Author Archives: Yvonne

Good in-laws, bad in-laws

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Today is my mother-in-law’s 67th birthday. Since she’s in Melbourne, time-wise, she is ahead of us, so we called her on Whatsapp video last night to wish her a happy birthday. Pookster was acting a bit faux-shy, and despite our practicing saying “Happy birthday, Suma!” the night before, Kaia didn’t really carry this through on the call.

Earlier in the day, I was rummaging through a drawer I rarely go into, and I found a bunch of random knick-knacks that Chris’s mom had gifted me over the years. Some were from travels, while others were gifts just-because. Amongst these items were a maple leaf painted case to store tiny items, a carved moose envelope opener, and an outdoor-themed notepad. She had also given me a number of kitchen items, ranging from a collapsible cloth bread “basket” she got in Portugal, cute character designed bag clamps from Korea, and a set of French cheese knives she picked up while in France. Everywhere she went, she seemed to think of me and get me something, even if it seemed completely random or impractical; it’s the thought that counts at the end of the day. She never had to get me anything, ever. I always thought it was cute… even if I never used most of the items in a practical way.

I told Chris about how I found the moose envelope opener. “It’s such a random thing to give!” I exclaimed, smirking and then laughing. “Who uses letter openers anymore?”

“Well, the drawer full of stuff I’ve gotten from your parents…. well, it’s empty except for one San Francisco hat,” Chris retorted.

Part of me chuckled when he said this, but part of me just felt annoyed. Chris and I have been together over 12 years now. My parents are really so divorced from reality that they have no idea how little regard they have had for their one son-in-law. My parents have never wished Chris a happy birthday or a merry Christmas. They have never given him any gifts whatsoever, other than the San Francisco Giants hat they gave him the very first time they all met. While they have paid for some meals for him, there was always a hidden cost: getting angry at me later for him NOT paying the bill, accusing him of “taking them for granted,” or insisting whatever Chris had paid for them was insignificant or “nothing” compared to whatever they’d made up in their head that they’d done for him. They never call, text, or email him to say anything at all, or even just to check in to see how he’s doing. Yet my mom remains delusional, saying that Chris’s parents “do shit” for me and that they treat Chris far better than his parents will ever treat me. Nothing could be farther from the truth: as far as I am concerned, Chris pretty much doesn’t have parents-in-law considering they have pretty much no interaction ever.

While Chris gets annoyed by this, occasionally, his mom will text or email me directly to check in with me to see how things are going, how Kaia is, and how work is going for both of us. And she doesn’t just ask high level and generic “how are you?” questions, but instead, she asks specific questions, like about Kaia’s school applications, my work promotion and what that means for my job, or Chris’s job search. When people ask you specific, detailed questions about your life, it’s because there’s real concern and love; otherwise, why would they take the time to ask, or, why would they even care to hear about it at all? Chris gets annoyed because he thinks it’s a bit intrusive or nosy, but what he doesn’t seem to recognize is that his mom doesn’t have to check in with me… at all. She doesn’t need to reach out to me directly without him involved. She has no obligation to have a separate relationship with me. She does all this because she genuinely wants to and cares (plus, she wants in on information that Chris doesn’t willingly share, but that’s another story). These are all the things Chris’s parents do for me that my parents would never do for him. I think it’s something to be happy about and grateful for.

There are the good in-laws, and there are the bad in-laws. Chris’s parents are the ones to model behavior from. My parents are an example of how not to be an in-law.

High-end candles: a sign of being in my 30s

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On Saturday, I was supposed to take my friend on a food crawl around Jackson Heights as a day out during her visit. Unfortunately, the weather had other plans for us. I didn’t want to deal with the stroller in pouring rain, nor did I want to risk experiencing any subway flooding, so I suggested to my friend that we have lunch at the Singporean Urban Hawker center instead, and then figure things out from there. The MoMa, which was our original after-lunch plan, was immediately x-ed out: the line wrapped around TWO BLOCKS, even with the pouring rain. So instead, we went window shopping at Nordstrom and in Time Warner Center instead. We spent at least 15 minutes inhaling every Voluspa candle on display in the home wares section; the Saijo Persimmon and Mokara were definitely my favorites. I told my friend about how I’ve been burning a scented soy or coconut wax candle every night the last few months while I’m reading before bed. Everyone likes the mood and ambiance that real lit candles bring, and the scent is always soothing at bedtime.

