(Arc II) Act 9: IU HEREH Concert Gift, San Diego Team Offsite and Beer Tour, and the Grad School Homestretch

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Intro and Graduate School

It’s been a while everyone! Hope all of you have been well. I do have a couple of updates and pictures to share with all of you that have accumulated since the last post. During the time of my last entry I had been preparing to pursue graduate school in accounting. I remembered talking to the Director of Accounting and my public health graduate mentor when I was thinking of applying since it was a big step. To be honest, I was a bit nervous knowing I was going to be juggling work and school. I knew that more of my free time was going to be taken up by assignments, exams, lectures, and projects. But I knew that this was something I wanted to do, and it ended up being a challenging yet rewarding experience.

Fast forward to today, and I’m in the final semester with only around a month and a half left in my program. The two years went by so fast, and I met a lot of great people throughout the program. We were able to support each other and tackle some challenging group projects. The program at UIUC had been an amazing learning experience, and my professors were well-organized and really knowledgeable.

I’m finishing off my final semester with managerial accounting, governmental and nonprofit accounting, and the CPA prep course (ACCY 398). I’m definitely looking forward to finishing the term and moving forward with everything. It’ll definitely be nice to have a break from exams, projects, and homework! I remembered when I took Auditing in the Fall semester I had a few classmates who were graduating in December since that was their last class. We were all cheering each other on as we were approaching the finish line.

As for this post update, there will be a lot of pictures which I hope you’ll all enjoy. As I was going through my photo album, I came across a picture of me spending some time with my colleague’s dog (I don’t remember if I had shared this on site previously but will share it again). She’s so sweet and would always follow me especially when I would start eating lunch! I remembered one time when I was grabbing a dish and utensils, I accidentally lightly hit the fork on the plate and she sprinted all the way from across the room to me. It was so precious. ❤

Recipes

I was going through my folder of the old recipes that I haven’t been able to put up yet. There are 12 left in my folder which I haven’t added yet on site. I will add them to the Recipes page and these will be the updates. It might take me a bit of time to reformat the Recipes page with the signature menu format, so in the meantime, I will put them here as PDFs so that you won’t have to wait to access them. I did go back to the Recipes page as I was writing this blog, and and it looks a bit different in terms of formatting. So, I might have to redesign the page to freshen it up when I go to add the recipes here onto the page.

Thank you again, courtesy of Healthy Meals in Minutes, Great American Recipes, and ShopRite.

Speaking of food and recipes, I was talking to my friends from Wisconsin, and I told them that I finally got through watching Season 21 of Top Chef which took place in Wisconsin. I knew that the new season was coming up for the one taking place in Canada, so I wanted to finish up Wisconsin just to be caught up. I enjoyed Kristen Kish hosting, and it was nice seeing her approach to hosting the series. I think Padma and Kristen are both wonderful, so the essence of Top Chef is still there in my opinion. I’ve been liking the challenges for Season 22 (Destination: Canada) so far (in particular the one showcasing the ingredients from different regions of Canada), so hopefully many of the future challenges will be just as interesting.

Reading

I’m getting through my book list, and I had completed The Librarian Spy by Madeline Martin. It was an interesting read. The book switches between the perspectives of the two main characters and along the way you see how the experiences weave together. The pacing and buildup was well done, and it didn’t feel like it was dragging on or details were padding onto the story (at least for me). There were tense moments throughout the book where I was nervous for the characters, and I would wonder what was going to happen next. This is definitely a recommended read from me.

Right now I’m going through Jennette McCurdy’s memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died. She’s an incredible, eloquent writer who demonstrated such strength and resilience as she navigated her own healing process from what she had went through. Reading through the details was heartbreaking. I do remember though watching an interview from ABC News where she discussed the process and stating that she was proud of herself. Seeing that integrity and being able to work hard on her personal growth was very admirable. I’m looking forward to finishing the book and reading through her thoughts.

IU’s HEREH World Tour

My friend took me to IU’s July 15th concert at the Prudential Center in Newark as a birthday gift. He also gave me the official Light Stick for the concert. We’re both fans of IU, so it was nice to be able to see her in person. We hung out and chatted for a bit before heading to Newark for the concert. Once we got to the Prudential Center, the wait wasn’t too bad. Someone was giving out the fan banners which my friend was holding up here in the pictures. When we got inside they gave us a little giveaway gift which was a small case that contained a button, keychain, and picture.

One of the cool things during the concert was when all of the the Light Sticks would synchronize and change colors based on the song she was singing. The vibe was amazing, and we were able to sing along and get immersed in the show. Since it was the first stop for her tour in the US, everyone seemed pretty hyped. It was incredible seeing IU and her team perform, and it was so heartwarming to see the fans chant for an encore. I loved that she performed Lilac for her encore when she asked everyone what song they wanted to hear her perform since it’s one of my favorite songs from her.

As we were heading home after the concert, my friend had a big smile on his face. It similarly reflected on the other people leaving the venue who you can tell had a great time enjoying the performance and experience. I know recently the K-drama she’s in, When Life Gives You Tangerines, is currently playing on Netflix, so I’m hoping to jump into that sometime soon. But I’m definitely looking forward to her next tour whenever the time comes.

San Diego Trip

We had a work trip to San Diego back in October 2024 at the Catamaran Resort. I got to meet and hang out with colleagues from the London office as well as my domestic colleagues in the States. Going from the October chilliness of New York to the warmth of San Diego was a nice welcome (although I do enjoy both cooler and warmer weather). When I got there on Monday, I checked in at the front desk and freshened up before I met up with my colleagues from my team for dinner.

Here are some daytime pictures of the resort along with lunch pictures with my colleagues:

The trip was from Monday to Thursday. The bulk of the events were on Tuesday and Wednesday since Monday and Thursday were basically eating, getting settled in, and travel days. We had presentations and workshops on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Tuesday evening, we had group dinners where we were paired together with people from other teams along with someone from executive management. My group had the Engineering VP as the lead and we were a mix of people from departments such as product, design, engineering, and HR. I also got to meet a colleague from the Legal department on the return ride home, and legal counsel and I had a nice chat about pets and animals!

Our restaurant was at Meze Greek Fusion. The portions were huge (I usually get to finish my plates, but I couldn’t this time haha), but it was nice getting to meet new people and chat with them. I was talking to one of my colleagues who grew up in Singapore because my parents were traveling there. One of my friends was sitting next to me, and we go way back prior to Quizlet. We were updating each other on our lives and what was going on. The VP was taking pictures and here is our team picture that he took:

In addition to the work events, we also had specific activities that we could choose such as biking or the beer tour. I had the craft beer tasting tour where my group and I visited two breweries: Modern Times Beer and Coronado Brewing Company.

For the beer tour, we had a tour guide who provided us with information on the brewing process, history of the breweries, and gave us samples of different beers to try. In Coronado they also provided us with food such as pretzels and chips and spinach and artichoke dip. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and organized which made the tour really fun and engaging. She’s the one with the yellow hat in the picture here in the Modern Times Beer pictures:

I was chatting with members of the engineering team while we were choosing which of the samples we enjoyed. After our tour at Modern Times, we headed to Coronado. I was so happy to see food at Coronado because I was a bit hungry (it was around late afternoon and our team had an earlier lunch that day). The weather was nice and we were eating outside in picnic style tables. Here are the pictures from Coronado. You can see my colleague breaking a piece off one of the big pretzels (now I’m kind of craving a pretzel as I’m typing this haha).

Then on Wednesday night we had our company dinner on a cruise where I got to talk to our Controller, General Counsel, and the Chief People Officer along with other colleagues. It was a casino night themed event where we were given Monopoly type play money to play games like blackjack and roulette. There was also a photo booth where my team members and I took some fun photos.

I also took some evening pictures of the resort:

Here are the return flight pictures. The daylight one is after takeoff from San Diego and the nighttime one is arriving at JFK in New York. After the long day, I was happy to get home, wash up, and get into my pajamas and eat dinner. Before the flight I just had a few pieces of melon, a banana, and half a bagel for breakfast, so I was definitely hungry!

Writing this update was a nice little break from studying but will jump right back into Becker and Gleim after this. Ahh!

But thank you so much again everyone for reading. I know this update was a bit long overdue but it was really fun going through the pictures and recipes and revisiting these memories to share with all of you. I enjoyed writing a new blog post and getting the creative juices flowing again. 🙂 I’ll be revamping and reorganizing the site along the way.

Wishing all of you and your loved ones the best! I’ll finish off this entry with a cute picture of ducks I took at the resort.

(Arc II) Act 8: Virtual Cooking and Tourist for a Day

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Hi everyone, hope the transition into 2022 has been smooth. As always, I wanted to wish you and your loved ones good health and success as we move forward this year. The weather has generally been nice in my area, but there have been some weeks where the days would teeter between warm and cold. Looking forward to comfortable beach weather!

It has been a busy past few months. I spent a lot of time with family and close friends over dinners and heartfelt conversations. It was the best way of decompressing and just really being in the moment with them as we shared stories. I also updated my site a bit with my current work along with mentorship of my direct reports when they moved to the next chapter in their careers (I’m super proud of them!).

