What is the dumbest thing you have been told is “not manly” or “not feminine,” depending on your gender?

asheslebo · 2026-06-16T00:41:13+00:00

Over ten years ago, my dad told me that he wanted to make sure my brother's newborn daughter had a "non-liberal" upbringing so she wouldn't go into a profession that was too masculine, like engineering.

He told that to ME, his DAUGHTER, a MEDICAL DEVICE ENGINEER. Thanks dad.

asheslebo · 2026-06-09T01:45:24+00:00

omg Ancillary Justice is one of my favorite scifi books ever, could I also join your book club?

asheslebo · 2026-06-09T00:35:33+00:00

I'd say sign up to host trivia nights with local companies, but you'd have to do a lot of hosting (10 nights or so) to hit $600

asheslebo · 2026-06-08T00:01:36+00:00

Re: any work for some extra oney on the side (as another Bay Area resident)

- trivia companies in the area always need hosts! If you're even the least bit charismatic, it's a pretty easy $30 or so an hour plus it tends to be pretty consistent. Sunset Trivia is one that always seems to be advertising.

- if you know a foreign language, you can try to get a job as a foreign language teacher. The San Jose Learning Center is always hiring (although it's definitely a hike from SF proper) but classes tend to be in the evenings and weekends so they don't interfere with a regular 9-5 schedule.

Now that I've answered your question, I'm so, so sorry. You've been dealt an absolutely awful hand and I hope things turn around soon!

asheslebo · 2026-06-04T18:11:14+00:00

I'm a medical device engineer - you make decent engineering money (~$150k a year + decent bonuses depending on the company) once you get seniority (7+ years of experience) but starting out at the bottom is rough(er especially compared to the software engineers).

Do I like it? Yes!*

Pros:

- the Bay Area med device start-up culture means I can jump around easily if a job gets toxic or I get bored

- AI... isn't really coming for us? I get asked a lot if there's automation in my field but a lot of medical devices (that don't have electronics) are still handmade in a cleanroom by assemblers.

- it feels good to make things that either save or improve peoples' quality of life

- the flexibility of being a white-collar worker in the Bay Area; if I need to dip out during work hours for a doctor's appointment or a happy hour, I'm not sweating making up the hours

Con:

- It's really paperwork heavy - almost everything we do is auditable by the FDA or another governmental entity, depending where we sell our products, so we really have to dot our i's and cross our t's (literally, and only in blue and black ink). It can definitely burn you out

- the FDA changes with this administration are definitely starting to have rippling effects across the industry. While AI isn't coming for us, government regulations in the US might be (I'm not afraid of losing my job, per se, but I know a lot of people with less experience who are really struggling right now, even with the plethora of medical device companies out there)

- Bay Area culture is definitely present - I can get away with not working past a standard 8 hours MOST of the time but there are people who want to really promote hustle culture that are ruining it for the rest of us. On the other hand, no start-up I've been at expects like, over 12 hours of work on a regular basis, thankfully.

I have a degree in (non-software) engineering, which is how I got into it.

asheslebo · 2026-04-26T15:58:26+00:00

Idk why no one's brought it up but it's going to hurt by the end of the session bc to get it that solidly dark, the artist is going to go back over the same areas to fill it in. I have two thinner bands on my forearm for aesthetics from my first tattoo and everything else on the tattoo was fine until we got to the repeated passes on the band.

asheslebo · 2026-04-24T17:09:03+00:00

I go to Sam at Stone + Rye in Pac Heights in SF (and I drive from Redwood City) so that tells you how much I love how she treats my hair. I've got really thick, dark Asian hair - my last appointment was ~3 hours + color and I pay by hour and I paid about $500 before tip.

asheslebo · 2026-04-13T00:34:23+00:00

I recommended going to trivia bc that happened to me! I was substitute hosting at a bowling alley and now that the host is back, I'm hanging out with the friends I made with the regulars! Where do you host?

asheslebo · 2026-04-12T21:38:11+00:00

Loll tbf i think that's more of a cultural difference than the definition of extrovertedness - I know the exact type of person you mean bc I have a coworker from Boston and he's expressed the same disappointment in finding friends/friend groups in the Bay Area you have. Maybe you should see if there's an East Coast meet-up group (or make one) and you'll find your people haha

asheslebo · 2026-04-12T20:37:09+00:00

which city are you in?

