Category Archives: Travel

Asianized Sydney

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Chris has to be in Sydney for work the next two days, so I decided to go with him and explore the city on my own. The last time I came, it was almost three years ago when we came at the end of 2012 to see New Year’s fireworks at the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

The city seems even more Asian than it was when I was last here. Chinatown looks as though it’s expanded quite a bit, and there is an even wider variety of Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and Thai shops, ranging from simple grocery stores to clothing boutiques to even milk bread shops. There are stores along George Street that advertise selling just beauty and home items exclusively from Japan and Korea. And when I stepped into the Din Tai Fung off of George Street just past lunch time, there was a decent number of non-Asians dining there. Sure, the table of white people next to me made sure to order fried rice and generic noodles, but hey, they made sure to order the xiao long bao and other dumplings that Din Tai Fung is famous for. The “Asianizing” of Sydney seems to be rampant.

Aunt and uncle catch ups

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Today, we went to visit Chris’s paternal grandmother for about two hours, then spent about five hours at his aunt and uncle’s home nearby. The funny thing is that we spent five hours at his aunt and uncle’s home, yet we didn’t even realize that time had passed that quickly because there was so much to talk about between running around with their grandchildren, who they were babysitting for the weekend.

I thought about my lunch with my aunt last Tuesday before we left for Australia, and I realize how much of a far cry these conversations today were versus the very shallow conversation with my own aunt. My aunt is a well-meaning, happy, good person, but she just doesn’t have it in her to have a conversation with me past very surface level topics. She will ask me, “how is work?” But if I were to say anything more than “good” or “okay” or “terrible,” she wouldn’t know how to react or respond. She will ask me if I am planning to have children shortly after the wedding, and I will respond yes, no, or maybe, and that would be the end of that topic. There’s no deeper digging, no topic that develops past the first question and answer, and some answers are too complex or painful or long for her to fully be interested or engaged in. Tonight, we discussed our wedding preparations, everything from how we chose a photographer to the questions that he would ask us leading up to the wedding to prepare for the wedding day. I could never have that conversation with my aunt… or any of my aunts or uncles who are on my side at all.

As Tolstoy once wrote famously in his epic novel Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” All families have problems. All relationships have problems. But not all families and relationships see the same issues as “problems.” I’m positive my aunt doesn’t see our shallow conversations as a problem, but I do. I feel like she will never really know me. Even my dad asks me deeper questions than my aunt.

But this is my family. They are who they are, and our relationships aren’t going to change. So, as per usual, I have to keep reminding myself that I need to accept these situations as they are — not capable of change. And that’s okay because I can find deeper conversation with Chris’s family members and a select few of my own friends.

Vietnamese food in Melbourne

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I never realized how large the Vietnamese population in Melbourne was until my second visit here in 2013, when Chris took me to two different Vietnamese neighborhoods, Springvale and Richmond. It shouldn’t surprise me given Australia’s proximity to Vietnam, but it was more just intriguing to me to think of Vietnamese people speaking English with Aussie accents and living in the land Down Under. This morning, I had a craving for pho, so I asked Chris to take me to have some. We decided to go to Springvale, where we passed by a handful of Vietnamese butcher shops one store at a time. I’ve never seen a Vietnamese-specific butcher shop, nor have I ever seen Vietnamese-only barbecue restaurants and takeout counters for classic dishes like heo quay (Vietnamese roast pork belly). Here, there are pho shops that open at 8am, which I also hadn’t seen before outside of Vietnam. Traditionally in Vietnam, pho is a breakfast dish, and here, people actually do have it for breakfast… and queue up for it!

The original place we wanted to go to have pho had too long of a wait (I have never seen a queue for pho, nor have I ever had to wait for it anywhere), so we settled on a place a block away, which ended up still being quite satisfying with a side of jack fruit shake. These shops serve pho and only pho, and they are bustling. I wish New York had Vietnamese food like this and quality that was as easy to find as this.

Maille mustard in Melbourne

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After arriving in Melbourne and having lunch with Chris’s family, Chris and I took a long drive to nowhere and found ourselves at the Woolworth’s supermarket near his parents’ house. I always like to visit grocery stores and supermarkets when we are traveling, even if I have been in the same exact ones in Melbourne multiple times. It just makes me happy to see the variety of food, how it differs in terms of food type, place of origin, and types of readily available ingredients. This time, after a trip to France, I am more cognizant of the French brand mustard Maille, which recently opened a glamorous, high-end store on the Upper West Side in Manhattan (and where I got ripped off into buying a small $9 jar of their basil flavored whole grain mustard). So I was shocked when I saw a shelf of just Maille brand mustard imported from France, and everything was $4 AUD or under! That’s less than $3 USD! I immediately bought one large jar of whole grain Maille mustard and rejoiced in my purchase.

