So many chefs and celebrities over the years have been accused of cultural appropriation. Some of it is legitimate, and some of it may be a bit off base. Famous chef and cookbook writers like Ivan Orkin, the owner of Ivan Ramen, and the British chef and cookbook writer Fuchsia Dunlop, who was educated at the Sichuanese culinary academy and is the author of several acclaimed Chinese cookbooks that vary by region of China, have both been accused of it. The thing about both of them is that they both have made seemingly complex cuisines more understandable to Asian Americans like myself, who oftentimes struggle to understand how to “bridge the gap” between Eastern and Western culture. Ivan Ramen introduces new techniques to the humble ramen bowl by introducing rye as an ingredient in ramen noodles. Fuchsia Dunlop tries to use more modern techniques in Sichuanese and Hunanese cuisine while preserving flavors, and even writes a memoir that helps me understand the nuances of a culture that I’m supposed to claim as my own, even though I’ve grown up here in the U.S. She’s actually studied the language and the history of China, and tried to understand the language nuances and cultural differences in a way that someone who isn’t Chinese in China can understand. It’s people like Ivan and Fuchsia who have helped me better understand these Asian cultures, one of which I’m supposed to identify with. But in China as in the language, everyone outside of China is an “outsider,” even those who are ethnically Han Chinese.

After I checked out from my disgusting hotel yesterday at noon, I had an Uber driver take me from the hotel back to my parents’ place so I could rest for the remainder of the afternoon. The oddest thing about the drive, though, was that the driver took the most erratic route. The quickest way to get from the financial district to my parents’ house from downtown is via Pine, and it’s especially fast when there’s no traffic (and at around 1pm on a Friday, there was none). He did begin by taking Pine, but when we were reaching the end of it, he went on some weird back streets and continued to use backstreets all the way back to the Richmond. And another odd thing: one back street he took brought us right past the Columbarium, right past Loraine Court, where my brother now rests.

I felt guilty this week for multiple reasons — being in San Francisco for work and not being able to participate in our mid-year kick off event, which was the primarily reason I was out here to begin with. I felt guilty being laid up in a terrible hotel bed when I was supposed to be engaging with my colleagues and doing work. I felt bad using company expenses to not work and instead to vomit into a toilet while being sick. And I also felt bad knowing I’d have no energy to go visit Ed at the Columbarium. It would be the only trip I’d ever take to San Francisco since my brother’s passing that I would not have gone to visit him, and it made me feel terrible.

So maybe this erratic route was some strange, other-worldly way to acknowledge my brother, to acknowledge the fact that I wanted to see him and say hello despite falling ill and not being able to do as I originally planned.

I sent out an email to a number of my colleagues today, informing them about my AFSP donor drive this year and asking for their participation. I felt a bit awkward sending the email, especially given I am in a remote office, and the majority of people are far away in San Francisco. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Who’s really going to donate to my drive or care about me and my brother when they don’t see me every day?

I’ll be honest. At the rate I sent out this message at my last company, I got a lot more donations, and I’d assume that’s because I worked at that company’s headquarters, thus more people around to see me, but the amount that each person donated at my current company in the last 10 hours has been a lot more. And not only that, one of my colleagues  who donated even shared my AFSP page with his fiancee, who then donated $100 to my drive and wrote me a very personal message, telling me that she was really touched by my story and my courage in sharing, and she had lost her father to suicide about ten years ago. Not only that, both her brothers in the last year had attempted suicide. She felt lost and struggled to discuss it, but she was inspired by what I wrote and how I’ve chosen to move forward. She hopes to work through her feelings.

I get negative about fundraising every year. It’s part of who I am, I guess, because the apple never falls that far from the tree, and I generally don’t always believe in the pure goodness of people. But these responses from total strangers always inspire me to move forward and continue raising money for this cause. It’s the only way I know to keep Ed alive. I think he’d be happy to know that I was touching the lives of complete strangers in a positive way because of the legacy he left.

Today, after six days of preparing, I did a mock business review presentation in front of my team over video conference. My company takes onboarding very seriously, and they want to make sure that everyone is set up for success properly before delving into their actual jobs. This is my seventh week on the job, and I haven’t done any “real” work yet. But given that this presentation is basically a test to see what I know and how I present and speak in front of customers, it was a little nerve-racking for me. I’m usually not that nervous when it comes to having small group conversations with customers and informal chats since I was so used to it at my last job; presenting internally to your team who you know is full of smart (and very opinionated) people tends to seem more scary because you know they will call you out on something if you get it wrong.

I think overall, it went as well as it could have gone. My peers have been very supportive of me, and it’s a comforting feeling that I definitely don’t take for granted. I’m also in an environment now that is conducive to constructive feedback, so however harsh it may be, at least there’s actually a true feedback loop now that we need to acknowledge rather than my last situation, where only the positive (and fake) feedback was given and taken. It’s not great to tell someone they did a great job when in fact, they did a really crappy job.

