Category Archives: Friends

Annual Southern Hemisphere meetup with my Instagram friend

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This evening, I went to Elwood, a suburb close to where Chris’s parents live, to have dinner at a Greek restaurant with a friend I made on Instagram during the pandemic. Since 2022, I’ve been meeting with her once a year in December when we come back down here. In 2022, we met at a cafe here in Brighton with our respective babies. In 2023, we met at a children’s museum so the kids could play while we caught up. And this year, we actually went out without the kids and just caught up one on one. She seemed really relieved when I suggested we just meet up 1:1 (which was at Chris’s suggestion). She’s had a slightly difficult year, and she was looking forward to the child-free time with me and some wine.

We’ve only ever seen each other three times, but we’ve had a lot of conversations through Instagram messenger over the years. We have a lot in common, as we originally found out about each other through each others’ food handles, and with a shared culture, plus the fact that she’s Melbourne based, it added to our commonalities. Once we ended up coincidentally having kids around the same time, I thought it might even be like fate that we were supposed to be friends in opposite hemispheres. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that there are not only different definitions of “closeness,” but also different definitions of “comfort.” Even though I’ve only seen her in person three times, every time we’re together, it feels really comfortable, almost as though we can talk about anything and everything is just an open book. She opened up to me about her family problems, marital problems, debate about whether to have a second child. She talked to me about her own evolution in terms of her views on therapy, as she’s currently in therapy and had convinced her husband to do couples therapy, as well. I talked to her about my family dynamics, Ed’s struggles and suicide at her request, and we talked a lot about intergenerational trauma and how to heal and move on from it.

Sometimes, you can’t always have frequency of in-person meetups due to, well, geography and life. But I feel lucky to know I have one friend in Melbourne who has no connection to Chris I can meet up with and feel comfortable with when I come all the way here. It’s nice to have someone so far away that will make time for you and look forward to seeing you, even when you originally started as complete strangers. It’s a really nice kind of kinship that I am grateful for.

The sketch Wall Street pool where Kaia had a makeup swim class

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We were able to get a free swim class from Kaia’s swim school since they were doing a limited time promotion: if families upload an Instagram reel or TikTok video praising the school and our experience with them, then we can get a free class redeemable by the end of December. So on Monday of this week, after I picked Kaia up from school, we took the subway down to Wall Street to the makeup swim class location at a pool I’d never been to. The pool was located at Wall Street Bath and Spa. The directions to get there seemed a bit weird: Look for the Spa 88 sign between a sandwich shop and a dry cleaners. I saw the school sign and walked down a dark staircase with Kaia. We poked our heads into the place and asked if this was where the swim class was. They confirmed we were correct. We then walked down another flight of stairs, through a steamy sea of half naked old men, sipping away at their cocktails and beer and reading newspapers and books. I had to walk through this strange area just to get to the women’s locker room. But once I got there, I discovered it was actually a very fancy spa-like locker room, complete with complex hair styling accessories and even a whole shelf of pool-side sandals that I could borrow while on the pool deck. I was pretty happy about this since I had forgotten my flip-flops.

I thought to myself, what the heck kind of sketchy place is this? It’s supposed to be a Russian bathhouse, but given that about 99 percent of the clientele were all 50s+ old white men who were barely clothed, I wasn’t totally sure this was a child-friendly place. I spoke with the instructors of the class, and they said that they didn’t even feel comfortable walking through the place, so they set up a tent on the pool deck to allow their students to change into their swimwear inside. This whole time, they didn’t even know the locker rooms existed and that you just had to walk through the sea of half naked men! I had to show them that day!

The journey and experience were worth it, though. Kaia basically had a 1:1 private swim lesson given how few kids there were versus the number of teachers. This whole visit to the bath house just made me realize exactly how hidden and discreet a lot of these secrets spots are all over New York City, and that “if you know, you know,” and if you don’t know… well, you may find out given these strange and unexpected opportunities.

Friends you make in your youth vs. friends in your adulthood

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One of my good friends from my last company has been in town this week for work, so I met her for breakfast this morning after over a year of not seeing her. We talked a lot about work, the tech industry in general, layoffs and disguised PIPs (“performance improvement plans”), health insurance, politics, and family. I still remember when I met this friend over a Zoom call for the first time about seven years ago. I had been at the company for about six months; she had started a few months after me. But as soon as we started talking, I knew we clicked. It was like love at first conversation. I remember loving the sound of her boisterous laugh and loving how unrestrained it was. We were both loud, opinionated, laughed a lot, and loved food, cooking, and travel. She was like my West Coast equivalent on my team at the time. And since then, we’ve always confided in each other regarding all the work bullshit and hypocrisies around us. We no longer work at the same company, but we’ve stayed in touch. She’s one of a small handful of former colleagues from my last company who I still chat with and see. 

