We had a somewhat early evening show in the West Village tonight, so I decided to go downtown with my laptop to do some work at a coffee shop while waiting for Chris to come back from his work trip. I have a very long and full Yelp bookmark list, which includes not just restaurants and bars, but also interesting coffee shops throughout the city, and I know I will likely never get through any or even all of them given that every single time I try going, I fail. These shops, no matter what time of the day or what day of the week I try to go, are almost always full. If they are not full of laptop workers, they have poor acoustics and are extremely loud, meaning that they are pretty much impossible place to get any real work done. I sadly ended up at a Starbucks on Hudson. At least I had my own table to work at.

That’s the thing about New York. It doesn’t matter what neighborhood or what time of day or week. It’s not just the trendy restaurants and bars that have queues. Even the cute and innovative cafes have waits.

Years ago when interviewing for jobs, I was told by pretty much every single male friend I trusted that they’d advise against a woman wearing her engagement and/or wedding band during a job interview. It didn’t matter whether the people conducting the interviews were male or female; it would be better to not give any sign or mention that you’re either in a serious relationship, engaged, or married.

However, my male friends all said that male minds, though consciously knowing it’s wrong to discriminate against someone who is married or engaged, their subconscious mind is a completely different thing. One of my male friends, who was single at that time, said to me, “Yvonne, just take it off before you walk in.” He said he really didn’t want to admit it, but the smartest choice would be to not wear your engagement ring. He was speaking from the perspective of a single and looking man, someone who may subconsciously be looking to hire someone who could have the potential to be his future mate. All my hopeful ideas about how society has progressed were shattered. This is one of my most progressive friends giving me this advice. He doesn’t even trust himself, and he especially doesn’t trust prospective (male) employers considering me to be part of their workforce.

I shared these depressing thoughts with my friend, who at the time was working and living in Singapore. She responded by saying it was far worse in Asia because there, it’s actually legal to point blank ask your job candidates during interviews if they are engaged, married, have children, or expect to have children soon. There’s no law banning it from being asked.

What is worse, the conscious or the subconscious? They are both evil.

Chris is trying to pack as many theater shows as he can into our winter, so today, we went to see Mope, a play at the Ensemble Studio Theater about the LA porn industry and the “losers” called “mopes” in it. The play was quite sad, actually, as it depicted a very sexist and ignorant white man who helps his black male friend get into the porn industry, and this friend ends up becoming far more successful than he is. He blames his failures on being a white man in an industry where white men are not appreciated enough because their penises are not as large as black men’s, and apparently we all know that everyone wants to see a big black penis in porn. He claims that black men are taking away the white men’s roles in the porn industry, and it has nothing to do with his talent or ability that he hasn’t done well for himself.

This made me sad because it reminded me of all the white Trump voters who claim that immigrants and people of color are taking away their jobs, that there’s an attack on white people in this country. This country is a country of immigrants, so what makes a white person feel more entitled to any job than an immigrant or child of immigrants, or someone who doesn’t have white skin? Trevor, the main white character of this show, would definitely have voted for Trump. What a mope.

Tonight, we met two of our friends for dinner at a Filipino restaurant downtown, and then we went to their apartment close by for a night of board games and drinking. Our friends have a fairly large apartment on the east side, so they oftentimes invite friends over for meals, games, and just hanging out.

When I lived in Elmhurst, I would have loved to invite friends over more often… but I lived in Elmhurst, which is a place most people never wanted to go to since it wasn’t in Manhattan or in a trendy neighborhood in Brooklyn. Now, we live on the Upper East Side, but our space is a bit too cozy to have lots of friends come over at any one time. Even our alcohol stash in our fireplace is being cramped. I’m looking forward to getting a bigger place so that we can host friends over more often this summer.

My friend and I were just discussing how hard it is to keep a low grocery budget and still eat healthily in New York City when today, I walked through Citarella on the Upper East Side (a fancy grocery store I’ve never purchased anything in before), and I found non-organic radicchio for $14.95/pound. How is that even possible that a vegetable could be that expensive? My friend tries to exclusively buy organic produce, but this isn’t even organic or exotic, and it’s over $10/pound.

I don’t understand how people shop here regularly for everyday groceries, especially when I see people queuing up after work for their produce and meat purchases. It makes no sense to me, or maybe they don’t care about the cost of groceries because they just never eat out. This city will always be an anomaly when it comes to the proportion of people who cook few or none of their meals at all.

