I met my friend for dinner tonight at the Canal Street Market, where we shared steamed rice noodle rolls, ceviche, and shaved ice. While I am not completely a fan of food markets for the sake of food markets, especially when a lot of food markets nowadays tend to be extremely expensive, Canal Street Market does a pretty good job of having reasonable price points and a varied selection of food. It’s not just Asian food here — they even have a token salad stall and a ceviche stall.

I thought about Joe’s Steamed Rice Roll, which I shared two of with my friend tonight, and which I just had a couple weeks ago in their original location in Flushing. It makes me happy to think about these small food businesses that started so small and humble in Flushing, and having made it and attracted endless lines and waits, have moved into Manhattan and even have their own branding. That reminded me of how big Xi’an Famous Foods has become, as well, also having started in a tiny food stall in a nondescript basement in Flushing. When there’s nothing else, there is still hope for good and delicious food.

Our friends in Sacramento came to visit this week and came over for brunch today. Even though it’s been a year since we last saw them, not a lot has changed for us. We’re still doing the things we always do: living in the same apartment, experimenting with different recipes in the kitchen, eating out, theater, work, work travel, and fun travel. On their end, while they’re fully settled into their new home they bought in Sacramento, it’s been a lot of family life for them given they have family nearby, and not as many friends. They haven’t spent as much time looking for new friends because most of their out-of-work time is either spent with each other after work or with family on weekends. Family time really is their social time now.

For myself, I don’t really mind not being that close to any family. I guess I have one cousin in New York, but he’s not a desirable person to spend social time with. I kind of like that when we visit our family in San Francisco and Melbourne that it feels like a special time because we’re not always there. You’re no longer special and prioritized when you live in the same place with someone, right?

A couple friend of ours who relocated to northern California last year are in town this week for work, and so they invited themselves (well, they knew we’d agree if we were also in town) over for Sunday brunch. I got excited since we haven’t seen them in about a year since they relocated to Sacramento, but I also got excited because it meant I’d have another opportunity to try out some new recipes. Since I got my Instant Pot, I knew I wanted to test out the “yogurt” incubator mode to make dosa/idli batter. Dosa and idli are made from the exact same fermented batter; the only difference is that the idli batter is the fermented batter as it is once it’s finished rising, while the dosa batter is idli batter that is thinned out with water. This helps with getting it nice and crispy when you fry it on a pan to make a super thin crepe. Dosa batter, traditionally, doesn’t use any real learners like yeast or baking soda; it relies completely on the fermentation coming from the urad dal lentils, rice, and methi seeds. This failed the last time I tried it last year, and the batter never rose, and I had thick crappy pancakes to eat for a whole week because I didn’t want to throw out the batter (wasted food is the enemy in my house). So, I don’t know if it’s the problem of the air in this apartment or what, but I’m hoping the Instant Pot incubating mode can resolve my worries.

I took one of my customers out to lunch today, and one of the members of the team is planning a two-week-long vacation to Japan, visiting multiple cities both urban and in the countryside. I asked him where he was going, and given his interests, I suggested he add Hiroshima to the list. It’s strange to me to hear about Americans visiting Japan, some multiple times, and never expressing any desire to go to Hiroshima, the city that this country decided to flatten and decimate within seconds at the end of World War II. I don’t want to be openly judgmental about it, but I try to be effusive when I recommend it from a historical and empathetic perspective. Don’t we as Americans have a responsibility to know what we did to this group of innocent people during one of the major world wars? And aside from that, Hiroshima is a beautiful city with Miyajima Island, a beautiful half- or full-day trip away, as well as the delicious local oysters and okonomiyaki. To me, it’s a win-win to add this city to one’s Japan itinerary.

I gave him my 2-minute pitch, and at the end of it, he said, “I’m sold. Send me all your recommendations there, and I’ll retinker my itinerary.”

That’s what I can sell without even trying: food and and travel.

I went out to Forest Hills today to attend a friend’s housewarming party/baby shower. Since Chris is traveling internationally, I went on my own. And I’d never really felt more unattached than when I showed up at this party, where literally everyone, with the exception of the host’s two single friends, his mother, and his grandmother, were all paired up. I’m generally a social and outgoing person, but at this party, pretty much no one wanted to talk to me because everyone seemed to be glued at the hip to their plus-one/boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife. The people who ended up talking to me were 1) the host obviously and 2) the two single male friends who came. One of the friends was familiar to me since I met him the last time I came to this friend’s house for a dinner, and so he ended up latching onto me, for better or for worse. We clearly had very little in common, so it was a nice break when the second male friend arrived and could change up the conversation topics. I got asked a few times where my husband was… not because anyone knew Chris, but because they saw the wedding band/engagement rings on my left hand. Go figure that everyone is going to want to size me up to some degree.

I don’t really think about being married that often in a social context because…. I suppose I’ve never really had to think about it. Chris and I are not the couple who attends an event and cannot be separated. In fact, we tend to break off pretty often, and sometimes it seems like he’s just more social when I am not there. But I could tell that the host’s friend who latched onto me was very cognizant of being single in a party where pretty much everyone was paired off. And I’m sure it made him feel self-conscious and perhaps even made him question his self-worth.

We don’t really live in a society that’s progressive enough to not judge people who are single by their early- to mid-30s sadly. I wish it didn’t have to be this way. But we live in a judgmental world. Just because someone is dating someone or married to someone doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s a better person or more “put together” than someone who is not paired off. I don’t think I will live to see the day when this is not a measure we have to hold ourselves against.