I was thinking a lot about friends I’ve made in my adulthood vs. friends I’ve made in childhood (K-12), and especially thinking about friends I’ve made in the last seven or so years of my life. The friends I’ve made in adulthood, as you’d predict, have values that more align to what I have. Relatively speaking, they are no-nonsense, ‘say what they think and mean’ people and don’t really tolerate much bullshit. They don’t say something to your face and say something different behind it. My good friends from childhood avoid confrontation like the plague; my adulthood friends confront stupid shit head on and stop it before it spirals out of control. They’re all striving to do something important with their lives and contribute to society. A lot of the friends I have kept from my childhood days are friends because of legacy; if I met them today, we’d unlikely “click” and become good friends. But I think all that is to say that different friends serve different purposes in your life. The friends you meet today and spend at most a couple hours a month with are less likely (due to time constraints) to reach the same comfort level of friends you’ve spent literally hundreds of hours with during your childhood; the context is just different. I’m lucky to have a happy and healthy selection of friends from both childhood and adulthood to keep me grounded. 

New friends in your 30s – an investment of time and energy

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This late afternoon, I met up with a new friend I met at the Sambal Lady’s Rendang Hang in mid October. While that event was fun and the food was delicious, I had to balance all the food and the bits of socializing with running around and making sure Kaia didn’t get her hands on anyone’s beer or ended up tearing all of Auria’s plants up. Kaia’s silliness and running around led me to the table of this friend that I ended up meeting with today. She clearly liked children, seemed friendly and outgoing, and like she could be someone I’d get along with. So after some chatting interspersed with running after Kaia, I suggested we exchange contact information (on Instagram first, just in case she thought I was some freak) and maybe meet up in the future. 

We met at a cafe in Nolita and had house-blended ube lattes while discussing the election, politics, life in multiple parts of the world, familial expectations, mental and physical health, college, work, family, and travel. We really packed a lot into almost 2.5 hours of conversation. I found the conversation really stimulating, like the kind of conversation I wish I had more of but don’t have the opportunity to have as much as I’d like given my remote work situation, child rearing, and general life responsibilities. Part of it is that I find it refreshing and stimulating to chat with people who work outside of my tech industry bubble; I learn about industries I have little to no exposure to, and that is always enjoyable and humbling to me. But the other part of it is that I love meeting people who have had very different experiences than my own in general. My friend has lived in four different countries throughout her life, and so she brings an interesting perspective to U.S. politics and also just life philosophy. 

I’m turning 39 in a couple months, and many would already consider me “middle aged.” As I’ve gotten older, especially into my 30s, I’ve realized how much harder it’s been to make friends. We don’t have the endless amounts of leisure time we once had while in school or during summers or school breaks. So now, when I meet people who I find genuinely interesting, even if it’s for just a few minutes, I’ve realized I should take the leap and suggest meeting up for a coffee or meal. The worst thing that could happen is they say no or ghost me, and well, I’m tough and confident enough in my own skin now to not let that bother me if it were to happen. Life is short, and I’ve thought about that more so at two specific junctures of my life: when Ed died, and then after I gave birth to Kaia. Our time should be spent with people we care about who we respect and want to spend time with, people who make us feel full and full of life. So, that’s what I am trying to do with the few new friends I have been lucky to make in the last several years — make a real effort to be in touch with them and spend time with them, getting to know them deeply. 

A continuation of the same life, just older

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Several years ago, my friend purchased a house in a suburb of Sacramento shortly after getting a new job up there at the local Veteran’s hospital. I was really happy for her and thought it was incredible — not only that she got a new job and bought a house, but that it all happened so quickly. She had only been searching for a couple months before this house worked out and it closed.

We ended up coming to visit her several months after she moved in during July 2021, when I was visibly pregnant. While she had told me that her brother would be “temporarily” living with her (he already lived in the area before she got her job offer), what I didn’t realize until later was that both her parents would also be living with her, as well. From her mom’s perspective, once two out of her three children were living in the Sacramento area, she wanted to move to be closer to them, especially since she said she never liked living in Arkansas. So she moved, then her dad sold their house and shortly followed after. When my friend told me, I always thought that they’d come live with her temporarily before getting their own house; at least, that’s how she framed it to me when we spoke. When I stepped into the house for the first time, I realized… no, that was not the case, or the intention, at all. The intention was that her parents would effectively move all their valued family belongings and essentially set up my friend’s house as their own. All their family portraits, including their graduation photos and special family event photos, were already up in frames. Her mom’s Buddhist praying area was set up in front of the house. Her parents even had the main bedroom and ensuite. My friend had relinquished her rights to her own main bedroom and was sleeping in a small bedroom next door that was like a teenager’s room.

