Friends for 29-plus years

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Three years ago when I went to my friend’s 40th birthday celebration out in Long Island, I found out that her best friend from business school was flying in from Texas for the weekend to celebrate. At the time, I thought it was the sweetest thing. It wasn’t a bachelorette party or wedding — that type of major milestone, but it was for a milestone birthday celebration. It seemed like a really kind, thoughtful, and generous thing to do.

In the middle of last year when I told two of my close San Francisco friends I was looking into a restaurant for my 40th birthday, one of them asked to keep her in the loop because she’d like to fly out to New York for it. And when I finally found the right place and put a deposit down for it, I let her know, and she confirmed she would definitely come. A month or so later, she booked her flight, and then we made plans for the rest of the weekend she’d be here. And she even treated me, as a 40th birthday gift, to see the Broadway show Maybe Happy Ending on the Sunday after my party. She came to my party on Saturday night. We had an early brunch on Sunday, went to see the show, hung out in Midtown and had yuan yangs at Urban Hawker, then went back to my apartment so she could spend time with Kaia and eat dinner with us. It was a really enjoyable time together that I’m very grateful for.

We’ve been friends for 29 years now. Along with my two other best friends, she’s my longest standing friend in my life. We haven’t always agreed with each other or seen eye to eye on things, but the amazing thing is that it hasn’t gotten in the way of our bond, of the comfort we have with each other. It doesn’t seem to matter how much time has passed since we’ve last spoken or seen each other. Because when we’re together, it almost feels like nothing has changed. Sure, most of the friends I’ve made in the last few years are very different from her or my childhood friends. But each person adds something different and special to my life. And that’s why we all have multiple friends and not just one.

It’s been a long weekend of love and gratitude. I’m just feeling thankful to be here to get to soak all this up.

Happy 40th to me

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It snowed today. I went to and from the Upper East Side for my makeup appointment in the snow. The crosstown bus was delayed getting there, but I still made it five minutes ahead of schedule. We had two spouses decline last minute due to unexpected lack of childcare for young children. Chris’s friend and his wife were supposed to come were deserted by their scheduled babysitter, who cancelled on them right at the time she was supposed to arrive. Then, his friend decided to come on his own… but made the mistake of going to the Brooklyn food hall location of Patok by Rach. He ended up taking the A train all the way up to Inwood and arriving about 1.5 hours late.

Things don’t always go as planned, but despite the snow, the fact that my birthday is right smack in the middle of Northern Hemisphere winter, and that cars and trains were delayed today, it all went amazingly well, probably even better than I could have imagined. I had so much fun at my party tonight. Everyone enjoyed the food and drink. I got rave reviews from several friends who had never really had Filipino before. The service was amazing by the Patok by Rach team. And we ended the night with karaoke!

I gave a little toast at the beginning that went something like this:

….

I’m so happy you could all make the trek to the very top of Manhattan to celebrate with me tonight.

Thank you so much for being here. A couple special individuals I have to call out: Rebecca, one of my best friends along with Crista here, since we were 11 — which means we’ve been tolerating each other for a very long time. Thank you for flying all the way from San Francisco just to celebrate my 40th. That means more to me than you know.

And of course, to my life partner Chris — the most loving and most annoying person I know — thank you for sharing this incredibly happy, lucky, and full life with me for the past 14 years. You may find this hard to believe, but I consider it a privilege to be annoyed by you every day. And I consider it an even bigger privilege to get to annoy you every day! 

Every person here tonight is special to me in a different way. I’ve met you across many chapters of my life — through work, food, friends — some of you just recently, some of you over a decade ago. And even if we don’t know each other well — if you’re a partner of a friend or a friend of Chris — you’ve brought joy into my life by making the people I love happy. And that makes me happy.

I’m truly grateful to be here, to have made it to 40. I know that may sound strange, but as many of you know, I carry with me the people I’ve loved deeply who didn’t get to reach this age, and I think of them every birthday — and how lucky I am to still be here, experiencing how beautiful and delicious this world can be.