I also finished up with my continuing education early this year for my recertification. The topics were pretty interesting (clinical trials, mental health for the elderly, issues surrounding marijuana regulation), and it has been great to catch up on the latest research, legal guidelines, and best practices for public health and pharmaceutical science.

In terms of this entry, this one will be heavy on the food and cooking content so hope you have your appetites ready!

Creative Endeavors

I was so happy to support and see a project from my former direct reports get funded on Kickstarter! The Experience Corporation is a comedy podcast focusing on the main characters’ (Delmont and Cameo) adventure navigating through their work at The Experience Corporation and unique encounters throughout Three Cloud City. I enjoyed talking to Thomas, Kate, and Samuel throughout the time period when the Kickstarter was active, and I could see how they were so excited to launch an audio drama for Readymade Utopia. They were incredibly passionate when describing what went into the script, music, and design, and it was wonderful that they now have an opportunity to bring the project to life.

If you are interested in learning more about their production company Readymade Utopia, go check out their site here. They are a very talented team, and I’m very excited to dive into their audio series once they launch it.

Learning

As I’ve been piecing together and organizing my website a bit more, I found a nice format for the learning section. I initially experimented with the ESL section on my site, and it ended up being an organized layout which was visually appealing for me.

For the Health Literacy and Cultural Competent Healthcare sections, they will follow a similar format in terms of the page structure. I started on the first health literacy handout and the page’s design which I hope to launch soon after this is posted. I will also create separate pages and downloadable versions for the handouts. This has been a big part of my research and work, and I am very excited to share this information with everyone.

Food and Shows

Season 19 of Top Chef had started in early March, and I dove right in. I had to also catch up on Season 18 (Portland) since I didn’t watch it when it initially premiered. I ended up binging Season 18 over the course of a week just as Season 19 started, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was no unnecessary drama with the chefs being supportive of each other throughout the challenges. Restaurant Wars in Season 18 was one of the highlights. I remembered that one of the main things of Restaurant Wars was balancing cooking for diners while interacting with the judges and guests. Even though Season 18’s was a bit different due to the pandemic, seeing the members of Kokosón work together and interact with the judges made me smile. It was still very positive and welcoming while showcasing their dishes. Kudos to them!

I’m a bit sad that the season finale is this week! This season had been a staple for my Thursday nights while cooking and eating dinner over the past few months. The top three (Evelyn, Buddha, and Sarah) had been very creative and worked really hard to get a place in the finale. Sarah rocked it at Last Chance Kitchen while Buddha and Evelyn were very consistent throughout the challenges. I’ll be happy with whomever wins. (By the time this blog entry is published, the winner would already be announced 😉)

When the first season of Top Chef premiered in 2006, I was finishing up my undergraduate studies and didn’t know whether to have high expectations or just see it as another reality cooking competition. The show did evolve, and I felt more invested in seeing the growth of the chefs throughout the competition. There were times in the past where I felt like the drama overshadowed the cooking, but I am happy to see more focus on the chefs’ skills and talent from the current seasons.

On the cooking side of things, there were a couple of dishes I was able to try through virtual cooking classes.

I did a virtual cooking class with my colleagues back at the end of 2021 with ingredients from Virtual Table and Kassava Co.. The entire event was from Offsyte’s Boba Milk Tea and Popcorn Chicken event. I highly recommend it! The popcorn chicken was absolutely delicious. The seasoning mix was flavorful and had a nice umami to it (There were several components to it but I didn’t get to take it down since I was focused on chopping. I wish I did write it down though! I remember the chef stating that there was a bit of anise in the seasoning when we all tried to guess what the seasoning was composed of).

The kit we received from Offsyte
The kit we received from Offsyte
Opening the box with thank you message
Opening the box with thank you message
The contents of the kit
The contents of the kit
Everything we needed to cook with!
Everything we needed to cook with!

The portion was pretty big and could be good for several meals or to feed several people. (Everyone around me loves popcorn chicken so it was definitely a nice treat!)

The final product: crispy popcorn chicken and jasmine green boba milk tea

At the start of the new year, we also had an event for Udon making with a choice of either tea or sake tasting. This was hosted by the Story of Ramen. It was a bit more fast paced, so I just ended up taking a picture of the final prepared dish. We did stomp on the dough for the udon noodles and you can see everyone jumping and moving around through Zoom. It was fun! A few of us had the sake while others had tea to taste while we were cooking.

I did like these virtual cooking classes, but I felt like it can be very fast paced. I remembered constantly listening to the chefs’ instructions while catching up to where we were supposed to be. But in the end everything turned out well! The udon was lunch for that day while the popcorn chicken and boba spanned several meals. All in all these were good experiences, and I highly recommend trying them out.

The completed bowl of udon

For dinner one night, I made roasted lemon rosemary chicken. I paired it with some sautéed brussels sprouts with potatoes and a nice slice of bread.

Roasted Lemon Rosemary Chicken with Brussels Sprouts and Potatoes

When I was a kid, I didn’t really like brussels sprouts, but now I really enjoy them. I love the nutty flavor especially when I also integrate some sweetness with mirin (Japanese rice wine) and Bull-Dog Worcestershire sauce. I had a few Sunrise Medley potatoes left over from a previous dish I made, so I chopped them up and added them together with the brussels sprouts. It was as my friends would say “Chef’s kiss”. haha

I do have a couple more food pictures and videos to share which I’ll include in the next few blog entries.

Reading

I was excited to read Reggie Fils-Aimé’s new book which had just come out in early May. He was the former President of Nintendo of America and had an extensive career in marketing and management for several companies (I didn’t know he was involved with Panda Express or Pizza Hut until this book). The book was a short, interesting read (took me around 4 days of light reading), and I enjoyed seeing his insight from his family background in Haiti to his leadership experiences.

He is a charismatic guy which is why I can see how he was pretty memorable in people’s eyes. There was a lot of general business advice which he provided in the So What? sections within each chapter. I can see their applications and he does highlight challenges such as how to navigate disagreements with an approach with a colleague (e.g. Nintendo of Japan wanted to take one approach with pricing or packaging a game with a system while Reggie felt that the Western markets needed a different approach to attract more sales).

It was a refreshing business read which was a casual break from the studying from my finance and accounting readings. Reggie demonstrated his professional conversational style while balancing his more fun and approachable personality.

Since I’m also finishing up Top Chef I’m going to dive into Gail Simmons’ book Bringing It Home next. Her first book Talking with my Mouth Full was very interesting, but there were times where it didn’t flow such as when she listed off ingredients at the beginning of a chapter. But overall she’s an incredible food expert, and I find her critiques constructive and insightful. You can tell that she genuinely wants the chefs to succeed and show their true potential. I like her as a judge on Top Chef and love hearing her feedback.

Tourist for a Day

One of my friends from the West Coast came to visit, and I took her to the Edge Observation Deck at Hudson Yards. Although I’ve been to Hudson Yards several times, this was my first time heading to the Edge.

I took a picture standing on top of the transparent glass, and I asked her if she also wanted to stand on top of it. She laughed and said, “No thanks!” People were laying down and posing. I was a bit nervous though (and I’m usually fine with heights!). But it was nice to at least experience this.

Looking down below!

I enjoyed catching up with her while we walked around. Before we visited the Edge, we walked around the High Line and shared stories of how things were going on our end with loved ones, work, and life. The time flew by quickly and we met up with my other friend for tapas later that afternoon.

Smiles from above

As we move towards the summer here in the States, I hope you and your loved ones continue to stay well! Whether you are traveling, enjoying some hobbies, cooking up delicious dishes, or catching up with family and friends, I wish you all the best. I’m going to explore more of WordPress and other people’s blogs over the summer since I’ve seen a lot of great content. Always appreciate the support from those who have subscribed to my site. You all rock!

(Arc II) Act 7: Summertime Celebrations and Fashion Conversations

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I can’t believe it’s already November with the holiday season coming around the corner! Summer flew by so quickly, but I’m also enjoying the transition into autumn and winter with seasonal treats lining grocery store shelves and the cooler weather. They are also playing the Hershey’s Kisses We Wish You a Merry Christmas commercial on TV right now so that’s certainly setting the mood.

I’m going to cover a few things in this post including a birthday dinner and brunch with friends in early July and a few site updates.

A few things popped into my mind when adding in new sections on my site. One section I was thinking of adding was a library section. It was similar to one which I had on my old site but instead of just listing the books which I’m reading, I might provide more information or restructure it another way. I’m also working on the page to transfer the Prezi presentations I made when working with ESL clients in the past. Stay tuned for those!

Recipes / Music

I cleaned up the formatting on my Recipes page and added a few more since my last post. With the new format, everything looks more organized and neat. It was a bit difficult at first since I had to rewrite some of the sections due to some of the recipes being indented improperly.

I have around 10+ recipes on queue to add before moving on to the next set. I’m going to add a few more from the list.

I know it’s a bit random that I’m including music under the recipe section but I have some stories to tie them together with (I promise!).

