After his performance last night, Ronny stuck around and greeted guests to thank them for coming. The venue was quite small, so it was easy to approach him and chat for a bit. I’m always so surprised when I find that people who perform for a living in front of crowds of hundreds or thousands of people are shy in real life. They’re happy to have millions of eyeballs watch and critique their every word, but when one-on-one time comes, they almost clam up. That’s kind of how Ronny was. I got behind another couple to say hi to him while Chris was paying the tab, and he seemed almost embarrassed that I wanted to talk him to him beyond just saying thank you. The more questions I asked and the more I wanted to engage with him on everything from his time in Australia to Malaysian food outside of Malaysia and Singapore, he seemed more and more awkward. It was kind of cute. There’s no way I’d ever be able to do what he does for a living; it’s even more exciting that he’s an Asian comedian in a white/black dominated comedy world.

We’re all biased. We all have our self interests, the things that make us feel self-righteous. We all judge regardless of what we say. But what always throws me off is when people are so marred by their own biases and disgust for humankind that they cannot see the positives in the world.

We were at drinks late tonight with two of our friends, and one of them goes off politically about welfare like unemployment insurance, educational funds for army veterans, and Medicare. Basically, the gist is that he is implying we’re all naive to think that these are truly “benefits.” “Do you really think that the government provides all of these things to us to really ‘benefit’ us? They do it because people protested and revolted and demanded this stuff, otherwise they’d burn everything down and kill others!”

Well, no one said that people never protested to demand their rights. Hello, Civil Rights Movement and women in the late 1800s and early 1900s demanding their right to vote, which was denied to them merely because of their vaginas. After visiting the Civil Rights National Museum twice, I realized that JFK probably gets far more credit for being supportive of civil rights and black people in general than what he really deserves; it was purely political, unlike what they taught us in school. JFK was never going to participate in any “Black Lives Matter” type protest for sure. But at the end of the day, the origin or the reason for these laws or benefits is irrelevant to what positive benefits they provided to people then and now. Was my friend going to reject or deny taking his unemployment insurance when he was between jobs, or was my mother, who looks at the world just like he does and thinks “the government doesn’t give a damn about anyone,” NOT going to take advantage of Medicare and her monthly social security payments? Of course not.

It’s always fun to see people enjoy their “welfare” benefits but complain that the government “doesn’t give a shit” about anyone. Maybe they don’t really care about you, but you still get things from them. Don’t be the person who blindly and happily takes but doesn’t want to give a single thing in return, even if what you are “giving” is merely a little credit or one kind word.

In yesterday’s world, we applied to hundreds of jobs (or at least, I did), and if we were lucky, we’d hear back from maybe 10-20 of them. Companies would make you wait and squirm during interviews, asking you one question after another in an attempt to stump you or make you feel stupid. Then, after whatever phone or in-person interview, the worst of the worst ones wouldn’t even get back to you to let you know they turned you down until two to three months later. Those days really sucked.

Today, there’s LinkedIn for recruiters, internal and external, to reach out to you to ask you if you want to work for them. Recruiters are incentivized to find the best talent for their companies, and many will stop at nothing. I had one person I met say that a recruiter reached out three times, acknowledging all the previous outreach, until he finally responded to her and took her up on the interview request. I’ve had internal recruiters at some of the most prestigious technology companies in the world keep me in their back pocket in the event that a relevant opening comes up that might be to my liking.

And what really shocked me today was when I went in for an interview just past a normal lunch hour, and the interviewer offered to buy me lunch. You want to buy me lunch? Really? Can we be friends now? You’re kind of amazing even for just offering. Thanks so much, but I ate before coming. What a sweetie.

And then later tonight, to set up another interview with another company, they offered to provide a ride to and from their office because “we want you to arrive to your interview stress free!”

I told my friend this, and he responded, “Who is this — Exxon or Goldman Sachs?”

Neither, dude. Neither.

It’s the second day of spring, and I really should start expanding my food horizons when it comes to what I buy at Trader Joe’s. They are constantly coming out with new products, so why do I always just buy the same produce and oil and dairy products all the time?

I’m clearly late to the band wagon, but Trader Joe’s is the cheapest possible source for organic frozen acai. They also carry the cheapest box of Nature’s Path hemp granola. And why did I always ignore the dried fruit section other than the dried cranberries and cherries? With the help of a random food blogger I found, I realized that they actually sell dried baby bananas that literally taste as good as banana bread, just without all the extra sugar, oil, and eggs. If you tried these, you probably wouldn’t care to touch banana bread again (well, I will still make it, but you know what I mean).

I really need to slow down and actually browse stores instead of being so laser focused on things I supposedly need or want to make the recipes on my list. Maybe this is the season for it.

For the first time since college, I have a huge helium-filled balloon in my house, and I’m so excited by it. I got it at a freebie event that was held by an Italian shoe company for their birthday today, and they were handing out free gift cards for way-too-expensive shoes, and these massive green balloons. The last time I remember getting a balloon, my brother had gotten it for one of my birthdays. It may have been my 21st.

Helium balloons bring out the child in me. It’s a very simple thing (until you find out that these things can actually get quite pricey!), but it brings so much joy not just to kids but to adults. As I walked down the street with this huge balloon (it’s probably 6-8 of my heads combined), everyone looked at me and smiled.

Now, I just want a whole room full of helium balloons to get me giddy.

I haven’t had an eye exam in almost two years, partly out of laziness and also partly out of cheapness. It’s frustrating when your vision insurance requires a co-pay of only $20 for an eye-glass exam but a nearly $60 co-pay for a contact lens exam. Why the discrimination? Because I hate wearing glasses, I need to pay three times as much for my exam, especially when we all know that maintaining contacts overall is far more costly than wearing eye glasses?

