The Priya Parker Project: The Back Story

It's been a month since I quit my job. A job that I had passionately loved.  A job with incredible coworkers. I was good at my job and it made me good money that I got to travel around the world with and pay off $60k in car and school loans. A job that gave me a lot of flexibility to work from home in Portland. 

But something was missing. Be it some growing pains, office politics, or the fact that I was not in the office regularly - which makes you the last person to know about anything, somehow the need for me to have fun at my job began to allude me. I can pinpoint exactly that time I started to lose that fun feeling. August 7th, 2013. Three weeks after getting struck by lightening on a rooftop deck in Seattle, and a week after recovering from emergency surgery. I remember myself getting admitted for an inpatient hospital stay, and the first thing I told my husband was, "Call my bosses and tell them I will be missing work." I was in so much pain and yet all I could think about was all of the work piling up the following week. When I finally opened up my laptop, after a week of recovery, I wondered why I even stressed out so much? What am I doing to myself? How did I let all this stress almost kill me? Is this really how I want to live? Shit still went on without me. My coworkers picked up my workload. My accounts got handled. Life went on and continues to goes on.

By January 2014, I started feeling like a person going through the motions. My husband and I were trying to have a baby, and that stress along with work stunted any joy I had inside of me. I started going to therapy to talk about it, and he made me realize that I didn't take long deep breathes when I spoke about my job and that I need to start changing the way I thought about things. And he was right. Little did I know that it would take me the entire 2014 to really start changing my thoughts and my attitude towards what I want from life. Along the way I met with a career coach, Aubrie, who helped me understand why I needed to feel like I am having fun and and encouraged me to explore more with what brings me true joy. When I was in Medellin Colombia in the fall, I met Jade, who was from Seattle (small world right?),  and she taught me about about the power of affirmations and living life as though you already have everything you need because the universe will provide. Even then, I still felt like I was standing on the diving board looking down at the water knowing that I needed to jump. That I have to jump. That there were no other options. But I didn't really know when to do it or if I was ready to dive into the water.

After coming back to Colombia, some things at the job unfolded, and somehow I am now blessed with this time off. I had been working 11 years straight with no real break, and now I can actually sleep in and relax without any deadlines and upset accounts calling or emailing all hours of the day. I'm not going to lie. Going from 45-55+hr day/night work weeks to zero responsibilities is shocking. Although I am using this time to learn new things, I still feel bored at times. There were no schedules or deadlines to meet. Five years at the same job going 100mph nonstop to nothing requires a lot of detox.

Early January I went on a vision quest with my best friend. She, herself, had recently made huge life decisions and moved to LA to give her daughter a real shot at becoming a child actress. So it was her brave energy that I needed to be next to after taking the plunge into unemployment. I recall being in Joshua Tree National Park and the rocks whispering things to me I was not ready to hear but needed to listen to. The next day we did a cleansing ceremony, and more messages came to me. Again, I was not ready to accept it. When I got home, I spoke to my friends and family and they all said the same thing.

"Who cares, Esther? Just do it!" 

And I wanted to do it. But the fear. The fear was holding me back. Correction: IS holding me back.

After a box wine and karaoke night, a friend sent me Priya Parker's Youtube on quitting and rebooting your life. Call it divine intervention, but it is exactly what I need to do right at this moment in order for me to take the messages I have been receiving and put it into good use.

There are 7 steps to rebooting I will be documenting on my blog  for the next few weeks.

STEP 1 (Mental & Emotional level)- Take the obituary test and make sure you pass: Write down your Obituary on paper. Answering basic questions like; how do you I want to live my life? etc.

STEP 2 (Mental & Emotional level) – Passion comic strip: What passion do you have? Interview 5-10 close people ask them When they have seen you happy? Draw on paper cartoon series about your passion and thing you wish to do or did till now.

STEP 3 (Physical & Emotional)- Get comfortable with this concept: Build your muscles for discomfort i.e. get habituated with awkward and humiliating situations in life! Just for the experiment she has suggested following 3 crazy ways -

(a)      Start singing in public places when in queue or standing. Notice your emotions inside  the body (heart),and feelings while doing this.

