A friend and I caught up over dinner tonight near his new apartment, which he wanted me to see since he just moved in last month. It’s actually owned by the same management company that my building is a part of, so I was interested to see how it compared. I’d previously visited a few units here two years ago, but given I generally hate anywhere in the 30s on the west side, it never would have been a fit for me.

The first thing I noticed about the apartment is that for a “luxury” building, the layout was definitely non-standard: you don’t just walk in, have an open kitchen to your right or left, the living/lounge area, and then turn left or right to see the bathroom and bedroom. Here, there was actually a pretty long living space that would easily accommodate a separate dining area. The kitchen was half open, and the closet space was quite overwhelming. Several of his closets weren’t even filled with anything as of yet!

But the biggest annoyance about the place was the total lack of natural light. Anywhere in midtown in the 30s, whether it’s on the west or east side, would be starved for natural light, but especially his area between 8th and 9th Avenue. You’re surrounded by skyscrapers and other tall office and apartment buildings; it wouldn’t matter if you were on the 10th or 30th floor because there’d still be no light. In that case, there’d be zero reason to pay more for a higher floor because there’d be no extra natural light to justify it. Bigger windows wouldn’t help in any case.

Even if you live in a “luxury” building in Manhattan and are paying luxury prices, there’s still no guarantee you will get everything you want.

I came late to our team happy hour this evening given that I’ve had a lot of things on my plate this week, but I realized when I arrived that I wasn’t really feeling it. We do have a lot of new people who have joined our team here in New York in the last couple of months, so I should have been more social, but I wasn’t really feeling it. I just felt exhausted and disengaged. I stayed for about an hour and then ended up leaving… and picked the absolute worst time to leave, as there was torrential downpour at that time. And it was not just endless buckets of rain coming down, but the wind was out of control. The weather report said the rain wouldn’t end until around 9:30 and kept sending me multiple alerts for flash flooding, and there was no way I was going to stand around for another hour and a half just to get home. So instead, I ran about 5 blocks to get to the subway station, taking breaks under cover occasionally to clear my vision and wring my dress. I thoroughly drenched my flats, dress, and hair; I can’t remember ever getting this soaked in rain ever before. And very empathetic women and men on the subway told me that my eye makeup had completely run down my face as I was using a napkin to dab it all away.

Luckily for me, when I got out of the train at the stop closest to my apartment, the rain had lightened to just above a drizzle, so I was able to get home okay, wring out my clothes, and then have a quick shower to get comfortable. I am never not packing an umbrella when there’s even a hint of rain in the weather report ever again. I rationalized it in the end, thinking that even with an umbrella, I still would have gotten drenched, but it’s better to come prepared anyway.

As a joke among a handful of Asian females on my team, at our team week in June, one of my colleagues got all of the Asian females on our team a “wrong Asian” pin. Unfortunately at our company, we’ve had more than a handful of instances of people confusing us for each other, and so we thought we’d keep the inside joke running along regarding how dumb people can be to actually think we’re all interchangeable.

So, you can imagine how I felt when my Australian colleague, who is based out of our London office, said “Hey, Mei!” to me today. He and I get along really well and have endless fun banter when it’s just the two of us, but given that I was between too many meetings today, stretched thin for time, and he said this to me, I looked at him in shock and said, “What the heck — did you just call me Mei?!”

“Whoa, whoa!” he said, defensively. “Calm down! I said ‘hey, mate!'”

We both cracked up. My sensitivity was clearly on high given my work to-do list has felt never-ending, but at least we both had a good chuckle about this. He knows the story behind this. However, I did tell him he’d be in a lot of trouble if he ever did confuse us in the future.

Since I’ve come back from our China trip, it’s been pretty much nonstop at work, fighting fires that were created in my absence that I had to resolve, traveling for customer and prospect onsite, more and more meetings to accomplish the endless to-do list at work. Sometimes, even though I think overall, the work is meaningful in my day-to-day role, I cannot help but think that a lot of what I am doing is so robotic, and the way we are being measured is feeling more like quantity over quality: quantity of customer meetings, quantity of tasks completed over quality of tasks. It’s exhausting to think about it.

