In my new commute to a new job in Palo Alto, I have figured out the following options—with fully fleshed out pros and cons. With the consideration that I prefer to work normal hours like 9 to 5. All costs are determined on full cost without regards to passes or other bulk discounts.

Option 1: BART to Milbrae -> Caltrain
Duration: 1 hour, 10 minutes
Total cost: $8.10
BART: $3.85
Caltrain: $4.25
Ideal time of departure: 7:47 am
Estimated time of arrival: 8:57 am
Pros: Least amount of walking, public transit only,
Cons: Expensive, transfer between transit agencies (no discount for transfer), bulk discount does not help

Option 2: SF Muni Bus to Caltrain
Duration: 1 hour, 5 minutes (according to 511.org)
Total cost: $7.50
SF Muni: $1.50
Caltrain: $6.00
Ideal time of departure: unknown
Estimated time of arrival: 8:57 am or later
Pros: Least amount of walking, public transit only, I will likely get a fast pass
Cons: This specific bus is very unreliable (511 claims it’s only 17 minutes, but it’s actually 40 minutes; sometimes it stops halfway; goes through the projects), too much stress from unreliable public transit

Option 3: BART downtown, bus to 4th/King, Caltrain
Duration: 1 hour, 20 minutes
Total cost: $7.50
SF Muni: $1.50
Caltrain: $6.00
Ideal time of departure: 7:45 am approximately
Estimated time of arrival: 8:57 am or later
Pros: Have taken this route before and mostly reliable, great station at 4th/king, useful if have fast pass
Cons: SF Muni T and N line get stuck in the tunnels, buses are inconsistent, angry homeless people slow down muni often, too much transit agency transfers, expensive, too much stress from unreliable public transit, too early in the morning

Option 4: Get a ride to caltrain station, then caltrain
Duration: 55 minutes
Total cost: $6.00
Caltrain: $6.00
Ideal time of departure: 8:05 am
Estimated time of arrival: 8:57 am
Pros: Least amount of walking, comfortable, no problem with guilt tripping
Cons: There won’t always be someone to drive me

Option 5: Drive to caltrain station, park, then caltrain
Duration: 1 hour, 5 minutes
Total cost: $7.00
Estimated cost of car: $1.00 (unknown)
Caltrain: $6.00
Ideal time of departure: 7:45 am
Estimated time of arrival: 8:57 am
Pros: Self-sufficient and independent, have a car allowing for flexibility
Cons: Where will I park my car? Near my apartment? At the station? Have to account for parking tickets

Option 6: Carpool from San Francisco to Palo Alto
Duration: 35 minutes with no traffic, up to 1 hour in typical traffic
Total cost: unknown
Ideal time of departure: unknown
Estimated time of arrival: unknown
Pros: Cool conversation, new palo alto buddy, relaxing, can sleep in car, door-to-door service
Cons: No carpool lane until Redwood city, most drivers to Palo Alto take the 280 which means downtown Palo Alto is very out of the way, those who do commute to downtown Palo Alto leave at 11 am and return at 8 pm

Option 7: Bike to caltrain 4th/king, caltrain
Duration: 1 hour, 10 minutes
Total cost: $6.00
Caltrain: $6.00
Ideal time of departure: unknown
Estimated time of arrival: 8:57 am
Pros: Exercise, bike valet at 4th/king
Cons: 3 mile bike ride, must bike through downtown, not comfortable with city biking yet (aka fearful)

Option 8: Bike to caltrain 22nd/Pennsylvania, caltrain
Duration: 1 hour, 10 minutes
Total cost: $6.00
Caltrain: $6.00
Ideal time of departure: unknown
Estimated time of arrival: 8:57 am
Pros: Exercise, faster than taking a bus
Cons: 2 mile bike ride, must bike on Cesar Chavez, no bike valet so must carry bike on train if don’t want to get it stolen, stairs down to station, afraid of biking DUH

Option 9: Drive self
Duration: unknown
Total cost: unknown
Ideal time of departure: unknown
Estimated time of arrival: unknown
Pros: Self-sufficient, independent
Cons: Parking near my apartment and downtown Palo Alto is difficult or far or expensive, too much traffic, hate driving

Option 10: BART to Milbrae -> SamTrans
Duration: 2 hours, 5 minutes
Total cost: $5.60
BART: $3.85
SamTrans: $1.75
Ideal time of departure: 7:50 am
Estimated time of arrival: 9:43 am
Pros: Cheap
Cons: Too long, unknown shared audience

And I still remain unconvinced as to which option is best. That is, if I don’t want to move away from San Francisco. Of course, there’s an option of staying at Chris’ place in Mountain View, but even there ideally I would get a ride to the destination (15 minutes) or get driven to the bus line (total bus time: 30 minutes and is $1.75) or bike (25 minutes).

