“popeye’s dream” at All Spice

Life as a Vegetarian

I was raised a Hindu; and, although my family wasn’t very conservative or strict, many associated practices like vegetarianism stuck. I ended up an ovo-lacto vegetarian in a household of ovo-lacto and lacto vegetarians. I always asked if soups had chicken stock, made sure asian food didn’t contain fish sauce or oyster sauce and informed friends of my dietary restrictions before attending a party or going out for dinner. Being a vegetarian added some overhead to my life.

Surprisingly, there were numerous advantages to being a vegetarian. Whenever we flew internationally, we would request vegetarian meals in advance. Special meals always came out first and seemed much more interesting than standard fare. I also never had to sit in the airplane and wait for the food trolley to finally make its way to my seat while the smell of food circulated through the cabin and made me hungry. I never worried that my meal selection could run out before I had a chance to order. Sometimes after eating out, while some friends would complain about upset stomachs because of undercooked meat, I was fine. During biology class, when we learned of parasites that can spread through meats, I never worried like some of my classmates did.

Tofu-Ball Soup (豆麩団子のお椀) at Kajitsu

Of course along with those advantages came quite a few disadvantages. I avoided barbecue restaurants, steakhouses, most fast food restaurants and whole cuisines like Japanese and Brazilian because of the lack of vegetarian options. I rarely bought lunch at school. Salad and cheese pizza were my go-to meals at theme parks, conventions and other places where food options were limited. When I started watching my diet more, I found that it was extremely carb heavy because being a vegetarian often meant avoiding proteins altogether and substituting with carbs.

Friends would frequently ask questions like “don’t you ever feel like trying meat?” and “what happens when you accidentally eat meat?” The questions bothered me a little; but, I would point out that just as I don’t eat meat, most of them don’t eat certain things because of personal preference and allergies. I was still happy as a vegetarian.

A Gradual Shift

Two changes started occurring in me that would eventually lead me to where I am today.

First is the gradual erosion of my vegetarianism. When I was a child, if I accidentally ate meat, I would spit it out and find something else to eat. My reaction to meat was never as harsh as that of many people I know who immediately lose their appetite or even gag or vomit if they accidentally eat meat.

brandade ravioli and skuna bay salmon at Longman and Eagle

As time went on, I slowly stopped caring if soups contained meat broths. I was fine with pulling the meat off pizza and eating it as long as there was no strong meat flavor. I even started to prefer refried beans cooked with lard. The knowledge of if something contained meat no longer mattered. I only started avoiding whole pieces of meat and food that overwhelmingly tasted like meat.

The second change is the result of the crystallization of one of my guiding philosophies. It happened in the fall of 2006 during my MIT alumni interview. Towards the beginning of the interview, the alumnus asked me a question that threw me off balance, “If you can boil your values and guiding principles into one statement, what would that be?”. I didn’t know how to answer. I was prepared for the usual shallow questions I received from other alumni, but I just didn’t know what to say to this one. I told I’m had to think about it and we continued on with the rest of the interview.

When I finally answered, this is what I said: “I want to be a swiss army knife. I want to be able to thrive in any place or any situation.” He loved the answer and it formed the cornerstone for the rest of the conversation. At the end of it, he told me that I had as good a chance as anyone of getting in and wished me the best of luck. As I left the room. I felt a mixture of excitement and confusion. I loved the words that came out of my mouth, but where did they come from? It was one of those moments when a solution seemingly appears out of ether, like when I’m staring at a difficult problem in an exam and all the puzzle pieces line up magically.

Around that time, I had started learning foreign languages, dabbling in self improvement, and getting good at things I used to hate. Clearly, this philosophy had been guiding me until that point without me ever realizing.

As I thought about it more, a glaring conflict emerged between that philosophy and vegetarianism. I hated when people were picky about their food or told me that they don’t eat certain foods for any non-medical reason. What a contradiction! I was the pickiest of them all. Here is this artificial restriction that is completely inconsistent with what should be my guiding principle, who am I to criticize others? At that moment of awareness, I decided that I would start walking down the road to complete abandonment of vegetarianism.