So tonight, I’d like to raise my glass — to all of you. Thank you for the love, laughter, food, and meaning you bring into my life. Here’s to many more meals, thought-provoking conversations, and memories together. Cheers! 

….

When the evening ended, we took the A train back down with a small crew. We thanked the babysitter, and she went home. I spent about 15 annoying minutes taking off all my makeup to find several white heads on my forehead and nose — thank God I rarely wear foundation because this would completely ruin my skin! And after four hours of my party, I left with a very full heart — and maybe even a fuller belly.

A birthday kamayan feast planned

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Given I never had a real birthday party growing up, other than the one that one of my besties threw me for my sixteenth birthday, I figure that my 40th birthday coming up tomorrow will be the one party that I actually get to throw myself. I found the perfect restaurant for it, Patok by Rach, up in their cozy Inwood location, complete with a large tree growing inside and a kamayan feast. Kamayan is a traditional Filipino celebratory meal that symbolizes community, camaraderie, and cultural heritage. Large banana leaves are laid out across tables where guests sit, and the food is served directly on top. It traditionally will include dishes like pork BBQ, chicken inasal, kare kare stew, different types of lumpia, lechon (with crispy skin!), freshly fried shrimp chips and fruit. I’ve had it a few times before with my cousin’s wife’s family, as well as for a friend’s birthday dinner in lower Manhattan. I just love the idea of everyone being surrounded by endless food served on banana leaves, directly on the table, and eating and drinking to their heart’s content. That’s ultimately why I chose this place — not to mention the deal we got on this space, and to have the entire restaurant booked out, seemed almost like robbery!

I think every birthday is special because it’s another year around the sun, another year when I get to continue experiencing life and all that it has to offer. But I haven’t had a group birthday dinner since pre-pandemic. It’s mostly just been Chris, Kaia, and me in the last few years — nothing big or splashy. But this year, one of my besties is flying in from San Francisco to partake in festivities. I’m using a gift certificate she got me two years ago to get my makeup professionally done tomorrow. And we have a set kamayan menu for 18 guests tomorrow night. Kaia has her babysitter lined up. I’ve never been this excited to celebrate my birthday before now! Who knows — maybe I will have so much fun that I’ll decide to do something like this (okay, maybe not at a restaurant and pay for everyone) every year from now on!.

New B train rides and my sweet Kaia’s twinkling eyes

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Kaia loves the subway, the trains, the buses, the cars, planes — all forms of transport excite her to no end. But in New York City, she especially gets excited about riding on the new B train. It’s always a toss up whether we are able to get on one coming back home after school, but today for the second time ever, we got lucky and got on one. She saw it from very far away and yelled, “It’s a new B train! I get to go on a new B train!” She was all smiles the entire ride home; she kept reciting all the stops we passed, plus the stops that were still to come. She counted down the stops until we arrived at Columbus Circle.

Parenthood is hard no matter what generation you are in, what age you are parenting. But there is a lot to love about it. I still love and get excited watching her get excited over things that as a jaded adult, I think are just mundane, everyday things. It’s like I get to see life through her eyes as someone who is just discovering the world and all the things that make up that world. Sometimes, it feels like a renewal to me, that I get the privilege to see the beauty of life through her eyes. Everyone makes their own life choices. Some people choose to be child-free. Some people who want children are not able to have them because of situations beyond their control. But it’s hard for me to imagine not having this experience of experiencing life through her young, growing eyes. It’s as though a richness of life would be absent from my life. I squeezed her and kissed her extra while on the train today, just reveling in how lucky I am to be able to be her mama.

Unreliable childcare = situation normal in the U.S.

