Category Archives: Contemplations on New York Life

Transitional weather conundrum: what am I supposed to wear?

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The weather has been pretty wonky here in New York the last couple weeks. This last week, it’s been so cold that even after doing a thorough wash of our down-like winter coats to (originally) put away until next winter, I actually had to take them out again for Kaia and me. Kaia wore hers twice this week, and I wore mine once! It’s April, and we still need to turn the heat on at home…

So today, it was actually supposed to hit low 60s F in the city. Kaia wore a light jacket to school. I wouldn’t leave the house until the afternoon to meet my friend, and I had no idea what I wanted to wear. Because I tend to run cold, I put on a sweater, plus a medium-weight coat on top of it. I walked outside for two blocks and already felt too hot, so I took off my scarf.

Everyone who is into fashion always goes gaga for “transitional” seasons like spring and autumn. These people love their autumn or spring jackets, their cute tops and skirts, and count down the days when they can put together these nice outfits. I, on the other hand, am not at all a fashionista, truly dislike both of those seasons for dressing myself. I never have any idea what to wear, how to layer things. And since I run cold, I tend to overdress, which then means I will need to shed layers, which then means I will need to either carry said layers or stuff them in a bag. And that is so annoying to me. It’s even more annoying now that I have a preschooler, who always insists I carry her crap, as well!

I met my friend for tea today. After she hugged me, she looked me up and down, then back down and up. Then she said, “Are you a bit warm in this?”

Sometimes, I wish I could just go outside wearing a big warm brown paper bag and call it a day. That would be so much simpler.

The overachieving babysitter

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Tonight, we went out to dinner at a new and impossible-to-get-reservations restaurant with two friends who had a food distributor hook-up. We got the same babysitter who came over the night of my birthday dinner party this year. She is a complete overachiever: she came about fifteen minutes earlier than I asked the last time, and she followed all my instructions to a T. She probably even did more cleaning around my kitchen than I asked her to do the first time around. She especially stands out because of how meticulous and into detail she is, and also because she is so early.

Today, about 15 minutes she was supposed to arrive, this babysitter texted me. When I see a text coming from a babysitter just before they are supposed to arrive, I immediately assume it’s because they are running late and want to give me the head’s up. In this case, it was the total opposite: she wanted to let me know that she would be “late” as in, she would not be able to make it to our house ten minutes early. And she apologized in advance.

This babysitter is amazing. She is so nice, so prompt, so attentive to detail. And the best part is that Kaia truly adores her. She’s the only babysitter who Kaia has actually asked to see again, and demanded that she come back the next weekend. Our other regular babysitter… is regularly late. And she rarely apologizes for being late and rarely gives a head’s up she will be late unless I text her to ask for her ETA. And to make matters worse, she just raised her rate by 20 percent — and at last minute notice just four days before she was supposed to come babysit. So, yes, all of this has definitely left a sour taste in my mouth.

We don’t get a babysitter very often given it’s not cheap — it probably evens out to about once a month (when we’re here), or even less. But this babysitter is definitely on the real favorites list.

Sluggish two days later

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On Friday night when we had dinner and a comedy show with friends, our friends got to the restaurant early enough for Happy Hour, so they ordered a bunch of items off the Happy Hour menu, including two orders of Korean fried chicken that came with two buckets of beer, for a total of ten beers. I figured they would get a single order of fried chicken with the beers, but I didn’t realize they would get two buckets. I had asked my friend to order me a specific Happy Hour cocktail without realizing they got so many beers. And because I hate waste, I felt bad leaving so many beers behind. So I decided that on top of my cocktail, I would have a beer… and then I opened a second beer and probably had a quarter to half of it. During dinner and the show, i felt completely fine. I did not turn red (no, I don’t get Asian glow). I felt sober and clear-headed.

That was until the next morning, when I woke up feeling sluggish in the mind and body. I wasn’t in pain, and I did not have that “hung over” feeling. It wasn’t like I couldn’t think straight, but I definitely did not feel good or refreshed in the slightest bit. I just felt… off. I could still follow conversations, do my usual tasks, and even did some yoga that morning. But “off” is the only word I can use to fully describe how I felt. And if that was not enough, today, which is two days later, I still don’t feel right. It’s like a foggy brain without being fully foggy, if that makes any sense at all. My motivation to do anything productive is extremely low. And given it was threatening to rain and did rain today, we ended up staying indoors all Sunday. I made one dish, and that was it.

