If it wasn’t already clear, I’ve been really getting into my Instant Pot. Five perfect and delicious dishes later, I’m completely hooked and want to try to cook as many things as possible in this stunning cooking machine. A colleague friend of mine who is based in Europe who still has yet to buy one, said she was inspired to want one after reading this inspirational profile in The New Yorker called, “The ‘Butter-Chicken Lady’ Who Made Indian Cooks Love the Instant Pot,” which also includes this woman’s infamous butter chicken recipe at the end. The recipe seemed simple enough with most things in my pantry and freezer, so I figured it would be something fun to make within my first ten uses. I made it yesterday for dinner with a couple of tweaks, and it was delicious, probably just as good, if not better, than any butter chicken I’ve had in a restaurant. I posted about it on Facebook and Instagram, and multiple people messaged me for the recipe.

And if that was not already encouraging, a colleague told me at the office today that he was planning to make it for dinner in his Instant Pot with his wife. He was asking me about what I tweaked and even texted me a few times with preparation questions. Another colleague and her boyfriend were so inspired by my Instagram Story posts on my Instant Pot usage that they ordered their own Instant Pot last night. And this coming weekend, a third colleague is planning to make the same butter chicken recipe with his fiancee!

Maybe I’m the equivalent of my office’s Butter-Chicken Lady now, or Instant Pot Lady?

Chris was not happy with me today. After having a Sicilian pizza slice craving this week, especially after my colleague was raving about her obsession with L&B Spumoni Garden in outer Brooklyn, I insisted to him that we had to venture out to another borough in search of this famous institution’s pizza. When we go out for pizza, we’ve never really had Sicilian style in the city before, so I figured this would be a good opportunity to try something new-ish.

When we arrived, the seating situation was a bit fuzzy. You have the choice of sitting outside at benches and under umbrellas and ordering from a counter, or you can sit inside (where there’s air-conditioning) and have table service. Chris immediately headed inside, and the service was immediately nonchalant, with an air of “We know we’re a Brooklyn institution, and therefore we don’t really give a shit about you because we know no matter how poorly we treat you, you will still want to eat here because we’re famous, and we are very aware of that.” What we didn’t realize is that after about 15-20 minutes had passed, when our server came and we asked to order slices, he said that we weren’t allowed to sit inside and only have pizza slices; we either had to order a full pie (which would have been far too much food for us), or order other mains. We couldn’t eat that much food, so we walked out to the benches.

So, the good news about this is that the counter service was friendly and swift. I even got asked whether I wanted corner, side, or middle square slices (I obviously wanted side slices to get the crunchy edges). But when we tasted both the round and the square slices, Chris was not impressed. “This is good, but this is not 1-hour-on-the-subway good, and the service was shit.” I personally enjoyed the Sicilian slice — the tomato sauce was perfect, and the textural contrast in the bottom, crust, and the soft, chewy middle was quite satisfying. But I do admit that it probably was not worth the hour train ride, and we could probably get Sicilian slices in Manhattan that were just as good if not better. And what’s also bad: their spumoni ice cream was so artificial tasting that Chris didn’t even want to finish it.

This just adds to our list of overrated New York institutions, which also includes Peter Luger Steakhouse, which pretty much no one else agrees with us on.

Today was one of my favorite colleagues’ last day in the office. He would have been here for another week if it weren’t for his two-week planned holiday to Italy with his husband, but today is his last physical day with us, and I was so upset. He’s the kind of person who is always positive, smiling, and calm, no matter how stressed out and annoyed he is with work or anything in his personal life. He listens to pretty much anyone’s problems and is like a pseudo-therapist to some of us. When I’ve been stressed or mad about anything, he’s done everything from listen to me, take me on walks, send me kitten videos, and even give me a shoulder massage and many hugs. I’m going to miss his presence a lot. He’s probably the most generous colleague I’ve ever known… really ever. Whenever there’s been a quarter-end, he’s brought croissants or doughnuts into the office. He’s baked for the office at least a few times since I’ve been here. Today, he presented the colleague who referred him here a $70 bottle of very fancy whisky (frankly, I’m not sure that was that much deserved or will really be fully appreciated… but it is what it is). And on his very last day, today, he brought in two massive boxes of Dough doughnuts, the very popular doughnuts that this city is obsessed with.

All I have to say is — if it were my last day at a company, any company, I wouldn’t be bringing in squat — not out of bitterness or anger, but rather… why? His generosity is really limitless. We need more giving people in the world, and now our office has lost one of these rare giving souls.

