You fancy your­self a writer. Well what have you written?

You say that you’re a direc­tor. What the hell have you directed?

You con­sider your­self alive. Then tell me what you have lived through.

–con­ver­sa­tion i had this morn­ing with the reflec­tion in my mirror

So I have recently become a vic­tim of the cur­rent eco­nomic down­turn. I don’t like to use the word vic­tim because no one is really a vic­tim. We should all be work­ing towards mak­ing our­selves indis­pens­able at our places of work. But some­times it can’t be helped. If a com­pany doesn’t have money, it doesn’t have money. And although it’s not good to blame your­self and wal­low in guilt, this would be an appro­pri­ate time to reassess your­self, your skills, and your cur­rent direc­tion in life. Take a moment to ignore the impend­ing bar­rage of bills that are about to start falling on your head and think hard about whether you need a course adjust­ment in where the hell you’re steer­ing your life.  Based on that, I have come up with 8 sim­ple steps to stay­ing sane, stay­ing pro­duc­tive, and prop­erly nav­i­gat­ing unemployment.

1. Find a sup­port system

No one is an island. It’s true. Find some­one you trust: a friend, a sig­nif­i­cant other, fam­ily. Some­one to share the bur­den of this stress­ful sit­u­a­tion. If you’ve done every­thing you can but still can’t find some­one, maybe you have big­ger prob­lems than unem­ploy­ment and the real rea­son you got fired was due to you per­son­al­ity and not the econ­omy. But this isn’t a post about how to find friends and even the friend­less need to sur­vive. So I sug­gest to those peo­ple, get a dog. We all need inter­ac­tion to help alle­vi­ate the stress. Hell, get a ger­bil or a cat for that mat­ter. The point is, don’t deal with this alone.

2. Stick to a reg­i­mented schedule

No going to bed at 4am and wak­ing up at 1pm. You’re out of col­lege and you need to feel pro­duc­tive. Oth­er­wise, you’re just going to enter a down­ward spi­ral of self loathing and depres­sion. You should already be use to wak­ing up at a cer­tain time for work, don’t change your sched­ule. Go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time that you would have were you still employed. Not only will it give you a sense of nor­malcy, but you’ll also feel a lit­tle more pro­duc­tive. I have also com­mit­ted myself to tak­ing my lunch hour at the same time that I did when I was at work. In addi­tion, I have sched­uled out my day with spe­cific tasks to help me accom­plish the goals I defined and out­lined in Step 5.

3. Do some­thing physical

You need to stay healthy. As much as peo­ple hate to say it, a youth­ful appearence plays a big role in whether you will get hired. A seden­tary lifestyle for even a few weeks can play havoc on your appear­ance. Your skin color and tone, your pos­ture, your over­all appear­ance. There’s noth­ing bet­ter to help you look younger than some good old fash­ioned exer­cise. I’m per­son­ally going to med­i­tate each morn­ing for 10 min­utes right after I wake up and then go for a swim. In addi­tion, I meet three times a week with my friends at the gym. This also con­tribute to Step 1, inter­ac­tion with friends. And even though this might be more exer­cise than you’ve ever had, hey, what else are you gonna do with all your free time. Might as well get healthy.

4. Tighten your belt

You have no more income. Stop spend­ing money! Com­mon sense right? You’re not the United States Gov­ern­ment after all. Start look­ing for places that you can cut cor­ners. In addi­tion to not going out to din­ner as much, get cre­ative about it. The lease on my Mer­cedes is up in a few months. I’m going to see if I can return it early with­out penalty and get rid of my car pay­ment. I can drive my mom’s jalopy around for a few months until I get back on my feet. I also turned an extra room in my house into my office. Although I hate to give it up, the cur­rent hous­ing sit­u­a­tion should make it fairly easy to rent out.

5. Keep busy and stay productive

For God’s sake, keep busy. Day­time tele­vi­sion is for old peo­ple and house­wives, not the down­sized. Find a pur­pose. Make daily tasks and weekly objec­tives. In addi­tion to your resume build­ing and job search­ing, you need to find some­thing to fill the rest of the daily void. Read that book you’ve never had the time to read. Learn a new lan­guage. Learn a new skill. Build your­self a web­site. Start a project.

