Full calendar

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Since I’ve come back from our China trip, it’s been pretty much nonstop at work, fighting fires that were created in my absence that I had to resolve, traveling for customer and prospect onsite, more and more meetings to accomplish the endless to-do list at work. Sometimes, even though I think overall, the work is meaningful in my day-to-day role, I cannot help but think that a lot of what I am doing is so robotic, and the way we are being measured is feeling more like quantity over quality: quantity of customer meetings, quantity of tasks completed over quality of tasks. It’s exhausting to think about it.

I was looking at my calendar for the rest of this week, and I couldn’t believe the number of meetings I scheduled, one literally after the other, so that I could barely have any time to breathe and think between meetings. I don’t really know why I did this, but now, I’ve pretty much forced myself into this situation and can’t really get out of it. There is light at the end of the tunnel… at the end of this week.

How to pronounce and spell my name

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It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I say my name, but it is always invariably always a) mispronounced, or b) misspelled… and pretty egregiously. When I’d go to a place that needed my name for an order, whether it was for a coffee/tea drink or a food order, I would rarely say my own name after a while and instead would say my friend’s/colleague’s/Chris’s name because I hated seeing “Evon,” “Ivan,” “Evonne, “Ivon” written out.

Once, I was at Argo Tea with my mentee, and I knew for a fact that the person who took my order spelled my name “Evan.” They called out my exact drink order at a quiet time when no one else was there, but the person making the drink insisted (and seemed really rude) that it was for Evan, NOT Yvonne. Fifteen minutes passed, and this mysterious “Evan” never appeared. I looked the server in the eye at the counter and said, “So, are you sure this is for Evan, or me?” She sheepishly said it was for me and gave me a half apology.

When I was eating at the Orlando airport on my own Thursday night, I was shocked when I got my bill, which actually had my name spelled correctly. When the server took my order, he asked for my name and typed it onto my bill. I told him I was a huge fan of him just for spelling my name correctly. He looked at me puzzled and said, “Isn’t that the way you are supposed to spell it?”

I explained to him all the variations above that I usually get when I say my name. This guy working behind him was listening to our conversation, and he said in his thick Russian accented English, “Wait, you spell your name y-v-o-n-n-e? That’s a European name… shouldn’t it be spelled “I-v-a-n”?”

This is the type of attitude that is absolutely the worst to me. “You’re supposed to” or “you should” be spelling it or pronouncing it.. No. No, no, and no. This is my name.

“‘Yvonne’ is a French name,” I said to him, pointedly. “This is a French spelling. And the last time I checked, France is a part of Europe.” Yes, it was snippy. Yes, it wasn’t very polite. But I’m 33 years old, dealing with people misspelling and mispronouncing my name for 33 years, and then worse, trying to justify it. Cut me some slack.

This reminded me of a conversation I’d had the previous night with two colleagues at dinner. One of them called me “Ya-vonne.” I didn’t correct it because I’m so exhausted by correcting people. But my second colleague chimed in and said, “Wait, is that actually how you pronounce your name? I’ve always called you ‘e-VONNE’ and you’ve never said anything.”

I told them that my second colleague was correct: I pronounce my name “ee-VONNE.” The technically correct pronunciation of my name is “ee-VOOHN,” though. And as side note, all the Australians in my life, including Chris, pronounce my name “uhh-VONNE.” And occasionally, I hear colleagues refer to me as “Ihh-VONNE.” I’m fine with all the above pronunciations. “Ya-VONNE” is so freaking annoying. And I always feel awkward correcting it even to this day.

What a joy, still interacting with people who can’t get this right after years of knowing me.

Upper West Side blackout

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Chris and I were at dinner early this evening when suddenly, all the lights and music suddenly went out in the restaurant. The service staff got into motion, checking everything, ensuring that the patrons were all fine. Our server/bartender served each of us two shots of tequila on the house. They took care of credit card payments the old fashioned way. And as we finished eating and exited the restaurant, we realized that this was affecting the entire area. We were literally standing in the heart of the theater district, where shows had to stop mid-way through or had to be cancelled. Crowds and crowds of people were exiting theaters, unsure what to do next or where to go. Traffic lights were not working, and cars and pedestrians alike were hesitant to move forward.

