one cup of coffee

Here's a late Korea travel post from back in March. Named "커피한잔", meaning one cup of coffee, this became one of my favorite coffee shops my cousin and I discovered, tucked inside a small neighborhood behind Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul.

Unlike a lot of contemporary coffee shops I'd stepped into in Seoul, this vintage coffee shop was completely vintage without the pretentiousness. From the exterior, it looks like the shop's been there for ages (maybe it has been. I didn't ask). It's a quiet shop that exhibits a glimpse of what coffee shops might have looked like in 1970s Seoul, with shelves full of vinyls, old comic books and disco balls hanging around in random corners.

Made me feel nostalgic for the... "older" Korea. Why does this country change so rapidly all the time?

crumbs & whiskers! DC's first cat cafe

If you live in DC metro area, you've probably heard of Crumbs & Whiskers - this city's first cat cafe. The place opened not too long ago to much anticipation after its successful Kickstarter campaign (more than $35k! cool), resulting in a long wait list and people being turned away on weeknights. The owner/founder, Kanchan, is my age (I think) and listening to how she came to start gave me a little nudge in my heart, because honestly, opening a cat cafe (or even just a cafe) is not easy. This whole thing, to me, is pretty inspirational.

I wouldn't say I'm a cat person but I still do like cats. Just unfortunate that I'm allergic. Not terribly, but if I touch a cat or be near a cat for more than 10 minutes I'll start going crazy. So how did I survive shooting/doing interviews for ~2 hours at a place swarming with like 30 cats? I'd say the place is pretty well ventilated - and clean. And my sheer willpower to not die.

If you live in DC area and are not repulsed by the sight of cute cats, you should definitely check it out! It's nested in an adorable building in Georgetown and the people (and cats) are incredibly nice. When you first enter the place feels a little tiny but there's a second floor where the VIP cats choose their favorite human to go home with. Jk. But all cats are from the DC Humane Society and are adoptable. When we went, they had been open for 6 days and had 6 cats adopted - so that's a pretty good rate!

^ cat giving me his/her fierce look

And here is Kanchan! (below) I mean, how adorable is she?

Video for PBS NewsHour coming soon!

a long list of unfinished ... stuff.

Fine. I am a serial book starter. I get some major FOMO about missing out on books like some people do with movies or shows. Especially since I wasn't fluent in English until I was 14, I felt like I had missed out on so many great pre-teen reads. So I'd buy those books in high school (i.e. the outsiders, ender's game, naaarnia, etc) and college and never bring them anywhere public, embarrassed about being stuck in the basics. I personally consider the ability to discuss books with people a pleasure and privilege - there's something about revisiting a work of art you pored over for weeks and maybe months (in my case, months) with others who did the same.

There are a lot of books I haven't finished. Murakami's 1Q84. The Nightingale. David Carr's memoir. The American Sniper. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's masterpieces Jason was raving about. Farewell to arms. Uh. Yeah. It's not that I lose interest by chapter 8, I'm just slow. I basically count on future ariel to have finished all of them by the time I grow up and am a better person. Also I usually only read on the bus or the metro, which is probably only like 30 minutes a day. Trust me, I have more excuses...

Is it too late to be starting things over? No one warned me about feeling like I'm losing the possibility of having more possibilities!!

Obviously books aren't the only things I have started and haven't finished... sometimes I bring myself to look back and see how many promises i had made myself and all the things I claimed I would do in my 20s. When I graduated from college exactly 3 years ago, I made a huge list of things I want to do in my 20s (or when I'm still 'young'). YET THERE ARE ONLY FIVE YEARS LEFT. FIVE. (ok maybe not exactly five...but i'm sure i'll make a huge deal when i turn 30) As much as birthdays are fun, they are also actually kind of scary. It's like life gives you cake and then shits on your face. Like, you move to a completely strange city for an internship and before you can decide what you want to do with your life, BAM. You're 25 and feeling kind of old already and also spending a lot of extra income to buy plane tickets for friends' weddings.

Is it too late to be starting things over? Am I spending my prime right? Where did the list go? What happened to living abroad and helping people and making my skills worth it? I know it's not too late right now, but maybe it is time to start being more proactive and start checking stuff off the list.

shirlington bleachers

When I can't focus at work and need to let off some creative steam, make something, and just be out there doing something, I (apparently) force my friends (who all happen to be such babes) to model for me. Hehe. Also needed a reason to try out the 35mm lens. Never worked with this focal length before, especially with a full frame camera, and I gotta say I'm sort of obsessed with it already. It's in that snug zone between the 28mm and 50mm, absolutely perfect for portraits and getting wide shots with lots of details. We'll see how I feel about it after next week's assignment.

Anyway, here is Leah, always chic & stylish, even when I caught her casually strolling to CVS the other night in ripped boyfriend jeans I would never be able to pull off, like ever.

Light leaks.

I usually end up waiting for about 5-6 months before deciding to get exposed rolls of film to a processor because let's face it, it costs a lot of time and money. Especially in this country. So when my cousin in Korea told me how cheap film processing/scanning was in her hood, I saved up a bunch of rolls from last year and made them travel thousands of miles across the Pacific with me only to end up with these lovely, unexpected light leaks on all of my photos. At first, I thought it was my camera but the film lab actually ended up apologizing for their mistake. Womp. Oh well. Still not the worst film disaster in my film photography career. Anyway, here's New York and Denver from autumn 2014.

Seoul on my mind

No words or pictures will sufficiently capture the majesty of centuries-old beauty of traditional Korean architecture. In the few days I spent in Seoul, I visited Gyeongbokgung -- one of the oldest royal palaces sitting there since the 1300's -- and a traditional village adjacent to the palace where all the servants apparently used to live. I got to visit my mom's alma mater (aka every Korean mom's alma mater) -- Ehwa Women's University -- and spend time with my cousins who are now 10 years older than last time I saw them.