Today, we took the LIRR out to Port Washington to visit my friend, her husband, and their two kids. Their oldest is 5, and their youngest is about 8 months older than Kaia, so just over 2. As soon as we arrived, we were bombarded by their two kids. Their younger one is a bit shyer and seemed to prefer observing and interacting with Kaia as she explored their endless collection of toys and books. The older one seemed more fascinated by Chris and me as adult guests. She was quick to show us all the things she’s been making in school and in her extracurricular activities, and she wanted to show me all the new things that were recently purchased by her parents or gifted to her by her grandparents or her other parents’ friends. It was really cute.

I think what stunned me about their oldest, their daughter, was exactly how chatty she was, how she was insistent on having back and forth conversation, and how she knew just so much. She seemed to be aware of all the latest songs, cartoon characters, and even how to operate all the electronic devices (Google) in the house. It will be curious to see how Kaia develops and how much she enjoys interacting and speaking with other adults. Right now, she is absolutely obsessed with saying “hi,” or “hello!” and waving constantly to almost everyone she passes. I wonder if she will continue to be that open and friendly as she gets older.

Despite the fact that we’re a tech company based in San Francisco and have many, many employees in the New York City area, we do not have a New York City office, nor are there any plans to make one. Everyone seems pretty happy with having our main U.S. offices just in San Francisco and Denver, and the lack of East Coast office just means that all of us East Coast employees are 100% remote. But what this means is…. we pretty much have almost no in-person bonding time. No water cooler moments. No chance to get to know random people in the kitchen or bathroom or water fountain; sometimes, it can feel a bit lonely. Even though I don’t miss the politics of my last company, I do miss having the in-person camaraderie: I miss the coffee catch-ups, the occasionally lunches and happy hours. I also miss having the random jokes and desk laughs, plus of course, the free snacks and food.

So when my colleagues who live in Westchester mentioned that they’d be in the city today and wanted to have lunch, I immediately jumped at the chance. I cleared my calendar and shifted some meetings… And then was immediately disappointed when the air quality in the area was so bad, ranking even worse than Delhi, that my colleagues decided to reschedule for a later date.

Sometimes, it feels like the only colleague I get to interact with is… my apartment. And that’s the sad, annoying thing about working from home full time. I appreciate the privilege of working remotely full time, and think it fits my current stage of life with a young toddler and a family to feed/chores to get done, but these are the moments when I get annoyed and wish I could talk to more people every day.

In the last few days, wild fires have been breaking out all across Canada. The news has reported that over 400 wild fires are active, and the largest concentration of them are in Quebec. Unfortunately, what that also means is that the smoke is coming all the way down to the northeast part of the U.S. Yesterday, I noticed a huge haze over the city, and when I went outside to pick up Kaia from school after 5pm, it largely smelled smoky outside.

Today, it’s been even worse. Inside our apartment, even without the air conditioning turned on, it smells smoky. The building shut off AC in all common areas since our HVAC system pulls in outside air. The sky has ranged in color from dark grey to orange and yellow. At times, it got so dark in our apartment that I had to turn on overhead lights during the day. Downtown is no longer visible from our windows looking down south. I can’t see the water along the Hudson anymore, either. Kaia’s school sent out a notification that none of the kids would have outdoors time (as they usually do during the summer) due to the poor air quality. In my neighbors groups on Facebook, pregnant women are worried that their fetuses will be harmed. Dog-owners say their dogs refuse to go outside because they can smell the smoke, and so they are searching for any spare wee-wee pads for them. Lots of people can be seen walking the streets wearing N-95 masks.

Climate change knows no borders. It doesn’t discriminate. This, unfortunately, looks like it will be our new normal.

I went back to Uniqlo today to pick up my hemmed pants, and also to use the remaining credit I had. After trying on a few items, I settled on a pair of drawstring linen shorts. I figured these would be nice and light for our upcoming summer trips to Mexico and South Asia. I also picked up some pants for Kaia to grow into and some slippers (not sure why, but these slippers made me really happy, much to my husband’s annoyance for slippers and my purchasing more things).

When I went to the pickup area for my pants and to buy, I realized that the entire purchasing process is completely different than it was the last time I entered a Uniqlo. There were about six self-checkout counters and only 1-2 attendants monitoring to help. Instead of individually scanning each item, all I had to do was dump all my items into the “box” that had a scanner by the screen, and the box would automatically read the item, how much it cost, and then ask me to pay. I downloaded the app for a discount, scanned my phone for my membership number, and then used Apple Pay to complete the purchase. It was that simple and easy. No fussing with the tags or bar codes. No ambiguity. It was fast and straightforward.

I felt like a bit of a dinosaur walking out of the store. It’s really been THAT long since I’d made an in-store clothing purchase. And this is what purchasing clothes in person is like now?!

It was a rainy day today, so Chris decided that we’d stay in Manhattan and not venture too far out, especially since the rain seemed to start pouring in bursts that were unpredictable. We ended up checking out the new food hall that opened at Pier 57 about a month ago, which includes one of our favorite New York ice cream spots that originally only had one brick and mortar location in Brooklyn. Since it’s a new development, I knew that finding a changing station in the bathroom would be a no brainer, so I didn’t need to worry about crouching down on the floor and changing Kaia’s diaper on dirty cement. However, when we sat at stools by Zaab Zaab, a Thai food counter in the food hall, no high chairs were to be seen anywhere. In fact, when I asked one of the workers if they had any, he shook his head and said they did not supply high chairs for babies. We decided to plop Kaia into one of the adult stools and just shove the stool really far in, while carefully monitoring her to ensure she didn’t fall out. She didn’t seem to mind and actually enjoyed her view of the counter.

