Monthly Archives: September 2024

Counting and Cracking

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Tonight, we went to see the visiting Australian (and Sri Lankan) show Counting and Cracking at NYU’s Skirball Theater. It’s a show that takes us through a multi-generational journey of a Sri Lankan-Australian family from 1956 to 2004, political turmoil of a divided Sri Lanka, and relatable stories of family love, conflict, pain, and forgiveness. Chris’s brother originally took their parents to see the show in Melbourne, and he told us about it and the fact that it would be coming to New York in the fall. So we got tickets and went tonight. Even though the show is three hours long with two intermissions, which is quite long, it didn’t feel like it dragged at all; instead, it actually felt like it was gripping you along, forcing you to wonder what would happen next. The show tries to condense a lot of history into a short amount of time, and it does it really well. I never once felt like it was too long or as though I was losing interest in the plot.

I found myself moved to tears at certain points of the show; I don’t think that’s happened at a show for me in ages. At the end of the show, Radha talks about how she would likely have never left Sri Lanka, even in the dire political state it was in, had it not been for Siddhartha, who she was pregnant with. She gave up the home that her grandfather built from scratch; it was a home her husband thought she’d never, ever give up. She ultimately left Sri Lanka for Australia 100 percent because of him: she wanted him to have a better life and to be safe. These moments in movies and theater just hit me differently since my fertility, pregnancy, and motherhood journey. It’s almost like my brain and body have been rewired since becoming a mother; it’s the process of “matrescence” that doesn’t get enough research or attention. Parents really do sacrifice so much for their kids, and most of their kids will never quite grasp even a fraction of the sacrifices until they (may) become parents themselves.

 

Beef rendang, coconut rice, and the rice cooker that decided to stop working

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It seems to be a once-a-year activity now: I decided to defrost the beef chuck I picked up at Costco a few months ago to make a batch of rendang using the Sambal Lady’s rendang spice packet (in partnership with Burlap and Barrel, who I have grown to love and admire). Last year, I made the rendang with a leg of lamb I cut up. In 2022, I made it with beef chuck I purchased on sale at Whole Foods. Just like the previous two years, while the process was simplified greatly given I didn’t have to source all the different spices with Auria’s spice blend packet, it was still a labor of love since it takes low and slow cooking and stirring over the course of four hours. Prior to having a fully remote job, this would have been unthinkable as a weeknight meal unless I did it on the Sunday before Monday dinner. But I was able to adjust the heat and stir the beef mixture between meetings and work tasks yesterday, and the beef rendang came out beautifully.

I planned to serve the rendang with coconut rice (infused with some cardamom pods) made in our rice cooker, but I was sad to see that after 14 years of operation, the rice cooker decided to stop working. I had to salvage the partially boiled rice by dumping it all into a sauce pan and finishing it over the stove. RIP rice cooker, and hello to your updated replacement (the same brand) coming in a couple days!

I wasn’t sure if Kaia would enjoy the rendang given these spice packets were the original hot ones, and she’s recently been complaining about spicy food (that friggin’ Dragons Love Tacos book that demonizes spicy food!). So I was very pleasantly surprised to see her carefully inspecting the beef shreds, tearing them apart, and daintily placing small pieces in her mouth and chewing. She’d hesitate, ask for water or milk, then go back for seconds, thirds, and fourths. She did say the rendang was spicy, but she kept going back for more. This is ALL a good sign! I’m trying to raise a spice/heat loving little eater!

Was the rendang a big effort? Yes. But was it worth it? Darn right it was. And we have plenty of tasty leftovers for the next few days to keep the ROI going.

The grass is always greener on the other side – from a food perspective

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Whenever we travel, and especially to places with really strong food cultures, like France, Italy, and pretty much anywhere and everywhere in Asia, I always think how amazing it would be to live in a place that truly values food and freshness. The U.S. was built to feed a lot of people en masse, which basically means that we’re feeding for the sake of feeding people here (quantity matters, full bellies matter) instead of thinking about quality or sustainability of raw ingredients. So whenever I hear about people who are of a similar age as I am, originally born and raised in a Western nation like the U.S., but have done the “reverse migration” of going back to their country of origin, I am always intrigued, and my ears tend to perk up.

