Category Archives: Gratitude

Chicago as a visitor many times over and the Obama Presidential Center

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Given Chris and I have already traveled to Chicago a lot before, we didn’t have much of a tourist list of things to see and do when we got here. While I created a map of interesting restaurants and bakeries, there wasn’t any single place I felt we absolutely had to go to. The main thing I wanted to see this time around, which was obviously not around in any previous visit, was the Obama Presidential Center, which is located on the South Side of Chicago and just opened in June of this year. Unfortunately when we booked this trip in June, official tickets to enter the center were already sold out… through October. But upon doing research, we discovered that this wasn’t the worst outcome because so much of the center, both indoors and outdoors, was open to the public and did not require any ticket. We were still able to enter the library portion, which is part of the Chicago Public Library system, and see lots of personal belongings of Barack and Michelle Obama. We got to see photographs, murals, and paintings of their lives and the values they believe in. I loved the grounds, the walking paths, and the vegetable garden (of course, Kaia was also a huge fan). My favorite thing I got to see was likely the ridiculously long mural in the library with far too many colors and ideas to see in a single viewing. Even without access to the main museum, we could easily have spent a longer time there exploring the beautiful grounds.

Another favorite, quiet part for me was the Ann Dunham Water Terrace, dedicated to Barack Obama’s mother, who was an anthropologist by training and a huge influence on his life. In his words, “My mother, Ann Dunham, was the biggest influence on my life. She had a core belief in our common humanity, and she made sure I recognized the inherent dignity in every person.” This was noted as a “touchstone vital not only for a political career but for a life of service,” hence why the structure is made of two massive round stones, with water that flows from one to the other. She died quite young, at the age of 52, from uterine cancer. This heavily influenced Obama’s desire and push for healthcare reform, as she spent her last days worrying about expensive medical bills. While his mom had employer-sponsored health insurance that covered most of the costs of her medical treatment, she still had a large deductible and uncovered expenses, which were denied by her insurance for coverage because the insurance company considered her cancer a “preexisting condition.”

I’m really happy that despite not having tickets to see the entirety of the center that we were still able to come visit and experience the vast areas open to the public. I was thrilled that Kaia’s first presidential library experience was at Barack Obama’s, and that we got to do the super touristy thing of “posing” with Barack and Michelle altogether (okay, fine, their statues!). While I am pretty pessimistic at the direction the U.S. is going, especially with the current Dipshit administration for the disgusting second time around, somehow being here for the few hours we visited imbued me with a little more hope, a little more faith for the future. I need to have a little more hope and faith… at the minimum for Kaia’s sake.

Back in Chicago for the first time since pre-pandemic

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We were not planning a family trip to Chicago this year. But given the insane fuel costs due to the war in Iran on top of the fact that we’re current in the U.S. Open season, flying directly back from SFO to JFK this week would have been ridiculously expensive. In the end, we decided to fly to Chicago, stay three nights here, then fly back to New York on Friday; we also used miles to book these flights. This wasn’t the worst idea in the world: both Chris and I love Chicago; we’ve both come to visit separately for both work and pleasure. Kaia has never been, and so we thought it would be fun to spend a few days here together. Plus, our timing is right: not only did the Obama Presidential Center just open, but the world’s FIRST Hello Kitty Cafe also just opened here!

Since it’s still a working week for me, I had to spend several hours this morning working and doing meetings before going out for the day. Chris took Kaia out (and to the Hello Kitty Cafe already!) in the morning, and I ended up meeting them at Millennium Park, right where the Bean, aka Cloud Gate, is. As I walked down from our hotel to meet them, I started thinking about all the times I’d previously come here and what I did each trip. I’ve done about half a dozen work trips here over the years, and I have always tried my best to eat at interesting restaurants or grab coffee from fun cafes to maximize my time here. On one work trip I took here back in 2010, I remember I had to arrive by Sunday for an early Monday morning meeting. So I took advantage of the day and arrived early Sunday to spend the whole day exploring Chicago by foot, which included a few hours at the Shedd Aquarium (AMAZING place!).