One of the things that I enjoy when watching food shows is the music. The catchy instrumentals paired with the eye catching dishes create the perfect combination. There were two songs in particular which I tried to look for in the past but couldn’t find their exact names.

One was the song from the Season 4 promo for Next Food Network Star and the other one was from an episode of Nigella Lawson’s show Nigella Express where she made Caramel Croissant Pudding. I finally found the name of the two songs (after 13 years!) just a few weeks ago. The Food Network song was Funky Stars by Xavier Decanter, David Mespoulet, and Steve Halford. The one from Nigella Express was Latino Nuevo by Shahrooz Raoofi.

You bet I searched for them on the store to purchase and unwind to! I was just really happy to find them since I really dug the tunes.

Reading

When I was going through books on Amazon in late July, I noticed that some purchases had points attached to them. I was not aware of the Kindle Summer Rewards program but saw that I was eligible for the beta launch. I liked how they added bonus incentives such as badges. I already knew that there was no way I was going to get them all. haha But it was fun trying to get what I can along the way.

Kindle Summer Rewards

The program had been enjoyable. When you reach 400 points you would get a $4 ebook credit. They provided a lot of opportunities to earn double the points for purchases or getting 350 points for spending $15. At first I was like, I don’t think I would be able to reach the 400 points but with the special offers, I was able to get to more than 400 points and redeem the credit. I definitely would like to see how this would develop in the future when it launches. I was able to purchase a couple of books from food writer/chef Ruth Reichl which I had not read yet. I love reading through her work such as Garlic and Sapphires and have put Save Me the Plums and Remembrance of Things Paris on queue to read.

I used to go through books quickly to try to have a record that I read through “X” number of books, but then I realized that I wasn’t immersing myself and fully appreciating what I was reading. In the past few months I started rereading a lot of the books which I had completed in the past to see if I would gain some new takeaways from them which had not come up from my initial reading. I was surprised to see the difference from this deep dive (and it’s not just from understanding the plot of the story), but I tried to direct my attention more to the characters and themes which the author is conveying.

Toward the end of August, I completed A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa which provided an emotionally detailed account of his family life in Japan and subsequent survival of navigating through North Korea after his father moved them there with the intention of providing them all with a better life. I wrote my thoughts on the book here on Goodreads.

I’ve been catching up on writing reviews on Goodreads for a few books I had reread recently. I think I got the hang of it! I wanted to provide some foundational info on the book without revealing spoilers.

Tying in to what I discussed in with what I had discussed in the introduction, I’m still deciding on what approach to use when having my library page (would Goodreads be the place to have the reviews while I provide smaller thoughts/snippets on the site?). But again, it’s very exciting to continue branching and developing kevinnissimo.

Birthday Dinner

In early July, I met up with a few close friends on separate occasions to catch up. One of my close friends took me out to dinner. Earlier that week she told me to meet her in front of the Barnes & Noble at Union Square around 6 PM.

She took me out to a French restaurant called Boucherie at Union Square. After the hostess showed us to our seats, we sat down and settled in. The environment was lively and absolutely beautiful. We were seated next to the piano which gave us a nice view of the restaurant.

Left to right: Menu, dessert menu, our seating next to the piano, and restaurant

The server was amazing. He was very friendly, attentive, and helpful throughout our dinner. As we were looking through our menus we were deciding on what we wanted to have. We settled on the filet mignon (Filet de Bœuf) and the mushroom ravioli (Raviolis aux Champignons). My friend asked our server for a wine recommendation to go with our meal. He recommended a red wine which paired well with our dishes. For dessert, we both got the chocolate mousse (Mousse au Chocolat), the Pistachio Bombe Glacee, and espressos.

Throughout dinner we were just catching up on how family and loved ones were doing, any future travel plans, and other birthday plans I had coming up. I was surprised seeing the birthday candle on the dessert but was touched by the thoughtfulness.

At the end of our dinner, the server handed me a signed book from Boucherie with a warm birthday greeting. He thanked us for a wonderful dinner. We thanked him for being so hospitable and providing the great recommendations. It was such a great experience, and I highly recommend coming here.

Signed book from Boucherie

After dinner we headed off to Ampersand Bar for drinks to end the night. We mainly stayed with The One with Cucumber since that one was delicious but also tried the Flamingo to mix it up a bit. We continued our conversation and this time I shared stories with her about past dating experiences. Aah! At the end of the night, we gave each other a hug and parted ways. We promised we’d meet again sometime in the holiday season.

Brunch

The week after, I met up with my friend Chris for Brunch. He wanted to go down to the Seaport since he hadn’t been there in a while. He originally planned for us to meet at Industry Kitchen, but they didn’t have any openings ready until 3 pm on the day we were meeting. I suggested either Barbalu for Italian or Seaport House for seafood. He decided Italian so we planned to meet at Barbalu.

We started off with some sangrias (they were really refreshing!). Our server recommended it since it was a warm summer day. For the appetizer we decided on the Burrata with Prosciutto di Parma. The server informed us that they didn’t have burrata and if mozzarella would be okay. We said it was fine. For the main course, I got the Fettuccine with Meat Ragu while Chris got the Spaghetti Alla Carbonara.

The food was really delicious! He and I were catching up on work and how our families were doing. I hadn’t seen him in more than a year so we just got into random topics like coding, data science, and other interesting topics. We also talked about outdoor activities (he’s a big fan of them) and summer plans.

For dessert we had espressos and shared a tiramisu.

He had another event to attend afterward so we both walked together to World Trade Center to catch our trains. We gave each other a hug and parted ways. We planned to catch up again soon.

The summer was great to catch up with friends and family. I was catching up with my brother and aunt, talked to Dr. Cowart before she visited family over the summer, and started on my continuing education requirements. It was really nice to spend time with others while doing some leisurely reading.

Fashion

I decided to separate this part from the reading section since I also wanted to cover one of the past events I attended at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Back in March 2016, I attended one of Fern Mallis’s presentations where she discussed her newly released book Fashion Lives: Fashion Icons with Fern Mallis. I wrote a lot of notes throughout the presentation and wrote up an entry on my previous site. I’ll share this with you before I finish with a note on her upcoming fashion talk at the Y.

Event Description courtesy of the Fashion Institute of Technology
March 2016

One of the great things about New York is that you can experience these talks from professionals in a diverse range of fields. I remembered how lively her talk was and she kept our attention throughout the entire hour. She integrated her own personal stories about how she got to where she was at that point of her career and how her passion for the field pushed her in directions she never would have imagined.

I loved how heartfelt and honest she was (discussing being let go from a job due to the economic climate at the time but then finding another new opportunity). She regaled us with stories from her fashion interviews with designers in the business such as Tom Ford, Donna Karan, and Michael Kors. I noticed how engaged she was with the audience throughout the talk. Although the lecture hall was big, she made an effort to make eye contact and address the different sections while peppering in some witty remarks.

She began fashion week in New York City at Bryant Park. In one of the fashion shows, pieces of the ceiling were coming off and sprinkled the stage and some of the models. Fern then remarked, “We love fashion, but we weren’t going to kill ourselves for it!” She reassured us that everything turned out okay in the end with nothing major happening. It was quite the experience for her and she continued working on New York Fashion Week for the next several years.

After discussing her background in public relations and the beginnings of her career in fashion, she continued with stories of her fashion interview work at the Y. A few stories which she shared included trying to get Bill Cunningham, a fashion photographer for the New York Times to come in for an interview at the 92nd Street Y. Since he was a pretty introverted person who rarely shared the details of his personal life, he declined. It wasn’t until Fern returned from India that the interview came into fruition.

Fern was wearing a chiffon top and met up with Bill. During the meeting he accidentally spilled vodka on her chiffon top and was profusely apologetic. She told him it was okay and to not worry about it. He still continued apologizing and finally told her, “I’m so sorry. I will do anything…anything!” At that moment, Fern smiled and asked him, “Would you do an interview with me at the Y?” (to which he agreed to). We all laughed. It was an amazing story and set the stage for the fascinating details she continued to share from her fashion interviews at the Y.

One interviewee who was known to be quirky in the fashion industry kept asking Fern if she could smoke during the interview. Fern replied, “No! We’re inside a building in New York City!” The interview continued, but the interviewee asked again if she could smoke. At that point, the audience at the Y was laughing and Fern was thinking, “How can I get her to answer the questions?!” After a bit of time, the interviewee stood up and asked the audience at the Y, “Do you have any questions for me?” Fern replied, “You’re asking them that when you’re not even answering my questions!” Fern then started laughing.

Left: Poster of the event outside the auditorium
Right: Fern sharing her stories at the podium

She then continued discussing other fashion designers such as Tom Ford who had a sold out event. The place was so packed at the Y that they also streamed at another section on a wide screen on one of the other floors to keep up with the demand. Tom Ford charmed and seduced the audience (as he always does during his interviews). Tom shared a quote with Fern, “The most important thing anybody ever taught me is to only hire people you want to have dinner with.”

You can check her out in Fashion Icons with Fern Mallis at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. She told us that the next interview will most likely be in the summer, but she’s not sure yet since she’s still ironing out the details.

