be worth doing once in a while. 

[Interesting Idea] Plant trees to offset your carbon footprint!

While scrolling through Facebook this morning, I saw a post that Alex Honnold (climber extraordinaire) had posted about a company that he found interesting.


The company (or in it's own words, social enterprise) is called Mossy-Earth (https://mossy.earth/), and, in their own words, this is what they do:

Mossy Earth is a social enterprise whose main aim is, by planting trees, to deliver real environmental change and make a positive impact on the state of the planet's wildernesses and forests.

We plant trees on two fronts. Carbon Offsetting to fight climate change and Rewilding to enrich ecologically and socio economically impoverished areas to create wildernesses that flourish and job opportunities for rural communities.

I found this interesting - climate change is a topic that has been more and more discussed recently, and this company attempts to do something about that (to my knowledge) hasn't been done before. We ask people to recycle, carpool, consume less meat, but never have we asked people to donate money in this way. Which is interesting, given that we do this in other non-profit sectors - we don't always ask people to change their lifestyles, we ask people to donate money so that those who are well versed in those subjects can help bring about change that will make it easier to change whatever it is that non-profit is trying to change.


This is definitely something I'll be looking at the next time I take a flight (https://mossy.earth/collections/carbon-offsetting/products/offset-your-flights), and I wish them great success!

Book Review: The Vacationers by Emma Straub

Summary: This book is about a family, the Posts, who go to vacation in Mallorca for 2 weeks, along with another couple, Charles and Lawrence. Everyone in the family has secrets, there is much unhappiness, and the book details those two weeks.

My Review: (And, of course, spoiler alert).
In one word, this book was shallow. There are four members of the Post family, Jim and Franny (the parents), Bobby, who's dating Carmen, who was also on the trip, and Sylvia, who's about to go to college. Like in many other books, one of the conflicts revolves around one partner cheating on the other. Another conflict - one kid's out of money, and oh surprise! The mom doesn't like the girlfriend. And one kid is concerned with re-inventing herself before she goes to college, and with losing her virginity before August. What better way to have that happen then to introduce a super hot Spanish tutor! Because, as we all know, on two week summer vacations, every kid wants to take language lessons.

This conflicts, and the resolutions, were predictable. How characters reacted - predictable. Even parts of the dialogue were predictable.

I would definitely not recommend this book. 

Review of Vicoletto

So tonight, the new grads of Airbnb all went out to dinner at a relatively nice place because it was San Francisco's Restaurant Week! We went to a place called Vicoletto in North Beach.

We all ordered the 3 course fixed price menu. The upper left corner is the appetizer, which was mozzarella burrata on top of arugula and tomatoes. It was really delicious burrata, although there was a little too much olive oil on the dish which made it feel greasy. The arugula also didn't taste great with the other two ingredients. I would probably give it a 5/10.

The next course is in the upper right corner, and unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the dish. Fortunately, though, after a quick google search it looks as though this pasta isn't on the normal menu. It was a vegetarian pasta, with ricotta cheese stuffed inside the little pasta balls. The sauce was creamy and a little nutty, but delicious.  8/10

Finally, the last (and biggest picture) is the chocolate lava cake and vanilla gelato. Hands down the best part of the meal. This lava cake was different in that rather than the lava being hidden inside the cake, you could actually see it from the top. So when you took your first bite, you got a little bit of lava with the cake, and you would see the lava gracefully falling over the side of the cake, just like an actual volcano. 9/10

I'm unsure if I would come back to this place during not SF Restaurant Week, because it was a little pricey, but it's definitely worth a visit. 

Rainbow Grocery Experience

First off, apologies of the lack of posting, things have been crazy for the past six months.

Anyway, the other day on my wonderfully curated Facebook feed (no really, 90% of the ads that I see are actually relevant to my interests) I saw an ad for an article regarding how an NYU student was able to eliminate most of her waste. Clicking through on the article, there was a video of her describing her process and showing how she was able to fit all the waste that she had generated over the past two years in one mason jar. Which is amazing. The amount of garbage I generate on a daily basis could not fit into a mason jar. And so I decided to read some of her tips on how to cut down on waste.

One thing she mentioned was trying to purchase things in bulk (pasta, lentils, etc) because a lot of stores that sell things in bulk allow you to bring your own containers, which helps cut down on all of the plastic packaging. I decided to try and find a store in San Francisco that would allow for this, and I stumbled upon Rainbow Grocery (http://www.rainbow.coop/). I visited the store on Saturday, and was blown away with the number of things that you could buy in bulk. Everything from lentils to pasta to all different types of oil to soap and lotion. It was amazing. Granted, I didn't have a lot of containers to put things in, and I was afraid that the process by which I was filling my containers up was wrong (according to their video, you're supposed to weight the empty container and then put a sticker on it with the weight of the empty container and the unique number of the product), so I only filled up two containers (one with oil and the other with soap), but I was impressed with the amount of products available for bulk shopping. The plastic bags that you could use if you didn't have your own containers were compostable though, which made me feel a lot better about using them.

Price wise, this was fairly comparable to TJs and Whole Foods (365 Brand), and bulk shopping is supposed to be cheaper (if you're actually buying in bulk, which I was not), which is the icing on top.

10/10 I would visit this place again!

Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson

 I just finished reading Cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson, and because it was unlike any other book I've ever read, I decided I would a write a sort of book review on it.

Why was it unlike any other book I've ever read? Because everything only clicks after about 80% of the book has gone through. In most books, there's a plot line that carries the reader through. While the reader may not know exactly what will happen at the end of the book, there are enough clues that the reader can have a blurry picture of the resolution of the conflict in the book. Not so in Cryptonomicon. The lack of clarity with regards to the plot line did two things:

1. When everything finally clicks, there's this moment of absolute clarity. It's the mother of all "AHA" moments.

2. You spend 79% of the book trying to figure out what you're reading and how it's connected. Which makes it hard to motivate yourself to actually read the book.

Point number 2 is definitely one of the biggest cons of the book. There were times in the initial 79% of the book where I just wanted to quit. Put the book down and never look at it again. The reason I kept going is because the people who recommended it to me said that this was a perfectly normal feeling to be having when reading one of Stephenson's books, and that eventually it will all make sense. To be fair, they were correct. But I'm not sure that spending 79% of the book in frustration and confusion is something I would like to repeat.

That being said, there are a lot of pros to the book. One, it interweaves two stories very well. The first story concerns the code-breaking efforts in World War II (along with other military efforts), and the second is a story in the present day about a group of people starting a financial corporation. One thing that I really liked was that Stephenson rotated between five different characters to tell the story. Each of the characters had a distinct personality which made for some interesting chapters. There were also many other characters present in the story - which made it difficult to to keep track all of them, but also allowed for a lot of great interactions between characters. Example quote from one of these conversations - "Plato's Cave - the Veg-o-matic of metaphors".

Overall, go ahead and read this book. You will learn more about cryptography and computer systems than you probably expect (or want). You've now also been warned - the first 80% of the book will be a struggle to get through.