Final Steps

In high school, I started eating California rolls at sushi restaurants. I was for some reason under the impression that “imitation crab” was imitation meat and completely vegetarian. In fact, it’s made from fish and is very similar to fish balls or narutomaki that you may find in ramen. When I found out, I was pretty impressed with myself. I had been eating fish all along and I never realized! One day, while eating my California roll, a friend offered a few pieces of his salmon sushi, and I thought “why not?”. I was genuinely surprised. It didn’t taste especially fishy and had a palatable texture. From that day forth, I started trying many different types of raw fish. Whenever anyone asked me if I had dietary restrictions, I would tell them that I am mostly vegetarian, but eat raw fish. I wish you could have seen the looks on some peoples’ faces when they heard me say that.

arctic char and maine scallops at dovetail

Fast forward 4 years and being a vegetarian that ate raw fish was pretty good. I could now eat at most sushi restaurants with friends and I grew to love Japanese cuisine; but, all this raw fish got me thinking “if I can eat raw fish, why not cooked fish?”. So, I began eating fish at the fanciest of restaurants (only Michelin star or recommended) because I knew that they would use only the freshest fish and cook it properly. By my senior year, I was regularly choosing the fish option at restaurants and proudly called myself a pescatarian. I could eat almost anywhere, but I didn’t want to stop at that.

When I moved to California, I started easing my way into the rest of seafood. I would order one appetizer like oysters or fried shrimp heads. Slowly, I would order more and more seafood. By end of my first 6 months in the Bay Area, I was eating all seafood including some weirder things like sea snails and sea cucumbers. This satiated my appetite for change and new foods for some time.

Ramen at Hide-Chan

As my second year in the Bay Area came to a close, I had a thirst for change again. My conversion wasn’t moving fast enough and as I went from one summer barbecue to another, I was still effectively a vegetarian since I still didn’t eat hamburgers or hotdogs. One day at Ssisso we bought chicken wings and I tried a few. The Uber back to Ari’s place was difficult to say the least. Nausea rushed over me and I felt terrible. However, an hour went by and I was back to normal. I had started to eat chicken.

On the first day of Burning Man, a few people from my camp had made some pork stew and asparagus. I originally stuck only to the veggies, but after 10 minutes I thought “to hell with it” and poured a large ladle of stew into my bowl. It wasn’t too bad, though the few glasses of wine I had probably helped. I told myself that I’m going to eat everything from this point on. If anyone asks me what kind of diet I stick to, I’m not mentioning anything that ends in -tarian.

Next Steps

Me at Kajitsu

It’s been a year and a half since my “full conversion” and I couldn’t be happier. I can more easily adhere to high protein diets, better appreciate foreign cuisines and I have started to cook many classic meat-heavy dishes. Gone are the days of being the pickiest person at the table and being asked about my dietary restrictions. And I can finally order food from the standard menu when flying internationally!

I don’t want to stop here though. I may now be in line with the average American, but there still are many foods around the world that I need to try and learn to appreciate like insects, rotten foods, living foods and others that look downright revolting. For me, 2015 is going to be the year of bizarre foods. If Andrew Zimmer can eat it, why can’t I? Friends, join me if you are interested. It’s guaranteed to be intriguing.

First, Chris, Dustin, Jeff and I drove up. We met up with Geoffrey, who was in town from Seattle to hang out with his Hong Kong friends. We had some brunch at Sweet Maple. Unfortunately, I wasn’t on top of taking photos and ended up only with this photo of my omelette. A few of us ordered their signature item, the Millionaire’s Bacon. I haven’t got the hang of bacon yet, so I’ll reserve judgement on that for now.

Afterwards, Chris and Geoffrey headed out together to hang out. Dustin and Jeff left to do some shopping.

I went over to Dan’s house for a potluck and Columbia reunion. I saw a lot of familiar faces and made some new friends. Unfortunately, I again didn’t take any photos. >.<

After that, I found some parking in the Mission (which was an adventure of its own) and met up again with Jeff and Dustin. When it came time for dinner, we got an Uber to Ssisso in Japantown. Not pictured is Jeff’s roommate in SF, Ari. He is the most punny guy I have ever met and really smart dude. We met JJ there and had some decent Korean food.

After dinner, we Ubered back home and played games and talked about life, philosophy and other topics late into the night.

The next morning, we met up with Jeff’s other roommate, Majd and walked to Starbelly for some brunch.

The second maple bacon item of the weekend! This time it’s doughnuts.

Many pictures were taken of the doughnuts.

Jeff and Majd ordered pizzas. I’ll probably order a pizza the next time I go.

I had the chilaquiles with chorizo. It was delicious. The chorizo added some spice and the salad kept things light.

After brunch, we parted ways with Majd and went back to Japantown where we happened upon a cosplay contest. If you look closely or click for the larger image, you can see a girl dressed as Naruto posing for pictures.

We spent a lot of time at Kinokuniya, the Japanese bookstore.

We stopped by Nijiya for some snacks and drinks.

Then, we continued walking around the area, trying on clothing at Mission Workshop, buying some stationary at Itoya Topdrawer and browsing through Aqua Forest Aquarium, Ocean Aquarium and Utsuwa Floral Design.