I was looking at my calendar for the rest of this week, and I couldn’t believe the number of meetings I scheduled, one literally after the other, so that I could barely have any time to breathe and think between meetings. I don’t really know why I did this, but now, I’ve pretty much forced myself into this situation and can’t really get out of it. There is light at the end of the tunnel… at the end of this week.

Chris and I were at dinner early this evening when suddenly, all the lights and music suddenly went out in the restaurant. The service staff got into motion, checking everything, ensuring that the patrons were all fine. Our server/bartender served each of us two shots of tequila on the house. They took care of credit card payments the old fashioned way. And as we finished eating and exited the restaurant, we realized that this was affecting the entire area. We were literally standing in the heart of the theater district, where shows had to stop mid-way through or had to be cancelled. Crowds and crowds of people were exiting theaters, unsure what to do next or where to go. Traffic lights were not working, and cars and pedestrians alike were hesitant to move forward.

It was a strange sight and lasted for a good handful of hours. We were lucky and regained power just past 10:30 on Saturday night. It really would not have been so bad if it were not for the sweltering heat. But it really became jarring to know that this power outage happened when someone posted a photo on Twitter showing how Manhattan looked to someone viewing the island from New Jersey…. lots of glittering lights as usual… except for an entire 20-block stretch of Manhattan that was just all black, lights fully out.

Tonight, Chris and I treated my friend and her boyfriend to a belated birthday dinner at an omakase restaurant I’d been wanting to try in the Flatiron. We caught up over sashimi and sake, and then ended up making a detour back to our place because Chris accidentally left a gift we got her at the apartment. It ended up all working out since it just meant extended time together in the comfort of our own home, with far less expenses under our belts since drinking and eating cake at home is always cheaper than doing the exact same activity outside.

During our catch up, my friend’s boyfriend said, “Yeah, I worry about a lot of things… like money, having enough money to do what I want to do, for the future, and all that. But us? I don’t really worry about our relationship. Not saying that I take her for granted because I don’t think I do… but well, I just don’t worry about us. I think we’re good.”

I didn’t say anything to that. I guess that’s how he feels. But I did think about it for a bit in the context of myself. What do I worry about? What makes me fearful of the future? In response to him in my head, I’m very lucky and privileged because I don’t worry about money. In fact, my entire life, I’ve never really had to worry about it, and that is a massive privilege in itself. While I never thought my parents were rich, I always knew we were comfortable in that we never had to worry about rent money, having a roof over our heads, or how we would get food on the table. We always had more than enough to eat, and a variety at that. But the saddest part about that is so many families do have to worry about that, as well as their children. And to me, I don’t think the worries of parents should ever, in a perfect world, have to be the worries of their children. And in the event that I ever had money issues, I know that Chris and I would have the support of our families. Not everyone is fortunate enough to be in that position.

I don’t really worry about work, even though I have a lot of frustrations with it, as any average person would. Circumstances and expectations frustrate me, internal politics and favoritism anger me to no end, but as far as the day to day goes, I’m not very concerned about the stability of my job; I do not fear that my next paycheck will get lost. I earn a comfortable living and have relatively good work-life balance.

Health, knock on wood, is not a concern right now. Other than the annoying colds I’ve gotten which have reignited bad coughing fits that have been reminiscent of my whooping cough days, I’d say I’m relatively healthy and fit for my age.

And similar to my friend’s boyfriend, I guess overall, I don’t really worry about my relationship with Chris. I think we are pretty stable and happy together. We have a lot of differences. He drives me crazy pretty much every single day and is one of the most annoying people I know, but he likely feels the same way about me, and to my friend’s point, that’s probably what keeps us together in the end, whether we are fully conscious of it or not. We both get bored easily; if you get annoyed by someone, it probably means you’re not getting bored.

So what does worry me? I don’t think about it very often, but I guess it’s all the things that are fully out of my control: stupid political situations like the U.S. becoming more anti people of color, anti-women, anti-immigrants; a potential World War III created by President Dipshit, climate change wiping out entire islands, cities, and states. I also worry about the things that are fully not real, but could easily become real in a second: a sudden death of someone close to me, who is going to take care of my parents one day when they are not able to take care of themselves, one of us getting a heart attack and dying while in flight on an airplane and having no help until it’s too late, contracting stage 4 of X cancer and not having any awareness of it until it’s too late. It all sounds a little ridiculous, some more than others, but when I do worry, those are the things I think about.

