I look at the way countries like Taiwan and South Korea have handled COVID-19, and I am constantly in awe at how people in some societies just obey orders they are given, barely question it at all, and stay inside. This type of collectivist mindset, while not great for innovation and producing independent critical thinkers, is extremely productive for global pandemics like the one we are currently facing.

Unfortunately, American dipshits in this country think that these stay-at-home orders to prevent the spread of COVID-19 are a violation of their civil liberties, of their ability to “live free and die.” An Orthodox Jew recently sued the state of New York for not allowing him to participate in Jewish gatherings, whether that was a wedding that got disbanded or Passover, because it was a violation of his rights as a citizen of this country. Others are going to their state capitol buildings to protest to end the shelter-in-place in their state, saying that these orders are more politically driven than anything. “This is not being done out of need because we’re being overly paranoid about how serious this virus is.” “It’s not that bad.” “Not that many people have died.”

And I’m sure that the people who are saying this either have not gotten the virus, have no loved ones who have gotten the virus or has died from it, nor do they work on the frontlines of these hospitals combatting the virus and treating patients needing ventilators and blood donations. These people are absolute idiots, and the world would truly be better off if they themselves were eradicated.

I understand that this is hurting the economy. Not all of us have the luxury of being able to work from home. Many people are out of work. It’s awful to not be able to put food on the table or not know when you will have health insurance again (yeah, THAT thing, which is its own can of worms). What they are being selfish and ignorant about, though, is that it’s not about caring or not caring whether they catch the virus or not; it’s that they could have the virus and give it to people who are weaker or older than them and have THEM die. COVID-19 is asymptomatic in so many people, so many of us are likely walking around with it and have no idea at all. And it’s not like there’s enough tests to go around just to check to see if we have it. So, the safest thing for all of us to do is to assume we have it and stay inside, away from everyone else, unless absolutely necessary.

So I’m not really sure if I should feel sorry for these people with their ignorance or just hate them. I think I’ve settled with hatred here, though.

We’ve been really privileged and fortunate during this crazy pandemic period. Our fridge, freezer, and pantry have been full of both fresh, frozen, and homemade frozen foods (like my wontons). We aren’t out of any critical necessities, and if we get close to being out of anything, we’re able to get them with ease. It’s been sad to hear about people who are not able to get the food and essentials they need, either because they no longer have jobs and income, or because they are old, frail, or disabled, without the ability to go out and get what they need, or with no one who can help them.

The New York Times has a lot of faults in terms of its reporting and elitist slants and lenses when it digs into certain topics, but one thing I think they’ve done a pretty good job of is highlighting all the communities during this period who are oftentimes overlooked. The reporting they’ve done on at-risk communities has been quite well rounded, like those in foster care and abusive households, and even non-human communities at risk: the elephants and rhinos across countries in Africa whose lives are truly endangered because of the increase in poachers.

I’ve checked in with my own mentee during this period a few times. She has enough food and supplies, but she’s at risk given she suffers from depression and lives at home. She has anxiety issues being by herself for prolonged periods. There’s little I can do to help her given she just wants to be around other people, but at least we can check in via text and social media like everyone else is. These situations are just blunt and harsh reminders of the inequalities that we oftentimes are shielded from on a day to day basis. Some of us are luckier than others… a lot luckier.

I was never a great test taker. It didn’t matter if it was math, science, English, whatever — I always hated them, and the pressure of the clock always irritated me to no end. Standardized tests, particularly the SAT, were the biggest things I dreaded while in school.

The scariest exam I ever took was in college — it was my sophomore year when I was taking my final exam for intermediate microeconomics, the most difficult course I’ve taken in my entire life. It didn’t seem to matter how many hours I studied, how much time I spent 1:1 at office hours with my professor, or what study groups I went to — I just really sucked at it. On final exam day, I opened to the first page of the test, and it said in huge capital letters: “BREATHE. DO NOT PANIC.” Too late. I already was.

