Category Archives: Contemplations on New York Life

“It takes a village” that can even include total strangers

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The last several days, I haven’t been taking the stroller when picking up Kaia. It started when Chris said he wasn’t going to take her in the stroller to school when we got ready early one morning, and so he wanted her to walk. It made perfect sense: the weather was warm and comfortable, and well, Kaia can walk. So she should walk! She tends to walk better (as in, in the right direction and at a decent pace…) with Chris than she does with me, though. She barely will walk the one block from the school to the subway stop in Chinatown with me, so I end up carrying her. Then, when we arrive at Columbus Circle, she will whine and whinge when I ask her to walk just for the two blocks home and insist that, “Mummy carry you! MUMMY CARRY YOU!” So I end up having to tell her if she doesn’t walk, she won’t get <fill in the friend, stuffed animal, toy, food, treat>. When we finally land on a motivator (yesterday, I told her if she didn’t walk, she wouldn’t get to see her friend Jacob this weekend…), she will eagerly hold my hand and walk with me the full two blocks nonstop.

Today, when we got to the corner of the street with two blocks to go, she started crying and asked me to carry her. I said, no, you will walk. Big girls walk, and you are a big girl now! She refused, so she simply sat down in front of the luxury apartment building and just stared up at me blankly. I was not going to let her win this; I do NOT want her always getting her way, even if we were running late to get home today. So I did my usual thing and threatened to take all these things away I knew she wanted. Nothing worked. She just would not budge. And I was not going to let her get what she wanted in this moment. I stood my ground.

Then, a good samaritan appeared out of nowhere. A slightly older woman with a big smile came up to us and kneeled down to Kaia. “Hey there!” the woman said in an upbeat voice. “What’s going on here? You don’t wanna walk with your mommy? You just don’t feel like it, huh? Well, how about this: if you don’t want to walk with Mommy, then I can take you with me! You want to come to my dance class with me? It’ll be so much fun! And then after, I’ll take you to my house! How about that?”

Pookster peered up at her and gave her a slight side eye. Then, she looked at me to see what my expression said. I simply smiled. After a few seconds, Pooks jumped up, grabbed my hand, and we started walking. I thanked the nice woman and wished her well, and we were on our merry way home.

“Sometimes, it just takes another person to chime in for a bit, and all is well in the world!” the woman said gleefully, as she wished us a good night.

Who is part of my village? All of New York City who has done things to entertain Kaia, soothe her, make her laugh, play peekaboo with her, and encouraged her to walk with her friggin’ parents properly.

Neighborly neighbors and my fixed earrings

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I was rummaging through my vast earring collection a few days ago when I came across a pair of earrings that Chris’s cousin had made me. She had taken a jewelry making class last year, and with that she decided to use her newly learned skills to make all the women in the family earrings for Christmas presents. It was so sweet of her. She’s always been a very crafty person. She’s knitted and crocheted Kaia a number of different clothing pieces, from mittens to hats and even more complex pieces like sweaters. As someone who enjoys creating arts, crafts, and homemade food, I really appreciate her hand-crafted pieces and the time and effort she puts into them. Anyone can buy a gift; not everyone is willing to put the time and effort into making it with their own hands for someone else.

Unfortunately, I only ever got to wear those earrings once before I broke them. Me being me, I overstuffed my carry-on bag that held the earrings, and tone of the earring backings fell off. The way it broke could not easily be fixed unless I found a new replacement piece, so I left it in my jewelry box and just let it sit. Though I figured someone in our neighborhood must know of a place where I could buy a replacement piece, so I posted in our Upper West Side Neighbors group for a recommendation on recommendations.

Amazingly, someone who is an artist herself responded. She said she’d have the finding needed to fix it, so she’d help me do it herself. I just had to come to her apartment. So yesterday, I went to her place after my dentist appointment, and she showed me the piece she’d glue on the earring back to fix it. I was truly amazed at her generosity, plus the fact that she’d so willingly let a stranger into her apartment. She lives in a co-op building in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment, where she uses the larger bedroom as her studio. If I hadn’t known any better when I walked in, I would just assume this was a work space and not originally intended as a bedroom! She said to leave the earrings with her so that after the glue dried, she could test it to ensure it really was successful. She’s already messaged to tell me her handiwork was a win, so I’m planning to go back up to her place to pick them up. I offered to pay her, but she insisted she just wanted to be a good neighbor and meet people in the ‘hood. So I’ll likely bring her flowers as a token of appreciation.

