Category Archives: Contemplations on New York Life

HK vs. NY: independence always threatened, plus the case for more public restrooms

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While wandering around the streets of Hong Kong and using its fast, efficient, and super clean metro, I thought about how similar New York City is to Hong Kong. Both cities are densely populated. Both have subway systems that the majority of its citizens rely on. Both have a fast paced nature. People in both cities live in relatively small and expensive spaces. It’s not uncommon in either city to hear that people rarely, if ever, cook, and most eat almost every single meal out. Both also are notorious for having very intense, grueling work hours yet exciting and late night party scenes. People also love to say that the people of New York and Hong Kong are rude (as a New York resident, I do not believe this is true. As a former New York tourist, I never thought it was true. And as someone who has visited Hong Kong twice, I do not find people ruder there than anywhere else at all. In fact, I think people are generally kind in Hong Kong, and they are far more kind to those who have young children/are pushing a stroller and who are elderly).

There are obvious differences, though, other than culture and language: wages and salaries are far lower overall in Hong Kong despite sky-high costs of living, for one. Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region of China, which means that its independence, or perception of, is constantly in threat. Hong Kongers want to stay separate from China, but China sees them as part of “One China.” Some hawker on the street who tried to sell Chris and me some lame shoe cleaner made some small talk with me while in Guangzhou. He asked where we were from and where we had been during our travels. I told him we had come from Hong Kong, and his response was, “Oh, so you were in China. You know Hong Kong is China, right?” Of course, a Guangzhou resident would say that, but I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who lives in Hong Kong who would say the same thing. Being in Hong Kong, it’s like you’re in one country, yet also in another. And the rules can change just like that, and you as an individual would have zero control over it.

The other difference that more immediately sticks out to me as a visitor is this: Hong Kong has endless clean and glorious public restrooms. It felt like every few blocks we’d run into one. I never had to worry about cleanliness or availability of toilet paper or whether there was enough soap. In New York, public restrooms are so sorely lacking that it’s an embarrassment. And when you are able to find one, it’s unlikely to be a desirable or even mildly pleasant experience. And how funny that in the last few weeks, The New York Times published an op-ed to make the case for more public restrooms in New York City; how timely!

Missing freshly pressed soy milk while back home

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This last week back in New York has been a bit of a blur. It’s been a mix of adjusting with Kaia’s jet lag and being back in school, getting back into the swing of daily morning workouts and getting Kaia ready for school, into the usual humdrum that is full-time remote work, and all the usual day-to-day things when you are back to “real life.” Instead of sumptuous and complimentary Chinese breakfast buffets, I’ve been forgoing breakfast as I usually do and having only tea until lunch time. I’ve been having little fleeting daydreams of enjoying freshly pressed, hot soy milk each morning to start my day. Sometimes, it’s just the little things you miss while traveling that stay with you, and this, for me, is one of them.

I had to pick Kaia up from school a bit early today because we had scheduled her for back to back dentist and doctor’s appointments this afternoon. But I asked Chris if there was anything he wanted from Chinatown that I could pick up. He responded and said that given all the great food we’d had in the last week in Hong Kong and China, plus the amazing Asian food we had while in Australia the previous three weeks, he really did not feel like… anything.

And the funny thing was… neither did I. Guangdong and Hong Kong are as close to my paternal roots as I can get, which means that they are really the the main types of food I grew up eating. Yet even I came up with blankness when I thought about what I wanted to get from Chinatown, as well. So, in the end, I actually didn’t get anything.

For our weekly Friday takeout, we ended up having Mexican/Peruvian tonight from a food truck nearby we liked. And yes, it really hit the spot.

Workplace assholes

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I’ve been working full-time almost 17 years now. In that time, I’ve seen a lot of really good, really bad, and beyond egregious behavior. I’ve seen the suck-ups, the people who somehow manage to get by and barely do any work. I’ve seen people who have self-professed themselves to be a “dick” and manage to get away with being rude to almost everyone. I’ve seen people who are awful at their job who still manage to get promoted. I’ve also seen people who truly do go above and beyond get passed up for promotions — time and time again. But what I never really thought would happen is that someone this week would actually have the balls to go off at me for simply thanking them for something they did for my customer.

