Tonight, we finally went to see Hamilton the musical. While it would have been ideal to have seen it when Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator/song-writer, was in it, that ship had unfortunately sailed years ago, but tonight’s performance did not disappoint. I will say that I did read up on Hamilton and his history and legacy prior to watching the musical, and I feel like if I hadn’t, some of the topics/songs being sung would not have made as much sense to me if I had not had this prior knowledge. Plus, it can be difficult to rely on songs and raps that go so quickly for all the bits of information unless you either do pre-reading or pre-listening to the songs. Now, I understand why so many people I know listened to the soundtrack over and over before actually going to see the musical. It all makes sense now!

But now that we’ve finished watching the musical, it’s truly amazing 1) how diverse the cast was (purposely done this way by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and 2) how high energy the entire production was; it was as though there was no calm, no real break in dancing/high energy singing to be had. Lin-Manuel Miranda was quoted saying that he made the cast diverse to really highlight what Hamilton was all about as an immigrant himself from the West Indies. And if you want to highlight that, what better way to do that than to show people of different colors and backgrounds on the set of the show? It’s most definitely one of the most notable Broadway shows I’ve ever seen — the rap and music made it so, so unique and different from anything else I’ve seen before.

This is one of those soundtracks that I’ll likely be listening to over and over again on Spotify, similar to how after I saw Phantom of the Opera, I listened to the soundtrack for months and months after. Seeing the musical has also made me want to learn more about Eliza Hamilton, who was Alexander Hamilton’s wife. She sounds like a force to be reckoned with.

Tonight, we went to Carolines on Broadway to see a comedy show by Hari Kondabolu. I actually didn’t know who he was before tonight, as Chris had booked the show. Last year, we saw a number of comedians from lesser represented backgrounds and geographies featured on Netflix, and it actually widened my understanding of what the comedy scene was like globally. For the most part in the U.S., comedy has been dominated by (surprise surprise) white males… with the occasional black male like Eddie Murphy or Chris Rock. Even white female comedians are lesser known, and of the ones who are known like Amy Sedaris, they tend to have smaller audiences. In recent years, we’ve had more people of color represented, such as Trevor Noah, Hasan Minhaj, Ronny Chieng, and even Ali Wong, who I’ve really enjoyed and appreciated not only as an Asian American female, but also as someone who was born and raised in San Francisco. It’s been a refreshing mix not just in terms of ethnicity, but also the actual topics that are being discussed.

Hari Kondabolu is ethnically Indian but born and raised in Flushing, New York. Of course, given his upbringing, race and ethnicity are big topics for his shows, as well as identity, inequality, immigration, and politics. (It is always laugh-out-loud funny when Indian people poke fun at white fragility). But sometimes it’s the little things that people joke about that somehow stand out to me, the things you never even think are worth discussing but come out in comedy. He joked about the shape of Q-tips, for example, and how ridiculous it is that doctors always warn you not to put them in your ear because you could push ear wax deeper into your ear canal and thus cause a blockage… well, if that’s the case, then why would you make it so that it just perfectly shapes the ear canal, then?!

That is so true.. and something I have personally wondered to myself…!

I thought I was having a pretty productive today on my day off. Since I get Martin Luther King, Jr., Day off from work every year, it’s always been one of those quiet days when I can wake up leisurely, have an extra long workout, go around the city, run errands, and spend time during the day with friends I’d normally never seeing during the weekday daylight hours. I worked out, cooked and cleaned, and headed down to Chinatown to pick up a handful of items in preparation for some Chinese New Year foods I want to make this year. I thought it would be relatively quiet since it would be a weekday and a lot of people would be at work… and then I was proven wrong almost immediately. The subway cars were full getting on and off at Grand Street along the B train. When I got to Hong Kong Supermarket, it was as though it was totally mobbed by people of all ages, not just the grandmas and the great-grandmas of the world. The surrounding areas were decked out in Year of the Rat signage and other red good luck Chinese signs and lanterns. The lines in the supermarket were so out of control that they had to open registers in areas that I’d never even seen registers before! I can’t remember ever waiting in line that long at this market.

I also stopped by my favorite Vietnamese market, where they had several freshly made varieties of banh chung, or Vietnamese steamed sticky rice tamales for the Tet Lunar New Year. They had the sweet ones filled with ripe banana as well as my favorite mung bean and pork belly ones in multiple shapes and sizes, so I picked up the savory one to bring home and steam. For some reason, I felt so embarrassed when the man selling them tried to address me in Vietnamese, describing the fillings to me, but I could only half understand what he was saying and had to respond back in English. “You aren’t Vietnamese?” he asked me in English. “Well… I am, but I can’t speak it,” I responded sheepishly. Well, at least I know what the food actually is! These are the moments when my level of “Asianness” is always in question, both internally and externally.

