Chances are high that if you are ordering Chinese food outside of Manhattan Chinatown, Elmhurst, Flushing, or other areas that are known for their Chinese food that you will be paying a premium for what could be subpar or passable Chinese food. I recently discovered a Sichuanese Chinese restaurant in the heart of the theater district that is supposed to have relatively authentic dishes, just at much higher prices. All of the seafood dishes are in the mid-20s, and even the Chinese pea shoots, the most coveted and delicate Chinese vegetable, are $20.

“$20 for pea shoots?” Chris exclaimed. “That’s insane!”

Well, it’s two things: pea shoots are already pricey when you buy them at the Chinese market. At their peak, they could go for $8/pound, and in the average Chinese restaurant, they would probably cost $15-16? And then second part is that this restaurant is located in a non-Chinese area, so they can charge a premium for this.

The other thing I think is a bit unfair is that everyone tends to assume that vegetables should be cheap when compared to meat. Fresh, in-season produce is usually not as expensive, yes, but I do not think we should be cheapening vegetables in the way that people oftentimes assume Chinese or Indian food should be cheaper than say, Italian or French food. That then diminishes the value of these foods in our life.

At work today, we had a baking contest… that I did not participate in. I got a bit of shock and confusion in reaction to my lack of participation. One colleague joked that I was ‘throwing shade’ by not participating. Another colleague said that I was probably too much of a food snob to participate. Maybe all of the above is true to a degree, but what was worse was when I actually saw some of these things on the kitchen counter.

One of the batches of chocolate chip cookies (can you ever have a bake-off and NOT see chocolate chip cookies in some form?) looked more like little tiny poop dumps of coal with black spots all over them (those are the chocolate chips). The chocolate chip banana bread was severely overbaked and thus extremely dry. When I was trying to search for the banana flavor, instead of being a rich, sweet, gooey banana flavor, it was faint, barely detectable (the bananas were not at their ripest and if anything, were still green or yellow… ewwww). The second set of chocolate chip cookies didn’t brown much at all, and they spread so much that they looked more like chocolate chip pizzas than cookies. And then was of course the paleo/gluten-free baked good for those counting carbs: zucchini-cheddar “muffins” made with grated zucchini, cheddar, smoked bacon, almond flour, and scrambled eggs, baked in little muffin tins. These were savory and delicious. But my favorites were the pao de queijo (Brazilian cheese bread) and the corn bread.

After reviewing the baked goods today, I do realize that I could come off as a jerk for not participating, but hey, I’m focused on other projects now. But even more, I’ve realized exactly why people are so happy to pay $4 for a slice of banana bread or $5 for a cupcake — because they could never produce even half the quality at home due to a total lack of skill or simply following direction. And don’t even get me started on applauding yourself when you’ve managed to bake a banana bread loaf when it’s dry, barely tastes like banana, and then have the audacity to share it like it’s amazing when it definitely is not. If I made banana bread like that, it would never leave my kitchen, much less get shared with colleagues. I have a reputation to uphold.

The last few months, outside of what I am making for dinner, I’ve felt pretty unmotivated. I’ve still been reading the news, updating this blog, reading books, and doing travel research, but in general, my desire to “do more” and push myself is at an all-time low. On weekends, when I used to wake up to catch up on current events and read long feature articles, I just want to lie in bed and sleep longer and longer. It’s felt borderline depressive.

Part of this is influenced by the deluge of negative news every single day, whether it’s the latest stupid thing that Trump and his incompetent and hateful administration are saying and doing, the recent mass shooting in New Zealand and now bombing in Sri Lanka, and even just the general monotony and politics of being in the tech industry. The world just seems so unkind, unwelcoming, as though progress has been halted and if anything, we are even regressing. The idea that abortion rights would be taken away in this country that has technically legalized it since 1973, that people from countries with predominantly Muslims would be banned from entering this country — it’s like one bad thing after another that seems to get cemented. Then, there’s stupid process for the sake of process at a company that is trying to act like a 10,000-person company when we are only 400+ that is nauseating to me.

So, we’ve identified a new way for me to motivate myself, and that will be through filming cooking videos. The annoying thing about this is that I have to teach myself how to do video editing, but as I am studying now, it’s actually not as bad as I thought. And it could even become a bit addictive in a productive way. We will see how this goes.

Tonight, we went to see To Kill a Mocking Bird on Broadway. I’m embarrassed to say that even though I obviously went to school in this country that I never read this book in any of my classes. It’s not as though we didn’t read about race, though. If anything, we read books with far more blunt titles like Black Boy by Richard Wright, and others with themes of racism like William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. But regardless of that, I always knew the story line of Harper Lee’s classic book.

The basic story line is that a young “white trash” girl named Mayella Ewell accuses a black man of raping her (she’s also fully brainwashed, abused, and molested by her Ku Klux Klan member father, but hey, that’s besides the point), and thus, this young black man is standing trial. The jury is made up of all white, rural farmers. You can guess what the verdict is going to be regardless of any “evidence” that is brought up during the trial. But the most striking part of the entire play to me is when the girl suddenly breaks her silence and inability to speak by rambling on and on, in a style similar to her father’s, about how she feels like she’s trapped “in a prison” with these “animals” (she’s referring to black people) roaming around, taking white people’s land that “don’t belong to them. How could she possibly continue living like this? How could any white person?

I felt completely nauseated after her monologue of shrieking and wailing was done. And I realized I felt that way because that her awful, hateful, racist monologue was pretty much what most Trump supporters and Fox News are saying today, just that that specific monologue was set during the early 1930s, whereas the hateful speech we hear today against black, brown, Muslim, or any person of color… it’s toned down and made slightly more nuanced and subtle by members of the Republican Congress, Republicans, and Trump Supporters who want to “take our country back” and “make America great again!”

