Category Archives: Culture

“The beach took my sandal away”

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We discovered in Boracay that during the day, it’s generally low tide and the waters are calm and serene. At night, though, high tide arrives, and the waves can come all the way to the steps of businesses (that is REALLY far in if you knew how small the current was during the day!). As with most islands, typhoon alerts are very much a real thing to be cognizant of and concerned about.

Yesterday early evening, Chris was having a massage while Kaia and I played in the water and built sand castles at White Beach. But given we’re so close to the equator, the sun set relatively early, so people started leaving the beach. We eventually left the beach and spent some time walking on the streets to find a restaurant. The place I originally chose had a wait, so we had to find somewhere else. After further browsing, I ended up choosing a restaurant to meet Chris at that would be most convenient if accessed by going to the beach first. What I wasn’t prepared for, especially in the dark, was how far in the tide would be. Luckily Kaia and I both were wearing waterproof sandals, so we were able to walk through the shallow waves easily. But I did feel a little uneasy, wondering if one of her sandals would just disappear with the force of a wave. We met Chris at the restaurant and had a quick dinner.

But after dinner, there was no escaping going back into the water in the dark. There wasn’t a way for us to get back to the hotel via the street; none of the businesses would let us go through their businesses to get to the street (okay, so maybe not everyone here is hospitable). So we had no choice but to walk at the edge of the waves to get back. This time, Chris held Kaia’s hand and walked through the waves. And a few minutes in, Kaia yelled out that she didn’t have a sandal on anymore. We turned on our phone flashlights and tried to see if a wave would bring her sandal back in, but to no avail; the waves had swept away her sandal forever! She ended up having to walk barefoot on one foot for the distance back to the hotel. It wasn’t a long distance, but it was still very annoying. And we were obviously very unhappy to be that family who had their kid lose a single shoe! I was even more mad about this because I just gifted her these sandals right before this trip, and so she’d only been wearing them for a few weeks. I cannot even count the number of times I’ve seen a single flip flop, a single sandal, a single shoe, lying around on the streets of New York, in playgrounds, parks, and at beaches. Each time I see these, I’ve given a sad look at what was lost that I could see, but its rightful owner would unlikely ever see again.

Now, we have to get her new sandal replacements for this trip while here so that she could continue to enjoy what limited time we still have at the beach. We really liked these sandals a lot, and they matched with everything she wore. I felt guilty for not securing the strap more tightly before we left the restaurant (I always tried to strap it on tighter, but she’d yell and say she didn’t like it, and eventually loosen it).

When we got back to the hotel and cleaned up, she gave me this long, glum look and said, “The beach took my sandal away.”

And that’s the story of how White Beach took my baby’s sandal away.

The most beautiful beach in the world

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Boracay’s White Beach is widely considered one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. We happen to be staying at a resort hotel that is just steps away from this beach. For many years, this beach was considered one of the benchmarks against which other tropical beaches were compared. It’s been called one of the top five urban-accessible white sand beaches in the world, ranked number 1 or 2 for beaches across all of Asia, and considered one of the top 10-30 beaches globally, depending on your source (e.g. Travel + Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, or TripAdvisor). I was curious to see if seeing this beach in real life would truly live up to all the hype.

As soon as we got on the beach, I understood immediately why it’s so popular and highly ranked: the color of the water is just immaculate, ranging in shades from pale aqua to pale jade green to deep turquoise. The sand truly is almost white here, and it has an airy, soft, fine texture against your toes. In addition, the shoreline is long and gentle, with calm waters and waves that would make it comfortable and safe for littles and people like me who are terrified of big waves. You could go out quite far and still be standing in water just at ankle or knee level.