Given how strong the U.S. dollar is in Australia now and how stronger it’s gotten every subsequent visit here, I have a feeling I may be making more food and maybe clothing purchases while I am in town. 🙂

In flight cereal milk

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I just had the most luxurious flying experience from LAX to Melbourne: fourteen and a half hours in the air on a points-upgraded flight to business class, complete with pajamas, turn-down service for my seat that changed into a bed, and endless food and drink served on real ceramic and glassware. I spent ten of those hours sleeping without even realizing it since I was feeling under the weather, but when I woke up, all I could do was think about the cereal milk custard dessert I had before going to sleep and how funny it is now that “cereal milk” flavored anything is so popular now thanks to David Chang and his Momofuku empire.

When Ed and I were kids, we ate a lot of cold cereal, both sugary and plain, and we always drank our milk in the end. No food could go to waste in our house, and in fact, the mere concept of throwing out the sugary flavored milk in the end had never even occurred to me until I saw kids at school on the free lunch program eating their cereal and then dumping their leftover sugary milk into a massive bin. At that point in life, that was one of the most disgusting sights I had ever seen.

To think that today, people are profiting off of “cereal milk” being sold at Momofuku Milk Bar is so mind-boggling and makes me feel sad and a little angry for all those kids who threw out all that good milk in elementary school — first world problems to have access to nutritious cow’s milk but to throw it out without realizing how fortunate they are. And it’s so odd to think that now, the same cereal milk is being sold for five bucks for a small amount, AND the term itself is even trademarked by Momofuku Milk Bar!

“You were in SWITZERLAND?”

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I caught up with my colleagues today in the morning, and they were all surprised that I was in Switzerland last week. I didn’t tell any of them that I was going to be in Switzerland the week of Thanksgiving; I just told them that I’d be working remotely.

“When you Slacked me and told me that you were in Geneva, I thought, ‘she’s in Switzerland?!’ But then for a second, I kept wondering if there was some city domestically that was also Geneva that I just wasn’t sure about,” my colleague said while laughing. I guess she was probably thinking of those odd cities like Melbourne in Florida or Paris in Texas. Another colleague, who spent last week in Rio and who I gave extensive Rio tips to, said she was shocked I didn’t tell her I was taking an international trip. “Why didn’t you say anything about that?” she exclaimed to me.

I guess outside of one or two trips each year, I’ve gotten to a point where I’ve stopped sharing where I am going unless colleagues explicitly ask me. It’s not that I don’t want to share or talk about it; I love talking about travel and things I’ve seen and what I am planning to do. It’s more that I just don’t like to deal with the negative or passive aggressive responses I get, which range anywhere from, “How do you get any work done?” to “How do you have time to take vacations?” to “Wow, your fiance must do really well for himself! (which is a very passive aggressive way of implying that there is absolutely no way I’d be able to afford this travel all by myself on my own salary, which frankly, is wrong).”

Part of life, as I am slowly and painfully learning, is that I cannot share everything I want to share with others and expect them to be happy for me or care or be anywhere as enthusiastic as I am about whatever it is. A lot of resentment, anger, and jealousy is everywhere, and part of my goal is to limit my exposure to that as much as possible, especially with people who I don’t care about at all.

Elitism

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We got to the Zurich airport this morning, and I was anticipating a nice, relaxing morning at the airport lounge complete with a warm breakfast and some nice Swiss milk before boarding our flight. Little did I know that not only was it not even an American Airlines specific lounge, it was some sub par third-party lounge that had no hot food at all until 11:30 (way past our time in the lounge), gave complimentary Wi-Fi for only up to one hour (then, you’d be kicked off the network and forced to pay), and barely had edible bread to eat. The only things I really enjoyed were the Swiss pineapple yogurt and the Swiss milk. Everything else was depressing.

When I was feeling my disappointment, I realized that my disappointment in this lounge experience was also the equivalent of my level of elitism now being a frequent flier. When I fly internationally, I now have the expectation that the lounges in other countries will be better because the U.S. lounges, at least for domestic carriers, are always an embarrassment, while the ones operated by international airlines and in other countries are always like walking into a luxurious suite. I guess this just goes to show that we adapt to our environment. I no longer go into lounges wide-eyed and thinking it’s amazing just because it’s a lounge that I have access to.