People complain a lot about Facebook, but I’ve really enjoyed feeling like I’m really a part of the Upper West Side through the Buy-Nothing and Neighbors groups. It really makes me feel like I’m a part of a real community and that people do care and look out for each other here. Yes, people do genuinely look out for each other here, in this big concrete jungle. Just in the last week, a kid’s new giraffe stuffed animal got returned, and in the craziest incidents, a real diamond tennis bracelet got returned to its owner! It’s really not terrible living in a big city!

Listening as a skill

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A former colleague I was friendly with reached out to me a few weeks ago to let me know that she had relocated back to New York in the last year from San Francisco. She asked if I was still here and if I was, that she’d like to meet up for coffee to catch up. I hadn’t seen her in over two years, so I thought it would be good to see her. We met up late Friday afternoon for some tea and sat at a park in Chinatown before I went to pick up Kaia from school.

We chatted for over an hour about all the usual things: her relocation, our respective work situations, people we still kept in touch with from our last company. We talked about Kaia and parenthood, and we also talked about health. I was pretty stunned when she recounted to me things I’d shared with her over three years ago when she was last in town, and we met for coffee. I invited her and another former colleague to hang out on my roof, and she remembered me telling her about my cubital tunnel syndrome and random travel anecdotes that I didn’t even remember telling her. I was really endeared that she remembered, and it felt really comforting. I’m so used to being a broken record nowadays and sharing the same stories over and over again that I forget who I have shared them with… and frankly, who even cares and retains them.

But it made me realize how it feels like people have such short attention spans now that they don’t really listen. People complain about news articles being too long. There are even people now who think that some TikTok or Instagram videos are too long, so they just swipe to the next one that is faster. Chris even complains sometimes when his brother or I are telling a story and he keeps saying, “Get to the point!” People don’t seem to appreciate the art of story telling the way I always did as a kid and even now, as an adult. But I think the best stories are nuanced and have interesting arcs. There’s always a good lead up. Characters have different subtle personality quirks that only reveal themselves with time. And it’s comforting to know that there are still some people in existence who really do take the time to listen, and even remember.

Counting and Cracking

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Tonight, we went to see the visiting Australian (and Sri Lankan) show Counting and Cracking at NYU’s Skirball Theater. It’s a show that takes us through a multi-generational journey of a Sri Lankan-Australian family from 1956 to 2004, political turmoil of a divided Sri Lanka, and relatable stories of family love, conflict, pain, and forgiveness. Chris’s brother originally took their parents to see the show in Melbourne, and he told us about it and the fact that it would be coming to New York in the fall. So we got tickets and went tonight. Even though the show is three hours long with two intermissions, which is quite long, it didn’t feel like it dragged at all; instead, it actually felt like it was gripping you along, forcing you to wonder what would happen next. The show tries to condense a lot of history into a short amount of time, and it does it really well. I never once felt like it was too long or as though I was losing interest in the plot.

I found myself moved to tears at certain points of the show; I don’t think that’s happened at a show for me in ages. At the end of the show, Radha talks about how she would likely have never left Sri Lanka, even in the dire political state it was in, had it not been for Siddhartha, who she was pregnant with. She gave up the home that her grandfather built from scratch; it was a home her husband thought she’d never, ever give up. She ultimately left Sri Lanka for Australia 100 percent because of him: she wanted him to have a better life and to be safe. These moments in movies and theater just hit me differently since my fertility, pregnancy, and motherhood journey. It’s almost like my brain and body have been rewired since becoming a mother; it’s the process of “matrescence” that doesn’t get enough research or attention. Parents really do sacrifice so much for their kids, and most of their kids will never quite grasp even a fraction of the sacrifices until they (may) become parents themselves.