(b)      Go outside for dinner alone (habit of staying alone), without reading  material, mobile or anything to entertain

(c)      Stand-up facing back towards door in a lift (different from others)

STEP 4 (Mental & Emotion)- Life Sentence: Give yourself a life sentence, like many organization and companies generally have their mission and vision statements. Ask questions like, What do I value? What is purpose of my life?,etc see below:

A. What are the qualities and values that I bring with me (regardless of family or at work)?

B. What is that I actually Do?

C. Why I do all this? It is most difficult but important task. It helps in analysing your life and help you to make future decision-making about life

STEP 5 (Finance)-  Dwindling-Cash Experiment:  To check how much money is enough money for you to live a normal life. In this experiments you first note down how much money you spend on yourself per month (not how much you earn) . Take that amount from bank and put it in an envelope. Then divide it into 4 parts (40%, 30%, 20% and 10% of total).  Then expose yourself to 4 different money parts one in each week. Start with 40% money for first week, then 30% in next week, etc. Note down what you did in each week and how did you manage e.g.  live with this much money for one week each to know how much money is sufficient for you/your habits/constraints/spending pattern, mind-set, etc. Find out what amount you are comfortable with and live on. Build a financial model and see how much you need to “reboot” your life.

STEP 6 (Mental) – Help Somebody else: Identify 5 different friends/person who are doing different and interesting jobs. Ask them whether you can spend 1 hour with them to solve any of their difficult problem in their business. It will build habit , how can I help others and  realize which problems you can/can’t solve ( your strength weakness analysis).

STEP 7 (Mental & Emotional) – Social accountability & PR:  Invite your 7 ‘close’ friends and tell them about your plan of quitting current job and rebooting life. Note their Suggestions and reactions. This will help you to know about your Social accountability and PR groups practice.

If anyone wants to go on this journey with me you are more than welcome! I was going to start right off with the obit, but realized I wanted to document the back story for my own reading in order to see the progress being made. That's the project manager in me doing it.  LOL! For anyone going through a similar journey, I wish you all the best this universe has to offer.

Check out the video in the link below.

PRIYA PARKER: Quit Your Life & Reboot

Cooper's Journey: Living With A Dog With Separation Anxiety

I wrote the first half in 2013, and there is an 2015 update in the second half of the blog. Enjoy!

MAY 2013: It's been a while since I've written a blog. Things have been going well this year although I'm overwhelmed by the fact that it's already May! Nearly half way through 2013!!!!!

In late January my husband and I decided to adopt a shelter dog from a rescue facility in Aloha, OR. We had no real intention to get a dog that fateful day in January, and had only wanted to walk some dogs in Petco for fun while on our way to Home Depot. Before we were set to leave, I saw a dog out of the corner of my eye pressing on the pen and pleading with his eyes to take him home. It was one of the dogs we had walked and he had done well walking on a leash. The look on his face melted my heart and I looked at my husband and he then asked the rescue worker about how to adopt him.

We changed the dog's name from Vilmer to Cooper, and immediately fell in love with his energetic personality and his desire to cuddle and learn new tricks for food. I mean, look at his eyes? How could you not fall in love?

Having adopted a shelter dog with lots of baggage in the past, I was very worried that this would be another "Bandito" situation (which you can read more about in an old blog post). A lot of shelter dogs come with issues that may have placed them in shelters in the first place. Even when you want to do the right thing and give them a good home, for many of them the damage is already too much. There is very little you can do except accomodate their needs and proactively manage the issues they cannot change from.

So what was Cooper's baggage? Well, we learned very quickly that Cooper suffers from severe separation anxiety. We are talking very high-end so stressed out that he shits, pees, and injures himself trying to escape from his crate or literally chewing the front door down. Thank goodness he's only 13 pounds! Even if it was for a quick step outside to grab the mail, Cooper had to be right by the door to make sure you came back to get him. Luckily for him I work from home so the time he stays home by himself is very limited. However, even in that limited time he manages to find a way to bleed himself from digging and has even escaped the crate a few times and ended up doing damage in the house.