This brief exchange suddenly reminded me of a friend I made while I was in Shanghai over 13 years ago; her name was Dong Mei (the literal meaning of her name in English is “winter plum”). We met at the university where she was studying, where I had my exchange program for a month. We became friends because I was randomly interviewing locals on campus, and she took a liking to me, and we started hanging out regularly. I complimented her on the shirt she was wearing; within two days, she showed up at my room with a similar shirt in a different color! I told her at the time that although I had just started learning Mandarin and the actual Chinese written language just a year before that I felt at home in Shanghai. I couldn’t really explain it at the time, I said, and my Mandarin wasn’t anywhere near proficient, but I felt very comfortable. It was just a feeling I had. She responded to me, “Well, of course you feel comfortable here. You are Chinese in China. It doesn’t matter if you were born in England, the United States, or anywhere in Europe. You can be born any place, but your face is Chinese. You look in the mirror, and you will always have a Chinese face staring back at you. The blood in your veins is Chinese. The blood running through my veins and everyone else’s veins here is Chinese. That is why you feel at home here.”

I always remember that conversation for some reason. Is that really why I would feel “comfortable” — because of racial homogeneity around me? Or is it the fact that the cultural “norms” that I have more or less followed around foods, ethnic traditions, just stand as they are and warrant zero explanation to anyone, because everyone there just “gets it” — it is literally just part of their DNA? Because in moments like with the banh chung seller, I didn’t really feel “at home” — if anything, I suddenly felt foreign with someone who looks just like me. Am I an outsider to him because I don’t speak the same language as him, or does he just get me because at least we eat the same foods and look the same?

It is always said that you “get what you pay for,” and that is usually the case especially with things like technology. Almost a year ago, I purchased my microphone for cooking videos and travel vlogging, and for the most part, it’s held up pretty well. But today, while going over footage shot in a windy outdoor market in Amsterdam, I started realizing the limits of this $50 microphone. It picked up more of the wind than my voice, and I’m hesitant to even use this specific footage because.. what’s the point if you cannot hear what I am saying? I might as well put music over it and add in subtitles, and I’m not totally sure I want to do that.

So I started researching other higher quality microphones that other vloggers use. Some are clip-on; the majority of higher end mics allow you to test and see what the sound is like while you are recording; that way, no time is wasted and no waiting period to see whether your sound quality is passable or good. But the one that really won, hands down, was a lapel mic that could capture your voice, crystal-clear with nothing else, no interference, even in the loudest wind tunnel on the top of a mountain. How much does this microphone cost? $700!!!

I’m not vlogging at a level where I’ve worked hard enough to deserve a mic that costs that much money. Maybe when I have hundreds of thousands of subscribers or am getting sponsored posts, I can do that, but until then, this $50 mic is going to have to do its thing. I need to start setting goals for subscribers, and once I reach those, I can “reward” myself with new or upgraded equipment.

Since coming back from Australia and Indonesia, I’ve been keeping a pretty low profile at work. I haven’t been as social because frankly, I feel pretty miserable being back in the office environment after being away for nearly a month, and the idea of going back to the usual grunt work does not excite me the least bit. We have a new office manager, and given our old office manager always knew my birthday, I figured I would keep quiet today and not tell anyone it was my birthday… until our legal counsel in San Francisco blew the cover and posted on our team channel that it was my birthday. HOW DID HE KNOW IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY? He isn’t even “friends” with me on Facebook! That got our current office manager excited, and she along with a colleague ran out to get me not one, but two birthday cakes (this was a bit crazy considering there were barely 10 people in the office today), a massive birthday balloon, a card that everyone signed, plus actual gifts for me to take home. I couldn’t believe how over the top she was; it was honestly too much.

Chris took me to L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon in the Meatpacking this evening for my birthday dinner. Joel Robuchon has a mini empire of restaurants and Michelin stars, two of which are here in New York City — one is the grill and the other is the l’atelier, or “workshop” as you would translate it from French. The idea of the restaurant is that it would be “open” as a workshop is, so the majority of the seats are around the kitchen. Diners can then see all the meals coming to life right before their eyes. We’ve eaten at other restaurants that have this concept for tasting menus, but none of them were as bright and loud as this one: Robuchon clearly loves the color red — the entire dining room is red and black. We had the “evolution” winter tasting menu, which ranged from small dishes of cold parsnip soup to frog legs (not like anything you’d imagine when you think “frog legs” and no bones!) to Alaskan king crab and lobster, artfully presented and prepared with skinny tweezers. I normally dislike cold soups, but the parsnip soup was creamy and delicious with just the right level of vegetal taste. Frog legs have never really been my thing: I’ve enjoyed them, but I think they taste just like chicken. So if they taste just like chicken, then why am I doing so much work taking all the meat out of these thin little bones for when I could get more meat with less bones by eating chicken? But with the frog legs presented here in what looked like little fried green dumplings on our plate, these were not only boneless, but super crunchy (yet still tasted like chicken). And the breads, which are all made in house, were incredible: they ranged from slim, perfect mini baguettes to “snails” (the texture of shattering croissants!!) to a little flatted croissant with a delicious melty cheese on top. The last time I felt the bread was this notable during a meal at a restaurant was when we went to the now-defunct Bouley, which was in TriBeCa.

