Mopping

I went on a cleaning spree today through the apartment, vacuuming, dusting, and mopping. Mopping does not happen frequently in the apartment. I don’t particularly like the act of it, and I hate constantly having to ring out the soap and water, even if we have a more modern “mop” and it doesn’t have all those nasty stringy things on it. But I suppose I am addicted to that feeling afterwards of a super clean hardwood floor, the lack of sound I hear when I walk across the floor with my flip flops, and even better when my barefoot touch the floor and I feel not a hint of dust or stickiness. It’s ridiculous to think how quick the kitchen floor gets; all it takes is a few crumbs of spinach of flour, some smudges of water, and then feet to walk across it to get the whole place dirty. It’s no wonder my mom always had a rag on the floor to wipe things up when I was growing up. I might need to start doing something like that when I am cooking.

This is one of those situations where you thought you wouldn’t be like your mom, but in the end, you end up being exactly like her…

Coming to Queens

A good friend from college is coming to town the last weekend of this month, and when I asked her what she wanted to do, she said, “eat!” She has a list of things she wants to try: Peruvian chicken, Levain Bakery chocolate chip cookies, Xiao long bao/soup dumplings, Indian food, and Thai or Malaysian food. When I asked her what she wanted to actually do outside of meals, she said she wasn’t sure and would have to get back to me. Food is the priority when she’s visited New York a number of times (and some of those times were with me when we were in college together!).

New York City is one of those places where you can finish doing all the “touristy” things such as the Empire State Building, Central Park, Times Square, but still never get enough of it because of the massive diversity of cuisines here. I suggested that because she wanted a lot of different Asian foods that I take her to Queens; outside of JFK airport, she’s never really seen Queens. It’s a very under loved and under appreciated borough, so we have that on our plan for Saturday of her weekend with us.

McDonald’s on Gastropod

Reading the news has become far too depressing in a day and age of climate change, a global move toward the political right, and an age of President Dipshit, so I’ve tried to lay off reading too many breaking news stories unless they are through my round-up news summary e-mails and top headlines. What I’ve been trying to focus on more are long-form feature pieces that tend to have more research and paint a bigger picture story of a given topic. It’s likely the only way to stay sane in today’s life.

Podcasts on food, politics, science, and history are always fun, and so the intersection of all the above topics can be found in my absolute favorite podcast of all time, Gastropod. The latest podcast they released is on McDonald’s and how it became so ubiquitous. What it also touches upon is how they actually helped create jobs for black Americans during the 50s and 60s when “white flight” was happening, and the inner city was left just to black Americans. McDonald’s obviously did not discriminate “white” money from “black” money; they just wanted *all* money and then some. And so they allowed black Americans to become franchise owners in urban areas, which led to more and more black Americans eating in McDonald’s in inner cities; many of these black-owned McDonald’s franchises ended up being some of the best performing McDonald’s of that time.

The sad truth, though, is that while McDonald’s created these opportunities for black Americans, they did it 100 percent motivated out of greed and capitalism, to line their own pockets more. It was hardly because they wanted to help the black community at a time of extreme racism and segregation. Forget the government taking over the responsibility of creating opportunities for its citizens; why not just let a corporation do it so that it can profit and make money under the guise of “helping the local community”? The racist conservatives loved this idea because the idea of “black enterprise” was a more palatable solution to them than integration (because, oh, no, what would happen if people from different ethnicities mixed and actually interacted with each other!). The liberals liked it from a superficial perspective because this brought money and ownership to black communities.

Today, discrimination still persists across people of color working at McDonald’s at all levels, and sadly because of this history, fast food has become part of the stereotype of the black American diet. So when conservative commentators from Fox News talk deprecatingly about black Americans, they say they make the conscious choice to eat junk food and get fat, completely ignoring the history behind how this stereotype even came to be.

Racist stereotypes persist. Racism persists against pretty much all people of color. It’s so depressing to think about.

Oh wait. Didn’t I just say that Gastropod was my favorite podcast? It is. It helps shed light on nuggets of history like this for me that I wasn’t quite aware of before. It’s depressing, yes, but at least I am informed in an entertaining and fully researched way.

Three-day weekend

Every time a three-day weekend comes, while I am always grateful to have an extra day tacked onto my weekend, it always feels like it goes by too quickly, as though maybe the American work week should have been made to be a four-day work week with a three-day weekend just so that we could all learn to be a bit more efficient. I’ve always found that when my weeks are shorter, I tend to prioritize what absolutely has to get done, and in the end, I feel like I’ve actually gotten more accomplished with less time. In fact, I’ve read several studies showing that women in countries where companies actually allow flexible work schedules actually feel more efficient and productive with four days at 10 work hours a day vs. five days with 8 work hours a day.

I got a good amount of things done this weekend, though, along with another vlog edited. I wish I had this every week.