My friend laughed. “This is such a sign you are in your 30s; only people in their 30s-plus can appreciate high-end, fancy candles!” she said. She agreed, though, and said that she also started appreciating them in the last few years.

Okay, so maybe it is true. In my twenties, I never thought anything of candles and didn’t understand how they could be so expensive. I didn’t understand how Diptyque could have multiple boutiques across New York City, JUST selling one item (candles!). It always evaded my comprehension. Then, I didn’t understand the difference between paraffin and soy/coconut wax. The idea of spending $50-75 on a candle was insane to me. Now, while I still think that price point is high, I do appreciate them so much more. A high quality, perfumed candle is not just a thing, an object to display in your home; it’s also an experience, a somewhat sensual one at that. The one candle I own now that I did buy before I turned 30 was a lavender soy candle purchased at a Tasmanian lavender farm in December 2015. I still burn it occasionally and am obsessed with the scent, though I am sad I’m reaching its end. What was also remarkable about this candle was that despite it being very high quality and having a good “throw” (that is candle speak for “the scent travels through the room it’s in and isn’t weak”), it was actually quite inexpensive in U.S. dollars after the conversion from AUD. Now, I may end up seeking high quality, scented candles elsewhere where I can get them cheaper. 🙂

“Don’t hit me,” says your toddler

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The other day, I was changing Kaia’s diaper at our changing station, and she was being extremely unruly. It’s clear that she hates having her diaper changed now, and she’s increasingly becoming more self conscious of wearing a diaper as well as her poops. She was moving around precariously and squirming everywhere, which wasn’t fun for me considering it was a huge poop diaper. She ended up smearing poop on the changing pad cover and all over her legs; this was not fun for me. She flipped herself over, butt in the air, and just lay there, staring up at me as though she was just a little angel. I looked at her sternly, then tapped my finger on her back firmly.

“That is very naughty, Pookster,” I said to her.

Kaia looked up at me with a serious face. “Don’t hit me!” she exclaimed, turning away from me. “Don’t do that… AGAIN!”

Wait, what? Did she seriously just say that I HIT her? I tapped her back, and she thinks I actually hit her…? My child thinks that I hit her….!!!!

And then it occurred to me that this was probably language the teachers use at school when the kids get chaotic and start hitting each other. And Kaia was just parroting her teachers. But it still didn’t make me feel good. What if one day, she randomly decides to tell a teacher at school that “mommy hit me,” and then they call Child Protective Services on us, and someone has to come “observe” us at home? Talk about a nightmare waiting to happen!

Chinese cuisine: a cuisine that deeply appreciates textures and “delights”

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Back in high school, I remember a friend that I made in journalism who was a third-generation Italian American. Her mom used to make the most incredible Italian-American feasts, many of which I was invited over to enjoy for their annual Christmas celebration each year. Although she loved food, she mostly really loved Western European food and found a lot of things about Cantonese Chinese food so puzzling. At that time, most of the Chinese people in our high school were Cantonese, and most of the Chinese restaurants in the city were also Cantonese. One day, she went on a rant against bean sprouts, also known as mung bean sprouts, especially in “Chinese chicken salad.” She was debating the idea of them to several of us in the room, most of us being Chinese.

“I just don’t understand bean sprouts!” she exclaimed, annoyed, picking them out of the salad she had purchased from the food court at Stonestown Galleria, the mall next to our high school. “They have absolutely NO flavor and add nothing to this salad at all!”

I looked at her, a bit amused. “They don’t have much flavor, yes, but they add a really nice crunch to the salad.”