I’m on the customer success team at my company, which means I manage a book of business that includes a set number of customers. I interact cross functionally at my company with multiple teams, ranging from sales, renewals, solutions engineering, accounting, product, etc., to get my job done. In the last year, there’s been a solutions engineer who has been labeled aggressive, rude, demeaning, and even sexist by some. We’ve gotten along fine to okay most of the time, but I got caught off guard this week when I thanked him for taking care of a customer request in his realm this week, and the response was extremely unexpected.

He responded with, “Why are you thanking me for doing my job? [Insert task] is what SEs are responsible for. There’s no reason to thank me for doing my job.”

My gut reaction to this response was, “Wow, you are truly an asshole.” But my general thought was, Oh, my. You must have had some really awful life experiences to get angry at someone for simply thanking you for doing a single deed. Clearly, this guy has a lot of pent up anger that he is choosing to misdirect, and to someone who is expressing a sentiment that is called “GRATITUDE,” that he should be meeting with grace. He is a good example of someone who is sorely in need of seeing a therapist, but is unlikely to have any self awareness to actually pursue to help himself.

We’re really in a questionable work setting when we cannot even thank someone for doing something without eliciting their uncalled for rage. Where do people get this idea that behavior like this is actually acceptable? I do not even want to know what his reaction would be if I actually tried to give him some constructive feedback. I’d likely get my head blown up — virtually.

Jet lag continues for the husband and the toddler, and the attempt to limit screen time for our toddler

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Chris has been pretty sluggish this week. He’s even been napping in the afternoons. Kaia has been napping occasionally at school… and then also almost falling asleep at around 4pm after a period of extreme quietness that the admin alerted me to. The admin was considerate of our need to get her adjusted and sleeping overnight, so she’d nudge her before she’d fall asleep and have her eat the usual scheduled supper before pickup at 5pm. We all knew Kaia was jet lagged, but it’s hard to force her to adjust since it’s just her body clock, and she’s only three years old. The concept of “time” at this age is a difficult one. The first few days of pickup, she’s been so exhausted that she refuses to even walk, so because I rarely take the stroller anymore for school, I’ve had to carry her myself several blocks. It was tiring, especially given she was feisty and almost like dead weight because she’s been falling asleep on the trains. She’s almost 30 pounds, so definitely not a little baby anymore! My arms have gotten an extra workout this week…

When she has been awake in the evenings, it’s been a little brutal. These “thrilling threes” have been full of even more intense tantrums, bigger displays of anger and frustration, and very few things, other then presenting chocolate or screen time, have seemed to consistently help. We did more screen time during our trip because of the long-haul plane rides as well as all the times we’ve had to sit in restaurants and finish our conversations and meals with friends and family, but we’re cutting it all off now that we’re back home. We don’t want to be those parents who just immediately give their kid screens to shut them up every single time they get upset. I was pretty unhappy when we were on our flight back to New York, and Kaia barely ate anything on the entire 14.5-hour-long flight. She mainly just had milk and cartoned apple juice (to my annoyance, this was her very first time experiencing juice boxes, which I’ve tried to hold off on for as long as possible since I want her eating whole fruit only). She was either sleeping or glued to the screen, watching Pepa. This was her very first flight wearing headphones and having sound with her screen time, which she was completely enamored by. The few times I tried to get her attention and block the screen, she got angry with me and yelled, “I can’t see! I can’t see!” (It’s also hilarious because she pronounces “can’t” the Austrailan/British way, not the American way). I do not want her to become a personality-less screen zombie in her youth. That’s one of my many nightmares.

