22 Things to do Before I Turn 23!

So this is my 22nd post and my 22nd birthday is coming up in about a month! I’m a strong believer in the birthday month concept – the entire month of your birthday is your BIRTHDAY MONTH! Granted I think I’m one of the few people who believe in this concept…

For my 22nd year, I want to come up with a list of 22 things to do before I turn 23. I’ve had bucket list-type things before: I had a food list for things to eat in Berkeley before I graduated. I had some new year’s goals (one of which was run a half marathon which I did last year!). So I want a new list of things to do before I turn 23.

I’ll take suggestions in the comments or the Tumblr! I’ll post the list when I come up with all 22 things!

God, I love cake. I want cake now.

My Best Friend’s Back!!

In a few hours or so, I’m going to be picking my best friend up from the airport and we’re going to have the week of a lifetime! After living together for two years, it’s strange spending time apart. Next year is going to be rough.

The Bestie and I visiting San Francisco! This is our first picture together on Facebook. We were so young!

On Sunday we’re going to be leaving for Hawaii and spending a week there! It’s going to be our last hurrah and a whole week of fun before we start our real post grad, work lives. Being a new grad, I highly recommend taking a grad trip before you start work. Most jobs won’t force you to start right after you graduate, they’ll give you a bit of time to move and get your priorities in order before jumping into the work world. Take some time to explore the world, with your friends or your family! I’m lucky to have had my family so close to my college so I got to go home on the weekends to see them.

For our grad trip, my roommate and I picked Hawaii. It’s not outside of the US but at the time same time, it’s a bit exotic and foreign. And who doesn’t love the beach? We’re looking forward to tanning and swimming and surfing and libations in coconuts. I can’t wait!!!

The last time I went to Hawaii was my sophomore year in college during my winter break. Since our football team didn’t make a bowl game, I had most of my winter break free, which meant I got to travel with my family to Hawaii. We spent the days in the sun and having delicious food and I learned to surf. It was such a lovely time. This time we’re headed to Waikiki. Anyone have any suggestions on what to do there?

Check me out! I'm surfing!

Also, this is my 21st post, something I guess I should commemorate because I’m 21 years old! Being 21 was something I looked forward to, not only for the lovely drinks, but because it marked my last year of college. I have a summer birthday so I always stay the same age during the school year, which I always thought was kinda cool. I can’t wait to exploit the fact that I’m 21 in Hawaii!

Summer Reading Lists

Just a quick follow up on my summer reading post. My school sends out a summer reading list ever year to the new, incoming freshmen class and it’s not required reading but it’s a list of books recommended by staff, student and faculty to tide you over while you anxiously wait for school to start. I didn’t know about this until after I graduated but it doesn’t lessen the quality of the books!

This year’s theme was “What Would Seniors Read?” It’s a bit of a strange theme and I’m not even sure what exactly it means – I’m guessing books that us graduating seniors would read? These lists contain everything from old classics to expository writing and it’s a really comprehensive list! Some of my favorite lists are “Banned Books” and “Favorite Book When I Was 18.”

If you’re looking for some new reading material, I suggest take a look at these lists!

I really wanted to use a photo I saw a while back with these people reading books and the books each had different scenes that were popping out of them and engulfing their heads but I cannot for the life of me find it. So this one will have to do instead.

Coffee vs. Coffee Ice Cream

I’m not a caffeine drinker. I’m a pretty hyperactive person as is so I don’t need the extra energy that caffeine gives you. I’m also a huge nap taker – mostly because I like sleep, not so much because I need the nap. My intake of caffeine comes from two main sources: bubble tea and coffee ice cream.

Bubble tea has green tea in it and I’m addicted to the stuff. Something about the sugary sweet syrup mixed into the green tea with a dollop of pearls, I always crave it.

Coffee ice cream, however, is my strange addiction. I hate coffee. No matter how many times I’ve tried it, I cannot get over that bitter taste. And putting in so much cream and sugar seems counterproductive. I’ll just get really excited over the sugar and not so much the coffee. But the one thing coffee-flavored I do love is ice cream. I have no idea how I got hooked on it but once I tried it, it’s become one of my favorite flavors of ice cream. Granted coffee ice cream is much much sweeter than actual coffee…

Do you have any strange food addictions? Hate tomatoes but love ketchup? Can’t stand avocado but love guacamole? Leave me a comment!

