Note: I recently created a personal website/blog where I will start posting these annual reflection and goal-setting posts as well as thoughts on tech. Check it out at EarlVLee.com!

2018 was an incredible year. Certainly not the easiest but when has incredible ever been easy? This year, I went from not programming since 2015 to coding 40 hours a week on top of a full-time job, vaguely considering business school to cramming for the GRE and applying, and leading a team of 5 on the FiscalNote mobile app to a team of almost 20 across web & mobile engineering, design, and QA. I got to visit Peru—my first South American trip—stopped by Beijing for business, visited Paris to see my girlfriend, and spent a weekend in Chicago for the first time. I placed 3rd at a weightlifting competition and even learned to kayak and snowboard.

It wasn’t all snowflakes and rainbows, however. There were many bittersweet moments when friends in D.C. moved on to their next great adventures—likely a factor in why I was so productive—and sad moments when friends and family fell ill or moved on to the ultimate destination.

Through all of these experiences, I remember that the only constant is change but that change is ultimately a positive force. (For a good read/video on these topics, I’d recommend Steve Job’s commencement speech at Stanford back in 2005.)

2018 Reflection

Getting straight to the point, here’s how I did on my 2018 goals.

• Launch 1 new idea
  • I learned React.js and brushed up on server-side programming to launch Retaino!
• Read 18 books
  • I fell sorely behind on this goal, completing only five books. Luckily, all five were excellent: Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr., The Halo Effect, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, The War on Normal People, and Factfulness. I think the main reason I didn’t spend much time reading was that I spent a lot of time working on Retaino and applying to business school. In 2019, I’ll leverage reading as a form of entertainment instead of social media and fill idle time with audiobooks.
• PR all lifts by 10% or more and be 155 lbs / 10% BF
  • I missed this goal but remain undeterred. On the bright side, I found a coach and started training with an amazingly diverse team. One of the obstacles that limited progress here was losing a lot of strength while I intermittent fasted for a month and went on a couple of trips abroad.
• Meet 50 new, interesting people
  • Not sure if I completed this goal, but I admire the late David Rockefeller’s studiousness on this point. According to WSJ, he accumulated around 200,000 note cards on the people he met.
• Complete 5 side projects
  • I migrated Toastable to my own hosting after nearly 10 years of hosting it on one of my dad’s servers, started working with a nonprofit called Firoz that’s focused on educating kids in Afghanistan, and launched an MVP for Retaino. Regretfully, I didn’t sell any photos which was another side project goal of mine.
• Try 5 new productive habits
  • I started adding more vegetables to my diet and regulating my protein consumption to more moderate levels, woke up 2-3 hours earlier to work on side projects before going into the office, single tasked more, and spent less time on social media.

In 2018, I learned how important it is to communicate and to make others feel heard, not to invest in things you don’t really know about or trying to time markets, and being careful to avoid diminishing returns on time—blog posts for another time.

2019 Goals

• Deeply learn one new topic—computer vision, statistics, machine learning, etc—by taking an online course or reading a textbook. I generally view deep understanding of a subject area as a pre-requisite to creating something unique and valuable.
• Improve Retaino by knocking out 10 substantial features, launching a mobile app, and starting to publicize on places such as Product Hunt.
• Publish 12 tech/product blog posts by writing once a month, including one—or few—on lessons learned throughout my journey at FiscalNote. Writing helps clarify and reason through thought.
• Total 200kg in weightlifting (e.g. 87.5kg snatch + 112.5kg clean & jerk) by training 5-6 days/week and tracking macronutrients.
• Consume 18 books by reading one book a month and listening to audiobooks when doing low-mental capacity work such as eating or commuting. The secondary goal here is to limit social media and mindless content consumption—which is necessary to have time for books. Reading is like GPS for the mind: you get the distilled learnings of what others had to earn through painstaking experience—which is not to discount the fact that some things are learned only through experience.
• Travel to 2 new countries, ideally one trip with current friends and one trip with new friends, because I believe experience different cultures is one of the best ways to generate new ideas and increase adaptability to the unknown.
• Meet 100 new people to learn about what they do and are interested in (another way to come across new ideas and arguably one of the best ways to learn).

To elaborate on some of these goals, I generally view the deep understanding of a subject area as a pre-requisite to building something unique and valuable. Writing helps clarify and reason through thought.

Conclusion

This fall, I’ll start my MBA & MS Engineering at Harvard Business School and the School of Engineering & Applied Science. I’m excited to fill gaps in my business sense and explore new industries & technologies. Ultimately, I aim to figure out what I want to build next and set myself up to do so.

In the meantime, I plan to work on some new and ongoing projects such as Retaino until the fall. 2018 set the bar high, but with a ton of work and a bit of luck, I’m planning for 2019 to be as rewarding or more rewarding than 2018!

Thanks for reading. Send me a note via email, text, Messenger, or Instagram—I’d love to hear from you!

Hello, World! I always look forward to writing these annual reflection and goal-setting posts, and it will be nice to look back and hopefully be able to see progress through the years. I find these posts to be helpful in recalibrating my approach to growth and long-term goals. Furthermore, writing all of this down creates a sense of ownership for my actions and accountability for my goals. Continue reading to see how I did on my goals for 2017, lessons and observations from the past year, and what I hope to accomplish in 2018.

Retrospective on 2017

Goals Reports – B+

Overall I would grade myself a B+ on hitting my goals for 2017. I attempted every goal or habit, partially accomplishing many goals but not fully satisfying the requirements of any.

• Read 17 books by reading a book every three weeks.
  • I read 12 books in 2017, 9 in 2016, and 5 in 2015, so I read 33% more books than the previous year but not as much as I hoped. I sometimes finished books in a matter of days—over a week, a weekend, even a long-haul flight—so I’m sure I can push this metric up with better time management.
• Build a useful web app by committing code to GitHub twice a month.
  • I completed 2 projects in 2017, as opposed to 0 in 2016. The first is an Alexa skill called Trump Tracker that tells you Trump’s latest tweet (to be clear, I am not a Trump supporter). The second is a CLI utility called Crypto Capital that aggregates and summarizes your crypto holdings across exchanges, making it easy to assess your altcoin portfolio. These small projects are not what I envisioned when setting this goal, but progress is progress.
  • I also planned and validated two other ideas which did not move forward. One of them still seems like a good idea. If you’re interested in the concept of an unsweetened, energy drink coffee, let me know.
• Monetize my photography.
  • I made $0 from my photography. This project lost steam after I printed and framed a handful of my photos but failed to sell them through online postings. I realized it’s actually a lot harder to sell photos at a 50%+ margin than expected. My next step is to experiment with advertising and gather data on what kinds of photos are most popular as wall decorations.
• Connect with 50 new people by talking with someone new every week.
  • I met many new interesting people in 2017 but can’t say exactly how many.
• Become more informed about the world by reading important news.
  • This was a very poor goal because there are better ways to learn about the world than just reading the news. For example, I read Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, which arguably taught me more about globalization and wealth inequality than any handful of articles I may have read this past year. The book also made for a much more lasting impression than articles. This won’t be a goal for this year.
• Be healthy and lean 155 lbs around 10% BF by training consistently 6 days/week, hitting my PR goals, and competing.
  • I hit 2 PRs in the snatch and clean and jerk, which was a breakthrough, and by the end of 2017, I felt strong and fit as I have ever been. I am coming back from a 2-3 week break but am very optimistic about the possibilities in 2018. I also started a weightlifting/fitness Instagram, @earllifts.

Although not part of a 2017 goal, I visited 12 new cities—Vietnam (Hanoi, Hue, Da Lat, Nha Trang, Saigon), Japan (Tokyo, Kanazawa, Osaka, Kyoto, Hiroshima), China (Beijing), and Oranjestad (Aruba).

Lessons & Observations

Focus & Distractions

Recently, there has been a lot of chatter around dopamine-driven cycles in consumer apps of today. These cycles ruin focus in our everyday lives, distracting us constantly with fleeting hits of dopamine. I removed the Facebook app from my phone a long time ago, and last year, I made a concerted effort to focus on a fewer projects at a time and single task. This year, I want to focus on reducing time spent on short-term reward loops such as endlessly scrolling through Instagram or watching Snapchat stories. It’s a ruinous habit of mine that I need to rewire. I would like to set a time limit on those apps but can’t find any way to automatically track iOS app usage. If any of you know something out there that helps you do that, let me know by commenting!