Although she discussed her work in the fashion and public relations world, she also provided a lot of sound advice and information for all of us in the audience (this is also applicable to any other other field). Someone in the audience asked the question, “Do you have any advice for aspiring fashion designers?” Fern replied, “Be nice to everyone because you never know who you will bump into in the future.” She then continued with, “…also, people like to hire and work with nice people. No one wants to deal with diva behavior.”

Regardless of our backgrounds, we all form relationships with everyone whom we collaborate or work with. There are always things you can learn from others, and Fern’s stories showcased this aspect.

At the end of the event, Fern signed copies of her book for the audience members. It was such a wonderful talk and really made the night enjoyable.

Fern signing copies of her book

Fast forward to November 2021. I started rereading her book again in anticipation of one of her next talks on November 22 with Prabal Gurung. She has a great way of steering conversations and making her interviewees feel comfortable throughout the talks.

My signed copy of the book (such a great read!)

I’m very excited to watch the event this coming Monday! Since I have work, I will be attending virtually rather than on site at the 92nd Street Y. The upcoming event brought up so many memories. I didn’t anticipate including this section for this blog post, but it all tied together after reliving these memories as I wrote about them.

Hope you all have a wonderful holiday season! I do have other things I wanted to write about (such as things I’ve cooked), but as I had discussed in a previous entry, I don’t want to put too much information in one post. Definitely looking forward to providing you with more updates on the recipe and food side of things as well as adding in new sections on the site. Take care everyone.

(Arc II) Act 6: An Overdue Outdoor Reunion

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I did not expect things to get incredibly busy in the past few months! Things have been going well. Hope all is well with you and your loved ones! Continuing education and work (along with being able to see family and loved ones post-vaccination) were the main things which I had been focused on recently. Now that I have time to sit down and update, I’m excited to share some pictures and going-ons with all of you! One of the things I’m going to experiment with is adding short video clips to include with my entries. For this entry, it’s going to be simple with the ferry to and from Governors Island along with a clip of me walking down the Highline. (Again, kevinnissimo is all about experimenting!) If I end up liking it, I’ll make more elaborate clips later on for future entries.

Before I get into my main entry regarding my trip to Governors Island and an evening of tapas and drinks with my friend at Hudson Yards, I’ll share some quick updates with the site.

Recipes

I scanned the majority of my recipes and will add some more this week after I publish this post. I believe the most recent ones I put up were the Old Fashioned Beef Stew and Cinnamon French Toast. I have a couple of them set up already such as a few brownie recipes, rustic lasagna, and chicken Diane to name a few.

As I was scanning the recipes, I decided that I needed something more high powered since I also planned on digitizing my notes from college and scanning old developed pictures. I was in college in the early 2000s, so I have stack of notes in my house which are almost 18 years old. I purchased a Fujitsu ScanSnap ix1600 from B&H Photo and started scanning notes this past weekend. I tested it on my notes for one of the art classes I took as an undergrad, and it took me less than 10 minutes to scan an entire semester’s notes. I loved its ability to scan both sides of the paper (duplex scan).

So moving forward, I will use this for my recipe and picture approach! Now that I have a new scanner, it should make it easier to transfer these into my computer. 🙂 I might still have to rewrite or retype some recipes (my uncle’s handwriting for his vegetarian lasagna was a bit difficult to read). But this certainly makes things a lot easier to work with.

Reading

Aside from reading scientific articles, I’ve tried to catch up with some leisurely reading. One evening I just dove into one of Mindy Kaling’s books, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? after I prepared dinner. I read both of her books (that one in 2013 and Why Not Me? in 2016). I enjoyed her work as a writer (along with her portrayal of Kelly Kapoor) in The Office, and when I read her first book, I had just begun diving into her new show, The Mindy Project.

I like how she switches between personal anecdotes from her life and her lists and random musings (e.g. “Best Friend Rights and Responsibilities”). I remembered when I first looked at the Table of Contents for Is Everyone Hanging out Without Me?, I thought that the pacing would be random. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see it flow when I transitioned to a new chapter. It was interesting to dive into the book and get a glimpse of Mindy’s thoughts. It’s like having a conversation with someone over lunch or dinner and you end up jumping through different topics over the course of the meal (whether you intended to or not).

It was a nice, casual read which I finished this past weekend. I’ll provide more of my thoughts over at Goodreads (which reminds me, I should probably put a place to link all of my stuff here on kevinnissimo).

I didn’t get to do as much leisure reading since early May, so I decided to devote 1-2 hours per day to dedicated reading time moving forward. It was refreshing to just sit down and dive into a book while tuning out any distractions.

Outdoor Trip to Governors Island

Around late May, family and friends wanted to coordinate to see each other in person again (since everyone was getting vaccinated). I was excited to hear from them to start making upcoming plans for the summer. The weekend before I caught up with my brother and two friends and we just ordered food, watched random video clips from Youtube, and caught up.

Two weeks ago, I met up with my close friend S to catch up. We had not seen each other since last March so we were very excited to see each other in person.

We had planned to meet with each other a few weeks beforehand (and were counting down the days). We were bouncing ideas off of each other such as a beach trip or shopping. Taking all of this into consideration, I asked her about a day trip to Governors Island. Since we figured that we needed a lot of time to spend catching up, a nice walk outdoors along with a picnic seemed like a perfect outing.

I purchased the tickets for the ferry the day before for the times we agreed (12:40 PM departure and 5:00 PM return) which would have provided us with a time cushion to get to South Ferry.

I arrived at the World Trade Center Oculus around 11:45 AM. At that time I was focused on taking the R train to Whitehall Street-South Ferry that I completely forgot that the 1 train was also available (and a shorter walk from my train). I got to the platform for the downtown R train and there were a lot of people waiting already. After a few minutes, I saw an alert on the MTA app that there was a brake issue being investigated, so the R and W trains were temporarily suspended. I then remembered that I could also take the 1 train, so I had to walk back down the Oculus to get to the 1 train. I was a bit nervous since I needed to be at the Maritime Building around 12:20-12:25 PM to get ready for check-in, and when I was heading down the stairs for the 1 train, it was around 12:10. A train arrived in 2 minutes so I got to the Whitehall Station in time.

My friend S and I finally got to see each other after a year and a half! We gave each other a big hug and joined the line for the ferry check-in. We started with how family is doing, plans for the summer, and a general check-in on how other things in our lives were moving now that things are reopening. The weather was sunny that day which made the ferry ride pleasant and relaxing. The breeze felt nice. I was caught up in conversations with S that I suddenly realized that my finger was in the shot of my video. 😅

On our way to Governors Island

Song: Fredji – Happy Life (Vlog No Copyright Music)
Music provided by Vlog No Copyright Music.
Video Link: https://youtu.be/KzQiRABVARk

We disembarked and the first thing we wanted to do was eat! That morning I just had a bowl of cereal and coffee and she had a doughnut, so we were both ready to dig into some lunch. Originally, we wanted to get food from the Kimchi Taco Truck but they weren’t there when we went. Alternatively, we went to Little Eva’s since it had the food and drinks which were close to what we were going to order at Kimchi Taco Truck. We walked around the island for a bit and then arrived at Little Eva’s where we ordered frozen margaritas, a cheeseburger, and a fish taco.

(Left to Right) our food from Little Eva’s and walking around Governors Island

We freshened up and start chatting while we ate our food. A main thing I discussed with her was my future thoughts and plans on the next step in life: plans on settling down, if I had set a timeline for when to have children, and whether I had any travel plans in the near future. It was a very interesting discussion where I bounced ideas off of her and explained my thought processes. I also told her about devoting more time to my hobbies and creative pursuits. S was very encouraging and shared some insight when I showed her my cooking pictures and musings. As I had discussed earlier in this entry, I’m setting aside time for leisure reading (which S advocated for other aspects of life too–we’re both proponents of self care). So, I should be able to focus on My Life in France and get my thoughts up on Goodreads soon.

The time flew by so quickly so after lunch we walked around to find a place to set up our little “picnic area”. We first stopped by Joe Coffee right next to Little Eva’s to get an iced Americano with milk along with two scoops of the chocolate chip ice cream. We found a nice shaded area to relax at. When we sat down, I gave S a little gift–a cheeseburger teddy bear. The toy had a lot of symbolism of our friendship with her love of cheeseburgers and my love of We Bare Bears.

We continued our chat and this time we caught up on how things were going with her and what her plans were. We enjoyed the coffee and ice cream while taking in the scenery. There were kids running around doing a scavenger hunt while their chaperones/parents were giving them instructions. Other people were biking while families were taking strolls together. It was a festive atmosphere which S and I loved being surrounded in.

After a bit of time we started planning what to do for dinner. We were still full from our lunch and coffee and dessert, so S was looking at places which had light food and some drinks. S mentioned that there were a few places around Hudson Yards which had interesting menus. She suggested Mercado Little Spain after going through a bunch of places. It checked off everything on our list: (1) having filling food and drinks which were not too heavy and (2) the menu items were dishes we were interested in trying.