You know how sometimes, people reminisce about high school and say it was the best time of their lives? Those people must seriously be losers. Why would you ever want to be back in a time when people were going through growth spurts, awkward photo poses, acne breakouts, and SATs?

Four episodes into 13 Reasons Why, and I am feeling so grateful that that period of my life is so far away. Also from my perspective, it was so tiring being around a population of about 80 percent grade-obsessed Chinese Americans, most of whom had no personalities and were generic, and probably still are generic and bland.

Two weeks have flown by quickly in San Francisco. Between new hire bootcamp, new hire bootcamp homework, 1:1 meetings, team meetings, lunch meetings, and family/friend/colleague get-togethers after work, there’s been very little leisurely time for me to plop myself on my bed and decompress, to think about everything that I’m trying to learn and what all this is going to mean.

On Friday early afternoon, I set aside 45 minutes to catch up with one of my counterparts on my team. What was originally supposed to be a meet-and-greet and work discussion ended up being something I wasn’t quite expecting. Life outside of work had been quite excruciating for her in the last year, and she told me she was dealing with a lot of family baggage… mainly because her mother had suddenly passed away last year (about a month and a half before her wedding), and she was handling all the inheritances and legal aspects of death now. It was an emotional chat, and she was especially upset because Mother’s Day was coming up today, and it made her really miss her mom and the great friendship they had.

“I just feel angry,” she said. “I don’t even know what I’m angry at… maybe the world? I get so pissed when people actually try to say that life is fair. It isn’t. It isn’t at all.” She reflected on the devastation of her mom’s decline and death, how hard it was for her to get through her wedding day, though it was beautiful and memorable, knowing that her mom was supposed to be there. I felt myself aching as she described all of this. Her mom even helped her pick out her wedding dress and went to most of her fittings.

So this became a segway into a discussion about whether life is fair or it (it fuckin’ is not at all), what death actually means, what death means to us who are still living, and how we keep going despite losing those so close to us. It’s one of the rawest discussions I’ve had in 45 minutes with someone I literally just met in my whole life. At her request, we even talked about Ed, and I shared with her general details about him and his passing. And because I’m a crappy colleague, I made her cry even more sharing this.

My colleague apologized for prying, but I told her what I tell anyone who wants to know more about Ed and his life; I actually am very comfortable discussing it (well, I still get knots and choke up, but I end up spitting it all out in the end) and want to discuss it with whomever wants to listen and truly understand. My qualm is whether others actually want to know and understand. So I never get upset or feel taken aback when people ask. When I hesitate, it’s really because I don’t know if people truly want to know or are hoping I will just say my brother died in a freak car accident or a drug overdose or something that sounds more “normal” given his young age. And she said she felt the same and was angry so many times when people she thought would care or at least ask never asked, or never even asked her how she was feeling or doing. This resonated so much with me.

The second thing this makes me think about is my own mom. I was tearing up when she told me about how her mom passed, and how she literally just missed her only child’s wedding day by a month and a half. I don’t even know how I would have gone through my wedding if the same thing had happened to me. I could feel hurt in my own body. My mom, like every mom in every child’s life, drives me crazy to no end. She worries way too much about me and about everything that doesn’t even need worrying. I even tell my mom this all the time: sometimes I feel like she searches for new things to worry about to constantly be in a state of worrying about me. She obsesses over trivial things that I think shouldn’t have so much attention or care. She distrusts everyone and thinks they are out to get her and me. She also insists on feeding me until I could potentially gain 100 pounds and doesn’t understand when I tell her I’m too full to eat anymore (“but you barely ate anything!” even after I have already eaten a full plate of food…). But that’s my mom. She does it all out of love, even though sometimes her level of love and compassion make me want to rip all my hair out, shake her, and yell, “please STOP!!”

“Dads are important, and I love my dad, but my mom… that’s different,” my colleague said between tears. “My mom was like my everything, and I hate to say this, but yeah, I do love my mom more. Maybe all daughters do — who knows. And sometimes I don’t know what I’m supposed to do without her. I just love her so much.”

That’s like me and my mom. And for a second, the fear I had from when I was only four years old came over me again — the awareness that inevitably one day, my mom would no longer be on this earth with me anymore, just as my colleague’s mom had passed and left her. One day, she’ll no longer continue to try stuffing food down my throat. She won’t be here to pack fresh fruit and Chinese zongzi into my carry-on luggage. She won’t call me and ask whether I’ve had enough sleep or eaten dinner yet. One day, I will feel the loneliness that all of us feel when one has lost the human being who gave birth to and physically brought her into this world.

That thought is absolutely terrifying to me.