Diniwid Beach is a little beach just across a cliff walk from White Beach. We walked along the cliff walk and admired the rocky headlands before finding a little covered alcove to park our blankets at. As far as I was concerned, Diniwid Beach is basically like White Sand Beach, just much quieter, less open, with fewer people and thus more of a relaxed feel. I was all for this! I especially loved our little shaded alcove right under some big trees we camped out at, which you definitely would not be able to easily find at White Beach, which is far more out in the open with fewer coverage areas. We spent the majority of our late morning here today. Chris and I took turns splashing in the water with Kaia, and I also spent a good amount of time building a sand castle with a large moat (as I keep telling Pookster, the best sand castles always, always have a moat — it’s a non-negotiable!). I found some interesting shells amongst the coarser sand that my toes dug into and tried to collect those. And as soon as I (dumbly) announced to Pooks that I would be taking a photo of my sand castle…. she went ahead and sunk her arms into it. And there went all my hopes and dreams…

Eventually, I stopped taking photos and videos of White Beach and Diniwid Beach because I realized I just had to soak in these sights on my own. No photo or video was going to ever fully capture how spectacular these beaches were. After seeing these beaches and wandering around the different streets throughout the day, I realized why people choose to spend a full week or even over a month here — Boracay has a really great mix of tourists and locals, touristy and local businesses, and a fun, relaxed vibe. You can have a $0.10 USD Filipino pastry from a local bakery, or you can have a $35 USD plate of Thai crabs at a tourist-centered restaurant that is just down the street. But either way, you can enjoy the beauty that is right in your face here.

The road to paradise is not always paradise

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Before we arrived in Boracay, I was skimming reviews of our resort hotel we’d booked for our three-night stay there. One reviewer wrote, “If you’re here (in Boracay), you know you’ve made it in life.”

So, I’ve “made it in life” if I’ve come here, huh? Well, I don’t think you get that feeling at all when you are en route to the island of Boracay. The entire experience felt rushed, chaotic, and crowded. It did not feel like I was in the lap of luxury — I can assure you that.

First, we landed in Caticlan Airport. From Caticlan Airport, you have to take a shuttle to a boat to another shuttle/van to get to your hotel; Grab does not exist here. Boat transport is required to get from the airport to the island of Boracay. At the jetty port, you also have to pay tourist/nature conservation fees, and so ideally, you’d want all of these fees plus transport costs covered in one go. Chris rushed out to book our transport to the hotel while Kaia and I waited for our one checked roller bag. We got our bag and eventually came out to a shuttle van, which was going to whisk us off to a jetty port. At the jetty port, we had to wait until our group name was called before they’d load as many of us (and our luggage!) as they could onto the boat. Kaia complained multiple times: “Why is it taking so long?” By this time, it was past dusk, so everything was quite dark. It was hard to see clearly, but you could tell right away that the water was not calm when we were walking towards the boat. So we all crammed ourselves like sardines into these small boats and hoped for the best despite the trashing waters and limited visibility. We finally made to Boracay Island, where we all offloaded from an unsteady boat, got into yet another shuttle van, and then finally got dropped off at our respective hotels after what felt like an endless journey.

Chris remarked that this is how it feels in transit to nearly every tropical island resort that he’s aware of. Throughout the entire journey from mid afternoon to evening, I kept thinking about that online reviewer saying that “we’ve made it in life” since we’re here. I kept chuckling in my head over the irony of that statement. Welp, I always thought “making it in life” would mean never having to be pushed into a jam-packed van or boat and then being rushed from point to point. And I’m positive that reviewer had the same miserable, frantic transfer experience to the hotel we did!

By the time we made it to our hotel, none of us had any desire to go anywhere for food. So Kaia and I showered while Chris went out to a nearby mall and got some chicken inasal for us. And thankfully, that meal was very satisfying and tasty — exactly what we needed after a chaotic transport experience to “paradise.”