Onward to Hudson Yards

Our return trip for the ferry was at 5 PM. Around 4:45, we started packing up and headed to the port to return to Manhattan.

Return trip to Manhattan

Song: Fredji – Happy Life (Vlog No Copyright Music)
Music provided by Vlog No Copyright Music.
Video Link: https://youtu.be/KzQiRABVARk

We took the R train uptown to 42nd-Times Square to transfer to the 7 to head to Hudson Yards. Even after all of the walking on Governors Island, we still had a lot of energy to walk around! We headed into the shops and went down the escalator to Mercado Little Spain.

We got to the front and were able to be seated right away. S and I settled down, and we were reading the instructions on how to order. For this, we had to scan the QR code, register our table, and then order from the menu. It was straightforward once we both navigated through the menu on the app.

After freshening up, we looked through the menu and ordered our drinks. We started with frozen sangrias, Gambas al ajillo (the garlic shrimp), Calamares de La Plaza Mayor (calamari), and the Spanish bread. I added in the Pulpo a la Gallega (octopus served with mashed potatoes). The one thing we liked was that we could just continue ordering if we wanted some more food. After we tried all of our dishes, S suggested the Garbanzos con bacalao (the cod with chickpeas and a soft boiled egg).

The service was really quick and everyone was really friendly. We didn’t wait long before the servers gave us our dishes.

The food was good! Everything was to our taste (except the calamari which was a bit salty–it wasn’t bad, just a bit salty for us). S took a candid of me sipping on my drink while I took one of her cutting into the cod. On the lower right you can see our dishes (the calamares and octopus to the right, the bread at the bottom, and the shrimp in the middle).

Over dinner, the conversation moved towards reminiscing about past events and sharing funny anecdotes. There were a lot of laughs and we just enjoyed each other’s company. We dove into our upcoming plans for the rest of the weekend.

We finished up with dessert by ordering the Tarta de Queso (the cheesecake) and Flan al estilo “Mamá Marisa” (the flan).

Dessert!

Once we were done, we walked around to explore Hudson Yards. They were playing a film on a giant screen while people were sitting down and watching. I snapped a few pictures along the way. We sat down to chat some more regarding evening plans. Once it started getting late we headed back to the station. I got off Times Square to transfer to my train, so we gave each other a hug and planned to hang out again soon.

Hudson Yards Part 2

I hung out with another friend, E this past weekend and we met up at Hudson Yards. We also ate at Mercado Little Spain but this time it was during lunch. There was a 15 minute wait so we headed near the tables at the entrance to catch up. E has always been a great conversationalist so the 15 minutes went by when we updated each other on how things went for us during the past year. Once I got the text that our table was ready, we headed to the front. When we sat down, I told E that the table I sat with S during my catch up with her was the one right next to us.

We had a few of the dishes I tried with S but this time E and I also tried the Croquetas de Pollo (chicken fritters), Gazpacho, Mollete con sobrasada y queso mahón (Cristal bun with sobrasada spread, mahón cheese, and honey), and Tarta de Chocolate (chocolate cake).

The new choices were equally delicious and service was very friendly and top notch. Time also flew by really quickly. After sharing anecdotes, we planned to check out the Vessel (since he hadn’t been there yet). E told me that the Hudson Yards area hadn’t been as developed yet the last time he came here, so he was very surprised to see the shopping area, restaurants, and the Vessel set up.

(Left to Right) Croquetas, Gazpacho, and Tarta de chocolate with an Americano (forgot to take one of the mollete..it was really good!)

As we headed out, a photographer approached us (his IG is onlykenonlyken) and informed us that he takes pictures of strangers doing wacky, creative poses. It caught me off guard when he asked if he could photograph me doing silly poses.

Here is a pic that E took while I was being photographed:

Posing for Ken

It was fun overall. E was apologizing because he’s generally very friendly when people approach him and he told me, “Sorry Kev if I got you into this!” We both laughed and told him it was fine. I had fun since it was an unexpected surprise.

After the impromptu photoshoot, we walked around the shops and the Highline. We originally had planned to go to the Vessel but due to the upcoming thunderstorm, they informed us that everyone had to be evacuated out of the Vessel for safety purposes.

Walking down the Highline

Song: Fredji – Happy Life (Vlog No Copyright Music)
Music provided by Vlog No Copyright Music.
Video Link: https://youtu.be/KzQiRABVARk

After meeting with E, we planned to hang out again this summer (and invite another mutual friend to join us). I gave him a hug before my stop and wished him a safe trip home. Before traveling home, I stopped by Lush at Union Square to pick up some things. Since I’m not usually in the City as often now, I try to take care of anything I needed whenever I head out there. I got the Face Masks (the coffee and rosy cheeks) along with a peach bath bomb (y’all already know my love of peaches 😉). My plan is to just have a relaxing bath day sometime around my birthday.

(Left to Right: Walking along the Highline, a screen outside of The Edge attraction inside the shops, and my Lush purchase)

It was so nice catching up with my friends the past few weeks. I liked that we were able to continue on from where we all left off. The beginning of summer definitely provided some positive vibes which was greatly appreciated. I’ll try to get more recipes up later this week (hope they have been interesting for all of you!). Please continue to stay safe and well!

(Arc II) Act 5: Iconic Dining, Night Strolls, and Artistic Finds

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Thank you so much everyone for your support! I’m really loving how kevinnissimo is progressing and hope you’re enjoying reading through my adventures. There are a couple of things I wanted to highlight in this entry (since I post updates on Arc II entries while Arc I entries will remain unchanged and keep to the original post from my past site). So I decided to create a new entry here before posting my first entry for the Archive section.

As I was going through my old phone (it was a Nokia Lumia 635–I had to plug it into my older laptop to access the photos 😅), I saw that there were a lot of pictures which I had not published online. I decided to organize them into folders and include them for future posts in Arc II. I was surprised to see a lot of them since I had forgotten that I had these pictures. These past pictures are what gave me the idea to write certain sections in this post.

Recipes

Another thing I was doing this past weekend was organizing a collection of recipes that family members gave me throughout the years. I was scanning them because I wanted to save them electronically in the event that I lose them during a move or they just get misplaced or become illegible and hard to read (some of them were from recipe cards from the 80’s as well as handwritten ones which look a bit fragile). This gave me an idea to put up a section on my site with these recipes so that you all can have access to them.

As I was reading through the recipes, one thing I noticed was that a lot of them were easy to make and can be modified as needed to suit your tastes and nutritional needs. I think I’m going to try out these recipes and post them here. I’ve tried variations of some of these dishes but have not made these specific recipes. This is exciting! Now I can liven up some dishes (off to the grocery store later!).

When I was looking for a style idea for the recipe page, I saw that one of the recommendations was an online menu from a restaurant. I thought it was clever and adorable, so I formatted the style to fit the recipes on the page. The recipe page has been published so go check it out if you’re looking for some meal ideas. I’ll try to update that page regularly as I get through the recipe stack. The main picture I put up on the page was a tasty dish from a wedding I attended which was Pecan Salmon in a champagne cream sauce with potatoes and asparagus. (It was absolutely divine!)

I should have the first two recipes put up: Swiss Chicken Cutlets (from Healthy Meals in Minutes) and Gwen’s Country Butter Cream Ribbon Chocolate Fudge Cake. Hope you enjoy them!

Reading

I’m finishing up My Life in France so that I can put up my mini review on Goodreads. After that I’m deciding on which book to cover next. There are a couple that come to mind such as The Girl with Seven Names by 이현서 (Lee Hyeon-seo) and David John, Tina Fey’s Bossypants, or Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist.

It’s nice revisiting these books as I begin putting up my reviews on Goodreads. Whenever I read books, I try to rotate through different genres and/or topics (for example, I would read a comedy after reading a political thriller). It was interesting for me to see how people who are learning English as a second language choose books to start reading with because whenever I’d ask them, the majority would say Harry Potter. Back when I was in grad school, one of my students was so excited reading the Twilight series. She would come to class and she’d give me a synopsis of what she had just read (she’d always tell me beforehand, “Oh! I hope it’s okay, so I don’t ruin anything by giving away spoilers for you!). It’s so nice seeing individuals be passionate about their interests, and I think it’s great when people find books which captivate them.

While I do enjoy the current books on my reading queue (which you will all see through my Goodreads as I continue posting reviews), I still revisit many of the ones I had read as a child like Stephanie Spinner and Steve Bjorkman’s Aliens For Breakfast. Roald Dahl’s Matilda was another one of my favorites (oh that chocolate cake part!). These are fun reads and can be done in one sitting.

Dining and Warm Company

In December 2017 my cousin and her friend from the West Coast came to visit to experience the holidays in New York. We were discussing what restaurant to have dinner at and she told me that her friend wanted to go to Beetle House since he was a big fan of Tim Burton. My cousin made a reservation for three for the evening.

