Twelve years ago when I first moved to New York and was looking for apartments, my then roommate and I went to see one Bushwick apartment. The apartment was bare bones, the building looked like it could have collapsed in the next week, and the owner was pretty much covered from neck to toes in tattoos. I didn’t really care about the tattoos, but my aunt insisted on coming to view the apartments with us, and she was absolutely terrified about everything. It didn’t help that the entire area was covered in graffiti and litter everywhere, not to mention all the people hanging out on the street and blaring their music like it was a Saturday… except it was a weekday. My roommate didn’t love the area or the apartment then, either, and so we passed on it. Just four years later, she ended up moving to Bushwick with her boyfriend, and the area had started changing. Today, most of that graffiti and litter has disappeared in favor of endless constantly changing street art, hipster cafes and bars, and delicious Asian restaurants that couldn’t afford the Manhattan rent.

We walked through the neighborhood and took videos and photos of all the street art. Unfortunately, everyone seems to want to make fun of Trump, so there were many iterations of his face and body everywhere. But there were also political messages, too, ranging from climate change, the upcoming election, #blacklivesmatter, and wearing a mask. Sadly, yes: it’s become political whether you wear a mask or not, just as I predicted back in the spring. This is our country. At least the art is good, though.

Although we’ve been living in this building now for over 3 years, every other 9/11, we’d never really thought to go up to our roof to see the 9/11 anniversary lights above the World Trade Center that shines up into the sky. Every year, I see posts about remembering 9/11, the lives that were lost, the lives that are still with us but are changed forever. Because I hadn’t lived here at the time of 9/11, nor did I know many people directly who were affected, it felt very far removed from me. Even as a resident here after I moved, I still didn’t feel that connected to it. But for some reason, this year, the social media posts actually made me feel something. I read lots of heartfelt posts from people who were in New York, who had family who were in New York and were scared for them when they couldn’t get in contact. It really tugged at me and made me wonder how terrifying it would have been had I known anyone there at the time or had been here.

I started thinking about the people who worked at the twin towers who died, and the ones who had offsite meetings that day that were supposed to be in the building who survived. I thought about all the phone calls urgently made to those who worked in the towers that were never received because it was too late. It’s a depressing thought. In some ways, it reminds me of the night when I knew Ed was missing, and I tried calling his cell phone number multiple times even though I logically knew he had disconnected it months before. Those feelings of helplessness — you never really quite move on from it.

So much of our lives are not in our control, and that in itself is a terrifying thing. I always meet people who seem so confident, so sure of themselves and their life plans… but what if it doesn’t quite go their way? What if they get diagnosed with stage four cancer and die in a year? What if their spouse gets a sudden heart attack at age 40 and dies? What happens to your plans then? Life can change in just an instant. And there’s nothing really to console you then at all. You just have to hope for the best.

After months of looking and a few months of intense job search and interviewing, I finally have concluded my job search with three offers on the table, and today, I finally accepted an offer with a company whose mission I can actually get behind — in real life, not just for myself to make money. Looking back, I never really thought that in year 12 of my career that I’d be on company #5, but things rarely turn out how you hope or expect them to. In a day and age where pensions are a thing of the past and loyalty to a company only gets you screwed, I guess it makes sense that I’ve never been at any single company longer than just over four years. I wish I could have stayed longer at the current company, but… that just wasn’t in the cards.

It’s funny. I’ve just left the best company I’ve ever worked at of my working career, but in many ways, it was probably also the worst — the dichotomy there is a little perturbing, but when I think about it more deeply, it makes sense. I had a love/hate relationship with this place. I met so many high-integrity, good humans there who I still keep in touch with and consider friends. But I also encountered a handful of the most toxic, school-time drama individuals that made me remember how terrible gossip can be in middle school. There is rarely good without the bad in life. But I think I’ve taken what I can from this place and hope to continue picking away at my naïveté so that I can be practical and do what is right for me and my general morals.

Life goes on, and lucky for me, I don’t have to take those toxic people with me in my steps forward. Life is pretty good right now, and I feel very lucky and privileged to be in the position I am in today.

Filming with a mirrorless camera on a tripod can be really annoying for many reasons. You always have to have the right setting on both your camera and the tripod, be at the right angle if your camera is not wide angle enough, and then on top of that, once you hit “record,” the camera actually zooms IN, so there’s no way to check to see if the view is correct until you’ve actually pressed “record.” Filming with the phone is so much easier and less maintenance. What you see is exactly what you get; no surprises. So when I started filming quick TikTok cooking videos in the last week, it felt almost like instant gratification. All I needed was a tripod for my phone, and I was all set.

I’m still getting used to the TikTok app. I feel very old for saying that it took some learning, and I’m still learning as I go, but I can see how and why it’s even more addictive than Instagram; the videos are all videos, so they are very interactive and they really pull you in. This is what the next generation is all about, huh?

We went back to Queens for the second time this weekend yesterday, this time to the Forest Hills/Rego Park area. We did a mini food crawl, which included spicy silken tofu and fish fillets, meat-filled samsas, lamb kebabs, and crab-and-pork Xiao long bao/soup dumplings. Eating in Queens is always such a delight; so many options but not enough time or room in our bellies to eat everything.

When I look back, I’m always so happy and grateful that I spent my first four years living in Elmhurst. While it was certainly not a trendy or hot neighborhood to live in by anyone’s definition, it made me more aware of all the different neighborhoods and food destinations across Queens, and that’s only fueled my desire to keep going back to old favorites and discover new goodies. THIS BOROUGH IS THE BEST and TASTIEST.

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.