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Back in August, over a month before I confirmed and booked a restaurant for my 40th birthday dinner party coming up this Saturday, I reached out to our main babysitter who lives a block away to ask if she’d be able to babysit Kaia that night. She agreed and blocked it out on her calendar. And despite the fact that she confirmed she could come all the way back in August, I had this weird feeling in the back of my mind that something, somehow, would come up closer to January 17, and she would end up cancelling.

Unfortunately, my gut feeling was correct. I typically reach out to our chosen babysitter about a week ahead of the date they are scheduled to come to ensure they can still make it — just as a reminder. I texted her on Sunday and did not get a response until Monday morning, when she told me she could no longer come because her grandmother had died. It wasn’t clear what the timeline was for her grandmother’s passing, which is obviously sad, but all I knew was that I needed to find a replacement ASAP. And with less than a week’s notice, it would be a real challenge to find a replacement.

I immediately reached out to our #2 babysitter. She couldn’t make it because of her son’s basketball game. A third babysitter through Chris confirmed she also could not make it. I asked babysitter #2 if she could recommend anyone she trusted. She said that she had a 26-year-old daughter who has three kids of her own (and thus childcare experience) who she could ask if she would be free. She immediately found out she was, sent me her number, and we texted back and forth to confirm her pay rate, time, our address, and agreed to have her come.

Ideally, we’d have a babysitter come who knew Kaia, who Kaia knew. But in this case, we ran out of options. The three babysitters we usually cycle through were all unavailable. We have no backup care options through my work; Chris doesn’t work anymore, so his work benefit is long gone. We have no grandparents nearby. So we’re constantly at the whim of babysitters who can easily flake on us at any time, with zero notice. And then we’re stuck. In these moments, I get frustrated that reliable, trustworthy, affordable childcare is such a challenge and impossibility here. It feels like a no-win situation. And then I can’t help but get annoyed by people I know who do have able bodied, mentally sound grandparents nearby who can help (for free), yet they still complain about their free childcare all the time. No one is ever satisfied with what they have.

A good reason to go to Uniqlo in different countries: region-specific shirts!

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We don’t normally do a lot of shopping when we travel, whether it’s to other cities or countries. But occasionally, we do pop in to Uniqlo so Chris can see if they might have something he likes that he cannot easily get in the U.S. Uniqlos (Uniqlo is pretty much the ONLY store he shops at!). When we were in Denmark, we popped in to get an additional layering shirt for me because I was so cold my first two days there; we also got Kaia a puffer vest as an extra layer just in case. When we were there, though, we barely looked at anything other than layering items because we just wanted to get in and out. But what I wish we had done while there was to look at any potential region-specific shirts they might’ve had. Uniqlo makes region-specific print shirts in countries where they have a presence. For example in Japan, you can get shirts that call out specific cities like Tokyo or Osaka. In Hawaii, you can get shirts that have illustrations of Hawaiian specific foods, like spam musubi, poke bowls, and garlic shrimp. In Hong Kong, they have a fun limited edition shirt where the Hong Kong skyline was recreated using mah jong tiles (very culturally appropriate!). And when we were in the Philippines just over a week ago, they had shirts that I was compelled to buy that spoke to the local food!

When we saw the lineup of shirts while in Manila, I was super excited to see a “Mickey Mouse in the Philippines” theme that included Mickey Mouse in Davao eating durian, plus another Mickey Mouse in Binondo (Manila Chinatown) getting sugar cane juice from a sugar cane stand. It was like these two shirts were calling out to me, so I eventually decided to get both; where else was I going to get a shirt with durian on it?! It would be a rare goodie, and once again, a situation of “if you know, you know!” Most people either love or hate durian, but regardless, no one would assume they’d pass by someone on the street wearing a shirt with this loved/hated fruit on it. And with the sugar cane, I have loved sugar cane juice since I was introduced to it in the Vietnamese markets and malls of Westminster in Orange County, California, during my high school years. Most people know and recognize refined sugar, but sugar cane is the real deal, completely unrefined and pure right out of the freaking cane! I felt like this shirt was beckoning me to buy it! For Kaia, we got her two shirts that she selected: one was just a Hello Kitty shirt (not region specific, just Kaia specific!), while the second one was Mickey Mouse with mango (Philippines specific, definitely!).