When we entered the place, we were surrounded by iconic art from many of Tim Burton’s films. I’m sure you can recognize a few from the pictures below— The Nightmare Before Christmas, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, and of course, the renowned Edward Scissorhands. We still had to wait a bit since they were cleaning and setting up our table. We waited at the bar and my cousin’s friend B ordered The Nine (which had absolut citron, triple sec, midori, and I think a sour pucker and lime juice) while I got Alice’s Cup O’ Tea (anyone close to me knows that peach is my favorite fruit so when I saw that it had peach vodka I knew I had to get it!).

I ordered the Butcher’s Stew (a take on Firehouse chili topped with cotija cheese, sour cream, and scallions served with garlic toast points), another Alice’s Cup O’ Tea, and the Willy Burger (which was a half pound burger with grilled pineapple, pepper jack cheese, smoked bacon, french fried onions, maple barbecue sauce, on a honey garlic butter bun). My cousin got Jack’s Jambalaya Risotto and B got the Sweeney Beef and they both shared the Cheshire Mac and Cheese.

During our dinner, there was also a group celebrating a bachelorette party. With Beetle House, there would be costumed characters who would come to the tables and chat with the guests. The character would change for each day. During our visit, it was Johnny Depp’s Willy Wonka. The bachelorette party had a blast talking to him and taking pictures. The actor was so in tune with the character. The way he spoke and his mannerisms were exactly like Depp’s character in the movie. B took a picture of my cousin with the Willy Wonka character.

Throughout our dinner we were just catching up on life’s musings. B was asking us trivia on Beetlejuice and we were just laughing throughout the meal. “How many times do you call out Beetlejuice for him to appear?” The combination of the vibrant environment with good company made it incredibly memorable. I’m typing this entry in 2021, and I still vividly remember that night from December 2017. It’s bringing back so much smiles!

After dinner, we walked around the City (at the time it was past 11:30 PM). We started around the Bowery area and moved all the way up to Rockefeller Center. Below are a few pictures I snapped along the way from the tree at Rockefeller Center, the Macy’s Holiday Window displays, and Grand Central Terminal. We were just taking in the atmosphere and enjoying each other’s company. I’m sure you’ve all had those moments where you are walking and talking with a friend, loved one, significant other, or another individual and you end up just getting immersed in the dialogue. Then you look at the clock and it’s 3 hours later or you realize that you just walked down 25 blocks from where you started.

It’s these impromptu moments which make some of the best memories. We don’t expect what will happen next but everything falls into place. This is why I love writing these blog posts. I love sharing these memories with others and in a sense, I’m having “conversations” with everyone through my posts here at kevinnissimo.

Art

As I was going through my other photos, I found a picture I took with Sebastian Masuda’s Hello Kitty Time Capsule back in May 2015. I met up with my friend J and Rob to catch up after work. They spent the day shopping and playing around at FAO Schwarz.

As we walked down Hammarskjold Plaza (around E. 47th St. and 2nd Ave.), we stumbled upon this piece. It immediately caught our eye and we all took pictures with it. I was so excited when I saw this because it brought back memories of when I made a presentation on Murakami Takashi and his Superflat approach during my senior year at Rutgers. Seeing artists develop their style and come up with new works is great because you can see their evolution as you follow their exhibits and presentations.

Now that I discussed this, I’m going through book recommendations to see if there are any art books I can dive into next. If anyone has recommendations, please let me know! I still have my art history books (do you all remember Gardner’s Art Through the Ages from Intro to Art History?) and love perusing through chapters from time to time.

Hello Kitty Time Capsule by Sebastian Masuda

As I’m writing my entries, more focused ideas come to mind as I’m building up kevinnissimo. It’s great to have that creative spark reignite, and again, I appreciate everyone’s kind support for visiting my site! As I had said before, I love sharing my stories and adventures. I look back at these photos, documents, and other memorabilia, and I get a chance to revisit these memories.

I do have some movies to watch which my friend recommended during our video call–Nomadland and Minari. We also planned to do a virtual movie night and dinner sometime soon. She’s amazing when it comes to new films to check out or what beauty products to try. We’re anticipating when we can see each other again in person so that we can catch up over some good food.

I’m currently working through the Comic Con 2015 blog which I plan to post this weekend. I resized a lot of the pictures in my original entry from my old blog, so I’m going to replace them with the original ones when I publish the blog post here. The pictures were on my old phone (which I discussed at the beginning on this post), so I transferred them over to a folder here on my laptop. The one great thing with the format here is that I can create the tiled galleries and collages for pictures (which my old blog could not do). What ended up happening was that I had to place individual pictures and it made the entry become a long scroll down the page. At least here I can group them together and make it more manageable (plus you’ll get to see when I attended the Adventure Time panel). I’m pretty stoked and look forward to publishing it for everyone to read.

(Arc II) Act 4 Sweet Gifts and Artistic Delights

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I’ve been looking forward to getting back on the groove of writing blog posts. Just sitting down and going through my notes and pictures, I start to bring together what I want to cover for the post. Whenever I would write blogs in the past, I would outline different topics in my notebook and see which ones would flow well.

I purchased a new notebook a week or two after I started kevinnissimo since I knew that I would get back into writing (after taking a break from blogging on my old site). Continuing from my discussion of changes to the site (as I had mentioned in the past few entries), one of the changes I will make regarding my entries is that I won’t overload too many topics into a blog post. For my past site, I remembered deciding to just post a detailed entry once a month to try to space things out; however, it ended up with me cramming so many pictures and topics into one post which made it a lot more difficult to navigate. I think having these bite sized posts would be more manageable, and I can expand a lot more on a few topics rather than brush several ones superficially.

I decided to choose a light-hearted topic from my past blog to start as my initial post in the blog archive section here. It will be on my visit to New York Comic Con in 2015. It was an incredible experience where I got to see the cast of Adventure Time and hear Rebecca Sugar sing. Her series Steven Universe was one of my favorite shows to watch (not to mention the songs on the show were incredible! “Giant Woman” and “Love Like You” are two of my favorites.).

Food and Reading

I was going through my book list and decided that my next little mini-review on Goodreads will be for My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud’homme. I initially read this book on January 2010 and wanted to learn more about her life and background. I remembered watching her cooking shows, specifically Baking with Julia in the late 90’s. She had such passion for the ingredients and dishes (both in her cooking as well as the ones shared by guests chefs on her show). During the time period in the late 2000s, my interest in cooking and other food related activities was at its peak. I tried to cook new types of dishes and also started typing out handwritten recipes as backup (in the event, the recipes become hard to read or get misplaced). I also watched a ton of Top Chef and other reality shows haha.

One of my favorite things when I frequently blogged on my old site was that I would take pictures whenever I would cook to keep a record of different food recipes I had experimented with. You’ll see a lot of my food pictures from past posts in the blog archive section. Now that I’ve restarted blogging again here, I started documenting my recipe experiments again. I’ll be adding more food pictures along the way so keep an eye out for them! 🙂 Here is a little collage I made back in May 2015:

From top left moving clockwise: Thai Basil Shrimp Fried Rice, beginning to prepare curried chicken, Herb meatloaf with rice, and Udon noodles with edamame pesto

The udon noodles with edamame pesto came from an America’s Test Kitchen cookbook I bought during that time. It was absolutely delicious and full of flavor! A couple of the ingredients included basil, coriander, toasted pine nuts, and edamame. It was refreshing and light but very filling.

Significance of Experiences

As I had mentioned in my previous post (ACT 3), sharing moments with loved ones through food have been key highlights whenever we’d share stories and catch up. I remembered my 10th grade English teacher telling us a story about how she met up with her friend for lunch. She ordered a tuna sandwich which ended up not tasting good, but the outing was still a positive experience for her because they both enjoyed catching up and seeing each other again. She emphasized how focusing on positive aspects (in her example, company) can serve as the highlight / central component for an experience. However, it’s not just solely applicable for social components, but can also be applied to the importance of one’s individual experiences.

An individual might venture on a solo trip or take a “me day” to examine things without distractions. In this case, their personal goal and what they want to gain from the experience are what serve as the highlight. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed times having a solo meal or going to a museum for my “me day” to center myself. It helped me focus and gain insight into my own personal plan for that day.

With my loved ones (family and friends), we would usually gift each other food whenever we would meet up. It could be chocolates, snacks, or ingredients for cooking. One of my close friends (the one who I had dinner and dessert with in the previous entry – ACT 3) started our friendship on our love of food and dining out (we were talking about Indian food at that time). We told each other we would still continue our tradition despite not being able to do it in person this year.

It was such a wonderful surprise when I received a package from Levain Bakery which is known for its massive cookies. I had the biggest smile on my face and thanked her for the thoughtful gift. I received it on a Friday which was a nice start for the upcoming weekend. The cookies are really good when you warm them up in the oven for a bit!

The oatmeal raisin cookie from the Signature Cookie Assortment (they’re huge!)

Books and spa / self care gifts were also main items we would give each other. She introduced me to Lush products and gifted me one time with the Rosy Cheeks face mask which she highly recommended. Since it has to be kept in the fridge, it provided a nice coolness when you set it on your skin.

