During my onboarding period, a number of people had said to me to never underestimate the power of a donut, a sandwich delivery, a lunch, a free meal — anything that feeds a customer is likely to make her happy, so just do it to get potential better results. I’ve had one customer who has been hard to get a hold of, but finally she was in town this week, and I offered to take her out to lunch. She was working at Chelsea Market, so I offered to take her out for lobster rolls. Someone who was once tight-lipped and guarded suddenly had f-bombs exploding out of her mouth and was spilling the beans about everything I asked her. This lunch meeting was turning out to be a success.

That lobster roll was really good, too. They said it was mayoed, but the mayonnaise was so light that I barely noticed it was there.

When I was little, I remember always hearing older people starting sentences and rants with, “when I was your age…” and “when I was young….” and then going on to make some statement about how much harder they worked, how much more well behaved they were, or how much less they expected of the world than my generation of “young people” did. It was annoying, and I rarely said anything in response to it. Arguing against it wasn’t going to get me anything, and trying to disprove them certainly wasn’t going to do any good. Older people always think they are right. That’s still the case now, and I’m 31 now.

But I can’t help but think that now sometimes of people five, ten, fifteen years younger than me. I was on a train with a large number of children from some summer program today, and I could not believe how loud they were. They couldn’t have been any older than eight or nine years in age. And the program leaders, adults who were likely around my age, were futilely telling them to quiet down. I could barely hear the thoughts in my own head, and I was counting down the minutes until I could finally exit that car.

When I used to go on field trips during school, our groups were always so freaking quiet in elementary and middle school. We were warned many times before leaving the school grounds that we represented our school, so don’t we want outsiders to respect us and our school by our good behavior? We’d line up in pairs with our designated buddy, or in single file lines, and be so quiet you’d barely even realize a bunch of kids were surrounding you on the Muni. There was either a lack of discipline in that school, in that program, or just a lack of care. If this is the way the average school or summer program is in New York, then that really is not something that makes me excited about the future of our children.

Today, we spent the afternoon at Chris’s mother’s cousin’s house in Hell’s Kitchen, where a number of other cousins were there. We were the youngest couple in the room. We caught up over delicious Turkish food, wine, and too many desserts, and everyone seemed quite jovial and genuinely interested in hearing what everyone else had to share. That’s the thing about all the Indians I’ve met; they’re always smiling, always happy, always enjoying. Why can’t my family be like that? When my family gets together and I am there, it’s as though I am just counting down the minutes after the event ends so that my parents can just gossip endlessly about all the stupid things that were said and done that irrationally pissed them off.

There’s the stereotype that Chris and his brother love to tell me, and that’s that every time Indians see Indians, they immediately start smiling. It’s like the default look on their faces when they see each other. It’s as though even though logically, we all know there are literally billions of Indians all over the freaking world, when we see Indians in a place that is not India, we all get excited and think, hey, there’s more of us! Yes! Is that indicative that Indians are just happy people? I once asked. They weren’t clear cut on how to answer that. Because all I have to say is, when Chinese people see other Chinese people, and when Vietnamese people see other Vietnamese people (not always as clear, especially with mixed people like me), they certainly do NOT get excited, and their initial thought is NOT to smile at the other person.

I was a little devastated at dinner last night when we found out that a friend of ours, someone we’ve only met less than two years ago but have hung out with regularly, announced that he may be leaving to California for good. He’s been in the midst of a job search for over seven months now, and nothing has panned out, mostly because he’s switching careers and industries, and hiring managers are rarely willing to take big chances on more senior roles. He and his wife were planning to move to California at some point in the future anyway, so he figured that if this job search doesn’t have any solid leads in the next month, he’s going to be packing up and leaving for good. And once he gets an offer, his wife would quit her job and join him out there.

It’s sad news to hear, but people’s lives have to go on. It’s just sad for us because they’re probably the only couple friend we spend time with regularly and really enjoy. They’re the only couple friend we have where when one person’s talking, the other three are actually engaged and listening. It’s the only couple friend we have where both of us like the other two as much as the other does. We rarely see them separately, as that’s just how our relationship has been, and it’s been really enjoyable and comforting to have them around because they’re just not the typical New Yorkers at all (and funny enough, neither of them is originally from New York) in that they love having people over at their house and just lounging around. If they do leave, I’ll really miss them. The world doesn’t revolve around me, but I really hope his search works out so that we can still enjoy his company locally.

I can count on one hand the number of banh xeo I’ve had that have been really good, and not just passable: San Jose, Orange County, Vietnam, St. Louis, and in Melbourne… Oh, wait, and at home, too, because I’ve mastered the recipe that Andrea Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American cookbook author I love, has made public. The few times I’ve tried ordering it in New York, whether it’s been in Queens or Manhattan, it’s been pretty terrible. The texture is soggy, there’s no coconut milk flavor, and there’s zero crunch. But tonight, at Madame Vo, a popular modern Vietnamese restaurant that has opened in the East Village, I actually sat there a little stunned when the beautifully plated banh xeo came to the table. As soon as the server set the dish down, I could smell the coconut scent wafting towards my nose. When I eyed it carefully, it was seared properly so the edges were crisp. You could see brown fry marks on it. And when I actually bit into it, as big-headed as it sounds, it almost tasted like what I’d produce at home. This place is pricey, but it’s also a keeper. It’s the only place in all of New York City that can produce a banh xeo I’d actually willingly pay for. And it’s comforting thing considering that it’s such a labor-intense dish to make.

