A friend had let me know that yet another Taiwanese bakery/sweets company had arrived here in New York City, and it’s Bake Culture USA. I realized that we had passed it many times on our way to Renew Day Spa along Bowery for massages, but I kind of overlooked it since it looked very trendy from the outside, and I already had my staple bakeries that I loved. She convinced me to go when she told me about their special mooncakes, which included black sesame and taro flavors, as well as even a mochi filling! I’ve really only ever had traditional mooncake fillings such as salted yolks, lotus paste (my favorite), red bean, or green tea paste, so I wanted to see what this was all about.

Of course, when I went in, they had many beautiful gift boxes for the mooncakes, but I made a beeline to the individually wrapped mooncakes. Since leaving home in 2004, I haven’t always eaten mooncake around the time of Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, which this year, falls on October 1. I’ve been spotty about buying them myself, especially since my last roommate and now Chris aren’t that fond of them. The ones at Bake Culture probably weren’t even two inches in diameter, but they were $4 each! These are a lot more expensive than the ones my family used to buy, but at least the size was right, so I was willing to get three of them.

The black sesame mochi one is the only one I’ve had so far, and while the black sesame wasn’t very pronounced, I loved the mochi texture on the inside. I’m not sure if it would be worth getting again, but I do like the novelty of mochi in mooncake.

I met up with a friend who is a former colleague today in Jackson Heights for lunch and strolling. What has bonded us is definitely our love of food, travel, and culture, and it’s always so comforting to catch up with him and know that he takes my passion with my channel seriously. He’s always sharing different ideas with me on things he thinks I should try and what he hears from other friends who are trying to build their social media following. He actually left the company we both worked at shortly after I left because he was sick of the corporate world, and he’s now running his own business with a friend.

Wandering around the Jackson Heights, Woodside, and Elmhurst area today, I always feel grateful that I used to live in this area and got to get acquainted with it better than most New Yorkers would who live in Manhattan. But as I browsed, I realized that there’s still so much of just this specific area that I have no idea about, streets I’d never really walked down. I discovered a street in Jackson Heights actually called “Colombia Way,” where a bunch of Colombian businesses were speckled along. I walked off of Baxter Street in Elmhurst onto 82nd Street into a Colombian bakery that has been around since the ’70s and bought the most delicious pan de bono (Colombian cheese breads) and fresh squeezed passion fruit juice. I was in heaven. As I sat there drinking my non-sweetened juice and eating my crusty, chewy cheese bread, waiting for my friend to drive to the area, I realized there’s still so, so much more exploration in this neighborhood I want to do.

And now that I’m starting a new job this coming Monday, my time to explore during the weekdays is sadly coming to an end. It’s funny how we never think we have enough time no matter how much time we have in a day.

Today, I participated in a #fallfoodiecollab, an Instagram food collaboration with a number of other Instagram food personalities where we all submitted a dish that reminded us of autumn, for the first day of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. The rule was that the dish had to have autumn squash, pumpkin, apples, cinnamon, Brussel sprouts, or walnuts. Knowing that I was going to be sharing a hashtag with a lot of larger accounts who are overachievers and likely do social media for a living, I knew I had to shoot all of this on my mirrorless camera and think about how to style this in a way that seemed very autumn. I decided to choose a simple baked good — French apple cake, a recipe I’d used from Cook’s Illustrated before, but changed it up by replacing the 1 cup of vegetable oil (it was too greasy last time I made it 2 years ago) with 1/2 cup of browned butter. I knew it would be simple and would be simple to photograph. I’d just need to figure out what props I wanted for it. I arranged it by the kitchen window this morning and ended up spending about two hours in total cutting the cake, styling the scene, photographing, editing, and posting.

Two hours – for a post that would likely get a few seconds of view time on Instagram. This is social media today.

I thought about all the work I put into this post, which got a lot of interaction and a few new followers. This could truly be a full time job in itself, without the YouTube channel editing and shooting! I did enjoy the process overall, and it was a lot of fun, but on top of a full-time job, this can get extremely extensive and tiring. I hope all this work pays off in some way. I’ve been reading more about food photography and observing more of what others are doing. I don’t want this to completely look like a set, but I do want it to photograph well and look good while viewing on a mobile device. I’m still learning and iterating.

