Our first stop in Albuquerque after landing and dropping off our bags at our hotel was to Sadie’s, a well known New Mexican restaurant that is a bit of an institution. They are known for having classic New Mexican fare, delicious margaritas and other mixed cocktails, as well as massive portion sizes. Chris ordered a beef and queso quesadilla like dish, and I ordered a breakfast burrito since all I could think about food-wise when thinking of New Mexico was breakfast burritos; we also got a side order of the famous green chile stew. It’s debated that either the city of Santa Fe or Albuquerque first invented the concept of a breakfast burrito. Regardless of which city can claim it first, I love breakfast burritos, tacos, and anything resembling them. How could you possibly reject eggs, fried potatoes, salsa, avocado, your choice of bacon, sausage, or Mexican-style meat, all wrapped up neatly in a flour tortilla?

While I knew to anticipate larger portions here, it didn’t really hit me until our server brought our plates over, which came complete with huge side portions of beans and vegetables. My breakfast burrito was likely 2.5 to 3 times the size I had envisioned in my head; there was absolutely NO WAY I was going to finish this all on my own. I made it through half of it while also eating some of Chris’s dish, and we ended up wrapping up a decent portion of food to go. Good thing our hotel room had a refrigerator and microwave for us to store food and eat it later. This would all make a very tasty breakfast the next day.

American portion sizes are always huge when you compare them to food portion sizes across the world, but when you’re in the South or Southwest part of the U.S., they always take portion sizes to the next level!

This morning, we woke up bright and early to catch a 6am flight to Albuquerque, New Mexico, via Chicago. I was curious how the experience would be both at the airport and while on the plane, and for the most part, it actually seemed pretty good. There were signs requiring mask-wearing throughout the airport, along with huge vats of hand sanitizer. Upon boarding the plane, we were handed packets of hand sanitizer wipes. And anytime someone was not eating or drinking and had their mask down, a flight attendant was quick to remind the passenger that it was a federal aviation requirement that they needed to have their mask covering both their nostrils and mouth at all times when not eating or drinking. I’d say overall, it was well done.

While the in-flight experience was good, I would say that the pandemic period created a bit of memory loss when it comes to quality customer service for the gate agents. I was on the upgrade list to get to ABQ, and when I walked up to the desk, I asked about the wait list for the first-class upgrades. The agent was really curt and rude, saying that first had already checked in full. I told her I was on the upgrade list, and she said I wasn’t on the list. WHAT!!! She didn’t even know my identity before claiming that I wasn’t on the list! Eventually, I did get upgraded, and I did not thank her when she handed me my new boarding pass. Her crappy service did not deserve thanks.

I felt like I was having a futile and insipid argument with a United flight attendant, except this time, I was having a difficult time with an American Airlines gate agent who failed to recognize my Executive Platinum status and likely drew quick judgments about me merely because of what I looked like. I find it very unlikely that she would have treated me that way if I were a middle-aged or white-haired White man.

Other than breakfast burritos, enchiladas, green chilies, Los Alamos/the Manhattan Project, and Pueblo art and culture, the first thing I think about when I think about New Mexico is the Georgia O’Keefe Museum in Santa Fe. I studied 1.5 years of art history, and Georgia O’Keefe is one of the very few modern American artists that I actually liked. She was most famous for her New Mexican landscape and macro flower paintings. She is also, very likely, one of the most respected (and well paid) female artists of all time. And her macro flower paintings… well, they were very very zoomed in, as in, they actually look like vaginas. I love flowers. I also love and appreciate the natural beauty of vaginas. So, it was no surprise that I would like Georgia O’Keefe’s work.

Well, unfortunately because of the COVID-19 pandemic, all museum tickets must be purchased in advance, and when I checked two weeks ago for tickets, they were all sold out until the middle of June. So much for trying to support one of the most famous female artists of all time.

I can’t believe I’m going to New Mexico without seeing the Georgia O’Keefe Museum….

For the last four or five years, I was on planes at least every other month, if not every month. It was rare to go a quarter of the year without getting on a plane at all. Plane travel was just normal, whether it was for work, pleasure, or a combination of both. And I always looked forward to flying and the experience of being in an airport. Most people dread plane travel and airport time; but I always loved it. Flying always felt like it was giving me purpose. I’m GOING somewhere, I thought.

Well, the pandemic obliterated all my travel plans last year. My last time on a plane was in February 2020 for my then company’s annual kickoff in San Francisco, plus extra time with family and friends. The kickoff was fine; the friend time was enjoyable; the family time was pretty horrendous and frustrating all around. That’s how I remember my last trip I took that required plane travel.

So now, 15 months later, we’re booked to take a five-day weekend to New Mexico, beginning this Thursday, and I cannot believe I’m actually getting on a plane again! It will be interesting (or frustrating) to see how airports and plane staff are handling the pandemic precautions and cleaning, and a very new feeling to even be traveling for any reason to another state. New Mexico will be my 45th state; Chris has already been, but we’ll be seeing other parts he didn’t have a chance to his first time. I’m looking forward to the warm weather, the arts and culture, the outdoors, and the breakfast burritos and green chilies. Bart will also be excited that he can travel again, too; he’s been pretty bored collecting the occasional bits of dust on my dresser in the last 15 months.