During that time both my husband and I did lots and lots of reading about training dogs with separation anxiety. We watched tons of videos from the library, Amazon, and Youtube, and listened to many of our friends and families with pets and their suggestions. We used the thunder shirt, kong, pheromones,  natural herbs, and did everything we could make his time alone tolerable and comfortable.  We stagger train him to be on his own to this day. Unfortunately, nothing worked for the longest time. It's very hard to see our dog injure himself and bleed while having to clean up his poop and pee every time we left. We even recorded him to see what he did when we were gone and it was difficult to watch how bad his anxiety got. I wondered, "Why does he think we are going to abandon him when we love him so much?"

Finally, one day I brought it up to my vet and she recommended putting Cooper on Fluoxetine, or Prozac. At first I balked at the idea because I'm 100% against pharmaceuticals in general.  With the exception of aspirin and ibuprofen and some antibiotics, I generally believe in using natural herbs to help treat and cure ailments. My husband is even more against pills than I am. So I refused and wanted to keep trying to use behavior modification to help him with coping with when we leave.

Another month went by and we did not see any improvements. In fact, it was getting worse. Cooper's separation anxiety started manifesting in other ways. In one such occasion when he was left with our friends or family in a separate room from us, even though he can see us from his crate it was too much for him to bare. He howled until his anal glands stank. That's no fun to clean.

So I went and asked the vet for a prescription. My husband was not happy I got it so I told him that we would use it only when he's ready to give it a try. After a particularly bad crate day where Cooper dug in his crate until his paws were skinned red and bled all over the crate, he finally agreed it was time to try something to help in conjunction with our modification training.

I know what a lot of people are thinking and I struggled with this myself and that's "Why do you need to drug up your dog? That's abuse and maybe you are not fit to be an owner." There was very little information  online to on pet owners who did use the drug because nobody wants to be ridiculed for being a bad dog owner. Nobody wants to be told they are poisoning their dog and doing more harm than good. However, the little information that was out there was very helpful and gave me a good idea of what to expect.

Fluoxetine takes about 3-4 months to really see the full effects on an animal and even then it helps the dog from rising into extreme anxiety, but they still are confused and need to learn ways to deal with when you are gone.  Behavior modification training and desensitization training to anxiety triggers are key at this point. Cooper's triggers included anytime he saw me put makeup on, when we jangled keys, when we locked the door, etc. It was hard but we had to teach him that these noises do not mean we will be leaving him. Eventually he stopped howling the entire time we were gone and started relaxing a bit. After 10 months he was noticeably more sleepy on the medication and enjoyed going to bed early. After a few more months, he did a lot better. That, combined with a lot of modification training, really started to pay off. I couldn't believe it. But at the same time I couldn't wait to ask my vet to help with weening down his dosage and taking him off the pills completely.

Let's fast forward a year and a half from the first part of the post.

Jan 2015: It's been 2 years since he's adopted Cooper, and he's no longer on doggy prozac. We slowly weened down his dosage over the past year and his personality has blossomed! He's such a momma's boy! We have no clue what his true age is, but he still loves learning new tricks. Does he still suffer from separation anxiety? Yes. Are there good days and bad days? Yes, but mostly good with a few bad days sprinkled in once or twice a month. 

So what happened? We continued with our stagger training, and also made sure to socialize him and help him understand that the house is his safe place. We also make sure to give him the best treats that make the act of leaving less painful for him. Even though I work from home, I put his bed in a separate room and he enjoys his naps on his own. The snoring is a good indication he's very happy. We also do not leave him in a crate which gives him the freedom to roam around and pick whether he wants to sleep in our bedroom or on the living room couch. Most days he's not right at the door when we come home, and he is trotting out from the bedroom to greet us after a nice long nap. That makes me really happy.

