Cough cough

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This is really a year of hell for me when it comes to catching colds. First, I got sick coming back from Vietnam in January. Then, I got sick coming back from San Francisco in February. I don’t think there has ever been a year of my life after the age of 5 when I have gotten sick this frequently. Now, I’m sick from something I caught at the end of our Colombia trip nearly two weeks ago. And the same violent coughing and phlegm build up is there. I’m not happy. If it were just a basic cold, I’d probably be okay with it and shrug it off, but this coughing is just not good — at all.

I called Teledoc yesterday, and that was pretty much useless. The doctor was unempathetic, curt, and flippant. Despite telling him none of my symptoms were getting better, he insisted it was a virus and not bacterial, so he just said the usual – drink more liquids, rest more, vitamin C… and a prescription grade cough suppressant “if you want it … it’s up to you.” He did not care at all.

Then today, I went to urgent care and had a doctor look me over. He said that because my symptoms hadn’t improved at all after over a week and a half that it must be bacterial, so he gave me an antibiotic for bronchitis and similar respiratory illnesses.

These are the moments when I think… this is why we need to be grateful for having good health. Having a violent cough that could come up any time, any place, is really a hindrance, and a nasty one.

Food poisoning fears

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Growing up, it was a normal thing in our house for my grandma or mom to make a big pot of soup, stock, or congee/jook, and leave it out on the stove overnight, then reheat it each morning or time they wanted to eat it again. We never considered that unsafe, and the logic behind it being safe was that if any weird bacteria were growing in it, boiling it again to reheat would kill them all anyway.

As a result of this, I’ve also done similar things as an adult, though most of the time, I do put these things in the fridge. I’ve left food out at room temperature for several hours. I’ve even taken leftover food from my Seamless work lunch, gone out after work, then taken it home (while it was sitting in my backpack the entire time). I’ve never gotten sick.

But in the U.S., everyone seems to think that everything needs to be refrigerated or frozen immediately. I don’t really get it. Leaving food out at room temperature is apparently a breeding ground for bacteria growth and inevitable food poisoning. When some colleagues of mine did a group lunch order today from Luke’s Lobster, when the food arrived, they were in a meeting. Another colleague panicked, fearful that they would get food poisoning, and put all the food in the fridge. They were just going to be out of their meeting in another half hour; no one would have died. And to add to this, the air conditioning was quite high in the office since we’re pretty much in summer time, and so the office was quite cool already.

The level of panic around food safety here is always mind-boggling to me; if these colleagues knew what I grew up with and what I do at my own apartment, they’d probably wonder why I haven’t already died from food poisoning.

Little love for women in the world

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I met my former colleague and now friend for dinner tonight in Elmhurst, and we caught up over Northern Thai food (which was so good that I’m still thinking about it now). She was based in our company’s Amsterdam office, but she is temporarily here in New York with her husband and baby daughter, waiting for their visas to be cleared so that they can relocate to Hong Kong for his new job. We lamented all of the ridiculous drama at the company where I currently work at that she has left, and discussed all the hate in the world for women, and particularly, women who are mothers.

At our company, we get 17 weeks of fully paid parental leave. Given that the Netherlands is, well, in Europe, they clearly have better laws that allow mothers more time off, so she took an additional three months of leave… and it was really clear that the leadership on our team was not happy about this. When she informed our leadership team that she would likely be relocating back to New York City, which is home for her, a leader on our team responded, “Oh, so you want to do the easy thing when moving home, then?” and asked her if her views of work and work ethic had changed since becoming a mom. What the fuck kind of question is that? It’s almost as though since she became a mom that she had less respect on our team. And it didn’t help when someone said that in the last year, she had become “less ambitious.” Why — because she… gave birth and became a parent?!

On the flip side, she has friends who have sleep trained their babies, and they are judging her left and right for not sleep training her own daughter, who is just over a year old now. They send her passive aggressive text messages, saying she should really consider sleep training. To me, she’s not any different pre or post baby, and she is definitely not more tired or grouchy. I don’t really get what all the fuss is about. It doesn’t seem to matter what you do or what you say, but as a woman, and especially as a mother, someone will be judging you very openly, and implying you are failing or just not good enough.

You’d think that in 2019 we’d have made more progress than we have…. but even at “progressive” companies and cities, we really just have the facade of progress, but inside, we’re just as backwards as any other place.

