Texas.

Somehow all my posts became about food, but I didn't mean for this to become a food blog. I haven't really written anything about my personal life in a while, so I figured now would be a good time. Although this post does feature food, too. Oh well.

I went back home to Texas two weeks ago and had a really great time seeing family and friends, and of course, stuffing my face. If you follow me on Instagram you have already seen most of these photos, but I don't care what you think deal with it.

I ate a lot. My parents made so much awesome food while I was home in Houston, including this Filipino dish, pancit palabok.

More food at home (clockwise): Vietnamese sandwich, a fresh coconut for drinking, and a lot of Filipino desserts: bibingka (a type of rice cake), puto (the colored rice cakes), kutsinta (orange sticky rice cake), pichi-pichi (sweet gelatinous dessert made from grated cassava), and kamote (a type of sweet potato I think)  

I also looked through a bunch of old photo albums one day when I was bored.

Then I drove to Austin with my brother.

Did some cool things with cool people.

And ate a lot of great food. Clockwise: Mexican martini, sno cone from Casey's New Orleans Sno Balls, BBQ from Stiles Switch BBQ, chicken enchiladas from Polvos

I already can't wait to go back again, but it probably won't be until Thanksgiving :(

Other things:

• It's starting to get cooler in New York and I'm still not used to real seasons so I find it odd that it's cooling down so early in September. I like it, but then again I don't because I feel like summer wasn't long enough. I need more time to wear cut offs and sundresses, goddammit.
• I enjoy my job and the people I work with. I'm starting to work on different projects and clients, so that has been really interesting and cool. Yay for being a functioning adult in the real world.
• I went to Meatopia last weekend which is a meat food festival here in New York, and it was AWESOME. Separate entry about that coming very soon.
• :) :) :)

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

In an effort to try to become a normal well-functioning adult these past couple of months, I have completely neglected this blog. To my three readers, I apologize, and I want to try to make a conscious effort to update this thing, if not for your sake then at least for mine. I haven't had much of a chance to write too many things that are longer than 140 characters at a time (since I work in social media), and I'm desperately out of practice. I also have done a shit job of recording my time here in New York and I'd like to remedy that. So I guess as a start, I want to list out what the hell's been going on in my life since March.

I got hired full-time at my new jobby job
I started freelancing at a huge ad agency, doing social media and tweeting tweets and Facebooking Facebooks, and I got hired full-time! It's been a new and different experience and I've been learning a lot about the advertising world and expanding my social media skills and know how. While it isn't what I originally set out to do when I moved to New York City, I've come to terms with the fact that goals change and I don't regret this particular career path I've set out on. It's pretty awesome and the company is cool and the people are cool and the accounts I work on are cool and everything's just cool, man.

I moved to a different borough
In May I moved from the East Village in Manhattan to Astoria in Queens. It's definitely been a bit of an adjustment, especially in terms of my commute to work. I used to be able to walk, and now I have about an hour's commute into the city. But the change has been a good one, the apartment I share with my two roommates is really spacious, especially the kitchen, and my bedroom has an actual closet! I've been really slow in decorating and getting everything together because of work and being social and whatnot, but the place is definitely coming together and I love this apartment so far. Plus, it's so cheap compared to what I was paying in the Village, so that's a definite plus. Also we live right by a big, beautiful park and the water, and Astoria is known for its beer gardens and some amazing restaurants which I have yet to try but I'm very excited about exploring this part of New York, especially now that it's finally summer. Here's a few pictures of life in Queens so far:

Clockwise from top L: Hanging out in Astoria Park, drinking homemade iced tea on my fire escape, the sign of Mr. Tasty aka white Drake that I pass by on my way to the subway every day, vanilla sprinkle cone by the water



I got a cat!
I'm actually just fostering one. This little guy is named Louis, and he's cute and cuddly and I keep having to remind myself not to get too attached because he's being adopted in a few more days.