Since we had a car yesterday, we also decided to make a needed stop at Costco. We go to Costco about once per quarter, and so it was finally time to come back and stock up on staples such as toilet paper, meat, nuts, frozen items, and of course, fresh fruits and vegetables.

I had almost forgotten how much I love visiting Costco during the holiday season. Growing up, I always went with my parents to Costco, and the period between Halloween and Christmas was always the best time to go because Costco would have the most elaborate holiday setups, from Halloween costumes to Christmas decorations and gift sets. I love the endless rows of Christmas chocolates and cookies they have, plus the elaborate meat and cheese gift baskets they always have lined up. Even though I personally never buy them, simply seeing them always gets me feeling happy and a little giddy. When at home, occasionally my dad used to indulge and get a few Christmas chocolate or cookie tins; our favorites were always the Belgian chocolate biscuit tins. But with Chris and me, it seems a bit too indulgent to get these items… especially since Chris is pretty happy with his Arnott’s biscuits. There’s no way I’d never eat all these myself before they became stale.

One pleasant surprise we saw in the produce section were rambutans — my lovely red-haired, hard-shelled Southeast Asian fruit. These actually were not grown in Asia, but actually in Honduras, and the shells looked more reddish-brown color rather than the usual magenta-deep red hue. I can’t wait to eat these!

Chris and I took the day off from work today and rented a Zipcar to do a day trip to Connecticut. Since we used a Zipcar twice during the summer for some day trips, I suppose Zipcar wanted our business back, so they offered Chris a $50 voucher to use through the middle of this month, so we decided to take advantage of it. While we are in the first week of November, the autumn leaves were intense and gorgeous along many of the roads and highways that we drove through. I just love this part about living in the Northeast; you don’t get these colors out in California for sure. I still remember always seeing fall leaves on TV shows and movies growing up and always wondering, “How come we don’t see that here in San Francisco?”

We did a mini food tour of the New Haven Little Italy area today by going to three different New Haven style pizza spots: Sally’s, Pepe’s Pizzeria, and Modern Apizza. Until about 10 years ago, I actually had no idea that New Haven was famous for pizza. “New Haven style pizza” is also known as “apizza,” which the New Haven take on coal-oven fired, thin crust Neopolitan pizza. The name “apizza” comes from the accent of the immigrants who settled in this area from Italy. While I loved all four of the pizzas we got (from Pepe’s, we got two different types!), my absolute favorite was definitely the Pepe’s white clam pizza. While I’ve definitely had white pizza and clam pizza before, I’d never had a white clam pizza that was THIS FRESH. The clams were insanely fresh; they just screamed of the ocean with their seafood-y flavor and their saltiness. And the white pizza base was just perfect – just a little cheesy, very garlicky, and a lovely, crunchy, charred flavor.

My cousin loves this pizza and told me that we could actually get the pizza delivered to New York City via Goldbelly. Honestly, that’s not a bad idea…

When we were in Indonesia in December-January, we got to try Luwak coffee, or Kopi Luwak/civet coffee, twice, once in Jakarta and once in Bali. The concept seemed a bit strange around what is reputed to be the most expensive coffee in the world. The concept behind it is that many years ago, Indonesians noticed that a native cat called the Luwak (or civet in English) loved eating coffee berries, but would not be able to fully digest it. As a result, they pooped the berries out whole, but in that process, the coffee berries were fermented going through their digestive track. Always the resourceful ones, the Indonesians took the berries, disinfected and treated them, and attempted to make coffee out of them. Lo and behold, the coffee ended up being smoother, more robust, and fruitier as a result of going through the civet’s digestive track. They found a new industry: Luwak coffee!

While the coffee was quite good, it wasn’t good enough for us to want to buy it (and pay the very high price for it), so we ended up not buying any of the beans to take home. This week, I finished editing a YouTube video showcasing my first experience drinking this prized coffee. “CAT POOP COFFEE,” we called it.

Out of curiosity, after I posted the video, I did a quick Google search on civet coffee and was a bit appalled at what I found. Many articles have been written about how civet coffee/Kopi Luwak is basically like olive oil, in that over 90 percent of the “Kopi Luwak” on the market is actually fake; no cats pooped these coffee berries out. And what is arguably worse, the civets that actually do eat these coffee berries are oftentimes mistreated and force fed coffee berries, similar to what is debated to be done with ducks in order to make fois gras. So the warning of the articles was all the same: when going to Indonesia, stay away from Kopi Luwak.

Maybe I should have researched that more deeply prior to going. But hey, live and learn, right?