Ohmigod, I thought to myself then. This is her family’s house now. She paid for it, but this is her parents’ house, and she’s living in it. I wasn’t sure how to react to any of this. And like she and her brother were as children growing up, her mom did all the cooking five to six days a week, and they’d eat out as a family once or twice a week. Her mom did all the decorating of the house, all the cleaning, all the housework. Her dad, the stereotypical Vietnamese male, did no housework and almost expected to be spoon fed. He didn’t even clear his plate from the table after eating.

While it’s now over three years later, the setup is still the same. Her parents and brother are still living there. None of them have any intention of ever leaving. They’re all just aging together. My friend and I are the same age, so we’re almost 39. Her mom is 71, and her dad is 81. I asked her if she was happy with this setup.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” my friend insisted. “They’re getting old and will need help. It doesn’t make sense for them at their age to live on their own or take out a mortgage.”

The strange thing about that statement is that her mom is currently in excellent health, which is why she keeps churning out Vietnamese specialties every day in the kitchen and does all the cleaning. Her dad has a rare slow-growing cancer, but the doctor has already said he’d likely just age with it given how slow this growth is.

I asked her how she would make new friends or find a potential partner with this current setup. She mostly spends all her time with her parents and brother, and while she does have some friends at work, that seems to be her only way of making friends since she doesn’t go out much. She said she didn’t mind it, but maybe she’d try online dating again. I have a feeling that both my friend and her brother have mental health issues that she’s never openly discussed with me, but she has hinted at it a few times without any elaboration. While it makes me sad that she refrains from being open with me about her feelings, stresses, and borderline unhealthy attachment to her parents as a nearly 40-year-old woman, I don’t push it with her. I just let it be, even though it seems like she’s just living the same life she did as a child, just 20-30+ years older. She seems to accept it as her fate. But part of it, I can tell, is her general distrust of society as she’s said repeatedly to me. She will casually mention she can’t trust humanity, which is why she would never be happy living in a condo or apartment long term (“What if they are stupid and set a fire that burns their apartment down, and then my apartment gets destroyed?”). But then the opposite of that is becoming a recluse in your own fortress of a home, isolated from other people who could truly add value to your life in the form of company, support, and love. Frankly, I am more concerned about how it feels like she is letting the prime years of her life pass her by. One day, her parents aren’t going to be around anymore, and then what will she do? Who is she going to lean on, especially with no friends nearby?

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.

Visiting Sacramento after three years

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If you asked me ten years ago if I had any interest in going to Sacramento, I would say… absolutely not. I had visited once years ago with my parents, and I found the place fairly lackluster and dull, especially when you compare it to other cities across the U.S. But given the increasing cost of living in major metro areas in California like L.A. and San Francisco, a lot of people who would have liked to live in those areas have now been moving further north to the capital of California. One of our friends grew up in Sacramento, so she and her husband returned to Sacramento to settle down several years ago. Then, my good friend from college ended up getting a job in Sacramento, and she relocated from Arkansas for work. Now that we have friends in the area, it makes more sense for us to go visit.

As more people have moved to Sacramento, the food options have gotten better and better. There’s two major Vietnamese areas with good restaurants and grocery shopping. It has a budding Indian population; I was thinking of the South Indian spot we went to three years ago and thought it would not be the worst idea to go back and eat there again. And tonight, we went to a delicious Burmese restaurant called Burma Light in Folsom, where pretty much everything we ordered (especially the tea leaf salad and the Burmese style lamb curry) was very, very good, minus the garlic noodles, which were quite plain. I didn’t think the garlic flavor was that pronounced.

Our friend who grew up in Sacramento had a baby, and sadly, just weeks after her baby was born, her husband, our friend, died. We still don’t know what the cause was. Sometimes I think about it, and I’m still haunted by his death. When we last visited, it was just months after his passing, so it was still raw for her and the family; it was terrifying for all of us. Three years later, she’s adjusted to life without her life partner, raising their son alone. She used to have the support of her mom and younger sister, but since her other siblings (she’s one of nine kids!) have been having babies, her mom hasn’t been helping her much anymore. So somehow, our friend manages to work from home full time AND care for her son, who is now 3, full time. Luckily, she has at most 3-4 meetings a month, but still: I have no idea how she gets anything done at all. Babies and toddlers are so demanding. She manages a full house, all chores and errands, a full-time job, and a toddler all on her own. I was just in awe when she told me this. She’s truly super woman.