It was a strange sight and lasted for a good handful of hours. We were lucky and regained power just past 10:30 on Saturday night. It really would not have been so bad if it were not for the sweltering heat. But it really became jarring to know that this power outage happened when someone posted a photo on Twitter showing how Manhattan looked to someone viewing the island from New Jersey…. lots of glittering lights as usual… except for an entire 20-block stretch of Manhattan that was just all black, lights fully out.

What do we worry about?

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Tonight, Chris and I treated my friend and her boyfriend to a belated birthday dinner at an omakase restaurant I’d been wanting to try in the Flatiron. We caught up over sashimi and sake, and then ended up making a detour back to our place because Chris accidentally left a gift we got her at the apartment. It ended up all working out since it just meant extended time together in the comfort of our own home, with far less expenses under our belts since drinking and eating cake at home is always cheaper than doing the exact same activity outside.

During our catch up, my friend’s boyfriend said, “Yeah, I worry about a lot of things… like money, having enough money to do what I want to do, for the future, and all that. But us? I don’t really worry about our relationship. Not saying that I take her for granted because I don’t think I do… but well, I just don’t worry about us. I think we’re good.”

I didn’t say anything to that. I guess that’s how he feels. But I did think about it for a bit in the context of myself. What do I worry about? What makes me fearful of the future? In response to him in my head, I’m very lucky and privileged because I don’t worry about money. In fact, my entire life, I’ve never really had to worry about it, and that is a massive privilege in itself. While I never thought my parents were rich, I always knew we were comfortable in that we never had to worry about rent money, having a roof over our heads, or how we would get food on the table. We always had more than enough to eat, and a variety at that. But the saddest part about that is so many families do have to worry about that, as well as their children. And to me, I don’t think the worries of parents should ever, in a perfect world, have to be the worries of their children. And in the event that I ever had money issues, I know that Chris and I would have the support of our families. Not everyone is fortunate enough to be in that position.

I don’t really worry about work, even though I have a lot of frustrations with it, as any average person would. Circumstances and expectations frustrate me, internal politics and favoritism anger me to no end, but as far as the day to day goes, I’m not very concerned about the stability of my job; I do not fear that my next paycheck will get lost. I earn a comfortable living and have relatively good work-life balance.

Health, knock on wood, is not a concern right now. Other than the annoying colds I’ve gotten which have reignited bad coughing fits that have been reminiscent of my whooping cough days, I’d say I’m relatively healthy and fit for my age.

And similar to my friend’s boyfriend, I guess overall, I don’t really worry about my relationship with Chris. I think we are pretty stable and happy together. We have a lot of differences. He drives me crazy pretty much every single day and is one of the most annoying people I know, but he likely feels the same way about me, and to my friend’s point, that’s probably what keeps us together in the end, whether we are fully conscious of it or not. We both get bored easily; if you get annoyed by someone, it probably means you’re not getting bored.

So what does worry me? I don’t think about it very often, but I guess it’s all the things that are fully out of my control: stupid political situations like the U.S. becoming more anti people of color, anti-women, anti-immigrants; a potential World War III created by President Dipshit, climate change wiping out entire islands, cities, and states. I also worry about the things that are fully not real, but could easily become real in a second: a sudden death of someone close to me, who is going to take care of my parents one day when they are not able to take care of themselves, one of us getting a heart attack and dying while in flight on an airplane and having no help until it’s too late, contracting stage 4 of X cancer and not having any awareness of it until it’s too late. It all sounds a little ridiculous, some more than others, but when I do worry, those are the things I think about.

All in all, I’d say it’s a pretty decent set of things to worry about because I suppose this means I am fairly stable and relatively positive? I don’t always think the worst, even if it sometimes seems to be that way.