So you can imagine how freaked out I was when I started reading about the recent influx of online proctor companies that are getting all kinds of money from closed colleges across this country. Student surveillance is becoming the new norm during this current pandemic. The proctor forces you to enable screen sharing and your web cam, but you are not able to see them. At any time, they have the right to force you to move your camera to your desk, your wall, the back of your room — anything. And for some, when you look away from the computer screen for more than four seconds, you get flagged for cheating and could fail the entire course. Because, of course, that makes a lot of sense when you’re taking a MATH exam and need to crunch some numbers by HAND with a pencil and paper on your DESK. Because, no one ever allows their eyes to wander when contemplating a test response.

These companies are absolutely insipid and short sighted. They’re certainly raking in the money right now and taking advantage of a pandemic when people are dying every single day and gloating over it all. But I think what is even worse are the universities that are hiring them in droves.

This would only add to any student’s stress given the pandemic and trying to finish a course now. If I were living as a student during this time, I would be completely miserable and likely sweating buckets. Because, yeah, I really want to have some random stranger who I cannot see stare at me nonstop for a 1-3-hour-long exam and rate me with a “suspicion” score on whether I may or may not have cheated based on where my eyes wander.

Some things are predictable when it comes to pandemics: you know before it descends upon us that citizens across the world will freak out and panic buy items such as canned and dried goods, shelf-stable items, and toilet paper/paper products, but what about all the random items that you don’t necessarily think are necessities, but somehow have increased in purchases and general demand/inquiry? Here is a list of items I’ve seen across multiple news sources that have been a little surprising to me:

1. Thermometers (I guess we all think we have the virus now, huh?)
2. Raw chicken (boneless chicken, particularly breasts, and mince make sense, but even whole! Whole chickens never sell out.. until now!)
3. Dried beans (but even more peculiar are the heirloom varieties run by small family businesses across the country)
4. Flour (the gluten-free fad totally bites the dust when a pandemic happens…)
5. SOURDOUGH STARTER – bakeries and sourdough starter companies that have 50-100-year old starters are reaching their peak demand!! I guess I wasn’t that original in wanting to use this time to begin my sourdough journey)
6. Live chicks / hens: People suddenly think they want to self-provide food by raising hens to lay eggs for them to eat, not to mention have their own mini farms. Do these people have ANY idea what they are getting into? Do they even have the proper space/conditions for this to not kill the chicks…?!)

We have a new director who got hired for our team, and he is spending a couple of days with us here in New York this week. He introduced himself and put time on my calendar for us to catch up one on one. We were only supposed to meet for half an hour, but half an hour ended up turning into two-plus hours over the course of two days.

He introduced himself by saying that he can handle and would prefer that I be fully honest and blunt, that he could handle it, that he doesn’t really do very well with politics.

“You don’t do well with politics, huh?” I said to him coyly. “Well, we have quite a bit of that here, so I hope you enjoy.”

I can get away with being this provocative because I’ve pretty much earned the right to do that. It was amusing to see how he responded to certain things I said. This was actually enjoyable. In some ways, this almost feels like a bit of a game now.

I know everyone says they don’t like politics, that they don’t deal with it or put up with it. But let’s face it: once you are in an office environment or any kind of group environment, there’s inevitably going to be politics regardless of what you say or do. Some people are going to be favored over others for reasons other than concrete performance or data that backs up how “good” they are. Others are going to be dismissed because they have been labeled as “complainers” or view work with “low urgency.”

It’s exhausting. It’s why my dad retired early from his “day” job to run his own business. “Why should I slave away for the white man when I can earn my own money and work when I want?” he declared when he retired in 2001.

His words come back to me all the time when I get frustrated with work.