I have a laun­dry list of things that I haven’t had enough time to do and now I’m tak­ing advan­tage of the free time by stay­ing pro­duc­tive. I have a doc­u­men­tary that I’ve been putting together on my off time that I can now focus on. I have a few screen­play ideas that I’m plan­ning on mov­ing to stage two. I also have a few tele­vi­sion ideas that I have been mean­ing write treat­ments for so that I can pitch. I’m also been mean­ing to pol­ish up my reel and build by busi­ness web­site. The great part is that all of these goals will help me out of the hole that is unemployment.

6. Get outside

It is very easy to stay in your paja­mas and just loaf around the house. But if you do too much of that, I starts to bleed into your pro­duc­tive­ness. Going to apply for jobs on the inter­net? Go to a library or a cof­fee shop with inter­net. Read­ing the Clas­si­fieds? Do it some­where pub­lic. In addi­tion to feel­ing like a part of soci­ety, the change of scenery will do you good. Vit­a­min D from the sun has been proven to fight depression.

7. Be hum­ble and believe in yourself.

Be hum­ble with your­self and you won’t take some of the sac­ri­fices you’ll be mak­ing as hard. Although you need a cer­tain amount of con­fi­dence to sur­vive in today’s world, don’t think of your­self as invin­ci­ble. Sh#t hap­pens to the best of peo­ple. If you stop think­ing about your­self as Super­man, you might have a chance to for­give the sit­u­a­tion, get over your­self, and move for­ward. You’re going to have to make some choices that you think are beneath you and being hum­ble will help you swal­low that pill called pride. I was for­tu­nate to just be cut to part time, but if I had been fired out­right, it would have been hard to not take it per­sonal. But you just have to believe that your self worth isn’t depen­dent on how oth­ers per­ceive you. You can never know the exten­u­at­ing cir­cum­stances that moti­vated which depart­ment got cut. For all you know, Joe Schmoe over in receiv­ing might be the nephew of the long lost sis­ter of the boss.

I’ve been pretty pub­lic with my down­siz­ing. I unabashedly broad­casted my job sta­tus on Face­book. And I’ve twit­tered it as well as writ­ten about it here on my blog. Sure there’s peo­ple out there that I’d rather not know, then again maybe there’s peo­ple our there that might have a job for me. I believe enough in myself to know that my friends won’t judge me based on my cur­rent employ­ment sit­u­a­tion. And if they do and con­tact me less, then bet­ter for me. Who needs friends like that.  I also have enough belief in myself that this is only a tem­po­rary sit­u­a­tion. This is some­thing that I will be able to look back upon as a minor hic­cup in the long road that is my career to suc­cess. And how we han­dle our­selves in the tough­est of times is the true marker of what kind of per­son we really are.

8. Get a new job

Get a new job dumb dumb. Use your new found free time to take stock of your skills, pol­ish up your resumen, renew acquain­tances, and hit the pave­ment hard. After all, you can’t stay job­less forever.

• just had my first foray into new age http://www.drzail.com The psy­cho babel was ques­tion­able but the adjust­ment was right on. #fb #
• @Sabri­naGee That’s ridonku­lous #
• Why are old peo­ple the slow­est dri­vers? Shouldn’t they be the MOST rushed? After all, they do have the short­est time left to live. #fb #
• New Post on my blog: Kogi BBQ stole their taco idea from ME!!!: Yes you read my title right,.. http://tinyurl.com/d579pb #
• Those must be fake! Look how skinny she is… That’d be phys­i­cally impos­si­ble! …but I bet you couldn’t drown her. *gulp *gulp #
• Those must be fake! Look how skinny she is… That’d be phys­i­cally impos­si­ble! …but I bet you couldn’t drown her. *gulp *gulp #fb #
• some peo­ple just don’t under­stand love. and sadly, those peo­ple will be doomed to never enjoy it. #fb #
• is the lat­est vic­tim of the eco­nomic down­turn. #
• hasn’t left the house all day. And hasn’t put a shirt on either. #fb #
• can’t take much more of this devil lan­guage. argh­h­hhh! my ears are bleed­ing! #fb #
• New Post on my blog: The best Red Vel­vet cup­cakes in LA are not from Sprinkes:
  There’s a de.. http://tinyurl.com/ctvms4 #
• New Post on my blog: The best Red Vel­vet cup­cakes in LA are not from Sprin­kles. http://www.kwongfucius.com #fb #