When your 4-year-old gets food poisoning and poops in her bed at 3am

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Chris and I are still taking turns waking up in the middle of the night to take Kaia to the potty to “dream pee.” We decided not to put her in pull-ups for this trip since it would be too long of a time frame out of this routine and might cause her to regress. Our bodies have a muscle memory, so we thought doing that would set her back too much. Our goal, of course, is to have her wake up on her own to pee if she needs to, and to stay dry all night. It was my turn last night to wake up to have her pee. I set my alarm for 1am, but at around 12:30, she woke up and came to our bed. I touched her bottom and realized she was already wet. This seemed a little odd to me; I had been able to wait until 1:30 or even 2am to have her pee, but I didn’t think much of it. So I cleaned her up, lay a towel on top of the small wet spot on her bed, and had her go back to sleep. Kaia fussed and indicated she wanted me to stay. So I ended up staying there and passed out until 3am, when I woke up to go back to my own bed.

Within 10 minutes of going back to my own bed, Kaia started crying. She jumped out of her bed and ran to me. And before I even touched her, I immediately smelled something very foul. I touched her bottom and even in the darkness, I could see that my hand was covered in something dark and mushy.

“Oh, no, baby!” I exclaimed lightly. “Did you poop in the bed?”

She had this pained look on her face. “It was an accident! It was an accident!” she said over and over. Then, she told us her stomach hurt. And then the sequence of events made even more sense.

I proceeded to clean her and her poopy shorts. Chris gathered the towel I lay on her bed, and luckily it caught almost everything. He emptied it into the toilet, then called housekeeping to see if they could help with this emergency cleanup and new bedsheets. Luckily, they came up right away and were quite gracious about the whole accident. We had to keep Kaia in a towel just in case — we had no idea if everything had come out, or if there was still more to come. I was bracing myself if she might not be able to control her bowel movements while sleeping for the rest of the night. It’s not like we had easy access to laundry here.

From the smell of her poop, I could tell immediately that it had to be the seafood lunch we had on the boat the previous day. Although lunch was quite tasty, it clearly did not sit well with my sweet baby’s young tummy. Luckily, Chris and I got through the night and the rest of today just fine, so our stomachs were not negatively impacted by the same food Kaia ate. As the day went on, it seemed like Kaia was doing just fine. Her poops were more solid; she seemed to be in a good, chipper mood. She said her stomach no longer hurt. So we’re lucky that this passed through her relatively quickly.

i always wondered when Kaia’s first poop accident or poop-in-bed might happen. And well, now, it finally happened, and I suppose with “good” reason since she got a mild case of food poisoning. I felt so proud of her for getting through the day and being so good about it all.

Cebu: the land of rich culture, delicious food (like lechon!), and beautiful beaches

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Before we came to the Philippines, the only things I knew about Cebu were that a) it was known for its delicious lechon (roasted suckling pig!), b) it has gorgeous beaches and is good for swimming, snorkeling/diving, and c) one of the Filipino nannies in our building is originally from here. When Kaia had a nanny, this nanny and I got acquainted, and so we’re friendly and have small talk when we see each other. When Chris booked this trip, I told her about it, and she immediately got excited that we were going to her homeland.

“There’s such good food in Cebu!” she exclaimed. “You will eat very well there!”

Before I started researching Cebu, I just imagined it being like Boracay, that it was some small island where you’d have water activities and the related to do. But this baseless assumption (that I… just made up in my head for no good reason) was quickly squashed once I looked at it on the map: Boracay is about 3.985 square miles; Cebu is 121.6 square miles. Boracay’s total population is about 38,000 people; Cebu province’s total population is over 5.1 million people, with about 1 million of those residents living in Cebu City, a very urbanized city (and where our hotel for this leg of the trip is). The Cebu metropolitan area or Metro Cebu is the second largest metropolitan area in the Philippines (after Metro Manila). So in Cebu, you could have a mixed holiday with both urban fun and sun, beaches, and water. You could also do nature activities like hikes to see some famous waterfalls. You could easily just spend your entire time here exploring the metro area for all its urban glory, or you could forgo the city completely and hang out at the beaches, maybe even go to Mactan Island to visit some of the most famous beaches in Cebu. The strangest thing, though, that we were not expecting is that Ayala Center Cebu Mall would be listed as the number one place to visit while in Cebu City.

