Tonight, I met a partner who works with my company on a temporary project for Caribbean food for dinner. I had no idea how old he was before finally meeting him in person (we’d been on video chat many times before finally meeting in person today), but when he told me that he literally graduated from college this past December, our age gap suddenly hit me, and I felt a bit old sitting across from him while chewing on my jerk chicken and plantains.

With his Puerto Rican and Dominican heritage and my Chinese Vietnamese heritage, we ended up talking a lot about race and how it’s perceived in different parts of this country. He grew up in Georgia and Florida but now lives in San Francisco, and while I have always lived on one of the coasts, I’ve definitely been many times to the deep South and the Midwest, where people who look like me are not always the norm. Now that he lives in San Francisco, he said it’s almost like being in a different country than where he grew up, where races didn’t intermingle much and race pretty much determined what your life would be like. But even in his own community and own family, Trump supporters can be found. And people repeatedly defend him.

This is the America we live in, where people continue to vote against their own self interests but think they aren’t. Maybe we really get what we deserve.

I’ve never had a sick visit to the doctor’s in New York City. I guess I am lucky enough that I usually don’t get sick often, and when I do, I drink so much liquid and take so much lemon and honey that I end up peeing whatever evils that were in my body out within a few days. Unfortunately because I’ve had lingering mucus and a cough and a weak voice for nearly four weeks now, I decided to schedule this appointment with my regular doctor.

After a lot of discussing the sequence of events from Australia to New Zealand to San Francisco to here and examining me, my doctor concluded she still had no idea what was wrong with me, but knew this wasn’t normal that I still had these symptoms after nearly a month. So she referred me to an ear-nose-throat (ENT) doctor to see what could be wrong. She said that what they could do that she couldn’t would be to stick a camera through my nose and down my throat to see if anything could be stuck on my vocal chords or on my larynx.

Oh, goodie. Now, I can’t wait! Because who doesn’t want an experience like that at least once in their life?

Yesterday, we passed by a KeyMe key making station and decided to test it out by duplicating one of our apartment keys. It seemed so simple; it recognizes you by your finger print, it saves all the keys as you name them, and anywhere you can find a KeyMe station, you can get a key. It would be the most useful in the event you locked yourself out and had no other way of getting in. And if you think it costs too much, just decline buying, and it will ask you why you don’t want to complete your purchase. The options include… “changed your mind,” “don’t need it anymore,” and “too expensive.” And being us, we hit “too expensive” to see what it would say, and lo and behold, a 50% off discount that can be used immediately! And it even allows you to have a design on your key! Ours was the New York City subway map. Chris suggested that I keep it because of how excited I got to have a key with a design on it, and so I swapped out my original key for this one.

Well, that was a mistake because on its second time this morning attempting to unlock the apartment door, the key literally got stuck and jammed. It was so bad that we had to call our super and handyman, and together they had to completely remove the lock and change everything out. It took nearly 45 minutes to get done. And… my friend was on a time crunch to get to the airport in time for her flight. She literally got to the gate after everyone else had boarded with ten minutes remaining.

The handyman asked us if we used KeyMe, and we said yes. And he said, don’t do that again.

Yeah, we won’t.

Our indulgent dining continued tonight, as tonight was the last night my friend would be in town. She’s flying back to San Francisco tomorrow. She was extremely generous with us and insisted on treating us to have the omakase at Sushi Nakazawa, a very popular and hard to reserve restaurant where the chef was actually an apprentice of the famed Jiro of Tokyo. While the food and service were excellent and notable, it was a bit annoying that a) they said they usually do not allow men not wearing long pants to dine there (Chris was wearing long shorts that exposed half his calves), b) they served Chris’s sake in a stemmed wine glass (“because we are here in America,” the white server said with a smile), and c) why were absolutely none of the servers Japanese at all? The only Japanese staff we saw were the sushi chefs at the counter.

New York City. It’s actually quite a small city when you think about square miles, but it’s big… because of the tall buildings? The number of businesses that are on it? The sheer number of people who live here? What are the odds that you’re going to not only be dining at the same restaurant as someone you know, but also be sitting at the table next to them?

My friend, Chris, and I were dining at Scarpetta tonight, and lo and behold, a colleague visiting from San Francisco, his wife, and her parents ended up dining and being seated at the table next to us. I had no idea they were even there, as we were having a very animated conversation, until my colleague came by to say hi and introduce his family. This has never happened in my entire time in New York. “Didn’t realize this city was so small that we had to end up eating at the same place tonight,” my colleague joked.