The only thing is that he's still fixated on the front door. So when he's having a bad episode we can guarentee he's going to scratch the front door when we are away.  My husband put plexy glass on the door to stop the damage and it worked for a while, but now he's attacking the molding on the side of the door. It's hard to know when he will have an episode, so we are working to figure out what to do next. The good thing is that he's not hurting himself or getting splinters from the wood, but I do worry about the paint he may be ingesting. The main goal here would be for us to get Cooper from being fixated with the door.

So when it comes to our dog's separation anxiety, I can definitely say he has improved a lot. Like any humans with anxiety, there are many ways to deal with it and it takes time. A lot of time. Sometimes medication is the answer, other times it isn't. Sometimes it requires a mix of meds and behavior training. For Cooper, he needed a combination of both. If things got worse would I put Cooper back on prozac? I would have to carefully monitor and speak to my vet and behavioralist before making that choice. Although I am very anti-meds, it's not something I would completely rule out. What you do with your fur family members is entirely up to you. I just wanted to share this story with others so readers can see what my family's journey was like, and what we are working on today.

What are some good things that came from this journey? Can I say this has enriched my life? That is showed me what kind of man I am married to? (All good things, btw). Through it all, I absolutely love Cooper and am happy he chose us to be his dog parents. And no matter what pops up, I know we have a strong loving family and tons of patience to help Cooper be the happiest dog he can be.

Getting Pregnant: Not As Easy as Teen Mom Makes It Out To Be

So it's been 9 months since this whole "let's grow our family and have a kid" plan went in place.

Am I am not getting any closer to getting pregnant since the day my husband and I started this journey. And in 2014 there's not going to be any baby.

Most of my life I was worried about not getting pregnant, and now here I am trying to get pregnant and shit ain't happening.

"What do you think your kids are going to look like?" I wish I could have one right now so we can solve this mystery.

But I'm getting nothing but negative signs everywhere. EVERYWHERE.

I am tired of peeing on my fingers on accident when trying to test my preggo sticks or test for ovulation.
I'm tired of tracking my cycle.
Tired of my parents and friends asking about it.
Tired of hearing my parents' friends asking about it.
Tired of trying new diets and regimens to fix my apparently low thyroid.
Tired of spending money on all these doctor visits.
Tired about thinking about this all the time.
Tired of crying and having tears in my eyes every time I think about this.

Am I stressed? Yes.
Am I trying to deal with my stress in a way that will be productive on this journey? Yes...well, it's easier said than done, but I am doing Kundalini yoga, eating tons of spicy food to warm my body, wearing warming jewelry, and overall just trying to eliminate as many stresses in my life as possible.

My family and friends do mean well and they do have wonderful words of encouragement for me, however,  I am still a complete and utter mess. It's so hard for me to say, "Thank you I know your words come from a place of love but it hurts to hear this." The truth hurts and even encouragement stings. Especially when you feel like you have zero control of the situation.

Is the reason why I am not pregnant yet because I am terrified of being a mom that somehow my mind is not letting my body get pregnant? I grew up not being much of a baby person. I remember not even liking my little sister until she was 2 and started talking. Watching my friends and families with kids, I see so many things I admire about these awesome parents, but at the same time I question if I have it in me to give my everything. I feel like it's a watch what happens kind of situation. The only thing I that gives me hope that I'll be a good mom is how much I love and care for my dog, Cooper. He gets the best of everything and I honestly love spending time with him and teaching him new things, and watching him explore our surroundings. He's been such a blessing to my family and honestly is the reason why I want to be a mom to a human now.

My attitude towards this brutal process has changed from hope to lets-just-get-this-over-with-quickly. It's not right nor is it healthy to bring a kid into the world with these terrible thoughts, but this process is getting downright annoying and mechanical. Not even enjoyable. I feel terrible for my husband. Now he has to worry about me spiraling into this crazy funk while worrying about his swimmers.

Dealing with the pain and sadness and crazy jealousy when I see friends and family on social media flaunting their beautiful kids or announcing they are pregnant, or they post these manifestos on how parenthood's changed their lives forever has really messed with my mind. I am so happy and thrilled for all of them. For real I am. And then I feel so much guilt when I battling my own depression and supreme jealousy. Guilt Guilt Guilt. What a terribly powerful emotion. I could go off on a tangent about the power of guilt but let's save that for another blog post.