Moving is a B*tch

Being a graduate means moving. Whether it’s back home or to a new job, you’re going to have to move out of your college apartment (unless you’ve gotten into grad school where you went to undergrad in which case, congratulations!). I’ve moved a total of three times in my undergrad career: out of the dorms after my freshmen semester into a sing room apartment, into a two room apartment after my sophomore year and luckily, I got to stay in that lovely two room apartment my senior year. But graduating means I had to move out of that apartment and my wonderful, wonderful roommate and back home for a spell before I move down to Manhattan Beach to strat my job.

Moving is ALWAYS a pain. I’ve never heard anyone say, “I can’t wait to move! I love putting all my personal belongings in a box and forgetting exactly where I put everything because even though I’ve labeled the box, we all know I put purses in the ‘kitchen stuff’ box and kitchen stuff in the ‘accessories’ box.”

I just moved home and all my stuff is still in boxes. After living for two years in a place, your stuff really accumulates. And since I’ve moved home, there’s a lot of stuff I don’t need to unpack since my parents own it already. As a result, I have a bunch of boxes lying around and I can’t bring myself to unpack anything. Knowing me, I’ll just wait till two days before I have to drive down and panic and freak out then.

Here's a picture of my roommate and I a few days before we moved out. You can see our boxes are sort of out of control. And we get easily distracted.

Anyone have any tips on making moving just a tad bit easier? I made mine a bit more fun with a little friend called Two Buck Chuck but I don’t think I can justifiably do that at home without raising some alarm with my parents and while driving down to LA... And without my partner in crime, the cheap wine just doesn’t taste as good.

“Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?”

I just finished Mindy Kaling’s book, “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?” and I really enjoyed it. It was a relatively quick read, only 200 or so pages and it was filled with a whole lot of fun. It read a bit like a blog with a very distinct Mindy voice and after listening to a few chapters of the audiobook, her writing sounded even more like her, if that’s possible. I watched the entire first season of The Mindy Project during my dead week last semester and Kaling's character in that show mirrors her personality so well. It's a fantastic show, I highly recommend it!

I’ve been on this non-fiction reading spree lately: I read Tina Fey’s “Bossypants” before this so for my next book, I’m going to be reading Dan Brown’s “Inferno.” I’ve read all of Dan Brown’s other books and though he has a formulaic writing style, all his stories always fit together so perfectly, I can’t help but read his books. Next on my list is “And The Mountains Echoed,” another one of Khaled Hosseini’s books on Afghanistan and then perhaps after that, Ellen DeGeneres’ book. That one’s been sitting on my iPad for a while but I still haven’t gotten around to it. It’s going to be a reading filled summer.

I’m heading to Hawaii in a few days and I would love to take my iPad and read with it in the sun but I haven’t figured out a solution so that the screen isn’t just unreadable in the sunlight. I did find this article, however, and perhaps my problem can be fixed with some polarized lenses or passive 3-D glasses. I wonder if the glasses I get from the movie theater will work?

Find though she be but little...

This is one of my favorite quotes from Shakespeare and it’s from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The quote speaks volumes to me because I’m of petite size and while sometimes I’d replace the word ‘fierce’ with ‘sassy,’ I think it describes me all the same. A Midsummer Night’s Dream was one of my favorite Shakespeare plays to read in 8th grade, probably because it wasn’t as macabre as Hamlet and it had faeries in it. I’ll admit, I had sort of a literary crush on Oberon – he was the king of faeries and really hot in my imagination. It’s been a while since I’ve picked up a Shakespeare play…

Essie Obsession

I’m obsessed with nail polish. Once, during my sophomore year, I just binged and bought 14 nail polishes on eBay just because someone was selling them for less than $15. I thought I was getting a real deal. Unfortunately, cheap price = cheap nail polish. Of those 14, I probably have maybe two or three of them left. I’m also a sucker for those Urban Outfitter nail polishes that come in that rectangular box container and are notoriously hard to grip. Like seriously, whose fingers can comfortably wrap around those cube tops?

But post grad me is a new me! I vow to only spend money on nail polish that is guaranteed to have an easy to grip top and is of quality manufacturing. My latest nail polish obsession is Essie. It’s been one on my “I wish I could afford to splurge” list, but it turns out, this stuff is less than $8 at your local Target! So hail the era of the Essie nail polish. It’s going to be the brand that I’m buying for a while and no more of that cheap drugstore, generic stuff. (I do realize that you can buy Essie at the drugstore, but psh, a little of that cheap me is always going to prevail.)