I wonder if I would still feel this way if I didn’t actually know I was 40. I feel like because I know I am in my 40s now that I’m feeling more of these “your metabolism is slowing” feelings. As I read, your metabolism doesn’t just fall off a cliff at 40; that’s not really how metabolism works. It slows gradually over your late 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s. Regardless, this wasn’t a great feeling, especially as I’ve actively cut back on alcohol in the new year. And I don’t think I can drink that much anymore — for my mental clarity, but also for my general fitness goals.

Candied nuts – the simplest addition to salads that can make it pop!

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As someone who has always loved tinkering in the kitchen with different ingredients and recipes, I have always enjoyed candies nuts in salads when I’ve had them. But for some reason, I never thought to make them myself. I know they are pretty simple and straightforward to make: you take a bunch of nuts, coat them in maple syrup or simple syrup, sprinkle a little sea salt on top, and toss them. Then, you bake them at a low-ish temperature in the oven for about 25-30 minutes until they are crystallized. When you are done, you get this magical savory-sweet, high protein, high fiber snack that will quickly impress people when they find out you actually made them yourself. It’s low effort, but high “wow” factor.

Well, I finally got inspired and pushed to make them for a beet and lentil salad with tahini-yogurt dressing recipe from Hetty Lui McKinnon’s Linger cookbook. Honestly, this is not normally a cookbook I would have bought for myself; it’s all about salads, and the entire book is vegetarian. But after being gifted it and going through it, I’ve realized I am quite inspired by Hetty’s take on what a “salad” is, and I love the way she pairs ingredients together. It’s definitely made me rethink food pairings and what flavors complement each other.

So for this salad, (pre cooked) beets and shallots are pickled in a sweet vinegar mixture with spices. Then, you add cooked lentils, toss them both together in olive oil and salt/pepper. And finally, you smother a tahini-yogurt sauce on them, topping them with candied walnuts. And yes, the candied walnuts truly MAKE this salad pop. It’s one of those salads that are very memorable not just because it’s gorgeous to look at with the color contrasts, but because the flavors all meld together really beautifully.

And that, my friends, is a beautiful, delicious salad worth making and eating again and again.

Fragrance testing with my Kaia Pookie

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After last weekend when we had a social engagement Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, we also had a bit going on this weekend given that I had a scavenger hunt Saturday afternoon, plus dinner and a show with Chris and friends after. But I got some quiet respite today on Sunday since we had zero plans, and that’s exactly what I wanted after last weekend. The only thing on my calendar was a Hep B booster shot at the pharmacy a couple blocks away in the afternoon. Other than that, it would be yoga in the morning for me, some light vegetable prep and cooking, and time with the Pookster.

Pookster really didn’t want me to go to get my vaccine by myself; she insisted that she come with me. So even before I grabbed my purse, she already had put her shoes on and was standing in the doorway waiting to go with me. So, we went to CVS together. She stood by and held me while she watched the pharmacist give me the HepB vaccine (it’s a tiny bit painful since the needle is thicker). I even saw her wince when the needle went in, and she had this clear look of pain/sadness that swept over her face after. Once the pharmacist cleaned up, put on a band-aid, and left, Kaia looked at my arm and squeezed me close.

“Mama, does it hurt?” she asked me, looking fearful.

“It’s okay, Pookie!” I insisted to her. “All done now. Want to do something special and fun you’ve never done before?”

Her eyes twinkled, and of course, I am sure she thought about candy or ice cream. But no, I had different plans.

I was reading about some different “natural” fragrances that were available at Sephora, but I hadn’t made the time to go test them out until today. I brought her into the store, and she immediately voiced her disappointment. “I don’t want to be here — there’s nothing special here!” she whined. I told her that she would be able to smell some special things, and she loves smelling things!

We got to the fragrance wall, and we tested out about 10-12 different fragrances. I made a game of it, asking her which one smelled like what. And Kaia got really into it. She said one smelled like roses. Another smelled like apple. Another perfume smelled like vanilla — “Oooh, yummy!” And one she really liked was like a peach scent!

“Can we eat this?” she looked at me, with a huge smile on her face.

“No, Pooks, this is just for smelling,” I told her, tapping her nose. “This is to put on your body to smell nice. Everyone wants to smell nice! You know how I always say you are ‘fragrant’? This could help Mama be fragrant!”