At the end of the day I WANT INTO THIS CLUB! I want to be a part of the parents club. I want to learn from others and see how my kid interacts with other kids.

*Banging on the door: LET ME IN, LET ME IN!

But it's not meant to be right now, I guess. Everyone keeps saying when the timing is right it will happen. This is so hard because I am the most impatient person I know married to the most impatience man I know.

Maybe one day I can read this blog post and laugh about it. But today I only have tears.

Guns or Butter? Cliff Diving Into 2013

As I get older I find myself pondering this question more and more, " Where is American society headed towards?"

There's been a lot of sad and tragic news involving guns.

We spent more money on a war that will take nearly 50 years to pay back.

America is indebted to China. Gosh knows how much.

It's sad to see that the morality of our younger generation has been reduced to heart felt conversations in 140 characters or less (Twitter), connections on Facebook, and bullying has been taken to new heights due to the internet. Mental illness has taken center stage yet nobody in congress wants to stand up and make changes to help people in need.

Due to lack of investment in cultivating our nation's future, we see money being spent carelessly on the military overseas while our war veterans are suffering on our soil.  And they want to tell us that cutting military spending will make it worse for these military vets and families. But in actuality the money is going to the outsourced military contracts...not these people who are using the equipment to fight these wars.

In my high school economic class my teacher said, "If there's anything you need to know about the US economy it's this: When America spends more money on butter then life is good for everyone. When it spends more money on guns life is bad." Butter stands for investments in infrastructures, education, programs to help everyone, offering more money to each of the states to sustain and build needed programs for people of all ages. Guns = military.

Now there's this talk of the fiscal cliff, and quite frankly the bottom line of the matter is this: We need to  start paying back the deficit. It's going to hit everyone hard, but the middle and lower class cannot continue to carry the brunt of the deficit issues passed on by those who only served lobbyists and the wealthy population. We need to stop outrageous military spending, and allocate it to badly needed programs the states can use to help their residences with. We need to save our education system. We need trade schools and college educations to be more affordable.We need to help our people who suffer from mental illnesses. We need to close tax loopholes that benefit corporations and the wealthy. We need to keep semi-automatic and automatic guns away from those who are not fit to use these. We need to offer universal health care. As tax paying citizens we should be able to see that our basic needs can be taken care of, as also it's a level playing field for those who want to pursue their career and personal aspirations. That is the American dream, right?

However, the rich think they did everything without the government's help and now the government wants to take their money for no good reason. The poor are losing hope and as a result, they are moving towards more desperate measures to escape their harsh realities through drugs and alcohol. Mental illness programs have plummeted so low that most of the time these state run facilities just drug these people up instead of dealing with the issues at hand.

A lot of these things feel like short-term duct taped solutions.

And it worries me. It's a bit sad to see our country in this state. I don't think my parents escaped Vietnam to see their kids and future grandkids struggle. However, what can we do? The christians say we need more God, the gun advocates says we all need guns everywhere, the rich people say they need to be taxed less so they can create more jobs for those out of work. And then there are those who are saying the very opposite of this. It's all very confusing.

Throughout all of this, I still have hope for a brighter future. It starts with the family and friends you surround yourself with. It starts by saying hello to your neighbors and taking the time to remember names and faces of those around you. It starts with putting away your cell phone or iPad and connecting with a person face to face. It starts by limiting your escapism methods whether it is too much tv, internet, texting, or drugs and alcohol and embracing life completely sober, fully awake, and fully aware. This way everyone around you can embrace the goodness of butter. And Butter makes everything better.

Bad Market Research Contributed to Romney's Presidential Loss

If you are a market researcher, you have heard this quote at least more than once: "Garbage in, garbage out."

Basically it means the results from your research is only as good as the way you set up and deploy your project. There's a lot of items that can turn a project into something shitty: Bad survey writing, writing biased questions,  overcomplicated survey questions, poor respondent sample , bad survey tool, wrong way to reach ideal survey population, poor analytics, and more.