I love tasting menus and seeing how different chefs create “art” in bowls, plates, and dishes. I also appreciate them even more knowing how much creativity and hard labor go into each single dish. Watching the chefs and cooks painstakingly plate each one, complete with droppers, tweezers, and the smallest little metal utensils… it almost made my head spin a little. I could never handle that type of precision or pressure in a kitchen. Hence, I’ve had zero interest in ever doing real “plating” at home; I don’t care about doing it myself. That’s the stuff I can go out for and enjoy.

As with last year when I turned 33, I’m having similar feelings this year when it comes to turning another year older in light of Ed’s passing. Ed was 33 when he passed away; he was about a month shy of turning 34. So while last year, I turned the age that he was when he passed away, this year, I will be turning the age he never lived to see. It probably didn’t mean much to him; he didn’t want to live to see another day and made that more and more clear to me the closer we got to his death. But the only reason he felt that way was that he was blinded by his own pain and suffering. This prevented him from truly seeing and appreciating everything that was great about living on this earth.

It doesn’t always feel great to be a part of the world today. With ridiculous politics, a moronic leader of “the free world,” climate change, endless wild fires, misinformation, constant ignorance of overly privileged people, and other awful current events, I’ve caught myself oftentimes thinking that I am currently living in a dystopia, and I don’t know when all of this insanity is going to end; actually, I know the answer to that question: it will never end. The stupidity and chaos will continue. But being able to see light and hope through all that is a daily challenge and one that we have to strive for, otherwise, what’s the point of living, anyway?

I don’t really know what is going to happen this year, but I do know that I owe it to Ed to try to do my best, to continue living life as fully as I can to prove to him that this all actually is worth it. I still catch myself feeling in shock that not only is he gone, but he’s been gone for this long. This July, it will be seven years — seven years of living without my big brother. I really can’t believe it sometimes. But I have to keep hoping for the best, if not for myself, then for his memory. It’s the least I can do for him.

While we were in Indonesia a few weeks ago, we visited Jakarta’s colorful Chinatown, where we saw endless displays of Chinese New Year decorations, red envelopes, and packaged foods and gifts. It was a reminder to me that Chinese New Year is right around the corner, and in fact, this year, it’s actually much earlier than it’s been in previous years. This year, Chinese New Year falls on January 25th, which is super early; that’s just a week after my birthday! It reminded me that I want to make some of the traditional new year’s dishes that I skipped making the last couple of years since I was more focused on making Chinese New Year dinner foods, such as spring rolls, noodles, and braised pork belly and eggs. Traditional Chinese (and Vietnamese) New Year treats such as turnip cake, taro cake, and New Year’s glutinous rice cakes are not actually meant to be eaten as part of a formal “meal,” but rather as a snack/small treat when having guests come over for New Year’s red envelope rounds.

In past years, I’ve always made the taro cake because it was my favorite, but I’m considering staggering making different cakes this year just to test new things. I’ve never made the turnip version, so I hope to try that this year. And for nian gao, or new year’s cake, I’m thinking about testing out an iteration that has pandan and coconut as a flavoring. I figured it couldn’t be that original of an idea to apply pandan and coconut to this cake; I quickly did a Google search for it, and there are versions of this cake with these flavors that are made and sold in Singapore. We were so spoiled in Indonesia with pandan and coconut as sweet flavorings in dessert there, and given nian gao is usually such a plain glutinous rice cake, it could benefit from these two additional flavorings.

I also want to test out another version of Vietnamese cha gio, or fried spring rolls. I wasn’t that pleased with the color of the rice paper wrappers when I deep fried them for the first time during Lunar New Year last year, but I’d likely need to invite other people over to eat these since I would not want to eat boat loads of spring rolls on our own.

My boss was in town from San Francisco this week, and suddenly in the middle of a meeting yesterday, he had sharp, shooting pains in his abdomen that required him to go to the emergency room. We were worried about him, so a few of us left work early yesterday to check in on him to see if he was all right. His pain had subsided, but he was still waiting to do a cat scan to get a full diagnosis because the culprit of his pains still was not known.

The last time I was in a hospital was in November 2014, when my dad had his bypass surgery. The smells, sights, and sounds of being in any hospital always completely disgust me. But what was even worse this time was that this hospital’s emergency room “waiting area” just seemed like a complete mess, total chaos everywhere, with patients given far too little space given whatever contagions they may or may not have. I didn’t stay in there long, but for the period of time I was in there to see my boss, I felt uneasy. Hospitals, ironically, are known in this country to be some of the dirtiest places. Medical professionals don’t even wash or sanitize their hands after using the bathroom. So what on earth would make me feel comfortable about being in a place with people like that plus those who are actually ill? The least amount of time I can be in a hospital, the better.

I felt so terrible looking at my boss on his bed in his cramped space, in pain, yet grateful that we came to see and check up on him. I cannot imagine how awful it must be to need to visit an emergency room far away from home where you don’t really know anyone and have no idea how things are supposed to work.