I was at Whole Foods this evening after getting back from Atlanta, looking in the nuts and seeds aisle, failing to find poppy seeds. I’m planning to use it for my long-awaited take on the vegan lemon coconut loaf I had in Vancouver last year that also had millet and poppy seed for added texture. Why would poppy seeds not be in the nuts and seeds aisle? I went up to a store associate, and she said I could find them in the spice aisle. “Poppy seeds — that’s a spice?” I wondered to myself. Why do poppy seeds get separated from, say, sesame seeds or pumpkin seeds? Where is the logic here? Who made all these random decisions that don’t seem to be rooted in any real sense?

I’ve been cheap this year, so I haven’t had my highlights redone at all until today. The last time I had my highlights done was in December of last year before leaving for our annual Christmas trip to Australia. Since then, I’ve had two trims which, including a generous tip, cost about $35 each. I texted my hairstylist to let her know I was coming, and she gave me her usual quote: cut plus wash plus highlights would be $160 for a full head (don’t ask me what “a half head” is). And once you add in a 25% tip, that’s $200 total. Note: you cannot get highlights and NOT do a wash, so don’t even try to ask her if you could skip the wash, because that’s not an option with any kind of hair dyeing.

That means that for 2019, I’ve spent $270 on hair maintenance. If I were good to my hair (and, apparently, my few new grays), I would have gotten highlights twice this year, which would have meant about $450 spent on my hair this year. Given that I had never gotten highlights or any real hair treatment until after I turned 31, I kind of think I shouldn’t feel so bad about spending this much on my hair now. Then, I quickly looked up how much the average woman spends on her hair; in the U.S., she spends about $960 per year. That’s a crap ton of money!

Then, I thought about how I used to only get two cuts per year. That means I spent about $60-70/year on hair prior to age 31. Wow, I really “saved” a lot of money next to the average woman, then!

It’s expensive being a woman. Add to this that when my hairstylist saw the length of my hair, she exclaimed about how long it’s getting. “Bella, to be honest, I usually charge $200 for a length like yours, but don’t worry, I will honor what I told you and charge you $160,” she said with a smile.

A $40 “discount”? I guess that was nice of her. Or, it’s just another way that women get penalized for being women and feminine.

Since I moved here 11 years ago, the options for ramen restaurants seems to only be getting bigger and bigger. Not only do we have a lot of our old standbys that are the ramen OGs, like Miso-Ya in the East Village, but we’ve got a number of ramen spots that have come straight from Japan. Ippudo was the biggest and most well known one, but today, we discovered E.A.K. Ramen right in Hell’s Kitchen. They are famous for Yokohama-style ramen and straight noodles, and they offer two main types of broth: shoyu (soy sauce based) and shio (salt based). The menu was also very vegetarian and vegan friendly, as there were several options to satisfy both types of diners. We came here tonight and really enjoyed the ramen, everything from the broths to the chashu to even the texture of the seasoned egg.

The other spot we were debating on going to was Ichiran, which is also from Japan. They are famous for having single-diner booth settings where you are fully focused and immersed on your ramen slurping experience. But I was surprised when I looked at their online menu and noticed that all their ramens start at $18.90, even the vegetarian option… and pretty much every topping other than the meat and noodles was considered extra. $3 for a seasoned egg on top of a bowl that is already $18.90? While I really do still want to try it, the idea of eating this at this price did not sit well with me. I already thought that Ippudo at around $16 per bowl was expensive, but this really tops it all.

When I uploaded my overnight oats YouTube video, although I was pretty satisfied with my different angles when filming and the editing I did, I didn’t really think it would be that popular of a video. Just five days later, though, it’s already gotten more views than any of my Indian cooking videos or my Oaxacan mole videos. And when I mentioned to my colleagues my latest video upload, a number of them started squealing and oohing and ahhing with delight that overnight oats was finally live. One said she’d make sure to watch it this weekend because she loved seeing me bring my mason jars in filled with my oats for breakfast during the summer. I didn’t realize how “exciting” oats would be to people. But I guess this goes to show that even when you think that something is boring or bland, others could completely think differently from what you’d assume.

