Tonight, Chris surprised me by taking me to Forest Hills Stadium to see Russell Peters for his Deported World Tour comedy show. The greatest thing about going to see Russell Peters, or really, any comedian or any act of color, is that it’s guaranteed that the audience will be very diverse, as well. What has always frustrated me seeing theater in New York, whether it’s mainstream Broadway, off-broadway, or even smaller theaters like 59E59 Theater, is that the audience is almost always the same: a bunch of much older white people, with a small sprinkling of younger white people. Chris and I are usually the ones creating the element of “diversity” in the audience at those shows. And with an act who is of Indian descent like Russell Peters, it ends up being like multiple family reunions in the crowd, as families will use this as an excuse to get together. We saw so many big Indian or South Asian families meeting up in the food areas to hug and catch up. It was so adorable.

When I was a teen, I never imagined living to see the day when I could see Asian people like Russell Peters, Aziz Ansari, and Hasan Minhaj accepted as entertainers, and movies like Crazy Rich Asians reaching mainstream theater (though, Asian Americans in movies… this movie is JUST the beginning, really). Maybe I am actually gaining some faith in the world.

It doesn’t seem to matter how much or how little I spend on handbags, but none of them ever seem to last. A $250 Kate Spade crossbody bag that my friend got me as a maid of honor gift lasted about 4.5 years before I had to discard it, as the strap, the zippers, and all the edges started to fray and come undone, not to mention all the scratches that had accumulated all over it. I’m usually very careful with my bags, yet these things tend to happen over time. The $70 discounted leather bag (which was supposed to be over double that cost) I bought through Rue La La (a discounted designer items website) that I’ve used heavily over the last two years now has a handle that is on the edge of breaking, and there’s really no way to easily repair it. It would just need to be thrown out.

Then, there’s the Lo & Sons OMG (overnight / medium / gym) bag that I got just over two years ago, which is actually still in good condition despite all the travel I’ve done with it, but the strap has started to unravel. I emailed the company to ask if there was a way to have this repaired, but they said they had no process in place to have that done, so instead, they’d just send me a brand new replacement bag. Really — a completely new bag, just like that?

It gave me doubts about how much I probably overpaid for this bag in the first place given that they were so quick to offer me a free bag just like that. All these things are cheaply made, in China no less with cheap labor, and there’s no way to get any of these material items to last no matter how much or how little I pay.

Tonight, I organized a dinner for my team to celebrate one of our colleague’s upcoming wedding. We toasted to his nuptials over many shared plates of Northern Indian food and endless garlic naan. He’s generally someone who is very open and friendly and loves to share, and it’s been really clear to me over the last few months exactly how excited for his wedding he really is.

It’s a funny thing, listening to people talk about their weddings. Usually, if we have to be gendered about this, it’s the woman who tends to talk about the details of the wedding, the pains and pleasures of coordinating such a big event. But in this case, my (male) colleague is the ultimate sharer; he’s been giving us endless wedding updates along the way, especially around things that he’s passionate about, from the obvious (food) to the far less obvious (the types of tables and even the plates they’re going to eat on!). It’s sweet and adorable to see a man so interested in the details of his big day. It definitely is not something I am used to hearing.

A former colleague from two companies ago reached out to me over LinkedIn last week after I had posted that there were open positions at my current office, so we met up for a coffee and tea break at Madison Square Park this afternoon to chat through what he was looking for, why he might be interested in my company and our open role, and why he wanted to leave.

I honestly still couldn’t believe he was there. He had changed roles and levels many times since I left, but I found that place to be the epitome of everything I cannot stand about career and job life in today’s day and age: substituting activity for achievement, people pushing paper without any purpose other than a paycheck, a glorification of the completely mediocre due to politics and favoritism. We discussed this and of course, as conversation continued, we talked about updates on our own lives since then: I got married! I changed jobs twice! He got married AND had two kids! He moved from Queens to Long Island! He owns a house with a front AND backyard! I moved from the Upper East to the Upper West Side!

Whenever I catch up with a colleague after a long time of not seeing them, it’s always these same high-level updates we tend to share, these so-called “milestones” in human life: marriage, children, house or no house status. What if I suddenly just said, hey, I’m doing volunteering for foster care children! Or, by the way, my brother died from suicide, so this is how I view life now?

How deep is a casual catch-up really supposed to be, or is it really just meant to be superficial since the ultimate motive is that one person wants something from the other? I’m honestly not sure.

After over ten years of working full-time, I can say that I’ve seen quite a number of interesting interviews, both from an interviewer as well as interviewee standpoint. I’ve been in interviews where the interviewee has been extremely arrogant or insecure. I’ve seen candidates do hand stands and discuss why they preferred crunchy versus smooth peanut butter. I’ve been interviewed by stone-faced people and those who want to make it seem like the interview is more of a casual chat rather than a situation during which they’re being evaluated. I’ve also felt like at one time, I was being hit on during an interview. But what I’ve never seen is a candidate who felt so comfortable chatting with me that she would ask me what office gossip I have to share or ask if the room we were in was bugged because she’d previously been in rooms that were bugged, and words she shared privately were being exposed. This actually happened this afternoon as we were interviewing a potential candidate for an open role on our team.