In the last year, I discovered the freelance journalist Clarissa Wei and her cookbook Made in Taiwan. She is of Taiwanese descent, but she was born and raised in Southern California. She has since moved back to Taiwan and is living there with her husband and young child. When I did a search for her, I actually realized I had read endless articles she had written about Chinese and Taiwanese food previously, but I had just not remembered the by-line on those articles. Her cookbook reads like a journal or blog, peppered with lots of heavily researched factoids and also personal stories of her own experiences in the U.S. and in Taiwan. She says that when Costco opened in Taiwan, she and her husband got a membership and treated their visits there like her parents used to treat treks to Ranch 99 in California: while her parents would get excited at stocking up on all their favorite Taiwanese and Asian ingredients and fresh produce, she and her husband now meticulously plan what they will buy at Costco: avocados, bagels, and all the Western things that you cannot easily find in Taiwan that they missed having easy access to while in the U.S. “The grass is always greener on the other side,” she lamented. Prior to moving to Taiwan, she used to get excited about having easy access to the night markets and all her favorite Taiwanese dishes. Now that she has all that literally at her doorstep, she wants the American things that are either far more expensive in Taiwan or more difficult to find.

Another funny anecdote she shared that actually made me laugh out loud: she said that her standard Taiwanese stove top was able to get so hot that it would make restaurant-quality fried rice with real “wok hei” as I always get excited about. I always love getting stir-fried noodles and rice at restaurants because “wok hei” is just impossible at home with our stove top. On the flip side for Clarissa, it was very challenging to impossible to slow simmer anything on her stove top. So she went to a shop to see what it would cost to get her range replaced with an American-style one. The shopkeeper looked at her like she’d gone crazy and said, “Why would you do that? Do you want food with no flavor?” The sheer horror!

We always want what we cannot get easily and romanticize the things we don’t have. Off the top of my head, I think that if we leave the U.S., I would most definitely miss not having to think about how to read food labels (this is a funny one, isn’t it?). In New York City specifically, I’d miss easy access to literally every cuisine on earth, somewhere across these five boroughs. I’d also probably miss easy access to boneless, skinless chicken thighs, or trays of neatly cubed beef chuck, or a boneless leg of lamb. I am American, after all, raised in a western country that is used to having its citizens being quite far removed from the process of animal slaughter.

Varied fast-casual lunch options in a post-pandemic NYC

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Prior to the pandemic, the quickest lunch options while at the office were always the standard types of things you’d expect: salads, sandwiches, and pre-made sushi. While we did have nicer sandwich options like the Cambodian sandwich shop Num Pang or higher quality salad spots like Sweetgreen, there really wasn’t a great fast casual option for Chinese food nearby. We had a few places that had limited lunch specials, but they were standard sit-down restaurants, not places where you could grab and go the way you do at Sweetgreen or Le Pain Quotidien. So when I read about Milu, a fast-casual, modern Chinese spot that opened near Madison Square Park, I thought it sounded promising, especially since it had interesting options for lunch that you wouldn’t normally think about, like Yunnan-style beef brisket or Mandarin crispy duck. I met a friend here for lunch today and was impressed by almost everything about it, from the sleek seating and booths, the fresh, bright, modern decor, the quick ordering and serving system, and the food itself. You order at the counter and grab a number, and within five minutes, the food is brought out to you. With a plate and a drink for each of us, Our meal came out to less than $50. The duck was crispy on the outside and succulent on the inside, with duck fat rice, fresh herby salad and pickled cucumber salad on the side. My friend’s brisket was fork-tender and a little spicy, much to my surprise, and had similar side salads.

I think New York needs more Chinese places like this that are quick, casual, and modern that also have high quality food. The average person who isn’t exposed to Chinese food thinks it’s a bunch of greasy, MSG-laden fast food, but this food is fast, high quality, not greasy, and NOT MSG-laden.

Mid-Autumn Festival: Lantern making with parents activity at school

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Each month, Kaia’s new school will have activities where parents are invited to participate in the classroom. It’s done by lottery, and usually two parents will be invited to join each event. This month, I was selected as one of two caregivers to attend for the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival lantern making activity. I dropped Kaia off at the school at 8:30 and then came back at 10am for the lantern making. It was a bit haphazard, as nothing was really described beforehand, and we all just jumped into the activity. The kids were given the supplies, and steps were barely described even as we went about the activity. On a positive note, I finally got to meet the Chinese teacher, who comes in from 9-4:30 every day, which is why I hadn’t met her yet; we just never overlapped since I pick up at around 5pm.