Tupperware

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I participated in six hours of onsite customer meetings today and am completely drained. Something surprising happened today, though, when I was at a prospective meeting this afternoon with the company Tupperware. I usually do not attend prospect meetings since I work on customers post-sale, but since I was down in Orlando anyway, I offered to come with my colleague to visit this prospect to shed light on what they could expect from a post-sale enablement standpoint. One of my colleagues mentioned how she owned Tupperware products because of her sister-in-law’s Tupperware parties. I shared that my parents owned Tupperware, as well. Towards the end of our two-hour onsite meeting, one of the prospects quietly stepped out of the room. I assumed she left to use the restroom or take a call, but instead, she actually came back with multiple gift bags with Tupperware products – as gifts for us! I ended up taking home a Tupperware microwaveable container, as well as a Tupperware flask that keeps liquids hot for up to six hours. 

I am not used to customers giving gifts to me at all; as a technology company, we are used to treating customers and sending them gifts, much less having a prospect, not even a customer, give usa gift. The other funny thing about this happening was that it all reminded me of Ed. While working at Macy’s, Ed befriended one of his colleagues who hosted Tupperware parties and asked him if he would be interested in buying some. He took a look at the products when she brought them in, declared they were far superior to any of the plastic reusable containers my parents had at home, and bought three different types: black lidded, teal lidded, and dark blue-lidded. He insisted we needed to buy better quality products, and he told us these were much, much better for us to use. These Tupperware are not at all cheap; each of these pieces costs $25. Ed was always far more generous than anyone could know or ever fully appreciate. For someone who didn’t earn much money, he constantly surprised me with his level of generosity. It made me sad when I got to the airport this evening and opened the containers, wondering what Ed would have thought if I told him that I not only visited the Tupperware US offices, but that they even gave me free Tupperware. I’d imagine he would have been really excited and would have wanted to know what they looked like. I don’t know anyone who would have been as thrilled to hear about the Tupperware visit and gifts as much as he would have been. It is a depressing thought. 

Work travel two days after coming back

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I’m on a plane again just two days after coming back from China. My colleagues were making fun of me yesterday about this. “You just got back last night, and you’re on a flight again tomorrow? You’re crazy!” Well, when work has to get done, work has to get done. And I’d like to say that I pride myself on being productive and getting crap done, which means I oftentimes need to travel to do this with customers. 

Traveling to see customers also takes me out of my usual day-to-day routine, which helps me keep my sanity, especially when yesterday’s snafu occurred. I don’t have to directly deal with the same politics, the same insipid nonsense of office life that makes me want to grind my teeth down. And, I also get the ability to have little luxuries like a hotel room that overlooks a manmade lake at a resort in Orlando, or enjoy lobster deviled eggs at a well-appointed bar at the JW Marriott in Grande Lakes. In this sense, I don’t have much to complain about and recognize that I am quite a lucky person. 

Poor business acumen

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I came back to work today to a lot of drama resulting in some poor business decisions that were made on an account that I’m assigned to, so I was no happy camper pretty much all day today trying to deal with the mess I was coming back to. It never ceases to amaze me the complete lack of empathy and foresight that goes into decisions made by egotistical, entitled white men. I can say that as an Asian American female in a white male-dominated work place, when someone, anyone, ever even for a second, questions something I’ve done, my immediate default response (if only internally in my head) is to second-guess myself, wonder if I am actually in the wrong and if I could have done things differently. It has pretty much never occurred to me to immediately result to a stubborn deadlock, insist I am right without any thought or reflection, and continue to defend my “right” no matter how glaringly wrong I could be. What is even worse is the absolute refusal to admit any wrongdoing when they are clearly wrong… and have outright lied. And I always attribute this to the conditioning and painful awareness of my race, of my gender, something that white men are so privileged to never truly be forced to think about. It doesn’t even matter if you are in a city or country where being white male is not the majority. Why is that? Because in countries like China, which are painfully racist even against people from other cities and provinces within China, they still look at “the white man” as the preferred race to defer to. 

Moments like this always make me wonder if I was really ever “made” to be in the corporate world, constantly battling fights that seem so pointless, especially in the year 2019, when you want to believe that “progress” has actually been made. I want to believe that people at least have the intention of being “good” and have some level of integrity, but that seems to erode every time something reckless and toxic like this happens. 