A colleague with whom I’m friendly who is based in our San Francisco office is here for the next two weeks. She’s originally from Queens and is back in town because her mother had surgery, and she wanted to be here to help take care of her during this time. We took a walk together today around Madison Square Park, talking about our experiences at the company, how we chose to switch coasts (I’ve now been here just over ten years, and she’s been in San Francisco for over eleven now), and how it’s hard for both of us to realistically consider moving back to our original hometowns. It was a funny conversation because we’re both fairly direct yet fun-loving people, and we both, as Asian women, do not at all fit into the stereotypically passive Asian stereotype mold that people might assume of us. She swears a lot; I make frank comments about situations that surprise people. Neither of us is afraid to say what’s wrong in any given situation, even if it means annoying someone else in our presence. A lot of the times, it ends up being comical, but it’s nevertheless always a little shocking for some in the room who do not know us very well.

Later on, at the going-away happy hour of our colleague based here, she was exclaiming, “Yvonne, you’re so New York! You’re way more New York than I am now!” I guess I kind of am. I’m much more impatient now than I was ten years ago. In conversations around people with whom I feel comfortable, I try to be more direct and less beat-around-the-bush because I don’t want to waste time. I don’t really want to keep people guessing (except the times when I do… but that’s another story for another day). I’ve always been a fast walker, even in San Francisco, so that was easy to get used to here. I also said that I can’t stand delusional people who cannot accept and deal with reality… which is definitely not something a typical sunny Californian person would say.

You have to handle the truth. It’s part of survival, right? New York makes people a bit harder, which I’d like to think makes you fitter for survival.

Our team’s manager was in town this week, so he took us out for a team dinner tonight. We ate at an izakaya and shared many small plates, reveling in how lucky we were to live in a city with as plentiful of dining options across all cuisines as New York City. Given that we were sharing and the nature of what an izakaya was, I was quietly thankful, being the one ordering all the food, that we had no one with any food allergies or picky food inclinations at our table. Whenever food is a topic, people on my team and in our office tend to look to me for advice and suggestions. And it’s flattering when not only they ask my advice, but they actually follow through and try the different dishes or restaurants and find that they enjoyed their experiences.

“I think our team out here in New York is so great because it’s like every single one of you has a passion that is really obvious,” my manager said. He motioned to one of my colleagues and mentioned how into animals she is (she has a puppy she adopted from a local shelter), another colleague who is obsessed with sailing and has a goal of owning his own boat (and is obsessed with the band Phish, and then of course me, who is clearly passionate about food and travel.

Knowing what you are passionate about, what you deeply care about, is really important in life… especially if you are at my age, in your late twenties or early thirties. I kind of think that by this age, you really should have some idea of what you love. It gives your life meaning, direction, a sense of purpose. Otherwise, what are you doing — are you really living, or are you just existing and watching your life pass you by? It’s like this article I read recently about the most resilient people who are able to overcome massive life obstacles — the death of a parent at a young age, the sudden death of a spouse, a near-death car accident, etc.; the way that they got through these difficult life circumstances was by continuing to do what they were passionate about and loved, whether it was a hobby like sewing or painting or singing, or by volunteering and giving back to their communities if that was their thing. If you don’t have any of those things to fall back on, then what really is the point of living?

Oddly enough, my manager said that when he’s been asked what he’s passionate about, he cannot answer the question in a straightforward way and is still struggling to answer it. It sounds like he needs to do more soul searching, as well.

I was finally allowed access back to the office today as our office manager is overseeing asbestos testing in the office after the city has given its approval that there’s supposedly no asbestos that’s leaked into our HVAC system. I went in to retrieve my work laptop before heading over to a shared space that we rented for the day. We won’t know for sure that there’s no asbestos contamination inside our office walls until tomorrow morning.

During midday, a number of us in the shared rented space and those brave enough to work in the office met up to get bubble tea from Boba Guys, and it felt really comforting to be in the presence of my colleagues after nearly a week of not seeing each other. Unfortunately, one of my colleagues will be leaving us soon to join another organization, and it made me feel a little nostalgic for what once was: an organization where everyone seemed really committed not just to the cause, but to each other. The more our personnel changes, the more our culture will change, which leaves a big question mark when it comes to what this office culture is going to evolve into. Is it going to be a happy place to come to work every day, or are we just going to become a corporate machine in an attempt to be more of the “enterprise business” that our CEO wants us to become?

So I’ve been working from home the last two days due to a massive steam pipe explosion that occurred just two blocks from my office in the Flatiron district downtown in Manhattan. Generally, these explosions have happened throughout the city due to ridiculously old infrastructure that the city is too cheap or careless to deal with, and every now and then, there have been fatalities and injuries. The city seems happier to deal with these fatalities and injuries in payouts than they are to prevent them in the first place. If you think about it, it’s actually the way our healthcare system is: it’s happier to deal with you being sick (and taking you for everything you are worth because healthcare here is the most expensive in the world) than it is to prevent you from getting sick in the first place. Luckily this time, no one was killed, though a few people did suffer some minor injuries.