The one non-work trip I did was for a girls’ Thanksgiving long weekend trip in 2009. That was the trip when I stumbled upon a German-style Christmas market just a few blocks from my hotel, and before my friends arrived from San Francisco. There, I had some good chatter with the German vendors there, who happily educated me about the glorious and magical Christmas markets I could experience if I traveled to Germany during the holidays. I had no idea that was even a thing back then, so my curiosity was piqued. It was then that I decided that I absolutely had to go to Germany during the holiday season. Four years later, Chris made that dream a reality for me, as we took our first trip to Germany (Berlin and Hamburg) during Thanksgiving week 2013! That trip cast a spell on me for European Christmas markets. After that trip, we just kept on going with the European Christmas market Thanksgiving week trips. Fast forward to 2022 and to present, Kaia has now also joined us for four of these trips! A new family tradition was born, all ignited from my very first leisure trip to Chicago in November 2009.

I love Chicago for many reasons. I love the layout of the city, the river, the lake, and the L. I love how walkable it is. I love the parks and the green spaces. I love the food scene here. I especially love the great things I’ve discovered here, including the beginning of my obsession with European Christmas markets and all things related to them. So I’m quite happy to be back.

Last day with family in San Francisco for this year

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My family tends to go through the same behavioral patterns in the last day or two when I am home. My mom goes through an anxious, angry period where she is either aggressive or passive aggressive with me, getting mad at me for innocuous things or accusing me of having feelings or intentions that she makes up. If I am not home during a given period, she will call repeatedly and ask when I am coming home; this is her way of actually saying, you need to come home now. On Monday, we planned to have dinner at my aunt’s upstairs, and my uncle would also be joining us. She asked us to come at 5 since my uncle needs to leave early since he cannot drive in the dark. So at around 3 while in Mission Bay with Chris and Kaia, I called home to let my dad know that we’d be back before 4. I could hear my mom in the background saying I was late and that I needed to come home right away. I could hear her angst, but I shrugged it off.

We went to pick up ice cream (black sesame and mango!) from Joe’s Ice Cream, a neighborhood ice cream shop that’s been around since I was a kid. Then we walked home from there. When we arrived back and I came into the kitchen, that was when I could feel my mom glaring at me with her eyes burning. “It’s almost 4 o’clock now. You are late,” she hissed at me. “You should have been home a long time ago! They are already upstairs waiting for us and eating.” Um. It wasn’t even 4pm. Who the hell was going to be eating dinner at this time? I said nothing and did as I promised, which was to help make a steamed eggplant dish to bring to the dinner along with my purchased dessert. She proceeded to get mad that we went out at all today and didn’t tell her, as she was hoping we could “talk more” together. I did not have that same hope.

As 4:50 rolled around, my mom started yelling that we’re all late and that we all needed to get upstairs, pronto. I was still cleaning up and washing dishes in the kitchen. Kaia was running around happily. My dad was doing something somewhere in the basement. Chris was lying on my bed, asking what the rush was. The reason she wanted us to go upstairs as soon as possible was that she wanted us to be done with this family dinner as soon as possible. She can only keep up her “family dinner” face for so long, and she had nothing to say to my uncle. While at dinner when we were asking my aunt questions about her potentially changing living situation, my mom got mad at me for asking questions and insisted we “let her eat her dinner.” I told her that it’s normal to have a conversation at the dinner table, and that shut her up; not everyone wants to eat in silence and call that a “family dinner” for god’s sake. It’s almost like she is in pain being at a dinner table with any wider family members and she needs to find a way to make it stop as soon as possible. When they invite her, she feels a need to “return the favor” and invite them back right away, which is “suffering.” Thinking about this is so exhausting.

There were some nice moments, though. This morning before we left, Kaia kept insisting to my dad that he show her his worms in his compost pile before leaving. Obviously this made my dad beyond thrilled, so he was happy to comply with her ask. Then as he rummaged through random junk in the garage, she insisted she wanted to stay with him to watch what he was doing. This attachment she’s developed to my dad has been really endearing. Every time she yells, “GONGGONG! GONGGONG!” and runs after him, it makes me smile and chuckle. Chris commented that my dad has probably never felt more desired or more affection from another human in his entire life before now. He is probably right.

And as we packed up the car to go to the airport, while she was being a little bratty and refused to give my mom a hug and kiss until the very last minute, she had zero problem giving my dad endless hugs and kisses and grabbing onto his leg until she had to let go and get into the car. My dad’s big goofy grin in this moment was pretty epic… and this is coming from someone who never uses that word.

