I was sitting in my favorite wonton noodle soup joint in Chinatown the other day, enjoying my freshly made noodles and wontons, when a white couple came in and sat down next to me. They clearly did not feel comfortable dining there, and they kept looking around as though someone was going to jump them any second. They debated whether they still wanted to eat there and finally settled and decided they would stay.

The both of them seemed a little perplexed as they are scanning over the menu, also glancing around to see what other diners are eating. “I think this place is supposed to make all their noodles and wontons in house,” the man said as he watches the open kitchen workers in front cutting fresh noodles and dumpling them into a massive boiling water-filled vat.

“I want to eat dumplings. Let’s get the vegetable dumplings; they sound good,” the woman said in response, clearly ignoring what her partner just said. The man insisted they get the steamed buns, or the char siu bao, and so that’s all they ordered.

The dumplings and the buns arrive at the table, and they started picking at the buns as though they are foreign goods to them. “I thought these were supposed to be Chinese pork buns, but the outside of the bun is sticky,” the man remarked. “It must be made with sticky rice. I had no idea that Chinese steamed buns were made with sticky rice.”

I’m not sure why you would go to a Chinese restaurant known for wonton noodle soup and order buns and dumplings. I’m also not sure why you would think that your steamed buns were made of sticky rice just because some of the dough stuck to your fingers.

Actually, I do know why. Foreign things always feel foreign to those who keep “foreign” concepts at bay, so it feels “safe” to order and eat what you know and are comfortable with and stereotype a culture to be. These are always the moments that I’m really grateful to be part of two Asian cultures that are rich in their history and food and not part of a generic categorization that gets ridiculed for not having any real culture.

This my ninth year in New York City. I never thought I would say that. I always thought I’d spend 2-4 years in New York, then move back to San Francisco, or at least California. It’s strange to think about how time has passed so quickly, and at the same time, I feel very young and old simultaneously.

In New York, I’ve made a handful of good friends, got laid off from my first job during the massive economic recession of 2008-2009, and since had two other jobs that have taught and exposed me to new things in life, for better or for worse. I’ve faced intense office politics and unfairness, sex discrimination, and subtle racial discrimination. I’ve had to compromise on ethics and when faced with the decision to be myself or suck up and be someone I wasn’t, I continued to be an adult and be myself. I’ve come to know when Jewish holidays are coming up because in this city, that is the expectation whether you are Jewish or not. I realize here that no one gives a shit about Lunar or Chinese New Year the way people do in San Francisco.

New York has hardened me. It’s made me a little more jaded, a little more cynical. But at the same time, I also have more hope. I have hope that even in the worst of times, I can survive and make it out alive and well. And in a Trump Nation for the next four years, I know that survival is key, and I won’t let Trump or any bad work situation prevent me from living the life I want to live.

I finally got back to the gym this morning after a month hiatus. It’s always hard the first day back after Christmas and New Year’s given the long break from intense cardio and weights. It was even harder this morning when during my run on my treadmill, the guy who happens to be running on the treadmill next to mine continually farts, over and over and over again. It’s like he thinks that the ventilation at the gym is so strong that people right next to him cannot tell that he is flatulating. How dumb can people be?

I finally had to stop my treadmill and move all the way down to the other end of the row. And I was not the only one moving away from this idiot. It doesn’t matter how many smart people you meet in the city of New York; you will always continually meet even stupider people.

I’m ordering myself a birthday cake this year. This year’s indulgence will be chocolate mousse, creme brulee, and chocolate sponge cake. I’ve done this many years before, and this year, I am doing it again. Why is this so amusing to so many people?

I was on the phone with someone at a French bakery in Midtown East today, and she asked who the cake would be for. I told her it would be for myself, and she laughed and said, “For yourself? hahahahhaha!”

Why does a birthday cake have to be purchased for you by someone else? If I want to buy myself a birthday cake, I will do it. I don’t need some loser bakery assistant to imply it’s silly or excessive to buy myself a cake. If I want to buy myself a cake every single day, then I will do it.

Today is our last full day in New York City this year, as tomorrow we’ll be leaving for Melbourne. It was also absolute hell at work, so I’m looking forward to getting away even if I will still be working remotely. Sometimes, distance and space is all you need to function and get through chaos.