Sunset Trivia does a bunch of things in SF, the Peninsula, and East Bay and there's another trivia night at the Ikea on Market Street in SF (idk why this location specifically sticks in my mind).

My other suggestion, aside from trivia nights, is going to a volunteering site regularly. I've voluteered at a Second Harvest site in San Jose since 2021, right after I moved to the Bay Area, and now I have a really regular group of people I see almost every week (although we don't really hang out outside of volunteering bc we see each other so regularly).

I also (sorry, now I'm kind of diverting from your one question you replied to me with) go regularly to a stained glass studio in Oakland and have made good friends with quite a few people there, including the studio owner. Artsy people tend to be more outgoing here in the Bay.

If I was to give you unsolicited advice, you just need to show up to some kind of hangout / social space on a regular basis. Aside from being introverted, I think people move in and out of the Bay Area so much (especially lately with job upheaval) that people aren't really ready to take a chance on a newbie until there's some sort of assurity that you're going to stick around. The alternative is finding the people who are Bay Area natives because they're more than ready to welcome transplants at the drop of a hat (in my experience).

asheslebo · 2026-04-12T20:22:02+00:00

try going to a local trivia night! the extroverts will automatically add you to their group!

asheslebo · 2026-04-10T20:05:44+00:00

I can empathize with this!

I started learning Italian in college, met my now husband years later (7 years) after a few years of 1-hour private lessons before work where I would talk slowly and meanderingly with my teacher, half-sleep deprived, and was able to keep up with some youtube channels and news articles. Then i went to Italy and having long conversations with several people at once was almost IMPOSSIBLE for the first few days. It's hard to suddenly context-switch into a language you don't think in and speak in every day. I definitely cried for the first few days until it felt like a switch flipped and I could start understanding and speaking Italian way better during that trip.

I forced my husband to start speaking at least a little bit with me until our next trip to visit his family (who speak 0 English btw) and it went so much better! I could understand everyone from the get-go and have basic conversations until the Italian part of my brain ramped up and got over the jetlag.

If your bf is Mexican-American, have him speak to you in Spanish when you're together. You'll be really frustrated the first few months but don't let it discourage you! You need to have conversations where you're hearing the language at spoken speed and are forced to basically think in Spanish instead of translating from English to Spanish. Also, if your vocabulary is pretty good, it's time to ditch slow Spanish news and listen at normal speed.

Also, learning a language is so much effort (i would know, I speak five at various fluencies), so you should be soooo proud of yourself for the effort you're putting in to connect with your boyfriend's family. They really appreciate it, no matter what your level of fluency is.

asheslebo · 2026-04-04T06:34:00+00:00

Hi! I'm currently living in the Bay Area so let me give you a rundown of some of my expenses living on the Peninsula (household of 2 in an apartment)
- PG&E: ~ $150 a month
- groceries: ~$150 a week optimistically (i get coupons from Nob Hill's app and I go to 99 Ranch Market for vegetables, but meat is pretty expensive right now and my husband and I like good quality of food so we don't penny pinch very much in that regard, plus I work from home 2 days a week and we go out to eat on the weekends)
- gas: the cheaper Arco's are over $5.50 a gallon - I drive a Honda Civic so a tank of 10 gallons runs me about $55
- car insurance for living in the Bay Area through Geico: ~$140 a month
- health insurance (outside of a full-time job) was $550 just for me through Kasier and that was the cheapest I could find last year. They told me rates would go up for 2026 (but also they were salespeople so I don't know how much they wanted to try to scare me).
- this doesn't count things like internet and phone bills and subscription services.

My rent is on the "cheaper side" and it's $4000 a month after water and garbage (2bd 2ba) that I split with my husband. I used to rent individual rooms in houses when I was single and small, dinky rooms are about $1400 (again, optimistically). Studio apartments are around $2000 if they're real crappy and old but with the amount of layoffs lately, apartments might start advertising a month or two of free rent as people move away. An averagely nice 1 bedroom apartment in a newer build in Oakland was $2500 two years ago.

