I have always believed in cooking food from scratch. It’s primarily because I just love cooking and baking in general, so the time invested in it doesn’t seem like a waste as it does to so many, but it also makes sense from a health and awareness standpoint. When you make your food, you know exactly what goes into it, and there are no surprises. There’s no hidden high fructose corn syrup, no monosodium glutamate, no disgusting artificial colorings and preservatives that have complicated and scary sounding names. You can control the amount of salt or sugar or oil or any ingredient you use.

But then I think of all the things I have absolutely zero desire to make, primarily because I’ve made them in cooking classes in the past and realized that they are hard AF to make (e.g. croissants, macarons), or because I know they are hard and laborious, and I simply have no desire to make them (Peking duck, parathas). And then, on my last trip to Jackson Heights to stock up on Middle Eastern and Indian ingredients, I found a VALUE PACK for 25 paratha in the freezer section, which I rarely look at unless I’m getting frozen vegetables as backup. 25 PARATHA FOR SEVEN DOLLARS? And all made of natural ingredients with zero preservatives? And all I have to do is heat them up in an empty skillet? Yesssssssssss.

These are the joys of the modern (and increasingly obese and unhealthy) world, of the lazy person who likes food and doesn’t want to cook it. I can kind of relate now.

In getting ramped up for job training, I’ve been encouraged to look at different people’s calendars in the company and add myself to meetings I think would be beneficial, so everything from customer calls, internal product calls, engagement calls — you name it. I’ve been told to shadow as much as possible and refer to everyone’s calendars. One of our main company values is transparency. All our calendars are visible to all so that our colleagues can know what we’re doing and who we’re speaking with and what we’re working on. That all sounds like common sense, right?

Well, it isn’t really. Because where I came from, we had different people on sales and someone who was once on my own team who refused to make their calendars transparent. So if you looked at this guy’s calendar, instead of telling you what his meeting was and who he was speaking with, it would simply block out a time and say “busy.” If you’re working at an organization where people are supportive of one another and share information to help one another, why the hell would you make your entire calendar blocked from others to see? His response when we actually debated this? “I don’t want you to see when I’m at the doctor’s or getting my teeth cleaned!” That argument is so weak because you can just mark those specifically as “private.” Your work calendar is your work calendar, not your personal calendar. Your work calendar should be visible in a healthy organization. No one is asking you to make your private non-work life visible. At the “top” of that team I started on at my last company was someone who didn’t want to instill any values about transparency or trust in his team, so he stayed out of this conversation and said everyone could make their own decisions about this. It probably wasn’t apparent to him because he was dense and self-seeking, but something as seemingly trivial as this actually speaks volumes regarding the organization he is trying to lead and the culture he wants to instill. Until the last day, there was no real sense of “team” on that team. It was really sad.

My new company is by no means perfect, and every day I’m seeing things that could use improvement, but I never entered this place thinking it would be paradise. But to be frank, it actually does feel like a sort of paradise when you compare it to the last place where I spent 3.5 years. It still kills me when I think about it that I stayed there that long.

During his test comedy show at a small, intimate venue last night, Hasan Minhaj talked about an experience on a plane where a guy who sat next to him was carrying a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 — you know, that one single phone that has been exploding and catching fire that has been banned from planes? Hasan immediately is alarmed and tells the guy that he cannot have that phone on the plane, that it’s dangerous and could explode. The guy gets really defensive and is really annoyed. He responds with questions like, just because other Galaxy Note 7s have exploded doesn’t mean his will. There are plenty of Galaxy Note 7s that have not exploded, so why are the few that have exploded giving the rest of these phones such a bad rap? You can’t just assume that my Galaxy Note 7 will be bad, too! Mine is fine!

Hasan Minhaj’s response? “Well now, my friend, you understand what it’s like to be a minority.”

Tonight, I went to see a test comedy performance by Hasan Minhaj, who I love and have seen live before in his one-man show Homecoming King, and of course, have also seen in The Daily Show. Chris couldn’t make it as he had a work trip that conflicted, and my friend who was supposed to come with me bailed on me right before the show because he was too tired to stay late enough. So it was just me sitting on my own amongst strangers.

It was actually really nice to be there on my own because I ended up having a decent conversation with an Indian-American guy who had traveled from LA for work. He works for Adult Swim, a film company, and was here this week for work. As someone who works in film and writes, he’s a huge fan of Hasan Minhaj and was on a mailing list that alerted him to this show. He looks at people like Hasan Minhaj, Aziz Ansari, and Russell Peters as inspirations. As the son of very traditional Indian parents, with his dad working and moving their family all over the country with his career in IT, he’s very well aware of how Asians are stereotyped and hopes to follow in these writer/comedians’ footsteps.

I’m excited to see a more colorful representation of talent now and in the future since it clearly was not something I grew up with. This guy at just 24 gives me hope, just like Hasan Minhaj and Ronny Chieng do.

I’ve never lived in a place without working plumbing. Isn’t that supposed to be part of the guaranteed glory of living in America, that your home should have working plumbing? This is partly why I was slightly taken aback when I was reading Jeannette Walls’s memoir Glass Castle to find out that pretty much her entire childhood, she lived in homes without toilets across this country. She and her siblings lived in rural areas where they’d literally just drop their pants and pee in grass, or dig holes in fields and take a dump.