My dad is not the kind of person who shows his emotions. He’s the stereotypical Asian male, the one who is usually stoic, sticks with the facts and the tasks at hand and never tries to enter the realm of feelings and inner thoughts.

I sent him this article from the New York Times about a successful woman who experienced her own stroke quite young, the same article I wrote about last week. I said to him over email, hey, sometimes, even when you think you are healthy and are doing the right thing, things happen, and you need to treat them with urgency.

He replied back with something along the lines of, “Luke Perry’s situation was probably more complicated than that. He was likely on drugs!”

I responded, eh. Should we really be that quick to assume drugs were responsible for this? I’m not fully sure?

My dad’s last response to me on this via email: Even if you think you are healthy because you’re eating relatively healthily and exercising regularly, if you work in an office full of politics and have a stressful work life, then you aren’t healthy!

I stared at that short and sweet email for a while. He’s basically saying to me… that that is my life. That’s probably Chris’s life.

Then, I thought about all those times my dad has always said that working for someone else is always going to be terrible because you are at the beck and call of someone else. You are constantly serving someone else and not yourself, that the best way to live is to work for oneself because you can run your life the way you want it and don’t have to answer to anyone.

Before I left to go back to New York on this last trip home, he said, “Remember to take care of yourself,” with a stern voice. My dad worries about me. I know he does because my mom always tells me that he wonders if I am getting enough sleep or am stressed out from work… because they know I would never tell them if it was bad.

My dad is right, though. Working for someone else really does suck… especially when you have officially gotten recognized for being a top performer and are not rewarded proportionally for it.

It’s a small world we live in, but this small world certainly has a lot of people… a lot who are smart, and even more who are dumber than dumb. The worst people, to me, are the ones who feel entitled to whatever they get or want.

I had a pretty sour end to the last company I was employed at. To this day, I only actively keep in touch and spend time with one person from there. Everyone else… I truly could care less about. But when I left, only a very small handful of people reached out to me to be cordial. Outside of those people, I really could care less. So it was amusing to me when one of the people who totally ignored me when I left sent me a message that started with “Hi friend!”, then asking me how I like my current company because she’s considering applying (she’s still at said last shitty company), and would appreciate a referral.

Wow. Really?

I deleted it and will not respond, but if I did, this is what I would have said: “If you think you are going to get any favors from me when you never reached out to me and ignored me upon my departure, you can keep dreaming, you entitled loser.”

What goes around comes around. If you are kind to me, I will likely remember it forever and go out of my way for you. But if you aren’t…. you can expect absolutely nothing from me. Ever.

My friend, a former colleague and his friend, and I went to Flushing today for a food crawl in hopes of discovering new and interesting foods. The one thing that hasn’t changed in New York for me is the constant discovery of new, interesting dishes across the different regions of China represented in Flushing. It feels like every single time I go back to Flushing, as I am going into basement food stalls or the new and shiny food malls of New World Food Court or New York Food Court (as it’s generically called along Roosevelt Avenue), I’m discovering yet another region or city’s cuisine I’ve never heard of, but is just as delicious or more delicious than the dishes I have been acquainted with. Today, the three of us visited six different spots to grab food, and all were delicious. I got to have my beloved Happy Lemon salted cheese green tea with lychee jelly and introduced it to both of them.. and they loved it, even despite the initial skepticism of “salted cheese with tea — what?!” I realized the best way to sell this concept: “If you like salted caramel, then you will like salted cheese with tea.” This ended up working, and one of them was tempted to get a second drink. I even found a stall that served very similar fish and chive dumplings to Shandong Mama in Melbourne, so I will definitely be going back there. But the most surprising thing we ate today was Luo si fen, which is a pork bone and river snail soup with mixian (Yunnan) style slippery rice noodles, beef, pickled bamboo, and vegetables. The broth was sour, salty, hot and numbing like the Sichuanese peppercorns. It was kind of addictive. Even though we kept scooping through the soup to find snails, there were none. I read later that in this soup, the snails actually don’t get served; they’re merely there to “flavor” the broth. But if you think about it… do snails really have any real flavor on their own..? Regardless of that, it was definitely a highlight of the food crawl today.

Being in Flushing today and eating all the super cheap, delicious food reminded me yet again of how much I love this neighborhood and really should spend more time discovering new things there. There’s always a delicious, cheap find around the corner there. When you think of all the expensive and “just okay” meals in Manhattan, it’s really such a small price to pay to trek out to Flushing and have such a good experience there every single time.

I originally started my Friday thinking it would be a catch-up day: I could log all my meetings of the week, have a few external meetings, two internal, and pretty much be done for the day by 4:30 and try to leave early to cook the planned butter chickpeas (the vegan version of “butter chicken”) in my Instant Pot tonight. Unfortunately, that did not happen, as more meetings appeared on my calendar, more tasks I forgot to take care of had to be dealt with, and then, the worst part of the day: my Gmail just failed.

I was working on an important email in “draft” form for about an hour, and I had promised someone internally I would get this back to her by end of day today. By around 2pm, I was pretty much finished with it and still had it in draft form, but I wanted to read it over before finally hitting “Send.” Well, 5pm comes by, and when I check my draft folder… the email is in its original state it was in this morning, as in, all it had was the title and two questions I needed to answer in the body.

I almost had a melt down. I stared at my draft folder in disbelief. I hit “Refresh” probably about 10 times to no avail. It wouldn’t update. For a good minute, all I could think was… “Oh my god. Fucking hell.”

And this was all because of a bug with a Gmail plug-in I need to use for work, an issue that is still pending and far from being resolved.

I ended up leaving at 7. This week seriously could not have been more full of angst, and it certainly ended with even more angst.