Today, Mai, Chris, and I visited the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site where one day in September 1957, the “Little Rock Nine,” who were 9 black students, tried to attend what was an all-white school in an attempt to end racial segregation in schools. They were prevented from entering the school by a mob of hundreds of whites and the Arkansas National Guard ordered by then racist Governor Faubus. The Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling meant nothing to Faubus and the majority of white people of Little Rock, who insisted integration would ruin their “traditional values” and ways of living. The Little Rock Nine were pushed, screamed at, kicked, hit, and spat on to the point that one of 9 wearing a dress said it was soaked to the point that she had to wring it out when she got home. Almost 60 years after this event occurred, segregation still exists in our neighborhoods and schools, as well as unfair treatment of non-whites in society whether it’s conscious or subconscious. It made me sick to relearn all the things I had learned in history classes growing up — that the police and National Guard did nothing to help these kids simply because of their skin color. They just stood by and watched; in other cases, as with the Bloody Sunday in Selma, they actually beat them, tear-gassed them, and clubbed them. 

The world has changed a lot since the Civil Rights Movement, but I will never say that we’re color blind, that race doesn’t matter, or that blacks and browns and Asians and whites all have the same rights and opportunities because that is just not the case for anyone who has any perspective or keeps up with the news or spends time with anyone who is not the same color as they are. Some people, in their deluded, ignorant thinking, say that race doesn’t matter anymore simply because we’ve had our first black president. Barack Obama is the exception; we all know he’s not the norm of what we stereotypically think of in the black community. Yet, I will also not be the person who is so extreme as to say that nothing has changed since the 60s. Police brutality still exists, but not to the degree that the Freedom Riders experienced. It’s not normal to be black and get spat at and called the “N” word regularly on the streets or in school and have law enforcement or teachers not do anything about it. We also don’t have separate “whites” and “colored” water fountains, bathrooms, or bus sections. I can’t even fathom how bad it truly was 60 to 70 years ago.

I’m still waiting for the day when we can stop discriminating based on the color of our skin or hair and judge people solely based on their actual character. As congressman John Lewis said at the Salesforce Connections conference, we just need to love and support each other. It seems corny, cheesy, and/or trite out of context, but it makes sense. If we cared about each other more, maybe the Little Rock Nine wouldn’t have been so intense. If more black people had supported the Nine, it could have been a bigger success, and the black students trying to integrate could have actually gotten into the school that day and gone to class. If more white people stood up for the students in those mobs and in the classroom, they could have set a better example for their white friends and families. The power in numbers cannot be underestimated. 

This weekend, Chris and I are in Arkansas, where we will be visiting historical sites, eating what will likely be a lot of fried food, and visiting my good friend from college who lives down here and is doing her medical residency. This will be my second time in Arkansas, as well as my second time visiting the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum. After having visited so many presidential libraries in the last four years, it was interesting for me to revisit the Clinton Library with a new perspective. It’s actually an even more interesting time to be visiting the Clinton Library given that Hillary Clinton may soon become the next president of the United States in less than two weeks. It made me look at the First Lady exhibit much more differently and the impact she had during her husband’s administration. At the time, she was the very first First Lady of the U.S. to have had a professional career, a degree higher than a B.A., and a very active role in her husband’s administration. She then became the first and only First Lady to run for office and then become a senator. Times have really changed since the 90s. The world really is moving forward, even if it does feel very slow right now.

Tonight, I enjoyed a delicious Italian meal by myself on an outdoor patio at a restaurant resembling a little cottage in the middle of Midtown Atlanta. I had a beautiful yet simple arugula salad, wild mushroom ravioli, and one of my all-time favorite glasses of Sangiovese. The temperatures were still in the mid-70s in the early evening, so it felt like a warm summer evening as opposed to an autumn evening. There would be zero chances I’d agree to dine outside, day or night, in New York at this time of year.

As I sat and ate my ravioli, I wondered about all the people in the world who are shunning pasta and bread and thought.. what a miserable life. If you cannot appreciate how good something like these morsels are, you must be a very unhappy person. During the food tour I went on over a week ago, one of the women on the tour said that she thought some people waste so much time obsessing over food that it probably makes them miserable people, and that if they just stopped obsessing and just allowed themselves to eat the things they obsessed over not eating, they’d be happier and healthier people. So true. And what a first-world obsession.

It doesn’t seem to matter where I am going or what airport I’m leaving from, but first class (or business class or both, depending on the flight you are on) is so lacking in diversity that it is exactly what is representative of everything that’s wrong with our society. On Monday on my connecting flight through Charlotte to Tampa, I got upgraded to First. First class on this plane consisted of 16 seats. I boarded the plane a little late, so I was the last person in the first class cabin to be seated. I took a quick look around to see who my fellow passengers were. Out of 16 first class passengers, 12 were older white men (at least age 50 and chances are even older than that given the amount of white hair I saw), three were middle-aged to older white women, and… there was me. I’m the only person of color sitting in the first class cabin. I’m also the only person under the age of 40 probably, and a year ago, I could say I was almost always the only person under the age of 30.