While I probably don’t need more print shirts, especially after our Philippines trip, I will likely still want to stop by Uniqlo in other countries when we pass them just to see what the local prints are. It’s a fun way to get something “unique” and for the specific country you visited, but in a global store you recognize.

A happy surprise at the door: when your neighbor friend shows up with freshly baked goods and milk!

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Growing up, I always wished I had a friend who was just next door or on the same block who I could easily go play with. That never happened. Then as an adult living in New York City, I always wished I had a friend who either lived in my building or just a block or two away who I could see as often as I wanted, with as little notice as possible. For the longest time, I only had that once with a friend who lived about six blocks south of us. But he wasn’t very easy to get a hold of, and so that “ad hoc” nature of hanging out just never happened. We’ve been living in our current building for almost nine years now, and unfortunately, I’ve just never been able to make a real friend in this building until last year. This friend has a child who is close in age to Kaia, and luckily, they love each other. So the four of us try to arrange a catch-up about once a month when we’re all in town.

This friend remembered when we were coming back, so she messaged me randomly yesterday afternoon that she had done some baking and wanted to bring us some treats! So she stopped by and hung out with us for about half an hour with her son. They even brought over a half gallon of milk in case we were short of groceries! Kaia and her friend didn’t talk very much, but they did run around each other and squeal quite a bit to indicate that they were both super excited to see each other again! It was a quick and rushed visit because they had to get back to their home to welcome an out-of-town friend, but it was still so nice that they came to see us and came bearing edible gifts.

I love that I have a relationship like this now and that it’s right in my own building! It was so touching when she texted me to say she wanted to share baked goods and to see us even briefly. I know Kaia got really excited when I told her she might see a little friend later that day, and it definitely warmed my heart, as well. One thing that I haven’t loved about adulthood, or “adulting” as my friends call it, is that it always feels like everything needs to be scheduled and planned in advance. Yes, that’s necessary for a lot of things, but not everything. I wish I could do more ad hoc, spontaneous things more often with friends; it would feel a lot more fun… and frankly, more young. But I guess the older we get, the less spontaneous we can be, especially when we all don’t live in the same building or down the block from one another.

Embracing middle-aged-dom by organizing all my Chinese herbs

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Yesterday, I spent about an hour labeling glass jars in Chinese and English, and then emptying all my Chinese herbs out of their plastic bags and into the glasses. My herb bag was becoming a total mess, especially once I started buying more around the time my best friend had a baby, and I wanted to make her a few tonics. So I promised myself that once we got back from our month away that I’d finally set aside time to get all these organized. I hated the feeling of disorganization and clutter: I feel like as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten more annoyed and disgusted by clutter and dirtiness.

Once I got all the labeling done and the herbs into their appropriate jars, I felt this deep sense of satisfaction. This is what it means to get older: to feel satisfied about organization and cleanliness. In some way, it kind of reminded me of all the endless glass jars my grandma used to store in the cupboard at home. She had an even larger and more complex herb collection, which she used very frequently for soups and tonics for all of us. I never thought I’d ever be like her, but here we are with a growing Chinese dried herb collection that resembles hers!

I’ll be using some of these dried herbs for pork bone lotus root soup today — also a soup that she made fairly often when I was growing up. It’s a soup that reminds me of home — soothing, homey, and almost medicinal in a happy, nourishing way.

A night at the opera: Madama Butterfly

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After being reminded of the Under 40 Met discounts for the opera by my friend who is three years older than me, I finally got tickets to see the opera. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do since my twenties, but I had just forgotten about it. Opera tickets, like ballet, can get exorbitantly expensive. So with this Under 40 Met deal, I was able to secure mid-orchestra seats for us for just $89 each. It’s still not a cheap show, but it’s far cheaper than the several hundred dollars we could have paid without this deal!

