I’ll admit that I was a bit pessimistic about this year’s annual Go-To-Market kickoff, especially since last year, I really didn’t enjoy almost any of the sessions at all, I really hated our partners being there and knowing inside out what that fiscal year’s strategy was going to be, and I absolutely hated the homework we had to do to prepare for individual “quiz” like presentations on day 2 of the three-day event. The whole purpose of GTM kick-off is to 1) highlight the accomplishments of the previous year and 2) establish the new fiscal year’s strategy for how to move forward and what we need to do to accomplish our goals. This year, we got a rough schedule of when sessions would happen, but there was zero description of what the sessions entailed or what we had to prepare for, if anything. I was irritated last week about this and thinking the worst.

But now that day 1 has completed, I can say that a lot of things have changed for the better. The sessions were actually engaging and interactive, information was shared that actually made sense that I could agree with, and we even had a trivia piece that added an element of competition to the day, which added to the fun. We also had customer panels, which everyone seems to enjoy, as opposed to having our partners on stage.

We ended the evening with team dinners at various restaurant around the Napa/Yountville area, and our team ate at Redd Wood, which was delicious; California produce and local ingredients at its finest. It made me miss having easy access to such fresh local produce here. One team tradition we have is at kick off team dinners, we do a go-around where everyone has to stand up and thank someone for something they have done for them. One of my colleagues stood up and thanked me for being the “New York office social chair,” for always being positive and lending an ear. “You really bring people together,” she said. My heart almost melted. It always feels good to be recognized, but public recognition is not something I have experienced a lot of, so it felt very strange… but in a positive way.

A large group of us were on a shuttle bus headed toward the Silverado Resort and Spa in Napa this evening. This resort property is so large that unfortunately, not every room or apartment is walking distance from the main mansion and ballroom area, so instead of walking, we were told we had to call a complimentary shuttle to take us to and from each day. I really didn’t like the idea of this, especially since last year, I was spoiled and had a room that was less than a five-minute walk to the mansion. This year, based on the map, I was far, far out, and so the Silverado workers insisted that I take the shuttle. Another colleague who has been coming here for the last 4 years insisted that no cottage was more than a 10-minute walk from the mansion. A colleague was somewhat close to my apartment based on the map, so we thought we’d be independent and walk there on our own… which was a huge mistake. At past 9pm when it was pitch black outside with very little lighting along the way, we probably walked over 1.5 miles over half an hour, through streams, bridges, a golf course, to finally end up in the private condo properties that, while they are technically part of the Silverado resort, we were not actually supposed to be in this area given we do not live there. We were about 100 yards from the area we were supposed to be, but were fully blocked off by an iron gate that required a code to be entered, which we obviously didn’t have. So we sucked it up, called the front desk, and asked them to come pick us up after giving them our estimated cross streets. The driver was not amused with us and was flabbergasted that we would even attempt walking so late at night when it was so dark. “No one walks here!” he said to us, obviously with a hint of judgment in his tone. “It’s way too far and way too dark.”

Well, at least we made it to our rooms.

Space, especially in metropolitan cities like New York and San Francisco, is not cheap. It’s so expensive that most of the time when we do team “offsites” for multiple days, they end up actually not being off site from our usual offices, but instead “onsite” in a conference room at the office we had to reserve in advance. It’s kind of funny to me, but it is what it is.

Our team has been expanding slowly but surely. There were so many new faces to meet from all of our offices, in San Francisco, London, Amsterdam, Cologne, New York, and Austin. Although a lot of people dread the travel and dislike these big team events, at this company, I’ve really looked forward to them because I genuinely think that overall, the calibre of people we’ve hired has been far above average. I actually meet people here who are not only passionate about work and doing a good job as cliche as that sounds, but they have hobbies and interests outside of the office that make them interesting. So it’s nice to make these connections and know that your colleagues are multidimensional beings that are more than just workaholics. And I think I felt this when I first started, but I still feel this now almost two years in. This type of consistency is good.

