January 2, 2022

October & November 2021

Life

I spent most of October in NYC, beginning to form a routine to my new life as I settled into my apartment and as work became more rhythmic. I started going to the office a couple times per week to ‘switch things up’, found a long street block not far from home good for running, and explored the hole-in-wall cash-only places around for food.

At the end of October, we had a week long new-hire consulting training in Chicago. I leveraged this opportunity to visit Oklahoma City the weekend before, adding Oklahoma to my list. I didn’t really have a plan of what to do until I got there, and it turns out there really isn’t much to do. Oklahoma City is the kind of place where if you tell someone you’re here for tourism, they look at you pleasantly surprised. I ticked off the top three attractions according to TripAdvisor: visiting the National Cowboy Museum, walking around the rather underwhelming Bricktown (the downtown entertainment district), and learning about the Oklahoma City Bombing in painstaking detail at the Oklahoma City National Memorial.

I also saw No Time to Die while I was in OKC, which was 2 entire dollars cheaper than had I seen it in New York. In addition, for just 7 dollars, I went to see a Thunders game that wasn’t ever really competitive. The most hype the crowd got was when a fan made a shot from half court and won 20,000 dollars. However, my highlight in OKC was completely unplanned for: I was passing through the city’s ‘rich’ neighborhood while walking from lunch to the memorial, and stumbled upon the annual Heritage Hills Historical Homes Tour. For a weekend every year, a bunch of rich people open up their houses for us commoners to admire, and charge 20$ for the experience – a weird way to flex I suppose. Nonetheless, it was an experiential version of flipping through a picture-perfect interior design magazine; the amount of detail put in to balance creativity, history, and livability was inspiring. I felt I got a slice of what (high socioeconomic status) life in Oklahoma was like.

The living room of a mission-style home in Heritage Hills

The week of training in Chicago was very chill; we worked on a ‘mock case’ throughout the week that focused more on the procedure than the output. I met a lot of new hires from other offices during meals and evening events, which is one of the key benefits of in-person training I suppose. I stayed the weekend after in Chicago but didn’t do too much sightseeing – I met up with a few friends, saw a (much more exciting) Bulls game, and walked around the picturesque UChicago campus during peak Fall season.

When I returned from Chicago, we had a second week of GAMMA-specific training in which we did another ‘mock case’, this time with a data science focus. Partly because it was virtual, it was less involved than the previous week. But after that week, I returned to my actual case and started to feel things picking up: the deadlines for the holidays became more pertinent, and I was becoming more established on the case. I started logging 10+ hours daily, but I didn’t mind it much. However, it was around this time that a friend came to visit for a couple weeks. My schedule became something we had to plan around, and I felt inconsiderate and conflicted: I wished I had more time in the day.

La Perla near Old San Juan

We went to Puerto Rico for Thanksgiving. Puerto Rico is quite visually unlike any other part of the US. San Juan felt like Manila (curiously both ceded to the US in the Spanish-American war), with the infrastructure and urban development appearing more ‘developing country’ than ‘richest country in the world’. San Juan also was like a poor man’s Honolulu, specifically how Condado was like Waikiki but with less happening and a far worse beach. Prices in PR were higher than the mainland, but the incomes weren’t at the same level to match.

We hiked in El Yunque National Park, the only tropical rainforest in the US, going up to a small waterfall and then sliding down a fun natural rock slide. We took a tour of Casa Bacardí, where most of Bacardí’s global production is carried out, and learned how to make mojitos the ‘correct way’ (apparently, don’t clap or slap your mint). San Juan’s Old town was very pretty through its colorful colonial architecture and large Spanish forts, but felt empty with a dearth of operating businesses around. We also saw La Perla, probably the world’s most famous shanty town (can you guess why?)

My favorite parts of Puerto Rico were actually in Vieques, a smaller island 25 minutes away by seaplane known for its lack of tourism development. While its sites were not particularly remarkable – there were no viewpoints and the snorkeling was dull – there was a genuine country charm about the island. Wild horses roamed freely and the roads were often unpaved, posing challenges to the golf cart we rented. There were no major hotel chains on the island; Hurricane Maria had caused the only W retreat to permanently close. In fact, we visited the abandoned resort complex, admiring nature’s slow takeover while enjoying the thrill and exclusiveness of urban exploration. The brightest point (pun) was the bioluminescent Mosquito bay, which had a high density of Dinoflagellate algae that emit light on contact. It was a truly magical experience – when our kayak paddles hit the water, it felt like we were superheroes wielding light. With the glass bottoms, it felt like we were gliding through the galaxy, complimented by the night sky above.

