I think of all the things I am grateful for in the professional world, the biggest thing is definitely the network I’ve become acquainted with in the last 3.5 years. Even if we had never even met because certain people had left the company before I even joined, people have been so friendly and eager to help others with job referrals, introductions, and even helping to search for new roles when I’ve been looking. It’s been lots of feelings of warm and fuzzy over the last couple of months; people are so eager to help in any way they can, even total strangers. And of the ex-colleagues I know and have worked with, they’ve been even more willing to do extra things for me, whether that means acting as job references, making introductions to hiring managers or higher-level management on teams I might be interested in joining, or just having conversations with me so that I can have a sounding board about what I want to do next.

I feel extremely lucky and privileged to know such good, talented, genuine people who want to help in whatever way they can. In many ways, it cancels out a lot of the bad experiences and the few bad and toxic individuals I’ve met over the last few years. Life definitely has been treating me well as of late.

A good friend I’d made through work and I decided to finally get together since January, before the pandemic began in New York, today with our respective husbands. It was funny when we first met; we weren’t sure if we should be hugging, elbow tapping, or shoe tapping to greet each other. But that’s the thing during a global pandemic where everyone is concerned about germs and hygiene: I guess handshaking and/or kissing is probably the least hygienic greeting, followed by hugs. Maybe the Asian greeting of showing hands together and doing a little bow was really the best idea all along, conveying both warmth and respect at the same time.

We had never met each others’ husbands before, so it was interesting to watch the two get along pretty well and bond over travel, airlines and hotels, airline and hotel status, and so on. Another area that stood out was when my friend’s husband summarized all Chinese vegetables (very relevant given the experience with the white woman and her daughter at outdoor seating yesterday) as “all the choys!” Until that moment, I’d never heard a more perfect summation of Asian vegetables ever before. As soon as those words came out of his mouth, I knew… I liked this guy.

One of the indulgences that Chris loves the most is having a massage. He could probably just get his back rubbed all day, and he’d be a happy baby. Since massage spas have been allowed to open up during the pandemic, Chris jumped at the chance to get a massage at his favorite spot in Chinatown. Usually when we do this, we also plan to eat in Chinatown, and I make sure to stock up on all my favorite Asian produce and ingredients while down there.

While I understand that it’s for everyone’s safety, the one precaution we are required to take while getting a massage is to wear a mask. The first time we did this, my mask didn’t really allow for much breathing space for my nose, so I felt stifled the whole time and had to keep taking deep breaths. Since then, I’ve expanded my mask collection so that I have ones that are roomier around my nostrils, so I was able to relax a bit more this time around.

We indulged in suckling pig and roast duck, along with Gai lan vegetables for dinner. As we sat outside in the spacious outdoor seating area of Wu’s Wonton King, a white woman with her daughter sat behind us. As she was ordering, she added at the end that she’d “like some Chinese vegetables, too.” The server looked at her and said, “Many Chinese vegetables… you want Chinese broccoli? Bok choy? Pea shoots?”

The woman turned to look at our table and pointed at our plate of garlicky gai lan, “That Chinese vegetable!” she exclaimed. We briefly made eye contact and she winked at me and smiled.

To get to the point, my YmF social media following has been pretty abysmal. I was posting a couple times a week on Instagram for nearly a year, and no one new was really following me other than people I already knew or were connected to me in some way. Then finally, a month ago, I started doing more engagement with other food/cooking Instagrammers and YouTubers. I did more interaction, posting, and commenting on Reddit. I also started commenting and watching other vloggers’ videos on YouTube. And then within the last month, I gained over 100 new Instagram followers just from that. My subscriber count on YouTube has also been increasing much quicker since mid-July, as well. Maybe then, the key is really a lot of interaction and engagement from and with similar accounts to start appearing as “suggested” for following for those prime to find new content and handles to follow. Weeeee.

