Explore!

Location | New York City

Here's a lovely photo of Yuki and me.

So I went a bit crazy and I’m about to launch a brand new blog. I’ve decided to switch hosts, so I’m slowly migrating/transferring everything over. I’m discovering just how easy it is to migrate WordPress when you actually know what you’re doing (versus about 4 hours ago when I was acting like a manic trying to figure things out). Here are the details:

• New layout!
• My personal blog will be www.joannie.net
• I will be removing the original blog on joannaleelin.com
• The explore! blog will go away and just be www.joannie.net (I will keep it was a redirect)
• I will be going through my old blogger account, The Wasteland (with posts dating back to 2002), and deleting useless posts and curating them as fit to migrate over to the new blog.
• New features: fashion, photography (better photos, I promise!)
• A lot of food features – including reviews, I swear
• More travel – let’s hope!
• General thoughts and ideas about life.

Let’s hope that I’m as interesting as I’d like to be. I will go back and edit/curate my old entries as well (which does indeed make me crazy).

Love it!

Cheers,

Joanna

Location | New York

I am 100% positive that everyone has gone through the job search and felt that frustration that everyone gets with terrible job application systems. If I developed a Job Applicant Website, it’d feature the following:

Main Features

• Candidate Profile (with generic resume and generic cover letter)
• Search Openings
• Saved Searches
• Submitted Jobs (with status of Submitted, Under Review, Not Seeking Candidacy + date and update statuses)
• Job Cart

Special Features

• Each job would allow a new version of a resume and cover letter (No limits)
• If a position has been filled, HR must close out the job description and send out an email (even if computer generated) to all applicants
• Essential Questionnaire for hiring managers “Rank your Excel Skills from 1-10” with scale

I just wish that the HR business would actually evolve into something better. I haven’t seen any change since I first started applying for jobs.

If only things were that easy.

Location | New York

What I’ve learned in the past few months have been invaluable. I’ve discovered a lot about who I am and what I want to do and who I want to become. I’ve received advice from all walks of life and have just learned that I have to be really ready to go through what I went through again. Here are a few quips from what I’ve learned:

• I have to work terribly hard at having any sort of patience (trust me, I’m working harder than an Olympian rower in the final seconds of the race)
• “Expect the Best, Prepare for the Worst” has become a “mantra”
• Work as hard outside of your job as you do during your job

There’s plenty more, but I’ll add them as I think of them.

Location | East Village, NYC

So I had made up my mind that I’d write a ton of blog entries for my personal blog, but instead I end up on my Tumblr or Twitter. So many pieces of sharing my life to keep track of! I had a discussion yesterday about being an “open book” and I do realize that I am completely an open book. I will blog, tweet, or blatantly announce anything as long as I feel if it’s worthy to be shared (which is almost everything, because in case you haven’t heard, I’m kind of a big deal).

Well, since I left Time Inc, devoting my time to the full-time job search has been both disheartening and exhilarating. While I am hearing a lot about many different companies, I am also disappointing in waiting for any leads to turn out. I know that I would make a fabulous marketing manager in the digital arena, but proving it has been quite a challenge.

So here’s what I’ve been up to in the past few weeks:

• Catching up on Google Reader
• Updating my Tumblr
• Tweeting
• Eating my way through the city
• Drinking a whole lot of iced tea (now I’m originally from the south, so I ADORE sweet tea. If I drink too much I think I’m going to have diabetes, this needs to stop!)
• Being glued to my blackberry
• Finishing off some books (just completed Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh – now to finish Eat Pray Love before the movie comes out!)

Overall, it’s been an up and down past month and a half, but nonetheless, it’s the next chapter of my life and I’m so excited to share it all with you!

Location | Birch Coffee, 27th Street, New York City

One of the most important things that I look for in my permanent working place is the company culture.

It’s an alluring word, and can mean so many things. Whether it’s the benefits & perks or the people, the right combination is very important. The first company – an actual corporation! – that I worked for had amazing company culture. They were the only company listed on the 100 Best Companies to Work For for 6 years running (right up until they had a merger and didn’t qualify that year). They had fantastic amenities, great people to work with, and the fact that the CEO was extremely accessible made everyone feel like they were a part of something bigger.

No matter what your work is, the people that you work with will be a determining factor in your reason to stay in the long term. The moment you hit that wall where you don’t feel comfortable anymore, it’s time to move on.

Truth? Be honest with yourself, would you rather stick around for the pay and be miserable or would you rather work with amazing people who are passionate about what they do, even if it does pay a little less?

Location | New York City

Beginning today I’ll be moving my posts from my old travel blogs – for Taiwan and Tokyo here. It’s going to be a slightly long and arduous task since my Taiwan blog has 70 entries I want to edit and prune before placing here and the Tokyo blog luckily only has 7 entries. So if you notice anything funky, sorry. I hope that it’ll be good to consolidate all my posts.

Also, I’m working on another blog project, which you’ll hopefully be able to see in a few months. It’ll involve my other favorite topic – food. Then I’m going to work on consolidating www.joannie.net into a portal and then moving my blog that currently resides there to yet ANOTHER subdomain. I know, it’s harrowing to keep track of. We’ll see if I’ll be able to work some WordPress magic since I’ve been working with Blogger for about 10 years now and I’m moving onto greener pastures. For those of you who are WordPress experts, please be patient with me as I ask questions that may just seem awfully silly.

Thanks and I hope you’ll enjoy reading my material even more.

Location| New York City

Check out the current radar map of Puerto Rico…

Doesn't the weather look lovely?

If you look to the west of the Island to about where it says San Sebastian under the green blob, that’s where Rincon is… crossing my fingers that this changes in the next 18 hours…!

Location | Malu Bed & Breakfast – Rome

So… Ngoc’s Macbook is dead… This is being published from my iPod Touch. Will update from home or from Prague…!!!!!!!!!

Sad… This was the most eventful day.

Damn you Grey Screen of Death!!!!!!!!

Location | JFK Airport

Funny how things work out. Of course the day my trip starts I get a bomb dropped on me at work. I now get to actually assume the role that matches my title. I’ll be the Marketing Manager of Fortune, Money and Real Simple Magazines. Along with this, I’ll have an associate manager under me. While both exciting and disheartening (they broke up the dream team of Steve and me), I am a little ambivilent toward the situation.

I guess I shouldn’t talk about my job on this blog, but I thought I’d get it in there that it might affect how I write about this trip (I hope not!).

Location | New York City

Tomorrow I leave for Europe. As most of you know, I’ve been talking about this trip nonstop for the past 2 months and now I’m finally going! I’m a little bit scared (only because the first 3-4 hours will be on my own and without my security blanked aptly named… Ngoc) but I think if I can survive New York, I can survive anything!

Let’s see. I have one rolly suitcase. Mainly filled with clothing, my lovely brand new camera and various other essentials. Other than that, I’m not bringing much. Mainly due to the fact that I definitely do not want to lug it all around.

I’ll leave you now with this complimentary picture of a flower that I took in Madison Square Park with the new camera I got.

A photo I took in Madisqon Square Park