The abandoned W Resort in Vieques

Food

The dry aging room at Cote

• Cote (New York, NY): a Michelin-starred Korean BBQ place that prepares and presents different cuts of beef like a steakhouse, integrating the best of both worlds. Also, their soy sauce caramel soft serve is mind-blowingly delicious. The drizzle is so rich, balancing salty and sweet. The sauce tastes fatty from beef, as if the caramel was made from some beef fat too.
• Cosme (New York, NY): Enrique Olvera’s New York restaurant that delivers excellent Mexican cuisine with only ingredients from the Hudson Valley. It’s modern but doesn’t leave behind tradition. The place is most known for the cornhusk meringue, a lovely dessert that presents the essence of sweet corn conveyed quietly on a plain and sweet canvas of cream and meringue.
• Lamb testicles (Oklahoma City, OK): I enjoyed a big Oklahoman meal at Cattlemen’s Steakhouse. Deceptively called lamb fries, the fried lamb testicles actually have no taste but the texture of very tender chicken. I would liken the dish to thinly sliced, actually tender, chicken tenders. It’s served like fried oysters, paired with lemon and cocktail sauce.
• My own pizza (At home, NY): we had a virtual pizza making class as a case team event. I didn’t have a baking tray or any suitable replacement, which led to the team laugh at me for my ill-preparedness.
• Torien (New York, NY): Torien does Yakitori gloriously well. The chef’s prowess shows through how the meat is always cooked just right, and how flavorful each skewer is grilled especially with the Binchotan coal. Compared to other Yakitori places, the restaurant pioneers a technique by cooking closer to the coal for more flavor and charring, which leaves much less room for error.
• PR bowl (Vieques, PR): a Puerto Rican breakfast rice bowl consisting of spam, eggs, avocado, and sweet plantains. It was so delicious all mixed together that we came back for it the next morning.

The avocados in Puerto Rico. Banana for scale.

Misc

The literal Chinese translation for parsley at my local supermarket is “foreigner cilantro”

Congratulations to Professor David Card for winning the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. One of my favorite classes at Cal was ECON C142: Econometrics and Public Policy with Professor Card; I felt I took away a fundamental and intuitive understanding of Econometrics/Statistics from him. Separately, last year in Data 88E we put an extra credit question on who the Nobel Laureate for Economics would be, and a student emailed me after Professor Card won asking for retroactive credit.

The sidewalks in suburban Oklahoma City are often non-existent. For the 10 minute walk from my hotel to the movie theater, I had to mostly walk on grass since there was no sidewalk, then cross an interstate underpass with no lights.

The BCG offices are quite different in layout. NYC is like a tech office, with mostly open seating consisting of tables connected together and plenty common places that afford interaction. On the other hand, the Chicago office feels like a swanky law firm: the work desks are organized within office rooms, and there are way fewer common areas. I think this is a function of the office’s age – newer offices are embracing a more collaborative and open design.

What kind of rip off is this!? The font and colors are all the same…

When you get a Chipotle bowl, do you mix it up before eating it? Turns out this is a pretty controversial question, and it really depends on what you value out of each bite. It can also be asked for similar food items such as Bibimbap, Oyakodon, or the PR bowl above.

Puerto Rico uses a strange combination of units from the metric and imperial systems. Gas is measured in liters. Road signs for distance are in kilometers, but speed limits are in miles per hour.

The smallest airport I’ve been to. It is mainly for flights to Vieques and private aircraft.

In Vieques, I was able to see the milky way. There’s a difference between seeing stars and seeing the milky way – there was ‘noise’ throughout the sky that looks sort of milky (hint its name, originating from Greek mythology about how Hera sprayed milk across the sky). It made me realize that there was far more out there that we just can’t see – really makes you think what’s out there.

When I got the COVID vaccine booster, I once again didn’t feel any side effects. This makes me wonder – am I very immune to COVID or very not immune to COVID?

I want to define a non-ambiguous definition for words to describe quantity. A couple is 2; it literally should not be 3+ (I’m guilty of this). A few is 3-5. A handful is 4-6 (because there are 5 fingers on a hand). A dozen is 10-14.

I made a video from driving around Vieques. It is synced to Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s cover of Country Roads, an ‘island’ adaptation of the country classic that I was reminded of while on the roads of Vieques. The scenes go in chronological order over a day, and is intentionally shot facing backwards to signify ‘looking back at the past’.

At Millennium Park after a day of training