“Who cares?” she retorted, clearly not liking my response. “It has no flavor, so it serves NO purpose in this or anything!”

What I didn’t realize then, but I realize now, is that to many non-Chinese or non-Asians, the concept of something being “delicious” is directly related only to a flavor. So if something does not have an actual distinct taste, there is no way that something can be delicious. Adding texture doesn’t add “flavor,” and therefore isn’t valued in western food. But to the average Chinese chef or Chinese person who appreciates food, texture is actually extremely important and part of what makes something “delicious.” The root of the word “delicious” is actually “delight,” as Fuchsia Dunlop so eloquently explains in her latest book, Invitation to a Banquet. So for something to be delicious, it doesn’t necessarily have to have a “taste,” but instead, it just needs to bring delight — if you stick with the definition of the word. Chinese people appreciate all textures, whether it’s a crispiness from a just deep-fried prawn, the crackle of a roast chicken skin, or the creamy wobble of a custard. Those are textures that Westerners generally appreciate. However, what Chinese people appreciate that the average Westerner will not are textures like the sliminess of taro (I LOVE THIS), or the crispiness of silver ear fungus (a clear fungus/mushroom that is oftentimes in Chinese tonic or dessert soups that I grew up with, but has virtually no flavor whatsoever; I had an addiction to this stuff as a teenager).

Fuchsia Dunlop asserts that one is unable to fully begin appreciating Chinese cuisine if one is not able to appreciate mouth feel, or what Chinese refer to as 口感, or kǒugǎn. You must be able to appreciate the pleasure of texture, otherwise Chinese food in its purest, most authentic forms will be incomprehensible to you. As someone who studied 3.5 years of Mandarin Chinese in college and grew up knowing how to speak Toisan and understand some Cantonese, I will never be fully fluent or literate in the language. But even if I were, I found out that even the most fluent, literate Chinese person may not even know how rich their language is, as there is an endless lexicon of Chinese words not just for “mouth feel” but also for different ways of cutting and cooking foods that are unique by REGION or town of China; a Sichuanese chef may have specific words for julienning vegetables that just do not translate up north in Beijing! I was just blown away by this part of the book.

One of the great interpreters of Chinese culture for western readers Lin Yutang wrote in his book My Country and My People: “If there is anything we are serious about, it is neither religion nor learning, but food. We openly acclaim eating as one of the few joys in this human life.” So I thought back to my high school friend’s diatribe against mung bean sprouts while reading the section about mouth feel. I hope she has moved on from her narrow view of bean sprouts and embraced the texture; who knows, maybe since then, she’s actually eaten more varieties of Chinese food and gets why that “crunch” is important in the context of that salad. But if she hasn’t, I suppose she will just be one of the many westerners who is never able to fully embrace Chinese food due to her own mental block the way Fuchsia subtly warns against.

A home cooked meal = a simple pleasure

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Since college, I always knew that once I graduated and started living on my own that I’d cook most meals at home. While cost is certainly something to think about because no one has unlimited funds, that was actually never my first concern. My first thought was about knowing what I was eating and what was going into it; almost all pre-made food outside, whether it’s pre-made food at a grocery store or takeout from a restaurant, will have far more salt, oil/fats, sugar, or all the above added to it. Oftentimes weird preservatives with names that no one knows how to pronounce are used to keep things edible longer. And in a food supply as frustrating as this country’s, I think we’d all be healthier and happier if we ate more home cooked meals. I did exactly what I thought I’d do: since I moved to New York, I cook most of my meals. It helps, of course, that I love cooking and find it very fun and therapeutic. And with tiny human in the house, I really want to make sure the majority of her food is homemade, too. So it’s easy for me to forget sometimes that for the average American, they are *not* eating homemade meals as the majority of their diet. And then somehow, I get surprised, and then I forget once again.