In a city like New York, where people hire everything to do everything for them — everything from food and tampon delivery to laundry to shoe repairs to even sofa doctoring (yes, this exists), it’s very odd that with a task like moving that anyone you know will ever offer to help you. That sounds like a thing people do in other smaller, more homely cities, where you can actually rely on neighbors and trust them. In New York, surprisingly this time around for moving, two different friends have willingly offered to help, as one had a car and said it would be useful for us, and the other had, well, his physical size and power to help us. We declined both, but it’s so unusual to have even the offer. Even when I’ve heard of friends moving, it’s never even come into my head to offer to help pack or move. It’s one of the worst and most tedious tasks ever.

It’s still hard to believe that I’ve been living in this apartment for over five years now. I went from living in a massive, kitchen-renovated, and cockroach-infested apartment above two cheap and nosy Toisan landlords in Elmhurst to transitioning into a tiny one-bedroom apartment in a co-op building on the Upper East Side, where no one even knew I moved in or existed other than Chris. It was an adjustment making do with the much down-sized kitchen space, but we made it work. Hundreds of delicious and laborious meals have come out of this kitchen, probably far more than the landlord would ever have imagined given the space constraints. The kitchen island/bench that Chris purchased for this place has had my presence standing in front of it, chopping vegetables and preparing different dishes for five years now. My favorite place in this apartment is right behind that bench. And oddly, even though I will be going into a far more beautiful, more spacious and much newer kitchen, I will miss this bench dearly. This bench and I have bonded. I’ve even cleaned parts of it that Chris never even thought needed cleaning. Sometimes, it’s the simplest things that you will miss. This is one of them for me. I hope whoever ends up buying it from us will appreciate it.

Who would have thought that finding a place to volunteer for a group of 25 would be so difficult? I’m organizing my company’s summer volunteer event for the NYC office in August this year, and I reached out to six different organizations to ask if they could accommodate us. This was everything from New York Cares, which organizes hundreds if not thousands of events all year long across organizations, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, to under-resourced schools. All but one said they couldn’t accommodate us either because our group size was too large, or they had already booked up for that specific week in August.

Getting a job in New York City is competitive. Finding the perfect apartment here is competitive. And even finding an ideal volunteer opportunity for a willing and able group of 25 in this city is extremely competitive.

I don’t like to tan. I don’t get mega protective and cover all my exposed skin when I go out in the sun, nor do I wear a wide-brimmed hat when I am exposed, but I have never been and never be one of those people who likes to rub coconut or tanning oil all over their bodies and roast in the sun on the beach. I think it’s pretty revolting. When people say you have a “healthy tan” it’s such an oxymoron given the damage the sun does to your skin. When I tan, it’s usually in spite of my broad-spectrum SPF 30-50 and because I’m in a hot, humid, and sunny place far away.

So I came back to work today, and one of the first things someone exclaims during video conference (from SF) is, “wow, Yvonne! You’re so tan!”

I immediately recoiled… and laughed, and said that was really not my intention. She didn’t really get my reaction, and I just said that I prefer not to get darker skinned. Slightly awkward. But it’s okay because I can deal with it.

Maybe that’s just the really Asian side of me, to not want to be “tan.” I won’t be like the women in Asia who want “white” skin and go out with parisoles during the summer to block the sun’s rays from hitting their skin — that’s a bit extreme for me. But I rather be lighter skinned — in other words, what I am naturally supposed to be, rather than dark-skinned. I don’t even think my natural skin tone is supposed to be white, especially with my mother being Vietnamese.

After work, I had to stop by our friends’ house to pick up glasses that Chris left the last time we came over. Our couple friend, who we met just two years ago, have become regular hangout buddies for us in Manhattan. We really don’t have that many couple friends we see on a regular basis, and we’ve bonded pretty well over the last couple of years. The guy of the couple has been in a deep job search switching industries for the last ten months and hasn’t had luck in securing a role.

Although I intended to stay only about 10 minutes, I probably stayed over 40 given that he was so down about the search and how long it’s taken, especially given that he’s trying to switch industries. I can empathize given that I’ve had periods of unemployment before, and I do truly feel bad for him given that I know he has been actively searching, applying, prepping, and interviewing, so it’s certainly not due to a lack of effort at all. But what made me the most sad about the conversation is how I’ve realized that for so many of us here in the U.S., our jobs are our livelihood and so much of our identity, even if we are not the Steve Jobs or the Elon Musks of the world who are creating massive changes and are billionaires. We’re just everyday workers soldiering on. When we don’t have a job, we feel as though we are worth less, and we need that job, that income, that form of stability to feel “worthy,” as though our lives truly matter. He said he’s felt ashamed and embarrassed a lot during the last ten months. I get that, as I’ve had similar feelings in the past. Would people coming from other cultures feel the same way if they were unemployed for that long? It’s not really about him as much as it is about the society we are born into and live in every single day. When Chris’s cousin’s wife from France didn’t work for over a year and half between the time she graduated from business school to our wedding, we spoke and texted often, yet not even once did she mention feeling bad about not working, not making money, or feeling like being jobless made her feel like she was worthless or incapable of being.

I told him what I really think, which is — I’m not friends with him because he was working at a large company before and because he had an MBA; we’re friends with him because he’s a good, interesting person who is enjoyable to be around. That’s why most of our friends are our friends. He’s the same person to us now without a job as he was before when he was working full time. None of that really matters to us or to anyone who really should matter to him. It just makes me sad that so much of what we all do is tied to paid work that at the end of the day, probably isn’t going to matter a lot when we’re all on our death beds. All of us may work really hard, but there are plenty of people higher on the ladder who do less work who will inevitably get compensated more and think they are worth more. Work, work, work; money, money, money. The capitalist way. That’s our world.