I’ve never invited a group of colleagues over to my apartment before, but I always thought it would be fun to invite colleagues over to bridge the work vs. personal life line. It’s also nice to see a glimpse of what your colleagues are like outside of the office, as a person’s home gives a lot of insight into who they are as a person. Is the person anally neat and tidy, or sloppy and disorganized? What kind of books would be on her shelves? How would she decorate the place — with a lot of personal touches or more anonymous things, like candles and plants?

It was funny to have them come with their partners and spouses today because I wasn’t really expecting their commentary on my living space. I originally was expecting a total of 11 people, but because one of my colleagues had to drop out for a family emergency last minute, that deducted two adults plus three kids from the mix, so we ended up being a much smaller group of six. So given I had 11 people in my mind as guests, I told them our space would be “cozy.” When they arrived, they marveled over how spacious our living room was and my colleague’s husband insisted I set them up to believe the worst when in fact, it was the total opposite! All of them obsessed over how clean and neat the apartment was (“is it always this neat here, or did you clean up for us?”), and one of them even said, “You know you’re in a fancy person’s apartment when even the dish and hand soap are organic.”

Creating strict lines between work and personal life was never something I really believed in. In theory, I get it. In practice, it’s too exhausting. And the worst thing is to be called fake or inauthentic. I feel like it’s easier to just be open and more consistently oneself all the time. It was a fun time today, and I definitely want to do it again. For the first time, I actually work in a place where I’d be happy to bring my colleagues to my home for a meal. I’m going to relish this as long as possible.

I grew up eating a sticky, mochi-like Vietnamese cake that my mom and Vietnamese family friends would buy for us that was coconut and cassava-based. I always enjoyed it, but I never actually knew what it was called. Then, at our home in San Francisco, we hosted a potluck dinner party where I invited a friend and her husband over, and as their dish, they brought over a sheet cake that was just like this cake from my childhood, coconut and cassava based. I inhaled it and wanted to make it and recreate it.

Well, then I forgot about it, and I had another bite of it somewhere, and then wanted to recreate it again. Then, I found a recipe for it in a Vietnamese cookbook I own, and it called for frozen shredded cassava. The local Chinese market I got to in Manhattan Chinatown never had it, so I gave up. But given that this brunch party is happening this weekend, I knew I wanted to try a new Asian dessert. I HAD to make this cake. I was craving it in my head. So I did a quick Yelp search for frozen cassava and finally came across an actual Vietnamese grocery store in Chinatown that not only sells frozen cassava but all kinds of fresh Vietnamese baked goods (like Vietnamese “tamales” and sticky rice cakes).

I went tonight and was in heaven. It’s not a big store, nor is it fancy, but it’s packed with all kinds of goodies. Endless Vietnamese baked goods, Vietnamese ham (cha lua), all kinds of frozen goods that I could tinker with. Cut and grated lemongrass was packaged and frozen in the freezer — that would be an incredible convenience. Fresh Vietnamese rice noodles neatly packaged were lined up by the cash register. There were all these products I’d never even heard of before that I knew I had to do more research on. What would I do with frozen purple yam?

I can’t believe it took me over ten years to take the few seconds to research Vietnamese groceries in this city. Now, I can overcompensate for lost time by always coming here every time I go down to Manhattan Chinatown.

When I was in Shanghai in 2006, there was a book I purchased called Shanghai Ren Jia (Homes of the Shanghainese). The major theme of the book (in both Chinese and English) was that Shanghainese people are very guarded when it comes to their homes; when they meet with friends or colleagues, they always meet in public places, like parks, restaurants, cafes. They rarely, if ever, ask others to come to their homes because that’s an intimate ask. There needs to be a certain sense of closeness to a person before you feel like you can invite him to your house.

New York City is a lot like that. It’s rare to get an invite to “hang out” at someone’s apartment or a homemade dinner invitation. Our spaces, just like in Shanghai, are relatively small and cramped, and it just wouldn’t be very comfortable. And usually, when we have received invites to come over to others’ apartments, these people are not originally from New York; it’s other transplants like ourselves who want to forge a sense of closeness in their personal spaces with new and old friends.

I’ve been wanting to organize a get-together at our apartment with a group of my colleagues for a while, but Chris wasn’t very keen on it because he has a “six-person-max” rule he arbitrarily made up. But since he’ll be away for Dreamforce this weekend, I decided to take advantage of it by inviting the crew over on Sunday. It’ll be interesting to meet some of my colleagues’ spouses and partners for the first time, and also see them outside of the usual work environment. Sometimes, you never know if colleagues could potentially be real friend material unless you take them out of the work space.