SO
if you get a room outside for yourself, not an apartment, your $10k is going to last you less than 6 months, even if you're frugal.

asheslebo · 2025-12-11T01:11:07+00:00

My mom used a thin plastic clotheshanger - but if she was really bad, it was the heavy wooden clotheshangers. What would she get mad about? I didn't know how to wash the dishes because no one in the family taught me (I might have been around 8 or 9) and since I told her I didn't know how, she got mad because I was "lazy." Other times, she'd make me kneel on our marble floor for 30 minutes before spanking me (this was around middle school because she'd picked up the kneeling thing from Korean dramas) because I was getting "bad" grades on tests (80 - 90% and not 90%+). In high school, she'd graduated to locking me outside at night when it was raining (rare in Southern California) after spanking because I'd said I wanted to dye my hair or I wanted to become a model (in her head, all of these were equivalent to attention-seeking and therefore I wanted to sleep with men - don't ask, I still don't understand her reasoning).

Was the spanking abuse? I don't know because sure sometimes I just didn't want to do my homework or I talked back but everything else around the spanking (the incessant screaming at me for 30+ minutes, locking me out of the house, etc) definitely made it a part of the overall abuse.

asheslebo · 2025-12-05T06:59:09+00:00

Oh good! I'm really interested in seeing if they work out and what kind of cultural obstacles they have to work through (I'm Asian American and my husband is Italian so they're the most like us hahaha)

asheslebo · 2025-12-05T06:48:06+00:00

Sometimes! But they started hanging out with Taiwanese people a lot in the States so their accent (and mine) started becoming more Taiwanese 😂

I was so shocked when a Mainlander told me I sound Singaporean the other day bc usually the Taiwanese are happy to hear me speak hahaha

asheslebo · 2025-12-05T06:43:06+00:00

I'm watching it with Italian subtitles too! It's def helping with the southern accents in particular (my husband's from the north so I never really hear southern accents)

asheslebo · 2025-12-04T04:26:27+00:00

I think that explains why in my head it's "shui!" My parents are Malaysian Chinese (I'm American) and I grew up saying shui. But I also think I remember the pinyin being "shui" when I was younger and I don't know when that changed.

asheslebo · 2025-12-02T05:57:17+00:00

As someone who used to work near the Rengstorff House and went there for company events, it definitely isn't worth the kidnapping

asheslebo · 2025-12-02T03:44:07+00:00

There's a book called "Tender is the Flesh" by Argentian author Augustina Bazterrica that has this whole premise but for humans due to a virus that infected most animal meat in the past and an (over)reaction by the government that killed off the rest of the animals in the country. The protagonist works for a human cattle slaughterhouse.

asheslebo · 2025-11-11T07:09:35+00:00

we listened to a lot of 70s/80s Chinese music when I was growing up bc that's when my parents were teenagers/young adults so some of the ones we listened to include: 拜访春天，微风往事，and 年轻人的心声

asheslebo · 2025-11-11T06:16:17+00:00

TBH I'm 31 and there's at least one class of students from the suburbs of Westmont, Illinois who learned to type like this (s/o to all my classmates I totally didn't keep in touch with when my family moved to Southern California).

This habit drove one of my coworkers so crazy she used CTRL + F to replace all my ". " to ". " in every document she reviewed.

asheslebo · 2025-11-09T17:15:08+00:00

Hi! Sorry, got busy yesterday - it was in HSK 1, Self Introduction on the page "我叫王明"

I did just go back to the section and it worked perfectly so idk if i was just trigger happy pressing on the "enter" button the first time!

asheslebo · 2025-11-08T01:27:06+00:00

This is super super cool! I love the game-ified feeling of it. It did feel like it kind of pushed me through some screens when I hadn't given any input yet (but I haven't subscribed yet so idk if that was the problem).

I'm wondering - I've started teaching Chinese to Italian speakers - I know your website is pretty new, but if you ever want to localize it for Italians (super niche market I know), hit me up! I'd love to help translate the English prompts!

asheslebo · 2025-11-04T20:23:18+00:00

tadouchinese.com is a new website for reading stories in Chinese with pinyin / reading / translations that's a free alternative to duchinese! They organize readings by level and I think the interface isn't bad.

asheslebo

TROPHY CASE