Space is limited in New York City, and when it’s limited, it means that it’s expensive. And so when it was my cousin’s son’s 7th birthday party today, it meant only a two-hour block of time at a children’s bounce castle play house — exactly 2:55 to 4:55, no more, no less. I genuinely thought it was a typo on the e-vite my cousin sent out. But let’s note that “two hours” really meant one hour in the bouncy house and one hour in a windowless, gymnasium/cafeteria style room with brightly painted walls that screamed of a terrible middle or high school life once again.

And because we got there late since we decided to get banh mi from Sunset Park in Brooklyn, we missed the kids’ play time in the bouncy castle and got stuck only experiencing the miserable room where there was no natural light, and kids and adults alike ate cheese and pepperoni pizza, drank soda and water, and ate generic ice cream cake.

I came for my cousin’s son, who barely took any notice of me and didn’t really seem to like any of his “friends” who were invited, either, other than two young girls. At least I didn’t have to watch him open gifts; that is always the worst part to me.

I’ve been struggling to get the light the way I really want it in my kitchen for filming cooking videos. The ideal light is always sometime between late morning and early afternoon; after that, all these shadows start forming and it becomes very unflattering to do video. But then our handyman friend suggested tilting the living room ceiling lights to face into the kitchen and tilted some. As I was shooting chicken enchiladas today, I realized that there is still a bright yellow tint after the sun sets… and I wasn’t really thrilled with the close up shots of my enchiladas. They look too yellow and warm, which means I’ll need to figure out how much color editing I’d be able to do to correct this.

Chris then proceeded to move a few more of the living room ceiling lights into the kitchen, which is actually a good thing because we never want the living room that bright anyway. Now, the kitchen looks like a studio for shooting! And the light would be accurate to show the color of the enchiladas or anything else.

Given that our Seamless app has converted into Grubhub for our corporate accounts where we get a daily $20 credit to use, the number of options has increased exponentially since this switch; I can’t even count how many new places I now have access to at work that I didn’t even know I could order from! So today, I tried a Georgian place not too far away from the office. For $11, I ordered khinkali, which are Georgian dumplings with a thick, handmade skin, normally filled with a ground meat mixture. I rarely get to eat Georgian food; the last time I had it was in July, when I was in Rego Park seeing off my friend moving to Hong Kong, and we had a delicious Georgian feast together. I excitedly waited for my dumplings to arrive.

And, arrive they did. A teeny tiny box of… three dumplings. That’s three dumplings for $11. Really? That’s all I get?! While they were quite delicious, they weren’t particularly large, and it was just sad to see these three little blobs in my box alone. “Is that all you got?” my colleague said, looking over with a wrinkled brow at my box.

Welp. That was the first and last time I’m ordering from there. Delicious? Yes. Good value? Absolutely, heck no.

Autumn officially started a couple of weeks ago, but the temperatures didn’t really start dipping into the “I need to wear a jacket in the morning” feeling until this week. I resisted it on Monday, when it was definitely jacket weather, but I rebelled and left the house only wearing a thin cotton cardigan on top… and then really regretted it and wear my office hoodie home. I go through this same phase every year when summer has ended and autumn is pushing its way into my life: I resist, resist, resist, and then cave in.

The only things keeping me going are what’s keeping me productive: autumn baking and cooking, as well as video editing and my channel. Autumn is a great time for baking with all the squash and spices, so it is a good time to experiment again.

If you know me at all, you will know I absolutely hate picky eaters. As a child of a certain age, it’s passable because you’re a child and your taste buds are still developing, but an adult, it is not. You maybe get 3-5 different things you’re allowed to hate and can refuse to eat, and then after that, your tastes in food are pretty much just dead to me; I could never take you seriously for any food advice, opinions, or recommendations. Because as an adult, it is a choice to be picky. It is a choice to be close minded to new things, new ideas, new foods, new cultures’ foods that you’ve never had before. Unless you have serious food allergies or a disease that prevents you from trying new things, it’s just a childish choice to me.

