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. 😀

Tonight at dinner, I spent almost the entire evening talking to one of my colleagues who is obsessed with national parks. She asked me a lot about our time in Banff, especially since it’s been high on her list of places to see. Last year, she visited both Yellowstone and Glacier National Park, and I was completely in awe that she had visited Glacier National Park; it’s so far north in Montana that it’s actually not that far away from Calgary where we just were, and flight-wise, it’s not easy to get to at all. She told me that while she enjoyed both parks, she and her boyfriend spent far more time in Glacier and loved it more because of its scenery and that it had far fewer people than Yellowstone. At times, it seemed practically dead, she said. I love hearing things like this. What it ends up meaning is that if we go, it will also have fewer people, and we don’t have a problem with less hoards of people.

I also just love hearing about people going to places that are slightly off the beaten track. So many people I’ve spoken with had no idea what Banff was, and while almost every American knows what Yosemite or Yellowstone is, so few people are aware of what Glacier National Park is (I wasn’t even aware of it or where it was in the U.S. until earlier this year when I was doing national park research for Utah). After reading about some national park designations, some are as new as getting their official designations in the 1980s — that’s so recent!

My national park and hiking obsession will continue. I can’t wait for the next one.

Coming back to the city after days spent hiking with views of endless mountains and the fresh smell of trees and clean air is always a bit of an adjustment. The smell of hiking in Banff kind of stayed with me, and even on the flight back to New York City, I was thinking about how incredible the scents were there. It seemed like every few minutes during a walk or a hike up a switchback that I was inhaling some beautiful, clean and new scent.

This morning on my way to work, it was brutally hot and humid, and it was only 9 am. On the walk to the train, I could smell the lovely New York garbage smell wafting towards me. Clearly on 78th street where I usually turn off, it was rubbish collection day, and so the entire street was lined with endless large black bags filled with trash. What a contrast to the smells I was trying to remember and savor.

Tonight after catching on The Daily Show, I spent the evening researching hikes we could potentially do with my parents when we are back in the Bay Area for Labor Day weekend. Mount Tamalpais State Park and Point Reyes National Seashore are just over the Golden Gate Bridge, which means they are just an hour away for us to hike and smell fresh, crisp air again. Now, my only challenges are a) finding hikes that are not too strenuous (these have the potential of having my mother squat on a rock and refuse to continue onward), and b) grappling with the fact that in order to get to these places, I need to get over my anxiety of crossing the Golden Gate Bridge once again.

But I guess we need to face our fears to continue living, so I just have to be strong and think positively about the memories of Ed and the fact that I know he wouldn’t want me to cry.

We haven’t had any real “glamour” meals on this trip, as most of the food we’ve been eating has been either at the national park or random restaurants in the town of Banff. But one thing that has been certain is that the bread and dairy in this province, if not this entire country, have been phenomenal. We got a liter of regular whole milk from a supermarket in Banff the other night, and the milk had a distinct aftertaste that I’ve never really encountered back home, anywhere in the U.S. The bread we’ve had, in the form of “complimentary” bread with the elk stew we had at a park cafe, smelled aged and yeasty, while the cassoulet linseed bread yesterday night in Calgary was light and fluffy, yet hearty and almost “meaty,” if that makes any sense. It had heft and a great mouthbfeel, as well as a nuanced, complex flavor that screamed, “I’m not shitty supermarket American bread; I have character!” And this morning’s breakfast at Blue Star Diner just topped my Canadian bread expectations: my thick slices of sourdough toast that put together my breakfast “sammy” were so good that I didn’t want my breakfast to end. Ever. The flavor, the taste, the texture — it was all so good that even if the cost were double, I probably wouldn’t have cared much.

I read that Canada is known for having very heavy, hearty breakfasts, which I suppose makes sense since it is a very cold region given how north it is. Many items on the menu are not for those watching their waist lines — popular items across breakfast and brunch places include pulled pork eggs benedict, duck confit with poached eggs and hash, and pretty much every fancy meat you can think of combined with eggs any way with endless potatoes in countless methods of being cooked. When people think of countries known for their gastronomy, they oftentimes think of places like France, Italy, Spain, or Japan. Canada is pretty much never on that list based on travel features I’ve read. But I would argue that food is pretty notable here, especially given how culturally diverse Canada is, and their creativity with breakfasts and the care they take with raising grass-fed and finished cows for dairy and beef should be admired, if not replicated.

After having only two meals in Calgary and being blown away by the quality of the ingredients at both, all I want to do now is come back to Canada and eat. And see the rest of the Canadian Rockies. And maybe live for a little bit — if just during the summer.

The first two big hiking and outdoors trips I’d ever done were to Marin Headlands when I was 10 years old for an overnight school trip in elementary school, and then to Olympic National Park in Washington state on an outdoor education trip via my middle school when I was 14. Outside of these trips, I’d never been exposed much to the “outdoors.” My parents never appreciated hiking or visiting national parks, so they were never going to take me. And when friends’ parents offered to take me on snow sport outings to Tahoe, my mom always refused to let me go. She was overprotective, to say the least.

When I look back on my childhood, those are two trips I always remember fondly as happy moments of my life. I was with good friends, my parents weren’t there, and I was just there to take in my surroundings and all these new and foreign experiences. I think that these trips helped me develop a desire to do more hiking, visit more national parks, and pursue new outdoor recreational activities.

Yesterday, after about seven hours of hiking, we sat and relaxed at the Fairmont Lake Louise bar in Banff National Park, and we chatted with a man who came with his wife and two children from New Jersey. They love the outdoors, and in this same year, also visited Bryce and Zion National Park in Utah as we just did. He said they did many hikes, some more strenuous like the Lake Agnes tea house hike overlooking Lake Louise, and their children, ages 10 and 12, really enjoyed them. He said they exposed their kids to a lot of outdoor activities, so they were used to be being outside and active.

That’s what I want for our future kids. I want them to appreciate both urban city life and the outdoors, and to be exposed to hiking in natural, beautiful places like Banff from a young age. It’s true that my parents never took me to national parks or hiking in places like Yosemite or Olympic National Park, but they did pay for me to have the opportunities to do those two outdoors trips that led to my appreciation of nature and love of hiking. I still had the opportunities in a different way. And I’m grateful for that. I hope to be able to take it a step further with my own children and participate with them. Because don’t we all want our kids to have more than what we have been privileged to have?