Our company is pretty focused on going public. As a result of that, all focus is on selling, selling, and more selling. And when that is the focus, what tends to happen is that culture tends to decline. As culture declines, people start leaving in droves. That can be a good and a bad thing. It’s good for the people who you don’t like because it means you don’t have to deal with them anymore. It’s bad when it comes to people who were genuinely amazing to work with, who you believe had high integrity and were just all-around great colleagues.

Another colleague on my team announced that he was resigning today. I’m not surprised, as I expected he would have left sooner if he had gotten the “right” offer. I honestly could care less that he’s leaving because as sad as it sounds, he ended up being one of the biggest disappointments I’d ever worked with. He was really smart and eager in the beginning, easy to get along with when he first started. When something didn’t go his way internally just a few months into being here (which had nothing to do with any of his peers, which includes me), he decided, pretty much overnight, to completely disengage with all of us. This meant not eating lunch with us, not speaking with us to our faces and only sending us messages over Slack, not joining any meetings in person in our conference rooms and instead “joining” by dialing in at his desk, and when approached in person, fully refusing to make eye contact and only looking down at his computer or phone. It was one of the pettiest, most immature treatments I’d ever encountered.

Good luck to him. It’s unfortunate to meet people who believe that the world should revolve around them, and that when things do not go their way that they should take it out on completely innocent people around them which had zero to do with the problem. The sense of entitlement is truly stunning to me.

This afternoon, we went to Chinatown for massages. I have not always really thought massages were particularly useful; they seemed more self-indulgent than anything. But in the last year or so when I have gotten injured from exercise, I’ve realized more how beneficial they can be and have enjoyed the experience much more. I find myself zoning out more and thinking about all kinds of different things during massages. Falling asleep during a massage, while that may sound relaxing, seems like a bit of a waste of money and time.

The other reason I think it’s important is that in a day and age when we are always so busy with endless distractions, social media, our love-hate relationship with our mobile devices, it’s important to have time for self-care and self-reflection. Massage time is perfect for both.

Unfortunately for us, the glorious night markets that grace cities as delicious as Taipei, Kaohsiung, and Chengdu do not happen in the U.S. at all. But for New York City, we’ve come to address that by creating our own version of a night market right in Queens in Corona Park. It happens annually and runs from the summer months through the end of October and seeks to offer diverse foods from around the world. Tonight, we met up some friends and enjoyed some Burmese tea salad, Taiwanese pork belly buns, lamb skewers, among other tasty things.

It is actually a bit frustrating that as diverse as Queens and all of New York City are that there aren’t more and better Burmese, Cambodian, and Malaysian options. There are a number of Malaysian spots that just haven’t lived up to their hype. Burmese restaurants are pretty much nonexistent outside of pop-ups and night market stalls. And Cambodian… they are mostly pseudo-Cambodian that have mostly Thai or semi-Vietnamese menus. The best Cambodian food we’ve had to date in the U.S. has been in Cleveland, Ohio, of all places. I still think fondly about that meal and how delicious it was, with herbs and fermented fish pastes that I’d never quite had before.

When I was young, I got bored a lot. Depending on the time of my childhood, I would read books, do chores, play with my toys, and then be done with them, and then I’d have nothing to do. So the words “I’m bored” came out of my mouth a lot then. Once middle school started, though, it was as though the word “boredom” was no longer part of my vocabulary. There was always something new to learn, to study, more homework to be finished, yet another test to prepare for. I started reading even more voraciously in my teen years, and there was always something new to crack open. Since then, I haven’t spent any period of time really thinking that I am bored… except in random moments, such as in pointless work meetings or being stuck in awful, mind-numbing conversations with people who are either too busy bullshitting or who are extremely high in their self-orientation. And now, in my adult life, I’ve always felt like there are endless things I need to get done or want to do, and that there is never enough time for any of them. Even on the weekends, even on periods I’ve had off from work… it all seems to go by too quickly, and while a lot of my “to-do” list may have been completed, there was still a half dozen or so more things I wish I could have gotten done “if I had more time.” As I’ve gotten older, the to-do list only seems to be growing longer and longer. The endless cycle of news also doesn’t really help with that, either. My reading list for books is officially out of control (though I am way ahead of my reading goal this year, having read 17 books in full, and we’re not even halfway through October yet! 12 was the original goal for each year).