Pookster was very excited to see me come into the classroom, but she reverted into a bit of a baby from the moment I arrived. She wanted me to do all the pasting and positioning of the mooncakes and rabbits for her on the lantern. She wanted to squirt liquid glue everywhere (which I was not an fan of…). And every time I got up to get supplies or my phone to take photos, she freaked out and followed me, thinking that I was going to leave. When she said she had to go pee, the Chinese teacher offered to take her, but she refused. So the Chinese teacher still took her, and I just sat and watched from outside the door so she could see me.

“It’s okay,” the Chinese teacher reassured me in Chinese. “All the kids are like this. Once their mommy comes, they just want mommy and no one else. She is usually good here and always listens. She’ll go back to normal once you leave.”

The activity barely lasted 30 minutes, so I really wasn’t there that long. When I had to leave, it was total pandemonium. One kid whose grandpa had come was crying because her grandpa was leaving, and then Kaia started crying loudly when I told her I had to go, but Daddy would come pick her up later. One of the admins picked her up to comfort her as I said bye and went out the door.

I’m not sure I should come to these events moving forward after this. I don’t want to disrupt the day and just want her to engage with the daily activities and have fun with her classmates. The admin reassured me this was all normal and not unique to her, so it is what it is. It just made me feel bad that when I wanted to participate when given an opportunity, I probably made the day worse in the end for my Pookster.

Cute toddler moments, continued

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In this calendar year, it’s amazing how much Kaia’s speech has advanced. It’s almost like every day her sentences get more complex and her vocabulary grows. In just the last seven days of her new Chinese immersion school, she’s started speaking complete Chinese sentences to me. And when I’ve heard them, I’ve done a double take and stand there a little shocked. It’s as though she knows what she’s doing is impressing Chris and me because after she says a whole Chinese sentence, she will sit there and grin ear to ear. Or, the other hypothesis I have is that she’s been holding out all this time and just waiting to unleash her Chinese sentences on me, which could very well be the case since she’s such a cheeky bubba.

Sometimes, she will say sentences when she thinks neither of us is in the room or listening. The one time I laughed out loud earlier in May of this year was when she was in the snacks bar of a hotel where we were staying during Chris’s parents visit, and she kept going on and on when she got excited and saw the goldfish crackers: “Wow, goldfish! Ooooh, I like goldfish! Goldfish is yummy! So tasty, so good! I can’t have that!” She also knew she wasn’t allowed to touch it, so she never got her hands on it and just kept staring lovingly at the bags of goldfish crackers.

Today, she said, “I want orange” in Chinese. This doesn’t seem that exciting or complex, but the fact that she actually said, “I want (fill in the food)” was a big deal because she’s never even done that once before with me. She will say “want” or the name of what she wants, and that’s been it to date until now. She’s also said she likes x. It’s literally verbal baby steps.

While reading her Dragons Love Tacos book lately, there’s a page where there’s a large dragon sitting on top of a house. In the last couple weeks, she usually points at that dragon and says, “That’s a dinosaur on the house!” I’ve corrected her a few times and told her that it’s actually a dragon. She usually fights with me and gets upset, saying that it is really a dinosaur. So I’ve let her have her way with it and relent, responding that sure, it could be a dinosaur. Yesterday, she looked at the dragon on top of the house, paused for a bit, and said, “This is not a dinosaur. It’s actually a dragon!” I squeezed her and gave her a kiss and said, “Yes, Pookie! That’s right! It is actually a dragon!”

They grow so fast, people always say. It could not be truer for my Kaia Pookie.

Teaching children about their body and body parts

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When I was a kid, my parents always used baby words for my vagina/butt hole. They usually called my private parts down there “doo doo.” It was usually said in a funny or joking way. But they really did always use that word. Later on as a high school journalist for my school newspaper, I found out that the word “vagina” was banned from being said by any teacher, administrator, or school staff to K-12 kids in the San Francisco Unified School District. I had no idea why and could never confirm what the rationale was. And it made zero sense given SFUSD had a very progressive stance on comprehensive sex education. How do you teach sex education without saying the word “vagina”? I thought it was beyond absurd and just flat out stupid and wrong.