Rosy Cheeks from Lush

I sent her the Hello Gorgeous gift set, Sympathy for the Skin lotion, and Angels on Bare Skin cleanser from Lush. She loved it. If you know both of us, we’re big on symbolism and the gifts we give to each other (and to others) would reference to something significant (like an event or something we learned about the other person through conversations).

Art

Outside of science, my interest lies in art and design. I enjoy going to museums, reading books on art history, and learning about different types of crafts. One of my art history professors, Virginia Bower was a big inspiration for collaboration and developing my handouts. During class she would cover the time period and other important details for a piece without information getting muddled. Too many times I’ve written notes in the past where I wrote so much information that I might as well have read the textbook!

Professor Bower’s background (Courtesy of Smithsonian Journeys – 2015)

It wasn’t just her handouts, but her passion that was so refreshing in her class. The way she described each piece, the cultural significance of the work in relation to the time period, and her stories traveling around Asia (it was so sweet when she spoke Mandarin to us!) really engrossed us for the entire semester. I took it over the Summer of 2006 and it was twice a week for four hours in the evening from 6-10 PM — Kudos to Professor Bower for keeping us engaged the entire time!

A snippet of East Asian Art – Courtesy of Professor Virginia Bower

Her notes had a conversational tone to them and reading through them felt like I was talking to her again. It brought back memories from when she would go up to each of us before class and start a conversation on art or ask questions about our major (ahh I miss Professor Bower!). Each experience afterward through cancer outreach and research built upon this foundation that I had learned from her. (I’ll elaborate further in the next few paragraphs)

I do have pictures from my past trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in July 2019 which I plan to include in an upcoming blog. However, I did attend a small art exhibition during autumn of that year which I will share here. My friend and I went to an art exhibition in the Lower East Side at Van Der Plas Gallery in November 2019. Many artists showcased and were selling their work on site. As you can see from the pictures, they are incredibly talented and have such unique styles. He and I grabbed a cup of wine and walked around and spoke with artists about their work. (We went to an Italian restaurant for dinner afterward but I’ll save that for another entry!)

One artist described a winter landscape which had been inspired from her childhood growing up. She had a big smile on her face and was very descriptive when describing the different elements of the piece. Similar to Professor Virginia Bower you could feel how much the artist enjoyed her work and wanted to share her pieces with others.

A major theme I had recognized from all of these experiences was how the delivery and presentation of information played a crucial role with how you engage with what had been presented. I still remember a majority of the art pieces I had encountered years ago as a result of the stories and vivid descriptions with which they were paired with.

When I was in graduate school, Dr. Cowart and I had a writing assignment for the students in the Culturally Competent Healthcare class in which students reflected on their background (covering facets such as their cultural, ethnic, and racial backgrounds) and how those influenced their approach to navigating the complex healthcare system in the United States. Everyone had such unique perspectives and we both learned so much from the class through their personal experiences. As all of you may know, with health it’s more than just preventive care or diagnosing an illness. There are many aspects which also play a role to provide a high level of care for these populations (e.g. understanding the importance of the family system, addressing language barriers, or taking into consideration cultural values when caring for a loved one).

Including the elements which I had learned from those past experiences in art and public health have been a strong influence for my current work. When presenting health information or working with populations to move their health in a positive direction, making the information accessible and relevant increased engagement and provided more successful outcomes. This made me appreciate how a course in another field unexpectedly played a major role in my subsequent work. (This is why I always try to keep an open mind about things 😉 )

I’m continuing to update more things on kevinnissimo in terms of pages and what types of topics to include. As I continue to write these posts, it has been helpful trying to preview different styles and see what works and what doesn’t. It’s a work in progress, but I am certainly loving it!

(Arc II) Act 3: A Path Forward

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Before I begin, I want to wish everyone good health, continued safety, and peace as we move into 2021. 2020 has been quite challenging for the world (with 2021 having a rough start), so I’m hoping that we can return to some semblance of normalcy moving forward this year.

Arc I started as lecahierdekev and now Arc II will continue as kevinnissimo. I started kevinnissimo around Fall 2019 because I reflected on what I wanted to work on moving into the new decade. During my time with lecahierdekev I wanted to cover a lot of topics since it was my first website. It was exciting to dive into writing handouts for English writing and grammar, ethics, and mathematics. However for kevinnissimo, I am going to primarily focus on topics related to the health sciences and biostatistics as well as hobbies outside of work. I plan to take a more focused approach to this site after experimenting with lecahierdekev.

In terms of the blog entries, I’m going to continue with the spirit of my past entries. I always loved taking pictures and videos to accompany my posts. (1) It helps jog my memory when I’m writing the draft of my entries and (2) they bring in a lot of inspiration as I relive moments as I write.

I’m sure all of you already know where this is headed 🙂 I was going through the pictures on my phone, and I came across a few dessert pictures on a night outing with my friend back in November 2019. When I had first met my friend earlier that year, we instantly connected over a discussion about food. Ever since that time we continued to have our dinners and impromptu outings to catch up and talk about life. We would sometimes surprise each other when one of us would choose a restaurant and get each other hyped up on the way there. For this evening, she first took me to Ribalta in Union Square. We were so hungry that evening that we ate our food before taking pictures. The food was absolutely amazing.

We shared a bottle of wine and ordered pizza (the Margherita), fried calamari with shrimp, and the truffle gnocchi. Throughout dinner we spent a bit of time bouncing thoughts with each other (one of those things where I asked her, “Am I reading too much into what _____ texted me?” haha). She has such a warm and open attitude that I can tell her whatever is on my mind. We continued with our banter and jokes which always ended up with huge smiles on our faces.

After dinner, she took me to Patisserie Fouet for dessert. Luckily, we remembered to snap pictures this time!

Menu at Patisserie Fouet

After our heavy dinner, we settled for the 70% chocolate cake and caramel cheesecake. She wanted me to try another dessert that she really liked the first time she came here, but it wasn’t available the night we were there. We both had tea to accompany our desserts (we might have been up all night had we ordered coffee). She got Earl Grey while I got Chamomile.

The chocolate cake above and the caramel cheesecake below

It was a nice, quiet evening. We shared some more lighthearted stories as we settled into our cozy spot inside the café. There were a lot of events happening in my life during that time and with the holidays coming up, we didn’t know what to expect for the new year. I discussed my thoughts on starting a family in the future and personal endeavors I wanted to pursue regarding research. I also provided her with my two cents when she shared her own thoughts and plans. This reciprocity is a major thing I value in relationships (be it a friend, family member, or significant other). It’s a great feeling when you have close people in your life who you know will be there to be supportive and keep you grounded.

I snapped a picture of the interior before we headed out and parted ways

Books

I was organizing my reading list on Goodreads because I thought it would be a lot easier to have everything grouped up together there. However, I realized that I should have been writing the reviews after I had finished each book! So what I’ve been doing now is rereading the books which I had completed. It has actually been refreshing since it brought back a lot of memories from when I had first read them. I started with Alexa Land’s The Rest of Forever which I had originally finished in 2018 since I really enjoyed the story overall (who doesn’t love a heartwarming romance novel?). I completed rereading the book and wrote up a review on Goodreads.

The story is cute and full of heartwarming moments but that’s what makes it so fun to read! This reminded me of a conversation I had with my friend prior to the holidays. We both talked about watching cheesy holiday movies on the Hallmark Channel and getting engrossed in them.

I don’t think I’ll write a review for every book that I have read, but I’m going to do them for ones that stood out. I’m still deciding which one I will write up next.

Blog and Redesign

I aggregated my past blog entries into a Word document and will slowly add them to the archived blog section of my site. Some of them have videos and other formatting considerations which I will reorganize as I transfer them here onto kevinnissimo. Rereading these past entries brought back a lot of memories, and I’m happy to share them with all of you. They will be labeled with (Arc I) for reference purposes.

I’m enjoying the redesign of this site similar to when I had first worked on lecahierdekev back in 2012. It allows me to be creative and experiment on new styles. If you followed lecahierdekev since the beginning, you saw all of the changes that the site went through. It was sometimes a challenge to decide on the next theme to incorporate while keeping the essence of the site.

I took a look at this site on mobile and really liked how the layout came out. Right now I’m figuring out which pages to include in the menu bar. One of the major things I need to migrate are the handouts and presentations which I kept on different websites such as Weebly and Prezi. Indeed, it’s a work in progress!

Shows

I completed Hotel del Luna this past November! After a year of starting the first few episodes, I finally marathoned Episodes 11-16 while eating my dinner. It was nice to see the backgrounds of the hotel employees get fleshed out and understand what they had gone through in their original lives. The story arc with the killer felt a bit rushed, but it did have moments of intensity which were paced out well.

My friend who keeps up with a lot of dramas also recommended Crash Landing on You on Netflix. My other friend (from the dessert section above) highly recommended Schitt’s Creek so that’s on my to watch list. I generally don’t watch a lot of television, but when I find something that captures my attention, I go all out. 😉

I can’t count how many times I watched Home Alone 1 and 2 this past holiday. There were so many interesting movies on the Freeform Channel and both Home Alones would show up back to back on certain days. It was fun to just have it on the background while I cooked or took care of other things since the soundtrack is fantastic.