When we got to the airport lounge and sat down, I asked Kaia if she missed Popo and Gonggong. She nodded her head and quietly said a drawn out, “Yeah.” Then, she didn’t say anything for while, but out of nowhere looked at me and said, “We never got to see Jiujiu… because he died.”

Yes, that is true. At least she waited to say that until after my parents were gone because I am not sure how they would have reacted to hearing Kaia say this.

The soft side of my dad

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In the evenings before bed, my parents like to make hot chocolate. They don’t do anything fancy; they use 2% cow milk, a little heavy cream for extra richness occasionally, and different forms of hot chocolate mix. The latest versions I see that look quite depleted in the cupboard are Whole Foods brand or some random organic cacao blend. My dad already pre-measured out the evening mugs for milk and was planning to warm them in the microwave and mix in the hot chocolate blend. But I told him that I’d make it properly over the stove for all of us tonight. I finally asked him why he didn’t use the Dandelion Chocolate hot chocolate mix I got him; two of the three glass jars were still sitting in the cupboard fully sealed. He hesitated initially and said that he found it a bit too sweet for bedtime, which I could understand. So we compromised, and I mixed some of his unsweetened cacao into the Dandelion hot chocolate blend.

As I heated the pot over the stove, my dad stuck around while I mixed occasionally. We actually had a pretty decent chat. We somehow managed to cover glucose and cholesterol levels, general health maintenance, diet modifications based on age, dental care and insurance, my work, the Nepal flooding (!), and general house maintenance in a very short space of time while in the kitchen together. I’ve realized over all the years of returning home that my dad really does not enjoy table side conversation; he actually detests it most times and rarely says anything at the table unless it’s something specifically interesting to him. Because of this, I usually don’t probe him much at the table. My dad’s favorite way of talking to anyone is while each person is sort of side by side. One person may be occupied with a task like heating milk over the stove (me) while the other person (in this case, him) lingers nearby. One person asks the other person an innocuous question out of the blue. The other person responds. Then the conversation either builds on that topic or another unrelated topic comes up. But the door has already been opened to allow the conversation to flow pretty easily.

Long ago, I gave up on the idea that I could change my relationship with my dad. We’ve had many ups and downs over the years. I spent a lot of my childhood living in fear that he’d lash out at me the way he did with Ed. And yes, of course every now and then, he definitely did lash out at me with his fangs. But I have forgiven him for his shortcomings because I know he had a miserable, difficult, and impoverished childhood, with very little love or direction given by either of his parents. I have moments when I get pissed because I am human, but I try to remember his childhood hardships. I have come to terms that we will never have the ideal daddy-daughter relationship or closeness I wish we could have had. I have made peace with it, mourned it, and let it go. Instead, I do exactly what ChatGPT suggested I do, which is to find power in the moments instead of forced, idealized, longer periods of time together. So if that means offering to make him hot chocolate and chatting over the stove one on one, or dusting the living room surfaces side by side while having random chatter, then I will embrace it. Those are the times he feels the most relaxed and open to me. Those are also the times he seems the softest to me.

What I’ve also loved watching during this trip particularly is how much Kaia has embraced my dad. She actively engages with her Gonggong, shows him that she wants his attention, and will not accept any less (this level of stubbornness is truly amazing and so hilarious to watch). On Sunday, he had to go out to pick up dinner takeout; she blocked the door and prevented him from leaving. When he tried to climb over her, she grabbed his leg and said he would not be allowed to leave. Eventually I had to intervene and pick Kaia up to let my dad out of the house, but it was such a cute and sweet (and likely infuriating for my parents!) moment to see.

Each night we’ve been at my parents’, I tell Kaia she has to go to each of them to hug and kiss them good night. What she has also done, which I did not tell her to do, is she proactively tells each of them she loves them. The first time she did this with my dad, he patted her on the back (his version of a hug…). Then when she actually uttered the words “I love you,” I could see the shock spread over his face… then eventually melt into this huge grin. Then she kept doing it with him night after night. I just loved seeing how big my dad’s smiles were each time. It was almost like for the first time in his entire life, at the age of 78, he was experiencing verbalized love and physical affection repeatedly, all from this tiny little human who has been a temporary resident at his home.