 

The grass is always greener on the other side – from a food perspective

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Whenever we travel, and especially to places with really strong food cultures, like France, Italy, and pretty much anywhere and everywhere in Asia, I always think how amazing it would be to live in a place that truly values food and freshness. The U.S. was built to feed a lot of people en masse, which basically means that we’re feeding for the sake of feeding people here (quantity matters, full bellies matter) instead of thinking about quality or sustainability of raw ingredients. So whenever I hear about people who are of a similar age as I am, originally born and raised in a Western nation like the U.S., but have done the “reverse migration” of going back to their country of origin, I am always intrigued, and my ears tend to perk up.

In the last year, I discovered the freelance journalist Clarissa Wei and her cookbook Made in Taiwan. She is of Taiwanese descent, but she was born and raised in Southern California. She has since moved back to Taiwan and is living there with her husband and young child. When I did a search for her, I actually realized I had read endless articles she had written about Chinese and Taiwanese food previously, but I had just not remembered the by-line on those articles. Her cookbook reads like a journal or blog, peppered with lots of heavily researched factoids and also personal stories of her own experiences in the U.S. and in Taiwan. She says that when Costco opened in Taiwan, she and her husband got a membership and treated their visits there like her parents used to treat treks to Ranch 99 in California: while her parents would get excited at stocking up on all their favorite Taiwanese and Asian ingredients and fresh produce, she and her husband now meticulously plan what they will buy at Costco: avocados, bagels, and all the Western things that you cannot easily find in Taiwan that they missed having easy access to while in the U.S. “The grass is always greener on the other side,” she lamented. Prior to moving to Taiwan, she used to get excited about having easy access to the night markets and all her favorite Taiwanese dishes. Now that she has all that literally at her doorstep, she wants the American things that are either far more expensive in Taiwan or more difficult to find.

Another funny anecdote she shared that actually made me laugh out loud: she said that her standard Taiwanese stove top was able to get so hot that it would make restaurant-quality fried rice with real “wok hei” as I always get excited about. I always love getting stir-fried noodles and rice at restaurants because “wok hei” is just impossible at home with our stove top. On the flip side for Clarissa, it was very challenging to impossible to slow simmer anything on her stove top. So she went to a shop to see what it would cost to get her range replaced with an American-style one. The shopkeeper looked at her like she’d gone crazy and said, “Why would you do that? Do you want food with no flavor?” The sheer horror!

We always want what we cannot get easily and romanticize the things we don’t have. Off the top of my head, I think that if we leave the U.S., I would most definitely miss not having to think about how to read food labels (this is a funny one, isn’t it?). In New York City specifically, I’d miss easy access to literally every cuisine on earth, somewhere across these five boroughs. I’d also probably miss easy access to boneless, skinless chicken thighs, or trays of neatly cubed beef chuck, or a boneless leg of lamb. I am American, after all, raised in a western country that is used to having its citizens being quite far removed from the process of animal slaughter.

Varied fast-casual lunch options in a post-pandemic NYC

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Prior to the pandemic, the quickest lunch options while at the office were always the standard types of things you’d expect: salads, sandwiches, and pre-made sushi. While we did have nicer sandwich options like the Cambodian sandwich shop Num Pang or higher quality salad spots like Sweetgreen, there really wasn’t a great fast casual option for Chinese food nearby. We had a few places that had limited lunch specials, but they were standard sit-down restaurants, not places where you could grab and go the way you do at Sweetgreen or Le Pain Quotidien. So when I read about Milu, a fast-casual, modern Chinese spot that opened near Madison Square Park, I thought it sounded promising, especially since it had interesting options for lunch that you wouldn’t normally think about, like Yunnan-style beef brisket or Mandarin crispy duck. I met a friend here for lunch today and was impressed by almost everything about it, from the sleek seating and booths, the fresh, bright, modern decor, the quick ordering and serving system, and the food itself. You order at the counter and grab a number, and within five minutes, the food is brought out to you. With a plate and a drink for each of us, Our meal came out to less than $50. The duck was crispy on the outside and succulent on the inside, with duck fat rice, fresh herby salad and pickled cucumber salad on the side. My friend’s brisket was fork-tender and a little spicy, much to my surprise, and had similar side salads.