My first Essie purchase was a lovely color called: Bikini So Teeny. I’m wearing it right now and it reminds me of that block of time right between Spring and Summer when the weather is just warming up but summer just isn’t quite here yet. It also has a somewhat beach-y feel, which is perfect since I’m heading to Hawaii on Sunday!

I love the composition of this photo. Disclaimer: I didn't create it. But to get better at something, it's always good to have examples laying around!

Do you have any Essie colors you’d recommend? I’m looking into so more “work-friendly” reds and pinks but my interviewer/future boss did love my black with gold flecks when I was there so I’m open to all suggestions!

Spotify's Thoughts on the Class of 2013

I’m a recent convert to Spotify and I’ve recently given in and starting paying the ~$10 a month to get unlimited streaming everywhere and anywhere. I love building and following my friends’ playlists and it really cuts down on my need to download music all the time. (You can follow me here!)

In lieu of graduations happening everywhere, Spotify has created a playlist called “You Made It – Class of 2013” in honor of graduates of the class of 2013. From reading the title, you’d expect a musical mix of inspirational songs like Vitamin C’s “Graduation” and R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly.” Instead, you get a strange mix of songs including but not limited to: “Good Riddance,” “Closing Time,” “Gold Digger,” and “Boyfriend.” (I just looked again and it also has the Glee version of Santa Baby. I mean, what is going on? What are the criteria for making this list?) It’s certainly an eclectic mix of present and past Top 40 songs but I’m not sure it embodies the spirit of graduation and a future of possibility. I mean, what exactly am I supposed to take away from the song “Gold Digger” in light of my recent graduation? It doesn’t send the most encouraging message…

To remedy this problem, I think I’m going to make a new grad playlist of my own. You can follow it here and I’ll take suggestions, but the requirement to make this playlist is that the title or content of the song must be relatable to graduation in a non-metaphorical, obvious sort of way. Examples: Vitamin C’s “Graduation,” pretty much any song from High School Musical (but I promise to limit these), Destiny’s Child’s 90’s hit “Bills, Bills, Bills” (I think this is very applicable to our life after graduation) [also, that was a lot of apostrophes to describe possession]. Feel free to leave me suggestions here or on the Tumblr version of this site: afterthediploma.tumblr.com!

Not the most original image but it'll do.

On Posting Everyday

I’ve been updating and posting here twice a day but I’m wondering if that might be too much. The reasoning is twofold: 1) While I might be able to keep up with it for now, once I start work, I don’t think it’ll be that plausible to keep posting twice a day. I mean there is queuing but I don’t know how much writing I’ll be able to get in with a heavy work schedule and I want to make sure my posts are timely and relevant. Queuing sometimes makes posts obsolete by the time they get posted. Though I’d like to be able to keep writing as much as I can, it’ll be tough to keep up twice a day. 2) I’ve been noticing that my posts that get posted later in the day (usually after 4:00PM) are getting more views, so it might just be worth posting once a day, later in the day.

I found this quote while looking for "writing" quotes. I think it's quite appropriate considering my goals for this blog!

What do you think? Do you like having more reading material from me per day or is just one post fine and dandy?

The Lululemon Controversy

I’m a self-declared Lululemon addict and I spend weeks saving up to buy a pair of Wunder Unders or new tank top. Considering that Lululemon is in my blog description, it was only a time before I found something Lulu related to write about! I found this article while going through some tracked tags on Tumblr and I think it’s definitely and interesting read. While this definitely isn’t the first defaming article I’ve read about Lululemon, I can never stop myself from ogling their new line of pants and summer patterns. What I want to do, however, is draw attention to some of the points that Tech Mommy brought up in her blog:

His (Chip Wilson – founder of Lululemon) comments bring up some questions:

1. If plus sized women would need to spend more money for extra fabric in their clothing, would you give extra small women a discount? 

2. Why does Lululemon sell “plus sized” mens wear? Their sizing goes up to 40″. This would be a size 18-20 for women. 

3. Why did the XL sizing of Lululemon move from a size 14 to a size 12 in 2009? 

4. Now that Lululemon has moved their manufacturing to China from Canada, wouldn’t the cost of making bigger clothes be even less of an issue?5. If this is how the founder of the company feels towards plus sized women, how is message being presented to their staff members?

I don’t think these questions are limited to just Lululemon, but they’re definitely questions to think about for all brands. You don’t see brands like Nike showing plus size models in their advertisements and while I can respect plus-size as being a healthy figure, there is such thing as people who use the term “plus-size” to justify obesity. NOTE: I’m not saying EVERYONE who is plus-size is obese, I’m just saying that I’ve heard people incorrectly label overweight as plus-size. They’re not equivalents. It’s the same stereotype people use for skinny people. Skinny does not equal anorexic.