Contact all the people you loved at your previous job(s) and the people you hated. Contact the people you met once and admired. Contact someone at a company you want to work for.

This is time to put everything as water under the bridge. Ask for their feedback and what you can do to improve yourself.

Now this takes a lot of swallowing your pride. I admit that I wasn’t able to contact everyone and hopefully I will in the future.

At least though, it’s a good way to name drop in any future interviews.

Now that I am finally leaving the unemployed club, I must leave my (NON-EXISTENT) fan club with some advice.

After watching Burn the Floor at the Post Street Theater (tickets that Marina won yay!), we decided to grab a quick dinner at nearby Thai Stick. After a sticky situation involving ordering (the server said several things on the menu were unavailable), we were set. I commented how nearly everything was unlike the food I had in Thailand.

As i let my haughty arrogance of a well-traveled tourist played, I spotted a man and a woman sat at a table nearby. The woman had hair, brightly dyed red. Heavy makeup. The color matched one of the dancers…that we could barely see from our Mezzanine seats. I paused for a moment. Marina’s back was to them and I was nearly facing them.

“Is it…” I started.

“Well, she looks like a performer…” Marina responded.

Then a few moments later, the man and woman waved happily through the window. Apparently several diners were joining them. I recognized the newcomer’s hair. It was Jiselle—the San Francisco native. From my viewpoint where I was sitting, she was the shorter dancer, the one that seemed to have hyper energy, the one that had dark black tight curled hair.

The conversation at our table stopped as I stared. They…were…eating. Stuff. They…were…like…human.

I wanted to slap myself. If I was a bigger tweeter, I would tweet this…perhaps in trying to get people’s opinions. But this was silly. They were just the dancers in a show I had just seen. They noticed that I was staring so I tried to look away. And never looked back.

When Marina and I finished paying the check, I decided that I didn’t want to be a fangirl and we walked out of the restaurant without so much a word.

The moment I walked outside…I felt guilty. I should have said something, but the moment passed. Chris admonished me later for being a wimp.

Walking back to my apartment after the bus dropped me off at 11 pm, the street was dark . Walking past a busy bar, a middle-aged man from a group idly chatting on the sidewalk glanced a me. I kept looking forward, not stopping.

“How is your evening?” he asked. “Do you…need any company?”

Internally, I winced, knowing it was the semi-well-dressed-female-walking-alone-late-at-night thing. I murmured “No.”

About a block away, I hesitantly turned around to see if anybody was following me. Nobody on the street. No sound, except the muffled laughter and chatter from the bar. As I turned the corner, I maneuvered through the crowd outside of a popular restaurant next to my apartment. Then opened the door, slamming the external gate closed.

As I was walking into a building, an African American man asked me if I knew where I was going. He was dressed for San Francisco weather with a thick wind breaker and was talking with a friend. Accustomed to the typical people I encountered in the city, I automatically said that yes I knew where I was going.

He gave me a look and said, “I am security for the building—it’s on the third floor, take the elevator up and it’s on your left.”

Immediately I felt guilty, wondering if he thought I racially profiled him and passed him off quickly as a San Francisco nobody. Would I get a free pass just because I am a minority—an Asian? Probably not. But as I stood in the elevator filled with guilt, I realized there was no way I could have known he was security. He didn’t dress like one or behave like one—not with the casual clothes and the chatting with a friend during work hours. How could I have known? If he had been Caucasian or Asian, I would have thought the same thing.

But as I stepped off the elevator on the third floor, I completely forgot about the episode and opened the door to my destination.

Yesterday after a night out, I noted aloud that Chris and I had many similarities. Before the whole “us” thing.

We both loved 24! Jack Bauer action!

And we also loved Muse!

But then what else? Sure there are the other general similarities—low-brow stuff, high-brow stuff, foodie, frugality, sleeping in, love of cute stuff, political leanings…

Oh but the differences in approach to social media, interest in sports, interesting in playing sports, cars, spice tolerance, alcohol consumption, mushrooms, cilantro, investments, cleanliness (I am the messy one), affinity to planning, lungs expansion, volume of voice, extroversion, introversion, overall anxiety, media downloading, media purchasing, social network neediness, parental approval, independence, dependence, tv consumption, video games playing, street smartness, natural persuasiveness….

…and I can’t use my computer…

I would like someone to:

Five years ago if I walked into a large party where I knew only the host, I would have stuck to the walls, like a true wallflower. Hovering around the food and drinks table, I would pretend to be occupied with something—anything to not look like I was socially inept. Perhaps I would step outside the room for a moment and check my phone as if there was a message, but there wouldn’t be anything. And if someone started talking to me, I would try my best to say somethig—but my words would tumble out awkwardly and perhaps uninviting.

