Whoops neglecting the blog for a few days

Awww yeaaaa So if there's anyone actually reading this I apologize for the last few days of absence so get ready for some football!!! er updates!!!

Thursday!

9500 Liberty Ave - good documentary about immigration that I went to go see with Mable, Meagan and Lara. It was about a county in Virginia that was experiencing a high influx of Latino residents, documented or otherwise, and were blaming every single social ill ever on them. Lots of xenophobia and just really ridiculous accusations like that zapatistas were going to take over the county and crap. Also featured some very heroic individuals who fought to overturn an ordinance that essentially completely allowed racial profiling. I used to really enjoy watching ignorant ass people hate on immigrants. If used to give me so much fire. My inability to relate with them just made me hungry to do work. Strangely enough I now no longer enjoy it as much. I think now that I'm older I realize how much work there really is to do to create the sort of change I think society deserves and seeing these wackos (plus birthers plus Glenn Beck plus tea parties) really just makes me realize the insane magnitude of work this sort of change will require. I believe in really changing the way people think. Though we like to think that Obama's election has heralded in a new more progressive America, he only won 53% of the popular vote. 47% of the country still said no to change and hope. This is hardly a mandate from the masses and is why moving this country forward has been such a deadlock in congress. Seeing the morons in 9500 Liberty Ave scared shitless of Latinos for no reason just makes me tired because I know those are people who just never might change and that I'm going to have to try with them anyways. But really that's an inconceivable amount of work.

Anyways on to funner things! After the movie we got to meet the folks who made it, the main person was a Korean woman from LA who said I looked familiar. It might be the whole mixed thing cause I get that a lot but LA API artsy types all go to Tuesday Nights at the Cafe so it totally might have been there. There was an after party at this club called Lima. It sucked pretty hard because the music was so whack but there is some silver lining there.

On the way to the club some guy was trying to spit game at the girls and was like "how you doing?" they ignored him but I turned to him and told him that I was doing alright. His expression showed how unamused he was by it. I wasn't really trying to make fun of him either, that's just sort of my first reaction.

On the way out I was standing with Meagan and waiting for Lara and this older guy walks by and assumes were together and is like "Damn! you da man! I wanna be you when I grow up!" He was at least in his mid thirties so that made it pretty funny.

Anyways a few quick food hits from my lunch breaks:

king of kebab - all u can eat indian for 9 bucks. but it's so bland. I didn't know tandoori chicken despite still being red can taste like literally nothing. Same with the curry. How do you even make bland curry?

The "well dressed burrito" - my coworkers raved about it. It was the worst burrito I've ever had. I was so mad that despite being full after I had a hot dog from a cart just to get the taste out of my mouth. read my review here because If i think about it again I'm just going to get pissed off. (http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-well-dressed-burrito-washington#hrid:nF1fZmFEAI7WVnjaix3RMA/src:self)

Catman called me out on it but I feel a bit of that America is In the Heart young man on the road romaticism about my house in DC just because so many people live here it makes it seem like this romantic journey of youth. Now that I've been working for a week that has fast faded since I now realize how much of your day a full time job soaks up. It's incredibly depressing that this may be life until old age... or depending on JET and law school and travelling maybe not ;)

Anyways pretty cool weekend Cat Manabat from ucla days was visiting her friend Arlene who lives mad close so we chilled a good deal this weekend. We met up at this place called Busboys and Poets which one one hand is sort of a cool restaurant, it's got good food, a bookstore with "progressive" books and good beer. On the other hand it came off as pretty pretentious too. Gandhi was on the menu and there were poems by langston hughes on the inside of it. There was also a light bar that spit out statistics on the war in Iraq. All that stuff in a way is cool but it also commodifies things that are greater than a trendy business and in a sort of self assured preachy way. I can't hate on it too much because my food was good and there were interesting books in the bookstore but that's not a business that is going to engage anyone who isn't already behind all that stuff. It's easy to run a business that only focuses on niche appeal. Running a joint with broader appeal that can actually change the way someone feels about something is the real challenge.

Anyways afterwards we went to Chinatown to this super BRO bar called rocket bar to meet up with two more of Cat's friends, one visiting and one that lives in VA, both went to UCLA (go bruins) and did some good drinking. They played the most random music. Songs similar to the "i don't wanna wait for this life to be over" one from the old WB teen shows and shit. They also had hard cider on tap which was pretty cool. In the bathroom a guy def asked/announced "so who's getting laid tonight?" everyone just grumbled. Tough scene at the bro er Rocket Bar.

After that we went to this place that has "Party Bowling" where you can eat bar food, drink, watch sports and bowl. They even have vip packages that are all you can drink/bowl for two hours and come with a ton of food. Bizarroville to be sure. After that we went to the third and final bar of the night, Bar Louie where I had some more great beer (dead guy on tap) and they are apparently the bar that the UCLA DC Alumni use during their meets!