Double Crispy, aka Pu Ta Wang Bing Wu, and its popularity explosion

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I’ve been going to Double Crispy Bakery, also known in Chinese as Dan Ta Wang Bing Wu on Grand Street in Manhattan Chinatown, since at least 2018 or 2019. Since 2020, I started going there more and buying things, partly because I love their baked goods, but also because I got really worried during the pandemic that my favorite old-school Chinese businesses in Chinatown wouldn’t survive COVID-19 and the anti-Asian hatred that was stoked back then. Now that Kaia’s school is literally two doors down from Double Crispy, I go there almost every week. Sometimes, it’s to purchase breakfast items for the whole family; other times, it’s to get a treat for Kaia. Kaia’s favorite bao is pork floss bao, for which Double Crispy does an excellent version. I also love their egg custard pineapple bao, their cha siu bao, and several others. Their frozen cai rou bao and ji bao (pork/cabbage and chicken bao) are also delicious and great value. Although I do not buy their Chinese or Portuguese-style egg tarts that often, they do great versions of both (and I suppose they should given their Chinese name). For specialty items, they do a delicious variety of mooncakes throughout the year and amp up the variety and size of moon cakes around Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. I especially like their durian mooncakes. And you can never go wrong with lotus seed paste.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Double Crispy got featured in the New York Times Cooking section and was in a video they produced that went viral. The video highlights not only the bakery’s intense production of moon cakes, but also the family’s unity, perseverance, and drive to ensure the bakery is successful and that they are producing the very best products for their loyal customers. When I saw it last September, I nearly had tears in my eyes, seeing how much the owner’s sons helped out with their dad’s business and the very clear love they all had for each other and the bakery itself. And since that video came out, the virality was palpable: each day at school pickup when I’d pass by Double Crispy, entire shelves would be wiped clean of their buns, pastries, and breads. It was as though someone had come in and ordered every single darn item on the shelf. I was happy for them and how successful they were; I chuckled to myself when I’d see tourists gathering from outside, confirming this was the same place that was featured in the NYT video, then laugh even more when I saw they weren’t just buying one or two items, but dozens upon dozens of their baked goods.

I walked into the shop today to pick up a loaf of bread and was happy to see that one of the owner’s sons was manning the cash register. I greeted him and congratulated him on the NYT feature and said that I was proud to be a loyal customer for years and years before that video came out last autumn. We made some small talk about the business and how they could barely keep up with demand, and he thanked me for my repeat patronage. And as he bagged up my bread, he neatly wrapped two egg tarts for me and added it in. “This is just a little thanks for your loyalty and support all these years,” the owner’s son said with a big grin. “We wouldn’t be here without customers like you.”

That was so sweet and totally not needed at all; free egg tarts or not, I’d still support them anyway. And if I didn’t, Kaia would just repeatedly run in there and demand every bao on the shelf to eat! One of her favorite things to do on warmer days is to run through their open doors (only open during warmer months, obviously) and point at all the different baos she wants to eat!

Jet lagged toddler, jet lagged husband

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The last couple nights’ worth of sleep has predictably been broken. Kaia has lasted at most, four consecutive hours in her own bed before screaming and crying, taking at least three to four of her stuffed animals, and dragging them to our bed. Then, she’s been waking up anywhere between 3-4, wide awake and alert, demanding to be fed immediately.

“I want cheerios. I want milk. No milk?!”

“I don’t WANT mummy to sleep. I want mummy to GET UP NOW!”

“I’m hungry! I wanna eat NOW!”

A lot of demands, a lot of whining, and lot of “the world revolves around me” comments. ‘Tis the world of a thrilling three-year-old child.

The first night back on Sunday night, Chris woke up to Kaia’s demands for food. Because the apartment is absolutely freezing, unless we have the heat turned on in each room, the unheated rooms will be frigid. So, instead of setting up the high chair in the lounge area, Chris set it up in our main bedroom’s ensuite bathroom with the light on. That way, Kaia could get residual heat coming into the bathroom from our bedroom and actually see her cheerios, and I could get darkness while sleeping in my bed. As for Chris? Well, at 3am on Monday morning when Kaia was digging into her dry cheerios in her high chair in our bathroom, Chris was in bed, on his phone, digging into a bag of Australian All Naturals fruit gummies.

This was my world the last few nights with a jet lagged toddler and a jet lagged husband.

Cheetos and pink soda sprayed all over me on the subway

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I’ve been living in New York for almost 16.5 years now. Before that, I spent four years coming to New York as a tourist. So in total, I’ve spent 20+ years walking the streets and frequenting the subway here across all boroughs. In that entire time, I’d never really had any type of “incident” happen to me on the subway…. until today.