Experimentation & Investment

One of the things I realized I do well is experimentation. I am open to testing out low-cost changes with imperfect information. For example, I like to live frugally—grocery shopping and meal prepping lunches for the week on Sundays and cooking dinners on weekday nights. While I still find those activities to be cathartic and a good time to listen to podcasts or talks, I realized I spend more time doing these chores than pursuing my interests. Finding time for side projects became increasingly difficult which is why towards the end of last year, I cold-turkey signed up for a meal delivery service called Territory (referral link) that sends pre-cooked lunches and dinners for most days of the week. Mental calculations told me it would save 7 hours a week, which is almost an entire work day I can spend on learning something new or building things. Now, I’ve found a balance between having every meal catered and cooking at home. It’s saved me a ton of time and introduced more variety and vegetables to my diet. This made me realize that while I value my frugality, it’s important to be efficiently frugal, not blindly so. Money and time are both limited resources and the principles of frugality should be applied holistically across both instead of only being frugal with money but not time. Small investments to save time can have an outsized impact on growth if that extra time is used wisely.¹

Traveling

After returning home from my trips in Asia, I remember feeling refreshed and brimming with new ideas to tackle my goals. It’s a similar but not as powerful feeling to starting a new semester or job. You approach everything with a fresh perspective, and the exposure to new surroundings while traveling seems to trigger new ideas and thought processes. This is something I haven’t done much research into but feel anecdotally. To that end, I’d like to research this phenomenon a bit more and take advantage of long weekends to travel.

Attention to Detail

Early in 2017, I shipped a major reporting feature on FiscalNote that allowed users to communicate their legislative data and work to internal and external stakeholders. Almost a year later, we’ve seen very positive responses from our highest-paying customers, and it has overtaken the old data export feature which was how users historically pulled information out of the platform for sharing. However, I encountered many setbacks along the road and the release was endlessly delayed. After reflecting on the experience, I identified the root cause of various setbacks to be attention to detail—lack thereof. Missing the tiniest of details often compounded into larger and more complex problems.

More recently, I’ve been evaluating a different, key product area that has been the source of many issues for FiscalNote users and believe that the root cause of these wide ranging issues is missing edge cases, the most notoriously hidden details. I’ve taken steps to sleep more and double check work often to sharpen my attention to detail.

Goals for 2018

I firmly believe that habit is one of the most powerful determinants of hitting goal. I also think goals should have discrete outcomes. To that end, this year I am structuring my resolutions by listing discrete goals tied to habits that will help me reach those goals. I should note, however, that success is usually not binary, so many of these discrete goals are on continuous scales.

• Launch 1 new idea
  • Validate
  • Commit code
• Read 18 books
  • Listen to audiobooks when doing chores
  • Read at least 1 book a month and knock out a few books in a week
• PR all lifts by 10% or more and be 155 lbs / 10% BF
  • Train 4-6 days/week
  • Track macros
• Meet 50 new, interesting people
• Complete 5 side projects
  • Migrate Toastable.com to my own hosting and give it a facelift without hampering SEO
  • Sell 10 photos for profit of at least $500
  • More to come!
• Try 5 new productive habits
  • Buy and eat 2+ vegetables per week, eat 1-1.2g protein/lb body weight but no more, no less
  • Wake up earlier to have 2-4 undisturbed hours of creative time
  • Single task and create blocks of time for getting specific tasks done
  • Reduce short-term reward loops e.g. social media, short-form content by limiting “Distracting Time” on RescueTime to <15%

If you’ve made it this far, shoot me a note via email, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram—say “Hi” or give me feedback!

Notes

2016 was a tumultuous year for the world, with Brexit and Trump’s rise to the presidency erupting a new normal, but amidst the chaos, 2016 turned out to be both exciting and calming for me. I grew to love DC, made a handful of new friends, visited Berlin, Yosemite, Hong Kong, and Bejing, and got into the habit of consistently reading. Of course, it wasn’t all perfect, but I’m appreciative the lessons I learned along the way and how all these experiences, both good and bad, have helped me develop clarity and resolve around how I want to grow in the future.

Let’s start with 3 realizations:

1. I’m a builder at heart, or at least that’s what all my mental signals are telling me right now. I need to have a hand in creating new value to really enjoy the work I do. In college, I studied computer science and quickly gravitated towards the technology industry instead of academia. I had my feet in both—almost, quite literally. While conducting research phishing detection research at University of Houston during summer 2013, I wrote code for the early FiscalNote prototype during evenings and attended a web development camp at Google. The excitement of having ownership over something that was built from nothing is unbeatable. In 2016, this was building the analytics stack at FiscalNote.
2. Iterate yourself like a product. If you haven’t seen Henrik Kniberg’s illustration of how to develop a product, you should. It proposes that the way to build out an ambitious product vision is not by building interdependent pieces of the vision but by building the simplest, descoped version of that vision that gets the fundamental job done, in other words, a minimum viable product (MVP). From there you should keep adding features and improve the MVP until it fits the vision. In most cases, this is a great way to approach building things, and that goes towards ourselves too. You don’t go to the gym for the first time and try squatting 315 lbs and expect to squat that weight one day so long as you keep going back and attempting to squat that weight. You first train to squat 135 lbs, then 155lbs, and so forth. In other areas of life, it’s not so simple. If you want to run a successful company one day, what is the first step you should be taking? There are many correct answers and many paths, but I think it’s important to understand that it’s an iterative process that takes enormous patience and thought.
3. Time is the most valuable resource. I’ve always known this, but it’s something that we all need constant reminders of. We all get the same amount of this resource and there’s no getting back what you’ve spent. Yet we spend so much of it on wasteful activities like consuming junk content and being lazy because those provide short-term gratification. One thing I did to optimize this for 2017 is moving closer to the office and areas of interest, which reduces travel time and gives me the flexibility to go back and forth from the office more easily which directly helps the efficient allocation of time.

2016 Goals Retrospective
From a binary perspective, I only hit 30% of my goals for 2016. Furthermore, I started off the year doing 5 of the 7 habits I wanted to acquire but ended the year with only 2 of 7. From a pure numbers perspective, those results are very bad. However, I made substantial progress on 4 of the goals I did not hit. For example, I was only 35 lbs away from my squat PR, having improved my squat by 65 lbs. I also built up a robust analytics stack at FiscalNote and helped start a team that focuses on corporate strategy and analytics, which isn’t exactly the growth leader role I was aiming for but also not completely missing the mark.

That said, I’ll be making three changes to hit my 2017 goals:

1. Time Allocation
2. Focus
3. Consistency

I need to be more cognizant of diminishing returns on my time and evenly distribute it amongst various goals to get the biggest returns possible. I also need to pare down what I want to do well on and pace myself such that I consistently make incremental progress towards goals throughout the year instead of trying to tackle everything at once and consequently making little progress on everything. So without much further ado…

2017 Goals

• Read 17 books by reading a book every three weeks.
• Build a useful web app by committing code to GitHub twice a month.
• Monetize my photography.
• Connect with 50 new people by talking with someone new every week.
• Become more informed about the world by reading important news.
• Be healthy and lean 155 lbs around 10% BF by training consistently 6 days/week, hitting my PR goals, and competing.

Sitting in my new apartment, already two months into 2017, I feel pretty good about the goals I’ve set for this year and where I want to be in 5 years. See you all in 10 months!

Let’s face it, it’s hard to give feedback that matters. Feedback that matters should help the receiver improve, but that kind of feedback is rare in many workplaces because it isn’t given for fear of offending someone or feedback tends to only point out errors without offering pointers for improvement. This lack of honest feedback in turn leads to tension and lingering problems, a dysfunctional organization.

This is a phenomenon I noticed at FiscalNote back in Fall 2015 and one that resonated with others on the Product team. Early that year, we had launched a new product only to find it harder to sell than expected. Some people including myself had the feeling we had completely missed the mark only to find ourselves making incremental improvements with the hope that the next update would get us that product-market fit. We found ourselves skirting around the giant elephant in the room — the fact that we decided to build what was easy and not what solved new pain points for our customers — and lacked brutal honesty with each other. In these sorts of environments, it feels hard to hold each other accountable without hurting feelings and as a result, a lot of time gets wasted mulling over issues instead of taking action.

Read the full article here!

I will start posting thoughts on technology and entrepreneurship on Medium, so check it out and follow me if you like what you see!

A young teen opens up his Christmas presents to find an Xbox One. It’s a huge upgrade from the hand-me-down PlayStation 2 he used to play as a kid. He loves it and immediately becomes addicted to Halo 5, playing it for hours on end, even sacrificing school work and pickup games with friends. A couple months later, while playing Halo 5, the boy curses and chucks his controller at the console. Clink! The controller knocks over a cup of water perched on a coffee table between the boy and the TV set. The water splashes all over the console, and few seconds later, the screen goes blank. Worried, the boy runs to his father and asks him to fix it. The father walks over, tinkers around for half an hour and declares, “Son, you’re Xbox One is dead.” “No! Why! This is the worst!” the boy yells. The father, calm as the blank TV screen in front of him, looks his son in the eye and says, “It’s your fault you lost your temper, son.” “But, it isn’t fair that my Xbox broke so soon,” continues the boy, tears forming in his eyes, “Who knows when I’ll get a new one!” The father smiles and tells his son, “Oh, but what if it’s a gift?”

While reflecting on 2015, I found it hard to come up with one story to tell, one lesson I learned, or one change that happened. How is one supposed to fit an entire year, 365 days, 8,760 hours, 525,600 minutes, or 31.536 million seconds into one reasonably short blog post that won’t bore people to death?