After we got situated at our hotel in Cebu City yesterday, we walked a couple blocks to Ayala Center Cebu to see what the hype was about. It was an interesting experience for us not only because we live in New York City and rarely go to malls, but also because of the types of stores they had. I had no idea Garmin brick and mortar stores existed? I saw a Sperry shoe store (when I always thought they were sold only online or at major department stores?). Individual brands had their own little shops throughout the mall. We also noticed that there were apartments/condos built on top of the malls, so I suppose that’s just very easy shopping access for the residents in this relatively wealthy area? A fun thing we saw for Kaia (that she immediately made a beeline for) was a huge outdoor play area that was covered. It had several large slides, plenty of areas for tactile climbing, plus spinny rides that the kids were getting very feisty over. They also had parents/caregivers in mind when they designed this space, as there was plenty of seating and benches for us to comfortably watch over our kids.

The mall has several floors of individual restaurants, so we randomly picked a spot called Gerry’s Grill yesterday. There, we had a sizzling plate of kang kong (morning glory/water spinach – another thing I learned is that this vegetable is also very popular here!) with shrimpy sambal, pork sisig, inihaw bangus (grilled milkfish), and garlic rice, with a pitcher of sagot gulaman. Sagot gulaman was also new to us: it’s a sweet Filipino beverage made from brown sugar syrup, with tapioca pearls and almond jelly. Everything we had was so delicious and absurdly cheap for the quality of food. Kaia also enjoyed all the food, and she’s been really loving her morning glory while here (another bonus is that we don’t have to worry about her not getting enough vegetables, as in some destinations, it can be challenging to find decent vegetable dishes to regularly order).

Today, we visited Carbon Market, which is considered the main market for all of Cebu and where most of the food and goods comes through. I quickly realized why it wasn’t really listed on most tourist guides – it’s very much a local, locals market. There’s little about it that would scream out to tourists that they should come visit: it’s not pretty or flashy, nor does it have beautiful displays of produce or products. Everything there just has practical value in that it needs to be bought and sold – no frills here whatsoever. I loved seeing the endless piles of teeny tiny calamansis, all priced the same at 80 PHP/kilo ($1.35 USD/2.2 lb). The pineapples are also so small here, just like we saw in Manila Chinatown: the largest of the tiny pineapples were just a tad bigger than my fist!

I usually don’t mind this and enjoy the locals’ markets, but I will be honest and say that of all the markets we’ve visited thus far around the world, Carbon Market was likely the least pleasant. There were many sections of this market we walked through where the smells were a combination of rotting fish to heated rubbish. Kaia, who over the last six months, has become increasingly aware and knowledgable of unpleasant odors, immediately started yelling out, “It smells! It smells!”, indicating that she wanted to leave as soon as possible to be free of said foul odors. Her face looked so distressed. And frankly, I couldn’t really blame her. She yelled this out several times, and at one moment, it was right when Chris identified where the fish market was. This was also when we noticed how wet the floors were in there, and thought the fish market smells would likely not be too fun for any of us. So we decided not to go in and instead to wander around the streets of the market instead.

The one big win of going to the market, other than seeing some nice views of the city through the top floors, was running into some jackfruit vendors along the streets. We’re lucky in that we are visiting during jackfruit season (though it seems we were five months off from peak durian season, unfortunately), so I asked a vendor how much she charged for hers. She said 150 PHP/kilo (that’s about $2.54 USD for 2.2 pounds of fruit!). I chose a pre-cut chunk of jackfruit that was about 250 PHP, and she agreed to slice all the jackfruit pockets out for me (there was no way I was going to do this work on my own!). We ate some right away, and even Kaia got into it and kept asking for more. I love watching her really get into our favorite foods. Unfortunately, she did not have the same reaction to trying the mangosteen I bought in Manila Chinatown. But given that we already had so little flesh in those, it was fine that just Chris and I ate it.