Pandora’s box gets opened: the endless piles of letters from my middle and high school years

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A few months ago, one of my close friends from middle/high school said her mom was cleaning out her garage, and she noticed that there were two boxes with my name on it. My friend retrieved the boxes, messaged me, and asked if I could take them back the next time I was in town. I remember asking my friend to store these for me back in high school: it happened after a very painful and excruciating episode of my mom going through all my belongings (even my electronic files on my computer) and reading things that people had written me, as well as things I had written. My mom even went so far as to call one of my friends and ask what she meant when she wrote, “I don’t know how you deal with your parents.” My mom never wanted to have conversations with me about life or how I felt; instead, she always went through my things and claimed that she had a right to given that she birthed me, raised me, and put a roof over my head. We screamed and yelled. I even considered suicide for about a minute. I felt trapped in that prison of a house. I felt angry and violated, and I wanted to remove anything that could be spied upon or read far away from my parents’ house and in a place where they would be safe.

Fast forward 23+ years later, most of these letters and their contents are completely meaningless to me. Though there are a handful of funny and sentimental gems, nothing here could possibly be “used against me” today. Though I will say: I am truly amazed at the sheer volume and quantity of letters and cards from a number of friends who still remain and are close to me today. After spending a lot of time reading and sorting through old cards and letters this week from middle and high school friends, I realize that I’m really lucky to still have a handful of those friends still in my life in a meaningful way. As life goes on and people mature, have different experiences and priorities, move away and come back (sometimes), have intense jobs and have children, people evolve and grow apart. Yet, we’ve managed to stay friends and make the effort to keep in touch. Not everyone is as lucky as me in this regard. I went through the piles and piles of letters, each organized by the letter writer, and I could not count with all my fingers and toes how many letters (and even more pages) were all handwritten just for my reading pleasure. I admired the cute stationery (ranging from Tare Panda to Hello Kitty to various other Japanese characters I no longer know the names of) and the still-in-tact writing done by endless glittery and sparkly Sakura Gelly Roll pens (one of our teen obsessions!). Some letters were painfully emo. Others were more on the mundane side obsessing over SATs and grades. A handful were so heavy with then-current slang and Asian ghetto expressions that I could barely understand what the point of the correspondence was.

Of course, I couldn’t go through everything; to save time and effort, I immediately discarded all piles from former boyfriends, guys who were interested in me, and friends/acquaintances I no longer keep in touch with. Some of the letters were absolutely atrocious to read (oh, the teenage angst I had managed to block out of my memory all these years!), but some of them were truly endearing and laugh-out-loud hilarious. In one letter, my friend wrote: “You are like my mommy, always scolding me and making sure I stay in line.” I laughed to myself reading that.

I also had some cards from people I had completely forgotten about: a good friend of my mom named April, who she knew from work, would regularly send me very fancy (for me back then, anyway) birthday gifts every year along with a card. She gave me beautifully wrapped and packaged gifts, things like wallets and watches, in brands I never thought I’d ever own. In one card, she wrote, “I’m so sorry that I am late, but happy belated birthday!” I laughed, thinking, why are you even apologizing? You don’t need to send me anything or acknowledge my birthday at all! Then, there were a few birthday cards (which likely came with accompanying gifts) from my mom’s former boss Chris(tine), who she got along with very well. And lastly, some of my most treasured (and all beautifully handwritten) letters came from my sixth grade English teacher, Mary Rudden, who I still think of today as one of my all-time favorite teachers in the world. She was the one who made me feel like I had a voice, a real talent in writing and expression, and as though I actually mattered as a kid. I look back at my childhood, and I truly credit her plus two other teachers for my general confidence and self esteem. Adults who speak to young children like their voice and opinions matter can truly help children grow into good, self-confident, well-meaning adults who contribute to society. These are letters that I am definitely not tossing into the recycling bin.

The rest got ripped up and tossed into the recycling bin. I re-read them, wished them well and thanked them for their place once in my life, and bid them adieu. I don’t want to hold onto the past… well, maybe just a handful of them.