Sometimes, I look at her and I still cannot believe she’s growing up so quickly. This little Pookster is starting kindergarten in September, which is crazy to me how time flew. Doing these seemingly little but new experiences with her at every stage of her development always makes me happy because I love seeing how her face lights up and she realizes how fun something is that she wasn’t sure about. I knew she would like this even when she got mad — she always loves sniffing things. Smelling is adjacent to tasting, and she’s a taster!

Birthday scavenger hunt and “teamwork”

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A friend of mine celebrated his 48th birthday last Wednesday. This year is also his toshiotoko year, which means that he is a Year of the Horse baby, and this 48th birthday is the horse year! In Japanese culture, toshiotoko is considered lucky, while in Chinese culture (it’s called ben ming nian), it’s considered unlucky. Given his wife is Japanese from Japan, he thought he’d bring back group birthday celebrations and host a scavenger hunt and dinner for this zodiac birthday year. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it because I’d already made dinner and show plans with other friends before I knew he was hosting this event, so I was able to go only to his scavenger hunt.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from the scavenger hunt, so I tried to go in with an open mind. The last time I did one, I was in Atlanta hosting one for a customer, and well, it wasn’t done very well. My friend chose this company called Watson Adventures, which is rated very highly on multiple review platforms, plus by many large corporate clients who do scavenger hunts as team building activities. Our host Corey was really friendly and animated; he explained everything very thoroughly and was fun to work with. We split into two groups, and for about 90 minutes, we roamed the West Village area with very detailed instructions on which direction/street to go on, where to turn left or right, and what types of monuments or markers to look for. New York City’s history is so rich; pretty much every single street has some interesting factoid about it. The West Village is particularly famous for all of the great artists that have come out of it, so I got reminded of this during this experience.

While working with my three teammates on the scavenger hunt, I also got reminded pretty quickly of how passive aggressive and dismissive people can be of others based on absolutely nothing. We had one person on our team who would make annoying remarks constantly. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like her when she went down the line of our group to inquire what we all did for a living and where we worked (because this was definitely integral knowledge in winning the scavenger hunt). One thing we could do to get bonus points was to take photos of our team at certain landmarks around the neighborhood, but we had to be doing specific actions or poses. I wasn’t sure if “team” meant it could just be part of the team, or it had to include all of us. I was the team leader, and I also ended up becoming the de facto photographer.

We had to pose to create numbers, and I was trying to selfie all four of us, which was really awkward. I decided not to be in the photo because we just would not all fit, and I mumbled out loud, “How am I supposed to do this?” And Ms. Passive Aggressive (PA) said, “Well, you can take the photo!”

I glared at her. “I am taking the photo and trying to figure out how to get all of us in it,” I said in a steely tone back. “Not sure if that was obvious to you.” She zipped her lip.

Then, we got to an awkward point of the location questions where we were walking on Minetta Lane, but we had to turn on Minetta Street (gotta love this about the West Village). The question context explicitly said the plaque we needed to look for was on Minetta Street, not Minetta Lane. None of us could find it. We were stumped and kept walking back and forth on Minetta Street. Ms. PA was hell bent that we read it wrong (even though we were all reading from the same damn screen) and insisted that the plaque was on Minetta Lane.

“It says Minetta Street,” I said to her multiple times, along with the two other teammates. “It is not Minetta Lane! We are reading from the same description!” She kept refusing to leave Minetta Lane and kept telling us we were wrong to turn on Minetta Street — just like the scavenger hunt directions said.

We eventually did find the plaque, which was actually removed (we had to report this) — on Minetta Street. She said nothing when we found the real home of the plaque.

In friend groups, as in work settings and offices, all it takes is one bad apple to ruin things for your enjoyment. But luckily, once that Minetta Street incident happened, the two other teammates and I banded together and basically ignored most of what Ms. PA said — which also meant we won the scavenger hunt. There were multiple times if we listened to her that we would have gotten dinged for incorrect answers, so it was good that we toughened up and just decided we were deaf to her. That’s what it takes to win sometimes.

Resume writing, interviewing, and the job market

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I’m currently in my sixth year at my current company, which for me and most people in my generation, is a long time to stay at one employer. Before I worked at my current company, my longest tenure at a single place was four years, three months. That sounds kind of sad when you share this with people like my parents, who worked at their respective companies for 20-26-plus years. But in our generation, most people tend to switch jobs every two to four years. There’s no real incentive to stay loyal to one company because there’s zero promise at 99 percent of work places of things that my parents got to benefit from, which is… a pension. A pension is this mythical, beautiful thing of bygone days for most people in my age range. Plus, if you get a “merit-based raise” of about 2.5 to 3 percent staying at a current company, but could get 15 to 20 percent more by switching jobs, most people will choose the latter.