So I was sitting at the lunch table today, listening to a new colleague go on and on about how picky of an eater he is, that picky eating is a “personality trait” and that he can’t stand ground meat, but he’d happily eat a burger or a meatball “because in one, it’s all put together, and in the other, it’s just all crumbled all over the place.” I could feel my blood pressure go up. He was literally sitting there, thriving on all this attention he was getting, this grown white man, having nearly every person around the lunch table poke and prod, ask him “what about this?” and “will you eat that?” His face was truly priceless. I don’t know what made him more excited: the attention he was getting from his pickiness or his actual pickiness not being completely shat on by someone like me.

I’m an adult. And part of being an adult is remembering to think before we speak. So, instead of saying anything, I chose to simply leave the lunch table. I can’t be around ignorant talk, nor can I be around reinforcement of ignorance. This is the exact kind of person I really do not want to spend any time around at all.

I wonder if I’d be able to access data for exactly how many people in a given week come to New York for work. And then after I look at the data for that, I’d really like to understand of the number of people who travel to New York for work whether that travel was actually necessary for real business purposes, or if it was justified as fluffy internal meetings or accompanying supposed direct reports on their customer meetings. Regardless, New York is a hot place to visit, and it’s an even hotter place to visit when you’re not traveling on your own dime.

I cannot even count the number of “fluffy” BS visits I’ve heard of at companies where I’ve worked when people just wanted an excuse to travel to New York, so they made them up. The most recent one was for a supposed “internal” training that would have lasted an hour… and could easily have been done over a video and screen-share meeting.

So oftentimes now, when I hear that someone is coming to New York for “business” purposes, I usually just chuckle to myself and think, “Sureeeee they are.”

Two days in a row, and I went back to Queens. Yesterday, it was to pick up groceries and Indian desserts in Jackson Heights, and today, it was to pick up Mexican dried chilies and cheese at a Mexican grocery store in Corona, which is known for having a very diverse Latino population, many of whom are Mexican, plus to meet friends for Isan Thai food in Woodside.

When I first moved to New York City and lived in Elmhurst, Queens, I heard everyone telling me that no Mexican people live in New York City, that there was no good Mexican food. Then, I went to areas like Jackson Heights and Corona (and Sunset Park in Brooklyn) and realized exactly how wrong everyone was. What people generalized in their meaning was that perhaps there weren’t a lot of authentic Mexican restaurants or Mexican immigrants living in Manhattan... because apparently, New York City revolves around Manhattan, and most people never even think to venture out to outer boroughs like Queens except when transiting to and from the two major New York City airports. Part of me wonders if that is just due to sheer ignorance, a lack of curiosity, or just a complete dismissal of true immigrant communities like Corona. You can’t really discover anything new unless you actively make the decision to choose to seek newness out. Newness does not simply show up on your doorstep or in your neighborhood and scream, “Hey! Look at me! I’m here to cater as a new experience to you!”

Jackson Heights is one of my absolute favorite neighborhoods in Queens… or well, all of New York City, really. To me, it represents exactly how multicultural and delicious New York City is; one block, you’re surrounded by sari and 24-carat gold shops selling South Indian goods, fragrant of rose water and cardamom; the next block, you are fully inundated by Mexican, Colombian, Venezuelan, and Peruvian restaurants and bakeries. Two blocks down, there’s a string of Filipino restaurants. Then, there’s a Korean grocery store. And as if it couldn’t get even more diverse, you stumble upon an Argentinian steakhouse that is across the street from several Thai restaurants representing four different regions of Thailand. It’s a cultural explorer’s paradise.

I went out to Jackson Heights after work today to pick up a bunch of groceries in preparation for cooking this weekend, plus some Indian sweets at my favorite Indian dessert shop. What is always comical to me is the little smiles that are exchanged by the Indian workers at Patel Brothers, the major Indian grocery store there, as they watch me walk through the aisles of the store. They see me, an East Asian person, picking through Indian vegetables, different bags of legumes, various whole and ground spices, and I can imagine what they are thinking: what is this Chinese girl going to do with all this stuff? Does she even know what she is looking at? Is she learnt enough to prepare these the right way? I hope she doesn’t mess it all up and waste the ingredients!

Don’t worry, peeps. I know what I’m doing. In fact, I could probably school you all in it since I’m willing to bet that in your generation, you wouldn’t even know what to do with these spices if they were handed to you, as you likely think cooking is a woman’s job, and hence you rely on your wives to cook. It’s all good. I got you.