I can already tell that this post is going to be offensive to some people but isn’t that good writing’s all about? Controversy?

The end result, for me at least, is that we live in an imperfect world. Lululemon is part of that imperfection, I mean take a look at this article. If we want something to be affordable/cheap, it comes at the cost of somewhere else, whether it is the outsourcing of labor or quality of the fabric. It’s not so much individual brands so much as our entire commodity system. If we want something that’s American manufactured, it’ll take a chunk out of our wallets. I’m not sure the boycotting of brands will help the situation but I don’t have any solutions to offer either. It’s definitely a lot of food for thought.

Night Owl vs. Day Lark

You know how some people get more done in the early hours of the morning? That’s not me. I’m a night owl and I’ve always been one for as long as I remember. It used to make my dad mad because I like staying up late at night and then as a result, I’d sleep in on the weekend till 11 or 12. He told me it was a waste of natural daylight and electricity. But there’s something about the quiet of the night and everyone else sleeping that helps me get all my thoughts in order.

Thank goodness for queuing. If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t ever be able to post anything before 1AM. I’ve found that regardless of much or how little I sleep, once it gets past the midnight hour, I can stay up hours after that. I usually end up writing most of my posts at that point. I’m guessing this might change once I start my new job. Most jobs don’t run on my strange sleep schedule.

I call myself a night owl and I assigned the term “day lark” to my opposite. I got the idea from that one scene in Romeo and Juliet where they try and convince each other that the bird that’s singing is the late night bird and not the lark that sings in the early morning. I guess that AP English pays off. I know there’s an Emily Dickinson poem about the early morning birds singing but I can’t for the life of me remember what it’s called. Anyone know what it’s called?

What do you classify yourself as? A night owl or a day lark?

RIP Google Reader

Google announced a few months ago that they would be shutting down Google Reader because of a declining user base and I was crushed. I’ve only been using Google Reader for a little more than a year because an internship had used it to track certain blogs. I’ve been reading blogs but I was often getting behind because I didn’t have a blog aggregator. Enter Google Reader: the hero that saved me from having twenty different bookmarks in my Chrome browser.

The thing I liked about Google Reader was that it let me read full posts without having to actually visit the site. There were a few blogs that had that “more after the jump” that would make me click through to the site if I wanted to read more, but they had a brief intro so I could decide whether I wanted to read more or not. Since starting my blog here on Blogger, I’ve been able to migrate my blogs but it doesn’t give me the option of reading them all; instead, I have to individually click through to each site and read the full post. I’m guessing it has something to do with driving more traffic to those blogs since I’d want the same thing for my blog – more actual page views.

RIP Google Reader. I'm going to miss you dearly.

D-Day is July 1^st for Google Reader so I have about a month and a half to find an alternative. I found this article on LifeHacker with some alternatives as well as their Top 5 picks but I thought I’d get some peer advice. What do you use to track all your blogs?

Summer Television

Summer time also means new TV shows. My favorite television season has always been that winter into spring season because all my favorite shows air at that time: How I Met Your Mother, Community, Dance Moms, The Office (RIP :'[ ), The Big Bang Theory, Grey’s Anatomy, Castle…I think you get the picture, I’m a bit of a television addict. This has always proved somewhat problematic because of the whole school thing. Spring television means that the season finales were always around finals time, which proved detrimental to my studying at a critical time.

My school also had something called “Dead Week” which was a week before finals where classes were cancelled and it was, in theory, a week for students to take the vast amounts of time they were given to study. But in reality, we all used that time to catch up on some social activities (that may or may not have included various forms of a liquid diet) or in my case, start new series of TV shows.

My summer viewing schedule has yet to be planned but I’m looking forward to the finale season of Breaking Bad. I don’t watch much drama but last summer before school started, I gave in and started the season, curious to see a television show where the main characters moral compass actually declined.

Look at those collage skills. I'm really getting the hang of the crop and magic eraser tools.

Another show that’s riding on my radar is “The Goodwin Games.” Its main selling point for me is that it’s created by the same guys who made “How I Met Your Mother.” The premise is that three estranged siblings are brought back together by their father’s death and in line for a humongous fortune. The catch is that because they’ve fallen apart as a family, their father has arranged from them to inherit the fortune in a non-conventional way – by playing a game. It’s very “The Westing Game” (remember when we had to read that in the 5^th grade?) meets the three kids in Modern Family. I can see the series being a bit dragged out – I guess Bays and Thomas are good at taking a could-be simple plot and prolonging it, as evident in HIMYM. The pilot has been intriguing enough so I’ll at least give the season a try.