Other small things that don't matter as much

• Decided to grow my hair out reeeaaalllly long for the first time in a few years. I haven't gotten a haircut in forever. Trying to see how long I can go before I get annoyed and chop it all off again.
• I've been cooking a lot more since my kitchen space in the new apartment probably doubled from the last place. New things I've attempted to make: blueberry waffles, alfredo sauce from scratch, green chicken enchiladas, homemade iced tea. Mostly, it's been a success.
• Also I got on Instagram if you couldn't tell by the pictures, so friend me or follow me or whatever it is you do on there if you want. My username is jo__baby, with 2 underscores.

That's all I got for now.

In Transit

The Huffington Post stole from me. I swear to God they did. The other morning I visited the site like I normally do and in annoyingly huge maroon capital letters were the words, 'THE LOST GENERATION." What followed was a story about a girl who graduated from college the same year I did with a degree in art history, and how she struggled to find a job. She still doesn't have one, and had to move back home with her mom. The story continues about the current crop of graduates and how they can't find work and the recession and how life sucks you should just kill yourself, blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, The Huffington Post totally stole from me, because just 2 days ago I was sitting on the bus thinking about how me and my friends and all the people who've recently graduated from college should be considered the "lost generation." If you didn't know, I recently got hired as a full-time employee at the company I was interning for. I was excited, surprised, relieved, overwhelmed when I got the offer, because it was a long-ass road that got me to where I am right now. Two years of sending in probably about a hundred applications and cover letters, going to interviews, phone interviews, group interviews, accepting unpaid internships post-graduation, finally sucking it up and moving to New Jersey to continue pursuing my dream of working for a magazine, taking yet another unpaid internship. Leaving that internship to take my current one because they were willing to pay me. And finally finally getting hired.

So I was mulling all this over on the bus the other day, and how in those two years I watched as I wasn't the only one having a hard time out of college. Friends and classmates struggled to find work, moved back into their parents' house, took jobs that had nothing to do with what they studied and majored in. Pretty much no one around me had any clue whatsoever as to what to do in their lives, what the next step was. And especially that first year it seemed we were all stuck in this weird limbo, this in-between stage straddling the line between childhood and adulthood. And we did pretty much everything we could to distract ourselves from the fact that we were very, very lost.

And that's when I thought that we were kind of this "lost generation." I coined this term in my head, and then thought it was kind of stupid. And then the goddamn Huffington Post had to go and use it for their front page story.

Reading through the story made me realize how both lucky and unlucky I am. Lucky because at least I'm better off than the girl in the story (but she was kind of asking for it, I mean she majored in art history) and at least I didn't have to settle for a job at Starbucks or some job that didn't even require a college degree. Unlucky, because in a way, I kind of feel like I am settling with this job.

Now don't get me wrong. I enjoy what I do. I do social media for all the company's clients, writing their Twitter and Facebook updates. And social media is definitely a growing, constantly changing, interesting and relevant industry. But it's not what I wanted to pursue initially. I majored in journalism. I want to work for a magazine. If I had my way, I would rather not be limited by 140 characters. But a job is a job is a job. And after two long years of rejection, there was no way in hell I was going to turn down a job. A real job. It is what it is though. And even though I vow and promise myself over and over that I won't give up on my editorial and magazine dreams, I don't know what the future holds for me. I guess we'll see. I may still be a little lost, but at least now I've got a map.

What what in the butt

I've been commuting back and forth from Jersey to the city for work for about a month now, and since obviously I take the exact same route twice a day five days a week, I come across pretty much the same kinds of things every day. And so, since lately I can only organize my thoughts in list form, here are some things I can always count on seeing during my morning/evening commute.

Devoted/crazy Christians handing out pamphlets and preaching the Word or whatever. They set up a table right by the 1 train which I take to work every day, and are there without fail morning and afternoon, Bible in hand and voices echoing off the walls as they passionately spout off about how Jesus ate fish and how we're all sinners. As annoying as they are, I've gotten so used to seeing them that if they happened not to be there one day, I probably would be very alarmed.