All in all, I’d say it’s a pretty decent set of things to worry about because I suppose this means I am fairly stable and relatively positive? I don’t always think the worst, even if it sometimes seems to be that way.

Since it’s our annual team week this week and I will not be there, a lot of my colleagues have been asking me where I am going and what I’ll be doing instead. I never intentionally planned for personal travel during this time, but from my perspective, it seemed like poor planning on our team leadership’s part by never polling anyone to ask what their summer plans were. It is what it is.

While many have responded saying that they think my trip will be really exciting, filled with delicious food, historical sights, and a walk through, in Shanghai, of memory lane, I got one response that I wasn’t completely prepared for.

“WOW! That sounds amazingly exotic! I hope you have an amazing time!” one colleague exclaimed.

“Exotic”? I had to give myself some time to take this in to understand why I was not a huge fan of that word choice, and why this response kind of made me uncomfortable. In its plainest definition and form, “exotic” means “originating in or characteristic of a distant foreign country.” So, for example, we oftentimes will call a bird “exotic” if it is not of the native land in which we reside. A secondary definition of “exotic” is: “attractive or striking because of colorful or out of the ordinary.”

The above definitions don’t seem offensive, right? And I know from knowing and working with this colleague that she in no way would ever mean to be offensive or rude at all. But it still made me feel a little annoyed. And it reminded me of why I hate the term “oriental” when describing East Asia and why it’s always bothered me. It rarely is spoken or heard, this term, but very occasionally, I do see it in writing, and I do hear people use the term “oriental” when referring to food or even groups of people, and those people are usually older since the term is quite dated. The cheeky response back to someone who would ever attempt to call me oriental is, “Well, I’m not a carpet.” And the meaning behind a comeback like that is… I’m not an object. Calling me “oriental” is basically objectifying me and my culture, and no one wants to be objectified. But to flush that thought out more thoroughly, Erika Lee, the director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota and author of The Making of Asian America: A History,” explained this: “In the U.S., the term “oriental” has been used to reinforce the idea that Asians were/are forever foreign and could never become American. These ideas helped to justify immigration exclusion (hello, Chinese Exclusion Act), racial discrimination and violence, political disfranchisement, and segregation.” Lee also claimed that the continued use of the term “perpetuates inequality, disrespect, discrimination and stereotypes towards Asian Americans.”

So that is really what I hear when I hear someone call my mother or father country “exotic.” It’s being categorized as “other,” “foreign,” “distant,” removed from the everyday that is here in the United States. It is not like us here in the land of the free. And that truly is not the case because the U.S. is a country of immigrants from around the globe. I wish more people would readily acknowledge that and acknowledge that all our differences is what truly make up this country.

A friend of mine, who temporarily relocated back from Amsterdam to New York City, where she is from, has been in town the last couple of months before she, her husband, and their 1-year-old daughter move to Hong Kong for work. She lives out in Jamaica, which is pretty much in outer queens close to where JFK airport is, and that’s also where she grew up. When we’ve met up for dinner when she’s either been visiting from Amsterdam or back in town this last month, it’s always been in Queens… not necessarily because she insisted upon it (she really did not), but more because I thought, hey, this would be a great excuse to go to Queens since pretty much no one else wants to go there with me to eat (other than Chris when dragged and especially for dosa, and my male “travel for food” friends). While all of New York City is a foodie mecca, my heart will always be in Queens for the variety of cuisines. And given she has been away for so long, it’s also an excuse for her to eat the food of her own borough which has been sorely neglected. She had an endlessly long list of restaurants specifically in Rego Park and Forest Hills that she wanted to try, so we chose a Georgian restaurant from it (that I’d actually already eaten at, but loved).

“You’re the best! I don’t know anyone else who wants to come to Queens to eat the way you do!” she enthused.

Yeah, for the most part, her commute would be shorter than mine, but I don’t even think of it that way. I just want to go there, eat, explore, and also catch up with her, of course. So this isn’t hard at all for me.

