From the first time I harangued my mother into buying me a pair of platform sandals at the irascible and persistent age of 11, I've worn heels.
— Mary H.K. Choi
Rihanna's boots are too scared to look bad on Rihanna.
I am obsessed with Neil Patrick Harris on Twitter.
A fanboy's heart is filled with love, enthusiasm, and insecurity.
SoulCycle feels gross, is gross, and I'm grateful to have found it.
Home is where my house pants live. And they're hideous.
I was born in Korea and left before my first birthday.
For my first job interview out of college, I wore a cream-colored cotton suit with cap sleeves and an inverted box pleat skirt that was appropriate for the late-August heat - and wildly discordant with the Red Hook offices of the graffiti magazine I had called twice to find.
Wikipedia's a collaborative experiment akin to Simon Winchester's account of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary in 'The Professor and the Madman,' which outlines James Murray's mission to produce the tome in the 19th century.
When I was small, I thought I was just cooler than my mom because of how foreign she is. She's really foreign. You'd think it would kill her to get store-bought snacks, she's that foreign.
By the time you're in your 30s, unless somebody makes the god-awful decision to gift you with a cooking class or salsa lessons, it may have been a while since you learnt something new.
I like science a whole bunch, but I love 'The X-Files' more - I want to believe.
Never hold up your entire group of friends in real life trying to capture a perfect Instagram pose. Nobody cares.
When you have tools with which to stalk everyone all the time, the most seemingly aloof person wins.
Privateers, military contractors - these aren't pirates. They have bosses. Real pirates are sellswords on missions of their own making.
You are overwhelmed, overscheduled, and dejected because you keep trying to have it all - or at least most of it. You want a fulfilling job and personal life, and it's not working. The way out? Work more.
I have horrible shoe hang-ups. Particularly when it comes to flats.
I am anti-Halloween.
I do not care for musicals. In fact, I hate them.
'Avatar' is staggering. It's seismic. Evolutionarily speaking, it is cladogenesis in a thunderclap.
Nothing beats SoulCycle for dumbing all the way out or re-calibrating a mood in less than an hour, which is reassuring, since I typically wake up in a panic that's candy-coated with a low-grade rage.
Home is where I climb out of my mecha-suit-of-a-poised-persona and power down.
Pedicures are disgraceful.
Manhattan, after eight years here, still reminds me of Hong Kong. There are parts of Chinatown that are the spit and image of streets in Wan Chai, and I am held in thrall by the Chrysler building as much as I was by I.M. Pei's Bank of China Tower.
Consider this: alms aside, Wikipedia is fueled by competitive pedantry and emo-ness. How great is that?
My mom is an excellent mom. She knows I am irascible, prickly, and antisocial. She knows that most human interaction makes me tired and that I either scare people away with precise invectives or trot out the fakest, nicest skinjob of myself because it requires zero effort.
I roll my eyes at the grandstanding blowhards who have 'fixed' themselves, but I keep up with the gizmos and apps that track people's various rhythms. I'm no lifelogger or body-hacker, but I'm curious, and I want to be in-tune enough to know what's really the matter so I can level up and be at my most awesome.
Never post anything personal to your Facebook wall. Or anyone else's, for that matter. Only snitches and teachers look at Facebook.
Never post food on your Instagram. Nobody cares, and only old people do it.
'Awkward' is a ubiquitous teen word to denote socially unsanctioned behavior. It usually implies first- or secondhand embarrassment when you or a friend step outside the rules. Awkward doesn't sound overtly judgmental or negative; it's deliberately vague.
Try life as your own boss, on your own voyage. No daily commute. No salad bar at 12:15. No cc'ing about the meeting.
Have passion, yes, but acknowledge that side projects are still work. They shake things up, just like switching up your workout helps you stay one step ahead of your torpid metabolism. They scramble the synapses.
People bursting into song in unison and then pointing it at me is maybe the worst thing I can think of, never mind that you have to pay good money to go be yelled/danced at.
I love how British people call Asian people 'oriental' unless they're talking about Indian people, who get to be called Asian.
If there was a button that I could push that would agog my brain to the level that I felt first seeing 'Avatar' in its entirety and another one for food pellets, I would die of starvation.
I love small-business owners, and I actually love the idea of vintage clothing, but I don't get when they pretend that the Internet doesn't exist or that other customers have never been to the whole rest of the country where you can rummage around and buy the same dang belt for a buck and a half.
Twenty-thirteen was the year I got super into SoulCycle.
In New York, you collect a thousand encounters a year, a passel of handshakes, a zillion air-kisses, and boatloads of business cards that you pitch into your purse and eventually deposit your chewing gum into. Amid this break-neck montage of glancing contacts, I'm tormented by the constant thrumming fear of being fingered as a flake.
I cannot quantify the physics of friendships and do not know exactly how much intense pressure can be applied before these glittery, brittle bonds break.
I'm great at leaving. I am less talented at getting left, though I should be better, given how much it's happened.
When I was five, I compound-fractured my arm, pulverising my elbow.
I love my mother a not-normal amount.
I'm a sucker when it comes to under-explored human potential and 'stuff that makes you be better.'
Never post boring back-to-back selfies.
Teens are strange and magical.
Instagram is not a place for tone or irony.
Pirates, me hearties, are the Patronus of the freelancer.
Even the coolest jobs get stultifying with repetition, and the only way to break that cycle is to bring another job into the mix.