But then I realized that everything that was running through my head really boiled down to this: Think big.

To be specific, think big in the face of change. A lot changed for me in 2015.

1. I graduated college and left the place I called home for the past four years.
2. I forged amazing friendships with and mentored some freshman during my last year at Yale but then moved hundreds of miles away from them.
3. I met and dated a girl who made me really happy, created incredible memories together, but then lost her.
4. I became a product manager at FiscalNote after spending almost two years writing code and took ownership over several large initiatives—growth, metrics, and our API.

Change can be a blessing, but it can also be hard. It doesn’t discriminate between health, money, relationships, or career. It touches everything in your life, seemingly at random.

There’s a quote I love that goes, “Victims are frightened by change; leaders are inspired by change.” This is one of the mantras I try and live by. I’m not going to lie. At one point or another, I was frightened by every change that happened this year, but that fear and discomfort, slowly but surely, changes to inspiration. You think bigger than the past, the present, and the what-if. You begin to see opportunities born out of the current situation, out of change. How fast that shift happens—if at all—depends on your mindset.

On a similar vein, I don’t believe in karma. I don’t believe in luck. I don’t believe in destiny. I believe everyone is in control of their life. It’s easy to give in to external factors. It’s easy to say, “That’s not fair,” or “It’s out of my hands.” Once you believe something is out of your control, that you should leave things as-is, then you don’t have to work. However, there’s always something you can do. By blaming external factors, you victimize yourself and give up your power. If you take a step back and think bigger than that one change—if you turn a little to the left or to the right and take a few steps forward—then you’ll be able to look over and see that being forced to change paths was a gift.

Read on for my 2016 resolutions!

2016 Habits

1. Compliment or strike up a conversation with 1 stranger every week.
2. Connect with 1 friend every week—send a random text to ask how they’re doing, or ask to video chat.
3. Do 1 thing that scares you a week.
4. Write an article or essay every 3 months.
5. Read 1 book a month.
6. Visit a new country every 3 months.
7. Write 1 journal entry a week.

2016 Goals

1. Make 1 new close friend.
2. Be at a healthy and lean 150 lbs and around 10% BF.
3. Build a small business: PostQuarter, iOSalytics.
4. Squat 335 lbs.
5. Snatch 195 lbs.
6. Clean and jerk 245 lbs.
7. Date a girl that makes you happy.
8. Compete in a weightlifting competition.
9. Become Head of Growth at FiscalNote.

They say ignorance is bliss. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not. Maddening curiosity is not bliss, nor is slowly settling into the life you know without taking a step back to look at the big picture and what else is out there. The past couple weeks, I went on vacation, and for once, I mean that in the truest sense of the word. I stopped working. I stopped lifting. I got on a flight to LAX and didn’t look back.

A few college friends of mine and I went on what was nearly a two week road trip along the west coast. We drove from Los Angeles, up to San Francisco and the surrounding area, down to San Diego, and back up to Los Angeles. We planned to visit Tijuana and Baja California, but the beauty of being free to do whatever you want and beholden to no one but yourself and your friends is that you can easily adjust to changes. In our case, my friend’s sister who had been hosting us injured herself, and we felt most comfortable supporting her in lieu of seeing just a little bit more of the west coast.

I gained many things from this trip—stronger bonds with existing friendships and news ones, stories to remember for a lifetime, a pretty sick tan, and renewed perspective—but, today, I just want to talk about the last one. Prior to the trip, I had become held up on certain desires, and my happiness began revolving around them. My friends have commented that I am driven, even on this trip, and while drive to fulfill a certain desire helps us accomplish our goals, it can also create an unhealthy mindset. You become emotionally dependent on these desires, and setbacks or failures negatively affect other aspects of your life.

That happened to me, but as I spent time experiencing California with some of the most amazing people I’m blessed to call friends and met up with friends who are nearly a decade older than I am, I shed my unhealthy dependency on attaining desires. Spending time with my friends on the road trip showed me that happiness does not just come from getting what you want but also from simply enjoying the moment and the company of others. Meeting with a couple friends who have nearly a decade more of experience at life than I do made me realize that, in the long run, present setbacks lose significance over time, and there will always be opportunity for more later. That’s not to say I will try any less harder at achieving my goals. What it means is that, in one way or another, in a month, year, or decade, I’ll achieve these goals, and that has helped me enjoy life more fully and worry less about the future or the outcomes of my actions.

Will Durant once said, while paraphrasing Aristotle, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” In the spirit of excellent habits, most of my 2015 New Year’s resolutions are structured as habits I plan to acquire or continue to keep up. Hopefully, these can help you think of some habits you want to pick up in 2015.

Follow news more. Don’t follow everything, otherwise you will be beholden to a stream of useless information, but follow news that might help you learn from the experiences of others and society.

Read more, at least one book every season. A man who does not read is the same as a man who cannot. Reading let’s you look into the minds of others who are more intelligent and experienced than you. Reading about an experience is wholly different than experience itself, but time does not let us experience everything first-hand, making reading an invaluable tool in getting ahead.

Write. Write a blog post every couple months. Write down thoughts and observations you find interesting. This will help you think more clearly and analyze your experiences. Writing solidifies lessons learned and insights gained.

Meet more strangers and invest in others. I have a friend who seems to know everyone in my residential college and can strike up a conversation with anyone regardless of race, religion, or socioeconomic status. After I got to know him, he told me he considers himself an introvert, but that he makes a conscious effort to get out of his comfort zone to meet others. Everyone who you have ever met was at one point a stranger. Everyone close to you became close to you because you took the time to get to know them and share experiences together. I think I’ve done especially well these past couple years going out there and meeting new people. I know this because of the friends I’ve made and experiences I’ve shared with others, but we can always improve.

Make money work for you. Allocate at least a third of your income into investments, look into retirement accounts, and most important of all, don’t lose money. Money doesn’t directly buy happiness or influence, but having enough money can free you from many constraints and give you the security to pursue other, more important things.

Deliver more than you promise. Nothing makes people happier than getting more than they asked for or deserve, and nothing makes me happier than surprising people with something they didn’t expect. 2015 is looking to be FiscalNote’s breakout year. It also marks the first year I will be working on FiscalNote as a college grad. As was well put by a co-worker and friend, time to kick some FN ass.

Host dinner parties. This will allow you to pursue cooking as a passion and entertain your friends. Psychological studies have shown that food tastes better when we are with better company. Some of the most memorable dinners I’ve had I remember not because of the food I ate but because of who I ate with.

Set new personal records in lifts every couple months. Great weightlifters lift into their late twenties, so as long as you make slow and steady progress, you should not worry. I still have at least 8 years before my body would be better suited doing some more general fitness training.

Learn a few piano songs. Besides the fact that playing piano would be great for dinner parties and dates, practicing instruments can help improve cognitive function. Just as you train the body, you should train the mind through instruments.

Take more photos. At the end of this year, I ended up combing through all the photos I took this past year and wish I had taken more. There are those that argue we should experience the experience, not take photos of it, but I think we can do both. Besides, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Eat as healthy as you did in high school, even during a mass gaining phase. Eating healthy makes me feel good and results in improvements for training.

Be decisive and follow through. The more you make tough decisions, the better you get at making them. I was talking to a friend who happens to be the CEO of a high-growth startup that has raised millions of dollars, and he told me that, over time, decisions have become easier for him, and the right call just seems intuitive. The second part to this is, when you decide to do something and verbalize it, you must give everything you have to follow through. Otherwise, your word becomes moot in the eyes of others.

I saved the habit above for last, because it reinforces that I must try my best to continue or acquire all the habits above. At the end of this year, I’ll look back and assess how well I’ve done on following through with explicit examples. Cheers, and be proactive in making 2015 your best year yet!

The title of this post sounds a lot like the headline of some political scandal, but in fact, it highlights the keywords of things I learned this year. I don’t know about you guys, but I learned and changed a lot in 2013. I discovered new passions, such as Olympic-style weightlifting. I tried new things, from coding at hackathons to wrestling, and I changed the way I make decisions.

What I learned

Talking to strangers is really fun. As humans, we naturally appreciate it when a stranger strikes up conversation with us. It implies that someone who has no vested interest in you decided to take time out of their day to talk to you. It’s a form of attention, and who doesn’t love attention? In the age of the Facebook like, this is the most natural and pure form of ‘liking’ there is. “Hey, I like your piano interpretation of pop songs. If you posted a video of it on Facebook I would like it, but since this is real life, I’m going to tell you that in-person and talk to you.” This actually happened. I was waiting inside the Timothy Dwight College common room for my cab to Union Station where I would leave on a train for Thanksgiving Break. The frigid air outside slowly crept inside, but the industrial strength heaters kept the cold at bay with a continuous blast of warm air. Sitting on one of the olive leather couches, I heard someone playing piano behind the corner. I immediately began reminiscing over the past semester, which was quickly winding down, and the past weekend, a whirlwind of craziness that is the annual Harvard-Yale football game. As I sat there waiting, listening to piano, and reminiscing, I felt bliss. The piano jived perfectly with my mood, so much so that I had to compliment this mysterious player before I left.

