Unconfident women

Tonight, I attended the birthday party of one of Chris’s friends at the Dream hotel in downtown. It was one of those very New York-type spots, where everyone is dressed up and extremely glam, standing and chit-chatting while holding their $16 cocktails, all around a uniform four-feet-deep pool, into which no one will be jumping in.

I’m sitting and making conversation with some of his friend’s friends, listening to the story of how one of them is in a relationship with one of her colleagues, who has teenage children and is in the process of getting a very slow and painful divorce. The kids hate her and blame her for their parents’ breakup, and the man… doesn’t seem to have much of a spine at all.

Then he walks in, and within five minutes, the topic somehow gets to breast implants. We are discussing what men notice about a woman when she passes by. Well, I said, when I pass by, I’m sure my boobs are not at the top of the list! This guy responds, “Let me ask you something that she does not approve of (gestures to the woman who has been accused to break up his marriage): would you get a boob job?” I immediately answer no. “Oh god, you’re one of those women,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Why not?” Because I’m not quick-witted enough, I simply glare at him and respond, “Because I don’t believe in having anything fake on my body.” Then I slowly get up and get ready to leave.

I felt sorry for the woman after we had that interchange. That’s when I realized how unconfident she was to be with such a shallow, moronic man who was encouraging her to be fake and plastic.

Old colleagues reunite

A former colleague of mine, who I haven’t had a real conversation with in over two years, actually got together with me for dinner tonight. It’s so funny how Facebook and Instagram are the ways that we somehow “follow” people’s lives now without ever having any real human interaction with them.

We’ve both been aware of each other’s lives: since we last worked at the same company, she has changed jobs, quit her last job, and started her own stationery company; she’s gotten a cute Havanese dog, become engaged, married, and settled in her Upper West Side life. She’s even become a pescatarian. Since then, I ended a serious relationship, helped plan and attend two of my (same) best friend’s weddings, entered into a new relationship, moved in with the guy, got engaged, traveled to over 12 different states and 5 different countries. I also switched jobs, and have suffered a major loss in my life.

It’s like we know each other, but in many ways of course, we do not because we haven’t had that personal connection in so long. But what is comforting to know is that despite the fact that many people think (and I am included in this occasionally) that the world has become more impersonal with the use of technology, smart phones, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as a way of very loosely staying in touch, these means are also a way for us to connect more easily. If it weren’t for Facebook or Instagram, I wouldn’t have known she quit her job to start a business that I actually am really excited for, and I probably wouldn’t have reached out to her to catch up. The night ended on a hopeful note; we’re going to try to see each other more often, and we’ll hopefully be seeing each other when we’re both in San Francisco next week.

I occasionally have gotten sad at times when I think about how I’ve been in this city for over six years, but have never established a friend group I can rely on, or even more than just a handful of friends that I really trust and see regularly. But I think tonight’s meeting made me a little more hopeful that maybe rekindling old connections can be a possibility, and that I can actually meet normal, happy people who aren’t too dysfunctional here. Maybe I’m not the insane-person magnet I thought I was.

Happy hour in New York

It’s been over six years since I’ve moved to New York, yet sometimes, I still have these rare moments when I get shocked after seeing a bill at a restaurant, particularly given how much (or how little) I have ordered. Tonight, I went with a good friend of mine to a Mexican-fusion restaurant in the East Village, mostly ordered off the Happy Hour menu, which is supposed to be cheaper, yet somehow, my share of the bill after tax and tip still ends up being almost $60. How is that even possible considering I only had one happy hour drink and five out of the six items we ordered was off the Happy Hour/half priced menu?

This reminded me of a tapas restaurant I used to frequent in another part of the East Village that has a wildly popular special on Tuesdays, when all of its tapas dishes are half-priced. That may seem like a great deal to you, and did seem like a good deal to me the two or three times I went… except all of the times I went, I remember that the price per head probably still came out to $30-60 depending on how many cocktails we ordered. Even the “cheap” nights in New York City seem to be stupidly expensive.