So since then, I’ve felt very strongly about using real words to describe… real body parts for any children I might have. There really shouldn’t be anything controversial or shocking about this stance. If you want your child to call their arm an arm, then why the hell would you not want them to call their penis a penis or vagina a vagina? What exactly do you presume you are “protecting” them from — knowledge or facts? What, ultimately, is the end goal here or desired outcome (here, I can think about work for a second)?

So for the last 10 or so months, during bath time, I’ve been teaching Kaia about all her body parts as we wash them, and the ones that are a bit more “advanced” for her age, like her eyebrows, her forehead, her chin, her shins, her calves, her heels, her thighs. We cover all the major areas. And I’ve also called her butt hole a butt hole or “anus,” and I tell her about her vagina. She has asked me if Daddy has a vagina. I always respond the same way: No, Daddy does not have a vagina. He has a penis. You have a vagina. No, you do not have a penis.

I texted Chris on Thursday to ask how things were going given I was gone Thursday-Friday. And this is how he responded:

“She spent part of the train ride down putting her hand up her shorts saying, “I am touching my vag” pretty loudly with a big smile on her face. Then putting same hand in her mouth. Your deviant child.”

So, I suppose I am getting what I wanted? She did call it the correct abbreviated name…

The tech layoffs cycle: a continuation of the “tech-polcalypse,” just closer to home this time

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Once upon a time, in the world that my mom once worked in, people expected to join the workforce and stay at a company for 20-30-plus years. Job security was just a given. Once they hit a certain number of years of employment, they were guaranteed a pension until the day they (or their potential spouse) died. Both my parents were employed by their respective employers for 20-plus years and now are lucky to collect a pension. That world is quite foreign to me, as since before I even entered the workforce full time, I never expected to get any pension at all; in fact, I was repeatedly told that I not only would never get any pension at any job in my lifetime (unless I chose the government route), but I’d even be unlikely to collect any Social Security payments once I turned age 65. How fun for me and my generation!

My mom never experienced endless cycles of layoffs at her company the way I have at all my employers since I started working full time at age 22. My dad did have occasional layoffs based on demand (he worked in the glazing trade), but those layoffs were always temporary, and he’d get his job back once the demand picked up. So when I reflect back on my first job out of college and how I got laid off during the 2008-2009 financial crisis after just nine months of full-time employment, I recall speaking to my dad within an hour of being terminated. I called my dad while sitting on a bench in Union Square here in New York to tell him I was unemployed. And the first words out of his mouth, after a long pause, were, “Well, are they going to hire you back later?” To this, I slowly responded, “I don’t think so, Daddy.”

The only “good” way of losing your job is if you voluntarily quit or leave for whatever is the next step in your life or career. There’s no “good” way of getting laid off or fired. I’ve long debated in my head whether the “rip the bandaid off” situation in the U.S. (which I consider pretty terrible, inhumane, and abrupt, because it IS) with layoffs is better than layoffs that happen in countries like Singapore or France, where the employees have more rights and need far advanced notice. Regardless of which way a layoff happens, it’s always demoralizing for those who are directly impacted and those who remain.

At my current company, we’ve had two layoffs in the entire history of the company’s existence. The first happened in February 2023, when about 10 percent of my colleagues were let go. Just yesterday, we had our second layoff (with a pending restructure), during which about 15% of my teammates were let go. It’s unclear how many people were impacted across the whole company. But it’s been a sad and stressful period even when I haven’t been directly impacted. It’s made me relive the misery of getting laid off in my two prior times. It’s just tiring to always expect a layoff to be right around the corner. It’s exhausting and mentally taxing to always wonder if your job is safe. The “tech-pocalypse” as people are calling it has been pretty terrible the last two years for those who work in the technology industry. Once upon a time, everyone wanted to work in tech, and now, it’s probably one of the worst industries to be in when trying to find your next role. The market is too saturated with those who are unemployed who are in need of jobs. And there probably are not enough roles for all of them. Is this going to be how it will always be during the remainder of my working life: always waiting for the next layoff to drop? This is why working for someone else will always suck, just as my dad always told me.