I thought about this when I came to our new office location today. It’s our first day in the new office space. The office space is beautiful and modern, and it’s clear that a lot of work was put into renovating the space and building it exactly as our company wanted it: lots of natural light in every section of the floor, huge windows, high ceilings, a beautiful and brand new open kitchen space complete with three refrigerators, a double sink, and a massive kitchen island. The conference rooms all have glass doors and walls, and every room is hooked up with the latest and greatest for video and phone conferencing. Our desks are all adjustable via a button for sitting, standing, or half-sitting on stools. The one thing that was lacking? Working toilets. The toilets would not flush. And the plumbers were delayed in getting to us.

What were the alternatives? 1) Take the freight elevator to the basement where a haunted-house-like bathroom exists. 2) Walk two blocks north along Fifth Avenue to the old office space, where our badges can still scan us in and we can still use those bathrooms. Yay!

This is definitely a New York City thing when everything seems perfect during a move except one, big glaring issue. Classic New York.

Tonight, we had an early celebration of Chris’s dad’s birthday at one of New York’s top rated “romantic” restaurants, One If By Land, Two If By Sea. The food and the service were phenomenal; the portion were actually fairly large for a tasting menu, and although some dishes like the chocolate souffle were quite simple, the comforting flavors did not disappoint, proving that sometimes the best dishes really can be the simplest.

The funny thing about restaurants rated as “romantic” is that even in today’s day and age that welcomes the eclectic and the modern, the term “romantic” still seems to conjure the same images and notions that were thought of decades ago, things like long and lit candles, white or red roses, white linen table clothes, and dimly lit dining rooms. When I sat down at our table and took a look around the dining room, the top-top tables were what was most comical to me; they had long white table cloths topped with a little bouquet of white roses, with long white candles lit and flickering. It was just like an image out of those “romantic” dates that Jack Tripper used to do in the popular 80’s comedy TV series Three’s Company. I felt like we were in a very traditional dining room from the 80s tonight.

Tonight, we took Chris’s parents to see Arthur Miller’s play The Price on Broadway. Since Obama and his daughter went to see it months ago, the ticket prices have skyrocketed, but we got these tickets for Chris’s parents as a late birthday gift for his mom. The show didn’t disappoint either from a performance standpoint or a cast standpoint; Mark Ruffalo and Danny DeVito star in it, and their performances were extremely strong and convincing.

Arthur Miller has a special place in my heart as a playwright, as two of my favorite plays I studied, read, and watched in high school are by him. Death of a Salesman was his play that resonated the most with me, as so many of the family delusions and quest for the American dream painfully reminded me of my own family at a vulnerable and self-seeking time in my life. The Crucible, a favorite among many as a reminder of the Salem witch trials  of the 17th century, spoke to me in how it brings up the theme of perception and reputation. What truly creates the reputations that we may be proud (or not) of, the name that we seek to have and have remembered about us regardless of whether we are living or have passed, and in general, what is our “place” in society?

In conjuring all these themes, Miller oftentimes uses family dysfunction as the mechanism to make us think about these tough questions. So I suppose if you think about constantly seeing family dysfunction on stage, you’d understand why I like him so much. It’s like he’s speaking directly to me about all the familial insanities that are possible.

Tonight, we went to Hao Noodle and Tea by Madam Zhu’s Kitchen for dinner. Madam Zhu’s is a Sichuanese-influenced Chinese restaurant that started in mainland China and has locations in Shanghai, Beijing, and Hangzhou, and they’ve expanded to the U.S. with this New York City location. I knew that it would be a more upscale representation of Chinese food, but I wasn’t quite prepared for how modern not only the decor but the dishes would be in terms of the spin they’ve taken with the flavors and presentation. Not only that, another thing that was interesting was that the staff was very diverse; it was not all Chinese hosts and servers and bus boys, but a variety of colors. In fact, I think that only one of the wait staff who helped us was actually ethnically Chinese. It’s exciting to see this, as it means that more people are becoming open-minded to Chinese food and how incredible it can be. It’s not just the stereotypical Americanized corn-starch goop and sweet and sour pork that is so often generically on menus. This is real, beautiful, and tasty food.

You know you’ve been in New York City way too long when you go to a “fine dining” restaurant and marvel at how “inexpensive” the dishes are when the highest price points are $20-22. That’s what happened to me tonight when we took Chris’s parents, who just arrived from their multi-destination trip, to Tastings Social Presents Mountain Bird in Spanish Harlem. Maybe the lower prices are due to its location. Maybe it’s because the chef and owners are over the idea that quality food and presentation need to be so stuffy and overpriced. Whatever it is, the focus of the menu is around poultry, and the chef did an amazing job with all forms of the duck he used. This is probably one of the best and most reasonably priced meals we’ve had in a long time in the city. We really should be spending more time in Spanish Harlem, especially given how close it is to our apartment.

Here are the signs that you either grew up with half-glass-empty parents or you’ve spent too much time in New York: when a person approaches you on the street for directions, and you slowly start backing away because you wonder in the back of your mind whether this person is trying to con you into something or potentially steal your wallet without you knowing. That happened to me during a lunchtime walk today. This guy just wanted to know how to get to a certain area via the subway, and I really thought he was getting too close into my personal space, so I started backing away, even as he kept moving closer to me.

In New York, we get cramped on subway trains and platforms, and we’re used to being in massive crowds with little breathing room or “personal space.” Yet, as New Yorkers, we also develop defense mechanisms and forms of self-protection, and one of them is to never let anyone get too physically close to you unless it’s absolutely necessary (e.g. subway car during rush hour). I wonder if I’ll never get rid of this mentality once I leave New York… if I ever leave New York?