We’re all sleeping early tonight despite it being New Year’s Eve so that we can wake up bright and early for an island hopping and snorkeling adventure tomorrow. Chris said it reminded him of our New Year’s Eve in Indonesia in 2019, when we were in Yogyakarta and had to wake up before sunrise to see Borobudur Temple. I have a feeling this will be even more exciting because this will involve not only a boat, but being in deep water (which will be Pookster’s first time!).

One day eating in Manila

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Manila, the capital of the Philippines and the country’s largest metro area, is one of those places that you rarely hear about international tourists visiting unless they are either originally from there, are visiting family, or simply transiting through to get to more (internationally) popular places like Boracay or Palawan. With a population of over 14 million people, Metro Manila is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. It is also known for its chaotic traffic, which I was quite wary of before we arrived. Manila to the Philippines is kind of like Jakarta to Indonesia from an international traveler’s standpoint: it’s a capital city that people either transit through or manage to avoid entirely because most international travelers prefer more buzzy destinations, like Palawan, Cebu, or Boracay in the Philippines, or for Indonesia, the most obvious destination of Bali.

Manila is a strange city in that its large skyscrapers are not all concentrated in one section of the city. It actually has several very disparate parts of the city that are very spread out, each with their own concrete jungles! I noticed this when we were landing at the airport and thought about how unusual this was. We split our one day in Manila yesterday between the historic neighborhood and its Chinatown, also known as Binondo, which is supposed to be the oldest Chinatown in the world. It was established in 1594 as a permanent settlement for Chinese-Catholic immigrants. One thing I didn’t realize before coming to Manila and reading about it is that there’s actually a distinctive fusion cuisine for Chinese-Filipino food. One of the examples we got to try today was the Binondo-style fresh lumpia. This is not lumpia as in the Filipino fried egg rolls you may be familiar with, but rather a freshly packed spring roll stuffed with various vegetables, minced pork, crushed peanuts, brown sugar, seaweed, and crispy fried vermicelli noodles. To be honest, this was a bit sweet for us, but it did emphasize how Filipinos do like their foods on the sweeter side.

Siomai (or shu mai/shao mai/siu mai) is wildly popular here: you see endless street vendors selling these, and pretty much all the restaurants have different versions of them. They are huge, plump, fat, and brimming with pork. These are far larger than the ones you’d get at the average Chinese spot, whether it was for takeout or at a dim sum/tea house. We got some at a noodle shop we visited, and they were multiple mouthfuls big! The ones I am used to eating in Cantonese restaurants and dim sum houses typically have a mix of pork and shrimp, but these had pork only.

One interesting thing I liked seeing were the Lunar New Year decorations already up and being sold on the streets. The wreath that stood out to me the most was a true fusion of Chinese and Filipino cultures: a round wreath of calamansis all around, framing a teeny tiny fist-sized pineapple, then wrapped with a red bow, with red and gold tassels dangling down. That’s probably the best Lunar New Year decoration I’ve ever seen — ever. I would love to hang that in my house (and have unlimited access to calamansis!).

I also love that little calamansis are served with pretty much all your dishes to add a little sour/tart flair to your food. This came with pretty much everything, whether it was dry noodles, soup noodles, or sizzling meat plates. While I didn’t always add this to my dishes, I did either suck them up myself or have Kaia eat them. Kaia enjoyed chewing them down to pulp! These tiny suckers have so many seeds for how small they are! Kaia did NOT enjoy all the seeds, though.