I realize that in 2018, especially in a city like New York, we’re really in an employees’ market when it comes to hiring and retaining talent. Now is actually a really good time to be looking for a new job. But if you are feeling so comfortable during an interview that you would actually ask about office gossip, regardless of whether you are joking or not, which introduces questions about the toxic culture you could potentially bring into an organization, don’t you kind of think you’re crossing a line?

In the summer time in New York City, there are a lot of great, free events that happen throughout the city for those to enjoy, such as Philharmonic in the park, free big-screen movie nights in the park, and live theater productions of Shakespeare in the park. Unfortunately, when you live in Manhattan, you need to arrive at all these locations extremely early, i.e. take half a day off just to stake out your spot because these free events are in massively high demand. But I guess when you venture out to the outer boroughs, there’s no need to arrive that far in advance. We met some friends for Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well tonight in Sunnyside Gardens Park in Queens, and we got there just half an hour before the show was to start, and we still had decent spots to claim.

The production wasn’t that incredible; this play is one of Shakespeare’s least popular ones for a reason, and the acting was just so-so. But I do appreciate the access that we have to these events for free, and that the arts can be so accessible to anyone in the city. It’s definitely something to be grateful for.

It was a colleague’s birthday last Saturday, so her boyfriend had a gorgeous bouquet of mixed flowers delivered to our office for her the Friday before. Although they’ve been together several years and even live together, for whatever reason, he doesn’t know that she’s allergic to pollen… or if he does, he forgets. When the flowers arrived, my colleague immediately moved them away from her desk, and then asked if she could leave them on my desk. It was kind of a weird request, but since she knows I enjoy flowers and am not allergic, I figured it would be a positive externality for me, and all I’d need to do is replace the water every other day.

I kind of don’t understand how you can be in a long-term relationship with someone, though, and not be aware and remember something so basic as their allergies to something like pollen. Isn’t that a massive partner failure right there?

A couple of colleagues I’m friends with were in town from San Francisco this week, so a bunch of us went out to catch up over Korean barbecue, beers, and soju, adding to a very gluttony eating week for all of us. Seven of us went out, and while we’re digging in, one of my colleagues, who happens to live in a suburb of New Jersey that is right outside of Fort Lee and Palisades Park (which are known for having large Korean populations and thus a lot of great Korean food), says that he’s actually never had Korean barbecue before. He’s just a year younger than me, and we’re all sitting there looking at him incredulously. Of course, we’re all being a little judgmental, thinking, how could you not have ever had Korean barbecue before when you live just minutes away from one of the largest Korean suburbs in the tri-state area? He was certainly enjoying himself while eating, but since everyone at the table was generously eager to try new foods that they weren’t familiar with, we really didn’t understand his lack of discovery and curiosity here. At least we’re here to de-virginize him in this regard.

Tonight was our end of quarter celebration dinner at Dinosaur Barbecue, where we feasted on pulled pork, brisket, ribs, Mac-and-cheese, among other delectable artery-clogging delights. And as these events always go, I end up hearing extremely random anecdotes where I am left with question marks in my head afterwards.

A colleague of mine, who is pretty much a creature of habit, a homebody who, in theory, likes travel, but in practice, actually really hates it (for a three day trip, she thinks she should pack at leas 6-8 outfits because… how will she know what she feels like wearing on any given day of the trip when she wakes up?), mentioned to me that when she and her husband are having fights, usually after having a bit to drink, Chris and I often come up as a heated point of contention.

“What?” I asked, quizzically.

“Well, the two of you lead such an exciting life!” my colleague exclaimed. “You two are always traveling all over the world all the time that I cannot even keep track of where you are! And (husband) and I — what do we do? We just stay home, fixing things in our house. We don’t go anywhere! We don’t see anything! We haven’t seen any of the world!” (If it was not already clear, she was a bit buzzed).

She continued. “So I told him, “Yvonne! You met Yvonne! Yvonne and her husband travel and see the world! They know the world! We don’t know anything of the world! I want us to do that! Why don’t you ever want to take me anywhere? EVER? We are so boring compared to them!” 

I gently reminded my colleague that she hates packing, she always complains when she takes work trips, and she doesn’t like being outside of her comfort zone, so I don’t really think she wants to travel the way Chris and I do. She laughed and said it was probably true, but she wanted to do different things (in theory, again), but her husband didn’t want to. And they were always drunkenly yelling at each other to the point of saying they would leave each other, but then they realize at the end of the day that they have no clue what they’d do without each other and make up. Then, a week or so later, it starts all over again.

How romantic. And how very functional.