Over the years, I’ve had many prospective employers reach out to me via LinkedIn and direct email, asking if I was open to to roles. For the first couple years during the pandemic, my mind was not there at all: I had just started this role in the midst of the pandemic. I was trying to get pregnant (then got pregnant, and finally had a child), and was completely immersed in the early days of learning to raise a tiny human on less-than-optimal levels of sleep, while also pumping milk around the clock. I’ve had former colleagues reach out to see if I’d jump ship for their organizations; I told them I just wasn’t ready to even consider. My main focus was making sure my child had everything she needed to grow and thrive, and I liked the stability of knowing I had a decent job and the flexibility to maximize time with my child. But unfortunately, “stability” is not a real term in today’s workplace. Things are changing a lot pretty much every day, especially with AI taking over. I can’t really take for granted whatever feeling of “stability” I may erroneously be harboring in the back of my mind. So, I’ve leveraged the power of AI to help me update and revise my resume, do potential new company research, and help get me back in the game and mindset of being on the market, if even just casually for now. There’s really nothing I hate more than looking for, applying to, and interviewing for new roles — the vulnerability that you have for putting yourself out there, the idea of “selling” oneself, the uncertainty that it all brings because you never know what the corporate politics are at any given organization, or how well you will or will not get along with new colleagues you’ll need to collaborate with. But given it’s been almost six years, I probably do need to challenge myself more — get my brain working in different ways again, and stop staying within my comfort zone. Plus, I have the burden of needing to provide a steady income and health coverage for my entire family, so resting on my laurels in a state of flux is not the smartest thing to do.

The anxiety I am feeling of doing all this is real, though. I feel very rusty, out of practice, and need to carve out time to really reflect on my work accomplishments over the last six years and how I want to showcase that to a bunch of new strangers. Plus, I have to be more forward looking with all things AI. I guess this is what it’s like to be “out there” in the wild in 2026.

“Always learning”

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Even when you’ve been around people close to you for years and years, you never really fully, completely know anyone. Everyone has thoughts they keep to themselves, desires that are never discussed either because they don’t want to, they’re afraid to, or they don’t think anyone around them wants to hear about it. I’ve thought a lot about this in relation to pretty much anyone around me: my husband, my parents, my closest and longest standing friends, and friends I’ve made in the last several years. Sometimes, we get surprised when we hear someone likes something, and then we almost have this feeling as though we’re offended that we didn’t know it before. It’s a funny feeling or thing to hear. It has been more than once when I’ve heard Chris’s brother exclaim that he had no idea Chris liked x thing, or that their mom did whatever activity she did and he had no idea. I’ve also heard my friends express slight annoyance when they’ve found out that I did something they didn’t know about, or that I liked something else they were unaware of. What is unspoken when all these sentiments are expressed is, “Hey, I thought I knew you better than I did! I cannot believe that this is true about you… because I did not know it to be true!”

A friend wrote in my birthday card this year, “I’m looking forward to always learning more about each other.” And it was a sincere thought because although we’ve known each other for almost five years now and have had lots of conversations, I know for a fact that every time I see and chat with her, I learn something new about her (at least, new for me) that is interesting and/or unexpected. Just yesterday, she told me that before she got into research and writing, she thought she would be a painter; she was even enrolled at the School of Visual Arts and painted a lot in her late teens. I had no idea about this; it came up out of nowhere because she was texting me about interests she had earlier in her life that she’d like to revisit in the near future. But what that reminded me about was that I also really like art, and I miss learning about it and going to museums. The timing of this text conversation was kind of funny because I started thinking more about art since Saturday when we went to our friends’ house, where she had an inordinately large collection of very eclectic and beautiful prints and paintings from all over the place; all were framed, many were on walls, but even more were still on the floor, waiting to be hung up. And while we still do go to museums when we’re traveling, it’s a bit harder now with Kaia running around everywhere and preventing me from fully appreciating the art or reading all the descriptions.

So she suggested that when I come back from upcoming travels that we go see the Frida and Diego exhibit at the MoMA. And that excited me because I love Frida Kahlo (I am okay about Diego Rivera – that damn womanizer). And that sent me down the rabbit hole of looking at what other exhibitions are at the MoMA. This was when I learned about a temporarily exhibit about Wifredo Lam, a Cuban artist of Afro-Cuban/Chinese descent who stated that his art was “an act of decolonization.” His work is very Picasso-esque, but even more colorful and intense.

