Chris’s cousin is in town from London for work, so we’ve been spending our evenings with him and took him to the Comedy Cellar tonight. During one of the comedian’s acts, he talked about the Pride parade that just happened and how although he didn’t go to the parade, he was still a supporter of gay rights. He doesn’t actively do anything for gay rights, but he doesn’t actively do a lot of things; he just knows that he doesn’t really care about what other people are doing — as long as they aren’t harming anyone.

So the argumentative points here are: how do you define “harming” others? Someone could argue you are harming an unborn child by having an abortion. Another person can say that by not preaching the Bible’s words that you are harming others by not giving them the chance to be saved. Smoking cigarettes could be “harming” others by exposing them to second-hand smoke. There’s too much grey area on a statement even as simple and well-meaning as that one.

Today, we had brunch with my cousin’s cousin and her family visiting from Montreal. The funny thing about my cousin’s cousins is that although they are technically not my cousins, they seem to enjoy seeing me more than they want to see their own blood cousins. So the times they’ve come to New York since my New York cousin’s wedding, they’ve always reached out to me first to see if I’m available, and sometimes they don’t even see their own cousin here.

Chris always thinks the situation is odd, and he knows it’s odd primarily because when these group meals happen, the table tends to get very divided, as we’re not all actually interacting with each other. My local cousin and I barely speak, mainly because I find him one-dimensional, boring, and always a complainer who thinks his life is the worst of the worst (never mind the fact that there actually are people living in poverty in New York City, much less the world, but he seems to think he’s the worst off since he lives in a working class neighborhood where people oftentimes gets his takeout order wrong). I really only see him when it’s his little son’s birthday, or when we have family visiting from out of town. He is the kind of person who makes the best situations seem the worst (one of the latest texts from him includes “(my wife) doesn’t get that New York sucks” simply because his train is delayed going home). Sounds like he really fits into my bloodline, then, right?

His cousin from Montreal is a world away from him, though. She’s actually really fun, positive, and enjoyable to speak with. She has four kids, and they’re all upbeat and healthy. “How is someone normal like her related to the rest of your three cousins?” Chris asked me. I don’t know?

One of the joys that awaits me in the new apartment is finally being able to use so many of my kitchen items again that I haven’t used in five years — so since I lived in Elmhurst. There, I had a full sized oven, stove, and refrigerator, and here… well, I don’t. So things like my cookie sheets and baking racks just didn’t fit into the oven here. So I’ve stowed them away in the back of our closet in hopes that one day when we moved, I’d be able to use them again. That time is very close now!

The cookie sheet that doesn’t fit into this oven was given to me by Ed as part of my birthday gift in 2012. It’s a very solid, non-stick sheet that even has rubber grips on it. And it still looks brand new. It only got a handful of uses before I moved into our current apartment. Thinking about it makes me sad that he’ll never be able to see me use it in the new apartment… or ever again. It’s an odd thing to remember when thinking about what I’ll be able to use again in the new apartment, but the thought still lingers.

The white Macbook I bought with a fairly considerable Harvard student discount back in 2009 is now no longer mine. After several failed attempts to remember the password last Sunday, I was able to get it after remembering the number patterns I used to use for my passwords. Once I unlocked it, I changed the password settings and posted to Craigslist, and the first response I got was willing to pay $100 for it. It feels like I have my own little side business going, selling my used items on Craigslist from now until July.

This guy not only arrived early at the apartment, but he paid me in two $50 bills; who carries around $50 bills? He was friendly and told me he was planning to use it for some programs that were compatible only with my operating system. I still can’t believe I got $100 for this eight-year-old Apple product. Now, if only everything I owned that I wanted to sell before our move had that type of resale value…

I hauled a bunch of flattened boxes and bubble wrap from my office back home this week. I figure that since my office move just happened that our office manager would be fine to give me all the moving supplies that she’d inevitably throw out, so that was a big bonus for me. And today, I finally sold our first item, our coffee table. The guy who picked it up apparently had some freak accident in his apartment and broke his coffee table in half, so he was looking on Craigslist for a cheap but sturdy replacement. After inspecting our table and looking at the few scratches on top, he paid me and took it out of our building. I’ve sold another item on eBay, and someone is coming to the building to buy one of my old computers tomorrow.

We’re making progress on the move, and we’re still over a month away from moving. This is feeling pretty good so far.