Dinner was at Cordon Bleu, a Vietnamese restaurant in Nob Hill.

I loved it. No waiters, small menu, huge portions and delicious food.

It’s a hole in the wall with a small bar around the kitchen. There were only a few people behind the bar including the owner. I ordered the mapo tofu, though next time, I’ll probably order one of the chicken dishes they are famous for.

If you are in the area, you have to go. A regular was sitting next to us and she couldn’t stop talking about how much she has loved the place for the last decade.

On our way to our next destination, I spotted this beautiful car. I usually don’t like pinstriping or fancy paint jobs, but this C3 Corvette is an exception. The copper and gold stripes perfectly compliment the Corvette’s lines and the white base coat.

I can just imagine myself riding it down a long straight road in New Mexico with the t-top down.

Also, take a look at the typeface Chevrolet used for the nameplate. So unbelievably cool.

We topped off the night with a stunning concert at the Regency Ballroom.

Nils Frahm was the first to perform. Just like all the performers that night, he is a classical trained musician that has reached his own unique sound through experimentation and refinement. He produces sounds on the piano that are captured, distorted, looped and processed on electronics. The result is a trace-inducing cross between classical and ambient music.

During his set, a tipsy Ólafur Arnalds (the headliner for the concert) walked out to stage and performed a seemingly improvisational duet for 4 hands with Nils.

The next to perform was Hauschka. I was actually listening to a lot of Hauschka around that time, but I never realized he would be at the concert. It was a great surprise and pleasure to hear him in person.

If you haven’t listened to his music, you should at least listen to a few pieces. He is best known for a technique called prepared piano, where performer alters the piano by placing objects on the inside of the piano. The nature of each object and the placement of the object can enormously transform the sound. What used to be middle C on the piano could then be the sound of a tambourine or could sound like C on a harpsichord. Hauschka and his assistants took at least 10 minutes before he started, just to prepare his piano.

I think the highlight of his performance was a piece in which he removed objects during its course. Then, he abruptly shifted from a quieter, simpler, sound to a deep, rich sequence with many voices. It was a change from an instrumental or electronic sound to a distinctly piano sound. If you are a dubstep or hip-hop fan, you might have even called it a “drop”.

Almost 2 hours into the concert, Ólafur returned to the stage. As was expected, his part of the performance was nothing short of amazing. His music is art in the purest sense. At first, it seems simple and flowing, but as you listen, you start hearing the subtleties and complexity that come together to create that ostensibly simple sound. You can tell that he wields a vast array of techiques, but applies only the ones that are appropriate.

I’m in awe of people like Ólafur. They push the envelope on composition, production and performance all at the same time.

This concert was special. The acoustics, the lighting, the crowd and the performers were almost all perfect. These components culminated in an unforgettable, moving experience. I know that Dustin, Jeff and Sophia, would agree.

On Sunday, we were returning back to the Bay Area from Anaheim after Blizzcon. We decided to take uberX to LAX from the convention center. UberX is the ride sharing service from Uber. It allows regular citizens like us to function as taxis without meters, taxi dispatch, special licenses, etc. I requested the ride from my iPhone like usual and we were picked up in 10 minutes.

After we arrived at the airport, I checked my email to see my Uber receipt. Unusually, I was only charged $5 for a 35 mile ride. Based on the map, it looked like the driver accidentally ended the ride early soon after we got in the car. Later in the day, I received another email with an adjusted receipt:

First, the fare was adjusted to $88. I’m not sure where they got that number. There is no note about how that amount was calculated. I’m pretty sure that they overcharged me because we were charged less than $80 for a trip that lasted almost twice as long on the reverse route through LA traffic. That however, isn’t even my problem with this bill.

If you look at my screenshot above, you can see that they have made a huge mistake in the calculation. The adjustment that they added should have been $83 ($88 – $5 = $83), but for some reason I was instead charged $166, bringing the total charged to $171. That is even more than if I took a black car or SUV! Looks like a bug in their software.

The charges as they appear on my card

That should be an easy fix, right? I could just call them and get it fixed, right? Uber is the premium service that they claim to be, right?

Nope. Uber doesn’t have a customer support line. The only customer support they have is over email. You probably saw that at the bottom of the email, they say “Need support? Reply to this receipt”. I did that. I also forwarded the email to support@uber.com (the original receipt came from supportoc@uber.com). I also logged on to the Uber website and requested a fare review and submitted a help ticket. No problem, they will probably get back to me via email really quickly, right?

That was 3 days ago. I haven’t heard even one peep from Uber. I even tried tweeting. I got a quick response saying that they would “look into it asap”. Still nothing.

