I wore my banana outfit for the third or fourth time last year, and Chris refused to let me wear it to the office again this year. So, he suggested that I wear either my cheongsam, my Chinese dress I wore during the last hour of our wedding reception, or my ao dai, my Vietnamese dress. He had a good point: when else am I ever going to wear either of these outfits? I suppose if I went to a Chinese event that I could rewear my cheongsam because it is semi-formal, and not obviously a “wedding dress,” but the ao dai, given its traditional colors, could definitely be perceived as wedding only. I ended up wearing my cheongsam because Chris insisted that no one at my office would be able to appreciate how glitzy my ao dai was (nor would they even know what an ao dai is). “They’ll just think you’re a geisha or a Japanese flight attendant!” he exclaimed.

I got to the office, and a number of colleagues complimented me on my outfit. One said while smiling, “You look really nice today, but I have no idea what you are wearing.”

Chris’s response to that when I told him? “You should have said .. oh, I just assumed you were a Trump supporter because you are dressed up as a white guy.”

Maybe. But unfortunately, I am not that quick on my feet and never have been.

I had to come back to the Upper East Side for my doctor’s appointment this afternoon, as well as a follow-up eye appointment from last week. Two times to the Upper East Side in just a week; I hadn’t been there this often since I actually lived in the neighborhood over a year ago. It felt really nice to walk through the streets and pass by all the meticulously decorated brownstones with their ornate Halloween decorations and jack-o-lanterns. It’s one of those little quirky things I miss not living in that neighborhood anymore. Sometimes when you walk through that area of Manhattan, it feels so residential that you can forget for a moment that you live in a concrete jungle. It just feels like a homely suburban neighborhood… just without any front yards or space between the buildings. You do get bits and pieces of Halloween decoration on buildings in the Upper West Side or the East Village, but the Upper East Side has always been known to be decked out at this time of year.

I do miss this neighborhood. A lot of the storefronts have changed, of course. Many restaurants and shops have closed; a lot of areas have many retail vacancies. New high-rises have gone up. Well, I have my doctor and optometrist to keep me coming back here to relive my Upper East Side resident memories.

Tonight, we went to the Manhattan Theatre Club to see The Niceties, a play about a young liberal black student and her well respected liberal white professor at an elite East Coast university. Although they both on the surface seem as though they stand for the same values, their conversations quickly reveal that their thoughts on race and reputation do not match and actually clash quite heavily.

I spent most of the play going back and forth regarding who I agreed with. When it came to understanding race at a deeper level and not glorifying politicians like Washington and Jefferson, especially given they were slave owners and did not really want “rights” for anyone other than property-owning white men, I agreed with the black student. When it came to the oversensitivity of today’s generation and the constant need for “trigger warnings” and incessantly requiring people to be politically correct in everything they say,  I agreed with the white professor. But it was like a tennis match, constantly watching the ball go back and forth and not being sure where we would land. It reminded me of the Bernie supporters vs. the Hillary supporters in the 2016 election, or the third-party voters vs. the Hillary supporters.

I really liked the author’s note that came with the play’s Playbill, as it very succinctly summed up the goal of the play, as well as the general sentiments in today’s heated political climate which stare us in the face, which said:

“I’ve always been fascinated when good people fight.

Conflicts between good and evil can be fun fodder for action films. But I’m more intrigued by the times when smart, well-meaning people, with great values and the best intention, fundamentally can’t agree on the right way to behave.

Kindness or honesty? Idealism or caution? Forgiveness or punishment?

We all have natural instincts in one direction or another. We can all justify our instincts with logic, examples, and appeals. But do we really know for certain that our beliefs about the world, and about how we ought to behave in it, are right? And how should we respond to someone who tells us when we’re wrong?”

I always feel conflicted. I felt angry when I had friends who didn’t vote in the 2016 presidential election. I got pissed at my friend who voted for Jill Stein, a third-party candidate. I get infuriated when I still hear people today say that Bernie Sanders should run again in 2020 because this time, “he’d definitely win.” Okay, if you think that, you seriously did NOT understand 2016 at all. None of us really do, but you’re even further from comprehension of that. For those on the “right” side of progress, we don’t agree; the Democratic Party has no unity, no real unifying message. That’s one of many reasons things fell apart in 2016. We’re all trying to be good, but it’s not clear who is the “worst” of the “good” and the “best” of the “good.”

I am anal retentive about cleaning. I’ve always been this way. I’m 100% certain it was a learned trait that I got from my mother, who used to have a very calibrated routine for cleaning: all parts of the bathroom had to be cleaned every single week, usually Wednesday. The kitchen floor was swept weekly and mopped at least every other week. The bathtub was thoroughly washed after every single bath. The sinks were cleaned once a week. She usually did all of this, but my dad occasionally would help with sweeping and mopping the kitchen. When she cleaned the toilet, every single surface would get disinfected, even the sides of the tank, which most people don’t even think to clean.

I really do not enjoy cleaning at all, but I do love the feeling of being done cleaning and knowing that I am standing in a spick and span apartment. I’ve occasionally thought about what it would be like to have someone professionally clean my apartment, but there are two things going against this: a) I’m too cheap, and b) my standard of “clean” is really high, so the chances are also very high of my hating the job of whoever did the cleaning and never wanting to hire them again.

So on my local college’s alumnae Facebook page, someone recently asked for “reasonably priced” cleaning services that others would recommend. A women’s cooperative based in Brooklyn was recommended by a number of alumnae, and I looked at their website. On average for a 1 bedroom/1 bath apartment, they charge about $120, and it’s not by the hour (that sounded suspect, especially since they said on average the cleaner will spend about 4-6 hours cleaning. When broken down by the hour, that seems a bit too cheap to be true. It’s for “everything” – sweeping, mopping, dusting, cleaning countertops, disinfecting toilets. But when I looked at the details of how they define “cleaning toilet,” it simply says “clean toilet bowl.” Eh. That’s not the entire toilet. What about the seat – the top and the bottom? What about the handle, or the base of the bowl, where all kinds of nasty fecal matter accumulates? It says on their site that you can make specific requests or ask for “deep cleaning,” and after visiting your apartment, they would then adjust their quote based on your specifications.

At some point, I will succumb, maybe when my life circumstances change, but for now, I will pass.

Two years ago, and pretty much since I realized I needed glasses when I was about 16, my eyes have been a -1.50. For those who do not know what eye prescriptions mean, that means that I am slightly near-sighted. If you are standing in front of me or a few feet away from me, I can see you pretty clearly. But once you are about 30-50 feet away, I won’t be able to make out your face’s details, but I’ll still be able to tell it is you. That means that if I actually drove a car, I’d need to wear corrective lenses to legally drive. I wouldn’t be able to read street signs.

Last year, my vision worsened and became -1.75. Today, I told my optometrist that I felt like when I wore my contacts that things were a bit too fuzzy when I would try to look at my phone or a computer. I described using my glasses more while watching TV to see all the details, and after some further examination, he decided that perhaps I am straining my eyes too much. I’m trying too hard? Sounds like the typical Asian kid. So he is having me test out -1.00 contact lenses for the next week to see if these are enough for me.

Does this actually mean that my vision has improved?? I couldn’t believe it. He laughed at how astounded I was. “Just because you are slowly getting older doesn’t always mean that everything gets worse!” he exclaimed, smiling.