Yesterday, we spent the afternoon exploring the Sunnyside, Woodside, Elmhurst, and Jackson Heights areas of Queens. This area is near and dear to me since I lived in Elmhurst for my first four years in New York, and because of that, spent a good amount of time exploring these other three surrounding neighborhoods. The true glory of New York to me has always been its insanely diverse population of people. In a single neighborhood, particularly if you are in Queens, you could easily walk through it and hear over 20-30 different languages being spoken. And with a diverse group of people always comes a diverse array of cuisines and dishes that you can choose from. Because of this, I will always consider myself a Queens baby and have immense pride for having lived in Queens. And I obviously still come back to it all the time to eat and explore and find new delicious things.

In our afternoon of exploration, we had snacks at a Paraguayan restaurant, explored a few Filipino markets, purchased some fresh and jarred items to cook with at a local Thai grocery store with great prices, and ended in Woodside, where we ate at one of my all-time favorite restaurants in New York City — Ayada Thai. Until this day, Ayada has the best Thai fish, tom yum soup, and papaya salads I’ve ever eaten outside of Thailand, and they do NOT shy away from the heat – you will leave sweating and borderline in pain!

I was pleasantly surprised to see how two blocks in this area were completely blocked off from car traffic and set up completely for spacious outdoor dining, complete with overhangs to shade from the sun and lots of hand sanitizing stations. I felt so happy to see this; these quiet little Woodside/Elmhurst streets had been fully transformed in a positive way that they weren’t even fully recognizable to me at the beginning. They felt so warm and inviting, charming, cozy and fun. A huge feeling of pride came over me; my old neighborhood is just killing it during COVID-19. I really hope these delicious family-owned businesses can survive this pandemic. It will be a total loss to our city and our stomachs if they do not.

During our day trip yesterday to Jersey, we spent some time exploring the Indian and Filipino shops in Edison, and one of the places I briefly popped into in search of the season’s very last mangoes was Patel Brothers. Since I’d been to the Jackson Heights location so many times, I really didn’t think much of going into this location (also, there are THREE Patel Brothers within short driving distance on the exact same street in Edison! What is this about??). But when I stopped in after Chris dropped me off on a mango mission, I was immediately taken by the fact that when I entered, to the left of the entrance was an entire BAKERY devoted to fresh Indian breads: parathas, rotis, naans, theplas, samosas, puri… I could not believe it. Some people were standing in line for the breads just out of the oven. The front was lined was recently baked, still warm breads. It smelled like a mix of cumin, hing, ghee, and wheat. I was seriously in heaven and could not stop gawking at the bakery and all its offerings. It’s like I was a kid in a candy shop and I couldn’t contain how overwhelmed I was. I wanted to buy one of each, but ended up exercising some self restraint and settling on the coriander thepla and the palak parathas. How was it possible that I had no idea that Patel Brothers in the suburbs could have a bakery component? I wish the Jackson Heights location had a fresh bakery! I felt so deprived and like I had been missing out for the last twelve years of living in New York and being a regular customer at the Jackson Heights Patel Brothers!

I was likely the only non-South-Asian customer in the entire store — at least from what I could see. As I waited in line to purchase my breads and mangoes, I noticed the trays of mangoes strategically placed at the entrance of the store. As each couple or family unit entered, it was literally these actions taken, one after the other, no fail: Enter, grab cart, plop a tray of mangoes, proceed. Enter, grab cart, plop on a tray of mangoes, proceed. The store knew what it was doing. It knows its clientele. It knows that South Asians love their mangoes, and so they placed these right at the entrance to lure the customers. And lure they did.

I, however, did not need to be lured. I came in with one mission: buy those mangoes. And I left with not just a tray of mangoes, but also TWO TYPES OF FRESH INDIAN FLAT BREADS — oh, and some Parle-G biscuits since they happened to be on sale, and they go pretty darn well with my ritual Friday chai. It may have been the best day ever in a long time for me.

Our second day trip out of the city this summer was to New Jersey today for a mix of nature and hiking, local orchards and produce, and exploration of Edison, New Jersey, arguably one of the largest Indian-populated towns in the country.

After a morning hike, we visited Terhune Orchards in Princeton, New Jersey, and Chris immediately felt at home when he saw a sign at the entrance that said, “No pets, No picnics.” Many signs were everywhere to emphasize social distancing and limiting head count in indoor areas, and they even had hand washing and hand sanitizing stations outside throughout the property, so it was clear that this place took health and safety seriously. What really stood out to me immediately, other than the health signs, was the fact that they were selling apple cider slushies and apple cider donuts.