So it was weird for me to hear someone tell me as an adult that she is bored all the time and that she oftentimes finds herself with nothing to do. Nothing to do as a grown adult — this idea is so puzzling to me and in some ways, maddening. There are always current events to keep up with (as insane as it has been in recent years with politics), new topics to explore, new places to visit and see, new neighborhoods and foods to experience. There are people you could be donating your time and energy to via countless nonprofit organizations in New York. Where is one’s intellectual curiosity if you are bored? If you have no curiosity, there will no creativity to create and do new things that will ultimately benefit others and the world around you. And you won’t be fulfilled.

There are lots of people out there in the world who would kill for the privilege of being us, living in a rich country with extremely comfortable, cushy jobs in the tech industry, which not only afford us benefits and perks, but also flexibility to allow us to come and go to the office as we need to. We have no clue as to what it would be like to be poor, to be an immigrant at the border stuck in squalor, to have some life-threatening illness. Especially since Ed died, I’ve intentionally thought about my life’s privileges often, pretty much every single day. I am thankful every day for what I have and think about it every morning and every night before bed. Even though I’ve certainly encountered my fair share of discrimination, lack of equity, and horrifying experiences, I’ve lived a very comfortable and privilege life, and I’m fully cognizant that most people in this world have not had even a fraction of the level of comfort I’ve been afforded. But it’s people like me who have these privileges who shouldn’t be wasting our lives on frivolous pursuits like filling our free time with endless shopping and video games, and should be focusing on what we’re passionate about, what will help the world be better. Ed’s death pushed me to think about how precarious life can be and how quickly it can all end. I don’t want to waste my life away, and I’ve intentionally thought since his death that I want to prove to him that life is worth living through the way I will live my life as long as I am here.

The world would be better off with people who choose to live their lives intentionally, meaningfully, instead of watching each day pass by, blankly wondering what the next day will have in store for them.

Space is limited in New York City, and when it’s limited, it means that it’s expensive. And so when it was my cousin’s son’s 7th birthday party today, it meant only a two-hour block of time at a children’s bounce castle play house — exactly 2:55 to 4:55, no more, no less. I genuinely thought it was a typo on the e-vite my cousin sent out. But let’s note that “two hours” really meant one hour in the bouncy house and one hour in a windowless, gymnasium/cafeteria style room with brightly painted walls that screamed of a terrible middle or high school life once again.

And because we got there late since we decided to get banh mi from Sunset Park in Brooklyn, we missed the kids’ play time in the bouncy castle and got stuck only experiencing the miserable room where there was no natural light, and kids and adults alike ate cheese and pepperoni pizza, drank soda and water, and ate generic ice cream cake.

I came for my cousin’s son, who barely took any notice of me and didn’t really seem to like any of his “friends” who were invited, either, other than two young girls. At least I didn’t have to watch him open gifts; that is always the worst part to me.

I’ve been struggling to get the light the way I really want it in my kitchen for filming cooking videos. The ideal light is always sometime between late morning and early afternoon; after that, all these shadows start forming and it becomes very unflattering to do video. But then our handyman friend suggested tilting the living room ceiling lights to face into the kitchen and tilted some. As I was shooting chicken enchiladas today, I realized that there is still a bright yellow tint after the sun sets… and I wasn’t really thrilled with the close up shots of my enchiladas. They look too yellow and warm, which means I’ll need to figure out how much color editing I’d be able to do to correct this.

Chris then proceeded to move a few more of the living room ceiling lights into the kitchen, which is actually a good thing because we never want the living room that bright anyway. Now, the kitchen looks like a studio for shooting! And the light would be accurate to show the color of the enchiladas or anything else.