It’s been over eight years in New York now. I thought I’d be done with it in two to four years, but the years just keep piling up. Although there’s so much I love about it here, it feels good to leave it when it’s getting colder outside and the threat of snow is imminent. Snow is beautiful when I am inside a warm place looking out; when I am trekking through it, I feel miserable. I don’t think I would ever embrace the idea of living in an area that expected snow every year. When I think of shoveling snow and dealing with ice on a car, I just want to crawl into a hole and hibernate.

Corporate holiday parties are always so amusing to be at because each year, you realize exactly how bottled up people are at the office; we don’t have the time to get to know each other, and we’re constantly trying to control others’ perceptions of who we actually are. These are the people who then really let go when they get a free open bar and let loose in every sense possible. Then, they show up at the office the next day and start vomiting into the office toilets. Yes, that really happened last year. Vomiting isn’t normally a sound I expect to hear when I am in the women’s room at my office, but hey, post-company-holiday party, anything goes! The next day is full of hung over, sluggish employees, downing endless cups of coffee while trying not to pass out in front of their MacBooks. Most of them get in somewhere between 10:30am-noon, if they even make it in. One person on my team didn’t even make it in today. Fearing that people wouldn’t come in, our co-founder delayed the bagels and cream cheese until tomorrow morning.

Each year, the day after the holiday party, I come in with a scratchy voice from screaming to have conversations over ridiculously loud music at whatever venue we had our party at. This year, I actually had a lot of conversations around topics you would not normally have at an office holiday party: race relations in the U.S. and how they have evolved, politics and elections in Turkey vs. the U.S., and why Australia is not necessarily the perfect utopia that Americans seem to think it is. I did all this in between multiple tequila shots, glasses of cabernet, and a tequila sunrise. I would say it was a very productive and thought provoking night for me.

I went to my usual spot to get my hair cut tonight, and my hairdresser was as kind and bubbly as always. She works weekends but has Mondays and Thursdays off, and has a four-year-old daughter she supports with her husband. Her commute to Astor Place is long from outer Queens and involves a bus and a train. She probably doesn’t get paid much (haircuts at this spot only cost $25, which is a steal in New York City), so she depends on tips quite a bit; she can only afford to go back home to Sicily about every two years, which is sad because she sounds like she loves her family. It always make me frustrated to know how many people’s livelihoods depend on tips in this country. It just doesn’t make logical sense to me why they just cannot have a living wage to live regular, non-lavish lives.

She asks a lot about me, but I always feel guilty telling her things I am up to. I don’t feel comfortable telling her that I just came back from Spain; I especially don’t feel comfortable telling her that I’m leaving for Melbourne this Saturday. She knows I’ve been going there every year for Christmas since she started cutting my hair a few years ago, and she is always saying how jealous she is. Most of the time when people say they are jealous, it doesn’t mean anything to me. But when she says it, I always feel a nagging sense of guilt. I get to do and experience all these things she probably only dreams of. She works really hard, and she’s clearly very good at what she does. Am I really more deserving of all these things than she is? Probably not.

She also got an over 40% tip from me tonight.

Tonight, I had dinner with my friend, who is usually very chipper and positive. But as soon as I saw her when I arrived at the restaurant, she was clearly exhausted, with fine lines around her eyes and a dark cast over her face. She looked like she had barely slept in a week. Every response from her was a little snappy or annoyed, and she made lots of assumptions about what I knew that I didn’t know. It felt so odd for the first hour, as though I was having dinner with a stranger and listening to someone who I barely recognized. As the night went on, she broke down and started crying, and finally after she let her feelings go, she started resembling herself again.

A lot of the frustrations she was experiencing were from almost a month ago; she just didn’t have anyone to really talk about them with who would just sit there and listen and not say anything back. That tends to be the way people become when they don’t get to express themselves; they become a shell of themselves that becomes unrecognizable to the ones who truly know and love them, not just the self that they reveal to their colleagues or their superficial friends.

Most of my life, most of my friends have been of Asian descent. It’s partly because I grew up and went to schools where the kids were predominantly Asian. But what has always frustrated me the most is the constant Asian desire to not share our deepest feelings and frustrations, to not be authentic, to not share your opinions even when it’s the most crucial time to do so. Being neutral is not only boring, but it makes you seem like a fake person who doesn’t have thoughts. Pick a side; live a little. As the Jewish political activist and writer and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel once said, “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere.” In my friend’s case, I feel sad that she didn’t feel like she had an outlet to share in the last three weeks, and that it took her a while to even open up to me tonight. These are the everyday lifelong battles we face in our relationships.