If anyone in tonight’s audience could not see these sentiments of Mayella Ewell echoed in the news today, in the hate crimes that are on the rise today, in the insipid and hate-driven speeches by Trump, his supporters, and the majority of the ball-less Republican Party, then they had to have been absolutely deaf.

During my rigorous morning workouts of the last month, I managed to get a knot in the back of my butt… which then transformed itself into a sharp pain beginning in my piriformis muscle all the way down my thigh when I would do any butt stretch or butterfly stretch. I didn’t even know the muscle in the back of my butt was called piriformis until I looked up this kind of pain, but either way, I was not pleased. This is the fourth time I’ve been injured in the last year. They say this type of thing happens when you do not stretch enough before rigorous exercise, but I always stretch… maybe just not long enough? So I’ve been icing, stretching, massaging, and rolling that area with a hard ball multiple times a day in an attempt to release the toxins and get the tightness to go away.

These are signs that my body is changing and that I’m definitely getting older. There’s nothing else that can be said about this. Until last July, I’d never even known what a physical injury really felt like from exercise. I guess you learn something new every day, huh?

Today marks my two-year anniversary working at the company where I currently do. It has certainly been full of ups and downs, even ones that I would never have expected if you asked me to predict what would happen in the two years that have passed. I’ve likely met the smartest and most dedicated colleagues I’ve ever known here, some I would even consider “friends.” I somehow became the top performing person on my team last year and am on my way to our President’s Club trip in early May. Financially, I’m doing the best I ever have in my life.

Yet, despite all of those things, the things I’ve always known deep down will continue to be true: I’m still Asian and still a woman, and people will always see that first, particularly in a white-male dominated environment, where when women succeed, they are almost always white, and when they are not, frankly, they’ve had a mix of luck and politics on their side. And in the rat race, even when you are winning as they say, you are still a pathetic rat in the end.

So, I went back with my newly typed and printed visa application form this morning for the second time this week. The line somehow was shorter today, and it seemed to be moving so much quicker. And this time, the security machine scanning all our bags/coats was working, too, so no manual inspection!

A retired couple who travels to what sounds like a dozen countries every year was in line behind me. They’re planning a 2-week trip to China next month, and they got upset last week when they came in because their applications literally got thrown back at them because the woman reviewing all the forms said that they not only needed proof of hotel confirmations, but they also needed a letter typed in Chinese from the Chinese government saying they would be approved to enter the country.

“If you don’t have that, then you aren’t going to be successful today, either!” the retired woman exclaimed to me.

I had a few seconds of panic. There was no way in hell that could possibly have been the case. Chris got in just fine yesterday! He just showed the usual forms and the hotel confirmations I have!

I held my breath as the working woman scanned my forms again and eventually gave me my ticket number. Nope, no government corruption, no stupid letter needed. I was finally in.

Chris and I went to the Chinese Consulate office this morning to submit our visa applications for our upcoming trip to Mainland China. Neither of us has been since our separate trips before we knew each other 2006, and for whatever reason, this visa trip seemed to be so much more cumbersome than it was back then. Chris prepared our forms… yet somehow, he typed his form and hand wrote my form. And when we got to the front of the line, the woman reviewing applications turned me away, saying they have just stopped accepting handwritten forms and that all applications need to be typed. So, I’d have to type the damn form, print it, and bring it back. I was NOT happy.

Somehow, going to my own fatherland is so much more exasperating than going to any other country to date. I wonder why that is.

In New York, where space is a luxury, it’s amazing to even say that you live in an apartment with a standard-sized refrigerator and freezer. In our last apartment, we didn’t have a standard size for either, so when we moved into this place, it was like we had a field day stuffing the freezer with as many things as we could. It’s a pull-out freezer, so unfortunately, we end up stacking things on top of each other… and then slowly forget what we’ve purchased.

The one thing I never forget I buy when I go to Costco is a leg of lamb. They sell Australian lamb only at Costco, and it’s always the best price out of any place. I spent five hours today slow-roasting the leg in Persian spices and got to use my new pomegranate molasses for the first time. When one leg of lamb gets eaten, on the next Costco trip, it inevitably gets replaced. But that usually means we only end up having a leg of lamb maybe 2-3 times a year.

It ended up turning out tasty, but I’ll be honest and say I couldn’t taste the sweetness of the pomegranate molasses or honey at all. I guess this just means we’ll need to experiment with another lamb leg I’ll get on the next Costco trip.

While in Chinatown today, we were looking for a Vietnamese place to eat dinner and came across a spot that had relatively recently opened, so I decided to check it out. We ordered bun bo hue and banh xeo, both which were quite tasty and would mean we’d have faith in coming back to try other things. One of the things that caught my eye on the menu was bo 7 mon, or Vietnamese 7 courses of beef. This is one of those traditional banquet-type meals for special Vietnamese events, or historically, government officials, that serves Vietnamese beef in seven different and delicious ways. The first time I’d ever had this was in Westminster, California, the heart of Orange County, where the biggest Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam lives. I loved every single part of it, and have wondered when I’d see it at other places. Gradually, we found one spot in San Francisco that serves this, a couple in San Jose, and that’s really been it. And given that New York’s Vietnamese population isn’t that big, it was quite a surprise to see this on the menu here. Next time, I’m definitely trying this. I did notice that no price was set on the menu, and it simply said, “S.P.”