Monthly Archives: April 2014

Dinner with an old classmate

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Today, I arrived in Atlanta for another work trip. I’ll be here until Tuesday meeting clients, so I set some time up to meet with an old high school classmate who is down here getting his MBA at Emory. This classmate and I talked on and off throughout high school, and other than Facebook, we never really kept in touch since then. The last time I was here a month ago, I posted a photo of Atlanta skyscrapers, which prompted him to message me on Facebook and ask to catch up.

He was just as quirky and awkward as I remembered him to be, except now that we are adults, the awkwardness comes in around conversation topics that I don’t really embrace, like “when are you getting married?” and “by the way, most of the girls around your age are already married!” He told me he dated someone for five years to eventually break up with her. She was indirectly pressuring him to get married; he did not have marriage anywhere on his radar. This is why men suck.

Believe it or not, though, it was still a good meeting and dinner.

Device obsessed

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I think the dependence on computers and mobile devices is driving me crazy. I hate that I set my alarm to wake up on my phone. I hate that I have to check the weather on my Yahoo weather app when deciding what to wear. I hate that when I wake up, one of the first things I do is check the time on my phone. I don’t like that most mornings when I wake up, Chris is already awake reading news or e-mail on his phone next to me. I even dislike that there are Kindle book sales that cost almost nothing, but if I want to buy that same book in print, it will cost 10-20 times the amount. Sometimes, I want to throw my computer across the room… maybe Chris’s phone, too.

Work

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Last year when I started my new job, I felt like a lot of my time was spent being idle, searching for things to do because my role wasn’t neatly defined. I spent time trying to look like I was busy when I was not. I felt guilty every now and then because it seemed like I was getting this nice paycheck twice a month for doing very little of anything.

Well, I’m never going to complain about being idle or not having enough to do again because those days are very distant now. I have so much to do all the time now that there are moments when I struggle for a few seconds to decide which to prioritize, task A or task B? When I am not at the office, I feel compelled to constantly check work e-mail on my phone or computer, and I get guilt pangs when I don’t respond right away. It’s funny how quickly life circumstances can change. This is what it’s like to be a workaholic New Yorker in tech.

Emergency lights

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Occasionally growing up, when we’d be on the road and would need to pull over for a firetruck or ambulance with flashing sirens, my dad would joke that it probably wasn’t an emergency, and they were just in a mad rush for their morning coffee or doughnut. Well, for the first time in my life today, I actually saw an ambulance with flashing sirens pass by me on Third Avenue today, run through a red light, and double park itself right in front of Crumbs, the ubiquitous cupcake chain in New York. As the driver of the ambulance got out, he gave a high-five to a guy standing in front who I’m assuming he knew. When the guy said, “You needed your sugar fix today?” He responded, “Yeah, I have to pick up some cupcakes!”

Got to love the abuse of power, along with the sugar craving. We’re all human, after all.

Introversion

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A few days ago, Chris’s brother Ben was Whatsapp messaging me about a speech he will be making for Toastmasters on introverts vs. extroverts. He asked me what I thought I was. My response? I suppose I’m somewhere in between, but if I had to slide myself on the scale, I’d probably say I’m more introverted. Contrary to most people’s beliefs, being introverted doesn’t necessarily mean you are shy, are anti-social, or find being around people draining. It really just means that you enjoy thinking, crave alone time to think through thoughts and feelings, and actually feel energized when being alone.

I am certainly not shy or socially awkward. I love being around people, given that they are intelligent and not small-minded. 🙂 I love being the center of attention sometimes, but not all the time. I greatly enjoy being in small groups, but strongly dislike large groups, as I find them impersonal and at times even superficial. I loathe small talk and weather discussions and would prefer to chat about passions and ideas.

And as I look at my 2014 goals list and go to the Books section, I realize I’ve already managed to somehow finish reading seven books, and we’re only in the fourth month of the year. I suppose only an introvert could get through that many books in such a short amount of time.

Tax Day

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Today is tax day here in the States. It’s the one glorious day of the year when after spending the last year having taxes taken out of your paycheck automatically, you may have to cut a check to the IRS for even more money! That was me this year, and it was a very miserable moment dropping those into the mail. Little people have to pay big taxes. I automatically hit “delete” on any Tax Day sales emails in my inbox this morning.