Just as I was about to leave, I walked around the corner to see who I could thank for that moment of bliss. It turns out, the piano man was a freshman in my residential college whom I had never met before. I politely interrupted his playing to tell him that his music was wonderful. He responded, “Wow, thanks. That just made my day.” We briefly talked about Thanksgiving Break plans. I was going home to see my mom, and he was going to spend the break with his sister and her boyfriend. We both left that interaction feeling good—him for getting complimented on his piano skills and me for making someone’s day.

If you really think about it, what percentage of the time when you’re out traveling or running errands alone would you rather have been with someone else. In my case, a majority percentage. Instead of just sitting on a train pretending to tend to super important emails, most of us would rather sit on a train talking to someone. Life is more interesting with conversation, and you never know who you could meet by chance.

I met one of my closest senior friends in college because a mutual friend told us we should work on a web app together. Back in January of this year, I barely knew him. Now we’ve hacked together at multiple hackathons, attended a startup conference together, had on-site interviews for the same job, and turned late-night Monday Chipotle runs into a tradition.

Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it can facilitate spontaneity and create experiences. In turn, these spontaneous experiences can bring happiness. Some of the most exciting times I had this past summer occurred when I visited the San Francisco Bay area for a web development program at Google called Chrome Academy and a second time to visit FiscalNote and Google (again). I still remember exploring the search giant’s Mountain View campus like a kid and sharing endless laughter while hacking together Twine.rs late into the night. I remember eating Korean food and getting the cute cashier’s number with Jonathan and Gerald back when they were basically half the FiscalNote team. None of these experiences would have happened without $400 plane tickets at a bare minimum.

As another example, anyone who enjoys sports or other physical activity knows that equipment costs, facility dues, and other related costs can balloon out of control. This past summer, I discovered Olympic-style weightlifting. It’s a sport where athletes compete to lift the most weight in competition lifts, the snatch and clean & jerk. These lifts test strength, speed, and flexibility. How I stumbled across Olympic-style weightlifting is still kind of vague, but as early as May this year, I could spend hours watching someone like Lu Xiaojun snatch 150kg over and over again without getting bored. By the time I got home for summer break, I committed to get better at weightlifting and have been training for it ever since.

It’s been an amazing journey, but without money, I wouldn’t be able to train. Olympic-style weightlifting requires bumper plates, which are special weight plates you can drop on the ground. They are essential to weightlifting because gently placing weights back down on the ground after lifting them up over your head causes undue stress on the back. Unfortunately, my residential college gym doesn’t have bumper plates. In fact, there are no bumper plates anywhere at Yale except for in the varsity weight room, which is only open to varsity athletes. You would think that heavy pieces of metal and rubber shouldn’t cost too much, but a small set of bumper plates range from $300 to $4000. I ended up shelling out for my own cheap set and now use them in my residential college gym. That’s a few hundred bucks that will bring me endless hours of happiness. This realization of money facilitating experiences has caused me to think about the balance we should all strive to strike between financial security and expenditure. It’s something I plan on getting better at and something you should think about too.

2014 Resolutions

This second part is more for myself. To announce my goals for 2014 so that I can hold myself accountable.

• Snatch 200lbs.
• Clean and jerk 245lbs.
• Get to ~69kg/151.8lbs and 12% body fat.
• Improve NoteGenie: Setup rich text formatting, migrate from Nodejitsu, and expand Dropbox integration.
• Read a book, or two.
• Go on more dates.
• Throw a party.
• Go shooting, maybe as part of a CrossFit workout.
• Write one blog post every two months.
• Spend less than half an hour on Facebook each day.

Last but not least, thank you to everyone I met in 2013 and everyone I continued to keep in contact with. There are so many of you and the year wouldn’t have been so great without you. Happy New Year. Here’s to 2014, an even better year with endless opportunities. Cheers.

Tomorrow, I am going up to New York before I head back up to school the next day Thursday. I look forward to returning to school because, over the summer, I set my mind on a career path and found what passions I really want to pursue. Without delving into details, I gained new life experiences this summer. For that, I have to thank everyone I spent the summer with—fellow interns in Houston, old high school friends I met up with in California, new friends I made at Google, and more. Yet, as I prepare for my third year at Yale, I can’t help but feel rushed. With only two years of college left, I wonder if I’ll find myself in the spring of senior year wanting to start over. This is something I’ve talked about with recent graduates and alumni, and they’ve all agreed that by the end of senior year, Yalies are ready for and accepting of moving on to the real world. While comforting, this doesn’t change my renewed determination to maximize the latter half of my college years, so here’s to the next two years.

Raku

Last weekend, I visited a hip Japanese restaurant located in the heart of Bethesda, MD. Located in the midst of a busy shopping district, Raku is easy to overlook, but for its reasonably low prices, it doesn’t disappoint.

When I met my friend Sarah at the restaurant on a Friday evening, Raku was packed to the brim. Chances are, without the reservation I made earlier on in the week, we would have looked at a healthy waiting period before getting seated. In retrospect, some time spent with the menu before getting seated wouldn’t have hurt.

Raku’s dinner menu spans over 15 sections, from First Flavors to California Lineups. Among the intriguing options are ‘Seoul’ Train Roll and Chinese Five Spiced Duck Breast. Raku’s menu brings the indecisiveness out of most people, and it is menus like this that make me want to pursue a part-time role as a paid food writer, just so I could order everything that fancies my mind.

From the limited sampling of plates we tried, I would say that Raku is worth a try. The signature Raku roll packed a strong savory base flavor with an amalgam of textures from soft to crunchy thanks to eel, tamago omelet, avocado, and cucumber. With a sliver of marinated ginger, each piece was a brought a rainbow of flavor into my mouth.

The ‘Seoul’ Train roll triggered memories of Korean California rolls my mother used to make, the unifying ingredient being kimchi. As a hard-to-miss ingredient, the kimchi gave the ‘Seoul’ Train roll a uniquely Korean flavor. Alas, the ‘Seoul’ Train roll lacked in sophistication that the Raku roll pulled off so nicely.

Floating around somewhere in my mind is the name of the third roll, which was more traditional in the sense that it was not a specialty roll. Even so, this third roll appeased my inclination for savory foods by combining a healthy serving of salmon with crunch from a pea-sized dose of panko bread crumbs.

The strength of Raku lies not in its diverse and solid sushi lineup but its equally expansive selection of appetizers and entrees.

As a huge fan of the traditional French dish steak tartare, I had no choice but to order a tuna tartare. Though not similar in flavor to traditional steak tartare, the tuna tartare with lemon basil sauce piqued my interest for the food to follow. Raku’s tuna tartare is served with slices of toasted bread, dressed greens, and baby pickles that pack quite the punch.

The Maine scallop with oyster ragout was mellow in taste and soft on the mouth, consisting primarily of scallops, mushroom, and a creamy white sauce. A bit of added kick in the sauce wouldn’t have hurt, but the main pitfall of this dish lay in the fact that the tortilla strings topping the dish got soggy too quickly to enjoy.

Dolcezza Artisanal Gelato

After dinner at Raku, Sarah and I walked around the area a bit—which itself is quite charming—until we came across this gem of a dessert place called Dolcezza Artisanal Gelato. From the name, you can already anticipate the quality of its foods, and the gelato certainly lived up to its name.

As an aside, I should confess that I rarely eat sweet foods and almost never eat stereotypical desserts, i.e. ice cream, cake, etc. It’s not that I don’t like the taste of these foods. I enjoy them just as much as anyone else. I simply avoid them as part of eating a healthy diet. The reason I digress is that because of this, my palate for sweet foods may not be as refined as it could be. I find most sweet treats quite delicious.

However, I have an instinctive feeling that even self-proclaimed gelato connoisseurs would enjoy Dolcezza’s selection. The flavors are exotic, ranging from lemon opal basil to cucumber mint vodka, and they change weekly. You can find tried-and-true flavors too, such as espresso or salted caramel.

The gelato itself is creamy, with little if any trace of large ice crystals. It melts in the mouth like butter, and the flavors, far from being dull, trigger memories of the ingredients they’re made of. For example, tasting the lemon opal basil gelato felt almost like biting down on a basil leaf.

Raku
7240 Woodmont Ave
Bethesda, MD 20814
(301) 718-8680

Dolcezza Artisanal Gelato
7111 Bethesda Ln
Bethesda, MD 20814
(301) 215-9226

Last week, I attended a program called Google Chrome Academy, and it was one of the most memorable weeks I’ve enjoyed in my life. Chrome Academy is a weeklong camp at Google’s main campus in Mountain View, CA, where rising sophomores and juniors learn about web technologies, such as AngularJS and Polymer, and build their own web apps for a culminating presentation. In a sense, it’s like a week-long hackathon. To me, it was a paid vacation. Everything is covered—from basics, such as flights, hotel, and food, to extras, such as Patagonia backpack, Nexus 7, and a Google apron. We rode around in limos, posed for photos with the storied bicycles Google has lying around campus, hand-made pizzas at a Google café, took pictures of ourselves sleeping on charter buses, ate garlic fries at AT&T park while watching the Giants face off against the Marlins, and talked late into the night about where we wanted to be next summer.

