Category Archives: Contemplations on New York Life

Good people all around

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I walked up to 84th Street this afternoon to pick up my repaired earrings from a generous and artsy neighbor. I wanted to get her something to express my appreciation and debated between a gift card to the new Salt and Straw or flowers, but in the end, I thought flowers might be a safer bet. So I picked up some sunflowers on my way to her apartment. She seemed shocked, as though what I gave her was excessive for whatever reason. But it just seemed like a no-brainer to me. She generously offered to repair my earrings at no cost with her own time and materials, so this was really the least I could have done.

The last few trips home on the subway with Kaia, she has expressed that she really wants a window seat. Unfortunately, we’re not always able to get one for her because they’re occupied. So the last few rides, she’s loudly expressed she wants a window seat. A friendly woman overheard her yelping, so she tapped me and insisted that Kaia could sit in her seat; she said she was getting off in two stops, so it was no big deal. With my permission, she lifted Kaia up out of her seat and into the window seat. At first, Kaia seemed a bit shocked, as if to say, “Who the hell is this stranger picking me up out of nowhere?” But when she realized what was happening and where she ended up sitting, Kaia broke into this huge, wide grin and started giggling. I asked her to thank the nice lady, and she said “thank you” several times before the woman got off the train.

Kaia has elicited endless smiles on the subway. She’s disarmed many people everywhere. More people than I can count on my fingers have offered to give up their seat for her, to give her Kaia’s preferred seat, to help with her. I am always deeply appreciative and humbled by how truly kind so many complete strangers are. Granted, I suppose I’ve been lucky in my life. Even before Kaia existed, strangers have generally been kind to me. People pick things off the floor that I’ve dropped. They’ve offered to help me lift luggage into overhead bins on planes or take them up or down the subway stairs. These are all reminders to me that the majority of the world means well, even when 2-3 percent of the world may totally suck.

A play date in New Jersey

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Kaia’s bestie from her old school/daycare, Jacob, and his family moved to Glen Ridge, New Jersey, earlier this year. It was a sad time because they were very close at school and talked about each other all the time. Chris and I had become friendly with Jacob’s parents, so we had a few play dates before they moved, and also went to a kids’ theater show at Lincoln Center together shortly after their move. They said that once they got enough furniture and things fixed in the house that they’d invite us over, so that day finally came today. Chris rented a Zipcar, and we drove the approximately 20 miles to Glen Ridge so that Kaia and Jacob could reunite.

Unfortunately, the day was quite wet, so we spent most of the day inside, other than the brief time we were out in their yard so that they could grill some late lunch. I got a brief tour of their vegetable boxes, and Kaia was excited to eat fresh raspberries off the bush. But it was sweet to see the two of them get excited to see and be around each other, even if that was still interspersed with fighting over toys and squabbling here and there.

On the ride back, I was reminded of how disgusting and infuriating New Jersey traffic can be. The entire drive back to Manhattan was bumper to bumper and miserable. It took an hour to get back even though the distance was only 20 miles. I wonder how people could possibly find this tolerable who do this multiple times a week? The traffic here never seems to get any better, yet people always think it’s a “better life” when you move out to the ‘burbs. From my perspective, it just feels like more annoying time spent in a car and in painful traffic.

A growing awareness of mortality

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I’m almost done reading the book I am currently on, Matrescence. While I am not totally sure I would recommend the book, as it does tend to get on a number of tangents that are hard to follow at times, and it seems a bit like rambling at others as opposed to cohesively strung together thoughts, it does bring up a number of thoughts I’ve had about becoming a mother and about life in general. One thought that I was ruminating on after Kaia was born was that becoming a parent really does force you to think about your own mortality quite a bit. As a parent, you bring life into the world with the awareness that your goal, as ironic as it may be, is to raise that tiny blob into an independent adult who will one day not need you. And at some point, assuming all goes well and nothing tragic happens, is that that adult will one day live in a world without you in it; your child will outlive you, and you will die before they will. They will die after you (hopefully…. please). So becoming a parent makes you even more painfully cognizant of the fact that you will one day die, that your life on this earth is finite. It will come to an end. And so with that thought and fact is another thought: how are you going to make this life and all the moments that make it up worth it?