I think New York needs more Chinese places like this that are quick, casual, and modern that also have high quality food. The average person who isn’t exposed to Chinese food thinks it’s a bunch of greasy, MSG-laden fast food, but this food is fast, high quality, not greasy, and NOT MSG-laden.

When the mundane and everyday are funny

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I say this all the time, but one of the absolute best things about New York City is that there are endless things to do here, and so it never gets boring. Part of the reason there are endless things to do here is that people are constantly coming, whether it’s family and friends visiting, tourists or huge musical acts, stand-up comedians, and everything and anything related to entertainment. Chances are high that if you are in entertainment in some form, you will be coming to New York at some point, if not often.

Last night, we went to see the Taiwanese-American comedian Sheng Wang at Town Hall. We originally saw him open one of Ali Wong’s shows a couple years ago, and since then, we’ve been following him on social media. I still remember when I was in middle/high school and how I never really thought I’d see Asians in entertainment in the western world in my lifetime. And thankfully, how wrong I was! Sheng Wang is extremely down-to-earth. He’s like the guy who is super smart in the room but tries to hide it from everyone by acting meek. He is most definitely laugh-out-loud funny and about the most seemingly mundane things: lack of “ambiance” as a priority in the immigrant household, young kids making you go broke because of how much they love and inhale all your berries (read: the expensive fruit with all the antioxidants… you just know you are not supposed to like “oxidants”), a Black and Decker toaster oven vs. a Breville oven. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that the funniest comedians can do just that: take the boring and mundane things in life and make you laugh until you cry, just by seeing them from another perspective, one that isn’t usually talked about or explored in depth.

I’m so happy that Kaia will grow up seeing Asians in mainstream media in the West. It’s a very different childhood she will have from the one I had, in more ways than one.

Laser Excel V+ results, almost one week later

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The scabs have slowly but surely been flaking off my face. I’ve already passed the five-day mark of using the post-treatment skin regimen morning and night. I looked at my skin today and realized that yes, there actually has been quite a bit of positive change. I used to have all these tiny little black dots on my face, and after the scabs have fallen off, they’re completely out of sight now. There are still some tiny scabs left on my face, but given that so many have already come off and revealed new, un-pigmented skin, this seemed like a win. A large sun spot on the left side of my face by my eye had a scab that fully flaked off today, and it’s completely different than what it used to look like: it used to be quite raised, with tiny brown dots that had all accumulated together like little cells on a petri dish. Once this scab flaked off, lightly brown tinted skin was revealed. No raised skin was there anymore; the skin is completely smooth there. I took a look at photos of myself just a few weeks before, and that spot was noticeable from a distance, and not anymore! The esthetician and my referring friend told me the spots would continue to lighten in the next week, so I’m keeping an eye on them. It will be interesting to see how much more it lightens at this rate.

Unfortunately, given the skin on my neck is a lot more delicate, most of the tiny scabs have remained and have been slower to flake off. But I figure in another week, they should flake off fine on their own. I’m pretty impressed so far with just one laser Excel V+ treatment, as I had my hopes high when my friend said that she did one treatment, and she was told after that her skin responded so well to it that it appeared as though she had two cycles of treatment already. I thought, I hope that’s me! If the scabs keep coming off and reveal new skin as it has been in the last day or so, I might get one more treatment and call it quits. It’s quite a pretty penny, but I feel good about this investment so far.

More crappy service at food establishments

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Today was our first day leaving the house with an un-diapered Kaia, excluding going to school, of course. It was a bit nerve racking because it’s only been a week since we started really potty training, and she’s never used a toilet in a public bathroom. So, we sucked it up and brought our travel potty seat to place on top of a public toilet (yuck, I know) to see if she’d embrace it. And… how, she did not.

She screamed and cried when I tried to put her on top of the seat in a public restroom in the West Village today. We tried again at another public restroom at Murray’s Cheese, and she still refused to pee, even though she said she wanted to pee. In the end, she held her pee in for the entire 5+ hours we were out to finally pee in her little potty when we got home. That is good discipline, but I need her to be comfortable using public restrooms that are 1) not her little potty and 2) not at home.