Few things in life are better than you anticipate it, but this was one of them. Perhaps it was the late-night coding fueled by beef jerky and OhYeah! protein bars, or the laughter shared with my teammates who all came from different walks of life, or the feeling of roaming Googleplex as if I were a freshman again, but everything seemed just right. I found myself inside a bubble where nearly everything and only the things I care about* were all there. I even managed to get a few sleep-deprived, weightlifting sessions in, one of which resulted in a snatch PR.

At Google, we heard first-hand about web technologies. For example, Eric Bidelman, one of the developers of the new Polymer framework, taught us about web components and Polymer. Vojta Jina, a developer working on AngularJS, introduced us to the emerging Javascript MVW framework. We learned how to optimize our websites and utilize HTML5 features from Googlers who helped write specs. Everyone who dropped by were masters of their fields. I have no doubt that they were all probably busy with more pressing matters, but here they were, there, in-person, open to having one-on-one conversations and help sessions.

The food I ate, the free swag I got, and the new technologies I learned about will all fade into the past, but the people I met, the friends I made, the struggles, laughters, and aspirations we shared will be with me forever. Thank you to everyone who became a part of my experience at Chrome Academy, especially the organizers—Allison, Janet, Desiree, and Peter—my team, and the few others not on my team but wished you were.

*This is a dangerous statement to make because I care about many more things, such as family, but I’m going to go ahead and abuse my literary license.

Me and Andre (half-Korean!) pretending to eat raw pizza. Andre’s awesome cause he also likes to eat healthy and lifting.

A glutinous white rice bowl with Spanish chicken, lightly fried quail egg, and sauteed green onions. The salty and savory mix brought featured a few, excellent, pure flavors.

The hotel room.

A few of my teammates walking along the San Francisco bay.

A surprise delivery of In-n-Out coordinated by Janet, one of the awesome organizers of Chrome Academy.

Two, meaty beef patties with slices of American cheese wrapped in lettuce. I ate two of these. They were that good.

Pork and red onion.

Deliciously bloody steak.

Mixed greens salad.

A smorgasbord of brussel sprouts, Indian-style mushrooms, chicken, and fresh red onions.

A Mexican specialty dish which I forgot the name of. Steel-cut oats with a heaping of cinnamon and a few craisins. Cottage cheese. Boiled eggs. Banana chips. Whole wheat bread with peanut butter.

Refrigerator full of Odwalla juice, free for the taking.

There was as much garlic as there were fries.

Classic double cheese burger done right.

A smathering of Asian dishes ranging from sushi to roasted duck.

As a way to assess how well I spent 2012 and to make 2013 a strong year, I’m going to go through very briefly things I learned this year, things I appreciated, goals I accomplished, etc. This is for my benefit, but maybe you’ll pick up some things along the way too.

What went well

People

I met a lot of fantastic people this year and also improved my relationship with people I knew since before 2012. I shared some incredible experiences with people I never would have expected to know back in January last year. I really wish I could list them all here, but I don’t want to accidentally exclude anyone, so I won’t. However, if you think you are one of those people, thank you! You made my 2012 infinitely better, and I hope I did the same for you.

Goal: Despite meeting a lot of great new people, I grew apart from some people I was close with last year or even in the first half of 2012. I want to try and hang out with those people more in 2013. I also want to keep meeting new people.

Coding

I learned a lot in 2012—perhaps not as much as I wanted to, but a satisfactory amount. During the first half of the year, I mainly used the programming language Scheme while taking a introductory computer science class at Yale, but outside of that, I didn’t do as much programming as I would have liked.

This past fall, however, brought huge changes. I picked up LESS, a language built off CSS, and Git, version control software, while working for the Yale Daily News, learned more about PHP and SQL through self-studying in my free time, and have begun to read about C and Python. I also began using LaTeX for a few class assignments and have started relying on Vim for text editing.

I dove into a melange of various computer and web technologies this year, and while that gave me a broader perspective on the variety of tools out there, it prevented me from really mastering a specific language.

Goal: I’m still deciding on what languages I should really focus on, but here’s a tentative plan. Focus on learning Python|Ruby, JavaScript, and Java. (The “|” symbol means OR.)

Epicurean

I’m going to go over some problems the Epicurean had last year, but this section is about what went well. We launched a website this past summer. Our writer interest increased over three-fold, and the editors this year, for the most part, are much closer and enthusiastic about the magazine than last year. This is an exciting time of growth for the Epicurean. We are also looking to work with Yale Dining more closely this upcoming semester, thanks for Recipes Editor Lucas.

What didn’t go as well as planned

Balancing Classwork & Life

A funny thing happened these past three semesters. I went from taking four classes for a grade during freshmen year fall to taking four classes for a grade and one for credit (no-grade) during freshmen year spring to taking five and a half classes for a grade this past semester. Along with the increasing workload, my grades took a slight dip. It wasn’t an end-of-the-world dip luckily, but the trend was clear. For example, the ratio of A’s to A-‘s might have steadily decreased from the first to third semester.

This isn’t that big of an issue, but I definitely feel like I could get more out of classes if I spent more time working on them, which would consequently raise my grades. Luckily for me, I only need to take four classes for a grade per semester from here on out if I want to double major in computer science and economics. That leaves no leeway if I do in fact double major but tons of leeway if I scrap econ and just go with computer science as a major. I’m hoping to make each class count, and as always, I will look towards choosing classes that I actually find interesting.

Goal: Do well on four classes per semester.

Finance

My personal finance (stating it that way makes it seem like I actually have money) has taken quite a beating this year. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least $320 that I lost which could otherwise have been avoided.

For starters, the Yale Epicurean has always struggled with its finances, which led to bunch of us editors shelling out to print the Spring 2012 issue. I contributed $200 while a few others contributes amounts of $200 or $100. Theoretically, I should get paid back in the future, but as of now, I still haven’t been paid back.

The reasons for the Epicurean’s struggling finances are that print advertising doesn’t cut it anymore, and for the first half of last year, we worked with an expensive printer. I proposed switching to a new printer called Knepper Press, and their rates are much lower. Even so, we’re still getting back on our feet.

Goal: Bring the Epicurean budget into a surplus, so that the editors can get paid back and we will be on more solid financial ground.

Besides having spent a lot of money in France this past summer—on food, transportation, and gifts for relatives, which by the way I don’t consider “lost” money but money well-spent—I received a traffic ticket while biking in Paris. I’m not going to go into the details, but there were multiple ways I could have gotten out of that incident with my $120 intact. Alas, that was not the case, and I spent a sweltering afternoon in Paris navigating bureaucracy to pay the ticket. In total, I spent around $1,100 in Paris. A lot of that was on incredibly delicious yet painstakingly expensive truffled cashews, but they sure were delicious. Bought at La Grande Épicerie on rue de Sèvres, the truffled cashews had the most elegant, aromatic, savory flavors and were roasted to perfection. If only I could get my hands on the recipe…

Goal: On an unrelated note, learn to to evaluate securities (stocks) so that I can make smart 2-6 week investments.

What went both ways

Interviewing

This year, I interviewed for a few programs and internships/jobs. Prior to 2012 I never really had much interviewing experience, and in my opinion, I still don’t. Here are some lessons I learned, however.

• Always prepare. By this, I mean, know why you want whatever position you’re interviewing for. Have a compelling story, and be able to tell it with passion. Don’t think you can just think up answers on the spot.
• Try and find one unique aspect that makes you a great fit for the position or program that no one else has. When I interviewed for my Yale Summer Session program, I outlined why learning French and experiencing Paris would be perfect for my work in food blogging and photography. No one else in the class had a food blog dating back to 2009 or had a passion for photography.
• Make sure you’re arguing why you would be good for the firm, company, or program, not the reverse. If I was the interviewer, I would want to pick someone benefits me and the organization I am working for, not someone who would only benefit himself or herself by joining the organization.
• Review your previous experiences and find stories that would answer questions that ask you about challenges you’ve faced or disagreements you’ve had. These behavioral-type questions will show up in practically all interviews, and saying “I’ve never had a disagreement with a coworker” won’t cut it. You’ll want to display some appealing characteristic through these stories—leadership, compromise, initiative, etc.

Fitness

So last fall, I decided I wanted to gain weight—not just any weight, but lean body mass, a.k.a. muscle. I did, from last September through April 2012. Unfortunately, I took a haphazard approach and consequently gained a lot of fat. I ended up peaking at about 145 lbs after spring break last year—April. As a point of comparison, I was 130 lbs before college, so in 8 months, I gained 15 lbs. Theoretically, one should be able to pull this off with very little fat gain by gaining weight very consistently. Unfortunately, I didn’t fully committed to a controlled weight gain and instead oscillated between times of fast and sloppy weight gain and times of no weight gain or even a slight loss.