I participated in a YouTube user testing session today. If I understand this correctly, they chose YouTube users who actively upload videos to YouTube and maintain channels, and so I guess I fit the bill with YmF. We talked through my social media habits, which platforms I use, how often I use them, and how the content I create varies or overlaps across them. As the YouTube employee was asking me all these questions, I realized that I probably need to spend more time focusing on how I want to create different content by platform. Obviously, I’m not uploading all my main videos to Instagram or TikTok, but I oftentimes take my TikTok videos and add them to Instagram. But people don’t use TikTok the way they use Instagram, so it may be a better idea to make content for each totally separate.

I’ve actually been trying to increase my following and social media presence a lot more than before. Since mid-August, I’ve been a bit more aggressive about it, whether it’s reaching out to people I know are following my personal accounts or through interacting with other accounts. It actually takes way more time than I’d originally anticipated, but it’s been a good challenge to have. If other people can do it, so can I… right? Since mid-August, I’ve increased my Instagram following by over 180 people. That may not be a lot for some people or for influencers, but for me, that’s a LOT!

This genuinely could be a full time job in itself. I just need to keep at it to try to keep the dream alive.

I met a friend for yet another first-meeting since the pandemic began in Central Park today. It’s funny — we’ve keep in touch loosely in some form several times a month since we last saw each other in January, whether that’s been through Zoom, texts, Instagram, but it was our first time seeing each other. These meetings are always so strange now. In a non-COVID world, it would be normal to hug each other and be affectionate. In a COVID world, there’s the initial awkwardness of: do we elbow each other, hug, tap each other’s foot — what? Do we leave our masks on or not? These situations are the new normal.

We talked a lot about the virus, about how people in our lives have responded to it, as well as to the recent reawakening around racial injustice across the world. Since I first met her, I’ve known she’s always been politically active; she’s volunteered for a number of Senate and presidential elections, and she’s already volunteering to help out voter protection for the upcoming presidential election. It’s comforting to know that I actually have friends who are genuinely playing an active part in trying to make the world a better place and aren’t being complacent and expecting everyone else to make the change happen.

Every Saturday since the city started opening up, we’ve been exploring other neighborhoods across, Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn, and it’s inevitably been a bit of a food crawl through the boroughs. Today, we went from eating focaccia to tacos to Colombian soup and empanada to Indian-inspired ice cream — all walking distance, all within 16,000 steps. It was a delicious and eclectic food crawl which even included quite a bit more street art for photos and videos.

Part of me wonders if the pandemic’s silver lining is that it’s forced us to explore our own backyard a bit more. I’m constantly reading and bookmarking new restaurants, cafes, and businesses to check out in neighborhoods across all five boroughs, yet we never feel like we have enough time to see them all. Now, we’re actually doing just that. And it’s been really enjoyable. Sure, it would be more fun if we could actually sit inside and really enjoy some of the restaurants’ decor, but we’ve been patronizing them and seeing these others areas we generally spend little to no time in, and I think it’s been a blessing in disguise to a degree.

The last time I had a facial was for a spa birthday get-together with two of my friends back in San Francisco in February. We met up for a birthday brunch and then went to enjoy jacuzzis, steam rooms, and saunas at an upscale spa in downtown, then I enjoyed a 75-minute facial. What I was not aware of while I was enjoying that entire spa experience then was that it would be the last time I’d have any kind of spa treatment for a while given that COVID-19 would ravage the world and invade the U.S. shortly after that.

So as soon as facial spas opened up at the beginning of September, I decided to book some time for Chris and me to get one. The spa we usually go to had shut down their second location that we normally went to, which actually worked out because the location that remains open is closer and walking distance to our apartment. The protocols were as expected; we couldn’t enter the facilities until just before our appointment time; we had our temperatures taken; we were asked to wash our hands right after our temperatures were taken. It was a good, cleansing, relaxing experience, as my face is always full of gross gunk (I have my genes to thank for that!), but I think what stood out the most for both of us was actually being indoors somewhere that is not our apartment where we did not have to keep our masks on; this actually felt very odd and novel. You can’t really get a facial with your mask on, right?