Seven years later

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Today, we met up with our former colleague and friend at Efficient Frontier here in Zurich. It’s always incredible to think about where life takes us in just a handful of years. We were all colleagues then in our own respective relationships. In the last seven years, all three of those relationships have dissolved. She moved to Chicago, then to Shanghai, and finally to Zurich. Chris and I have been at five companies collectively since then, and somehow we got together, became engaged, and are planning a wedding for this coming March. She ended her long distance relationship from 2008, met a guy through a friend in Shanghai who happened to be Chinese American in Shanghai, had two weddings, and gave birth to a son who will be turning two just days after Christmas next month. She had no idea we even got together, but she seemed really excited and happy for us to be together. We’re all a little different than we were in 2008, but so much has changed in our lives since then. The one thing that has remained consistent is that more or less, we are still connected and have a level of affection for one another. I hope we will be able to meet again sometime soon. Distance makes staying in touch and remaining friends harder, but it always feels warm and fuzzy when you meet up after a long period of not seeing each other, and you still feel the same level of comfort as you did the last time you saw this person.

Basel Christmas markets

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We spent the day exploring the beautiful capital city of Bern, complete with a visit to the rosengarten to see the sweeping view of this well preserved city, Einstein’s apartment, and Zentrum Paul Klee. In the evening, we took the train from Bern to Basel, where we wandered through several of its ornate Christmas markets that are reputed to be the best in Switzerland. The Christmas markets there were quite buzzing, with huge crowds and lots of happy people drinking their gluwein and other alcoholic spiced drinks.

As we drank gluwein out of our little 2015 Basel boot mugs, Chris lamented how the Union Square holiday market was sorely lacking, not just in the goods being sold but also in the alcohol area. There actually is an area where you can drink at the holiday market there, but it’s roped off and you have to stay within that area to consume your alcoholic beverage. “That sucks,” Chris sneered. He insisted the whole glory of these Christmas markets in Europe is that you can freely wander around the markets with your alcoholic beverage and not have to worry about going over some dumb border line. We even noticed kids who were clearly under the legal drinking age serving us our mulled wine. That would definitely never happen anywhere back home.

I suppose another major reason that we travel is to experience culture and life that we don’t get exposure to back home, and in this specific case, it means being able to drink without boundaries at an innocent Christmas market. Whereas back home, they would be terrified of people doing this, giving alcohol to minors, and people getting drunk, throwing up, and perhaps engaging in lewd conduct, here in Switzerland, everyone is seemingly drinking responsibly and simply enjoying life. Enjoying life seems to be harder in the alcoholic regard back home.

Thanksgiving 2015

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I spent Thanksgiving this year traveling with Chris east on a Swiss rail train from Geneva to Zurich in the morning, then wandering through the old town of Zurich and its Christmas markets through the afternoon and evening. As we walked through this beautiful city, I thought about all the Thanksgivings in my past.

The last time I was home for Thanksgiving was November 2003, my senior year of high school. That seems like a hundred years ago even though it was just 12 years ago. Those were the days when my cousins, Ed, uncle, and I would have a Thanksgiving meal together, mostly prepared by my oldest cousin and me. Some sides would be brought over by my uncle, some crappy leftover food and chips from my second oldest cousin and his wife, who were always in a rush to leave our dinner to go to the wife’s family’s dinner in Vallejo, and a turkey that was painstakingly made by my oldest cousin. For some reason, we never called turkey gravy “gravy,” and instead my cousin insisted on calling it “au jus.” I don’t really get that even until today, but maybe that was his attempt at sounding fancy.

Family Thanksgivings for me are sadly a thing of the past. After I graduated from college and started earning an income where flying cross country to go home during a “peak” season wouldn’t break the bank, I realized I had little desire to go home during that period anyway. We were a broken family. The only reason I ever thought even for a second of going home was because I always felt bad about not seeing Ed that day, and his not having a “family” to have Thanksgiving with. After a while, the cousins stopped getting together, which meant my uncle stopped coming, which finally meant Ed had no one that day. Guilt is pretty much built into our DNA. Before he passed away, I thought, maybe I could go home for Thanksgiving in 2014, or he could come here, and we could have a meal together once again. Well, that never happened. I was too late.

“Experts” always say in those articles about grieving that everyone grieves on their own timeline, that it can take months to years to decades to let go of the regrets you have about things you wish you had done or not done or said or not said to those who have passed. That is all true. It’s hard to think of a major holiday like Thanksgiving or Christmas and not think about my brother, which then leads me to wonder what else I could have done to have helped him. It’s futile since nothing will bring him back, but I always think about it anyway. He loved turkey, especially the dark meat, and we both loved the canned cranberry sauce we grew up with. It would be really great to have a Thanksgiving meal with him once again. Now it can only happen in dreams.