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There’s a debate rag­ing through­out the Los Ange­les food crowd. No not which Kogi truck is the best but who makes the best Red Vel­vet cup­cake? The trendy choice is Sprin­kles in Bev­erly Hills. But that’s so unin­spired. True cup­cake afi­ciona­dos say that the over rated Sprin­kles is for the unin­formed masses who just like to fol­low trends. They wait hours in line like lem­mings for a $4 cup­cake com­pletely unaware there are other places in LA that make Red Vel­vet so much bet­ter. …really now? I’m not a lem­ming and I’m going to have to decide for myself. So this past week­end, I decided do an in depth taste test and try all three cup­cakes back to back to back. Still on a sugar high, I’m writ­ing to report back to you all that Sprin­kles indeed does not make the best Red Vel­vet cupcake.

Red Vel­vet became pop­u­lar dur­ing World War II when there was a sugar short­age. Sugar was being reserved for our troops and inven­tive bak­ers look­ing for an alter­na­tive sweet­ener for their choco­late cakes stum­bled upon an old south­ern recipe called The Choco­late Cake of the South that used beets for sweet­en­ing. An unin­ten­tional side effect was that the cakes turned red. Nowa­days, the beets have been removed and replaced with red food col­or­ing. Also, the sugar and cocoa pow­der has returned for a more tra­di­tional choco­late cake.  Renamed Red Vel­vet, the south­ern recipe has become so pop­u­lar that even Jes­sica Simp­son had it as her wed­ding cake. But we all know how that mar­riage turned out.

Bas­tard stepchild of real cake and cousin to the muf­fin, cup­cakes in my opin­ion are the ideal size. When done right, you get the right ratio of moist cake mid­dle, firm cupcake-top, and frost­ing in each bite. And there in a nut­shell was my judg­ing cri­te­rion. In addi­tion to look­ing for a great cream cheese frost­ing, I had every­thing I needed to get all Iron Chef on the fol­low­ing three bak­eries: Sprin­kles, Dots, and Aun­tie Em’s Kitchen.

Sprin­kles $3.25

Sprin­kles Red Velvet

Now, I’ve never actu­ally been to Sprin­kles. Two hours seems like a long wait for a cup­cake. For­tu­nately, I have a friend that works there. She brings over dozens of cup­cakes for free when­ever I have a house party. But in an attempt to get the whole expe­ri­ence, I decided to go and brave the line just like every­one else. The wait was about 45 min­utes and every­one in line was friendly. There was a good mix of reg­u­lars and tourists tak­ing pic­tures, “Look Ma! I went to Sprin­kle!” Now even though I didn’t think Sprin­kles had the best cup­cake, what they did get right was their frost­ing to cake ratio. The other two cup­cake pur­vey­ors either had way too much frost­ing or way too lit­tle. But although they had just the right amount of frost­ing, it was by far the sweet­est of the three and in my opin­ion way too sweet. Sprin­kles also uses a lot of pow­dered sugar which ends up giv­ing the frost­ing a gran­u­lar mouth feel. But my biggest quib­ble is that their frost­ing doesn’t have the nice tang that I look for in a cream cheese frost­ing. I also had a minor gripe about the cake itself because it was a lit­tle doughy. But this wasn’t that notice­able when eaten with the frosting.

Dots $2.75

Dots Red Velvet

Dots runs their busi­ness out of a small lit­tle store in Pasadena and had almost sold out for the day. Although still damn good, Dots was unfor­tu­nately the worst of the three. The cake was way too doughy and their ane­mic amount of frost­ing was not able to hide it. As for their frost­ing, it was too sweet and not cream cheesy enough for my taste.  But even though not my favorite, they can’t be doing that bad because they opened up a new loca­tion in Old Town Pasadena.

And the win­ner is:

Aun­tie Em’s Kitchen $3.50

Aun­tie Em’s Red Velvet

Although Aun­tie Em’s had way too much frost­ing on their cake, the tart­ness was refresh­ing. The cake was moist and sup­ple and by far the best. It had a nice springy tex­ture that popped back up after tak­ing a bite. And if you didn’t force your­self to fin­ish all the frost­ing, you had the per­fect Red Vel­vet cup­cake. They were also the only one to get inven­tive by adding a touch of coconut sprin­kles around the edge. Aun­tie Em’s has the feel of a casual neigh­bor­hood restau­rant and I ended up eat­ing brunch there. They have free help your­self, all-you-can-drink cof­fee and a great selec­tion of omelets. You can’t go wrong with this place and of the three, this is prob­a­bly the only place that I will go back to.

