Monthly Archives: April 2025

“Startling” laugh

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I was out at a Yemeni cafe having saffron adeni tea and Dubai milk cake with a friend, when out of nowhere she said that she “has gotten used to” my laugh. I wasn’t sure what to say about this and waited for her to continue. “When I first met you and heard it, I found it a bit startling,” she said. “But now it just blends in and I anticipate it now!” I kind of chuckled at this when she said it because I wasn’t sure whether she was saying a good thing or a bad thing.

I told her that I’ve always had a loud laugh, and that in general, people either love or hate it, and if they hate it, chances are high that we won’t get along or be friends. I’m not really one of those Asian women who, stereotypically as Chris always half jokes, “covers their mouth and goes ‘heeheehee!'” really lightly. People should live their lives as their full selves without abandon. And if you cannot laugh comfortably or fully, I”m not really sure you are fun enough for me to want to be around.

This comment, for some reason, reminded me of my one of my best friends from childhood, who is now living here in New York City. I think that if there is just one thing I love about her, aside from her general personality, it’s her laugh. When she is really laughing and finds something extremely funny, her laugh is the loudest, most boisterous thing in the world. She has a laugh that almost makes you want to laugh along with her, even if you don’t find said topic funny. And so when we’re together laughing nonstop about something, I always notice that there is at least one or two tables around us (assuming we’re at a restaurant or bar) that will turn around and look at us. I’ve never gotten self conscious about it or seen that as a way to police us. If anything, I’ve always looked at it as: we’re just here having a good time. And if that bothers you in some way, then the problem is clearly you and not us. Who gets annoyed at other people having a good time in their own respective space?

Persian Adasi (lentil) stew

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While still on my Persian cooking kick, I decided to also make some Persian style lentils, also known as adasi (lentils) stew. I soaked some brown lentils overnight, chopped up onions and garlic, and then simply used turmeric, cumin, and cinnamon to spice the lentils and simmered them for about 45 minutes. And when I seasoned and did a taste test, I just thought… wow. This is so warm and hearty tasting, and there’s no animal product in it at all. And though turmeric, cumin, and cinnamon are all spices that cross both Persian and Indian cultures, the resulting flavor is so, so different than any Indian dal you would ever eat, home cooked or at a restaurant. I was texting this with my Persian friend, who also agreed how interesting it was, while also nothing that at one time, they are all one empire. Then, they broke off and developed their own techniques and ways of cooking that are slightly the same, yet different.

I occasionally still meet people who are anti beans, who think beans are gross, give you gas, and should be avoided. I really think that if they had a lentil stew like this Persian version that they would be hard pressed to say it was revolting.

Persian cooking

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Given that we are now officially in spring, the Persian New Year, aka, Nowruz, has also come. At my last company, I made a Persian friend who was on my team, who also loved food. We spent a lot of time talking about food, different cultural traditions, and the first time we met, the two of us were actually charged with preparing food for two days for my team’s offsite at a semi-remote house in Northern California. The more she talked about Persian food, the more I started reading about it and got into it. And so I started experimenting more with Persian dishes like Persian lentils, rice, chicken and fish. I was amazed at how much saffron can be used in Persian cooking, as I’d never really known what to do with saffron before Persian or Indian cooking. I’d bought a number of small bottles of it from Costco, during travels in India, and had been gifted them by Chris’s mom. But given that saffron is actually more expensive by weight than diamonds, I always used it sparingly.

This week, in light of Nowruz, I made Persian sabzi polo, or Persian herbed rice with tahdig, or crispy bottomed rice, as well as slow-cooked salmon with herbs and spices. I had bought a massive amount of cilantro, parsley, dill, and scallions just for these two dishes. And as Chris watched me chop up a bunch of herbs, he looks at all the greens across the kitchen counter and goes, “We can’t eat herbs!” He meant we couldn’t *just* eat herbs for dinner, but because he said that sentence so slowly and didn’t say much after that, he made it sound like herbs were inedible. I reminded him how lucky he is to have such a varied diet with all my creative cooking even when he randomly forgets that yes, herbs actually are edible, to which he responded, “I give you a varied diet by taking you all over the freaking world!” Talk about men who don’t seem to take feedback well…

Grown men who cannot handle direct feedback are an embarrassment to society

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One of the things that I have always struggled with is confrontation. I don’t necessarily mean about really big, deal-breaker things, but I mean about sharing any type of “constructive feedback” to people that is ultimately not a compliment. You never know how they are going to receive the feedback. You never know if they will really understand or hear, even if you state it, that your intentions are positive, and you just want them to be the best version of themselves. Oftentimes, people will hear constructive feedback as a personal attack or a tear-down of who they are, take it really personally, get defensive, and just shut down. I think we’ve all been there, and it never feels good. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized exactly how important it is to be honest and forth right about constructive feedback, even when it’s difficult. It benefits the relationship in the long run. It’s transparent. It’s not passive aggressive. It’s direct. We ALL need to work on being more direct with each other, while also not being total assholes.

On my team, we actually had a “taking and giving feedback” session at our offsite last month. It was very introspective, and it was also a practice in… just being a damn adult. But it probably was needed because like most organizations, our company is full of people who clearly cannot handle getting feedback from their colleagues. A colleague of mine who I’ve worked with for over 4.5 years was sending me really passive aggressive Slack messages yesterday. He was insinuating that an email I had sent to a customer was going out of my swim lane and that he was “concerned” that I was not aligned with him on roles and responsibilities. I re-read his messages a few times, compared it to the benign, friendly email thread I had with the customer, and felt very confused. He was clearly overreacting, and I have a feeling it’s because of pressure on him to hit his number this year as a sales person, especially since he missed it last year. So I very directly told him over Slack that I found his commentary counterproductive, that I had done nothing out of bounds, that my manager was aligned with my approach, and I would appreciate it he could get on a call with me to talk this through.

Instead of looking back on what he said and reflecting on our interaction and wondering why I would react this way, he instead shut me down and said, “If you don’t like my approach, then you can talk to (your manager), who can talk to (my manager), who can then address it with me. I’d like to avoid this type of confrontation in the future. Thanks.” He also made excuses about being “too busy” to get on a five minute call with me for the rest of the week.

The way I read that message from his side is: I’m a late 40s/early 50s-year hold grown man who is incapable of receiving direct feedback from peers or being introspective at all about areas where I could potentially be wrong. I would prefer that you tattle on me to your mommy, who can then discuss with my mommy, and then my mommy can determine whether I get a punishment or not.

I responded with, “I think that after 4.5 years of working together and given that we’re both adults that we should be comfortable enough to give each other direct feedback. If that is not the case, then clearly there is a disconnect between us.”

Work doesn’t have to be awful if your colleagues aren’t awful. But it’s in moments like this where I wonder how people get older and never really grow up?