I got a library card by showing proof of residence. That enabled me to get free books, ebooks, movies, and cds. The library card also qualified me to get CulturePass, which gives free tickets to attractions and museums across the city.

I went to Shakespeare in the Park for multiple years. I also went to some SummerStage events.

I volunteered at some parks, like the Hudson River Park, which allowed me to get park membership. I haven’t redeemed the park membership for discounts on food and activities near the park yet, but it is a feature of the membership.

I got the covid vaccine, so I was able to sign up for a Public theater membership. I’m probably not going to do much with it, but if I did want to watch Public theater shows, then it would be useful.

I won tickets in the Hamilton lottery, so I only had to pay 10$ for tickets instead of a lot of money.

I use the Seated app, so I can earn gift cards for eating out at restaurants.

I joined a “Buy Nothing” Facebook group, so I was able to pick up some decent goodies from people in the neighborhood.

I had a bunch of perks from my old job, like discounted and free tickets to sports games, plays, and attractions, company parties, team bonding events, free clothes and swag, gift cards, a desktop computer, discounted food, free books, and more.

There are a bunch of inexpensive food places in the city. One of the best places near my old workplace was Haandi. I went there with some friends a number of times for the lunch buffet. It had a solid selection of Pakistani food for a reasonable price.

I made a 1iota account, which allowed me to sign up for a bunch of free events in the city such as movie premieres and talk show viewings. It’s not easy to win these, but it is cool to be part of the audience. One caveat is that the time of day of these events are not usually convenient especially if you have a full time job and you have to show up rather early to the venue.

Rush tickets from the Met Opera

Free Fridays from the NY Philharmonic Orchestra

I’ll update this list as I think of more deals that I had in NY

I recently looked up an actual recipe for how to poach an egg since I was interested in making Eggs Benedict. I didn’t end up buying all the ingredients for an Eggs Benedict, but I did buy eggs so I decided to practice poaching them. I looked at Alton Brown’s recipe and it worked like a charm. The first time around, I messed with the egg a bit too much since I thought I didn’t do the whirlpool method properly. The second time I left it alone, but it turned out that I needed more than 5 minutes – like 10 minutes for it to be cooked properly. I think that the water wasn’t hot enough when I did it. After looking up the science behind poaching eggs, it was cool to read that the vinegar was the main reason why the egg keeps its shape. All this time I could’ve looked this stuff up, but now I finally know how to poach an egg for real.

Throughout the years, I have eaten at restaurants on numerous occasions. I’m not a very picky eater so I enjoy most of what I eat. I feel that my eating personality can change vary depending on the people and the situation. When I eat with family, I’m usually not the one paying the bill. So, I’m a bit more comfortable at the table and I eat like normal. I would say that’s the usual eating personality – eating until I’m full and not talking too much. When I am with friends and we have to pay for ourselves, I might talk a bit more but I definitely eat less than with family. I try to order food that will cost a similar amount or less than the other people, which makes it good for either splitting the check evenly or paying for my own food. I don’t know other people’s comfort level with their own finances, so I try to avoid any unpleasant situation. If I’m with family and family friends, I eat a lot. Like I usually don’t have anything to contribute in the conversations and I let the more sociable people shine in the spotlight. I’m completely content with cleaning up the table. I don’t like it when it comes to the end and then people try to force me to eat more. In general people forcing me to do something I don’t want to do is unpleasant. Perhaps that’s why I’m not where I thought I could be in life, but that’s probably for a different blog post. Another eating personality that I have is when I try to facilitate the conversation. This doesn’t happen very often since the requirements for this to occur don’t usually pop up. But I have done it in the past. I don’t end up eating too much and the conversation lasts for a decent amount of time until I run out of things to talk about. Then, I sit there eating, hoping that they pick up the conversation, regretting that I made the decision to make conversation, dying slowly. Then of course there is the eating alone. I almost never eat at a restaurant alone. I think that I usually take the food to go in those situations. But it has happened before. I buy a normal entree (and a side if it’s a fast food restaurant). I just eat the food while people watching for a few minutes. Then I leave. People watching can be rather relaxing.

In terms of stuff I eat and don’t eat, I would say that I enjoy most cuisines. There are some dishes in each cuisine that I might not prefer, but I’ll at least try a bit of the dish. Some dishes that I don’t like from Chinese food includes that salted duck egg yolk dish and the thousand year egg. I just don’t get why people like preserved eggs. Also, eating ginger when it’s cut like bamboo shoots is another thing I dislike. I’m like “Wow, I found a tasty bamboo shoot – what a great scenario for my stomach.” but then I put it in my mouth and then it’s like “Oh. This is ginger.” and then I put it in my napkin. I think ginger is a good plant for making food taste a certain way and maybe for medicinal purposes. But I do not enjoy eating it straight. Another dish that isn’t Chinese but I don’t think I would try is the chicken egg dish where the chicken is like a fetus and then you eat the egg with the fetus. I think it’s called balut. Just the look of it deters me from trying it out. When you think of other exotic foods, I think I would give them a try, but I don’t know if I could do balut.