Unexpected therapy

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A friend of mine has been dealing with a lot of usual life challenges: a stressful job, the job layoff her husband has recently experienced, a judgmental, critical, and cold relationship with her mother-in-law, a passive aggressive relationship with her sister-in-law (who she has been actively trying to get closer to, but said sister-in-law keeps rejecting), the stress of raising two strong-willed young children (one of whom has become, in her words, “a little monster,” and the second who is an entitled brat who seemingly wants every new toy that comes out ASAP). So it was kind of like the cherry-on-top of all her stressors when she discovered, earlier this year, that the house she owns and once lived in, which has been rented out, a place she hoped to move back to some day… the tenant occupying it hanged himself in it. He was discovered by his ex-girlfriend. And my friend and her husband had to deal with the aftermath and clean-up of it. This was really the incident that tipped her over the edge.

My friend and her family are superstitious, so they hired a Buddhist to do a cleansing ceremony of the house. But it wasn’t enough. My friend said the house would always be ruined for her. She had so many happy memories in the home, especially since her first child was born while she lived there, and she just could never imagine that something so awful would happen in the same space.

For the first time in her life, she sought therapy. But the person who saw her was the epitome of why a lot of people avoid therapy: they think most therapists are idiots who will just give them trite advice. That’s what this therapist did until she finally phased her out. She told her things like, “carve out some time for yourself during the day… even ten minutes,” “go on walks alone,” “meditate,” “hire a babysitter to make time for yourself.” No one wants to hear this crap, especially given the high rates that therapists charge (and even when your health insurance is fully covering it).

Later on, she saw someone who was recommended by a relative for a massage, but the appointment time for the massage ended up becoming a talk therapy session, as when the massage therapist asked her how she was doing as she entered the space, my friend just broke down crying. The massage therapist lightly suggested she didn’t need a massage and it seemed clear to her that she needed to talk it out. So they did just that for an hour. And my friend said that one 60-minute session, which was never intended to be talk therapy, was better than all of the many sessions (over a few months) combined she did with that idiot Kaiser therapist she saw and then dropped.

As it is always stated and known by most of us who have had challenging upbringings, she said that it all “goes back to childhood.” She takes on all the burdens because she once tried her best not to be a burden to her mom when her dad died unexpectedly when she and her younger brother were young. She always wants to have the front that she’s put together, can handle everything and more… even if she cannot. But this was really becoming all too much.

I suggested she try seeing another therapist, as it was clear that talk therapy could help her as long as she found the right person who asked the right questions. I think talk therapy could benefit the majority of people as long as a) the person is open-minded enough to pursue it, even if just for a little while, and b) they have a competent therapist who can ask the right (and oftentimes challenging) questions.

Getting older: Different vibes in the same places

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My friend is visiting from San Francisco this week for work, so we went out to dinner tonight at an izakaya in the East Village. While the food was fine, it wasn’t anything to get excited about, and there was no “wow” factor in any single dish of the small plates/bowls we ordered. It was a bit of a downer (and when I shared this with Chris, he poked at me for glorifying the East Village dining scene… which is probably fair in this case). But at least it gave us some quiet time to catch up without many others around. Similar to how we would “open” restaurants in Uruguay and Argentina, we ended up being the first guests to arrive at 6pm here, and no one really started coming in until around 7:30 when we getting towards the end of our meal.

Afterwards, we chatted while walking all the way up to Koreatown, where we ended up at HHD (Heuk Hwa Dang), an international Korean franchise of bubble tea, croffles, specialty drinks, shaved ice, and coffee. Unusual for Koreatown, the space is very large, with plenty of tables, as well as large “step” seating, and the menu for desserts is huge. So we shared a massive mango strawberry “snowflake” (it’s essentially a shaved ice, except with shaved sweetened milk “ice”), generously topped with freshly cut fruit, jellies, and some soft-serve vanilla ice cream. As we spoke, we realized that our own voices had to keep getting louder and louder because we were surrounded by other people who were at least 10-15 years younger than us, talking and laughing loudly while enjoying their own shared snowflakes.

My friend chuckled and said, “It’s as though I can’t hear because it’s so loud in here… I keep straining to hear you! Are we getting older and just can’t tolerate this much noise, or are the acoustics here just that bad?”

It’s probably a little of A and B. We prefer quieter places to catch up when we see each other since we don’t see each other too often living on opposite ends of the country. Yes, the acoustics were pretty poor. But it was comical to think that while we would have been happy spending hours hanging out at a place this loud and young in our early 20s, now in our late 30s, there’s definitely a limit to how much time we want to be at these places. We don’t necessarily blend in because of our age and how we dress into crowds like these anymore. And as much as I love the East Village, I am definitely on the older side when it comes to people wandering around its streets now, even if I can still pass for much younger.