My friend is in town visiting from the Bay Area for the next several days. We ate out together on Thursday night, and on Friday, I suggested that she come over for dinner. I’d make food, but we’d also get a couple dishes for takeout from a nearby spot. On Thursday during our meal, she told me that she and her boyfriend, who she lives with, rarely cook at home and eat pretty much all their meals out. They barely have any food in the fridge, and their pantry is pretty bare. So I hoped she’d appreciate the home cooked meal more given this. For dinner on Friday, I made za’atar roasted chicken thighs with lemons and red onions, Middle Eastern-style eggplant with tahini sauce, steamed beets, charred bok choy with Sichuanese chili crisp, and pea pulao. Chris ordered some lamb manti from a nearby Turkish restaurant. We had freshly cut mangoes and pineapple for dessert. It was kind of a hodge podge of dishes without a real united theme, but I figured it would all still be tasty. While my friend enjoyed all the food, surprisingly enough, what she seemed to enjoy the most (and had fourth helpings of!) were the steamed beets. It was, by far, the simplest, easiest thing on the table, yet she was obsessed with them.

I always forget that the simplest dishes seem to please people the most. But I was happy to feed my friend a homemade meal since she doesn’t get them very often at all. Though I do hope, for her own health, that she and her boyfriend will try to make more food at home, even if it’s an activity they can do together. It would help them spend less money and also be more healthy. Who doesn’t want to be healthier and spend less money on frivolous things?

Kindness: often appreciated, not often duplicated enough

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I was on a work call earlier this week with a customer who I was meeting for the very first time. He actually let me know that he was leaving the company in two weeks, but not by his own choice. The company was going through a reduction-in-force (RIF), aka a layoff, and unfortunately, he was one of the unlucky “chosen” ones. He had been at the company for over 40 years and never worked anywhere else; he said he wasn’t sure what his next steps were going to be and who would want to hire someone at his age. We spoke a bit about that and I shared my concern and tried to wish him the best.

“Yvonne, I’ve just met you, but you have really made my day,” he said. “I really mean it. Not to say that people at your company aren’t kind, but you are incredibly kind, and I will remember your kindness. I feel like even though I just met you, we already really know each other. It’s really going to help me get through the day and my remaining days here.”

It’s so easy to be kind and supportive, whether it’s for a second or a minute, whether it’s leaving a door open for someone, helping someone with something they’ve dropped on the street, or even saying a few supportive words in a time of vulnerability. Not everyone does this, though, because they think it’s “an extra effort,” an inconvenience, or just won’t be received well. But when this man said this to me, I could tell he really meant what he said. We’re essentially strangers on a video call who will unlikely ever meet each other in person, yet he said my words really helped him. Sometimes, it really is the small gestures that we perform that stay with people. And they really are worth the extra effort or seconds it takes us to do them. As much negativity is shared on social media and in the news, I feel like almost every day, someone random on the street, all strangers, does kind things for me, whether it’s a little smile, making extra space for me in a crowded elevator, playing peek-a-boo with Kaia to get her to cheer up in the midst of a tantrum on the train, or assisting me with the door at the daycare when I’m struggling to keep the door open while also getting the stroller in/out (and they’re just a passerby, not even someone trying to get in/out of the school!).

Kindness is its own circular economy, one that each of us needs to contribute to in order to create a better world for us all.

Cheerios and Quaker Oats linked to reproductive issues – God help us all in America

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Even when you try to be healthy in the U.S., you are still slowly killing yourself.

CBS recently reported a study that a chemical called chlormequat has been detected in 92 percent of non-organic oat-based foods that were tested in May 2023. This includes mainstream foods that many Americans, especially young children, eat, including Quaker Oats and General Mills’ Cheerios. Chlormequat has been found in studies to damage our reproductive systems and to disrupt fetal growth in animals. The chemical is supposed to only be used on ornamental plants only, not on food crops. Yet somehow, the chemical is being used as a growth regulator for the commercial production of grains to make it easier to harvest crops.