Boston: like a third home

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While New York is my current home and has been for the last 16-plus years, San Francisco will always be my hometown. The next place that would be on the list would be Boston. I went to school in the Boston area for four years. I commuted back and forth between New York and Boston for three years after I graduated from Wellesley for a long-distance relationship. At minimum, I was there one weekend every month in that three-year period between 2008-2011. So much is familiar to me in Boston, as during my school years, I remember spending a lot of time just walking everywhere in Somerville, Cambridge, and Boston, exploring random streets and seeing what all the little neighborhood quirks were. Looking back, I remember that it felt like I knew the city better than friends or former classmates who actually studied and lived in Boston and Cambridge because they spent so much of their time just on their own college campuses. I’ve always been a city person, so whenever I could and didn’t have a midterm, final, or major paper holding me back, I wanted to be in the city and escape the ‘burbs of Wellesley.

Once that long-distance relationship ended, I didn’t return to Boston again for another six years. Chris planned a long-weekend trip in spring 2017 to take his parents to Boston, so the four of us went and explored the city once again. Then, between 2017-2019, I’ve had at least 2-3 work trips a year to Boston. When I would take these trips, I’d always leave ample time for myself to wander around and explore, try new bars and restaurants, and also catch up with local friends/former classmates if they were available. Sometimes, I’d be reminded of things I did at certain restaurants, locations, or neighborhoods. I’d reminisce on fond memories I had with friends in different areas. Other times, I’d be rudely reminded of dumb things that were said or done on specific streets. That’s what Boston is for me: it’s full of lots of memories, the good, the bad, and the neutral, because I spent a good chunk of my late teens/early-to-mid twenties there. And every time I went back on a work trip, I’d debate whether I’d want to eat at an old haunt (assuming it was still around), or try something fun, new, and/or trendy.

The last time I was in Boston was July 2019. I came back today for a customer onsite meeting, and it hit me that it’s been just over five years since I was last here. I arrived early this morning, so I decided that since I needed to be near South Station by noon that I’d have breakfast in Chinatown. I went back to an old favorite dim sum house called Windsor Dim Sum Cafe, a small restaurant on the second floor, which made dim sum to order after you marked what you wanted on a little sheet of paper. Since it was just me, I ordered pork and preserved egg jook and a bowl of sweet soy milk. Both came out piping hot and were delicious, though oddly enough, I actually think they added a bit too much sugar to my fresh soy milk (I really never thought I’d say that. This must be my aging Asian taste buds talking…). I really enjoyed being the first guest to open the shop at 10am. I sat down and enjoyed my congee while slowly sipping my soy milk as some grandmother/father-aged guests came in. Two friends also came in who looked around my age. They must have had a break from work and/or parenthood because both were having a very intense discussion about breastfeeding, pumping and under-supply. I was almost tempted to join in, but refrained since I was enjoying my alone time quite a bit and really couldn’t be distracted from my own food and drink.

After nearly four hours this afternoon at my customer’s office, I then spent several hours wandering through multiple areas: the Seaport, Downtown Crossing/financial district, Chinatown, the Boston Commons and Public Gardens, and Back Bay. So much is the same and felt nostalgic, but much has also changed. Newbury Street had more “for lease” store fronts than I had imagined. I figured it would have been hit hard by the last several years, but didn’t think it would be this dismal. Newbury Street also has far more Asian businesses in the form of casual restaurants, bubble tea shops, and shaved ice/fancy nail shops than I’d ever seen before.