She finally fell asleep while we walked further south to SoHo in search of something quick and easy to eat. I looked at my Google Maps bookmarks list and saw that Rice Kitchen was a spot I recently added to the list of easy-take out to try. It had made-to-order Korean-style rice bowls and kimbap. I ordered the black sesame tuna kimbap and the bulgogi rice bowl with kimchi aioli on top. As soon as I walked in, though, and saw the cashier, I just had a weird feeling. She gave me a strange, unwelcoming look as I approached the counter, and after I said I’d like the tuna kimbap, and as I was mid-sentence about to order a second item, she cut me off, spun the screen around so I could pay, and told me the total cost of what I’d have to pay. I wrinkled my brow, paused, and told her I wasn’t done. She didn’t apologize, turned the screen back to her, sighed, and said, “Okay, what else would you like?” She didn’t bother asking me if I wanted a drink or anything else after the first kimbap order was made clear, or even after I ordered another main. She seemed like a ditzy worker who couldn’t even be bothered actually being hospitable, and I was not pleased at all with the service. Even when I popped my head in to see if my order was ready, she simply shook her head and said, “No, not ready yet.”

I don’t know if I’m just getting older, but this crappy service always annoys me and rubs me the wrong way, especially when a stupid screen gets flipped my way and I’m asked to tip at least 25% — for what? For ringing up an order and glazing her eyes over at me when she isn’t happy I haven’t ordered fast and efficiently enough?

When dining out in Manhattan is actually good post-pandemic

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Since the pandemic year of 2020, we really haven’t done much dining out in Manhattan at multiple dollar sign places. And a number of times when we have, it’s always been a bit of a disappointment: the food is priced higher than you’d be comfortable with, “suggested” tips start at 25-30%, service really misses its mark, and the whole experience just feels rushed and underwhelming. Even for mid-priced food when dining out, it’s almost impossible to have a meal with multiple dishes and a drink for less than $50 per person in Manhattan unless you’re going to a total hole-in-the-wall. I especially get frustrated at the declining service levels in restaurants. Servers have not known what dishes are when we ask for a clearer description, they have specials, but they don’t know what the specials are before they come to our table, or they just seem clueless in general and are clearly there just to pick up a paycheck and leave. Then, there are the servers who constantly hover over your table when you’re clearly in a deep conversation and keep interrupting to see if you need anything else. I read that as a cue that no, they don’t want to actually see if we need anything else, but they want us to rush through our meal so that they can turn over the table and get another party seated (who can, in the end, increase revenue for the restaurant and increase their own tips). It doesn’t make me feel welcome to sit down and eat, and it certainly should not merit an “industry standard” of a 20-percent tip. That feels like a sense of entitlement when they haven’t even done the work to merit that tip.

So, I was pleasantly surprised when my friend and I went to eat at Frena tonight before our Lincoln Center show. Frena replaced Taboon after had to close due to a fire, and the owner completely gut-renovated the place, complete with a big open oven at the front. We each ordered a drink, had three appetizers, a salad, and two mains, and I am shocked to say that literally every single dish and drink we ordered was spectacular, full of flavor and even surprises. This is almost *never* the case at fancier, more expensive restaurants like Frena. There’s always at least one dish that kind of makes you think, really? That was fine, but not great. But luckily for us, that was not the case here. The bread, which came with the three dips we ordered, was made fresh in the open oven, and it was mouth wateringly good. Plus, the service felt warm and welcoming. The server clearly knew the menu and the specials inside and out, and not for a minute did I ever feel like he was hovering over us and just wanting to turn over our table for the next party of 2.

Most of the good restaurants we go to now are outside of Manhattan, where for whatever reason, the service seems to be warmer and more genuine, and where the food is less pretentious and stands on its own. But Frena was not part of the Manhattan dining stereotype I’ve developed in my head over the last couple of years: it actually was worth every penny we spent based on food quality, service, and ambiance. And it’s so close to home, too!