Narita Airport’s duty-free: success

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The last time I transited in Tokyo Narita International Airport was two years ago when Chris and I were passing through to and from Taiwan. I remember thinking that on our way back to New York, I wanted to stop by one of the duty-free shops, Akihabara, to pick up some Royce chocolate that I love. In Japan, these Royce Nama chocolates are only the equivalent of $4-5 USD, while at the duty-free shop at Narita, they are around $6 USD. However, if you want to buy them in the U.S. at an official Royce shop, like the ones that are in New York City, for the same box, you’d pay $18 USD, which is crazy! I understand why they would do this from a capitalistic, money-making perspective, but on the consumer side, there’s no way I would be that desperate to pay over three times as much for the same product, even if I only pass through Tokyo every few years. These are little luxuries I can live without.

Two years ago, though, I failed at my attempt to buy them because the line for checkout at this duty-free shop was far out of the store and snaking out. I couldn’t believe that I was seeing this with my own eyes; the wait would have been at least 45 minutes in line, not to mention all the aggressive Chinese tourists literally sweeping up shelves and shelves of products into their shopping carts. Others were running around chaotically, grabbing whatever was available and barely even looking at what they were snatching up to buy. I was really upset then and determined to make sure I actually came out successful this time. And I was successful this time at two different stores, one without even a minute’s wait. There was slightly less aggression from Chinese tourists, but this time, I noticed that some of the people buying multiple shopping carts-worth of Japanese chocolate and green-tea biscuits were not just Chinese this time, but white American and European tourists! More competition at duty-free now! It seems like everyone is discovering all these Japanese sweets and wanting to take them home, both for themselves and as well as their family and friends as gifts.

Chris’s taste buds on tea

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Chris’s commentary on food has certainly evolved over the course of our relationship. While he’s always enjoyed food, as the years have gone on together, he’s become far more vocal when it comes to flavors, textures, and presentation. This has even extended itself into foods he feels okay about, but doesn’t necessarily love or gravitate towards, such as bubble tea/tapioca tea/boba, and loose leaf tea, like the ones we’ve been tasting throughout this China trip. Before this trip, Chris never had a strong opinion about any bubble tea or loose leaf tea I’ve tasted or bought and had him try. He would just say they were fine or good and say it was my choice whether I liked them enough to buy them, and leave it at that.

As far as I can recall this trip, we’ve had about five different bubble tea drinks, and he’s declared the Yu Cha outside of our Chengdu hotel his favorite: in the taro milk tea, there was a very generous portion of minced and stewed taro — creamy, slightly sweet, and very rich. Then, in the egg pudding milk tea, the egg pudding was also creamy and rich, eggy and custardy. He disliked one of the ubiquitous chains we went to for their milk tea, insisting it wasn’t that sweet or unique, that the tea flavor felt watered down. And he’s not a huge fan of the “cheese” top with the salty-sweet milk foam, even though I love it. “That’s not good… I don’t want that,” he thought out loud. “That’s just tea with some milky thing on top, and that is not milk tea. Milk tea is tea with milk incorporated into it.”

The worst tea tasting we had was of a few Sichuanese teas at a Tianfu tea shop in Beijing. I was unimpressed by all four of the teas we tried. Two of them tasted like vegetables in a cup. A third one tasted like… nothing. The fourth one was probably the most flavorful, but that was a sad comparison when holding it against the other three. Chris sat there, also unimpressed after sipping from his tasting cup, and insisted that two out of four of them were “grass in a bowl. This is like drinking grass. This is not good. But, you’re drinking it, so you decide.” Luckily, the shop assistant helping us knew zero English and understood nothing that Chris so vocally stated. When she asked our opinion, I simply said that we were not particularly fond of any of these, and left it at that. She seemed crushed knowing she wouldn’t get a commission off of us.

But while at Zhu Ye Qing and the tea tastings we did at the tea market in Shanghai and Beijing, Chris declared these tastings far, far superior to the one at Tianfu tea shop, which is a mid-tier tea chain throughout China. “Not even a single tea we tasted at this place (Tianfu) can compare to the quality of teas we had at these other places. They’re just charging you for grass,” he insisted.