But that’s also another reason that it’s important for us as parents to have passions outside of our children, as all-consuming as parenting can be. One day, soon enough, Kaia will not want to spend that much time with us, and we should not expect her to fulfill all our needs and spend all her free time with us. I think that’s something that’s lost amongst many parents of our parents generation… like my own mom. In my early twenties, my mom used to get angry if she knew I was taking time off work to do anything other than go home and spend time with her. She used to call me selfish and threaten to make me pay her back for my college tuition (oftentimes used as a threat, as always). She said that all my vacation time should be spent with her. When I’d come home and spend time with friends, she would get angry and say that it wasn’t necessary and that I should be with her (you know, at home doing nothing). And at that time, I could not coherently verbalize why I thought that was wrong. But now, it makes perfect sense to me why all that talk did not sit well with me. As a parent, you are not just a parent. You are (potentially) a spouse, a sibling, a friend, a colleague, a citizen of the world. You also play other roles. And as your kids grow up, spread their wings, and fly away, you should also grow up and get back in contact with your own self and what you like to do and spend time on.

The lesser visited parts of Manhattan Chinatown

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As I’ve gotten older, and as the pandemic decimated a lot of Chinatown businesses, my fondness, general adoration, and affinity to Chinatowns everywhere have grown. Since the pandemic, my desire to support Chinatown businesses has only grown stronger, not that it was ever weak. So much Asian hate happened in 2020-2021 because of COVID-19, and it was unfairly exerted against businesses in Chinatowns across the world. Although I’ve lived in New York since 2008 and have always had a strong familiarity with Manhattan Chinatown, I think my knowledge of it and its businesses has gotten even stronger since 2020. Manhattan Chinatown is quite a large Chinatown. If you were to delineate where Manhattan Chinatown is touristy, popular, or “clean,” I’d draw the line at where Chrystie Street is, all the way down to where the Manhattan Bridge starts, and say that everything west of that line is recognized and frequented by people who are Asian and not. The main tourist drag is most definitely Canal Street. But once you go east of Chrystie Street, that’s where things become a bit more ambiguous. That area, to me, has always felt like the “real” Manhattan Chinatown since even before I moved here. At some times of the day and night, walking through there feels just like walking around in a large city in China when you see the sea of people moving, hear all the endless Chinese dialects spoken, and feel the sheer energy.

Generally, the area both slightly to the east and west of the Manhattan Bridge feels grittier, likely because of all the endless car traffic and the trains going above. There’s this one “mall” that is right on East Broadway, just underneath the bridge, that I’d always wondered about. It looked like there were businesses inside, and I could always see people walking in and out of that building, but I never felt compelled to go in there until a popular New York City-based Asian food personality on Instagram posted that she had some delicious dumplings and steamed pork buns in its basement. The spot is called Fu Zhou Wei Zhong (or ZWZ for short). The owners are originally from Fuzhou, so the food is Fuzhou style, which I’m still getting familiar with. So I figured that since I have to go pick up Kaia from school down in Chinatown five times a week now that this is my opportunity to finally explore all these little restaurants and holes-in-the-wall that I never gave myself time to really look at (and taste!) before.

This afternoon, I entered the mall, which was dingy, poorly lit, and not well labeled (other than in Chinese). I went down to the basement, where it was pretty much completely deserted except for tthe Fu Zhou Wei Zhong food stall, which was a huge window with a bunch of random tables around it. The same printing of the menu was on several walls, in English and in Chinese. On another wall, there was just Chinese writing outlining additional items, such as drinks (hot and cold), congee, and other steamed breakfast items you could get earlier in the day. I decided to order the fried dumplings, which was eight pieces for $5. They make all the food to order, so I waited for a bit while they did this. All the cooking is viewable through their large window, where I could see four women all busy pleating dumplings. Another woman was busy mixing a huge vat of what appeared to be pork and chive paste for dumplings. They called out to me when my dumpling order was ready, and I decided to eat one fresh. I took one bite, and BAM! It was crispy on the outside, super juicy and well seasoned on the inside. It was like the perfect fried dumpling. I did not regret eating one right away; I was only sad that Chris couldn’t enjoy these immediately with me and would have to eat them an hour or so later after I brought them home. I cannot recall the last time I was that happy and satisfied having a freshly made dumpling for takeout. These are like the dumplings that used to excite me when I first moved to New York, when I lived in Elmhurst and would occasionally go to the very popular Lao Bei Fang in Elmhurst’s “Chinatown.” Unfortunately, Lao Bei Fang, while still going strong in its newer location directly on the main drag of Elmhurst on Broadway (when I first moved to New York, it was in a tiny space on Whitney, which is a more obscure street) has since lost its magic since the owner no longer makes the dumplings himself and has his staff make them (good for him, but bad for us).