Regardless, I decided to start over by cutting fat during the summer. The picture of sous-vide chicken breast, quinoa, and broccoli above shows one of the typical meals I would eat during the summer: lot’s of lean protein, vegetables, and some complex carbs. After about 3 months, I got down to the low 120’s. Since then, I’ve been slowly gaining mass, and it’s been working pretty well. I’m back up to around 135 lbs. My strength at this weight is even higher than my strength when I was at 145 lbs, and my bodyweight to strength ratio has definitely increased.

Goal: It’s always hard to set fitness goals because you want to set something reasonable but difficult to achieve. If I had to set a goal, I would want to increase my lean body mass by 12 lbs by the end of 2013 putting my target weight around 145 lb (but at a lower body fat than last time). As extra credit, I plan to get my bench press/deadlift/squat to bodyweight ratio to ~1.5/2/2 respectively.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone! Above, is a kimchi and egg sandwich I made a few days ago. I spent the majority of the day today cooking and working out. I talked to some nice stranger at the gym who went to Hobart College in upstate New York. Apparently, he played lacrosse there, and decades later, he doesn’t seem to have gotten out of shape at all, definitely something we should all aspire to—lifetime fitness.

For dinner, I cooked NY strip steaks in a 132ºF water bath for ~7 hours. I learned that 7 hours is much too long to cook a strip steak for. The texture of meat somewhat disappeared, and in retrospect, I should have gone with a quick 1-1.5 hour cooking time.

We also had a ton of roasted vegetables—yams, butternut squash, beets, and Brussels sprouts. Everything besides the Brussels sprouts were simply seasoned with olive oil and sea salt. I used a balsamic, Dijon mustard vinaigrette for the Brussels sprouts. The Dijon mustard was the last of an artisanal brand I brought back from Paris this summer.

Anyways, did you know that the Brussels in Brussels sprouts must be capitalized at all times because it refers to the capital of Belgium? I always knew Brussels was a place, but I didn’t know the capitalization of Brussels in the vegetable name was correct spelling until now. That’s all of now, and I hope to get a more informative post in soon! Thanks.

This past fall semester has been quite hectic for me. I took on five classes, a board position at the school newspaper, and, more recently, a new job with Yale’s Collaborative Learning Center. On top of that, the Yale Epicurean put out another stellar issue, and the Epicurean recipes editor Lucas founded a culinary society, which I am now a part of. I also lifted with the club Powerlifting Team for the early part of the semester, though scheduling conflicts put an end to that and forced me to lift on my own. I’m hoping to be able to attend practices again in the spring.

Anyways, despite being overloaded and stressed for time, this semester has also been an reinvigorating one. I feel like I’ve gotten back the rigor I had during my junior year of high school where every second had a purpose—a slight overstatement but something I strive for. I also learned a lot, from what sub game perfect equilibrium is to how basic facial recognition works. I love learning new things and being productive, so this has been a great semester in that sense.

I’ve also figured out that I definitely want to get into the computer science field, though I feel like this is something I knew subconsciously for quite some time. The only question now is whether I double major with CS and Economics, just major in CS, major in the CS & Math joint major, or major in the Electrical Engineering & CS joint major. Regardless, I’ve gotten enough requirements out of the way so that I can do any of the above by taking only four classes a semester from here on out, which will give me more time to pursue side projects and learn more applicable computer science knowledge, since Yale’s CS curriculum is concept-heavy.

But enough about my life, after all, this is a food blog, and you’re all probably hungry for some food pictures.

Including the featured photo up top, these above and below photos are from a lunch at Heirloom I had with Sarah and Jessica.

I ordered a New England chopped salad which came with an abundance of wheat berries and cider citronette dressing. The cranberries leaked sweet liquid essence upon the salad leaves, and the goat cheese embedded itself into every bite for a sophisticated layer of savoriness. The ingredients all appeared to be fresh, as not a single wilted green was found in the bowl.

I indulged in a bit of dessert, so although I’m not qualified to judge harshly on desserts because I rarely eat them, the apple caramel gelato successfully juggled a balancing act between sweet and salty, similar to the salad.

Heirloom can get quite pricey ($12-16 for an entrée), so it’s not completely worth the cost but you won’t leave with much regret unless you have an incredibly voracious appetite.

Heirloom at the Study Hotel
1157 Chapel St
New Haven, CT 06511
(203) 503-3919

So I just got back from Paris after finishing my 5-week course there, and I’m excited to be back. I’ll definitely miss a lot of aspects of Parisian life, but I also missed being in the U.S.

Even though French eating habits are currently evolving, the French eat differently than we do. Many of these French eating habits play a role in keeping their obesity rates lower than those in the U.S. For example, the French seem to dedicate time solely to eating, and they rarely eat outside of these times. They have a set breakfast, lunch, and dinner—breakfast usually being the smallest—and set aside time to sit at a table and enjoy the degustation of food. Most French people are not frequent snackers, and snacking remains a largely American habit. Oftentimes, dinners with my host mom would last up to two hours not because of the amount of food we ate but because of the conversation and slow-paced eating that occurred at the table.

Furthermore, the French seem to eat small amounts of food but with greater variety. Dinners with my host mom always consisted of an entrée, main plate, and cheese. She would also offer fruits as dessert. Throughout the course of dinner, I was able to taste a variety of textures and flavors and almost always left satisfied in terms of taste. I would never, however, leave the dinner table feeling “full.” Emotional satisfaction of eating without the copious amounts of calories likely plays a role in lowering average calorie consumption in France.

Ironically, the French diet consists heavily of fats and simple carbohydrates. My housemate and friend Bernardo often relied on a simple baguette and cheese for lunch, two French specialties. Baguettes always served as a vehicle or side accompaniment at dinner—though I myself did not divulge in this habit.

Parisians also have a habit of smoking. While in the U.S., smoking has diminished, Parisians believe smoking to be a la mode, or in fashion. Consequently, not a day went by without inadvertently inhaling second-hand smoke. Though smoking is inarguably detrimental to one’s health, and I do not at all recommend smoking, smoking does carry the side-effect of reducing appetite. That, coupled with a more active lifestyle attributed to biking and small portion sizes, the Parisians seem to stay slim.

The confit de canard, or duck confit, I had at Chartier exemplifies many of the French eating habits described above. The portion, though small, contains a lot of duck fat from the cooking process. To confit something means to immerse in a substance for flavoring, and in the case of duck confit, duck meat is cooked in its own fat along with seasonings. Fortunately, duck fat contains a higher percentage of mono and polyunsaturated fats, which one can use to somewhat justify eating duck confit.

The potatoes, though laden with simple carbs and covered in grease, tasted phenomenal. The seasonings were poignant, and the insides were cooked to perfection. Though flimsy and soggy, the potato skin provided a nice textural contrast. I donated all but one of those potatoes to my friends, since I also ate a steak tartare that night and only wanted a taste of the potatoes.

I love steak tartare. It has got the fresh, raw feeling of sashimi but the additional allure of it being made from livestock rather than seafood. The taste, though bland on its own, consists simply of salt and pepper, usually. Steak tartare generally consists of minced beef, usually from a cut such as strip steak, onions, capers, and a raw egg—all mixed together and formed into a fat cylinder.

This steak tartare was from Chartier, like the duck confit. Again, we see attributes of French cooking in steak tartare. The portion is small but rather fatty.

Chartier itself serves traditional French cuisine at a bargain price. It is definitely a must-visit for tourists as it gives off the traditional French brasserie vibe.

Chartier
7 rue du Faubourg Montmartre
75009 Paris
Neighborhood: 9ème
01 47 70 86 29

Paris:la ville de les lumières, a city with almost more three-Michelin star restaurants—18—than the entire United States, itself, and a quality baguette on every block.

It’s been nearly two weeks since my arrival here for a French language program, and I think I’ve gotten into the rhythm of life in Paris. Before, coming I planned on trying to keep as much of my routine as I could while modestly assimilating into Parisian society. What does that entail? A subscription to a gym so I can continue weight lifting, aiming for eight hours of sleep per night, continue eating healthy (unfortunately, that means no unlimited baguettes or cheese degustations), signing up for the public bike transportation system, and tasting (at least just once) French delicacies such as macaroons, crêpes, and foie gras.

Life in Paris with this program keeps me as busy as ever. Between classes, homework, and mandatory excursions (guided tours), I barely find time to fit in my workouts and independent exploration of Paris. Right now, my daily weekday schedule consists more or less like the following:

Beginning time or window of time. Activity.

• 6-7 a.m. Wake up. Do work.
• 10 a.m. Class.
• 1 p.m. Gym & Lunch/Snack.
• 2:30-3 p.m. Afternoon obligatory excursion with class, or, on some occasions when we don’t have any excursion, independent exploration of Paris.
• 3-6:30 p.m. Get home and work.
• 8 p.m. Dinner
• 9:30 p.m. Work.
• 10-12 p.m. Sleep.