As soon as I see apple cider donuts and apple cider signs, that’s when I know for sure that autumn is right around the corner and that summer is really coming to an end. Apple cider donuts just scream “FALL” to me. It feels especially strange this year given the COVID-19 pandemic, as we’d normally take a few trips between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and this year, we really did nothing outside of the city other than two day trips within the tai-state area. It’s the end of the summer time… starting now…

In 12+years of working full time, I somehow have managed, until this day, to get away with never doing a single presentation for an interview. I’ve always hated presentations, and I have a particular distaste for mock presentations where everything is fake, but everyone involved has to pretend it is all real. I’ve always thought that because I didn’t enjoy presentations that I wasn’t actually good at it. My friends and colleagues, though, who have all seen me present, have said that watching me, they would never have guessed I hated it, and that it appears that it comes naturally to me. I guess fake it until you make it? My former colleague and now friend made a good point to me, though: “There’s a difference between hating something and actually not being good at it. You may hate the process of putting the deck together or the delivery of it, but no one else has any idea at all because your delivery is good.”

So I gave a presentation for about 45 minutes today to a panel of six participants. And as I suspected, a couple people decided to throw in some curve balls to throw me off guard to see how calm and collected I could be under pressure. What I always remind myself in these tense situations is to a) breathe, b) think about the question before I speak, and c) as a result of b, do NOT use stupid filler words like “um,” or “uhh,” and instead, pause and use silence as my time to think, as that will actually make me come across as more thoughtful and deliberate.

It seemed to work. The recruiter emailed me a few hours later and said that all signs were quite positive post presentation.

I really appreciate honesty upfront. I appreciate it even more as I’ve gotten older and less patient. There’s many ways to deliver honesty. You don’t always have to be an asshole about it, contrary to popular belief. But in order to appreciate honesty, the receiver also needs to have somewhat of a thick skin and be able to take it. It’s a balance on both the giver and the receiver’s side. In an exchange between a recruiter and a job seeker, what I really love is honesty upfront: if there are certain benefits I am looking for or a salary range that I am eyeballing, I tell the recruiter in the first call, and I really appreciate it when they tell me that they can or cannot meet those expectations. It respects my time. It also respects their and their hiring team’s time. So you can imagine when I’ve been upfront about all these things since day 1, and two weeks later, when an offer is on the table, and somehow, the salary offered is about $40K off of what I originally laid out. What exactly happened here that got lost in communication?

The recruiter explained that the company tries hard to stay aligned with market rates, constantly does market research, and this is what they came up with for this job title. I told her in response… well, that may be the case, but that doesn’t align with the years of experience with that title, because someone with five years of experience doing this type of work is going to demand something a lot lower than someone with 10 years of experience. They need to align their compensation bands as such.

I was so frustrated. It’s the first job offer I’ve had on the table since I started loosely looking for a new job at the beginning of this year, and this is what the result of the last two weeks of interviewing has been — really? It felt like a total waste of time. I realize I should be grateful to have any offer given so many people have lost their jobs since the pandemic began, and many companies have hiring freezes, but this was just poor expectations set on the recruiter’s side since the very beginning. I would have much rather appreciated that she just tell me as soon as she found out that the comp wasn’t going to align so that I didn’t have to waste any more time or effort with them.

This afternoon, I spent some time filming my next video for my channel, which is for Kerala chicken stew. I always feel a little funny filming Indian cooking videos since I am not Indian, nor did I grow up in India or eat Indian foods when I was young. Therefore, someone watching my in one of these videos could easily ask, “Why should I trust this Chinese/Vietnamese woman on Indian food?” The concept of cultural appropriation has been much discussed in recent years, especially in the food world, and I really do not want anyone accusing me of trying to appropriate their food. I suppose my cooking it and advocating for it can be made more “legitimate” by the fact that Chris is Indian, and by default, so are his parents and family, so that’s my connection to it. It’s important to be sensitive to the roots of food and to acknowledge that no, I did not in any way “create” this recipe, and I just took a version of it and decided to make it because I thought it was delicious. And there shouldn’t be anything wrong with sharing delicious foods and recipes, right?