Well, five years later, I still haven’t changed much. I still do the same awkward, idiotic things—the nervous eating of food and the constant aimless refilling of my cup. But somehow, I have improved my conversational ability—making opening statements and following up small talk.

And now with Chris accompanying me, I would like to say it’s easier. He is after all the epitome of relate-ability—being able to strike up a conversation with anybody. And sometimes with people I would not expect—the bartender at a large event, the sound guy at a concert, the pretty girl standing by herself at a party.

What’s interesting that he rejects social media—preferring to talk to people directly, bypassing online, digital methods. I embrace social media from twitter, facebook, yelp, blogs… There was once I said without the internet, I would not be here. First said in 2004. At time, right after I said it, I was immediately embarrassed—it was my introductory line to a huge group of people I was meeting for the first time. But my inner outspoken self couldn’t help it.

Looking back, it’s true. Without this outlet—social media, I wouldn’t have been able to find a voice. I started exploring chat rooms in 1996 and officially blogging/journaling in 2001. By 2002, I was part of huge communities and established a significant online persona—meeting people online almost constantly. My friends then spanned the globe—and I knew more people online than offlline. By 2004, I had my share of intense friendships and relationships. The few people I knew “offline” thought this whole concept of meeting people online was…so foreign—after all, how can you be friends with someone you have never met?

I can.

With social media, I am at an equal plane with everyone. I can speak as loudly as everyone. My words don’t sound any different from the next—no mispronunciations, no accent. My gender, my ethnicity gone. And only the core of my personality and identity is left. And no intense facial expressions, no immediate demanding responses. I can be as open as the super extroverted, gregarious person. I can be bubbly!

But perhaps that’s what creates the anti-social-media-type people. It’s anonymous. It’s self-promoting. It’s individualistic. It takes away some identity.

For now, it has helped me reach further than I could without it. I always wonder how I would be like in an alternate universe, an alternate time—would I be like the sulky teenager I was at 16 wondering what I was missing?

“When are you getting married?” Vikas point-blank asked me last night. “All my Chinese friends are getting married.”

I laughed in response, because as a result of attending friends’ weddings and massive reunion planning, I had been thinking of how my ideal wedding or celebration would be. Perusing etsy, Wai-Ching, and Off Beat Bride, I already had ideas for the food (BBQ), grand entrance (not normal), drinks (not just an open bar), flowers (not live)…

I know some people (obviously) female who have been planning their dream wedding since they were 6. I wasn’t like that…

But despite my planning and idealizing, I believe that such a celebration should be reserved when I have enough money. And when I have figured my life out—happy in career, network of friends, and living location.

The question I need to answer first is: Can you be happy alone?

When I can easily say yes, then I know I am ready for the next step.

It’s a question that my grandparents asked me and I brushed it off quickly, assuming that they asked because they wanted grandchildren. I said simply when the time is right.

Obviously opposed to Prop 8, I saw this article recently—the idea that a (straight) woman refused to marry because it’s just an institutional and religious thing. In some way, I agree. I don’t need society to tell me what marriage is. But it’s a hard and fast term. At one point during an interview, the hiring manager suddenly told me that there were two people on the team that were married. I was surprised, unsure what that meant. Of commitment, of dedication, of limited time at work?

What the article really is referring to is the legal term or marriage—the tax benefits, the automatic citizenship, the legal right to hospital visitation, etc. Sure, I agree…I believe that any commitment should have those rights.

Why does marriage have to be a heavy and loaded term? I have a relative that had two wives—right when the world was starting to look down upon the idea of multiple wives.

Why is marriage necessary? Why would the lack of marriage lead to separation? And what is the difference between a marriage and a commitment ceremony if only the former is commitment with legal benefits? Why not just have a court marriage then?

But regardless of all that, I will wait until I am ready (and have that extra 30k ready to spend). In the mean time, I’ll plan out my wedding party and guest list.

I had sat with my legs crossed underneath me for a few hours while taking phone calls and surfing on the web. After writing my rent check, I decided to get up to put in the living room for my roommate.

In the hallway, I stumbled, realizing that my left foot was asleep from being sat on. I fell against the wall, near the closet. Reaching out with my arms, I steadied, but I had twisted my ankle. I tried to take another step, but winced in pain. Having to lean against the wall again, I stood up putting weight on my right foot.

Ouch.

It was painful. My vision became slightly blurry with black marks. I felt light-headed and knew immediately what it was. I stumbled a bit more into the living room, landing on the futon—gathering myself.

Health insurance was the first thought in my mind—the cost of seeing a doctor especially in these times. I sighed while sitting lamely on the futon, wishing someone was in the apartment to take care of me. I had always wondered: if I lived alone, who would know if I had stumbled and passed out?

Struggling, I got ice from the freezer and slowly moved to my room. I laid on my bed, putting ice on my foot. While lying there, I got the phone and called my sister.