The esthetician who was working with me this afternoon said that I had more clogged pores around my nose and mouth, likely because of wearing a mask, which warranted more extractions. “This is what I’ve seen since we reopened earlier this month,” she lamented. “Every single person has more congestion on their face, more blemishes, from all the sweat and oil getting trapped in their masks!”

Hmmm — another negative side effect of the pandemic and mask wearing. Hey, maybe the anti-maskers will complain about more clogged pores on their face as yet ANOTHER stupid reason to not wear a mask!!

This afternoon, I met up with a friend and his wife for our first catchup since I’d last seen them in early March. For the first few months of the pandemic, no one felt comfortable meeting up, but now that it’s been a while and things are starting to open up, we finally decided to meet up at a park… with our masks on.

I really feel for people who have pre-existing conditions or who easily fall ill. My friend once suffered really extreme pneumonia when he was in college, and it was apparently so bad that he nearly developed a hole in his lung. Since then, he’s been scarred by the experience and takes extra precautions with everything, including COVID-19. His wife recently got diagnosed with asthma, and she gets sick very easily (and from what he said, pretty often), so they’ve been quite risk-averse since the virus took over the world. They refuse to take any form of public transport, and they won’t even go to the grocery store and are nearly completely relying on grocery delivery and food delivery for food. When we met up, he said he was more comfortable if we sat with our masks on, so I complied.

When will the world be “normal” again in the sense that friends can meet up without masks on?

Today, I took the subway out to Bensonhurst in Brooklyn to meet up with someone I became friends with over Instagram, the owner of Baraat Ice Cream. I initially just thought she’d be someone that I’d support as a small business owner and order ice cream from, but when we met and spoke for about 10 minutes outside my apartment building, we really hit it off; she’s obviously passionate about food. I am obsessed about food. What more could you ask for in a new friend? So we ended up suggesting to meet up sometime in the near future, and until today, we were texting and messaging over Instagram almost every other day and bonding over our mutual love of food and culture.

She’s way younger than I am, as I kind of expected given some of the slang she used, and I’m way older than she thought I was (she says I look more like her age — 26; I’d beg to differ!!). We talked about different food concepts, cuisines, travel in India, our families and friend groups, and what we’ve discovered in our roads to attempting to be entrepreneurial.

“I don’t know — I feel like my acquaintances have been more supportive of Baraat than my own friends,” she contemplated out loud while we shared takeout dishes at a local park from four different spots in the area. “Does that mean that my friends just suck? Maybe I need new friends.”

“It’s okay — I can relate to that,” I said to her. The funny thing is that I’ve gotten the most positive feedback and excitement about my YouTube channel, the whole idea of YmF, from colleagues and acquaintances, vs. the people I’m supposed to call my closest friends. I think I’ve always been clear about my intention and desire in this: I never thought I’d be some overnight YouTube star or influencer raking in six figures in months (and…. I’m not! Even close!). The real intent of all of this is to document and share my passion for food and culture through social media and video, and sure, if I could make money out of it at the same time, that would be amazing. But I do most of these things already (cook, eat, travel), so why not document it? I shared this with Chris’s brother at some point, telling him that I’d commented about my channel in group chats with some friends, who didn’t even comment in the chat, subscribe to the channel, or follow my social media accounts for months.

“Maybe they’re just jealous of your ambition,” he suggested. “That could be their subconscious way of showing it.”

I don’t even know if I’d call it ambition — I guess it is? It’s a hobby that I can share. I have scrapbooking as a hobby, but that’s more personal and you can’t really share that widely. I don’t even know if I’d call it jealousy — that seems to be getting a bit deep. I’d generally just say it’s a general lack of care… which actually, if you think about THAT, that REALLY sucks to think about the fact that your friends don’t care about your passions…

But that’s why I can relate to what my new Instagram friend says. It sucks when it feels like your own friends don’t care about your passions, especially when you know you’d support them enthusiastically with their entrepreneurial desires.