It’s always there. And it continues to be there even though I don’t want it to be. Every weekday morning, whether it’s 6:40am or 7:15am, when I am getting out of the 42nd street/Times Square stop along the yellow lines to go to the gym before work, I’m thinking about the workout ahead of me and how productive I’m going to during the day given how early I’ve woken up. And then at the same corner, no fail, that smell wafts towards me — the strong, unmistakable smell of fresh, crisp, fatty bacon, the scent lingering in the air around a tiny food cart set up just a block from the subway station.

I always scowl every time I start smelling that delicious smell. It’s such a tease. It’s like a reminder that yes, I came on an empty stomach to the gym, and no, I did not get to eat any fatty bacon before I got there. No fatty bacon for me — just a healthy workout awaits!

Why can’t the guy who runs that cart realize that he’s parked the freaking cart just across the street from the gym where all of us are just trying to do the right, healthy thing to start their day, and all he is doing is creating a distraction?!

Tonight, despite being a snow day at work, which resulted in the office being closed, I went to a macaron making class that Chris got me for Christmas. The snow storm wasn’t as bad as everyone anticipated (because New Yorkers are neurotic and over hype everything weather related), but despite that, only five out of eight participants who signed up for this class showed up. That was fine by me because that just meant we had more personalized attention, more space, and most importantly, more macarons to take home.

Before the class began, the students and I made some small talk with the pastry chef, who is from a small town in Brittany, France. I knew he was French, which was clear from his very thick accent, so I asked him where he was from in France. As soon as he said Brittany, I said, “That’s the place where kouign amann originates!” He laughs and says, “Wow, you know that!” He then proceeds to tell us how annoyed he is when he meets a lot of Americans, who just assume that because he is French, he must be from Paris. “That’s like when Americans travel and they tell people they are from the U.S., and people were to respond, ‘oh, you’re from New York City!'”

People say the dumbest things in this country.

The funniest thing about big snow storms in New York is how much people panic. Snow is a normal part of winter life here on the east coast, yet it seems that even locals tend to freak out about this. Chris and I went to Fairway to get some routine groceries (fruit, vegetables, dairy), and as soon as we got in, we realized how mobbed the place was because there were no shopping carts or baskets in sight. The “No Carts” line wrapped around the produce area, and I overheard one of the workers tell a customer that unfortunately, they had run out of cauliflower. When a supermarket has run out of cauliflower, which is hardly the vegetable of choice, you know for sure that people are in panic mode and just grabbing everything they possibly can in sight that will keep them fed while they are hiding out from the world.

As my friend so succinctly said on Facebook today, “Most of the country rushes to grocery stores before a blizzard because it can take a week for streets to get plowed. New Yorkers can get around fine, but they shop before a snowstorm because they keep no food and would go hungry in a day.”

I went to my first in-person session of a mentoring program I am doing for high school students tonight. The goal for this program is to get every single mentee into college. That may not seem like a big goal if you come from some privileged middle class background the way I did, but after I came here today, I realized why this goal would be so ambitious.

Every mentor is assigned with a mentee, and usually when you begin, you start with them when they are in the 9th grade and stay with them as a mentor through their 12th grade and final year. I knew my mentee’s English wasn’t amazing from the e-mail exchanges we’ve had, but when we spoke in person, I realized that she almost never speaks English. I asked her about her classes, and she said that every single class is taught in Spanish, as that’s her native language. How is this possible, I thought in my head. This is a public school in the U.S. How could every single one of her classes be taught in Spanish? “What about English class?” I asked her. “What language is that class taught in?” “Spanish,” she said. “English is taught in Spanish.”

So you get taught English in Spanish? I asked. “Yes,” she responded. “We mostly speak Spanish in English, but when we are reading text, we read in English.” No wonder her accent is so strong and she is so hesitant to speak in English. It’s because even in school, she doesn’t have any real place to just practice and speak in and be surrounded by English.

When I was learning French in high school, very little English was spoken in class. When we needed to figure out what a word meant, our French teacher spoke using French to explain what the word meant. In Chinese in college, especially in China, virtually no English was spoken. You learned Chinese by using Chinese and being forced to speak and listen to it.

I am so confused and sad now.

Lonely Planet is pushing Queens as their number 1 recommended tourist destination for 2015. I find this so comical given that I lived there for four years, my cousin lived there, hated it, and complained about how dumb people were there (he thinks everyone else is the problem, not him, though, so not much to take seriously there), and it hasn’t reached anywhere near the levels of gentrification that Brooklyn has seen due to the hipster invasion. The “cool” neighborhoods in which to live in Queens are Astoria and Long Island City; anywhere else is considered foreign to the unknowing white person moving here for the first time who wants something that is affordable but still “in.” When I tell people I lived in Queens and they ask me the neighborhood, I respond “Elmhurst,” knowing that 98% of them won’t have any idea what I am talking about. If they know what I am talking about, chances are that they are either Asian or Latino, or they have Asian or Latino relatives/friends who lived there or still live there.

Well, guess what: that’s the real Queens, not the Queens made prissy by hipsters who claim to not want to be yuppies and the yuppies who want somewhere clean and free of immigrants to live. In Elmhurst, I was happy with massive apartment space, a full sized, granite kitchen with all new appliances, endless ethnic eating options for cheap, affordable groceries, a safe area at all hours of day and night, and incredibly affordable rent. Yes, I had a 45-50-minute commute door-to-door to work, but in the end, the trade-off was worth it to me. I explored a neighborhood that most others don’t even think about or know when they think of New York. And I’m more knowledgeable about the “real foodie” places in Queens than the average person who claims to know this city’s food.