Welp. They’re following the laws and ensuring there are changing tables for babies in their public restrooms. They just failed on the other part: ensuring caregivers and parents can easily and comfortably feed their babies and young toddlers in public.

Chris wanted me to buy something via a handful of vendors to get some level of cash back in the last week, so the only vendor that seemed remotely interesting or useful to me was Uniqlo. I chose three pairs of pants, which are always a gamble at Uniqlo. The sizing for pants is always, always inconsistent here for me. It could be the exact same style of pants that say they are the same size, but because they are a different color, one pair will be three inches longer than the other pair, and hence will require a hem, while the original pair will be the perfect length. This has never made sense to me. In addition, pants that are two different styles but the same size will NOT have the same waist measurement, even though the “size” label claims they are the same size. We decided that instead of shipping to us that we’d do in-store pickup, so he chose the Hudson Yards location for me to retrieve the items.

I went there this afternoon, and after waiting in an annoyingly long line to try on the clothes to ensure they fit, the expected annoying “fit” issue happened: one pair of pants was the perfect length and fit; a second pair of pants of the same style as the first was about four inches too long, so I had to request a (free) hem. The third pair of pants were a complete disaster — way too big literally everywhere despite having the same size label as the first and second pair.

Uniqlo changed their return policy for online purchases during the pandemic: they do not usually allow for in-store returns on online purchases. But with a friendly plea, a manager gave me some grace and granted me a one-time exception, so I was able to do the return. But now, I still have to go back this weekend to pick up the pants I requested a hem on. And, I have $40 worth of store credit because I had a misunderstanding with Chris, and I thought he used his credit card to purchase, but he didn’t and actually used mine… so they wouldn’t give me a refund back to card and only gave me store credit. Now, I have to find SOMETHING that is at least $40 to buy when I go back to “get my money back. I also forgot to mention: I had to get into a line and wait at least 10 minutes about four separate times in this single visit. This was just yet another reminder to me why I hate shopping in store.

Once upon a time, in a world pre-COVID and pre having a baby, I used to go out at night all the time — on weeknights, on weekends, and walking along the streets of New York City past the hour of 6pm was pretty normal activity for me. Now that I work from home full time and also have a young child, going out at night is not really “normal” for me at this stage in my life. So when I was out and about on Tuesday night, it felt really good to be out and see how alive New York was, particularly around Sixth Avenue and Rockefeller Center, which on weekdays, has a good mix of both local workers, residents, as well as tourists.

What I was not expecting, however, was to be eaten alive by mosquitoes. While at my friend’s art exhibit and also walking along Sixth Avenue, I suddenly realized that parts of my arms and legs that were exposed started itching like crazy. And I am unfortunately a scratcher, even though I don’t want to be, so I just cannot help but scratch. So I came home to find that there were at least six bites all over my arms and legs from mosquitoes. I immediately applied tea tree oil to soothe the itching, but it didn’t help enough. Today, I looked down at my legs after my shower to see four massive red welts on my legs. This was very, very unattractive.

The funny thing is: no one really imagines mosquitoes flying all over a very densely populated urban area like New York City. Occasionally, you might get bitten while in Central Park during the summer or in someone’s backyard in Brooklyn, but right in the heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center — this is not the first thought you would have for where you would be most likely to get bitten by mosquitoes.

“What happened to your legs??” Chris exclaimed today, confused, looking down at my big fat welts.

“Mosquito bites from my night walk on Sixth Avenue,” I responded, sullenly.

“Haha, yellow fever!” He laughed back.

Tonight, I walked down to 45th and 6th Avenue to attend my friend’s Thought Experience event. On my way to and from the event, I noticed a crazy, block-long line of people waiting for a food cart I’d never heard of before: Adel’s Halal. There were two carts: one where the food was being served up and where they were accepting payment, and a second cart just where all the food preparation and cooking were happening. It was clear that these guys were doing a lot of marinating and prep on this side. I immediately looked it up to find that this cart had over 600 reviews on Yelp and 1,500+ reviews on Google, with overwhelmingly positive reviews, as well as people talking about a wait, no matter what time of day, of on average 45 minutes. This basically echoes the hey day of the Halal Guys food cart. This cart has now been hailed as the “world’s best” halal cart, not even just New York City’s. They even have this labeled on their cart.

About 15+ years ago when I first had Halal Guys, I used to marvel over Halal Guys’ chicken/beef/lamb on rice. I loved how well marinated, flavorful, and juicy the meat was. I always looked forward to the buttery, greasy yellow rice. The white sauce was always addictive, and the tiny hits of their hot sauce used to be nearly deadly. The very first time I had it, an entire serving of chicken/lamb on rice was only $5-6, so it was definitely a very tasty steal, a no-fail budget eat. Since then, though, the prices have only risen, and the quality had drastically declined. They stopped serving lamb, citing higher costs, and the meat has dried out. Even the rice the last couple of times we’ve eaten it has been lackluster. I don’t really look forward to the white sauce anymore. It’s also expanded quite a bit: they have brick and mortar locations all over the U.S., so it isn’t as special anymore. And people clearly realize this because when I passed their two carts on 53rd and 6th avenue, they had zero lines at all, just a couple people waiting for their food orders to pick up.

I also noticed they had a new sign advertising something new: spicy slow braised lamb. I guess they had found a new lamb vendor and were reintroducing lamb after a long time of not having it. And the prices? $17 for the regular sized plate, $16 for a small plate, and $14 for a sandwich. I immediately took a picture and sent it to Chris, who summed up my thoughts perfectly: “$17. That ain’t street food anymore.”