In just our first day in the Philippines, we already got our ube fix: in the morning, we shared a mango topped ube cheesecake shake; Kaia requested an ube swirl bun from a little bakery in the historical neighborhood. There, I saw a six-pack of ube cheese pandesal for just 120 PHP – that’s about $2 USD. I was tempted to get it, but I thought that my head was getting a bit too ahead of my belly, so I resisted. In the afternoon at Divisoria Mall, we shared a mango smoothie, plus our first halo halo topped with a huge scoop of ube ice cream. I wasn’t sure what Kaia liked more – the ube ice cream or all the colorful jellies mixed into the shaved ice.

We ended the day in Bonifacio Global City (BGC), a neighborhood that seemed a world away from Chinatown and the historical neighborhood, and ate a delicious meal of kare kare beef stew, lechon kawali, and garlic rice, with fresh calamansi and dalandan (a Filipino citrus) juices. If there was one thing to be certain about the Philippines, it is that I was pretty darn sure we would eat well here. And after just a day, I can say I was definitely right in that assumption.

Matcha Kobo in Melbourne CBD

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Every time we come back to San Francisco and Melbourne since they are our original homes, it’s always a trade-off on what places we love that we’ll revisit on a given trip versus new, interesting places that have opened that are on our list. Both city lists have hundreds of different food spots bookmarked, and so each outing always feels like a difficult choice. But I told Chris that the one new place I absolutely wanted to visit this trip was Matcha Kobo in Melbourne CBD. It opened around June of this year, and the reason it intrigued me so much was that this cafe is so serious about matcha that they actually grind their matcha leaves in-house. They have four ishu usu (stone mills) in the center of their large cafe. These were all imported from the Aichi Prefecture in Japan and cost $20,000 each; they are the only matcha stone mills in Australia. A small handful of these stone mills exist outside of Japan, so this is a true rarity to experience. The mills grind the tea leaves into matcha powder at a very slow pace, with each mill taking 24 hours to produce one kilogram of freshly ground matcha. One kilogram of match is enough to make about 300 cups of matcha. All the matcha used at the cafe is milled on-site, with fresh batches harvested twice daily.Once the powder runs out – that’s it. Stone-grinding fresh keeps the matcha from oxidizing, which means the flavor is fresher, smoother, and far lower in bitterness. On top of their expertly crafted drinks, they also have the most beautiful pastries that look like works of art, all under the direction of a very talented pastry chef of Asian decent who used to work for Adriana Zumbo Patisserie and Koko Black.

Given how particular and exacting this whole process is, plus the enormous cost of the stone mills, I just assumed the matcha would be quite expensive. But given all these intricacies and business costs, the matcha drinks cost just a tiny bit more than the average matcha or freshly made tea beverage you can order out. And with a stronger U.S. dollar against the Aussie dollar, it worked out to be quite a deal for us. We went to Matcha Kobo as our first stop in CBD today along with Chris’s parents, and for four freshly whisked and made matcha/hojicha drinks, a double scoop of vivid green matcha gelato, and a gorgeous, artfully made hojicha chestnut tart that was almost too pretty to eat, the total cost was $39.30 USD. It felt like such a bargain for such a fresh, delicious, gourmet experience.

The cafe itself is so airy and spacious — it’s supposed to seat 90 people and even has a traditional tatami mat seating area where you sit on the floor and are required to remove your shoes. It would be a very comfortable and relaxing place to have a catch up with a friend, while also enjoying amazing tea drinks and treats. I MUST come back. I want this to be an every-year visit!

20% Azelaic acid in the U.S. vs. Australia

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I learned about azelaic acid for skincare a few years ago, as a low percentage of it was in a face toner I bought meant for helping with hyperpigmentation and fading sun spots. The toner didn’t do anything for my skin, so I stopped buying it. But the ingredient kept coming up in conversation with my esthetician, who highly recommended it for treating and preventing sun spots. Azelaic acid has been heavily researched in recent years and has been demonstrated to diminish skin blemishes and help fade sun spots and post-acne marks, refine skin’s surface, and help to fight inflammation.