So while it’s nowhere as convenient now taking the train downtown to drop off and pick up Kaia every weekday while she’s in 3K in Manhattan Chinatown, it’s actually a positive in more ways than one. I get constant access to all my Asian greens, fresh tofu, and noodles. I can revisit my favorite bakeries and businesses as often as I’d like (or as much as my cholesterol/waist line allow). And I can also check out and really explore other sections and businesses in Chinatown that I’ve never given myself time to do before. So many places around East Broadway look authentic and delicious (not to mention that the prices on this side are definitely cheaper!), and they deserve to get more business… and my business.

“It takes a village” that can even include total strangers

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The last several days, I haven’t been taking the stroller when picking up Kaia. It started when Chris said he wasn’t going to take her in the stroller to school when we got ready early one morning, and so he wanted her to walk. It made perfect sense: the weather was warm and comfortable, and well, Kaia can walk. So she should walk! She tends to walk better (as in, in the right direction and at a decent pace…) with Chris than she does with me, though. She barely will walk the one block from the school to the subway stop in Chinatown with me, so I end up carrying her. Then, when we arrive at Columbus Circle, she will whine and whinge when I ask her to walk just for the two blocks home and insist that, “Mummy carry you! MUMMY CARRY YOU!” So I end up having to tell her if she doesn’t walk, she won’t get <fill in the friend, stuffed animal, toy, food, treat>. When we finally land on a motivator (yesterday, I told her if she didn’t walk, she wouldn’t get to see her friend Jacob this weekend…), she will eagerly hold my hand and walk with me the full two blocks nonstop.

Today, when we got to the corner of the street with two blocks to go, she started crying and asked me to carry her. I said, no, you will walk. Big girls walk, and you are a big girl now! She refused, so she simply sat down in front of the luxury apartment building and just stared up at me blankly. I was not going to let her win this; I do NOT want her always getting her way, even if we were running late to get home today. So I did my usual thing and threatened to take all these things away I knew she wanted. Nothing worked. She just would not budge. And I was not going to let her get what she wanted in this moment. I stood my ground.

Then, a good samaritan appeared out of nowhere. A slightly older woman with a big smile came up to us and kneeled down to Kaia. “Hey there!” the woman said in an upbeat voice. “What’s going on here? You don’t wanna walk with your mommy? You just don’t feel like it, huh? Well, how about this: if you don’t want to walk with Mommy, then I can take you with me! You want to come to my dance class with me? It’ll be so much fun! And then after, I’ll take you to my house! How about that?”

Pookster peered up at her and gave her a slight side eye. Then, she looked at me to see what my expression said. I simply smiled. After a few seconds, Pooks jumped up, grabbed my hand, and we started walking. I thanked the nice woman and wished her well, and we were on our merry way home.

“Sometimes, it just takes another person to chime in for a bit, and all is well in the world!” the woman said gleefully, as she wished us a good night.

Who is part of my village? All of New York City who has done things to entertain Kaia, soothe her, make her laugh, play peekaboo with her, and encouraged her to walk with her friggin’ parents properly.

Neighborly neighbors and my fixed earrings

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I was rummaging through my vast earring collection a few days ago when I came across a pair of earrings that Chris’s cousin had made me. She had taken a jewelry making class last year, and with that she decided to use her newly learned skills to make all the women in the family earrings for Christmas presents. It was so sweet of her. She’s always been a very crafty person. She’s knitted and crocheted Kaia a number of different clothing pieces, from mittens to hats and even more complex pieces like sweaters. As someone who enjoys creating arts, crafts, and homemade food, I really appreciate her hand-crafted pieces and the time and effort she puts into them. Anyone can buy a gift; not everyone is willing to put the time and effort into making it with their own hands for someone else.

Unfortunately, I only ever got to wear those earrings once before I broke them. Me being me, I overstuffed my carry-on bag that held the earrings, and tone of the earring backings fell off. The way it broke could not easily be fixed unless I found a new replacement piece, so I left it in my jewelry box and just let it sit. Though I figured someone in our neighborhood must know of a place where I could buy a replacement piece, so I posted in our Upper West Side Neighbors group for a recommendation on recommendations.