And even outside of our team as I was running into other familiar faces at the office and meeting new ones, a lot of people seemed so receptive to the messages I’ve posted about my AFSP fundraiser and getting the word out about how pervasive depression and suicide are in society. A few people I’d never even met before introduced themselves to me and said they recognized me from my Slack post on the main team channel, and they were happy that I was supporting a cause like this and being so bold and open. It felt really nice to know that they not only read my post and remembered it, but even remembered me and my name and face.

Even two years later, it feels weird knowing I have good people as colleagues. It’s a happy thought.

After having an early dinner with my parents, they drove me to the Mission Bay Hyatt Place, which is a brand new hotel that opened just a couple of weeks ago. Hotel rates in San Francisco have really skyrocketed over the last few years, so our company booked all traveling employees on my team to stay here. It still wasn’t what I would call “cheap” at $250/night, but unfortunately now for this city, that price is considered cheap.

It’s actually funny that this area is called “Mission Bay” to me. The hotel is located just a block from AT&T park, and growing up, we always just knew this as the “ballpark” area that was relatively industrial, with lots of warehouses where you could buy goods at wholesale prices. Now, it has this “Mission Bay” name that everyone refers to as though it’s always been called this and always existed. It felt so new being here, with all these new low-rise, modern cookie-cutter apartments, “fast casual” food chains like Panera, and even Pinterest’s headquarters is in this area. This is another reminder of how much my hometown is changing, and I just can’t keep up with all the changes. I didn’t recognize this area at all when I arrived. I truly was a tourist in my own city tonight.

Nothing is worse than being sick while traveling or on vacation. But getting back from an amazing trip and then going back to work and being sick is certainly no fun at all, especially when that cold you somehow caught while on the flight back results in massive coughing fits that are reminiscent of the whooping cough I had to live through in December 2015. It’s hard to forget how miserable that was, how close to death I felt during that time.

I’ve been working from home the last three days to incubate myself. While I have colleagues joking to me over Slack that I am probably just prolonging my vacation, nothing could be further from the truth. I wish I were on vacation and not dealing with hacking up phlegm.

Because Chris has a lot of accumulating Qantas points that he had to use for something, and obviously the only time you can use them is when you fly Qantas, he decided to apply a healthy number of points towards upgrading our flight to First Class. We’ve been flying Business Class to and from the last couple of years, which was already incredible (it makes any business class in the U.S. seem like garbage with the level of attentiveness and service, not to mention the quality of the food), but First Class on Qantas certainly took us to another level of getting the royal and spoiled treatment. We began with getting a booked massage for him and a facial for me, 20 minutes each, and then when we boarded our flight, we each had our own little pod, which could be adjusted so that you and your partner could dine… at the same table together. I took a quick look at the menu and realized that while there were the usual a la carte options, there was actually a multi-course tasting menu… on the plane. I’d never even fathomed the idea of having a tasting menu on plane before. So we chose that option to indulge, and even enjoyed some of the best champagne and Australian shiraz that we’ve ever had on that flight to LA.

For breakfast, I was pleasantly surprised to see that I could select poached eggs, as I’d never seen poached eggs on a plane before (for seemingly obvious reasons since poaching is already the most difficult egg method, but to get it right on a plane would be insanity). So I chose that over toast with avocado, and while the egg was probably more done than I would have liked, the yolk, when broken, still lightly spilled out over my toast. This was too much, I concluded as I chewed. If I had this every time I flew back and forth between Australia, I’d be ruined for every other flight.

The theme of food for our trip to Vietnam was freshness. As was the case when we were in Thailand two years ago, everything in Southeast Asia just screams fresh, especially since the cuisines there love to combine cooked elements with raw ingredients to lighten and refresh the palate. While I expected aspects like the mile-high plates of herbs, lettuce, and vegetables, what I did not expect were the fresh rice noodles in all the pho and other noodle soup dishes we had; for whatever reason, I just expected them to reconstitute the dried stuff, but nope. It was obvious from the chew and mouthfeel that these noodles were churned out fresh. No dried noodles here. And the one time I did see dried noodles, it was at the Danang Vietnam Airlines lounge in the dining area, where they had pho noodles that were instant pre set up in bowls for you to add your piping hot pho broth to.