I read about an 11 minute workout on NYTimes and I thought I would try it out. After a few weeks of doing it once per week, I think that it has been pretty nice. I can definitely feel the workout the day of and the day after. Also, I think that my cardio has improved in part because of this workout. The amount of necessary space is pretty minimal, which is great for working out in the apartment. The split squat jumps are the toughest part for sure, but after that passes, I feel like the second half of the workout is manageable and I feel somewhat accomplished. For a couple weeks, I would do another cardio workout by running around a track, but I stopped doing that since it got colder outside. I don’t think that this workout can be a complete replacement for other workouts like running, swimming, and stuff like that, but it is a solid workout to do during the pandemic when going outside is tougher and space is limited. I am a relatively athletic person so I don’t think that I am drastically more fit, but I plan on doing this workout every Monday until I don’t. I thought about increasing the frequency of the workout per week, but I thought that it’d be better to be consistent. I might do more in the future. Before the pandemic like in 2017 – 2019, I used to work out 2 to 4 times a week for about 30 minutes to an hour. Nowadays, I just don’t feel motivated to work out that much so I’m committing to at least 1 workout per week.

Workout details:

1 minute of easy jumping jacks, to warm up

1 minute of modified burpees (without push-ups)

1 minute of walking in place

1 minute of high-knee running in place

1 minute of walking in place

1 minute of split squat jumps (starting and ending in the lunge position, while alternating which leg lands forward)

1 minute of walking in place

1 minute of high-knee running in place

1 minute of walking in place

1 minute of squat jumps

1 minute of walking in place, to cool down

I would consider myself as risk averse. I haven’t capitalized on any of the trendy stocks and whatnot, but in general I am comfortable with my investment strategy. I think that is one of the more important things about investing. There are tons of investment videos and articles out there, but if I try a strategy that I am not comfortable with, if it does bad then I would dwell on it for a while. If it does well, then perhaps I get overzealous and make even riskier decisions.

I had a conversation with a friend recently that I should probably take more risks at least financially. After thinking about my current strategy and how I can iterate on it, I think that I would be comfortable with contributing more.

My thinking is that I’ll have the majority of my investments in mutual funds and index funds. Then, I’ll have some stocks that I’m tracking just for fun. I’ll choose these based on random articles that I read or advice from friends/family and after some research. I don’t really know much about the various metrics that are in financial reports and such. I try to read a little bit about the company mission and their products. If I am comfortable with what they are doing, then I am willing to buy some shares. After that, I want to get a core of dividend stocks. I keep reading about passive income and multiple revenue streams and blah blah blah. I sat on the information for a while, but I finally decided that it could be a good thing to consider. For these stocks, I’m probably just going to get companies that I think are solid and stable. Since these stocks will not be a large percentage of my portfolio, I’m not going to be gaining much from the dividends in the near future. Then, over the months and years, I’ll contribute more to each of the investments and I hope that they’ll grow enough to the point where I will have enough for retirement.

Over the long term, I’ll consider adding real estate to my investment strategy. I’m not really sure where I want to spend the rest of my life and I don’t think I’m settling down any time soon. I am pretty against investing in real estate that I am not living in. I’ll start investing in real estate when I am ready to buy a place and live there for an extended period of time. If I ever move from that place, I’ll think about renting it out. Renting comes with some headaches, but that’ll be a problem to think about for future me.

I’ve played chess recreationally for a bunch of years. I don’t remember when I first learned how to play, but I think I was in a chess club in elementary school. There weren’t very many other people in the club, but it was neat to learn the basics with other people using a chess board on a wall – it was a vertical hanging board that had little pockets so you could place the flat pieces without falling off (if that makes any sense). Anyways, I think our club had a mini tournament and I did pretty well. After elementary school, I didn’t pursue it any further, just playing with my family on occasion and perhaps a few times with my middle school and high school friends. My memory is pretty horrible when it comes to this sort of thing. In college, one of my roommates was really interested in chess. He had played when he was young as well and he actually competed in local tournaments. His enthusiasm for the game reignited my interest in the game and led me to play more, online and in person. I never beat him, but it was fun nevertheless. I find the puzzles / tactics of these chess websites really fun. lichess and chess.com have really nice puzzles that only require a few moves to complete, but they aren’t trivial. Also, they have a nice feature where they try to give you puzzles that match your chess “rating”. Nowadays, I spend more time playing these puzzles than I do against real people. I think that the puzzles have helped me think a bit more critically about the game, but I also feel that in a real game, I am unsure when I am in a puzzle scenario or not. This definitely arose when I recently played a high school friend in a game with a 10 minute time limit. I could definitely think of some good moves to play to take advantage of the board, but I wasn’t thinking quick enough to win. That is why I prefer the longer style of games. I plan to only play chess for fun, but we’ll see – if I do somehow unlock the secret of the game through these puzzles, I may consider playing more frequently.