It’s deeply unfortunate and horribly infuriating to learn of this news. We are just getting through a 10-pound package of oats that are Quaker brand. We’ve been buying Cheerios for Kaia since spring of last year since Solid Starts had said that of all the “O” cereals available that Cheerios had the highest amount of vitamin/minerals being fortified in it. Even when you are trying to do the right thing by feeding yourself and your children seemingly “healthy” foods, we are still damaging our bodies. It’s like we can’t trust anything in the food supply in this damn country. Now, I need to switch to organic-only oats and an organic version of an “O” cereal – this will obviously be more expensive, but I need to have better peace of mind around this crap. And you know what that means: if only those who can afford it can have healthy, organic, “clean” food, then we’re in a truly screwed up state of this country where the poor and less fortunate are left to suffer.

Precious moments amidst the tumult and chaos

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The Atlantic recently published an article entitled, “Why We Long for the Most Difficult Days of Parenthood.” It’s about how parents of older children always tell parents of younger children to cherish every second because time will pass all too quickly. Your child is born. You blink. And suddenly, they are off to college or starting their very first job. Everything in between very quickly becomes a memory in the back of your mind. While all this is true, every parent can attest to the fact that the first few years of their child’s life tends to be the hardest; you are caring for a tiny human who is 100 percent helpless and thus 100 percent dependent on you, so you don’t get much time to yourself. And so these parents of older children reminisce on those tough times, those sweet times, and say they wished they had cherished those moments more.

I can relate to this a lot. Parenting a young one is no joke, especially when you’re exclusively pumping in the first year or so. Even towards the end of my pumping journey, right before bed, instead of reading or listening to podcasts, I would sometimes just watch videos spanning the previous year, when Kaia was just a newborn, a babbling baby, a crawling baby, and eventually a pulling-up-and-cruising-along-furniture baby-becoming-a-toddler. I would marvel at Kaia’s chunky little face, made fat from all the breast milk I pumped, and her chunky arms and legs that I always said I wanted to eat. I would tear up when I’d hear her first babbles and giggles or when I’d relive her first smiles and stuck-out tongues. I partly took so many videos because my friend said exactly this, that she wished she had taken more videos to just record the SOUNDS her kids made as babies because she missed the sweetness and cuteness of it so much. Even now, as Pookster is learning new skills and saying new words every single day, while I love it, part of me is a little sad that my baby is growing so fast, almost too fast. I just want to bottle her up, cup her face in my hands, and pause this moment to enjoy her in her sweet (yet rebellious) toddler phase of life.

The other morning, I coughed and ran into the other room to grab a tissue while she was eating breakfast in her high chair. As I blew my nose in the other room, I heard Kaia yell, “Are you okay, mummy-dear?” I came back into her view and smiled at her.

“Yes, mummy is okay,” I assured her. “Mummy just had to blow her nose, but I’m back now!”

I just dissolve into a puddle when she expresses love and concern. I just want to squeeze her nonstop in these moments. My baby is slowly but surely learning empathy. She’s also been especially affectionate this week, constantly asking Chris and me for hugs and kisses. She’s also repeatedly asking for kisses and hugs at bedtime, which I’m obsessed with.

I am not able to capture every single moment in photo or video, as it would be nearly impossible considering how quickly they all happen. But to fill in the gaps, I am writing about these moments in this blog so that I can document her development in a written manner to revisit them one day, and to one day have her revisit them from my perspective, as well.