Healthy habits

A few of us at the office are participating in a contest to see who can bring lunch from home every single day — until someone breaks the rule. The whole point of this is to encourage everyone to see how much money they can save just by not buying lunch every day, and potentially to be healthier because we’d likely be making our own lunches (or our respective live-in partners would).

One of my colleagues today said that a lot of the time, he just doesn’t have time during the weekend to buy groceries. “I had stuff to do this weekend,” he said. “I have places to be. I actually have a life! Sometimes, you just don’t have enough time to buy groceries for the entire week. That takes a lot of planning.”

Honestly, that statement made me more sad than it did make me annoyed because then, I thought of a woman I met about a week ago who says that she is so busy that all she does is make the same enchiladas every week for her children, and the rest of the week, she chooses from among four to five takeout spots that the kids like that are walking distance from her apartment downtown. We live in New York; it’s the land of takeout, delivery, and eating out. Sadly, that doesn’t make for a healthy lifestyle for a growing child.. or even people our age. If we can’t pick up good habits for cooking and healthy eating before we have children and are constantly making excuses about being “too busy,” what makes us really think that we can do it once the kids come and we really do have less time?

Crowds and no crowds

I’ve probably lived in major metropolitan areas for too long because I always feel a little bit strange when I go to smaller towns in areas like the Midwest or the South, where it’s almost the norm to never see areas full of people walking and getting to places. Most people will drive, few people walk anywhere unless it’s from their car to a store front or office. Even in what was supposed to be the entertainment district by Riverfront Park in Montgomery, there were very few people on a Friday night. At 6pm on a Friday night in downtown Montgomery, we were the only two people walking its streets.

A friend of mine who is from Arkansas spent most of the last year in the Bay Area and has just come back to Little Rock. She said she also experienced a bit of a shock when she came back to Arkansas to wander around its streets and malls to find just a handful of people walking here and there. It became normal to her when she was living in the San Jose area to see hoards of people everywhere. But it wasn’t that normal before that.

The funniest thing about our visit to Montgomery was that the one time we saw a lot of people that entire weekend was actually at the Montgomery Center for the Performing Arts, where the center was divided into two sections: one half was a gun and hunting show; the other half was a five-hour-long evangelical Christian Sunday service. People were happily shuffling between the two and making conversation with everyone around them. Talk about a culture shock.

The Deep South

When people think of the South (or at least, assuming they know where the South actually is), I think Mississippi is undoubtedly one of the first states that would come to mind. Sadly, it is also one of the first states that comes to mind when we think of the highest crime rates, highest poverty levels, and also lowest life expectancy. Because of all the above, it also tends to be the state that people make jokes about when it comes to the last state they’d want to live in. Honestly, as someone who grew up in California and now lives in New York, I’ve never heard of any famous tourist spot in Mississippi that would have drawn me there.

We crossed the state line west today to visit the Gulf Coast National Seashore in Mississippi, which is in Ocean Springs, and also ate at a delicious and cozy seafood spot there. Friends of mine who live in Arkansas told me that Mississippi is actually a really popular place to visit for those in the South who want to travel, but not too far, and have great beaches and fresh seafood from the Gulf Coast. I never would have even thought about this before our visit. The fried oysters and shrimp were some of the best we’ve ever had, and of course at a price point that was more than reasonable and even borderline cheap for seafood. The hospitality overall was very warm, especially by the host, who commented on how pretty I was and told Chris, “Don’t let her go!” It seems like whenever I am in the South, I tend to get complimented more on my appearance. I’m guessing it’s because as an Asian, I’m more of an exotic novelty there.

Yankees

Chris decided that we hadn’t traveled enough this summer (anyone who knows us knows this is definitely not true, as we are reveling in wanderlust…or suffering from it, take your pick), so this weekend, he has decided to whisk me off on a trip that I did not know about — to Alabama! We are staying in Montgomery, the capital (and the birthplace of the Civil Rights movement) and plan on crossing the border west to Mississippi to see what “the South’s warmest welcome” state has to offer.