Maybe it's too soon to talk about politics as everyone seems to be politically burnt out. But I am going to do it anyways. Specifically about the presidential race.

Let's face it, Mitt Romney is super rich and he had some of the richest people around the world donate to his campaign, and yet the dude lost. He hired some of the brightest and smartest people to run his campaign and yet they failed to capitalize on all of the funding he was able to give them and deliver him the president's seat.  I have been reading some really interesting articles online  stating that Romney's campaign were not using unbiased polls and research to determine his political strategy. In fact, the polls that were spot on and proved true the day of the election were completely ignored or balked at in favor of their own in-house research. It's clear to me that all of this in-house research offered his strategy team a slanted view of their odds. Too many "yes" men do not and will not yield positive results.

As a person who works in market research I see this all too many times. My clients are not happy with the results or the response rates. They find a way to point fingers at others while not admitting that they may have not set up a good research project and deployment plan in the first place. They sell these incredibly elaborate research projects for more money, but then have trouble finding the right tools to accomplish them.

COMPLICATED QUESTIONS IN A SURVEY DO NOT EQUAL BETTER RESEARCH RESULTS!!!

Research people need to go back to simplifying the way the collect data, make it enticing for people to give opinions, find those who are passionate and invested enough to share results, use social media to track true opinions via #hashtags, and use unbiased techniques and respondent populations that gather "real picture" results. They also need to know that the simplest questions often yield the best results for board members or CEOS to review.

In addition, I also read that most board members and strategist already have a pretty good hunch of what they want to do anyways so the best thing to do is deliver data that is easy and to the point. They hardly ever read a 40 page research paper. Ever!

Sure, there are other reasons why Romney lost, and I am not supporter of his politics. However, I kind of shudder and also wonder what life would be like today had Romney's team looked at real unbiased results. Would Obama not be a 2-term president? We'll never know, but as a market researcher one has to imagine what could have been....

In Defense of K-Town...

Ok, I admit it, I am a total dork! Lately my life has been less going out, more watching TV and YouTube webisodes. I'm in a nasty reality tv rut and need to bust out, but these shows keep sucking me in! Maybe this is a desperate cry for help. Who knows....

The latest obsession is "K-Town." It's a YouTube show produced by the Loud channel about Asian Americans hanging out in LA's Korea Town.  It portrays the life of an Asian American that is quite different from the asian stereotype. Instead of striving for straight As in college, being home to help the family, and going to Korean baptist church, these people get drunk, catty, and are completely obsessed with their looks, materialism, and drama. And you know what? This is really what Asian Americans do. Well...SOME of the popular asians do. Nevertheless, I am pretty impressed that even though this show may or may not be scripted it does portray what some of the more Americanized Asians are doing.

I'm 31 years old and I do remember my time in my late teens to early 20s where most of my friends were asians and we would down Hennessy like it was water.  I probably drank more shots with my asian friends than anyone else. I would be back at school the next day all hungover trying to study and running to the bathroom to throw up in the college library. Drinking games with cheap beer were a staple at all parties. A typical night out in Seattle would include a Chinese 4th meal (only thing available after 2 AM in Seattle at the time) to soak up all the alcohol before your drove home. The shit you see on this show isn't newsworthy. Asians love hooking up and  partying just as much as any of those characters on the Jersey Shore. The only problem is that most asians want to keep that a secret. Some don't really want other races to see this because the stereotype that's been long-upheld has benefited us in many ways. Are all asians good at math? No...but it's nice for people to think you have a propensity to figure out how to split a dinner bill six ways.

"K-Town" blew this door to asian stereotypes wide open for anyone online to view. My favorite characters on the show is Scarlet Chan and Jasmine Chang.