I was already having an annoying day. I got my period a bit early yesterday, which led to a night of interrupted sleep due to cramps. They seemed to subside in the morning after I took some paracetamol and did some cardio and pilates at the gym. But my cramps came back this afternoon, and at around the same time, I started feeling a little feverish. But I insisted to Chris that I needed to go outside, so I’d still go out to pick up Pookster. When I got to the train station, the train was delayed; I had to wait 12 minutes for the next train to Chinatown. When I finally got on the train, it was packed. I stood there like a sardine in close contact with pretty much everyone else on the train… Until out of nowhere, I felt this cold liquid spray my back, legs, and shoes. At first, I thought the guy had projectile-vomited on me until I saw his Sprite bottle, which had pink liquid in it. And it had this strange odor… which I immediately realized was Cheetos, the fried cheese snack that I haven’t eaten since I was a kid. The guy who was holding it seemed totally unfazed with the pink soda bubbling over and flying all over the place; all he said was “oops!” And nothing more. As soon as I realized what happened, as if involuntarily, I yelled out, “What the fuck?!” and everyone around me, despite being packed, tried to make space and avoid the Cheeto-pink soda freak, who kept looking down and seemed like he was either high, drunk, or both. At least four or five other people got hit the freak’s Cheeto pink soda mixture, including a man in a suit sitting down near where he was standing, who took almost every tissue out of his pockets and laptop bag to wipe himself off; all the tissues were drenched with pink and orange. I gave him a sad look, which he shared back. All these people around us gave us sympathetic looks; one of them even gave me a light pat on the back as he exited the train. I got down to Chinatown as soon as I could, picked up Kaia, came home, and immediately took off all my clothes and threw them in the wash. I tried to scrub my Uggs as best as I could. I was NOT happy.

I love public transit. I really do, especially as someone who hasn’t driven a car since she was 21 and has never enjoyed driving. But this is one of those moments where I thought, “So, this is why people prefer their cars…”

The reasons to keep fighting

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It would be easy to write off the 74 million-plus people who voted for Dipshit and just sit here and be disillusioned… if I didn’t have a child of my own who has to inherit this world and live in it. But now, I’ve been sitting here, reading headlines, different publications, points of view that outline what the Democratic Party potentially did to create the total annihilation it has experienced this past week. Lots went wrong. A lot needs to change with the Democratic Party. A lot needs to change with education and disinformation and how it’s handle and addressed that will not be fixed in the next two, four, or 10+ years. But we have to keep fighting the good fight… even when those against us are just trying to kill us all.

I had the day off from work today for Veteran’s Day, as did Kaia from school. So this morning while Chris was on a call, I took her down to our building’s play room and brought along her favorite bubble machine (which I procured from my local Buy-Nothing group). I watched her gleefully run around with it and spread bubbles everywhere. She giggled, squeaked, and ran around endlessly to spread bubble literally all over the freaking room. I documented her joy through photos and videos. I stopped and just watched her in all her youth and innocence. And I just thought… she deserves a much better world than this. When she is older, how are Chris and I going to explain to her that the first presidential election she was around for, this country elected a convicted felon with a track record for spewing hate? Is this going to teach her that you can get away with literally everything you want as long as you are some rich White man?

This last week, my limbs have all felt heavier. Yet when I check my weight on the scale, I’m the exact same freaking weight. Even walking around and doing day-to-day tasks feels like it’s all been such an effort. But I have to throw myself into life and the future for the sake of my Pookster. I have to set an example for how she should be. The last thing I want is for her to repeat the line that I’ve said about my parents, the line that I read in Julia Child’s book My Life in France, which she wrote about her own regressive father: “He is an example of how not to be.” I’ve done a bit more cooking and food prep. I started reading a book that I’d been on the Libby / NYPL wait list for, for nearly five months, called Against the Loveless World, by Susan Abulhawa. It documents the life of a young Palestinian woman who lives as a refugee in Kuwait, then Jordan, then goes back to Palestine and becomes “radicalized.” I thought the title of the book was quite fitting for my general sentiment the last week, if not moving forward.

I have no words to say today

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…Other than that I am deeply disappointed in the American electorate — for those who were too lazy and disillusioned to come out and vote, for those who decided that a convicted felon would be better to lead this country than an accomplished female politician, for those who voted with complete disregard for civil rights and for the rights of those with a uterus. I try to be optimistic because I have a female toddler who is inheriting what is supposed to be one of the world’s great democracies, but it feels less and less like that is something to be proud of and stand by. And for those who vote against their own self interest… I honestly just feel sorry for you, as many of you probably have zero awareness you are doing so.

Hope and dread today

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It is scary to think that today, the United States of America could be electing a convicted felon to a second nonconsecutive term of president. Even after he denounced the 2020 presidential results. Even after he’s shown clear examples of blatant sexism, racism, and classism. I don’t have a lot of hope to be honest, especially given how close the presidential election was in 2020. But, I do have a toddler who is growing up in this very divided country where her rights are eroding every single day, so I have to be optimistic for her sake. Because… I am definitely NOT optimistic for mine.

God bless, America. Sort of.