Regardless, I only wear contacts at most once or twice a week. I wear them when I have special occasions (like weddings), or when I want to wear my regular good-looking, non-prescription sunglasses. I carry my eye glasses around when I know I need to see far or am on my way to the theater. My optometrist was amused by this and said, “so, you just walk around blurry most of the time? Well, that actually isn’t terrible for your eyes, so maybe it’s a good thing!”

This is only the second time I’ve seen him, yet this time, we actually had a pretty good conversation about blindness, the optometry profession in general, and how passionate he is about using technology to solve for vision problems he’s seen in his nearly 20-year tenure in the industry. He works in two practices, frequently gives lectures at different optometry schools, and also is employed in a health technology company that is aiming to create tech to solve for different types of blindness. His grit and passion were evident. He joked and said that he rarely has time to date, but when he does tweak his online dating ads, he always says he’s unavailable during the day on Saturdays and Sundays.

I don’t often have such lengthy conversations with my doctors, but this one was quite inspiring. His level of empathy and caring were a bit surprising, but I guess empathy isn’t necessarily a trait that is straight-up taught in medical or optometry schools according to what he told me.

Like I posted about recently, several of the male friends closest to me all agreed and said that during interviews, engagement/wedding rings should be taken off. Consciously, we know we’re not supposed to judge people based on their personal lives, but we cannot control our subconscious. Of course, during a job interview, the interviewer would be discreet in observing something like that, as it would be illegal to ask “Are you married?” or “Are you expecting to have children soon?” But, noticing details like whether a woman is wearing an engagement ring or wedding band in a purely social setting can also be discreet, too. It’s just that… some men choose not to be discreet about it.

I was at my friend’s birthday event tonight, and two different men, friends of my friend, in two completely different conversations, called out my wedding rings and how “shiny” they were, and asked when I got married. Is this what the world has come to now? Is our conversation so boring that you had to ask me about my marriage, or were you secretly hoping that I was single because you thought I was really cute or had a pretty laugh, and then got disappointed when you found out that I had bling on my fingers? Because in both of those conversations, after we discussed my husband and my wedding and even my rings, those conversations completely ended.

What ever happened to just being friends with the opposite sex? Now that I’m married, I’m no longer able to make new male friends? I swear that these people secretly teamed up with my mother because she’d love to hear this story right now and insist that I should not associate with any men outside of my husband, family, and work (and only for work purposes).

I cannot even count how many interviews I have been on since my college years, when I was interviewing for different internship opportunities in San Francisco, Boston, and New York. I’ve had so many good and really terrible experiences, but I would say that one of the worst ones I’ve ever had happened this week.

There’s really nothing worse than interviewing at a company that does not have the foresight to realize that in a job interview, “interviewing” is happening on two sides: the company is evaluating the prospective employee to see if s/he will be a fit for the role and company, and the prospective employee is also at the same time evaluating the company and every single person s/he is meeting with to see if this role, team, company, and culture being presented is going to be a match. It is disheartening when companies do not realize that prospectives are evaluating them, and instead choose to see their companies as the “catch” and don’t work to “sell” who they are to the prospectives. This happened on Monday, when I had a phone interview with two hiring managers. One hiring manager said little to nothing, showing he did not care to ask questions or really elaborate on anything, and the second hiring manager was basically reading questions off his “interview question list” as he called it and had no real social skills conveyed over the phone. He was awkward, monotone, and did not seem to sell through why it would be great to work at their company. It was all about their technology stack and nothing else. I’d sum this interaction up in three words: dry, humorless, and completely uninspiring.

These are the types of tech companies that shoo away talent. No one wants to work with a bunch of lifeless, monotone robots.

Back to reality and the cold that is still New York City here in March. We’ve just passed Daylight Savings Time, yet spring seems so far away. The snow storm is coming (she has a name; Stella!). And me not thinking at all, I went to the grocery store at around 5:45, thinking that I should really get all the household staples for the week. That was really smart.

I arrived at Fairway on 86th street, and the “no cart” line is so long that it wraps around the produce section and nearly goes out the front door. The pasta shelf is nearly empty, and I literally grabbed the very last half gallon of whole milk. People’s carts are filled with not fresh produce, but mostly boxed and processed foods… you know, things for quick reheating and instant gratification and hunger satiation. Everyone on the Upper East Side of Manhattan seems to think that tomorrow, people will literally all be snowed in and trapped in their apartments. Yet, according to today’s weather report, the snow is meant to stop at around 2pm tomorrow. No one is going to work who can work from home. New Yorkers are always overreacting to every little threat of bad weather. It’s comical at times, except when I have to deal with the long lines that are a result of everyone’s shared paranoia.

Vietnamese food is all the rage in New York City now. Over the last few years, trendy restaurants have been serving bun, pho, and banh mi like my mother never would have predicted. There have always been decent spots in Manhattan Chinatown, with my favorite banh mi spot out in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, but no place has really stood out to me as being a place I really love.

In recent months, new “modern” Vietnamese spots have opened, ones that claim to use ingredients that are locally sourced, meat that is grass-fed with no antibiotics and hormones, and organic produce. One of these spots is Hanoi House in the East Village, where my friend and I met last night. I was skeptical about paying $16 for 16-hour Northern Vietnam-style pho, but I was tempted, especially since I want to get my mind out of the thought that “ethnic” food should be “cheap.” My friend and I shared a manila clam rice porridge, a papaya and pig ear salad, and the 16-hour pho with bone marrow, and I couldn’t have been happier. The pho was probably one of the clearest, cleanest beef broths I’d ever had, with a depth where I could literally taste all the elements of pho: charred onion, roasted and simmered bones, star anise, and all of the other different herbs. If the broth had stayed hotter for longer, I probably would have finished it all myself after my friend had her share.