After having a quick meal at home, my friend and I walked to the Met Opera and sat in our seats. I noticed a little screen on the back of the seat in front of us, which would aid in translating the Italian into English for us so we could follow along. Although I was still tired from jet lag, I actually managed quite well through the show. After Act I, there was a 30-minute intermission. This is when my friend and I got up to look around us, and we noticed exactly how dressed up people were. Even though a good number of people dressed up for The Nutcracker last month, that was nothing compared to tonight: I saw men in the most decked out, colorful, tailored suits; women were bejeweled and wearing ball gowns and form-fitted dresses with trains! I felt pretty under-dressed given I was just in a sweater and jeans. After Act II, there was a two-minute “pause.” And once Act III was done, we were three hours and done with the opera! It was an interesting experience: the sets, costumes, and singing were all gorgeous. But I didn’t love constantly having to look at the screen to translate all the dialogue and lyrics. I far prefer regular theater, ballet, or chamber/orchestral music. And in retrospect, I am not a hundred percent pleased with the fact that I chose an opera that’s basically about an Asian woman getting used by a White man, being forced to give up their child to him and his new White wife, and then killing herself in the end? This was a bit too tragic and upsetting for me.

While I am happy I went to see the opera once and can say I have experienced it, I think it’s unlikely that I will want to go again — now, it’s been there, done that — and all before age 40!

Oldies but goodies in Manhattan Chinatown: Super Taste

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In the last several years, my bookmarked map list of places to try and eat at in New York city has exploded. And especially since Kaia has been in school in Manhattan Chinatown for the last 1.5 years, I keep running into interesting things I want to try. This then presents a very (first-world) conundrum where my old favorites battle with trying interesting new places because you can have only so many meals or snacks in a given day. One place that I’ve neglected for the last nine to ten years has definitely been Super Taste on Eldridge Street. Once upon a time, it was this tiny long hole-in-the-wall with just a handful of tables and the skinniest kitchen you can imagine. They had a small menu specializing in Lanzhou hand pulled noodle soup, a dry noodle version, as well as dumplings. Their signature dumpling was a bit unusual in that it was minced beef, celery, and cilantro (the usual tends to be pork and cabbage, or pork and chive). The last time I remember going here was before I moved to the Upper West Side, in 2017 with my friend, who loves cheap noodle joints.

This friend mentioned to me a couple months ago that Super Taste had exploded on social media a while back, and so all the food influencers were hyping it up. Now, they actually accept credit cards (they were always cash only before!), and they’ve even expanded their menu to have more options, including dishes like Mount Qi noodles, dan dan mian/noodles, and chicken (gasp!) dumplings and fully vegetable dumplings to accommodate people who don’t eat red meat or meat at all. This made sense to me because the few times I walked by it on Eldridge Street, I noticed a small crowd around it. I was never used to seeing this before.

Before I picked up Kaia from school this late afternoon, I decided to finally stop by Super Taste again to pick up some dumplings and noodles. And it was a challenge to get in: every single table was taken, and the majority of the people eating there were not Chinese! It’s a world difference from 9-10 years ago. I put in my order, paid by credit card, and waited for about ten minutes for my order. In that short time, there was a constant stream of people coming in and out to dine as well as to order/pick up takeout. I was happy for the growth of their business, but honestly, I was also a little sad that the secret was out about this place.

I took the food home and shared it with Chris and my friend who came over for a quick dinner before we were scheduled to head to the opera. We all concluded that the dumplings were excellent. They were having Super Taste for the very first time, but this was my third or fourth time having it. I am happy to conclude that they have not deterred from their original quality, and all the dumplings are just as good as I remember. This just means I’ll have to add them back into my rotation for northern style dumplings and noodles and stop neglecting them!