Hidden, forgotten emails in your inbox reminding you of the past you want to forget

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Before I switched over to Gmail in my mid-twenties as my primary email, I still used my Yahoo email address often. Now, it’s been relegated as my “shopping/email list” email address, aka sometimes junk, sometimes fun email. Back then, my Yahoo email was my primary email that I’d use to communicate with family and friends. Randomly today, I accidentally clicked on a folder called “Unread,” which didn’t make any sense because I had read all those messages. It was mostly a lot of messages that were (somehow) marked as “Unread” and still bolded as though they were never opened. And also oddly enough, a lot of these messages were between Ed and me. Most of them dated back to around 2006-2008, but the themes across the messages seemed to be the same: I would urge him to look for a new job or move out of our parents’ house. He would tell me in very short messages that our dad was constantly criticizing and putting him down, making meals out “very unpleasant” when it was just the three of them (our parents and him) to the point where he couldn’t enjoy the food. He repeatedly said he had no moment to himself in their house because once he was home and they were there, too, he was expected to be at our mother’s “beck and call.” If she called his name out and needed help with something, it was expected he would drop everything he was doing in that instant and come immediately to help her. It didn’t matter how trivial the task was. If he didn’t come in that instant, she would, of course, yell and talk about how “useless” he was. Our father, on the other hand, would just criticize him constantly during any interaction with him. When he wasn’t criticizing Ed, he’d be ignoring his very existence under their roof. When Ed would work late and sleep in the next morning, our father would barge into the bedroom, where the main house’s computer was, go online, and blast whatever random music, video, or news he wanted as though my brother wasn’t even there attempting to sleep. Sometimes, it would be as early as 7 or 8am — he just had no regard for my brother’s existence at all. Yet, our dad never did any of this when I’d come home and be sleeping in that same room. The difference? He actually respected me, but he had zero respect for his older son.

It’s sad to read these short exchanges that we had. It rarely was safe for us to talk on the phone with each other because one of our parents would inevitably be lurking in the next room, waiting to hear my brother say something negative about one of them and pounce on him. So, he’d usually wait until they were out of the house to call me. And if that didn’t work, he would occasionally call me from Macy’s, where he used to work, or just email me. In one of those emails, dated in April 2007, he wrote to me while I was in college with one line: “When are you coming back home?”

I stared at that email for a couple minutes today and just felt so sad. There was some deep sadness in that message that I detected, as though he was just wallowing and needed someone else there who he trusted who didn’t look at him like he was a piece of shit. No one should ever feel that way about themselves, especially by their own parents.

Then, my blood pressure went up again. And the wrath came back. You can forgive a lot of things. But these things can never, ever be forgotten.

Cost of eating out in New York City – at least $30 for a basic meal

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A friend and I went out to lunch today at a Korean soup spot that I’ve been wanting to try for a few months near Koreatown in Manhattan. It had been getting quite a bit of buzz, as it originally started as a pop-up from Korea, and also because it literally has just two things on the menu: dweji gumtang, which is a pork bone broth rice soup, and kimchi mandoo stuffed with kimchi, pork, and tofu. The gumtang is the main dish; the mandoo is simply an appetizer. There are a few non-alcoholic drinks you can order, as well, and that’s it. The entire restaurant is counter seating around the open kitchen where all the two servers are doing is serving you those two dishes. For two bowls of gumtang and one order of mandoo, with tax and tip, it cost just over $60 for two of us for lunch.

Yesterday, Chris, Pookster, and I had lunch at a nearby dumpling/noodle spot with my cousin and his wife, who were in town for a work conference. We didn’t order anything fancy at all: two orders of dumplings, two orders of noodles, one order of stir-fried rice cakes, one order of dry-fried string beans, and one beef/scallion roll wrap. The total bill, including tax and a 20% added gratuity because we were a party of five or more (yes, toddlers count as a full head), was $170. For four adults and one toddler (I’d like to call her half a person :), that’s $37.77/head. That’s a LOT of money to spend on a casual lunch!

My colleague, who lives in New Jersey, told me that when he and his wife met with friends in the city for dinner the other night, though they each only had one cocktail/glass of wine, their bill was over $200/person. I told him that it didn’t surprise me at all given the cost of eating out now. $30-40/person for lunch seems normal. So why would $200/person for dinner be unheard of? I’m sure their cocktails cost at least $18-24, while their wine was similarly priced, which would then mean their food would probably cost even more. This is the “new normal” cost range when it comes to eating out now, even for seemingly basic food like pork broth soup.