Exercise as fuel and meditation

I started this week pretty unmotivated, grumpy, and irritable about pretty much everything: family, work, the cold weather. Nothing was really keeping me going, and each morning when I’d rise, I had zero desire to start the day with exercise the way I usually do, so I abstained and stayed in bed longer. This ended up having a pretty negative effect on me, as I felt even worse during the morning and throughout the day. I finally hauled myself out of bed for a 40-minute workout this morning (this is actually short for me), and even with just 40 minutes of exercise, mentally I felt in a much better headspace than I had all week.

Even when I am feeling lazy and unmotivated, I need to remember and keep reminding myself that exercise puts me in a better place both mentally and physically, and even if I find it painful in the moment, once I start, I will rarely regret it.

Helpers as servants who lack humanity

I had dinner with a friend who recently moved back to New York City from Hong Kong. With her husband’s expat package, they had a full-time housekeeper/nanny included. Because my friend is originally from New York, she never really knew what it was like to have this level of service at home, and she was appalled to hear from other housekeepers and nannies who were friends with her nanny that these hired helpers are oftentimes mistreated, abused (verbally and even physically), and treated like second class citizens in the places where they are supposed to call home. In one home, cameras were in every room in the home, so the nanny was constantly being supervised, and because both she and the family she was hired to help were Filipino, she could not even speak openly, fearing her words would be recorded and listened to. Another housekeeper/nanny shared that she would accompany the family to group meals, but only be able to eat at the end of the mea when everyone else had finished, when only leftover food was ready, and she’d be rushed to finish in less than ten minutes because they had to reach the next place. During the meal, she had to tend to the child.

This type of classicism and abuse is “normal” in rich Asian cities like Hong Kong, though. Filipino women come to Hong Kong on work visas to be cheap labor for middle and upper class Hong Kong families, leaving their own children and families behind to care for richer families who will provide them incomes to then send home to their families. In most cases, these helpers never see their children grow up, and instead, they end up going home only when their children are grown so that the cycle continues: their children move to Hong Kong to care for the next rich family, while they stay in the Philippines to care for their grandchildren.

My friend took this to heart and tried to become friends with her nanny; her home ended up becoming the hangout spot for the nannies to congregate safely and even have dinner parties. I found this endearing and comical at the same time. At least they felt they had a safe space at her home and could trust her, but it does make me sad to know that since my friend has left, their safe space is now gone.

Cold, miserable and raining

I came back this early morning to a cold, miserable, and rainy day. It actually matched my mood perfectly. I had zero motivation to do anything — exercise, do work, you name it. It was helpful I was able to work from home today to stay away from any noisy office banter that may have gone on.

I’m not sure why, but this past trip to San Francisco has left me feeling more drained than any other trip in a while. Part of it was because I didn’t find our kickoff at Napa that exciting or eventful, and the second part of it was that my parents were especially difficult, manipulative, and childish. In their eyes, they are always victims, and everyone else is trying to con them. The world is evil and out to do bad things to them. Everyone else has wronged them, yet they have done nothing wrong. It’s always the same story every single time.

I do agree with them that the world is pretty evil. There are a lot of selfish, screwed up people out there who want bad things for other people. But I don’t think that is everyone. I feel like I need to decompress from all this needless stress and negativity this week and just zone out and find some quiet time to myself, away from all these bad influences and away from the made up drama.

Manicures as “self care”

Anyone who really knows me well knows that I have the most disgusting nail and cuticle picking habit. And I found out that there’s actually a name for this: Onychophagia – it’s body-focused repetitive behavior and is considered a disorder. The picking habit supposedly stems from anxiety, whether it’s conscious or subconscious. For me, I know I tend to pick my cuticles and nails when I am either bored, irritated, or just idle. Ed actually had a nail picking habit, too, when he was around, and when I think about it, I realize we both got this terrible habit from our dad. My dad picks at his cuticles and his dry skin on his hands, and as someone who worked in construction, his hands were alway dry, flaky, scaly, and pretty scary to look at. My mom always used to lament that when she first met my dad, he had such smooth, beautiful hands… then, after years of working in the glazing industry to install glass, his hands became her worst nightmare.

However, there is one time when I will definitely not pick at my nails or cuticles at all, and that is when they are polished. It doesn’t matter if it’s regular nail polish, gel, Calgel, whatever — if I can see that they look beautiful and presentable, the picking just does NOT happen. And when I was spoiled with manicures every few months while working at a agency, when Google used to take my small team for mani/pedis on the regular, I realized how nice it could be to be treated to something that I once thought was so superfluous and superficial.