The thing about issues like this is that in countries like the U.S., meat eaters get all crazy about eating animals they deem cute and cuddly, like rabbits or whatever arbitrary animal they refuse to eat, but they don’t think about the entire meat processing industry and how poorly animals are treated, given very little space, no room to exercise and live natural lives, forced to eat food that is not normal, and then killed after just a few weeks of life. I’ve seen photos and read quite a bit about how terrible the meat industry is here in the U.S. Do I still eat meat? Yeah. But I don’t turn a blind eye to the practices and pretend that these animals are given glorious short lives whereas animals like civet cats or ducks making fois gras are tortured. It’s all really the same thing. You can take it for what it is and eat what you want, or just remove meat completely from your diet.

A little part of me does try to be a better consumer, though. I try to buy meat, dairy, and eggs that are organic, as I’ve read that it’s more likely these animals will be fed and treated better, not to mention given space to move around outside. It’s hard, though, living in this country where the “laws” are so loosely interpreted, and food companies can just choose bullshit labels like “free range” when they don’t actually mean anything in the real world. The USDA’s definition of “free range,” for example, is that birds must have “outdoor access” or “access to the outdoors.” Well, that doesn’t mean much at all because that could easily mean that the animal have fresh air coming out of a “pop hole,” with zero full body access to the outdoors and no real space requirement. That is like if I said, as a human, “I have access to the outdoors” when what that really meant is that I had to stay in a dark, windowless room all day and all night, but I had a 6-by-6-inch square that was carved into the room to allow me THAT MUCH light and air from the outside. Pretty “free-range,” huh?

This is the third year I’ve come with my current company to the Silverado Resort in Napa for our annual go-to-market kickoff. Each year, it’s been a lot of socializing, learning, overstimulation, and I’ve left drained and exhausted. I can’t remember once when I actually was on my own and did much thinking or meditation on anything. You’d think that if I were in such a peaceful and beautiful place that I would have made time for myself, but year after year, I’ve forgotten.

This year, I have a comfortable one-bedroom suite that is about a ten-minute walk to the mansion and ballroom area where all the events happen. While walking back from a team dinner and some socializing at the bar, I stopped to look up at the night sky and realized that the moon was extremely brilliant and clear, plus the entire sky was like a huge canopy of twinkling white lights. It was a clear night, and all the stars were vivid, bright, and extremely visible. I could even see Orion’s Belt clearly — I do not know constellations at all, but this is the only one I know (it’s pretty simple to keep track of since it’s just three perfectly aligned stars).

It’s crazy to think how sucked into our day to days we get that we rarely stop to look up at the stars. In New York, we aren’t this privileged to have an unpolluted night sky; being able to see a single star is virtually impossible there. But in Napa and even San Francisco, the stars are so clear and vivid unless it’s a cloudy night. I was probably looking up for only about five minutes, but it felt really good nonetheless to finally take this view in and really appreciate it for the first time in these trips.

It’s the first of five days of being in San Francisco and Napa for work: two days of our team offsite, plus three days of go-to-market kickoff for the new fiscal year. Although it’s fun to meet new colleagues and catch up with colleagues I’ve known for a while since I don’t normally see them, after the first day has ended today, I am already ready to crawl into bed and sit in silence. I feel like I’ve been overloaded with information, over-stimulated, and that my introvert self is ready to go into hiding. Most of my colleagues consider me an extrovert, someone who keeps the stories and jokes going, is loud and laughs a lot, and is part of what gives the room energy when I am there. But once I leave that room, I am definitely done and not coming back — no FOMO (fear of missing out), no feeling of being the “party pooper” who left, and definitely not able to be peer-pressured to stay, ever. I might have felt that way in my early 20s, but now in my mid-30s, that is definitely over and done with. It’s like my Insights scale and evaluation (like Myers-Briggs, but to me, more understandable): I project an extroverted “yellow”, but in my truly natural state, I’m an introverted “green.”

When people talk about severe jet lag, as I’ve learned over time flying in premium as well as economy cabins, the jet lag is always the worst when you are flying in coach. When you can sleep flat when you’d like, move around, stretch, and have endless drinks, chocolates, snacks, and meals whenever you want them, time not only passes by quicker, but your body also more quickly adapts to the different time zones. It’s kind of a sad reality to admit when I have the privilege of flying business or first class, and not everyone does, but it’s really the truth. I’ve always had the hardest time flying back from Asia or Australia when I flew in economy seats. It’s just nowhere as easy to sleep comfortably and when you want in an upright cramped seat (the recliner in economy should NOT even be called a real recliner!), and this is coming from someone who is quite petite.

When we got back, we did what we usually do, which is unpack everything, put as much as we can away, and try to reorganize things in the apartment to get our lives in order for reality again. And by the time “bedtime” rolls around at around 10:30-11, I already feel like it’s time to sleep, even though we’d previously been in the air, in a timeless and dateness zone, for about 20 hours.

It’s always hard to adjust being back, not because of jet lag, but because of the boring realities of the day-to-day. Going to work, which is pretty predictable; the mundane and un-thought-provoking conversations heard from other colleagues; the usual rat race as it always is. Sometimes, I come back and tell my colleagues I’ve missed them… okay, to be fair, maybe once. Most of the time, I never miss them because I always know that in the zone of whatever I am doing when I am away, it’s always better than what I was doing at work.