What summer shows are on your viewing list? I’m open to suggestions and recommendations!

I am the Lord of Catan!

There’s no denying it, I’m an extremely competitive person. Ever since I was younger, I’ve always loved friendly (or sometimes not so friendly) competition. Though I’ve gotten better about not being a sore loser (when I was younger, I would actually stomp off in the middle of games if I was pretty sure I wouldn’t win), I still get a great deal of satisfaction from winning, usually board games.

Being competitive runs in my family, I guess. With three kids in the household, we often get compared to each other despite the fact that the three of us are all extremely different. In a way, it’s pushed us to all to “specialize” in our own comfort zones but it’s also led me to shy away from things I have anxiety that I might not do well in.

The pressure of competitiveness is a double edged sword – while on the one hand, it can drive and motivate you to excel and be better, it can also leave you with a bitter taste in your mouth when you constantly need to be number one and can’t settle for anything less.

Recently, my competitive attitude has really come out while playing a game called “Settlers of Catan.” I’ve never played this game before college and while I was an undergrad, there wasn’t much time to play board games so when we played during Game Night, I was hooked. It’s a combination of luck, probability, strategy, and a good poker face. It’s a bit of a steep learning curve and there are a lot of pieces that go on the board, but once you get the hang of it, it’s a pretty addicting game. The total game time can total more than an hour, so it’s a time investment but in my opinion, it’s totally worth it. Also, if you win, you can rejoice in my victory cry: “I AM THE LORD OF CATAN!”

I’ve played both the original version of Settlers as well as the Star Trek version. Yes, call me a nerd but when I saw the game at Target, I couldn’t resist. Another one of my favorite games is Set. That one is more a game of reaction and spatial thinking.

I hope there are more Game Nights in my future. What are some of your favorite games to play? (I sincerely hope someone says Cards Against Humanity because that game is the shi* in a kind of convoluted kind of way.)

Summer Flicks

Summer time means summer blockbusters! Have you ever wondered why they’re called blockbusters? Well thanks to some help from wiki:

“The term began to appear in the American press in the early 1940s, describing the largest of aerial bombs: single bombs capable of destroying a city block, also known as "cookies" during the firebombing of Hamburg. Later figurative use referred to anything making a public impact: "Broadway reacted to the request of War Mobilization Director Byrnes to close all places of entertainment by midnight Feb. 26 as if a blockbuster had landed on Manhattan" (Chicago Tribune, February 2, 1945). Some entertainment histories cite it as originally referring to a play that is so successful that competing theaters on the block are "busted" and driven out of business.”

I’ve borrowed a list from Pop Culture Brain for movies to watch out for this summer and I’m happy to say I’m well on my way to watching a majority of these.

‘Iron Man 3’ - May 3

‘The Great Gatsby’ - May 10

‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ - May 17

‘The Hangover Part III’ - May 24

‘After Earth’ - May 31

‘The Kings of Summer’ - May 31

‘The Internship’ - June 7

‘Much Ado About Nothing’ - June 7

‘Man of Steel’ - June 14

‘This Is The End’ - June 14

‘The Bling Ring’ - June 14

‘Monsters University’ - June 21

‘World War Z’ - June 21

‘The Heat’ - June 28

‘The Way Way Back’ - July 5

‘Pacific Rim’ - July 12

‘RIPD’ - July 19

‘The Wolverine’ - July 26

‘Blue Jasmine’ - July 26

‘Elysium’ - Aug 9

‘Kick-Ass 2’ - Aug 16

‘The To-Do List’ - Aug 16

‘The World’s End’ - Aug 23

So far, my favorite has been Monsters University. How did I already watch this movie, you may ask? As part of our senior week at Cal, our senior class council was able to pull some strings and get in contact with Pixar to come show the movie early. It was amazing seeing our campus translated into the Monsters University film and it made the movie all that more special to watch. I don’t want to give away any spoilers since it’s a Pixar movie and all of their movies are amazing. I’m probably going to watch it again when it comes out in theaters for the short in the beginning and the little extras that are going to be added in the public release version.

Should I write some reviews of the movies I’ve seen or should I stick to the musings of my post grad life? Leave me a comment and let me know what you want to read more of!