Tastes evolve over time, even for things you don’t really think you like much. That’s why it’s good to keep an open mind when traveling to places you aren’t very familiar with and still tasting things when you previously thought you might not have enjoyed them. You might actually discover you like said food or drink because maybe, just maybe you will have a version of it that suits your tastes.

Peking duck in Peking (Beijing)

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I’ve eaten quite a bit of Peking duck in my life. I’ve felt disappointed by duck experiences in cities other than San Francisco to date. In Boston, they were subpar. Here in New York, it took nearly ten years of living here before I was able to find a place that I could reliably go to and enjoy (and stomach the cost for, since here, it seems like you need to empty out your life savings just to have some version of a Peking duck… that isn’t even that great in the end). In Hong Kong, we had a delicious Peking duck experience, but for me, it was a bit tainted because the thin pancakes that were served seemed underdone and as though there was still flour on them… Were we being served raw pancakes…?

So when we were planning our trip to Beijing, I knew that we had to optimize our Peking duck experience, so I did pretty extensive research before I landed on one specific place that I knew we absolutely had to go to: Siji Minfu, which just happens to be a few blocks away from our hotel. They don’t seem to take reservations anymore, so after our half-day trip to the Great Wall, I asked our driver if he could drop us off there at around 1:30, which is considered “off-peak” hours for the place. I’d previously read that since they stopped taking reservations, diners, both local and tourist, can wait up to two hours for a table, and neither of us was interested in waiting that long for anything.

We were in luck: the hostess told us that only eight parties were ahead of us, and it would be anywhere from a 15-20-minute wait. I was already salivating, thinking about how glorious this meal could be that was just half an hour away.

Oftentimes, the uninitiated ask, what makes Peking duck different from the average roast duck? Isn’t duck just duck? Well, no, it isn’t, and it’s an extremely laborious and time intensive process that no average home cook with an average kitchen could replicate. Peking duck, from a historical standpoint, has existed for several hundred years, but it wasn’t until the mid 1800s when someone decided to open a restaurant here in Beijing that publicized this duck making process to the everyday Beijinger: chefs would hang the ducks upright in an oven heated with fruitwood fire. This hanging technique allows for more space for the duck’s endless rendered fat to properly drain, which results in a crispier, drier skin: the pride and joy of Peking duck. In a good Peking duck, the skin and the meat is fully and completely separated so that the skin can render out fat from both the top and the bottom, and also bastes the meat as it cooks.

We waited a long time for our duck after ordering.. it felt like at least an hour. It was so long that Chris started getting cranky as he saw other tables being served their ducks and having them butchered for them alongside their tables. Once the duck is taken out of the oven, it is hung and rested, then the chef wipes off any excess fat from the skin, and puts the duck on a serving tray and gives it to one of a handful of butchers who will present this glory to you, the diner. You have the option of ordering freshly made, paper-thin pancakes for wrapping, as well as little condiment trays that are filled with crushed garlic, various pickled vegetables, batons of thinly sliced cucumber and scallion, and the most savory and complex hoisin sauce I’d ever tasted in my life. It was very obviously fermented and made of beans… When I think about it now, maybe it wasn’t even “hoisin sauce” as I know it here. But regardless, it was the most delicious sauce I’ve ever had served with Peking duck. Chris was in love with this.

The skill with which the butcher exercised as he cut through this duck was so impressive; each cut was quick and swift, and not a single piece of skin or meat was wasted or left on the bone, unlike in the States, when I oftentimes am lamenting how much meat is left on the bone and sent back to the kitchen after slicing. I couldn’t believe how quickly he cut up this entire duck for us. When it arrived, beautifully laid out and presented on three different serving platters on our table, it was still hot and steamy. The duck was finally ready for us… even though we had been ready for the duck ages ago.

One bite of the skin and the meat, and I was in heaven: the meat, despite being fatty duck meat, was not even in the least bit fatty or greasy. It had the perfect soft texture and taste, and actually felt lean! And the skin is a completely different story: it was crispy without being crunchy, if that makes any sense. It literally just shattered in my mouth. And when I left it to linger on my tongue, it would dissolve within seconds, pretty much melting away. The flavor was so sweet, rich, savory, smoky, and deep; there’s truly no other duck experience I’ve had that is even a fraction of what this was to me.