Scarlet (girl on top) gets a lot of shit for being incredibly loud, rude, and all up in everyone's business, but she keeps it real. I love her brute honesty about any topic and she's only voicing the opinions of what many of the viewers are thinking even though she's doing it completely drunk. I love that she will never give the time of day to a guy that's shorter than her. I never did either. Hello!!! Just because I'm 5'2 that doesn't mean I am interested in a guy who's only 5 foot tall! Find someone who is 4'11 or shorter! She's hilarious and I would love to watch this girl on a date with a guy she thinks is good looking. So far nothing in K-town is impressing her. Everyone's been a "Konguru" in her eyes.

Jasmine Chang (the blond asian on the bottom) is considered the jokester, and she's really witty with her words, and knows how to laugh and have a good time. One time I also tried dying my hair blonde when I was younger but it came out green and orange and  made me look bald like a cancer patient. Jasmine can pull it off and she has a fun sense of style. These two characters together make Youtube gold in my book. All they need to do is go to grocery stores and go out and it will be fun to to watch them get into trouble and make fun of Colonel Sanders again.

The other character are alright and have their small shining moments. I really enjoy watching Young Lee because I think he's the most real out of all of them. He's not really trying to get in front of the camera but he knows how to be a good presence. His storyline about making it in Hollywood while trying to marry the love of his life is fun to watch. Joe Cha is the dude from Seattle and I used to see him around at the same places I used party at. He was very popular, knew everyone, and a lot of girls thought he was super hot. The show hasn't really given him much of a chance to shine. Steve is the drunk guy who likes to instigate a lot of things. He reminds me of a couple of my old guys friends who would always trying to get everyone wasted. Cammie, Violet, and Jowe are interesting sometimes, but the show hasn't spent too much time really developing their characters. Quite frankly, if they did a Scarlet and Jasmine spin-off show I wouldn't miss any of the other cast members.

The one thing I think this show is missing that even the Jersey Shore has is the element of family. As a fellow Asian American a lot of who we are are influenced by our families and if they had a chance to film these people interacting with their family members I bet you the ratings and viewership will skyrocket. I want to see Joe talking to his mom about his career, Scarlet to talk to her family about her life decisions and what their expectations are. Don't you think what happens within their family influences what they do on K-Town? Yes, for sure! Why does Steve like to drink so much? You got to wonder if his family has anything to do with it. I have some Korean friends and have dated a few Korean guys in my life and I know that the family unit is very strong and if the family doesn't approve, all hell will break loose. Maybe one day these cast member's families will allow us to see this.

I know what you are thinking: What does this review have to do with conscious marketing? Television or webisodes is a type of marketing.  These people are edited and portrayed in a way that the Loud channel thinks is interesting and will drive viewers to the show. The fact that they are not playing it safe with the typical Asian American type cast is worthy to note. I haven't seen too many asians on tv get as drunk or crazy as these guys. This is not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but if you grew up like me you will will definitely relate to a couple of situations when you watch the show. Sure, it doesn't put asians in the best light, but seriously, this is what's happening out there and there should be a show about it.

So scripted or not, this is my guilty pleasure I have to watch every Wednesday on YouTube.

Applegate Farms: Educating Meat Eaters Through Laughter

As a YouTube visiter you can now choose to skip commercials after 5 seconds and go directly to the content you are looking to watch. However, every time a commercial for Applegate Farms comes on I have to keep watching this 33 second commercial.

It's funny, the message is simple, and I love both characters: The concerned mother and the muscled cow man.  I am not a mom but I know plenty of friends who are that review everything their families eat with great detail. I see it even more so in the Portland area than elsewhere.

Applegate farms and other organic/all-natural food products are now using viral videos and comedy to spread the word that growth hormones in meat is bad for you. So bad that you can in fact it might as well be a roided-out german body builder in a cow costume.

It doesn't take a genius to see that it's probably not good to eat foods pumped full of hormones and medication. People of all ages can learn and laugh watching this commercial. It's really great to watch organic food product commercials going viral instead of the typical chip or soda commercial.

I've eaten Applegate farm sausages and they are good for prepackaged sausages. My personal favorite sausages are from the New Seasons Market, however, Applegate farms are great sausages that are precooked and great for a quick meal.

For more information visit: Applegate Farms