Based on discussions with our office manager, who has been in contact with our building’s super, who of course has been in contact with city officials, we’ve learned that it’s very much in the air as to when we will actually be able to regain access to the building. The city blocked off entry into the general area due to potential asbestos contamination. I was sulky because I actually do not enjoy working from home and prefer to be in the office. I like the camaraderie at work, the free air conditioning, and my free lunch. I also miss my work computer, which I stupidly left in the office on Wednesday night.

But the scariest part when I think about it is how old the infrastructure is in this entire city, and how many old buildings that are not up to code are being inhabited all over this island, all over these five boroughs. An incident like this one could happen pretty much anywhere, and we all know this will not be the last. Chris always says that the biggest irony of our being required to have renter’s insurance in our building (which is only two years old now) is that we’re far safer and less likely to have a disaster happen here than in our old Upper East Side co-op apartment, which is far, far older, creakier, and who knows when it was ever last inspected for safety? And we never had renter’s insurance at the last place.

We just have to hope for the best.

Today, a semi-new colleague who works remotely from South Carolina was in the office, so I suggested that we take a walk and catch up. Based on the few chats I’ve had with him and observing him when he’s been in the office, I can tell that he’s not quite at ease with his job responsibilities or his place in the company yet. He’s still adjusting to new processes and of course, learning our technology, which certainly can be a challenge. He’s also still trying to find his social niche here, particularly given that he’s a remote employee and doesn’t have a lot of face time with any of us. We spent most of our half hour talking about non-work related things, which I purposely constructed. So I told him about observations and experiences I had during my recent India trip, and he talked about the adjustment of his college- and post-college age children moving out, adjusting to adult and work life, and living a bi-state life (they go between New Jersey, where they’re originally from and have relatives, and South Carolina, which is their primary residence). “It’s nice to have a conversation not about work at work!” he exclaimed to me, smiling. It was clear he doesn’t really talk about non-work related topics with other people here.

It’s almost been like an unspoken role of mine, to make people feel comfortable here and at ease. I don’t even know how that’s really happened. I don’t know if it’s just part of my aura, or the questions that I ask or the efforts I make to talk to people, but it’s just kind of become part of my de factor non-job responsibility here. “You make people feel comfortable with your presence,” a colleague in this office recently said to me. “You keep things calm and organized.”

The more I think about it, though, the more it seems like additional pressure on me. It also seems like a bit of a gender role if I want to start digging deeper into this because what man has ever been told that he has a calming presence that puts people at ease?

When you live in the concrete jungle that is New York City, or just live in this area where a small amount of space costs loads of money, you start realizing how luxurious it must be to have space for things like gardens, vast open spaces for outdoor chairs, tables, and grills, fruit trees, and vegetable shrubs. A remote colleague who works out of his home office in Atlanta had a work meeting a couple weeks ago in Miami, and he’d told me that he and his daughters had spent a few hours that weekend picking peaches that were ripe and nearly falling off his peach tree in his garden. In total, they collected nearly 200 peaches; they had so much that they just couldn’t eat them all in time, so they went door to door handing them out to their neighbors. I jokingly suggested to my colleague that he share some peaches with another colleague coming down to Miami to join him for his meeting. My colleague actually took me seriously and gave my New York colleague a few peaches (and some plums from his other tree!). He presented a few to our New York colleague, who ate the fruit.

This New York colleague proceeded to text our mutual colleague here to complain about our Atlanta colleague’s generosity. “Why would he give me fruit? I’m traveling back to New York, and he wants me to cart fruit back?” he grumbled to our mutual colleague. When our mutual colleague told me this, I was livid. What is wrong with this guy? How can he not appreciate homegrown fruit; who in this area ever gets gifted anything that is homegrown or homemade? You’re lucky to ever get anything gifted to you for any reason!

There are fewer things worse to me than an inability to be grateful for what you have and are given, especially when someone has been so kind and generous to give you something for absolutely no reason at all other than for the sake of giving and sharing. It never fails to shock me how ungrateful and miserable people choose to be in their overly privileged lives that they take small acts of kindness like this for granted. He even ate the fruit, too, and said they were really good!! 

Yesterday morning, I woke up at around 4:30am, likely again from the little bits of jetlag that I’ve faced this week. It’s not something to complain about of course… until about an hour and a half later, I woke up again from a half-sleep, this time to a sharp, stinging, biting pain in my right calf that would not stop, and I started grabbing my calf and trying to depress my fingers on the spot where the stabbing feeling seems to be radiating from. It lasted for a good minute before I could stop holding my calf. I was pretty much screaming or moaning the entire time, and it certainly felt like longer than a minute. It felt like at least two or three times as long as that.

This type of pain seems have happened every now and then for me in the last couple of years, and it always happens when I know I am not getting enough potassium. This never used to happen to me before. “It’s a sign you’re aging!” my colleague, who is in her 50s, told me, laughing. “Welcome to aging, you youngin’!”

That… is not comforting. I actually am very comfortable being in my early 30s. I am probably the most confident about myself than I have ever been in my life. But sudden muscle spasms… no. These are not welcome at all.