After a workout, I always treat myself to a carb-heavy treat. Generally, that means buying a crêpe sucre—a sugared crêpe—a baguette, or other baked good. This is because I train fasted, and after a workout, the body needs carbohydrates to repair muscle and replenish glycogen stores. Simple carbs are great for a post-workout snack because the body processes them quickly and can use them as soon as possible. Even when not training fasted, it’s a good idea to get 20-50g of simple carbs into your system after your workout (Note: By workout, I mean something that requires high intensity bursts of energy such as sprinting or weightlifting. Those are the types of exercises that will almost exclusively deplete glycogen stores and require an elevated amount of muscle repair.)

This past Thursday, I visited a hip breakfast spot near my gym called Clause. The interior is blanketed in white; the countertops look spotless. A large, rectangular blackboard spans the left wall as you come in; it features the day’s specials and tells you what’s available. On the right are small, two-seat tables, and a shelf of packaged foods and baking supplies. In the far-right corner begins a staircase spiraling upwards to the main dining area. On the opposite corner, visible from the shop’s entrance is a linear staircase descending towards the kitchen. In between the two staircase stands an open-air refrigerator stand keeping the day’s freshly made sandwiches cool. By noon, the rack is nearly empty save for a couple sandwiches and fromage blanks.

Recently, I’ve grown a liking for muesli, which is sort of like granola except with very little sugar. My host mom had a box of muesli in the kitchen and within days, my friend Bernardo and I devoured the entire box after we discovered it. At Clause, which is known for its phenomenal breakfasts, I found a line of muesli and granola products by a brand called Mini Magoo’s. They produced hand-crafted muesli and granola with organic ingredients. Clause had samples of each muesli and granola type lying out, so after asking the cassier if I could try them, I did. The different types of muesli generally tasted and felt the same, only varying in the dried fruit featured in each one. There was a product called Fun Stuff which composed primarily of dried coconut shavings and definitely presents more sweetness and crunch than the muesli. Lastly, a granola/muesli mix I tried comprised of puffed rice cereal, rolled oats, and nuts.

I ended up buying muesli with dried blueberries. The ingredients list packs in a number of nutritious ingredients such as wheat flakes, rolled oats, pumpkin seeds, coconut shavings, and almonds. The last ingredient on the list is agave nectar, and rightly so because the muesli is far from sweet.

At the cash register, my eyes skittered across a large glass jar of dried figs. Figs have always been a mysterious fruit to me because I never had them much as a child. Whenever I saw pictures of them, the intricate details of the innards always fascinated—a deep red canvas stuffed with countless seeds. Whenever I ate fig, it was always merely a component of another dish, though the fig would unfailingly add a complexity to the dish through its herbal sweetness.

I asked to buy one fig even though they’re sold by the kilogram, and so the cashier grabbed a fig, wrapped it in a paper bag, and plopped it into my shopping bag along with the muesli. For a bit, I was confused because I expected him to weigh the fig. To my surprise, the cashier had decided to give me the fig gratuit—for free. Pleasantly shocked, I uttered an American “Thank you,” instead of a French “Merci, beaucoup,” and slipped out of the shop.

Through a stroke of willpower, I managed to save the fig until I got home, at which point, I savored every nibble of the organic delicacy. The sweetness of a fig does not resemble an outright, sour nor sugary flavor. There’s a subtle hint of herbal flavors and the sweetness seems like a mature version of a strawberry’s flavor.

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of sushi. I’ve eaten at numerous sushi buffets spanning across a couple states and stuffed myself to the brink of hospitalization each time. I’ve made faux tuna out of watermelon and even written a narrative for a food writing class at Yale about how I grew up afraid of sushi but came to love it.

To me, sushi balances a plethora of food qualities that you normally don’t see together except at high-end restaurants. Given small, traditional portion sizes, sushi tends to err on the healthy side, but it’s not a simple amalgamation of vegetables. Sushi provides delicate pieces of raw fish and presents them in an artistic, elegant manner. The variety of flavors can vary dramatically, letting the chef’s creativity shine, but the basis remains the same: raw fish bundled with extra ingredients wrapped in rice and nori. In America, sandwiches remain the iconic lunch food, but in Japan, sushi has a firm grasp of that role.

However, as much as I love sushi and appreciate its diversity, there’s a limit to how precisely my tongue can discern flavors or textures and my mind remember them. Perhaps it’s because I mainly eat at sushi buffets and always end up consuming more rolls than I can count, but I find it hard to come out of a sushi restaurant with a firm opinion on what roll was best and why it was so good. Throughout the course of dinner—or lunch—the variety of rolls all blend into similar flavor-texture profiles. There are crunchy rolls, sweet rolls, spicy rolls, and so on. When I dine at different sushi buffets or restaurants, the same phenomenon occurs and I stereotype sushi into these standardized flavor-texture profiles. Rarely do I come across a roll and say, “Wow, this is something different.” My reactions generally follow the lines of “Wow, this tastes great, but I can’t exactly say if it’s better than the roll I had at that other place.”

Miya’s Sushi helped me escape this “monotony”—if you could call it that. At Miya’s, you can find fresh, non-traditional sushi that combines ingredients you would never have suspected go well together—let alone, in a sushi roll. The chef/owner, Bun Lai, frequently catches fish used in the restaurant himself. I know this because I follow his Tumblr blog, through which he regularly posts today’s catch in the morning. By the evening, the fish or whatever edible that was caught is probably inside the bellies of several lucky diners. Lai strives to source ingredients locally when possible and keeps up with modern food trends. The chicken used in some of his rolls are organic, and he is currently in the process of transitioning rolls into gluten-free versions. The rice used in all of Miya’s rolls is a healthy amalgamation of brown rice, quinoa, amaranth, oat grains and flax seed. The complimentary miso soup oftentimes comprises of seaweed trapped a few miles from the restaurant, and the ginger, which is cut thick, includes traces of agave nectar. Miya’s, quite simply, is the healthy foodie’s mecca of sushi.

The menu spans a lengthy 20+ pages and can be made into a book. Many of the dishes, which oftentimes have bizarre names such as Romping With Goats or The Sky Is Falling, are detailed with a short back story behind its creation or other fun snippet. The Lost Tribe of Chiang Roll, for example, is said to have been created in honor of Rabbi Jim Ponet and “his incomparable wife, Elona.” The story behind each roll at Miya’s adds a sense of adventure and freshness to each bite, but when ingredients such as catfish, okra, american sharp cheddar cheese grits, spring onions, parsley, burnt chili pepper, and tomato salsa are thrown together into a singular roll, as is in the case of The Greatest Sushi South of the Mason-Dixon Line Roll, such introduction seems unnecessary.

Despite, or perhaps as a result of, its admirable goals and experimentation, Miya’s tends to be a love-it-or-hate-it phenomenon. Not everyone can stomach the brown rice, which tends to edge on the overcooked and sticky side. Not everyone can accept the taste of sweet sushi that has cheese in it, but with the level of innovation in sushi-making that occurs at Miya’s, it would be a shame not to give the place a shot or two.

Note: Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of Miya’s more daring rolls at the moment, but if you go on their website or Lai’s Tumblr, you can find pictures of some of the more interesting creations.

Miya’s Sushi
68 Howe St
New Haven, CT 06511
(203) 777-9760

When you get to college, oftentimes, you’re bombard with numerous communities and organizations that want to consume your soul. They shower you with gifts and make promises of grand opportunities, but that all ends after freshman year. More often than not, the benefits drop stagnantly as soon as after the first month. One of the best programs I signed up for, however, is the Korean American Students at Yale’s (KASY) adopt-a-freshman program. Of course, I, along with my friend Jessica, were the freshmen to be “adopted” by two generous members of KASY, Sarah and James.

As a frame of reference, most cultural societies at Yale have a program like this where freshmen are adopted into a family, allowing them to ask upperclassmen questions and get a better feel for college. Other groups do the same. For example, Timothy Dwight college (TD), my housing community, has a similar program.

With my TD family, I shared two meals—one at a dining hall and another at a famous pizza restaurant. While the dining hall meal was free because I am on the dining plan, everyone who went to eat at the pizza restaurant split the bill. Note that my entire family didn’t actually go get pizza, about half of my TD family—three people—could make it. These meals were nice, informative, and fun, but they all occurred within the first couple months of school, and I haven’t gotten to know any of the people in my TD “family” well.

My KASY family, on the other hand, poses a completely different outcome. We’ve gone out for multiple meals at local restaurants—Thai Taste, Basil, Oaxaca Kitchen, and probably one other occasion I forgot. I’ve met up with my KASY sibling, Jessica, in New York City for a run and a meal. Jessica, James (the father in this family), and I surprised Sarah (the mom) with a late-night birthday cake on her birthday. James and Sarah—I couldn’t make it to this occasion—delivered Jessica food and gifts for her birthday. I received an iTunes gift card electronically over spring break for my birthday and Christmas. I could go on. Both Jessica and I are blessed to have ended up with such an awesome KASY family, and this KASY adopt-a-freshman program truly was one of the best, most-enduring perks of being a freshman.