I tried painting my own nails on and off. I really just don’t have a very steady hand, especially painting with my left hand. I also don’t have the patience to let it dry completely. I resorted to just painting my nails clear since that was enough to prevent my picking habit, plus clear dries so much more quickly. But when I met up with a friend in Boston last summer and noticed how nice her nails looked, she told me that she made time to do it every week, once a week on the same day. “It’s my self care,” she said. “This is the time I get to myself to focus on my nails, and then I am rewarded with this for the rest of the week!”

“Self care.” It seems to be a term everyone is talking about now. I even get Instagram ads targeted to me in regards to self care — this pertains to everything from manicures, spa treatments, bath salts, scented soy candles… all of that. I’m not sure how I feel about this because as a marketing ploy, anything could be labeled self care as a justification for purchasing whatever it is, whether it’s an object or an experience.

If I get my nails done professionally, I might get them done once or twice a year, and I realized that last year, I didn’t get them done a single time. So I decided to splurge today on a gel design at a trendy Japanese nail salon near my office. My nail technician spent an hour and a half on me — longer than I anticipated, but I appreciated the level of detail she gave me (and even the Harry Potter movie I got to watch while she worked on my nails).

After I left the salon, I kept staring at my nails and admiring them. It wasn’t cheap to get a design with a gel, but I justified it in my head because a) I didn’t get my nails done at all in 2019, and b) they told me this would last for 3-4 weeks. Well, maybe this really is self care. And maybe these little splurges are worth it, if not just to express creativity in a different way, but also to prevent myself from skin and nail picking.

The Oculus in New York

As a tribute to the 9/11 victims and what was formerly the World Trade Center, the city’s architects constructed the World Trade Center subway station, in addition to a brand new shopping center and what is being called the Oculus, a massive glass and steel structure that is intended to resemble “a bird flying from the hands of a child.” In its meaning, the structure is intended to symbolize and bring hope to the site of tragedy.

But because this is New York, there’s going to be shops and money-making businesses to flank these beautiful memorial structures. And so there is a massive retail space that’s part of the Oculus, where not only are there actual luxury brick and mortar shops, but also spaces in the middle of the Oculus that pop-up retailers can rent by the month. One of these vendors who will be at the Oculus until late spring will be No Chewing Allowed, a seasonal French truffle store that can usually be found temporarily at the holiday markets across the city around the Thanksgiving to New Year’s period. I have likely seen them at the Union Square Holiday Market every single year since I’ve moved to New York, no fail, and their samples are always a free treat at this market. You always know them because the person handling them out continuously repeats, “no chewing allowed!” The idea is that you’re supposed to let it melt in your mouth, otherwise you ruin the entire chocolate enjoyment experience. I already do this regardless when eating any chocolate unless it’s a cookie, so I wouldn’t do anything differently.

My cousin who lives in the Bay Area requested that I pick up a box for him because he’d tried these as a gift from his brother, and he and his wife were completely obsessed with them. While they are good, there’s nothing particularly amazing to them for me. They’re just like any other truffle, maybe a little softer. And it also bothers me that their second ingredient listed is palm oil. Am I mostly paying $22 per box for a bunch of palm oil? The label doesn’t even tell you the chocolate percentage!

Nian gao – Chinese New Year Cake sweetness

Nian gao, or Chinese new year cake, is one of those cakes that is a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to how much people like it. There are the people who love it and absolutely cannot imagine Chinese New Year without it; it’s considered arguably the “most important” cake to eat during Chinese New Year. “Nian” in “nian gao” means “year,” but it’s also a homonym for “sticky,” and “gao” in “nian gao” means “cake,” but is also a homonym for “high” or “tall.” So in other words, if you eat this cake during the new year, then you will have a highly prosperous and cohesive new year. And who would not want that?

There are also the people who think it’s bland, boring, and don’t understand what the hype is around it. It’s very lightly sweetened with Chinese brown sugar slabs, and in most cases, the excitement of eating it is really around the chewy, mochi-like texture. After all, it’s made with glutinous rice flour, so it should be chewy and a bit sticky. There are also those who have improvised the cake to make it more flavorful by adding additional flavorings like ginger, vanilla or almond extract, and even coconut milk and panda juice. The coconut milk and pandan versions look to be quite popular especially in Southeast Asia, no surprise.

I’m a bit in the middle camp: I appreciate it and enjoy it; it’s a very simple cake to make and steam, as the base has only three ingredients – glutinous rice flour, brown sugar, and water. But I definitely do not crave it. After learning about these other flavored versions, I am very tempted to try making these variations myself, especially the pandan flavored one after being spoiled with pandan flavored everything in Indonesia just a few weeks ago. You really need to appreciate subtle flavors and slight sweetness to enjoy this cake.

Chris took one bite of it, insisted it was not sweet enough, and said it was like eating calories for the sake of eating calories. Then he refused to eat more of it and went back to his Maltesers.

So… maybe I could have added more sugar to this version. But I will try again next time, as well as with a pandan coconut version. 🙂