Garlic Salt

Two months ago, Austin joked about how it would be so great  if I could get my driver's license before we got married.  Yeah. I kn...

We discussed love while rowing on a freshly painted boat on Phewa Lake in Nepal. He rowed. And I pretended I knew how to. In the far di...

I once loved a boy. People thought we were really cute together. We thought so too. We would both get so pumped about the same things, vo...

I was raised by Filipino women. So for me going to the Philippines was like getting off the steam boat and arriving in an ancestral homelan...

Day One We sat around in bean bag circles, sort of like a benign underground brotherhood of nerds, and volleyed questions back and fort...

While walking aimlessly around Hong Kong with a dear friend one night, I spoke passionately of taking deliberate risks, especially in e...

He ran his fingers through his hair, shiny with grease, and brandished his practiced smile. Let me be your tour guide. Your bodyguard. Your...

I kept punching my memory foam pillow and readjusting my sleeping position within my down comforter cocoon, but I just couldn't ignore ...

At the start of every new year growing up, we would prop our short legs up on the engraved chest in the living room and scratch out our New ...

There were a lot of pathetic apologies from my end (I wasn't sure what I was supposed to apologize for). There were a lot of swearing an...

You learn a lot about yourself when you're living alone. I wonder if registered spinsters have these self-inventories all the time. Beca...

. . . when you're riding a bike with a billowing skirt and all the men walking towards you can't take their eyes off you because a g...

Recently, I've had a quite a few people who I look up to look at me in the eye and tell me that I'm going places. They seem so exc...

Just came back from girls' camp where I played camp leader to 60 girls. Jody was there for her first time. I tried not to hover too much...

Written on July 22nd, 2010. An email I wrote home while on my internship at the US Embassy in Beijing. My dating experience in China this ti...

J always jokes and says that I "never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Most of the time, it's because I am tal...

Gilbert, Arizona. So hot that I yelped when I tried to close the car door. We left the car windows cracked when we got out in case the windo...

Jody, recently joined Model United Nations (MUN) at school, a club where kids apply their knowledge of current issues in simulated UN settin...

Fashion magazines swear by the rule that every girl needs a LBD (little black dress). I have one, but mine isn't black. The body of my d...

This week, I was told, twice actually, that I was "too nice." I guess it's a compliment and a constructive criticism meshed ...