In November when I went for a dermatology visit, the dermatologist suggested I use a 20 percent azelaic acid cream that would require a prescription. She warned me ahead of time that my insurance would unlikely cover it given it is for cosmetic reasons. So when I went to CVS just to ask how much it cost, the pharmacist looked up the product and actually laughed out loud as she responded, “A tube for a one month supply would be $648 (USD).” I gasped.

Wow. That was like paying rent. I told her that I’d pass on it, and I immediately started researching other ways to either source this product, or to get a slightly lower dosage. Chris suggested I look it up in Australia, as a quick Google search revealed that this product did not require a prescription there. So we went to Chemist Warehouse today, where I asked the pharmacist. He confirmed to me that it did not require a prescription here, but it was behind the counter. He grabbed a tube for me and said it was just one unit per customer (and then Chris went to request a second tube). The cost for this tube: $18.99 AUD ($12.54 USD). So, $648 vs. $12.54 it was. That is beyond crazy to me! The price wasn’t even remotely in the same ballpark! Well, it’s clear there are massive benefits to having access to behind-the-counter pharmacy items in two different countries — and especially outside of the U.S.

Lack of comfort discussing the elimination of bodily wastes, and Poop and Fart Bingo games!

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Since Kaia was born, Chris and I have had an ongoing discussion about her poops and pees. Pediatricians and all healthcare professionals recommend it for parents to do for their babies since it’s the only way to know what actually went in (because… what goes in must also come out!). This is especially crucial if you are breastfeeding and especially nursing, since with direct breastfeeding, there is no other way to truly measure what the baby consumed. We used to keep a paper log, then a Google spreadsheet log. And then once Kaia turned 14 months of age, we would just have a verbal back and forth about it throughout the day or week. For us, we’re just trying to be good parents and track our child’s inputs and outputs, so we don’t see this being peculiar at all. We never saw it as something we liked or didn’t like to discuss; for us, it seemed like the responsible parent thing to do to ensure our child’s good health.

One funny thing I’ve noticed over the last four years now is that Chris’s parents are very, very uncomfortable with conversations around… the elimination of bodily wastes. It doesn’t matter if it’s pooping, peeing, or farting — they immediately look awkward and embarrassed, and his dad usually tries his best to quickly divert the conversation in another direction. He would shift in his seat, look another way where no one was to avert eye contact, and act as though no poop/pee conversation were happening at all. A number of times, his mom has gotten exasperated by the constant bodily waste conversation that she has exclaimed in many different ways, “My goodness! So much talk about poo and pee all the time! Will you still be keeping tabs on this for Kaia when she’s in her teens and 20s?”

Chris’s and my parents’ generation obviously had very different newborn/child-rearing advice than Chris and I’ve had. Things change and evolve over time, and I think on the surface, they do recognize this and try to follow our lead with most things we do for Kaia. With the poop/pee talk, there’s zero chance they could try to get us to stop it even if they wanted to because we’ll do what we need to do to ensure our child is healthy, nourished, and having the appropriate outputs in a day. It’s more just amusing to me how some people are so uncomfortable with actions that need to be done by all of us every single day, multiple times a day. It’s true that none of us really needs an audience there when we’re on the toilet or farting. But with child rearing, the conversation does need to be had. It gets even more hilarious because Chris and I comment now on how big and stinky her poops can be (this is physical proof that she eats a varied, well-rounded diet!) as well as how long her pees are, and his parents think we’re a little crazy about this. We also tell them how she loves to see her poops and peer closely into the toilet bowl after. And she loves to get reactions from me yelling out in Chinese, “What a big poop!” Sometimes, she even insists that I come over to see it when Chris is in charge of wiping her and going through the hand-washing motion together.