So, in my existing group of local friends, I’ve discovered very recently they are into art. And that means I now have people I can go see art exhibits with. Wee. We really are always learning about each other.

An unintended mini gymnastics show at the Chinese bakery – by me

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Running around after a tiny human is one of the many responsibilities you take on when you become a parent. And well, Kaia isn’t so tiny anymore and becoming bigger and bigger each day; she is a little human figuring out exactly how capable she is of everything, whether that is how fast her legs can take her, or how much she can manipulate her parents (usually me because I am the softie in this house). Yesterday morning when Chris took her to school, Kaia got envious when she saw several classmates be brought into the Chinese bakery next door to her school. She asked Chris if she could also have a bao; he immediately said no. And apparently, she immediately decided that she’d try to get her mama to take her after school when it was pickup time.

That is pretty much what played out: When I went to pick her up at 5pm, she asked if she could go to the bakery. I said I didn’t have any cash (half lie), so we couldn’t go. Kaia insisted that she “just wanted to take a look.” But then she started running around the place to stay out of my reach. And then we ran in a few circles… and then something happened that I did not quite predict. I got very unlucky and slipped on a part of the floor that was wet. And the fall was… quite memorable in that I got probably an inch away from doing the splits. To be fair, I am a pretty flexible person. In my natural state, I am approximately three inches away from truly, properly being able to do the splits. But, when this is pushed upon you because you have slipped or gotten into a compromised position– man, that hurt like crazy. As I tried to break the total split moment, I twisted my leg and banged my right knee pretty hard on the floor, so much to the point that I was limping the next block to the subway station.

Kaia had no idea what was wrong. She saw that I fell, but she had no idea what I was feeling. I told her that I hurt myself in the bakery, and it was because I was chasing her around. And I told her that my knee was hurt and I’d likely have a bruise on it today; so no more running in the bakery. She seemed a bit solemn and said nothing when I said this on the subway ride home yesterday.

This morning when I woke her up, she remembered. One of the first things she said to me after getting out of bed was, “Can I see your bruise?” while pointing at my right knee. Just so that everyone is aware, it’s actually not as ugly as I thought it would be: it’s a very faint green color.

So, yes. Pregnancy can be painful at times; I had really bad pregnancy sciatica for several very frustrating days around the 30-week mark. Childbirth, especially unmedicated as it was for me, was the most pain I’d ever experienced in my entire life. And well, apparently, the physical pain from having a child never quite goes away because it comes back in moments like these!

Rediscovering the glory of cooking with fresh lemongrass — all because of a very sharp knife

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At most, I cook with fresh lemongrass two to three times a year. You can’t buy it at a regular grocery store; if I need it, I pick it up from Hong Kong Supermarket or my Vietnamese market in Chinatown. There’s really no substitute for fresh lemongrass: it is bright, fresh, almost sweet, with very floral, minty, almost gingery and herbaceous notes. When you eat something with lemongrass, it stares at you in the face; subtlety is not a characteristic of this herb. Although I love this herb, I’ve historically found it really annoying to deal with. The edible part of the stalk is very hard, which means it can be difficult to cut, even with a sharp knife. If you look at guides for how to cut lemongrass, some of them even say that you should consider resharpening your knife after cutting lemongrass because the damn stalk can dull your blade!

But alas, with my fancy Shun knife that was gifted for my birthday, I have a super, duper sharp knife now. So when I picked up two lemongrass stalks to make some grilled Vietnamese lemongrass beef patties, I wondered how much easier it would be to cut these with this new knife. And lo and behold, this crazy sharp knife made a massive difference: not only did the knife slide through the tough stalk quicker and smoother, but every cut felt so easy! Who would have thought that the knife would truly make all the difference when it came to cutting this delicious herb?

So I finely minced the lemongrass and threw in some other aromatics, fish sauce, oyster sauce, black pepper, and some sugar. I added the minced beef, mixed it up, created meatballs, then flattened them for quicker cooking on the pan. And once I was done cooking, I took a bite of one of the meatballs: Yum. The lemongrass flavor was just singing! Few things beat this flavor for me. My new mental note to self is that I will definitely be cooking with lemongrass more often now that I have this knife, which has greatly improved my handling of literally tough ingredients like this herb. It really is true: oftentimes, your equipment makes all the difference when cooking!