This morning, I was at the gym and about to get on a treadmill when a man and a woman a few treadmills down from me start screaming at each other, yelling expletives and waving towels. I wasn’t quite clear on what had happened and I wasn’t sure if they knew each other personally, but it was the first time in my entire time in New York that I’ve witnessed a fight at the gym. After listening to their back and forth, I realized that it was simply about the guy accidentally using the woman’s towel. Is that really the end of the world if that accidentally happens? I remember a time when I was in a gym class doing some really intense cardio and weights, and I accidentally drank out of someone else’s water bottle, which just happened to look like mine. Thankfully, the woman it belonged to just laughed and didn’t think it was a big deal.

Sometimes, it’s exhausting to be in New York because of how high strung everyone is.

After our first year together, Chris and I have stopped “celebrating” Valentine’s Day. I still make him a card every year, but other than that, we typically don’t do anything special on that day. And a few days over the last several years, one of us has had work travel. This year, he’s away, so I ended up having a dinner of hand-pulled noodles tonight with my good friend instead.

My friend and I have been friends for 20 years, since we were both 11. Whenever I see her, I’m always excited to hang out. Nothing is ever scripted, sometimes things aren’t even fully planned, and I never have to think about topics to discuss. That’s the greatest thing about having a friend in your life that long: once you reach a certain level of comfort, you can feel free to literally shoot the shit, or really not talk about anything at all, and you will still have fun and enjoy each others’ company. We don’t talk about work or “popular topics” that people discuss; we just discuss whatever is on our minds. It’s like the way our minds work; we flow from one topic to another, even when the initial topic had nothing to do with the next.

Friendships like these are the reason it seems so exhausting to meet new people and start at square one again.

Today’s a snow day, which means the majority of white-collar New York City is not going into the office. It means there will be less traffic on the roads, less people on the subway, and not a whole lot of anyone outside. When I stepped outside to walk to the gym, I even saw cars and snow plowers running through red lights. This is the sleepy version of New York’s Upper East Side when vehicles don’t even obey the traffic lights.

The snow day also meant that the New York Public Library, among endless businesses, either decided to remain closed for the day, or open much later or for limited hours. I tried to pick up some books I had at the library, but the doors were locked.

“It’s a snow day so you don’t even have to go to work?! Your city is so lazy!” Ben exclaimed to me over Whatsapp.

He’s probably right. We’re a bunch of entitled and lazy New Yorkers.

I went out to dinner at a vegan restaurant with a friend who I had lost touch with but had recently become reacquainted with, and instead of feeling really clean and healthy after the end of the meal, I actually felt… the way I always do. Anyone who says that eating vegan makes them feel more clean is completely full of crap. Seitan and all those other vital wheat gluten products can really leave you feeling heavy and bloated.

That eventually progressed into… oh, no, why is my stomach gurgling? And that became a 2am run to the bathroom, which led to reoccurring bouts of diarrhea. And that went on pretty much all day long today just to paint a prettier picture. I stayed in bed most of the day, wondering how someone like me could get food poisoning from vegan food, of all things. The two other times I’ve experienced food poisoning were in Vietnam in 2008, then in Spain this past November. People always say it’s from things like contaminated meat or fish, or from fresh produce that’s been touched with unwashed hands. No one says anything about vegan food. These are all the misconceptions of life.

I’m never going back to that restaurant ever again.

Just my luck: the morning before leaving on a flight to go home, the water heater in our apartment building broke and needed to be fixed, and I couldn’t shower before heading to the airport. I rushed through security and arrived at the AA lounge to find out that both of the two showers were occupied and would not be free until about half an hour from that point — that was only fifteen minutes before boarding. When I got notified that the shower was cleaned and ready, I had a quick shower, washed my hair, and dashed off to board the plane. I got there at the exact time boarding for business class began.

It’s funny to see how my flying habits have evolved. Before Chris, I didn’t even know airport lounges existed (if I passed them, I’d just ignore them since they were then irrelevant to me). Now, I take advantage of them and their showers when I can, and especially in events where the apartment is having issues. These are like the secret habits of the privileged jet setting to all areas of the earth in luxury. I’ve become spoiled. And my parents are even used to hearing about my upgrades and just expect me to get seated in business class. When they pick me up from the airport now, one of the first questions they will ask me is “did you get upgraded?”, followed by, “what did they serve you to eat?”