One of our first stops today was at the First White House of the Confederacy. which was the first home of the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, and his family for just five months before the Confederate capital moved to Richmond, Virginia. The tour was free, half guided and half self-guided. Our guide during the first half was very friendly and asked where we were from. We told him we were visiting from New York City, and he exclaimed, “Oh, Yankees!” I started laughing because I’ve never, ever been called a Yankee before. And then it suddenly hit me: people in the South probably still, to this day, call people in the North Yankees. It’s as though we are from another country, with our different perceptions, ways of thinking, education, culture, and of course, accents. Unfortunately, he did not pick up on any Aussie twang of Chris’s.

Old colleagues

Today, I had lunch with some former colleagues from my last job. Two of them I haven’t seen in over a year now, and the other I’ve seen three times since I left over meals or drinks. It’s funny how sometimes, you don’t see people for a long time, and when you do see them again, everything feels exactly the way it did as the last time you saw them. It’s almost like no time had ever passed.

It made me a little sad, though. I realized that even though I was unhappy at my last job, there were things that kept me going there, like the few colleagues who I did share laughs with about nonsensical things, and others who I actually did discuss serious issues with. People actually acknowledged I was a human being. My presence was noticed. I was listened to. If I wasn’t there, people noticed and asked about me. The people you work with and are surrounded by every day really help shape your desire to go to work every day. So it seems pitiful when you have no one at all to lean at at your office.

Empty office

A friend and I had dinner tonight, and over Vietnamese vermicelli noodles, we discussed how his office has already experienced three rounds of layoffs this year, in addition to colleagues quitting left and right. Some are leaving to pursue roles at competitor companies, others are changing industries entirely, and two or three have even quit without any other job lined up. They were that fed up with the politics and attrition rate that they couldn’t be sane staying there. It’s gotten to the point where this summer, on average, he’s probably only come into the office one or two days a week at most and just “works from home” the rest of the week.

A lot of us spend a lot of our lives making decisions (or lack of decisions) based on fear. As a twenty-something adult, we may be worried about leaving our jobs without anything lined up because of the fear of no health insurance, the fear of future employers asking us to explain the “gap” on the resume and their judgment, the fear of not being able to pay bills or save (pretty fair, though, obviously), the fear of what our parents or friends or peers will say to our voluntary unemployment — the fear. I’m not exempt from this. That’s why it’s always so rare to hear about people actually quitting their jobs with absolutely no plan or no job lined up. It’s such a gutsy, out of the ordinary thing to do or hear about. Granted, I’m not advocating that people quit their jobs and just sit around all day and do nothing, but I think that we all deserve a break from being miserable and controlled by terrible, toxic work environments.

Robin Williams

Last night, I found out that one of the comedians that highlighted my youth committed suicide. Robin Williams, the voice of the Genie in Aladdin, the main lead in Mrs. Doubtfire, which Ed and I watched together, has died via asphyxiation in his Tiburon home. I’m deeply saddened by this news, and particularly because his death was of his own means. It’s another life taken by suicide, by a deep depression that failed to be fully recognized and treated by our society.

I actually met Robin Williams in Japantown in San Francisco during my middle school days. I was with a few of my friends during a school holiday, and we saw him at a store in the shopping center. My friend’s little sister was so excited and asked for his autograph, and he seemed genuinely happy and eager to give his autograph and chat with us even though he was in the company of who I think was his mother. A lot of celebrities would not have been this warm and kind.

I wonder what Ed would have thought to have heard that Robin Williams committed suicide. I’m sure he would have been shocked, but unfortunately, he isn’t here today to hear the news. Instead, Robin Williams is joining him in heaven somewhere up there. I hope he is cracking jokes and making my brother laugh now. Maybe they are even cracking jokes about the fact that Ed took his own life before Robin did, as dark as that may sound.