I woke up this morning to a surprise medical bill in my e-mail inbox for a sick visit I paid to the doctor last October — that’s almost a year ago. I was surprised given that I knew my insurance should have been billed a long time ago, not to mention the co-pay was paid on the spot. After looking at this three-figure bill in shock, I visited my primary care doctor’s website to discover that they no longer accept my insurance, which didn’t really make a lot of sense because the last I checked when I visited last year, they did accept my insurance. So now I’m getting penalized for this? Their website says that they will still accept my insurance, but bill my insurance as an “out-of-network” provider. The entire concept of “in-network” vs. “out-of-network” has always driven me crazy in my adult life, as what… this is basically doctors’ and hospitals’ ways of making the most money possible by signing with insurance companies that will give them the best deal. From a capitalistic standpoint, that makes sense, but from a patient planning standpoint in terms of how to choose a doctor where your insurance is going to cover the bulk, if not all, of your bill, this is a complete nightmare, and part of the reason I’m sure that people hate visiting doctors period.

In the end, it was a mistake, and my doctor texted me to let me know that the bill was sent in error and to disregard it. But I still got mad about it. I got mad being reminded how senseless and difficult our healthcare system is, especially given how much it costs. And I also got frustrated knowing I could no longer see this doctor given that she doesn’t accept my insurance anymore. Now, I need to find a new primary care doctor, which makes me sad given that I really liked this one. It’s like finding a new friend — takes too long and is arduous and sometimes painful.

A friend of mine said that she had suddenly found a lot of free time given that she just got let go from her job today, so she thought that the next month or so might be a good time to visit. As much as I like seeing my friends at opportunities I regularly do not have, I looked at the calendar from now through the end of the year and realized that almost every single weekend is taken up by something, whether it’s a booked show or live event, a dinner with local friends, out-of-town visitors who will be staying with us, and our own personal and professional travels. The ability to have a spontaneous visitor come and stay with us for 2-4 days isn’t a likely possibility anymore.

I felt kind of bad telling her this, but I guess this is the way our lives are now. We plan a lot of things ahead of time, and with out-of-town visitors, those events really need to be planned far in advance to ensure that no conflicts arise. This is part of grown-up life now.

Tonight, I was on the phone tonight with my friend who is currently in a medical residency program, and as of next summer, she will be starting her fellowship in movement disorders at UCSF. I’m really excited for her, if for nothing else but 1) she’ll finally get a chance to live on the West Coast, as she’s always wanted and dreamed about, and 2) she will actually for the first time in years have nights and weekends relatively free, as her fellowship hours are fairly “normal” white-collar hours, at about 9-5pm Monday through Friday. And because I’ll still be going back to San Francisco regularly for work and family, I’ll be able to see her more often. The last time I got to see her was almost two years ago, sadly.

People have often asked me why I never considered going to culinary school or working in a bakery given how much I love food. If there is one reason only, well, aside from the fact that I’d never have the salary I’d want, it’s that I’d have zero flexibility and I would have to kiss goodbye all nights and weekends. Those would be the times I’d have to work. That’s the way the service industry is no matter what country you are in. You are there to serve; that’s your job, your role, your everything. I love food. But I don’t love it that much to give away all my time and my freedoms. And frankly, I love serving the people I love, not a bunch of random strangers who have random (and chances are, crappy) judgments that I could truly care less about.

I met with my mentee for tea this afternoon, and she’s finally moved out of her foster parents’ house into her new dorm in Queens to start her third year of college. Despite having moved out, her foster parents haven’t made a single attempt to call or speak with her in a week. They haven’t even texted or emailed. So, it’s been zero communication since she told them she was going to move out of their house. She told me that her foster mom cried and told her she didn’t want her to leave, but when she finally did leave, she said nothing to her. Her foster mom is going through a depressive bout, and her foster dad, who has never been that involved other than to leave money on the table for her, hasn’t said a word to her in months.

I have no idea what the screening process is like to become a foster parent, but if this is at all representative of what it actually is like for other children who have been in the foster care system in New York City, much less the rest of this country, I’m extremely disheartened. The whole point of being put into foster care is because your own parents could not give you the love, care, and support you needed, so you are then placed with another family that is equipped to provide you these things. This is obviously not happening in this current situation, which infuriates me to no end every time I meet with my mentee and she shares these horror stories with me. She thinks something is wrong with her as a result; it’s nothing wrong with her. It’s what’s wrong with the world and the stupid system she has to deal with.

I was at dinner with my friend tonight, who is visiting for work from Seattle, and she was telling me that the thought of moving back to New Jersey after over six years of living in Seattle makes her want to gag. She could kind of consider New York City, but even that seems exhausting and frustrating to her. Within a day of coming back to the Tri-State area and going out to Jersey to meet some friends for dinner, she was assumed to be a foreigner on the train. Some white male made fun of her for supposedly not understanding the English signs on the train as she was reading them, and she turned around, glared at the guy, and said, “I’m actually from here, but the train is not making normal stops. And yes, I do understand and read English. Thanks.” He seemed completely stunned at her response, nearly stupefied, said nothing, and walked away. “I get this all the time in Jersey when I am back here,” she said, irritated. “I’ve never even ONCE experienced that in Seattle! Not even a single time!”