Given that our Seamless app has converted into Grubhub for our corporate accounts where we get a daily $20 credit to use, the number of options has increased exponentially since this switch; I can’t even count how many new places I now have access to at work that I didn’t even know I could order from! So today, I tried a Georgian place not too far away from the office. For $11, I ordered khinkali, which are Georgian dumplings with a thick, handmade skin, normally filled with a ground meat mixture. I rarely get to eat Georgian food; the last time I had it was in July, when I was in Rego Park seeing off my friend moving to Hong Kong, and we had a delicious Georgian feast together. I excitedly waited for my dumplings to arrive.

And, arrive they did. A teeny tiny box of… three dumplings. That’s three dumplings for $11. Really? That’s all I get?! While they were quite delicious, they weren’t particularly large, and it was just sad to see these three little blobs in my box alone. “Is that all you got?” my colleague said, looking over with a wrinkled brow at my box.

Welp. That was the first and last time I’m ordering from there. Delicious? Yes. Good value? Absolutely, heck no.

Autumn officially started a couple of weeks ago, but the temperatures didn’t really start dipping into the “I need to wear a jacket in the morning” feeling until this week. I resisted it on Monday, when it was definitely jacket weather, but I rebelled and left the house only wearing a thin cotton cardigan on top… and then really regretted it and wear my office hoodie home. I go through this same phase every year when summer has ended and autumn is pushing its way into my life: I resist, resist, resist, and then cave in.

The only things keeping me going are what’s keeping me productive: autumn baking and cooking, as well as video editing and my channel. Autumn is a great time for baking with all the squash and spices, so it is a good time to experiment again.

If you know me at all, you will know I absolutely hate picky eaters. As a child of a certain age, it’s passable because you’re a child and your taste buds are still developing, but an adult, it is not. You maybe get 3-5 different things you’re allowed to hate and can refuse to eat, and then after that, your tastes in food are pretty much just dead to me; I could never take you seriously for any food advice, opinions, or recommendations. Because as an adult, it is a choice to be picky. It is a choice to be close minded to new things, new ideas, new foods, new cultures’ foods that you’ve never had before. Unless you have serious food allergies or a disease that prevents you from trying new things, it’s just a childish choice to me.

So I was sitting at the lunch table today, listening to a new colleague go on and on about how picky of an eater he is, that picky eating is a “personality trait” and that he can’t stand ground meat, but he’d happily eat a burger or a meatball “because in one, it’s all put together, and in the other, it’s just all crumbled all over the place.” I could feel my blood pressure go up. He was literally sitting there, thriving on all this attention he was getting, this grown white man, having nearly every person around the lunch table poke and prod, ask him “what about this?” and “will you eat that?” His face was truly priceless. I don’t know what made him more excited: the attention he was getting from his pickiness or his actual pickiness not being completely shat on by someone like me.

I’m an adult. And part of being an adult is remembering to think before we speak. So, instead of saying anything, I chose to simply leave the lunch table. I can’t be around ignorant talk, nor can I be around reinforcement of ignorance. This is the exact kind of person I really do not want to spend any time around at all.

I wonder if I’d be able to access data for exactly how many people in a given week come to New York for work. And then after I look at the data for that, I’d really like to understand of the number of people who travel to New York for work whether that travel was actually necessary for real business purposes, or if it was justified as fluffy internal meetings or accompanying supposed direct reports on their customer meetings. Regardless, New York is a hot place to visit, and it’s an even hotter place to visit when you’re not traveling on your own dime.

I cannot even count the number of “fluffy” BS visits I’ve heard of at companies where I’ve worked when people just wanted an excuse to travel to New York, so they made them up. The most recent one was for a supposed “internal” training that would have lasted an hour… and could easily have been done over a video and screen-share meeting.

So oftentimes now, when I hear that someone is coming to New York for “business” purposes, I usually just chuckle to myself and think, “Sureeeee they are.”