I loved seeing my dad feel loved. I had a moment when I almost started tearing up. For his entire childhood, my dad was deprived of love and affection, which turned him into this hard, stoic, emotionless man that he became. He focused on survival and financial independence only because that’s all he knew. And now, his little 4.5-year-old granddaughter gives him the love that he always needed but didn’t realize he needed.

Back in Sacramento after two years, and contemplations on the “sandwich generation”

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This morning, we drove up to Sacramento to visit and stay with a friend of ours who has a child close in age to Kaia. We have visited this friend up in Sacramento twice before, once while I was pregnant in 2021, and the last time in August 2024. We didn’t come last year because she was the primary caregiver of not just her son, for whom she is a single parent, but also her mom at the time, who was going through lung cancer treatment. So she just had too much going on at the time. She messaged me in December of last year with the good news that her mom’s cancer was in remission. Unfortunately, it seems that did not last long: the cancer had returned, and her treatments started again in the last couple weeks.

The kids got together after she picked up her son from school this afternoon, and we spent some time together at the NorCal Aquarium nearby, followed by dinner at a local South Indian restaurant we enjoyed five years ago. My other local friend joined us for dinner. Afterwards, we went back to the first friend’s house, where we chatted for the next several hours while the kids built a fort and made the most ridiculous mess in the dining room. The theme of our conversation was definitely around our health, our parents’ health and their aging and slowing down, and the overall maintenance of a home (and how overwhelming, exhausting, and expensive it can be). As I was participating in this conversation, it suddenly dawned on me how “middle aged” and “sandwich generation” this conversation felt.

That made me think about the time when the only grandparent I’ve ever known died. My paternal grandma died in 1995 when I was nine years old. At the time, my dad was 47 and my mom was 41. In the seven months leading up to her passing, my grandma was quite ill and eventually had to be moved into a convalescent home. I still have distinct memories of going to the hospital or the convalescent home almost every night after I got off school and my parents got off work. My parents somehow managed our household, worked full time, got food on the table and supplies for us, and cared for my grandma — all at the same time. I always look back at that fraught, frantic period and feel a sense of admiration for my parents and how they somehow kept it all together — at least sort of. I never felt neglected during that period, and I was always in the know with what was happening with my grandma’s state of health and treatment despite being so young.

To be frank, I am not sure if I could have ever done all the things my parents did. I can already see my parents slowing down a bit; I suppose I’ve been thinking about it a lot more on this trip. My dad, for the most part, seems to be in decent health. I know he monitors all his health results carefully and has modified his diet quite a bit over the last decade or so. My mom seems to be quite fragile, both mentally and physically. My main hope is that they live independently for as long as possible. I want them to have long, healthy, independent lives. I want to continue seeing them mobile, and I want Kaia to have a relationship with them and know them. But now when I think about how my grandma died when my dad was 47, and I am 40 today… that just gave me some chills. Death is an inevitable part of life. But I want to hope they will keep living for at least another decade or two. Here’s to hoping.

Today ends our 2-year streak of going to Manhattan Chinatown almost every weekday

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I knew today would be a bittersweet day for all of us given that it’s Kaia’s last day of summer camp at her school for the last two years in Chinatown. Tomorrow, we fly out to San Francisco, so while I wanted to get some takeout for our last evening, I knew I needed it to keep well in the freezer since we’d likely have leftovers. So after my haircut this afternoon, I walked down from the East Village to Chinatown to several locations to mark the end of an era for us:

  1. Super Taste: The divey, hole-in-the-wall Lanzhou restaurant on Eldridge Street that churns out some of my favorite dumplings and noodles in all of New York City. It was shocking to me that this tiny place, where my friend and I used to go in the early 2010s for casual and cheap dinner catch-ups, had completely blown up because of foodie influencers. It used to be very quiet, discreet, with mostly Chinese people speaking Chinese in it. Now every time I pass it, there’s a line of people of all backgrounds waiting! They’ve also expanded their menu quite a bit. Somehow, they still manage to keep their prices relatively low. Tonight, I picked up two orders of dumplings (“open mouth” fried pork and chive dumplings and zhong shui jiao, Sichuanese style fat dumplings) — 20 dumplings total for just $13! Crazy cheap for 2026, and still so, so good!
  2. Kuih Cafe: Honestly, I’ve neglected this place for the last couple of years. I was one of her original customers when she first opened in February 2020, right before the pandemic almost ended the world. This used to be a regualr stop on my Chinatown list when I’d bring back lots of little things from lots of businesses to try. I was scared, given the timing of her tiny storefront opening, that her business wouldn’t make it. Now 6.5 years in, she has a very, very loyal following with people of all backgrounds and tourists from all over the world lining up to get some of her goodies. And she’s only open three day a week — Friday through Sunday! Veronica focuses on desserts mostly (kuih and Southeast Asian style cakes), but she used to do savory dishes that I enjoyed. It had been a long time since I’d come, so she did not recognize me. This visit, I ordered the pandan mochi waffle with a taro kaya filling. I asked for the kaya on the side since I’d be transporting it home and didn’t want to get it soggy. She looked down her nose at me and asked why I wanted it on the side. When I explained this, she looked relieved (probably didn’t want to hear a story about some picky eaters who didn’t want the kaya!), then instructed me to either oven toast or air-fry the waffle promptly when I got home to maximize the texture. This mochi waffle with the taro kaya was so delicious. The textural contrast between the crunchy waffle outside, the chewy mochi inside, and the soft, sticky taro kaya was super addictive. The pandan was really fragrant. Chris only had a bite because he said he was too full from dinner, but he missed out a lot! Kaia wanted the waffle by itself after she had one taste of the taro kaya and said, “That is for adults!” Then she kept nibbling on the waffle, mumbling between bites, “Tasty! So good! So yummy!” I feel like I need to go back here more. I was behind a woman in line who pre-ordered her Mid-Autumn Moon Festival mooncakes. Maybe this is the year I actually splurge and buy them? Chris isn’t a mooncake fan, but I’m sure I could get Kaia to eat them. The only one she’d previously enjoyed was a red bean one that came straight from Malaysia courtesy of the Sambal Lady!
  3. Hay Hay Roasted: Chris asked for roasted meats, so he got roasted meat. I stopped by this little restaurant on Mott to pick up their honey-roasted cha siu. It’s a little more expensive than Green Garden Village depending on the day (Green Garden’s pricing is always fluctuating), but their lean cuts are very, very lean. And the honey flavor is subtle but done really well. I also appreciate that service is very fast, efficient, and friendly.

And then after a stop at Hong Kong Supermarket to stock up on oyster sauce (the current bottle in my fridge is only a quarter full — gasp!), I picked up Pookster, stopped by a street kiosk to let her buy a surprise end-of-summer gift she’d been asking me about since June — a K-Pop Demon Hunters themed pushy game (no idea what these things are called…), and then off we went home!

I still have too many bookmarks for the Chinatown/Lower East Side area that I haven’t gotten to. Now when I go down there, inevitably every time I come home, my shoulders will be heavy carrying a lot of goodies back, just like the way it was pre Kaia being in preschool.

Chinese yam, pork, and carrot soup – a Cantonese soup standby

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It’s a bittersweet week this week for us, as it’s Kaia’s last week at summer camp at the same school in Chinatown for the last two years. She spent 3K and 4K/Pre-K at this Chinese immersion, dual language school, as part of New York City’s UPK program. It’s been a gift (and quite the savings…!) to not have to pay for school for the last two years, other than after-care fees and summer camp. What this also means is that this is our last week having daily trips to Chinatown… a very sad reality I have to spend time mourning. So I started going through my list of things to stock up on and also remembered a couple of things I wanted to make with fresh ingredients while I still have easy access to them.