Tonight, my team, including two team members from our San Francisco office, had dinner at ABC Cocina, a spot I’ve been wanting to try for a couple years but just never got around to going. As you usually do at tapas restaurants, the dishes are small plates and all are for sharing. It’s fun to share food… until you start eating with people who pretty much eat nothing except the most basic foods.

Because I’ve developed a reputation for being knowledgable about food of all kinds, my colleagues let me do all the ordering. What ended up happening was that one of our visiting colleagues, who is incredibly sheltered and not well traveled at all (by choice, not by limited budget) refused to eat anything at the table other than the pork tacos that we ordered. He wouldn’t even touch the bread basket that came to the table. He questioned our servers about every last ingredient in each dish. Being told that a dish was “salmon” was simply not enough. I tried my best to hold my tongue and not say anything mean, but it was really hard for me. Just try new food. Why is it so difficult? You’re an adult. Act like one. It’s not like anyone is asking you to pay for food that you don’t like. Money isn’t an issue here. Just TRY IT.

When I think of people who are that picky of an eater, I then think that they must also be fairly racist… which may sound extreme because there’s a very strong correlation between pickiness in eating and racism. I wonder how many non-white people he really spends time with and is actually friendly with.

I can’t do shared food with him anymore and hope to never have to eat at a restaurant with shared plates with him ever again.

Afternoon tea. It’s one of those uppity, generally overpriced, stick-your-pinky-finger-out-while-sipping-tea-from-a-delicate-cup events that I rarely do anymore except with maybe one or two girlfriends. It conjures up images of flowery tea pots, colorful wallpaper, and expensive crustless sandwiches. And yet, it’s still fun to do with the right people.

My friend and I went this past weekend to have afternoon tea at a spot we both visited and liked about six years ago, and sadly, the quality had gone down hill. The place was just as pretty and picturesque as we remembered it, but the sandwiches had bread that was dried out, the clotted cream was too cold, and the quality of the ingredients in the sandwiches just seemed stale and old. The prices had since gone up, as well, so it was not a cheap or even moderately priced affair to come here. They did, however, throw in a free glass of Veuve Cliquot champagne for each of us, but it still wasn’t enough for each of us to even think about going back.

Sometimes people go to places just for the ambiance and are okay to settle for mediocre food. We are not those people.

I’m still coughing and phlegmy with my voice coming in and out. It’s really uncomfortable being on calls with customers and my colleagues and hearing myself not 100% well, as it’s been nearly three weeks that I’ve had this infection, whatever it is. I thought I was getting better this week until on the train ride home this early evening, I suddenly started coughing incessantly, and it was so bad that my eyes started watering. A woman next to me generously and kindly offered a cough drop. I really just needed water because I was so dry, but I didn’t think to carry a water bottle. It looks like another doctor’s appointment is in tow for me… my fourth in about four weeks.

Today, a good friend from San Francisco and I spent the day together. We watched the off-Broadway musical War Paint together, and as two people who work in marketing, a lot of the themes resonated and cracked both of us up. The one that was the most ridiculous given what industry we work in was when Helena Rubenstein, who was back in the day a famous and very wealthy cosmetics titan and icon, was trying to figure out how to increase her company’s revenue. Her then partner says to her, why don’t you just take the same face cream formulation, label one jar “day cream,” and the second jar “night cream”? No one will know the difference! This “genius” idea led to literally double the revenue they had previously seen and much success for their brand. Of course, this was back in the day when women had no idea what ingredients were going into their skincare and makeup, and they lapped up any type of advertising that led them to believe they were becoming more beautiful and “youthful” as a result of all this crap that different brands were selling at the time.

As someone who works in marketing, I realize that there are some things that I am more easily bought in on than others. The “day cream” vs. “night cream” idea is just so awful that it is good.

It’s been almost two months since we left the Upper East Side, and today, we’ve come back to run some errands and pick up some random mail that failed to get to our new address. Seeing all the new Asian restaurants that have popped up here in just two months since we’ve left is a bit crazy. I guess that goes to show how quickly any neighborhood changes. There’s now a very affordable Filipino restaurant that is the second and sister restaurant of a spot I loved downtown, and they even serve macapuno ice cream. Five years ago when I moved to the Upper East Side, I never for a split second thought that macapuno ice cream would make its way up to that neighborhood. I guess I was wrong.

Now, my old neighborhood seems like it has better food than my current one. It always seems to be greener on the other side.