I came back to work today to a lot of drama resulting in some poor business decisions that were made on an account that I’m assigned to, so I was no happy camper pretty much all day today trying to deal with the mess I was coming back to. It never ceases to amaze me the complete lack of empathy and foresight that goes into decisions made by egotistical, entitled white men. I can say that as an Asian American female in a white male-dominated work place, when someone, anyone, ever even for a second, questions something I’ve done, my immediate default response (if only internally in my head) is to second-guess myself, wonder if I am actually in the wrong and if I could have done things differently. It has pretty much never occurred to me to immediately result to a stubborn deadlock, insist I am right without any thought or reflection, and continue to defend my “right” no matter how glaringly wrong I could be. What is even worse is the absolute refusal to admit any wrongdoing when they are clearly wrong… and have outright lied. And I always attribute this to the conditioning and painful awareness of my race, of my gender, something that white men are so privileged to never truly be forced to think about. It doesn’t even matter if you are in a city or country where being white male is not the majority. Why is that? Because in countries like China, which are painfully racist even against people from other cities and provinces within China, they still look at “the white man” as the preferred race to defer to. 

Moments like this always make me wonder if I was really ever “made” to be in the corporate world, constantly battling fights that seem so pointless, especially in the year 2019, when you want to believe that “progress” has actually been made. I want to believe that people at least have the intention of being “good” and have some level of integrity, but that seems to erode every time something reckless and toxic like this happens. 

Before my colleague’s going-away party tonight, I rushed in to see my hair stylist on Astor Place to get a quick hair cut. I was telling her that I just want to take off two inches of my fried ends and redo my side bangs as she combs through my hair and examines it when suddenly this look of horror swept over her face.

“Bella!” she exclaimed loudly. “What has happened to you? Your hair!”

I had no idea what she was referring to specifically. Yes, I know. I’m cheap; I haven’t redone my highlights since December. It’s June. That means six months have passed. I wasn’t even willing to come in to do a toner as she suggested. “What do you mean?” I responded, innocently.

“You’re going grey!” she whispered loudly. “Did you see this? There are several grey hair strands!”

I had seen one or two a couple weeks ago, some really short ones that were growing in, and I did the in-denial thing and pulled them out. But… I didn’t realize that it had friends in the back of my head.

“Yeah… I saw I had a couple,” I admitted, “but I didn’t realize there were more in the back!” She angled the second mirror so I could see the single strands in the back. I was not happy. I started sulking.

“Bella! What has happened?!” she continued to exclaim, looking disappointed. “Three months ago, you came in for a cut, and I know we didn’t see any greys at all! What is it — work?”

“Maybe… or maybe I’m just getting old,” I said to her, sadly, while staring at her in the mirror.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m just a year younger than you, and I have SO many more greys than you! You just can’t see it because I always bleach my hair!” she said gleefully. “It’s okay. I will take care of you; that’s my job! When I get back from Palermo and you get back from your vacation, I will touch up your roots and redo your highlights. We’ll strategically place all the highlights where the greys are, and it’ll be good as new! But… it will take some regular maintenance… I’m just letting you know now.”

Only someone as sunny and bright as my Sicilian hair stylist could get all giddy about grey hair. This really stinks — just another thing to throw money at.

This is really a year of hell for me when it comes to catching colds. First, I got sick coming back from Vietnam in January. Then, I got sick coming back from San Francisco in February. I don’t think there has ever been a year of my life after the age of 5 when I have gotten sick this frequently. Now, I’m sick from something I caught at the end of our Colombia trip nearly two weeks ago. And the same violent coughing and phlegm build up is there. I’m not happy. If it were just a basic cold, I’d probably be okay with it and shrug it off, but this coughing is just not good — at all.

I called Teledoc yesterday, and that was pretty much useless. The doctor was unempathetic, curt, and flippant. Despite telling him none of my symptoms were getting better, he insisted it was a virus and not bacterial, so he just said the usual – drink more liquids, rest more, vitamin C… and a prescription grade cough suppressant “if you want it … it’s up to you.” He did not care at all.

Then today, I went to urgent care and had a doctor look me over. He said that because my symptoms hadn’t improved at all after over a week and a half that it must be bacterial, so he gave me an antibiotic for bronchitis and similar respiratory illnesses.

These are the moments when I think… this is why we need to be grateful for having good health. Having a violent cough that could come up any time, any place, is really a hindrance, and a nasty one.