As I was writing out the envelopes for the tax vouchers yesterday, I remembered that last year, I e-filed and paid everything online using Tax Slayer, and I told my parents that for the first time, I would not need their CPA’s help (and he would not be getting my fee). Ed was concerned as always and asked what program I would be using. When I told him Tax Slayer, he immediately started doing all these Google searches and found a site that tore Tax Slayer apart with all its harsh criticisms. “You should have used Turbo Tax like I did,” he admonished. I sent him back the same domain with a different page that basically had the same critiques of Turbo Tax. He didn’t say anything in response.

It hurts to remember it now. I never thought then that 2013 would be the last year that my brother would ever do his own taxes, and even worse, that it would be the last year of his life. Ed worried about everything, even the little things like what tax program I was using, even when he was suffering so deeply inside.

It’s like his death is a part of me now – it’s not a devastating shock or even a past tragic event to me anymore; it’s like his death has become a huge part of my identity and how I perceive the world and look toward the future. Not everyone (or maybe anyone) notices it or can see it, but I feel it every single day.

I wish he were here today to scold me about not using Turbo Tax again.

South Indian food Meetup

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I’ve realized that of the Meetups I’ve been to, the most interesting times have been when the group is a big mish-mash of different people from different countries and parts of the world, and we’re generally eating ethnic food. Interesting food is what brings interesting people together.

Tonight, I went to a South Indian food meetup in Midtown East. I arrived later than most of the others because I get off work later than they do, so initially it seemed awkward because no one was talking. No one really started talking until we started talking about different food, which led to discussions about politics, cultures, and living in different parts of the world. We had two Indian guys from India, a girl from Malaysia who studied in Delaware and now works here, another who went to school in D.C. and now works at the Federal Reserve, someone else who is originally from Singapore, but his family immigrated to Sydney when he was young, and now, he never spends more than two years at a time in one place because of his contracting job as a statistician. We had two teachers, one who teaches kindergarten and another who teaches community college courses on substance abuse in the Bronx. Three of us work in tech.

I learned a lot of interesting things tonight. I learned but forgot that Alaska was mostly made up of men, but didn’t realize that the men who are there, due to the fact that Alaska is in the middle of nowhere, gets 23 hours of darkness for half the year, and is cold as hell then, results in five times the number of domestic violence cases as the rest of the country (this is told by the guy who never lives anywhere that long from Sydney). I also heard interesting hypotheses on why Australia is so Asian yet remains racist – hypotheses that I can actually believe. Maybe this will be my new goal – stop going to fru-fru restaurants for Meetups and stick with the well-priced, ethnic holes-in-the-wall. I definitely was not bored tonight.

Crying outside

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After a night out for Greek food and seeing The Cripple of Inishmaan with Daniel Radcliffe, we came home and shut our door to hear a woman screaming in the hallway of our apartment building. She’s yelling in a language I do not recognize, and I believe she is on the phone because I don’t hear another voice responding to her. After a bit of yelling, she just starts sobbing. The sobbing lasts for what seems like forever, and it’s extremely loud. I can even hear it over my electric toothbrush with the bathroom door shut.

I feel sad for a while and realize that the first thing I think when I hear this person yelling and crying over the phone is, “Did someone close to her just die?”

That was me almost nine months ago.

Maybe too soon

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Planning the next vacation with my parents probably isn’t the best thing when my dad is calling me now, nitpicking at all the little things that happened during the last trip that he didn’t like. The one that is one of the most ridiculous is the black car service that was parked outside our hotel, and my dad walked up to him to ask how much a trip to the airport would be. $27, the guy responds. Obviously, it’s not going to be a deal; it’s a black car service! The trip we ended up taking via a regular yellow cab was $15. I’ve heard this about ten times since it happened, and will very likely hear about it again in the next week. “Remember when…” Yes, I remember. Now, can we stop rehashing something so pointless?

Was this a highlight of our trip? Of course not. But it’s something he wants to complain about as much as possible.