It’s sad to think that is true, that in an area that is supposedly so diverse that people could still be so racist and make such blatantly ignorant comments. But I don’t really think any place is immune to it — not Jersey, not New York, not San Francisco or Seattle.   We’re just lucky when we don’t experience it. Asians are still minorities in this country and will continue to be for a long time. And even when that isn’t the case, there will always be white backlash at us for supposedly taking over what they perceive to be “their” land and “their” jobs. The world will continue to turn.

After an afternoon of customer meetings, my manager and I were sitting at the airport, eating burrito bowls and discussing life growing up in a semi-major city (San Francisco) versus a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, where he grew up. He now lives in Oakland in a house that he and his wife, also from the same hometown, bought, but spent most of his time in the Bay Area living in San Francisco proper. I obviously live in New York City, and it doesn’t look like Chris and I have any intention of leaving anytime soon.

“Do you think you’ll ever move back?” he asked between bites of chicken and rice.

It’s kind of a loaded question for me. I love San Francisco. I love its easy proximity to the outdoors, the clean air there, its reputation as a progressive, open-minded urban area. I love the different neighborhoods and how different they are. I actually even appreciate the odd micro climates that vasty vary from district to district.

But like anyone who gets bored easily, who is constantly looking for something new and unique and different, who doesn’t want the same experiences as everyone else around her, I do not find the idea of moving back to San Francisco exciting or even remotely interesting or pleasurable. It feels extremely mundane and to a degree, almost like I’m saying that I’ve given up on life and am resigning myself to the same ol’ same ol’ that the people I grew up with have and continue to have. And that is… gross to me. I don’t want the same life, even if San Francisco is not the same as what it was when I left it as a permanent residence.

No matter where you go in this country, the average American barely lives 18 miles away from his/her parents or where s/he grew up. Obviously, a multitude of factors contribute to why this is the way it is, but what this ultimately says to me is that at the core, most people do not crave change or a different experience to what his/her parents had, or a different experience to what s/he grew up with. Or maybe they had their period or “phase” or whatever you want to call it where they spread their wings, flew away… but decided to come back to the nest because it was time to “settle down.” When I hear about old classmates living in the same neighborhood as their parents in San Francisco or god forbid, in the same house, I immediately feel disgusted and can barely hide it from my face.

It’s actually a bit of a tragedy to think that our parents and grandparents or even great-grandparents left their families and homeland for a better life here, so they were far bigger risk takers than this current generation when it comes to uprooting oneself and choosing a “better life,” however you would like to define that. And so I explained this to my manager today while at the airport. I told him I just think it’s boring to “settle down” in the same place as one grew up… because I don’t really want my kids to go to the same middle or high school or even be familiar with the exact same neighborhoods as I was. That sounds senselessly boring to me. The mindsets in a single place never really change, either, and the ignorances you experienced while there will still persist today. San Francisco is a city full of liberal-minded people who sometimes are so blinded by their beliefs that they just can’t see outside of their perspectives. Living in other places gives you perspective. They do not get this.

My manager, having grown up in suburban Ohio, found this really interesting because he always thought that people felt this way in very non-diverse towns, but had never really heard of a “city girl” like me, coming from a relatively diverse place, complain about lack of perspective and finding her urban metropolis uninspiring, or get irritated by the fact that people from her hometown just don’t want to leave or even entertain the idea of living somewhere else. “I guess any place can be perceived as boring or uninspiring regardless of how diverse and open it is if that’s what you are used to,” he responded. Closed-mindedness exists everywhere, no matter how “great” or “diverse” of a place you live. I told him even living here in New York, I get annoyed easily by people who were born and raised in the Tri-State area and make massively sweeping (and flat out wrong) generalizations of “Cali” or San Francisco or pretty much any place that they’ve visited briefly for a work trip or vacation, but just think these three states are the best possible places to live in the entire world. That type of thinking exists everywhere. People think that wherever they are, it’s the best place. Perhaps it is the best place for them if they want the same thing constantly and to never have their perceptions or levels of comfort challenged, but that doesn’t make it the best place period.

And also, “moving back home” is more complicated by the fact that I married someone who is not just not from San Francisco, not from the United States, and not even from the North American continent. So while it might be “moving back” for me, it would not be moving back for him. He has his own version of “moving back” dread that I have, but in a totally different country and continent.

It’s been over 10 years now since I moved to New York. I originally thought I’d be here only 2-4 years and leave to go back to San Francisco. Clearly, that never happened. And I’m still not bored of it here. This city pisses me off all the time, but I still love it so much. You can’t have love without some hate. And it’s got airports that can take me directly to so many great destinations.

“New York is just a travel hub for you and Chris to travel to other places!” my manager exclaimed, laughing. “This IS a good place for travel to pretty much everywhere.”

That is definitely true, isn’t it?