Uber, I really wanted to like you. When talking to people from outside the valley, I used to use you as an example of a company doing interesting things and solving real problems. Now, I’m probably going to close my Uber account and consider competitors. Am I ever going to recommend Uber to a friend again? No. Not as long as you have this sad state of “customer service”. How can you call yourself a premium service, yet have almost non-existent customer service?

Going forward, I am probably just going to initiate a chargeback. They aren’t giving me many choices.

Update: A Community Manager from LA got back to me via email. They refunded my trip and gave me a $50 credit. I’m happy that this was finally resolved and hope that this is just a blip and not part of a trend. The comments from the Hackernews thread prove that it might just be the case.

Transcript of that email:

Hi Arun,

Thanks for reaching out and so sorry for the delay here. We take customer support very seriously and the fact that it took a few days to get a response is definitely not cool or the standard. I’m working with my support team to make sure that emails like yours don’t slip through the cracks again like this.

As for your trip and adjustment, the driver accidentally ended the trip prematurely and our operations team went in to adjust the fare to the amount that our estimator shows for this route (you can see a full breakdown for the charges below). However, it looks like there was a bug here that duplicated the adjustment (creating an additional $83 charge), which resulted in the $166 adjustment. Our engineers have already started looking into this to see exactly what went wrong.

I understand this is a big inconvenience and you shouldn’t have to pay for this hassle, so I have refunded this trip in full (card receipt attached) — you should see the refund back on your card in the next few business days. Additionally, for the delay in our response, I have added a $50 credit to your account. It looks like you ride in San Francisco most often, so this should get you a few rides on us. I promise this is not the norm and hope you can give us another shot!

Please reach out if there is anything else I can do.

==== Price Breakdown =====

Base Fare
$3

Distance
32.5 miles x $2.55/mile
$82.75

Time
4:30 minutes x $0.50/minute
$2.50

Total
$88

Best,
James

Community Manager – LA
Twitter – @Uber_LA

That’s what I thought when I purchased the earbuds on the bottom, the Philips O’Neill The Covert. They have good reviews. The construction seemed durable. They also looked comfortable. It wasn’t until I tried using the inline remote that I realized that I had been taking something for granted all along.

Below, you can see the difference in the profiles of of Philips earbuds at the bottom and the Apple EarPods on top. In Apple’s case, the volume buttons are at an equal level, but the center button is indented. In Philip’s case, the center button is slightly raised from the volume buttons which are also raised from the remote housing. When I first used the inline remote in the Philips earbuds, I couldn’t find the center button with my finger. I had too look down at it to see where my finger was.

This is an inline remote. If I have to look down at it to use it, it has failed one of its primary requirements. Someone at Apple thought about this aspect of usability. The inline remote in the EarPods feels like a continuous, smooth surface with a cutout in the middle. The texture of the center button is rough and the edges around it are sharp. It couldn’t be clearer which button is which.

This design isn’t new either. Apple has been doing this for years, as you can see on my 3 year old earbuds below.

This is good design. Apple didn’t have to make the inline remote usable. They could have arbitrarily designed it and called it a day, as Philips seems to have done. It reminds me that very few companies actually care about the little details that contribute to user experience.

I frequent many communities that are dedicated to my hobbies: photography, cars, running, computers. I find that there are too many posts in these forums, subreddits, etc. that ignore the art altogether. Photography communities are full of posts and reviews of gear. Car forums devolve into discussions of 0-60 times and power to weight ratios. Running communities are full of posts about the best shoes or the best gels. Computer related communities are the worst. They are just full of arguments about hardware.

Have we all lost our minds? Have we forgotten what we purchased these items for? If everyone spent as much time on honing and practicing their art as they did obsessing over their gear, then the world would be a more vibrant place.

Sometimes I find myself reading reviews of the newest mirrorless camera, or the latest L lens that Canon has released, only to realize that I am forgetting the true purpose of photography gear. I realize that I already have a great set of photo gear. It may not be what the pros use or the newest, but it easily gives me the potential to capture award winning photos. In the time that I spent watching videos and reading reviews, I could have experimented with the ND filter I made (post coming soon) or I could have taken a photo walk in one of the local hiking trails.

Having a car with a slightly faster 0-60 time isn’t going to increase your happiness by much. You know what will? Driving up a beautiful driving road and enjoying a scenic vista will.

Having the most sophisticated computer with the latest components won’t make you happy. Using that computer to create the next hot webapp or a piece of digital art will.

Don’t forget the true purpose of the things we buy. No one including you will remember how great your gear was. Go use the tools you have purchased to make yourself happier. Go create something and change the world.