Writing this entry and redesigning everything brought back so many warm feelings whenever I outlined topics for my blog entries years ago. I’m really happy to get back into the groove of writing. It was exciting to organize the outline for this entry and choose the dessert pictures accordingly. It’s not only with blogging or working on the site, but also doing new things like writing mini book reviews.

Definitely looking forward to getting kevinnissimo up and running!

Act I: The Chapter Begins

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Time to write my first official entry for Kevinnissimo! Before I get to the main entry, I’m going to briefly highlight how I’m going to organize entries for this site.

I’ve been enjoying the intuitive and organized design of WordPress. It’s been quite helpful since it allows me to keep all of the information in one place. An example is regarding my handouts. Rather than having the PDF in a separate page or site, I can have them as a downloadable link at the end of the entry.

As I had said in my introductory pages for this site, I wanted to keep things a bit more simple. To begin, I ran through different ideas and finalized them to the following topics for the first entry in each category:

PersonalArchiveLearning
Best friend’s pre-wedding venue visit

Korean music and drama		One of the fashion talks I attended

One of my museum visits (The Met or the American Museum of Natural History)		Nutrition

Microbiology

For personal blog entries, I usually cover two to three topics per post. There would be a main topic (such as an event, holiday/vacation, or an area of interest) with one or two other minor points of interest such as a TV show or a past memory. I’m also going to divide entries into smaller chunks. Looking back at my former archived blog entries, they were quite large. Again, I want Kevinnissimo to be more simplistic and easier to read. I found that stuffing too much information into one entry is quite a task to read.

The blog entries which will be placed in the Archive were the ones I had previously written on my first site. The entries will be kept in their original state. I wrote the original entries when my first site was created using Flash. When I spoke to tech support, they informed me that the entries would not transfer over when I switched my site to HTML5. That would not have been good since I would have lost five years of blog entries! What I did was save everything into a document before I performed the site conversion. With these entries on hand, I can add them along the way here.

Finally, the Learning section will be similar to my handouts, but I will instead spread out the information. Rather than having information divided by chapters, I’m going to break them down into smaller sections/units.

Now on to the main entry! 😀

Since this is the first official entry for the personal blog, I felt like my best friend’s wedding preparations would be a great start.

My best friend and I spoke over the summer to plan a time to catch up. On May, she told me about how her boyfriend (now fiancé) proposed to her. She showed me pictures of the proposal which were absolutely adorable. We scheduled a time the weekend after Labor Day to have lunch at the venue where she is going to have the wedding and reception. The venue is Maritime Parc located at Liberty State Park.

It was the perfect day to catch up. The weather was gorgeous. It was that comfortable cool which you experience during early autumn or spring. Usually, I would be at Liberty State Park during the summer for barbecues (and it would end up raining somehow!) when the weather was a bit hotter. So it was nice to not have the heat beating down on me!

We had reservations for 12:30 PM. My best friend (Jenny), her fiancé (Paul), and I bumped into each other at the parking lot and greeted each other with hugs. The hostess was very friendly and gave us a warm smile as we were promptly seated. We chose to sit inside, but were next to the deck overlooking the waterfront.

For drinks, I got the iced Earl grey tea, Jenny got the strawberry cucumber cooler, and Paul got a Coke. We were catching up on things such as how our summers went, work, family, and the general “going ons” in our lives.

After a bit, we ordered our food. Jenny got the steak and eggs, Paul got the burger, and I got the lobster mac and cheese. We got a very hearty lunch!

Our food: Steak & Eggs, Lobster Mac & Cheese, and the MP Burger (cut off at the side)

We discussed the details of the wedding and how preparations were going. I’m pretty excited to be a part of the wedding party. We were discussing colors, ideas, and other fun stuff. You’ll see everything in action in 2020 when the time comes. It’ll be wonderful! 😉

After we ate our meal, we still had room for dessert. I got the coffee and tiramisu while they shared a chocolate cake.

Coffee and Tiramisu

It was really nice catching up. The last time I saw them was during Jenny’s birthday last October. We went to Chelsea Market and went karaoking afterwards with her family. I enjoyed seeing them all again after such a long time. Here are some pictures we took back then:

Playing around with Jenny’s bunny filter
At Karaoke Duet with her family

As we were eating dessert, we shared stories of vacations, Disneyworld, family members’ quirks, and other vibrant stories. It made me want to go back to Disneyworld! Who doesn’t love a good theme park?

After a bit, we decided to walk around and enjoy the views from the park. We went to the top to look at the event space; however, they were fixing up so we couldn’t go inside. We did take pictures of the park from the top though!

Overlooking the waterfront (there’s Jenny on the right!)

We walked downstairs and sat on a bench close to the old railroad terminal. As we were sitting, there was a wedding party walking along the path to get wedding photos taken. Since the place where Jenny and Paul want to take photos is a bit farther away from Maritime Parc, they were sharing ideas on how to transport the wedding party from one end to the other. One of the ideas we talked about was golf carts which made us smile.

People were walking their dogs, biking, strolling with family and friends, and were just enjoying the sunshine. I’m sure a lot of you try to take advantage of any free time you have to relax and unwind. This was definitely one of the highlights I had from catching up with Jenny and Paul. Despite our hectic schedules, we’re able to laugh and share stories with each other.

After we conversed, we parted ways. We had one final talk about chicken wings and how we’d all drive out somewhere just to get good food. Food is so comforting! Afterwards, they had to meet with the photographer, and I went home to finish up laundry and relax. We promised to catch up again before the holidays.

Over the summer, I began watching Hotel Del Luna. My friend who is a big fan of IU (아이유) brought this to my attention. I watched the first two episodes and fell in love with the story. Here is the official poster they released for the drama:

Official Poster

IU has such a sweet and kind personality, so it was wonderful to see her showcase a different personality in the drama. I loved her unique wardrobe since it perfectly matched her mood when interacting with the other characters. You could tell she was the one “holding the cards” throughout each encounter. Overall, the entire cast was incredible and got me emotionally invested in the drama.

My friend was already halfway through it, so I have to catch up! I’m pretty excited though since I loved the dynamic between the two main characters (Jang Man-Wol/장만월 and Ku Chan-Seong/구찬성). One of the scenes that stood out was Man-Wol trying to test Chan-Seong by making him bring the coffee to her without spilling the drop. I don’t want to spoil what happened along the way, but I was in suspense at what the outcome would be at the time.

Additionally, the soundtrack is phenomenal. At the end of the episode when they played Another Day, I was hooked. Then you have such talented singers like Taeyeon/태연 and Gummy/거미 contribute to the soundtrack and you know it’s going to be a treat. I actually enjoyed every single singer who contributed to Hotel Del Luna’s soundtrack. (Now I’m going to probably end up binge watching the entire drama!)

But indeed, I’m looking forward to finishing it up and going through the story within the next few weeks! It brought back so much memories of college.

It feels so great getting back to blogging. Despite random schedules or new life events popping up, I always feel at home when I write. I tried to get into Twitter, but it didn’t take off for me. I do have an Instagram account set up for Kevinnissimo so that might be something that I can push forward with. Since my blog entries have pictures already, I can highlight a “main picture” in my Instagram. So stay tuned for that!

I’ve been playing around with the widgets here on WordPress and trying to come up with a style I like before I launch the site. I think I pretty much have all of the main elements in place. I don’t want to overthink things before I end up getting too caught up in the details. I think I’ll launch the site tonight and adjust things along the way.

Arc II: Kevinnissimo

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You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

— Maya Angelou.

Hi everyone! I decided to pin this post to describe the new layout for my site. As I had discussed in my ‘About‘ page, I wanted this site to be more focused and give you a glimpse on my interests and adventures. My past site was my first major site (Arc I: le.cahier.de.kev), so I wanted to capture a wide array of things. However, with Kevinnissimo it will cover two main topics:

  1. Blog (Archived Entries and New Adventures)
  2. Learning (covering educational material from science and public health topics)

What I’m planning is to do one or two personal blog entries per month. They will be pretty substantial similar to the ones I had written in my archived blog entries from my original site. I sometimes get nervous that I’d run out of things to talk about if I wrote frequently, but I feel that one to two entries captures the essence for the month. For the archive blog entries, I will pepper those in throughout the month.

For the handouts, I will plan to work on them weekly. There might be slight changes to the schedule such as if I go on holiday/vacation or take care of family matters, but I’ll try to maintain consistency as much as possible. Since I want the information to be digestible, I’m going to break down the topics into smaller handouts (in contrast to my original handouts which were considerably lengthier). I think this process would be more manageable.

I also bought a small notebook which will serve as my “Idea/Inspiration Book“. I’ve had times where I would see a random music video or wander into a food festival, and I wanted to write down my thoughts but didn’t have a notebook with me. This notebook should help me scribble down thoughts and get the creative process going.

At the bottom of the page you should see a subscribe form. Please feel free to sign up to get notified when I post new content on the site. Thanks again for coming along on the journey. I look forward to sharing great learning experiences and adventures with all of you!