Next day we all went to the Natural and US History Museums. The Smithonian is fucking tight cause it's free. I saw that actual Star Spangled Banner there which was pretty tight. It's enormous, like 30' by 30'. There was also 'bring history alive' thing where they reenacted a lunch counter sit in to let some real white guilt flow.

Later that night we went to a super hipster club. I'm just gonna paste in my yelp review of it:

I like hipster clubs because all the kids that are "too cool" to listen to pop music, chase women, and bump and grind like the rest of society are shown to enjoy essentially the same things even if they're pretending that it's ironic that they like the same music as people they consider below them.

Anyways the dj was cool and they have legitimately good beer there. Delerium and Leffe are fantastic beers and finding Leffe on tap is alwas a challenge.

Oh hipsters you so silly

Basically yea. Leffe on tap!

Sunday we went monumenting and saw the Jefferson, Lincoln, and WWII memorials. The Lincoln and Jefferson ones are great, good austere and thought provoking. the WWII one is ok, one of my coworkers described it as sort of facist looking, and compared to the Linc and TJ ones I'd have to agree though the thought didn't cross my mind when I was there. The Korean War memorial really does chill you a bit. The expressions of fear and trepidation on the faces of the statues is as real as it gets. Compared to the WWII one which sort of glorifies and aggrandizes war the Korean War Memorial really sort of checks that.

For dinner we went to this place called afterword and feasted. Something about gnawing on the bones of lambchops is immensely satisfying. I also love crabcake and wish it were cheaper.

The bookstore had some cool looking history books. I really want to learn more about south/central america, the middle east and india because those are all places I didn't really study in school. It's so hard to find a good history book though because so many really push and agenda. Thats what I miss about school. Most professors were pretty good about choosing books that didn't at least overtly push an agenda. Or if it did they taught you to see through it in class. I might just email some profs for recommendations on what i should be reading.

We also went to this jazz club after that was byob and were classy and listened to some jazz. I'm probably not classy enough though because though I was enjoying it I was sorta falling asleep. I like jazz but not enough to just sit and listen to it. Part of it was the whole day of walking plus food coma plus wine but I'm not going to make too many excuses for myself.

Monday: back on the grind and boy did I make some rookie mistakes, like not BCCing ppl, forgetting attachments and the like. I expect a lot more from myself in terms of being detail oriented and though my bosses were cool I was pretty ashamed of my work on monday.

I went to this "do you really wanna be a lawyer" panel at GW. DC is an intense town. People here are aggressive and driven by the handful rather than the rare border sociopath you encounter at home. Not a single attendee was a lost undergrad. I was prob one of the youngest there and the news I got wasn't awesomely reassuring. Apparently if you don't go to Yale, Harvard, Columbia, or Stanford your law school experience isn't nearly as academic as it is technical. I'd like to think of myself as somewhat of a scholar and that if I don't go to one of those schools my legal education won't really be as academic as I'm really hoping. Their main point was only go to LS if you wanna be a lawyer, don't go if you just wanna work in gov't or be a politician. That let a lot of people down but as good as Senator Tsukerman sounds I can't say it's the phrase that is driving me.

At night I made some chicken using random stuff and it actually came out pretty good. I used chicken, ginger, onions, red onions, soy sauce, cooking wine, pepper, and paprika. I got quite a few comments about how good it smelled. Much better than my attempted encebollado!

Tuesday: Did better at work for the most part, still a few stupid mistakes but I got a lot done today and am feeling a bit better about it all. I've been trying to really work hard, get there first, leave late, take 20-25 minute lunches. I've earned my spot in places before and I'm going to do it again. It's sort of tough tho from being used to being the top dog in my work to being the bottom of the ladder. My opinions are still listened to but when we do conference calls and I see so many parallels with my experience it's annoying to know that I can't really participate in the same way. I might be young but when it comes to working with people I really do think I know what I'm talking about. It'll come tho, just gotta work hard and earn my voice.

I'm realizing how different the 9-5 life is. On one hand it's sort of nice because when I was a student, though i wasn't in class that much (i didn't skip, class just doesn't take that much out of your day) i was still busy as shit with apc. Like all day errday until at least midnight. But so much of it is unsupervised and on your own schedule. Here there is a period of time where I can't go anywhere else just gotta work. And it's sorta cool cause some of the work I do is similar and it's nice having a set period of the day to work on it it's still not the same at all. No going to the gym in the middle of the day or waking up at 10 everyday. It really makes you value the weekends in a way that you couldn't in high school since you couldn't really go out then. But that's growing up. And at least I get to do a job that really conforms to my values, not that many people can really say that.