Clearly, I need to do more studying on what appeals to the masses.

This year, I finally watched both of Ali Wong’s Netflix specials. While I didn’t find her first special particularly appealing, her second special after having a baby definitely had me laughing out loud. I also appreciated her even more knowing that she is Chinese-Vietnamese American and was born and raised in San Francisco. Being a stand-up comedian is hard, torturous, and oftentimes thankless (and painful and moneyless) work, but when you’re Asian American AND a woman? That’s enough to have anyone rethink the job and take on a safe white-collar 9-5 job instead. Once I saw her movie Always Be My Maybe, I was definitely hooked on her and officially a fan. She can be extremely crass and has a total potty mouth, but I actually think that adds to her unique charm. She’s brutally honest and authentic, and when you are an Asian American female, no one expects or wants that of you, so this becomes even more shocking when you hear her speak. I’ve been listening to the audio version of her book Dear Girls, a book she wrote for her daughters to read when they become adults, during my morning commutes this week, and it’s been such a happy, funny start to my day… quite a departure from listening to all the nonsense of President Dipshit via NPR’s Up First or the New York Times’s The Daily, which just makes my mind fall into a downward spiral given how dysfunctional our government and society are today.

So far, I pretty much agree with all her commentary and advice she’s giving to her daughters: move away from home to find yourselves, travel abroad when you can to understand another culture, another society; don’t follow in the footsteps of Asian American women who only date white men and say they consider Asian men like “brothers or family” because it’s actually internalized racism that they don’t realize.

However, I’m not sure I agree with her that vlogging cannot be a full time job. Does she have any idea how many hours can go into video editing…?!

I spent very little time on Facebook nowadays. When I am on it, I am either looking at all of my cooking and Instant Pot group posts or clicking out into a food- or travel-related article that someone I am Facebook friends with has posted. One friend posted this revelation of a status update that I could somewhat relate to now, especially since I’ve been working full time now over 11 years:

Three stages of career development:
1) I can’t wait to be important enough to be included in meetings.
2) I feel so important being part of all these meetings!
3) I need to think of something fast so I can avoid all these meetings.

So, to be fully transparent, I have never felt the urge of #1. I have certainly felt #2, especially when I was a manager at my last two companies (in retrospect, it was a false sense of importance. Everyone wants to feel “important” to some degree, but let’s face it: we’re all deluding ourselves. We are all still rats in the rat race at the end of the day). But #3 is definitely what I think of constantly. The number of meetings we have is truly out of control, and the all-time worse ones are the ones where they could have easily been replaced with a mass message to a Slack group or an email. We don’t really need to hear about bug updates or updates in services engagement processes in a meeting. Send a freaking email, and the same job gets done, but we just saved ourselves 30 minutes!

Internal meetings = the bane of my existence at work. We just need to stop 90% of them from happening.

I met my friend for dinner tonight in Nolita in the freezing cold. We are barely halfway through November, and the temperatures have already reached below freezing. After getting out of the subway, I really got unlucky and walked straight into the chilliest wind tunnel that wouldn’t stop until I reached the restaurant where I was going to meet her. But once inside, I was excited at the idea of eating Egyptian food. My only other experience with Egyptian food has been in Astoria, and that was years ago on a food tour. This time, this spot is far more casual, apparently a chain from Egypt that specializes in tameeya, which are fluffy fried or baked balls of mashed fava beans mixed with different herbs and spices, served with different sauces and vegetables in a fluffy pita-like bread pocket. They are like the Egyptian version of falafel and refuse to be called falafel. They have multiple signs in the restaurant that say “this is not falafel.” It’s actually a bit comical to me.