Oaxaca Kitchen

The reason I bring up this story is because I want to quickly review a meal of Oaxaca Kitchen, which Sarah and I visited last week.

Sarah and I went on a quiet Sunday afternoon. There was only one or two tables occupied when we got there, and there are at least fifteen tables at Oaxaca Kitchen. The atmosphere feels festive, as the walls are peppered with aged cement, wood, and bricks. The lighting looks antique but not ancient. The place feels and looks like a cavernous bar, and I hope to come back during the night one day.

Once seated, the waitress brings to your table two small dip bowls made of soft wood. One contains salsa verde, and the other holds standard tomato salsa. Both are fairly homogenous, as there are no large chunks of tomato or any of the ingredients that compose the dips.

Oaxaca’s complimentary chips are triangular-shaped and are generously salted—not overly salted, however. The chips are somewhat thick, offering a nice crunch and stable support for the dips. While the salsa verde broke into a beautiful melody in my mother—the flavor shocking yet mild enough to discern its subtleties—the tomato salsa seemed rather standard. The tomato salsa lacked much kick and could use some spice and more salt.

Sarah and I both ordered the Mole rojo, which is a chicken mole. A mole is a type of Mexican sauce made from chili peppers, garlic, tomatoes, tomatillos, and other spices. The mole rojo actually included cocoa, which gave the sauce a fragile, yet present, bitter taste. The combinations of chili and chocolate flavors provided a unique experience in terms of taste, but the chicken breast, which sat doused in the mole sauce, edged on the overcooked side. The crust, although thick and crunchy, did not compensate for the dryness of the inside.

Alongside the mole rojo dish came two small, metallic bowls filled with fine pieces of Mexican rice and semi-pureed black beans. Both served a nice accompaniment to the mole sauce. The meal, overall, presented various flavors but few textures.

So after a long hiatus from cooking anything sous-vide, I broke out my portable constant temperature water bath and got to work. The reason I decided to cook chicken sous-vide rose more out of convenience than desire for the perfectly cooked chicken breast—though the latter certainly was an incentive. Knowing I would have to cook for myself this month, I stocked up on a ton of healthy ingredients: frozen chicken breasts, broccoli, spinach, romaine lettuce, red onions, garlic, blackberries, grapefruit, greek yogurt, whole-wheat tortillas, quinoa, fat-free feta cheese, peanut butter, agave nectar, and Peter Luger sauce (not really healthy, but it’s my favorite steak sauce).

Besides those ingredients, I have a handful of spices, such as red pepper and pure cocoa, and a few auxiliary “snack” foods—Kellogg’s FiberPlus snack bars, ProMax LS protein bars, Detour protein bars, and whey protein. By limiting your food choices to healthy ones, you’re bound to eat healthy. Getting fit and staying healthy occurs primarily in the kitchen, but if you dig deeper, it’s the grocery store aisle that makes up your diet, so shop only for healthy foods.

Frozen chicken breasts usually come individually sealed in a sous-vide wrap, which make them incredibly easy to cook sous-vide. I literally just flip a switch and through the pre-wrapped chicken breast into the water bath. One to two hours later, I take the chicken breast out and eat it—or, in most cases, pan sear it and prepare it as a part of a larger recipe. Now, don’t take this as a recommendation to buy frozen chicken breasts if you’re searching for the finest meal, but if you live a fast-paced lifestyle and don’t always have much time to cook, these pre-wrapped chicken breasts can be a lifesaver.

I decided to create a simple, protein-rich meal so only added sautéed red onions, lightly fried garlic, and reduced Peter Luger sauce. However, the possibilities are endless. After all, it’s a chicken breast.

Recipe: Simple, sous-vide chicken breast

• 10 oz chicken breast
• 0.5 red onion
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 0.5 tbsp olive oil (8 g)
• salt
• black pepper
• 2 tbps Peter Luger sauce

1. Set your constant temperature water bath to 142ºF. Once the water reaches 142ºF, drop the sous-vide chicken breast into the water bath. Wait between least 0.5 to 3 hours. Note: The exact time to leave your chicken breast in the water bath varies depending on the thickness of the breast. 1.5 inch chicken breasts will take 2 hours. 1 inch chicken breasts take 1.5 hours. Refer to this chart for exact times.
2. With about 20 minutes left before your chicken breasts are done. Dice the garlic with a generous pinch of salt sprinkled overtop.
3. Slice the onions into strips.
4. Toast the garlic on a pan with olive oil until the pieces start turning brown. Remember to let the pan and oil heat up first, before adding the garlic.
5. Remove garlic from pan. Throw in the red onions and a drizzle of olive oil. Sautée the onions lightly until slightly soft.
6. Remove red onions from pan.
7. By now, your chicken breasts should be fully cooked. Take them out of the sous-vide wrap and sear them on the pan. Remember to let the pan heat up again, and add more olive oil.
8. Each side will take about 1-3 minutes. When both sides are seared, pour Peter Luger sauce onto the pan and let it reduce/thicken.
9. Plate the Peter Luger sauce-covered chicken breasts, and top with sautéed reunions and garlic.

I’ve got to be honest. I don’t read many books. I’m the type of guy who spends hours on end reading articles on NYTimes.com or cozying up with an extended essay in The Atlantic or New Yorker. Long-form books are not really my type. I think I may have ADD because books can never hold my attention. Despite all that, I devoured Danny Meyer’s semi-autobiographical Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business during the past three weeks.

In Setting the Table, Meyer articulates not what makes him such a great restauranteur but a successful CEO of a food service company. Meyer, who brought us restaurants like Union Square Café, Shake Shack, and Eleven Madison Park, emphasizes the importance of hospitality when providing others a service or product. He divulges a handful of tenets, which, if followed correctly, can lead to a loyal following behind a brand and stable, long-term growth of business.

Meyer begins by describing his childhood and the early roots that formed his interest in food and goes all the way up to the opening of his restaurants in MoMA.Who is this book for?
I would suggest Setting the Table to those looking to enter the restaurant industry, whether it be as a waiter, manager, cook, or anyone else who helps make restaurants possible. I also think that Meyer’s book can serve as a guide to anyone looking to start a business or provide services or products to others. If there is any human interaction in what you do for a living, Meyer’s experiences can serve you well. His story certainly inspires. Meyer demonstrates that through a simple restaurant, one can raise over hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight hunger, ink a national television deal with American Express, revitalize dying neighborhoods, and even pen a New York Times bestseller.

Buy the book here:

I get asked a lot what molecular gastronomy, or modernist cuisine, is all about, but I think molecular gastronomy is one of those things you have to see, feel, and taste to truly understand. I can say that molecular gastronomy is the cross-section of science and cooking, where chefs apply techniques straight out of a chemist’s playbook to food, but when you really get down to it, nothing beats tasting and feeling the results of culinary experimentation.

I can still recall the anticipation I had leading up to my first watermelon caviar experiment. It was like experiencing college for the first time. I had no idea what to expect even though I read so much about it. The transformation of watermelon juice to watermelon caviar is magical. Little, if any, practical reason exists in creating caviar that has the taste of watermelon, but the fact that one can pull off such feat and create unique dishes that surprise people presents a form of art and entertainment itself. Techniques like spherification, though they have some scientific value, serve mainly a cultural landmark and fascination. As a society, we are infatuated with trying new things, and while the field of technology produces new products and innovations unfailingly, culinary innovations trickle in more slowly. When Ferran Àdria first presented the spherification technique, it was a revolution that thousands of others began copying—including myself.

A similar experience can be had for watermelon “tuna,” which, again, takes watermelon and presents it in new light. The texture changes, and no food serves as a precedent.

Making watermelon tuna does not present as much materialistic obstacles as watermelon caviar. One simply needs a vacuum sealer—which can be bought cheap at the local grocery store or Amazon.com—and watermelon. (Note: The prices of vacuum sealers vary a lot, from as low as $6.99 for a hand-pump sealer, to a mid-range FoodSaver for about $70. You can go even higher with industrial-grade chamber vacuum sealers, but those are generally out of the price range for most curious cooks).

Watermelon tuna, tastes undoubtedly like watermelon but takes on a curious texture. It maintain a little bit of the crunch originally in watermelon but becomes flexible and slimy—like tuna. A bite into watermelon tuna gives off the familiar crunch of an apple but yields with no resistance to the force of the bite. The experience of hearing a food crunch underneath your mouth yet feeling your teeth sink smoothly into watermelon tuna exceeds imagination. One must try the watermelon tuna for themselves to truly experience the excitement.

Recipe: Watermelon tuna

• Watermelon, cut into rectangular slabs like a steak
• Any liquid you may want to marinade your watermelon in

1. Freeze the marinade into small cubes—small enough to fit in a vacuum sealable bag with your watermelon
2. Place watermelon and frozen marinade into vacuum sealable bag.
3. Vacuum seal the bag and let sit for at least 12 hours. I probably wouldn’t let the bag sit for more than 48 hours.
4. Open the bag and serve. Note: You can sear your watermelon tuna for a caramelized flavor.

Create modernist sushi with this technique or, simply, a refreshing salad.