I spent the late afternoon and evening tonight hanging out with my colleague who is temporarily in the U.S. until August. He’s based in our Amsterdam office, but is relocating to the Cologne office due to an office restructuring. He’s actually originally from Germany, anyway, and lucky him, he got a Green Card through the Green Card lottery, which is why he’s in the States for a few months. He’s ethnically Armenian, but his family roots are in Turkey, but he was born and raised in Germany. I am ethnically Chinese and Vietnamese, born and raised in the U.S. He grew up thinking racism was the norm while in Germany, and I grew up in a bubble in San Francisco, never truly experiencing racism until I moved to the East Coast. When you give two people of different ethnicities and nationalities about five hours together, a lot ends up being discussed around culture and each culture’s idiocies.

“Why do people call Asians yellow?” he asked me. “I don’t get it. At the lightest they are whitish skinned, or they look like you… what are you, like tannish?”

“I have no idea what color I am,” I said. “You might as well call me beige.”

“In the American education system, do you guys get taught that Hitler was actually Austrian and not German?” he asked.

I told him that I remember learning he was Austrian, but it is likely it gets lost in the shuffle of how awful of a person Hitler was.

“I’ve been asked all kinds of questions that I think are dumb since I’ve come here… one person asked me what the capital of Germany was. Another asked me what the official language of the Netherlands is.”

And here’s the real thing that stung: “I realize that I’m really lucky to have a green card… and that so many people want it. But the major thing holding me back from wanting to live here is… I just don’t understand how any rich country like the U.S. doesn’t have universal health care. That should be illegal. What kind of developed country allows people to go bankrupt because they get cancer or some other life-threatening illness? Or why should my university education put me $200K in debt? That makes zero sense to me.”

It makes zero sense to me, too.

I’m pretty sure that when people first meet me now and have any real interaction with me, they will find out fairly quickly that my two major loves are 1) food and 2) travel. For me, food is part of the excitement of travel because when you go to new places, there will inevitably be food that you can have more readily than in your home.

So it warmed my heart this week when our friends who lived in Switzerland for six months last year told us that they were having a raclette grill shipped to their apartment, and they wanted to christian it with us over brunch. They figured that of all their friends, we’d be able to appreciate it best given our love of food and travel, and the fact that we’ve been to Switzerland before and have enjoyed raclette.

I love sticky cheeses. I love Switzerland. And I love friends who love a variety of food. It was a delicious meal.

Tonight, I went to a happy hour hosted by my company to bid farewell to one of our colleagues, who has left the company to travel to Bali for a month, and then will be joining her boyfriend in his small marketing company. It’s always sad to see colleagues leave who you like, and though I didn’t have much time to get to know her, she’ll be missed a lot. She was one of only five women in our office of about 27, and she’s also very outspoken about human and women’s rights.

Since she has left, the company needs a new ambassador to lead volunteer efforts for our Impact Weeks throughout the year, so our philanthropic leader reached out to me to ask if I’d be willing to fill her spot. I accepted and figured this would be a good way to get to know more people in our small office, and also establish myself more as a leader in general. It’s a great thing to be part of an organization that actively encourages volunteerism, even if it’s during regular work hours. It’s not just about us; it’s about the world and everyone else who has less than us.

After months enduring the new homeowner’s life, from picking what shade of grey-eggshell to paint the house to what type of wood to redo the floors in, my couple friend in Long Island City has finally finished and deemed the apartment worthy of a visit, and how flattering to find out that Chris and I are the first friends (after their visiting friend from California) to see the apartment. For the last four months, they’ve spent almost every weekend working on shopping and picking out furniture, building furniture, overseeing construction, and figuring out how to lay out their apartment, and it’s basically been like a full-time job on top of having an actual full-time job. The idea of being a homeowner just based on what they shared with us today makes my head spin. These are all the little benefits of renting and not owning; someone else has to deal with these issues and not me.

And on my end, because I knew I would see them soon, I wanted to get them a housewarming gift, but I had no idea what their home style was and was worried if I picked out something decorative that would’t go with their current look. I toiled over multiple ideas and finally settled on a set of Portuguese ceramic bowls, with the look of cracked glass inside them. These are the kinds of things I’d like, and they look very sophisticated. Plus, they’re dishwasher safe and are a faded blue color, so they’d go with lots of things. Who doesn’t need bowls to eat out of? I got a gift receipt just in case, but I told them that in the event they didn’t like them, I’d just take them for myself and get them another gift. 🙂 But they ended up really liking them and keeping them.

“These make our kitchen seem more adult like!” My friend exclaimed.