So there you go. Try them for your­selves and let me know what you think.

Kogi BBQ

Yes you read my title right, Kogi BBQ stole their Korean taco idea from me. Really! It was a cold Fri­day night and I had just fin­ished K-clubbing at Vel­vet Room. My party found its way over to El Tau­rino on the south­ern bor­der of Kore­atown. The late night line was extra long with the usual mix­ture of drunk Kore­ans and Mex­i­can cow­boys, and I found myself talk­ing to the guy behind me. He intro­duced him­self as Mark and we started talk­ing about the menu. “No, I’ve never had the brain taco”, I told him. Then in a moment of bril­liance, I pro­claimed, “But what I could REALLY go for is a Kalbi taco …with like Kim Chi.” BAM and there you have it.

No, not really. Mark Manguera founder of Kogi BBQ didn’t steal the idea from me, but I’m pretty sure a scene like this has played out hun­dreds of times over at El Tau­rino. You get a bunch of drunk Kore­ans eat­ing tacos on a nightly basis and it was inevitable for one entre­pre­neur­ial chef to put 2 and 2 together. In fact, this seems to be the story that Kogi alludes to on their web­site:

…Kogi may never have become more than a ran­dom idea after a late night out on the town.

El Tau­rino or Kogi? Can you tell the difference?

After all, the Los Ange­les Kore­atown has the largest pop­u­la­tion of Kore­ans out­side of Seoul. Seoul! That’s more Kore­ans than any other city in Korea except Seoul. So as Kore­atown expands, it was inevitable for Kore­ans to start infring­ing on other eth­nic neigh­bor­hoods. There’s cur­rently some increased ten­sion in Lit­tle Tokyo where the num­ber of Korean owned busi­nesses and res­i­dents are start­ing to rival the num­ber of Japan­ese. For­tu­nately, Kore­ans and their His­panic neigh­bors to the south of K-town have found a way to har­mo­niously coex­ist.  On any given night, it is pos­si­ble to find a 50/50 mix of Kore­ans and Mex­i­cans stand­ing in line at El Tau­rino and a hand­ful of Mex­i­cans shop­ping at Korean gro­cery stores. Kogi BBQ is the inevitable child of this  cul­tural inter­min­gling. But inevitabil­ity aside, the inter­est­ing cul­tural mash-up that is the Korean taco is not wholly orig­i­nal. After all, Nobu Mat­suhisa made his name by mix­ing Japan­ese tech­niques with South Amer­i­can ingre­di­ents. But lets not take any­thing away from Mark. It took a true entre­pre­neur to do what he’s done because even a great idea is noth­ing with­out the right vehi­cle; and his vehi­cle of choice was a taco truck.

The Lord of the Rings loves Kogi

On another note, Kogi BBQ is the next in a line of food crazes fol­low­ing Pinkberry and Sprin­kles to hit Los Ange­les. Remem­ber them? Two hour waits for a $4 cup­cake? It’s as if LA has an addic­tion to wait­ing inor­di­nate amounts of time in line for good, but not great, food. As if track­ing down a taco truck and wait­ing an hour in a park­ing lot before the truck even arrives cements their sta­tus as true food­ies and ver­i­fies their devo­tion to great cui­sine. As if such an act was on par with trav­el­ing halfway around the world for the per­fect cup of joe or going to Paris for a baguette. I think the Kogi craze just proves  LA’s lemming-like devo­tion to trends. Hell, if movie stars are going then it must be good. I mean, THEY really CAN go to Paris for bread. Add on top of our desire for foodie sta­tus our obses­sion with star stalk­ing and how can Kogi not be a win­ner. We order over-priced drinks at the bars of celebrity restau­rants we can’t afford to eat at on a weekly basis hop­ing to be there on the same night that Paris Hilton shows up drunk. Why? So that we can say we’re liv­ing the Hol­ly­wood dream. “What did you do last night?” “Oh, I went to the same restau­rant as Paris Hilton.” Well with $2 tacos, Kogi makes that din­ing expe­ri­ence acces­si­ble to the masses. I have to admit, I got caught up in the hype. I was curi­ous what I was miss­ing out on. I mean seri­ously, a 600 per­son line for tacos? It can’t be that good.