I sat at lunch today with my friend and two of his friends who brought up the Lonely Planet Queens mention. One of the girls said, “I like to walk through the neighborhoods of Brooklyn, but I wouldn’t really do that in Queens. There, I have to have a destination, like a restaurant I want to go to.” I can understand why people would say that, but at the same time, if I told her of an area of Brooklyn she probably has no clue about, like Bensonhurst or Bay Parkway, I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t want to wander the streets there, admiring gorgeous brownstones… because while there are brownstones there, they aren’t necessarily the picturesque ones she’s probably imagining from chic areas like Park Slope or Cobble Hill. Gentrification is the reason places like Brooklyn are becoming socially acceptable to live in and be a tourist in. Certain pockets of Queens are being gentrified, but I think that if the immigrant population gets pushed out too much there, what I love about Queens in terms of variety, culture, and cuisine will be gone. I never wanted it to become hip. I want business to get better though and people to more widely recognize it as an extremely important part of food and culture in New York, though, so maybe I can’t have both.

For such an educated, ambitious, and high income city New York is, sometimes, people here think and say the stupidest things possible.

Today, all I could hear or see were people commenting on how the first person in New York to get Ebola should be treated and cured — then arrested and thrown in prison for thousands of years for “attempted murder” — as in, potentially spreading the Ebola virus to other people in New York. This New Yorker who has Ebola — he came back from Africa, risked his life as doctor to treat Ebola patients there, and then suddenly gets demonized for coming back and trying to lead his own life. According to the reports I have read, he followed the exact protocol that the CDC outlined for those who come in contact with Ebola patients. If anything, people should try being rational and blame the CDC and their protocol for failing us. Another thing people should read is how Ebola is actually contracted, as it seems that a lot of people think that you can just get Ebola by breathing the same air as an Ebola patient.

Since leaving home for college in 2004, I haven’t been much of a sandwich person. I’ll occasionally have one, but I generally don’t get too excited about them. There is one big exception to this, though: banh mi! Vietnamese sandwiches have been a part of me since as long as I can remember. During all of our trips to Southern California growing up, we always had multiple banh mi stops, and in Vietnam, the best banh mis of my life were had from random food carts along the street in Quy Nhon and Saigon. In Vietnam, I realized how light and ethereal yet crispy banh mi bread could be, and I found out the best combination of sliced meats, pate, and pickled vegetables to complement that bread. By random luck, I found a great place that almost matched this quality in Dorchester, a suburb outside of Boston, but the second time I went back, the bread quality just wasn’t the same.

I’ve been lucky and through thorough research of food blogs and sites, I’ve found the best banh mi at Ba Xuyen in Brooklyn. The most ironic thing about this is that generally speaking, New York is actually lacking in a wide variety of good Vietnamese food. It’s quite a trek from where we live, but I’ve even gotten Chris wanting to travel all the way out to Sunset Park in Brooklyn for this sandwich. It could arguably be the best sandwich on earth to both of us.

Okay, I’ve bought the very last “deal” I will ever buy. Tonight, Chris and I went to JBird, a very date appropriate cocktail lounge just a few blocks from our apartment on the Upper East Side. We’ve been here a number of times since they opened in 2012, with each other, with friends, and with visitors from out of town. They are mostly known for their cocktails, which we love and are the main reason we keep going back. This was the first time we ever used a Groupon, which was for two cocktails and five small plates. As soon as we let our server know that we had a Groupon, she immediately told us that there actually was a different menu for the Groupon and proceeded to give us that menu. The dishes were far smaller, and the cocktail list was more limited. At the end, even though we came with a “deal,” I felt completely underwhelmed and annoyed by the entire experience. I’d never been given a “different” menu for using a Groupon or felt cheated food-wise before.

If you are going to be a business that offers a Groupon, you shouldn’t make your diners feel like they are either getting second-class service or a second-class (or limited) menu, or plates that are a fraction of the size they normally are. It cheapens the entire experience and does not encourage diners to come back. Because as a business, don’t you want repeat customers to sustain your business? Everything gets old in New York, and your business will, too, if you treat your customers like this.

I’ve been browsing blogs that discuss un-cluttering and simplifying one’s life. In the last several years, I’ve moved away from getting excited about getting Christmas and birthday presents and really would prefer experience gifts, if any, and greeting cards, especially if they were to be handmade. One of the blogs I was looking at said that every time you buy yourself something new, like an article of clothing or a book, try to donate or give away something you own in the same category that you know you will not use much.

We’ve done a few purges in this apartment since I have moved in. For the most part, I think I have been pretty good about getting rid of clothes that I don’t wear much anymore, especially since I tend to get bored of my wardrobe very quickly. I think I need to do another purge, especially since some items, I admittedly do not wear at all, but I keep them for sentimental reasons, which is a good and a bad thing.

I still have the comforter, comforter cover, and pillow that Ed got me that  used at my old Elmhurst apartment, and although the comforter is meant for a double bed and we have a queen bed, I have no desire to give it away. In fact, I want to keep it forever. I took out the pillow from the storage area today to see how fluffy and firm it was, and it’s just as I remember it the last time I used it over two years ago. I don’t want to get rid of anything my brother has given me even if it does take up extra space in my living quarters. It’s like all I have left of him that is tangible now that he is gone. Maybe it seems impractical or desperate, but I don’t care. It represents him, his love for me, and his great generosity.