The Subway entertainment. It's one of my favorite things about riding the subway every day honestly. Whether it's a Beatles cover band, Inca New Age or a little person Michael Jackson impersonator, it definitely makes my commute a lot more interesting. And I always love me some pan flute.



The old Asian lady. Every morning I walk through the long passageway from Port Authority to the 1 train and every day I pass by this old homeless Asian lady sitting in a corner next to a large green plastic bag, filled with her things I assume. She sits in the corner right next to a little convenience store/stand and most of the busy morning commuter crowd are in too much of a rush to even notice her sitting there. I don't think I noticed her until about a week after I started work. But I see her now sitting there every single morning, and there's something so silent and sad about her. She seems almost childlike in the way she sits there quiet, staring straight ahead. Every time I see her I always think to give her some money but I never have cash on me or I'm in a hurry because I'm already late for work and I always promise myself I'll pull out cash to give her the next morning, but I always forget and it never happens. I'd like to think this will change on Monday, but knowing me I'll forget all over again. :/

People asking me where things are and me never knowing. Okay, so this doesn't happen to me very often, but the other day I was walking to work and two girls asked me where the Marc Jacobs store was. Of course I had no clue, but I was kind of flattered that I looked stylish/cool enough to them to know where the Marc Jacobs store is.

I just realized that most of these are things I see on the subway. I don't really see anything on the bus/bus stop other than other commuters and stuff. Whatevs. Look out for more posts on the way, mostly fashion-related ones because I've been reading a ton of fashion blogs lately. Fun stuff.

Hey friends.

So I meant to start this right after I moved, but I kept forgetting about it, and then two months passed by. Oh well, I guess I'll just start it up now.

So after being in New Jersey for two months, I've gotten kind of used to life here and settled into a bit of a routine. I go to my magazine internship three days a week, and I spend the rest of the time applying and interviewing for full-time work, checking out New Jersey/New York and shopping/reading/eating/watching movies on a 1000 channel flat-screen. It's hard to condense two months into a single blog entry, so I'll do it using one of my favorites things: a list.

I love my job. I really really enjoy working at the magazine. I've learned a ton and have gotten so many opportunities that I thought I wouldn't have. I've pitched ideas that will be used in the magazine, written blog entries, interviewed random Disney celebs and met Justin Bieber's girlfriend. I even got a few perks, like random swag and advance tickets to Harry Potter, the latter of which I was super excited about. Anyway, working at the magazine has made me completely sure that this is what I want to do. I seriously love working there and I am trying as hard as I can to continue working in this industry. Magazines are my life.

I'm kind of falling in love with the city. Super cliche, but true. I've been to the city quite a few times now and every time I go I find something new and awesome and unexpected about it. There's kind of a magic quality about this city, no joke. Every time I go I'm in awe and surprised that I'm actually there. There literally is something different going on around every corner. Just the other day I was on my way to a show at Webster Hall and I passed a long line of people waiting for a chance to meet Nicki Minaj. I briefly considered ditching the show and jumping in line, but I had to meet some friends. I made a long long list of things I really want to do soon (like go to a Broadway show, which I might do tomorrow), and hopefully soon I'll be moving there.

There are some things I'll never get used to. The cold. And I know the worst is to come, I'm not looking forward to it. The time difference. Things start an hour later, and I seriously think 8 p.m. is too late for things to start. I don't like it. And I know I live very close to a place where there is a ton of amazing food, but sometimes a girl just wants a taco.

Um, I can't think of too much else. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was AMAZING. I really could watch that movie over and over again. I spent a lot of money I don't have at H&M. I LOVE THAT STORE TOO MUCH. I'm excited about Thanksgiving, but sad I won't be in Texas.

Hopefully I'll be blogging more about stuff. Fun times.