
I admire my Andrew a lot. I don’t know how he does it. (Hello! Get your mind out of the gutter—this is a PG-rated blog, most of the time.) I’m not referring to his parallel parking prowess, instant recall of useless sports stats or mastery of Angry Birds. No, my amazement stems from this observation: […]

I returned to DC several days ago, just in time for the heat wave blasting straight from Hades itself. I wasn’t off exploring a faraway, exotic locale. No, I drove to the Philly ‘burbs for a pathetically short visit to my mom’s house to celebrate her 70th birthday. I figured this trip would also be […]
It was 100 insufferable degrees today in DC. To state the obvious but tragic fact, no amount of antiperspirant was gonna save you from pitting out that dry-clean-only sleeveless silk blouse. (Actress Rose Byrne describes it as becoming “a feral mess.”) Anyway, the scorching temperatures made me think of the movie Heat from 1995. It’s […]

[Warning: this post exposes my inner-nerd. So what does that make me? A nerdy fashionista? A fashionable nerd? I’m cool with either.] Earlier this week during my mundane morning commute via Metro, it dawned on me that QR codes (which are ubiquitous on every freakin’ ad plastered throughout every station) look a lot like houndstooth. […]

I’m not gonna discuss Bianca Jagger’s iconic Studio 54 style or the advent of DVF’s jersey wrap dress here. No, even though I was born pretty recently (hey, everything’s relative!) in 1973, this post is not about that decade’s funky fashion and faux pas. Instead, I wanna give a big shout-out to my mom (a.k.a. […]

Ah yes, we are officially in the dog days of summer here in DC. The stifling heat and soupy humidity make rivulets of sweat stream down my back and between my boobs (squish). One morning while doing my daily trudge for three excruciating blocks from the Metro to my office, I realized that Tretorns and […]
I wasn’t officially allowed to watch Flashdance when it first came out in 1983. I was ten years old at the time, and my Asian scientist parents freaked out over the R rating. Exotic dancing? Ripped clothing? Sex scenes? Michael Nouri? All that was way too much for their traditional sensibilities. But as the saying […]

I had brunch this weekend with a childhood friend who I haven’t seen in twenty years. JK is as vivacious and radiant now as she was when we were growing up together in the Philly suburbs. We had a wonderful time catching up and looking into the future while also strolling down memory lane. Before […]
So the other day I was reading about the Roaring Twenties. I had forgotten how much astonishing shit happened during that decade: women’s suffrage, the Lost Generation, the Jazz Age, Charles Lindburgh, radio, the mass production of the automobile, the Wall Street Crash of 1929, Al Capone, and so on. (Maybe I can rework the […]