Amazingly, someone who is an artist herself responded. She said she’d have the finding needed to fix it, so she’d help me do it herself. I just had to come to her apartment. So yesterday, I went to her place after my dentist appointment, and she showed me the piece she’d glue on the earring back to fix it. I was truly amazed at her generosity, plus the fact that she’d so willingly let a stranger into her apartment. She lives in a co-op building in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment, where she uses the larger bedroom as her studio. If I hadn’t known any better when I walked in, I would just assume this was a work space and not originally intended as a bedroom! She said to leave the earrings with her so that after the glue dried, she could test it to ensure it really was successful. She’s already messaged to tell me her handiwork was a win, so I’m planning to go back up to her place to pick them up. I offered to pay her, but she insisted she just wanted to be a good neighbor and meet people in the ‘hood. So I’ll likely bring her flowers as a token of appreciation.

People complain a lot about Facebook, but I’ve really enjoyed feeling like I’m really a part of the Upper West Side through the Buy-Nothing and Neighbors groups. It really makes me feel like I’m a part of a real community and that people do care and look out for each other here. Yes, people do genuinely look out for each other here, in this big concrete jungle. Just in the last week, a kid’s new giraffe stuffed animal got returned, and in the craziest incidents, a real diamond tennis bracelet got returned to its owner! It’s really not terrible living in a big city!

Listening as a skill

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A former colleague I was friendly with reached out to me a few weeks ago to let me know that she had relocated back to New York in the last year from San Francisco. She asked if I was still here and if I was, that she’d like to meet up for coffee to catch up. I hadn’t seen her in over two years, so I thought it would be good to see her. We met up late Friday afternoon for some tea and sat at a park in Chinatown before I went to pick up Kaia from school.

We chatted for over an hour about all the usual things: her relocation, our respective work situations, people we still kept in touch with from our last company. We talked about Kaia and parenthood, and we also talked about health. I was pretty stunned when she recounted to me things I’d shared with her over three years ago when she was last in town, and we met for coffee. I invited her and another former colleague to hang out on my roof, and she remembered me telling her about my cubital tunnel syndrome and random travel anecdotes that I didn’t even remember telling her. I was really endeared that she remembered, and it felt really comforting. I’m so used to being a broken record nowadays and sharing the same stories over and over again that I forget who I have shared them with… and frankly, who even cares and retains them.

But it made me realize how it feels like people have such short attention spans now that they don’t really listen. People complain about news articles being too long. There are even people now who think that some TikTok or Instagram videos are too long, so they just swipe to the next one that is faster. Chris even complains sometimes when his brother or I are telling a story and he keeps saying, “Get to the point!” People don’t seem to appreciate the art of story telling the way I always did as a kid and even now, as an adult. But I think the best stories are nuanced and have interesting arcs. There’s always a good lead up. Characters have different subtle personality quirks that only reveal themselves with time. And it’s comforting to know that there are still some people in existence who really do take the time to listen, and even remember.

Counting and Cracking

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Tonight, we went to see the visiting Australian (and Sri Lankan) show Counting and Cracking at NYU’s Skirball Theater. It’s a show that takes us through a multi-generational journey of a Sri Lankan-Australian family from 1956 to 2004, political turmoil of a divided Sri Lanka, and relatable stories of family love, conflict, pain, and forgiveness. Chris’s brother originally took their parents to see the show in Melbourne, and he told us about it and the fact that it would be coming to New York in the fall. So we got tickets and went tonight. Even though the show is three hours long with two intermissions, which is quite long, it didn’t feel like it dragged at all; instead, it actually felt like it was gripping you along, forcing you to wonder what would happen next. The show tries to condense a lot of history into a short amount of time, and it does it really well. I never once felt like it was too long or as though I was losing interest in the plot.

I found myself moved to tears at certain points of the show; I don’t think that’s happened at a show for me in ages. At the end of the show, Radha talks about how she would likely have never left Sri Lanka, even in the dire political state it was in, had it not been for Siddhartha, who she was pregnant with. She gave up the home that her grandfather built from scratch; it was a home her husband thought she’d never, ever give up. She ultimately left Sri Lanka for Australia 100 percent because of him: she wanted him to have a better life and to be safe. These moments in movies and theater just hit me differently since my fertility, pregnancy, and motherhood journey. It’s almost like my brain and body have been rewired since becoming a mother; it’s the process of “matrescence” that doesn’t get enough research or attention. Parents really do sacrifice so much for their kids, and most of their kids will never quite grasp even a fraction of the sacrifices until they (may) become parents themselves.