I was saddened to learn ahead of time that my favorite Chinese cake shop of all time, Eldo Cake House on Harrison, had shut down mid-2022, due to unfavorable lease renewal terms. I was never fond of any Asian cake growing up because I found them boring and flavorless, but Eldo completely changed my mind about this. In my college years, I purchased two large cakes from them for two different friends’ birthday parties/dinners. Every time I’d be in Chinatown, I’d stop and buy something from that shop because it was just so exceptional. On every single work trip to Boston between 2017-2019, I always made sure to drop into Eldo for at minimum, a single slice of their mixed fruit and whipped cream cake, even if it was completely out of the way. THAT was how damn good that cake was. It was truly special, one of a kind, with just the right amount of sweetness, the most fluffy and bouncy sponge cake, always super fresh fruit, and perfectly whipped (non-dairy) cream. I don’t know if I will ever have Chinese-style cake that is that perfect ever again. In addition, Gourmet Dumpling House, which was my favorite Boston Taiwanese/Chinese restaurant on Beach Street, has also closed down at a similar time that Eldo shuttered. The story is similar to Eldo with a pricey rent hike, but on the plus side, it looks like they have a second location that is still humming along and quite popular in Cambridge. A few new trendy-looking restaurants have opened in the Chinatown area. I remember trying one during a 2018 or 2019 work trip and being completely underwhelmed. Sometimes, it’s the old traditional stuff that is just more satisfying than what is trying too hard to be unique.

I had dinner tonight with a college friend I hadn’t seen since my last Boston visit in July 2019. We ate at Saltie Girl on Newbury Street and shared a huge, luxurious salad and two warm and decadent lobster rolls. It felt so good to see her after so long. We talked about and caught up on so many things over three-plus hours together. I’m still processing what we discussed and trying to remember it all. It just felt really nice to be reunited with an old friend after so long, and after we spent so much time in college together.

I used to be sad shortly after graduating from college to think that I only had two good friends that I left college with, plus a small handful of friends like this one who I loosely kept in touch with. Socially, I did not think Wellesley was a great place for me, even if academically, I was decently suited to it. In my twenties, I was envious of other people who seemingly had endless friends from college who would be their 10 bridesmaids or have epic 10-20-person girls trips annually. But now nearing 40, I realize that what I have is actually really great, and I am grateful for the connections I was able to make and continue to keep. I have people from college who I can reunite with after years of not seeing or speaking with in depth, with maybe the occasional text or Instagram message, and it feels like meeting up with family again. They feel familiar, you feel familiar, and everything just feels comfortable. There’s no reason to front or posture over how great or perfect our lives are (because God knows all our lives are pretty imperfect and full of annoyances and tribulations). We just say what we think even if it sounds stupid, and we discuss it. There’s really no right or wrong answer when it comes to your thoughts.

Or, maybe that’s what approaching middle aged status means: being comfortable in our own skin, not giving a fuck what other people think (or, less than our younger years, relatively speaking), and well, being extremely cognizant of our own imperfections, our aging, and ultimately our mortality.

“Take good care of Kaia”

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I can’t remember how long it was after Ed died, but I remember being in a room just with my mom in San Francisco, and she murmured about him and finally admitted some level of regret or remorse about how she treated him when he was alive. I remember her voice quieted down, and she said, “I didn’t take good enough care of him. I should have. I didn’t take good enough care of him. I should have taken better care of him.” And she left it at that. I was pretty silent. And she was, too, after she said, that. And moments later, she changed the topic. I didn’t say much in response because… what was I supposed to say? There would have been nothing I could have said to make her feel better. Plus, to be frank, I agreed with her: No, she and my dad did not take good enough care of their son. They did not treat him well. That’s a very succinct summary of how their relationship was.

On the day before and the day we left San Francisco last month, I remember my mom taking a lighter tone and voice with me and saying repeatedly, “Take good care of Kaia.” She also said, “She’s all you have. Take very, very good care of Kaia. Don’t forget.” And while I know she was trying to be loving and caring when she said this to me, something about it just felt eerie, as though her message to me was echoing what she had said just years ago about not taking “good enough care” of her own son. It wasn’t what she said; it was her tone and how it felt like the same message she told herself about Ed. But instead here, she was directing it to me about my own daughter, her granddaughter, and warning me that if I didn’t take “good enough care” of my own daughter, that my own daughter would fall into a depression and want or attempt to end her own life.

That felt jarring to me. Kaia is turning three this December. She’s my sweet baby, even if she’s no longer really a baby anymore. She will always be my baby. I’m trying my very best to keep her safe, healthy, and happy. I want nothing more than to be her safe space for life. I want that as her mother, but I also want it because Ed and I never had that with our parents, and I want to do everything in my power to do good by Ed’s memory and give Kaia the love and support he never had. I am trying my very best. The thought of Kaia Pookie falling into a depression is enough to kill me. But we can control only what we can control, and I’m not going to obsess or worry about what is not present.