The flavor was definitely different, but the texture was very much like the better falafels I’ve had. The sauces were also a bit different, as some even included more pickled, piquant flavors, such as pickled lemon, which I wasn’t expecting at all, but was a welcome surprise. It’s always fun to discover new foods in different neighborhoods with friends. I’m lucky to have relatively adventurous friends when it comes to trying new foods.

Since joining my company 2.5 years ago, I’ve been able to enjoy the Veteran’s Day holiday as an actual day off. Two of the three Veteran’s Days I’ve had off, I’ve “celebrated” by going to Costco. Holidays are good days to go to Costco, as it tends to be a little bit less crowded. And today, as I went in the mid-afternoon, I would probably say it was the least crowded visit I’ve ever had to the Spanish Harlem location. I barely had to make room for anyone in the wide aisles, and the “line” that I was in got me in and out in less than five minutes.

There’s something special and nostalgic about going to Costco that I will always enjoy, even if I am not always discovering new things to buy that I supposedly “need.” It’s always comforting to get the things I know I can rely on in bulk that I know for a fact I am saving money on (some things like the Harmless Harvest coconut water, organic chicken thighs, butter, and the spices really cannot be beat), but other things that seem pretty boring even excite me. Take the 13.5-lb bag of baking soda. Who would have thought that this multi-functioning, massive bag of cleaner/scrubber/deodorant/baking leavener would make me so happy?! We have not even opened the fourth of the four-pack of Colgate toothpaste I literally bought two years ago on Veteran’s Day, but hey, toothpaste doesn’t go bad, so that makes me happy, too!

This time for new purchases, I picked up large bags of hemp seeds, chia seeds, and three pounds of almond flour. Chris will be happy to see that I got his favorite alphonso mango nectar. And for my “treat” for myself, I picked up a 1-gram container of Spanish saffron, what I also refer to as threads of gold. Costco occasionally sells speciality items throughout the year that vary depending on location and season, and I was only lucky enough to see this there one other time. So this time, I jumped on it. Saffron makes me so, so happy. I almost indulged even more and picked up some Madagascar vanilla beans, but I decided to not to go too crazy and put it back on the shelf. At $5 per bean, it’s far, far cheaper to buy these Costco vanilla beans, but I figure that I should wait to buy them another time when I have a very specific use case in mind.

Costco – one of my all time favorite stores: you never fail me, do you?

Even in the handful of months that I’ve been editing videos, it’s almost like I am doing a disservice to myself and my YouTube channel when I edit more recent videos and upload them before older videos that have just been in my editing backlog. I finished and uploaded my 16th video this morning on overnight oats. The way I’ve shot it, from the angles and the close-ups, is far superior to say, the Instant Pot masoor dal that is still sitting in my backlog from August when I shot it, waiting to be edited and uploaded. I feel like even the raw clips are just so inferior to what I did with this overnight oats video. So now I’m having the dilemma of whether I even want to use these dal clips or just trash them and start a new set for them…

Early yesterday evening before seeing Vir Das at Town Hall, I caught up with a former colleague who left my company about two months ago over ube coconut lattes in Koreatown. He was pretty miserable at my company when we were working together; every day felt like a waste to him. He was there over two years and never got a single raise despite performing well, and he felt like enough was enough, so he finally found a new job and left. Now, at his current company, he’s a remote employee 100 percent of the time, and while he gets along with his team and his boss, likely better than he did while at my company, he said he gets paid far more to do about 30 percent less than he did when at my company. It made him question why our functions even exist, why we get paid what we do, and whether there’s really a future in it for him… or really, any of us.

It’s a depressing thought when you think about it. When you’re an employee at an organization that you were not the founder/creator of, you think you get hired to fulfill a specific role, to fill in a void that needed to be filled. But what if you aren’t at capacity, yet everyone else seems to think you are? Is there really any meaning in your day-to-day responsibilities, in your job, in the function you were meant to fill? Who is really determining whether you are “at capacity anyway, and how is that even being defined? In most cases, it’s extremely subjective. And that’s where human error occurs, for better or for worse.