Ziwei Z

NYC Summer

“Have fun in New York!”, said every one of our friends and family knowing full well that Boston was the first leg of our summer trip. New York really is one of a kind. Every time I visit, I feel a magnetic draw to it that casts doubt on my increasingly entrenched west-coast-ness. But that pull usually subsides almost as soon as I board the flight back to LA, the land of never having to walk home carrying your groceries. For now, a visit every couple of years to soak in the NYC magic is enough for me. There is…

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October 9, 2021

Travel

Seattle Revisited

First flight in 16 months! I think this must be the longest I’ve not flown in my life since I first started flying. Packing, planning, and traveling efficiently are definitely skills that require brushing up, but I was grateful and thrilled once the trip was in progress. Seattle is green as ever. Last time I visited was with my friend Michelle about five years ago (posted here and here!). I was just about to start my first big adult job and she was waiting to get into medical school. Now she’s matured into a medical resident living in Seattle. Compared…

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July 5, 2021

Travel

Out in the Desert

More than five months… that is by far the longest hiatus I’ve had on this blog in the five and half years I’ve had it! Life is looking pretty different now compared to the last time I posted. My trip to SLO was an attempt to escape from the various stresses I was feeling. I tried my best but it was hard not to feeling bogged down by responsibilities and emotions that followed me from LA. One thing I was more than happy not to escape from was messages from an enthusiastic and charming boy named Marc. Flashforward three months,…

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April 25, 2021

Travel

Slow in SLO

Recently I went on a very solo, very socially distanced retreat to San Luis Obispo for a couple days, hoping to feel a semblance of normality and escape. My hotel had a disposable camera in the room so I opened it without thinking twice. I like the idea of having a limited number of shots when traveling, but I wasn’t confident enough in my untested film camera skills to abandon my DSLR altogether. I took photos with both. As soon as I returned to LA, I eagerly got the disposable camera developed and within a day, received the scanned version…

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November 20, 2020

Travel

Joshua Tree

A place like Joshua Tree makes me feel closer to a God that I don’t even believe in. There is an air of magic over it, almost separate from reality. Yet if anything, it’s more real than all the rest of the manmade reality in which I live. I don’t know how I haven’t been to Joshua Tree in my thirteen years of living in California, but I’m not sure I could have ever been as grateful to see it as right now. I remember dismissing a friend who said that life might never go back to “normal” a few…

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September 26, 2020

Fashion

Los Angeles

Calm in the Chaos

After a productive day at my regular job, I was unusually energetic for my live graduate school class that I started this May. The first semester was coming to an end, and I was ready learn to some more Python and finish strong. Ten minutes into the class, instead of nodding along with my classmates on Zoom, I found myself lying on the floor next to my new kitten Celine, waiting for my wifi modem to reset for the 5th time. This is the kind of scenario that could potentially turn me an anxious and tense mess. While I could…

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August 12, 2020