My Kogi cherry got popped when I spot­ted the truck in Sil­ver Lake. Just by luck, I was dri­ving when I spot­ted a hip­ster crowd con­gre­gat­ing in a park­ing lot. Notic­ing a yet to be opened taco truck, I knew what I had for­tu­itously stum­bled upon. With only about 20 hip­sters in line, I knew I couldn’t pass this up. Skinny jeans, fedo­ras, scarves, and Amer­i­can Apparel were all in atten­dance. The talk of the line was micro-blogging and it seemed like every­one had their cam­eras out, myself included. I ended up wait­ing in line for roughly 30 mins, which now after try­ing them is the max that I’d be will­ing to wait.  But before I had left, the line had dou­bled. As I got to the front of the line, I looked up into the truck to see if I could rec­og­nize any of the taco magi­cians from their press blitz. Roy? Roy? There were four peo­ple cramped into the rolling sar­dine can. The guy tak­ing the orders was Korean but not Roy. The rest were …Mexican?

Some things stay the same.

I guess some things stay the same. Either way, I was not deterred. I ordered 1 Tofu, 1 Kalbi, and 1 Spicy Pork taco. After hav­ing my name called, I found a spot behind the truck to gob­ble down my treats. I put on my Iron Chef face and took my first bite. To my dis­ap­point­ment, my kalbi and spicy pork meat were over­cooked. After fin­ish­ing my order, I came to this sad con­clu­sion …they all tasted the same. If I took a blind taste test, the only one I could pick out would be the tofu because of the tex­ture. Over­all, on a scale of 1–5, I would give it a 3. If I had a taco crav­ing, this wouldn’t sat­isfy it. If I had a kalbi crav­ing, this wouldn’t sat­isfy it either. It’s some­thing all its own. I guess the real judg­ment is that, yes, I would eat it again. I wouldn’t drive across Los Ange­les for it like Father’s Office, but if I was drunk and they were parked out­side a club, it’d be worth wait­ing in line for 30 minutes.

So if the tacos weren’t that great, then who are the real stars? I’d have to say Twit­ter, the inter­net, blog­ging, and those damn Asians with their damn cam­eras.  That’s an even more annoy­ing trend that I’ve noticed hap­pen­ing around Los Ange­les — Asians show­ing up at five star restau­rants and whip­ping their cam­eras out to take pic­tures of their food. Talk about rein­forc­ing a stereo­type. Sadly, I’m one of these Asians. I was at the Gor­don Ram­say restau­rant last month and was unabashedly orga­niz­ing a pho­to­shoot with my salt and pep­per shaker when i noticed I wasn’t the only one. There were three other tables doing the same thing! Flash. Flash. Flash. The reg­u­lars must think we’re crazy …or never get out. “These Asians. They’re not used to see­ing food with­out dog in it.” Any­way, this whole Kogi craze wouldn’t be pos­si­ble with­out our obses­sion with cam­era phones, an addic­tion to post­ing all of our pho­tos on Face­book, and the on-demand updates that Twit­ter makes possible.

I can’t say that I was dis­ap­pointed. Over­all, I got what I expected. Pinkberry was good but not 2 hours in line good.  It’s the same with Kogi. If you’re up for some­thing unique and if the line is not too long or you don’t have to drive around like you’re look­ing for a secret rave, Kogi is worth the $2. I guess I went look­ing for an epiphany and I shouldn’t have. A new way to expe­ri­ence Korean food, a rab­bit hole through which I once entered, I would never return. But what I got instead was a slightly salty per­spec­tive on the chang­ing cul­tural demo­graph­ics of Los Ange­les. But take this from me, if you don’t want to brave the lines, give it some time. I’m sure it’s just a mat­ter of time before the idea is copied across Kore­atown and you’ll be able to order kalbi tacos every­where. Because after all, that’s what we Asians do best, copy a good idea. But if you want to do what Los Ange­leans do best, suf­fer through a line so that you can say you were one of the orig­i­nal devo­tees, go here.