I was telling my colleague this before I left the office, and she groaned at the idea of going to Queens. She lives about 15 blocks from the office, walks to and from each day, and thinks that is too long of a commute. Her mom lives in Elmhurst, but she refuses to go there, so her mom always comes into Manhattan to see her. “That is soooo far,” she grumbled. “Why would you go out there just to eat? You should have asked her to meet you somewhere in Manhattan.”

“Um, do you remember anything about me?” I retorted back. “Plus, the food is so good in Queens!”

This colleague is not at all alone in this attitude, though, and it’s always driven me crazy about people in Manhattan. But then I realize… it’s not even a Manhattan thing. The people who live in Flatiron or Union Square don’t want to leave downtown. The people who live in Hoboken don’t want to go anywhere that’s over a 15-minute drive away. The colleagues I have in Willamsburg don’t want to leave Williamsburg or any neighboring areas of Brooklyn. The laziness is pervasive of pretty much anyone who has some level of privilege and doesn’t *need* to go to another neighborhood for things like food, groceries, work. And not everyone is lucky enough to have that ability.

New York City is a big place, and there are still so many parts of it I haven’t explore enough. And I don’t want to be that person who doesn’t know about the other neighborhoods of her own city. I think my mind (and stomach) would benefit from this exploration.

Endless restaurants are always opening up in New York City. With that also comes the endless variety, and one type of cuisine that is picking up in popularity as well as general ubiquity is vegan cuisine. Once upon a time, I wasn’t that open to these types of restaurants, but seeing how creative food has become for non-meat eaters has actually been a bit inspiring for me. Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have been gaining crazy traction to the point where the Impossible Burger is actually experiencing a shortage in supply; restaurants’ demands for this are exceeding the supply, so many places (like Roast in Detroit last week) are actually on wait lists to get more of these, and had to temporarily take it off their bar menu). And as I’ve been trying more vegan “cheeses,” I am more and more impressed with how delicious they’ve become.

Tonight, my friend and I went to a small, quaint vegan French restaurant in the West Village. Honestly, when I hear “French cuisine,” all I can think about are a) butter, b) cheese, and c) all things flaky pastry, which inevitably mean butter, eggs, and sugar. Well, this place does serve vegan croissants and sugar, but definitely no genuine butter or cheese. The tastiest thing we shared was the vegan “brie” that was actually made out of macadamia nuts. I probably could have just snacked on that all night and been totally satisfied. With all the innovations coming out of the plant-based food movement, I’m eager to see what else I can taste that is delicious and better for our planet.

Well, it’s that time of the year again when our company’s annual Impact Week happens, which is the one week of the year that all of our offices globally volunteer time with those less fortunate than us in our local communities. As our office’s ambassador, I organized three different events for our team this week, with the first one at a local church near Grand Central Station with the organization Coalition for the Homeless. This organization passes out pre-prepared food in containers and bags for those in need, so it’s almost like a “takeout for the homeless” setup.

The event was very straightforward – we prepped the food stations, served the different components of the meal to the people who came in. We were told by the volunteer coordinator that almost all were regulars, sadly, so he recognized many by both face and name, and always wished them well. The saddest thing about continually seeing them day after day, week after week, is that he knew their lives were not getting any better. And that made him really sad. Not only that, but they knew the schedule for each of the places that offered food, the types of dishes/fruit/drinks to expect, and what the food setup would be (e.g. here, it would be all takeout food, but the church two blocks down actually has table service). They all have their routine and route down pat.

As I walked home, I called my dad to see how he was doing, and he asked why I was getting out of work so late. I told him that we were actually ending a volunteer opportunity serving meals to the homeless. He then asked me if my pay raise was reflected in my last paycheck given my promotion, and I said yes. “That’s good,” he said. “Well, I guess it doesn’t really matter since most of your salary is going to Uncle Sam, anyway!” He loves to mention that pretty much every time anyone talks about any type of increase in pay.

I thought for a moment, thinking about what he said. “Well, that’s okay,” I said back to him, “Because I rather be the one serving these meals at the homeless center than on the receiving end, so I’m not going to complain about any of that. I know I have it really good.”

Dad agreed with me, and we moved onto the next topic.