This year, I was able to achieve my goal of making soups more frequently. According to TCM, soup is a nourishing component of a meal. In Chinese culture, it’s often noted that a complete meal should be “san cai yi tang” (三菜一汤), or three meat/protein/vegetable dishes and one soup, served alongside rice. I had a lot of bone broth in the fridge I made from chicken wings and chicken feet I got from Chinatown. And I ended up using it today with Chinese yam (or huai shan), pork shoulder (also from Chinatown!), carrots, red dates, ginger, goji berries, and shiitake mushrooms. Chinese yam is a pretty traditional Chinese vegetable. It’s used both fresh and dried; today, I bought it fresh for this soup. It’s considered a nourishing root vegetable that supports digestion, stabilizes blood sugar, and boosts overall vitality. I remember my grandma using it in soups growing up. The texture once cooked is almost like taro. When Chinese yam is raw and fresh, the stalks are long, hard, and thin. It has a really tough brown skin with lots of “hair” on it — definitely not the first vegetable you’d pick up when adventuring to explore new produce, as it’s on the “ugly” or even borderline “scary” looking side. And once you peel the skin off, the white flesh is hard to grasp firmly, as it becomes very sticky and gummy. On the plus side, the fresh root has active digestive enzymes; supposedly when you have mucus, it can help clear it for you!

So I made this soup today. I even served it for Chris and me with a tiny little shallow dish of high quality aged soy sauce for dipping the shredded pork pieces into — super traditional and like we had it growing up. And inhaling the familiar aromas and eating it really did remind me of home — at least, the happier parts. It’s funny that it’s taken me to age 40 to really understand and appreciate how much love and care my grandma put into all the soups she made for us almost every single day. I actually cannot remember a day living with her when there was not a huge pot of traditional Chinese soup on the stove!

And while I dipped some pieces of pork shoulder into the soy sauce, I could also faintly remember watching Ed try to fish out the biggest, most tender pieces of pork out of the stock pot so that he could eagerly dip and eat them himself. I always just ate and drank what was served to me and didn’t care about which pieces I got. Most of my happiest childhood memories are tied to food.

Pier 26 Science Playground, aka the Sturgeon Playground

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In addition to my Google Maps bookmarks of all the food and drink places I have either tried and liked or want to try by city, I also have pins and a separate list for interesting playgrounds across the city. This summer, I’ve already taken Kaia to three of them, including the Chelsea Waterside Playground last weekend and today, the Pier 26 Science Playground, also known as the Sturgeon playground, in TriBeCa. Kaia has been to this playground before with Chris in 2024, but this time, she came on a play date with our neighbor friend and her son. From their website, this is a description of the playground:

“The Playground includes custom-fabricated play structures in the shape of two endangered sturgeon species that are native to the Hudson River — the Atlantic sturgeon and shortnose sturgeon. Designed by OLIN, the same award-winning landscape design firm that designed adjacent Pier 26, this imaginative playground serves as an important educational and recreational space that further advances the Park’s extensive science and environmental programming.

Inside each of the two sturgeon structures children can explore fish “anatomy” and interact with other marine-oriented play features to learn about local wildlife that resides in the Hudson River Park’s 400-acre Estuarine Sanctuary. The play equipment manufacturer is Monstrum, a Danish firm that specializes in creating whimsical, nature-based designs that spark imagination. Hudson River Park’s River Project team advised on the scientific aspects of the design, helping to integrate science-based, age-appropriate educational features that help bring the sturgeon to life.

….

Each of Hudson River Park’s five playgrounds have been custom-designed by celebrated landscape architects to provide uniquely inspiring play opportunities for children. During warm weather seasons, each also provides welcoming water features to delight kids. Bring your beach buckets!”

A few years ago, I used to get annoyed when colleagues would make comments about how “challenging” or “interesting” (code for “WTF are you thinking?”) it must be to raise a child in New York City. Now the rare times I get comments like this, I am quick to respond and tell them that I think New York City is an amazing place to raise children — as long as you are proactive and look for all the things that kids can get full value out of, such as these incredible play spaces. And something that is available to everyone, like the New York City subway, has been such a great learning experience for Kaia. She’s able to name the trains, which stations have what transfer points, and even whether you have to go upstairs or downstairs to transfer to which line. To me, that’s true street-smartness that even adults today cannot grasp. You learn a lot when you walk a lot in a city and have to get around by public transit. You can’t learn this type of thing being in a car all the time or relying on chauffeurs to get you places. Here, she gets exposed to endless culture, lots of different types of people and cuisines — all without really needing to try; it’s incidental to living in New York City.

I loved this city before I ever came — when I just learned of it and saw a couple postcards my aunt sent me when visiting. I loved this city all the times I visited throughout my college years. I loved this city when I first moved here. And 18+ years later, I still love New York City and am obsessed with it. I’m still not bored, and it’s hard to imagine ever getting bored living here.