What not knowing how to drive taught me about soft power

When I was fifteen my dad asked me if I wanted to take driver’s education. I replied with the bravado of a teenager, “when I grow up I’m going to have a chauffeur”. I envisioned a life where I would become a high power female executive dressed in vintage Lanvin—exclusively from the Alber Elbaz era—and Celine–only under the Phoebe Philo creative vision, of course. I would be chauffeured around in a black company private car just like all the Samsung executives in K-dramas my mom and I watched. I had no idea that this small aspiration would set me on a different life trajectory as a car free adult.

After high school, I accepted a full-ride scholarship to USC. It was very clear that USC was determined to change their reputation as “University of Spoiled Children” to a West Coast Ivy. In President Steven Sample’s welcome speech to the incoming scholarship students, he said, “Your class will be more brains and less money.” Admitting students like me, based on grades and test scores, rather than donations from my parents, was the university’s strategy to be taken more seriously.

My high school friend Audrey and I lived across the street from each other. Figueroa Street divided my dorm from Audrey’s dorm. The scholarship kids lived in Trojan and Marks Hall across the way from the Radisson. Audrey and I could see each other through our windows and wave in the mornings. The Radisson was a converted hotel turned student dorm, replete with hotel amenities and room service. Celebrity child Rumer Willis and Greek shipping magnate heir Stavros Niarchos II all lived there.

The kids who lived in the Radisson also drove better cars. The parking garage of the Radisson was lined with BMWs, Mercedes, Audis, and a Lambo once in a blue moon. There was a saying that the professors drove Toyota Camrys and the students drove sports cars and luxury cars.

Not having a car in LA is the equivalent of not having legs. Getting around LA without a car takes skill. When you’re land locked on campus in South Central with some of the highest crime rates in LA you start to feel cabin fever. I quickly learned to befriend friends with cars for off campus escapades. Audrey’s access to a car opened up LA in a way I never had imagined—full of first experiences. She drove a silver Volvo that took us to my first concert at the Wiltern, movies at the ArcLight, and brunch in Silver Lake. When Audrey’s roommate would go home over the weekends she and I would have sleepovers and binge watch The Office. Her hotel dorm room was air conditioned whereas mine would get up to 90 degrees so a sleepover was pure luxury. One day her high power law firm partner dad called me, thanking me for spending time with his daughter. I thanked him and Audrey for giving me an upgrade to the shitty dorm room I slept in across the street, which I called “Warsaw”.

Friends with cars transported me to an LA that I never knew existed, especially coming from my sheltered immigrant upbringing. I found my escape through my roommate Joyce. Joyce who was the Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Trojan and a huge foodie. She took me to fancy restaurants that comped her for food reviews in our newspaper. It was on those culinary trips that I learned food can be more than nutrition and sustenance. Dining with Joyce at some of the best restaurants in LA helped me face an eating disorder I had been struggling with since high school. I started to see food as a cultural and social experience instead of something that had to be controlled and restricted. Little did Joyce know her trips off campus in her Lexus helped me during a bad anorexia relapse. When we were stuck in traffic on the 10 she would vent about managing rogue student reporters, fundraising for the newspaper, and motivating listless writers. She shared with me her management style of writing angry letters to incompetent people only to never email the drafts. Like Abraham Lincoln’s unsent letters to General George Meade, Joyce would write letters expressing her frustration and disappointment in her editors without having to undermine her authority and create tension on the team. This way she could continue to wield soft power as one of the first Asian American women editor-in-chiefs in USC history.

At times when I wasn’t getting a ride from Audrey or Joyce, I would take public transportation. Taking the bus in LA is one of the biggest class dividers and a social faux pas. When friends found out I had been taking the bus to Ktown for a haircut or to the Beverly Center for shopping their mouths dropped and their eyes bulged, staring at me like I was a crazy person. The truth is, I really loved taking the bus in LA. It gave me a portal into a different part of the city that wasn’t full of rich kids from the OC, frat bros, and sorority girls, talking about flying to Turks and Caicos for spring break. I desperately wanted to find people who I could relate to instead of drowning in unhappiness and class anxiety at a school where I didn’t belong. Seeing normal people from the working class on those bus rides allowed me to access a part of me that I shut out in order to assimilate to USC.

I loved taking the 105 bus down La Cienaga past the comically large stucco Randy’s Donut Sign. Every time I rode by the restaurant Hunan Taste on San Vicente Boulevard my mind would have a moment of dyslexia, reading “human taste” and I would chuckle to myself. It was during these solo public transportation trips and getting lost in LA where I found a sense of belonging. These bus rides healed me when I felt depressed, unhappy, and lost as a misfit in college. It taught me that I could exist in spaces my USC peers thought were beneath them. I began to practice chatting with strangers on these bus rides. They were janitors, dishwashers, line cooks, and recovering addicts who told me their life stories. After befriending them I would ask to take their portraits on my Canon AE-1 for my black and white photography class, mailing printed copies to my new friends after I processed the negatives in the dark room. Riding on LA buses taught me to find common ground with anyone, understand their differences, and embrace shared humanity.

No matter how much social mobility I have experienced as a first generation immigrant, I will never forget to acknowledge the hidden figures—receptionists, admins, janitors, or doormen in a building. They are the overlooked backbone of every organization. Do not underestimate how much power an admin or receptionist wields in getting meetings scheduled, screening calls, accessing important people, and helping you get shit done during the impossible. Soft power is respecting the invisible, unappreciated, force multipliers in an organization and making them feel seen and appreciated.

After graduation, I moved to San Francisco to work at a solar startup. There I started dating guys with cars and took trips to Marin county, Napa, Sonoma, and Big Sur. Like in a Fellini film, I felt free with the wind blowing through my hair, snaking down the Pacific Coast Highway in a mint green Mini Cooper convertible. One guy I dated helped me haul a piece of wood back from Oakland so I could make a coffee table. I boarded the Facebook shuttle one morning with a huge chunk of raw oakwood, determined to find a hobby that would offset my crazy hours.

Not knowing how to drive unwittingly created an adaptive skill for me to build a community of friends with cars and learn how to align weekend plans for roadtrips. When I couldn’t get a ride, taking public transportation grounded me in the different realities of existing in America. For the friends who gave me rides, I always tried to repay their favors so I wouldn’t come off like a mooch. I introduced Audrey to my Trojan Hall dorm room friends and gave her my midterm outlines I had compiled in economics and business law classes. I helped Joyce with her makeup, giving her a glam makeover, before dates.

Before USC, I felt like a little alien in the world because I grew up in an immigrant household that never taught me how to socialize properly. I lived in my dad’s laboratory during nights and weekends. My parents were clueless at workplace politics, complaining about how Asian immigrants could never crack into management. My mom was distrustful of other parents, preventing me from signing up for team sports like soccer in elementary school. I spent a good chunk of my childhood alone, playing the Sims, reading, and writing on Teen Open Diary and LiveJournal. At one point I started a relationship advice column for strangers—little did they know I had never dated before. These car rides with friends, acquaintances, and boyfriends became crash courses in social interaction, practicing the art of small talk, witty banter, and probing deep into someone’s psyche and childhood to find the deep, vulnerable, and human bits that would bond us for life. So I guess in a way, I did live up to my own prophecy. I found my chauffeur through befriending people with cars, building a community, and learning to talk with strangers on public transportation.