I thought about his parents’ lack of comfort around all things toilet related when we were browsing a shop along Chapel Street in South Yarra today, and we came across these games called “Poop Bingo and “Fart Bingo.” The Bingos are geared for playing with kids, and they are exactly what you expect them to be: they show you caricatures of animals and their different types of poop, as well as… what may come out of an animal’s anus when they fart (apparently, those potential… things that can come out are not technically poop!). I jokingly suggested to Chris that we buy them to play with his parents, and he chuckled and thought it could be funny. The better (and cheaper) side of me decided not to get it because the amusement would be short-lived, and they might play it once or twice with us and then stop. That probably would not be the greatest ROI (return on investment) on a gift.

My once-a-year catch-up with an Instagram friend in Melbourne

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After we returned from Wellington this afternoon, I went to go meet an Instagram friend for dinner at a popular Italian restaurant near Chris’s parents’ house. Chris’s parents had already been, and they said that an Italian client of Chris’s dad, originally from Rome, declared that it was one of the best Italian restaurants in the area. So that just added to my expectations for how good this place was going to be (not to mention that my Instagram friend is a huge foodie, so I figured she would have good judgment in choosing a spot!).

Usually, I am a bit wary of Italian restaurants because so many just have generic offerings, but given it’s a popular and “neutral” cuisine, the prices are always jacked up. This spot, Cucina & Co., was anything but generic. We shared a pear, rocket (arugula), and grana padano salad; eggplant parmigiana; spaghetti ai fruitti de mare (seafood spaghetti); the zucotta pizza (mashed pumpkin, buffalo mozzarella, sausage, thyme). We ended with a scoop each of gelato — she had chocolate while I had pistachio. And every single thing we got was just amazing. The pear and rocket salad was so fresh it seemed like everything was picked just before we ordered it; the spaghetti Napoli sauce was so addictive that I almost wanted to lick the plate, plus the seafood was perfectly cooked and fresh. The pizza was delicious as expected, but what shocked me the most was the eggplant parmigiana starter. Eggplant parmigiana has always felt hit or miss (mostly miss) to me. Most of the time, the eggplant layers are too thick, and the tomato sauce tastes bland. But this rendition had super thin layers of eggplant that pretty much just melted in your mouth. This was the best eggplant parmigiana I’d ever had in my life — I can say this for certain! And the ending of pistachio gelato was so rich, thick, and decadent: it tasted like loads of toasted and pureed pistachios mixed in with cream, milk, and sugar. All of that, plus two lemon and lime bitters drinks, and we spent only $45 USD each — what a bargain; that would never happen in New York City.

I met this Instagram friend during the pandemic when we each had our respective food channels on YouTube, and we were trying to build our Instagram presence. I messaged her out of the blue because I saw she was based in Melbourne, and we just started messaging on and off and clicked. We both love food (duh) and travel; she was married to a Sri Lankan while I was married to another brown guy with origins in India. 🙂 She’s a year younger than me, and after we started chatting, she gave birth in June 2021 to her baby boy. Kaia was born six months after that. So it felt like even though we were from very different parts of the world leading different lives that we had a lot in common. Since December 2022 when we came back post-pandemic, we met up with our babies; then in December 2023, we met at a children’s play museum with our kids, but given it was a museum, it was hard to have a real adult conversation since we were chasing our kids around everywhere. In December 2024, we had a Greek dinner catch up, and now we’ve met again for the fourth year in a row, also sans kids. We both get along really well and have a lot of opinions in common. She’s the kind of friend who, if we lived closer to each other, I’d imagine myself seeing fairly regularly. And of course, it helps that she loves to eat (and cook)!

I love having a friend down here I can meet up with that is separate from Chris’s people. I also love that I’ve made a couple friends through Instagram over the years. I have another Instagram “friend” who is based in Sydney. She doesn’t get out of Sydney much, but she told me that if I’m ever up there for a side trip that she’d love to have a meal with me. If we go back to Sydney, I’d definitely want to take her up on her offer because she does all the “project” cooking that I wish I had more time to do!