 

The grass is always greener on the other side – from a food perspective

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Whenever we travel, and especially to places with really strong food cultures, like France, Italy, and pretty much anywhere and everywhere in Asia, I always think how amazing it would be to live in a place that truly values food and freshness. The U.S. was built to feed a lot of people en masse, which basically means that we’re feeding for the sake of feeding people here (quantity matters, full bellies matter) instead of thinking about quality or sustainability of raw ingredients. So whenever I hear about people who are of a similar age as I am, originally born and raised in a Western nation like the U.S., but have done the “reverse migration” of going back to their country of origin, I am always intrigued, and my ears tend to perk up.

In the last year, I discovered the freelance journalist Clarissa Wei and her cookbook Made in Taiwan. She is of Taiwanese descent, but she was born and raised in Southern California. She has since moved back to Taiwan and is living there with her husband and young child. When I did a search for her, I actually realized I had read endless articles she had written about Chinese and Taiwanese food previously, but I had just not remembered the by-line on those articles. Her cookbook reads like a journal or blog, peppered with lots of heavily researched factoids and also personal stories of her own experiences in the U.S. and in Taiwan. She says that when Costco opened in Taiwan, she and her husband got a membership and treated their visits there like her parents used to treat treks to Ranch 99 in California: while her parents would get excited at stocking up on all their favorite Taiwanese and Asian ingredients and fresh produce, she and her husband now meticulously plan what they will buy at Costco: avocados, bagels, and all the Western things that you cannot easily find in Taiwan that they missed having easy access to while in the U.S. “The grass is always greener on the other side,” she lamented. Prior to moving to Taiwan, she used to get excited about having easy access to the night markets and all her favorite Taiwanese dishes. Now that she has all that literally at her doorstep, she wants the American things that are either far more expensive in Taiwan or more difficult to find.

Another funny anecdote she shared that actually made me laugh out loud: she said that her standard Taiwanese stove top was able to get so hot that it would make restaurant-quality fried rice with real “wok hei” as I always get excited about. I always love getting stir-fried noodles and rice at restaurants because “wok hei” is just impossible at home with our stove top. On the flip side for Clarissa, it was very challenging to impossible to slow simmer anything on her stove top. So she went to a shop to see what it would cost to get her range replaced with an American-style one. The shopkeeper looked at her like she’d gone crazy and said, “Why would you do that? Do you want food with no flavor?” The sheer horror!

We always want what we cannot get easily and romanticize the things we don’t have. Off the top of my head, I think that if we leave the U.S., I would most definitely miss not having to think about how to read food labels (this is a funny one, isn’t it?). In New York City specifically, I’d miss easy access to literally every cuisine on earth, somewhere across these five boroughs. I’d also probably miss easy access to boneless, skinless chicken thighs, or trays of neatly cubed beef chuck, or a boneless leg of lamb. I am American, after all, raised in a western country that is used to having its citizens being quite far removed from the process of animal slaughter.

Varied fast-casual lunch options in a post-pandemic NYC

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Prior to the pandemic, the quickest lunch options while at the office were always the standard types of things you’d expect: salads, sandwiches, and pre-made sushi. While we did have nicer sandwich options like the Cambodian sandwich shop Num Pang or higher quality salad spots like Sweetgreen, there really wasn’t a great fast casual option for Chinese food nearby. We had a few places that had limited lunch specials, but they were standard sit-down restaurants, not places where you could grab and go the way you do at Sweetgreen or Le Pain Quotidien. So when I read about Milu, a fast-casual, modern Chinese spot that opened near Madison Square Park, I thought it sounded promising, especially since it had interesting options for lunch that you wouldn’t normally think about, like Yunnan-style beef brisket or Mandarin crispy duck. I met a friend here for lunch today and was impressed by almost everything about it, from the sleek seating and booths, the fresh, bright, modern decor, the quick ordering and serving system, and the food itself. You order at the counter and grab a number, and within five minutes, the food is brought out to you. With a plate and a drink for each of us, Our meal came out to less than $50. The duck was crispy on the outside and succulent on the inside, with duck fat rice, fresh herby salad and pickled cucumber salad on the side. My friend’s brisket was fork-tender and a little spicy, much to my surprise, and had similar side salads.

I think New York needs more Chinese places like this that are quick, casual, and modern that also have high quality food. The average person who isn’t exposed to Chinese food thinks it’s a bunch of greasy, MSG-laden fast food, but this food is fast, high quality, not greasy, and NOT MSG-laden.