When I think about aspects of Vietnamese cuisine like this, I think, no one in the modern world, or, well, New York City, who works full time could ever regularly have meals like this. Who has the time or energy to source fresh everything, whether it’s specific Vietnamese herbs or just-churned noodles, or freshly pressed tofu? I’d be running all over the city all day… which can’t work if I have a job. It’s totally intangible, though I do dream of having such ready and easy access to all these beautiful ingredients. Fresh food is really what most Americans don’t eat at all or do not get enough of. Vietnam even has me questioning the taste of chicken, as I distinctly remember having chicken three times during this trip, and while chewing, thinking, ‘Wow, this tastes… more chickeny, with a stronger, more assertive flavor that screams, hey! I’m not the bland meat! I have my own flavor, thank you!’ The piri piri chicken in Portugal last November was incredible, one of the best chicken dishes I’d had in my life, but that was because of the flavor of the marinade, the spices, the chili oil, and the charcoal grill… not the actual chicken meat itself. In Vietnam when I had chicken, I knew it was the actual flavor of the chicken flesh itself.

And sadly, I’m sure the average American would eat the chicken we had in Vietnam and say it’s gross or doesn’t taste right… because they’ve been accustomed to the bland and the boring chickens of mass-grown and produced America.

One of the surprising places we visited on this trip was Danang. I didn’t really know what to think of it at all other than knowing that many large and fancy hotel properties and golf courses were being constructed there due to the beautiful beaches there. I knew of Marble Mountains, of My Son Sanctuary, which is a sanctuary made in a similar style to Angkor Wat in Cambodia. But other than that, I had no expectations. So when we arrived and spent an evening eating and roaming around the streets of the urban area of Danang, I was a bit shocked. It probably felt the cleanest of all the cities we’d visited, not to mention the most developed. The streets reminded me of walking through Seoul, which was also supplemented by the fact that endless signs in Korean and Korean barbecue restaurants and spas lined the streets (this is clearly a major South Korean tourist destination). Lots of bright lights adorned buildings and bridges. The one major bridge had a dragon descending upon it and was constantly changing color; I read that for special occasions, this bridge actually shoots out fire! And it’s a bridge both for cars and pedestrians!

The food we ate here was delicious, as well, as Chris declared the main meal we had on Thursday evening to be his favorite and the best meal we’d had in Vietnam, which is saying a lot considering how much we’ve eaten thus far. We found a tiny banh xeo place in the back of an alley and feasted on banh xeo and grilled beef wrapped in lalot leaves. The two surprising things about these banh xeo were that 1) the sauce accompanying it was not the usual nuoc cham (“all-purpose”) light dipping sauce that was ubiquitous and that my mom and I make at home, but rather a thick, fermented shrimp/hoisin/pig liver sauce that had a brownish-red hue. Chris gorged on that sauce. And 2) these particular banh xeo actually had scrambled eggs on the edges of them. People often mistaken banh xeo for having egg in them because they are yellow, but they’re actually yellow because of the turmeric it is spiced with and usually have no egg product in them. but these ones definitely had egg scrambled at the edges!

“Maybe you can try this at home next time you make banh xeo,” Chris said, giving a not-so-subtle hint that he wanted this.

We ended the evening at a hole-in-the-wall che spot, a Vietnamese bean, jelly, and fruit place, where we shared a bowl of assorted colored, flavored, and textured jellies, taro, jackfruit, and a huge lump of durian added in, all mixed with a pandan and coconut milk liquid base.

Definitely gaining weight by the end of this trip, but it will all be worth it.