In most Windows applications, pressing the large red X button on the top right closes that window. If that window is the last window left of that application, the whole application exits and you don’t see it in the start taskbar or in the notification area. You can assume that Skype on windows should behave the same way. Right?

Wrong! Pressing the X just collapses the window into the taskbar. That is the exact same behavior that is observed when you press the minimize button. I don’t get it. Whey even have the X up there if it does the exact same thing as the minimize button?

At this point, I am tempted to just ctrl+alt+del and kill the process, but instead I give Skype a chance and right click the icon on the taskbar to see if it gives me any options. And there it is! The elusive option to actually quit Skype.

I click the option and guess what! Skype pops up a dialog box asking me if I actually want to exit. Really? You think I right clicked the icon on the taskbar, and then clicked “quit skype” all on accident?

This sort of stuff really bugs me. Why is Skype ignoring already established patterns? Why is Skype making it so annoying to use their product?

Steve, You will be missed.

Vinny and I started the week by doing a massive problem set for Advanced Logic Design. We had Che Bella for dinner. It was my first time getting anything other than pizza there. I was satisfied.

Vinny and I grossly underestimated the amount of work that it would take to finish the problem set. We ended up spending all night doing it.

On Wednesday, I went to the YCombinator Q & A session at the Hunch.com HQ. It turned into a great networking event afterwards since there was free pizza and drinks. You can see the video from the event here.

Hunch has a MakerBot Cupcake CNC! I think they were still in the process of building it.

YC Fellow Harj Taggar and Reddit.com founder Alexis Ohanian answered questions and led the event. I think the purpose of the event was to spark interest in YC and in startups in general.

Friday was the Engineering Consortium Career Fair. IMHO it was the best career fair at Columbia so far. There were many startups that were looking for interns and full times. In addition to picking up a few leads on possible internships and full time jobs, I got a free shirt from Google! Google gave a shirt to anyone who could solve one of the puzzles they were giving out. Too bad that solving the puzzle doesn’t make it any easier to get a job there.

On Sunday I discovered that M2M sells jelly soda drinks! They were delicious, but unfortunately on the expensive side.

It seems that as time goes by, my netbook keeps collecting stickers. See if you can name them all!

The watch on the left is the Casio G-Shock GW9200-1 Riseman. It is a solar, atomic watch that gives temperature, altitude and pressure readings. I like it because it looks futuristic like a Gundam. The watch on the right is a Seiko SNK809 that was modified by a guy in Hong Kong called Yobokies.  I bought this watch because of its affordable price and similarity to the Sinn 656:

Justin and I spent most of Tuesday studying for our midterm on Wednesday.

Vinny noticed something funny about a business card I picked up at the local STA Travel. They should probably change that caption.

On Thursday, David Y., Sean and I went to midtown for a Microsoft tech talk.

The offices looked really nice, but the talk fell short of a real tech talk. It was more of a presentation of the features in the Bing search engine.

When Sean and I got back, Vinny, Sean, and I played a few hours of pick up sticks with the set we got at the tech talk.

A beautiful sunset I captured on Friday while waiting for the elevator in EC:

Friday evening was Dim Sum night that Jim and Tim organized. We had authentic Dim Sum dishes and live performers. The event was a success. People really loved the variety of foods we had.

Saturday was the start of the HackNY fall hackathon. It started with talks by almost a dozen startups. They showed off their APIs and datasets and suggested how we could work with them.

We then went to the 13th floor of the Courant Institute at NYU where we would be hacking all night.

Columbia had a great showing and we ended up taking up most of the space in a class room.

After spending more than 12 hours in the same room:

Our project ended up getting really complex and taking up 6 boards:

The sunrise over the NYC skyline:

One of the buildings nearby had pipes on its roof that made it look like an organ.

The project that Ryan, Hans, Jacob, Andrew, Vinny and I worked on was called “BarFight”. It was a location based rock paper scissors game. The game would pair up challengers based on the venues that they checked into on Foursquare. I worked on the icon, graphics and UI. Jacob and Ryan wrote all the server side code using SQL and Ruby on Rails. Hans and I did the UI using jQueryTouch. Vinny worked on some jQuery for the buttons. Andrew helped with rules and text. This is what the app looked on the iPhone home screen:

This is what the app looked like:

Unfortunately, we could not get the app to work. We didn’t have a good enough variety of abilities and hit a few major setbacks. I can’t wait to try harder and make something that works when the next hackathon comes around.

Any New Yorker would know that BxM4A is a Bronx to Manhattan bus run by the MTA in New York City. Looks like someone went crazy with the stock footage.