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.

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…