To be honest, I was surprised there were three other women sitting with me. Most of the time when I get upgraded, it’s always all men and me, plus maybe another woman or two at most. It was like a tiny glimmer of how women are doing better in our society now, either having the higher earning power to pay for first class seats, or the airline status to actually get the upgrades I get. You could almost call it a slight increase in “diversity” in the front cabin of the plane, as laughable as that is.

How do we get more women with more earning power and airline status, and even more, how do we get more people of color, particularly black and Latino, to have the ability to sit in the front cabin, for it not to be a dream or a reality that is seemingly out of grasp? Optimists say that the world is getting better, that people are less racist. Perhaps they are less outwardly racist, but it doesn’t say much for subconscious racism or the clear lack of diversity on an airplane’s luxury cabin. Articles like these make it hard for me to believe in a truly equal world of equal opportunity. I always get curious looks when I am traveling for work and getting upgraded; it’s like people cannot fathom why or how a young Asian woman would be able to sit with them. Yes, I know you are all used to sitting with people who look like you, dress like you, and probably come from similar backgrounds as you. But get over it and your racist, sexist thoughts. I’m coming to take over and bash all your antiquated stereotypes. 🙂

I’m in Tampa for three days this week for work. Client meetings usually have me coming down here at least twice a year now, along with Fort Lauderdale and Atlanta. On average, I probably travel about every other month for work. In the grand scheme of work travel, this is fairly infrequent, and the distances I travel are pretty short.

I came in around dinner time last night and not sure what to eat, I Yelped a few places that were walking distance from the hotel and settled on the place that had the best reviews but was the shortest walking distance (yes, I was just being lazy). It was a Thai restaurant that was quite large yet practically empty except for four tables, all with older white men dining (this is Tampa, after all, the land of rich, retired white people). It was one of the fanciest Thai restaurants I’d ever been in, with decor that looked like it had been shipped straight from Thailand. The menu was fairly standard for a not-very-authentic Thai restaurant, and because I just wanted something over rice, I got a seafood and chicken stir fry.

As I ate my dinner alone, I thought to myself what it would be like if I were a consultant, traveling the country (or the world) on my own most weeks, four days at a time, living out of a suitcase, rarely having the time or ability to eat or make a home-cooked meal. This would be my life — eating out alone, without many people to talk to. That would get very lonely very quickly and be deeply unsatisfying. I thought briefly of chatting with my server, who seemed curious about my dining alone. I caught him staring at me from the cash register and kitchen doorway multiple times and smiled.

I still think consulting is kind of a bs-y industry, but I guess if companies are willing to pay for outsourced labor to tell them how to run their business, that is what will help make the economy and world go round. But the next thing I thought was… how many of these consultants have these thoughts I do about dining alone and question if they are living a life of meaning?

It’s very rare that I have bad service at restaurants. But the sad part is that when I do have bad service, most of the time, I tend to be with my girlfriends. Why would this be the case? Is it because restaurants don’t take young women dining together seriously? They think that couples dining together are preferable as diners at their restaurant, which is why when Chris and I go out together, we rarely get poor service? My friends and I were at The Progress in San Francisco last night, and not only were we seated in this terrible alcove area at the front of the restaurant by the bar where we couldn’t even share a full table (my second friend had her own half table in our dumb alcove), but our server was constantly asking us if we were ready to order when it was clear we were not. We were being rushed to order everything from drinks to mains to dessert. The rush was very obvious, and the snobbery of our server was undeniable. He really just couldn’t wait to get us our bill and get us out of the restaurant.

To get back at him, we tipped him only 12 percent. He was a jerk, and while he may just stereotype us as being cheap Asians for not giving him at least 15 percent (really, 18 to 20 percent seems like the expectation nowadays as annoying as it is), what he really should know is that he was unnecessarily snooty and did not exhibit a good server attitude. The food was good, but fairly overpriced as most new restaurants in San Francisco are now, and not good enough to warrant even considering a second visit. We won’t be back there.

While doing research for Thailand, it suddenly dawned on me that one of the big lantern release happens for New Years, when thousands of lanterns are lit with flames and are launched into the sky. I’ve been wanting to see that (despite how environmentally unfriendly and potentially hazardous it is) since I first saw photos of it years ago. And we will be in Chiang Mai for it this year.

I don’t normally get excited about New Year’s festivities, but this is one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences, kind of like what 2012 New Year’s Eve was for me in Sydney. Now, I can’t wait. 😀