Radical Candor vs. being an asshole

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Last year, one of the books that I read on my reading list was Radical Candor, a book about how to build, lead, and inspire teams to do the best work of their lives… while also being honest (while being caring). The main idea is that in order to be a good manager, you need to care personally while also challenging directly. When you challenge without caring, it is called “obnoxious aggression.” When you care without challenging, it is called “ruinous empathy.” And when you do neither, it is manipulative insincerity. This book is considered one of the “it” books across up and coming tech startups. What is sad about that is that while everyone is touting this book, very few to none are actually actively practicing and embracing this.

So if we think about the concept of challenging without caring, that is called obnoxious aggression. And if we really think about it, another thing to call that is just being an asshole. That’s most men in power in tech organizations, and the majority of the time, it’s white men in power). Today, since I was on my way back from Atlanta, I skipped an “Ask Me Anything” session from one of our leaders, when he was supposedly attempting to be “radically candid” about why one of our sales leaders got canned the previous week. I received several messages updating me on what happened this afternoon. There’s a really fine line between being “radically candid” and just being an asshole, and he pretty much failed at the former and succeeded at the latter. And yet, it will all be just dandy because in his position, he can get away with it, and no one will question him. HR is on his side. He’s an Untouchable. For the rest of us mere earthlings, we’d get a massive admonishment from HR if we did even half of what he purportedly said.

There’s the glamour and perks of working at a tech company, and then there’s all the hypocrisy and bullshit. Today was a good example of the latter.

Excuses, excuses

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I’m in Atlanta today and tomorrow for customer meetings and for a customer marketing event we’re co-hosting tonight. Because of this, I have three different colleagues who are joining me from New York today. One of them happened to be booked on my same flight to Atlanta, as well as the same hotel in downtown. We sat together and chatted before our flight boarded, and I tried my best to be as patient as possible as she made up all these excuses for what she probably thinks she should be doing, but she isn’t. She’s likely going to be traveling at least 1-2 times a month for customer marketing events, yet she’s not loyal to any one airline (she is split among American, Jet Blue, and Alaska). Her trips are never more than 1-2 days long, yet she insisted today that between her and her husband (who travels maybe 1-2 times a month for work), they just “don’t have time” to travel for personal unless it’s a wedding/major family event because they both travel a lot for work (or so they think).

While I was listening to all these excuses she was making, I said absolutely nothing. I’m not even certain she was aware she was even making excuses. I sat, half smiling, occasionally nodding. It’s as though I was sitting there, bearing witness to her out-loud thoughts about all the things she should or could be doing, but she isn’t doing… perhaps due to one (or several, or all) of the following: 1) lack of planning, 2) lack of desire to plan, 3) lack of desire to travel for fun and maximize travel, 4) lack of willingness to admit that maybe, just maybe she and her husband just… don’t like to travel for pleasure. And that last part is actually okay! But can we all just be honest with ourselves?

So, she then proceeded to ask me about my travel plans for the summer. I told her we just got back from Colombia. I was in Miami last week for work, will be in Atlanta obviously this week for work, then Michigan next week. I have pending trips to Boston for work. At the end of this month through the first week of July, we’ll be in Asia, then in mid-August, we have another personal trip planned to Canada. My husband travels nearly every single week, and I travel at least 1-2 times a month, but the only reason I ever say I “travel a lot” is because of the combination of work and pleasure travel. I don’t really think traveling 1-2 times a month for work is a lot. But maybe that’s just me since everything is always relative. We make our trips happen because we plan out nearly our entire year in advance and block off dates. Work isn’t our life. We like to travel, and therefore, we make sure travel is part of our life.

She was really impressed with what I shared with her. “Wow, that’s such a smart thing to do!” she exclaimed, as I told her how we planned things out. “That also is so much work.”

Is it, really? Aren’t we supposed to work to make things that matter in our life happen?

I don’t expect everyone I know or like or chat with to want to travel. But, I’d like to think that everyone is honest with themselves. Sadly, this is clearly not the case.


“work trip”

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Tomorrow, I’m off to Atlanta for a customer meeting where I will be presenting. I’m also taking one of my colleagues along who I am mentoring since he’s a newbie. Since he’s merely there to shadow me and will not actually be presenting, this is basically a work trip for him where he’s not responsible for anything. Isn’t that fun — to be able to travel for work and not actually do any work?

And well, he’s planning to go to the World of Coca Cola while I’m doing meeting prep. Doesn’t he have the life?

kitchen sink cooking

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I really didn’t want to buy too many groceries for this weekend given that both Chris and I would be traveling for work this week, so I tried to make dinner from mostly what was in our pantry or fridge, with the exception of fresh vegetables. I ended up cooking green lentils, the dried fusilli bucati pasta we brought back from our Northern Italy trip, and tossing it in my homemade pesto from two weeks ago, roasted zucchini and broccoli, and some red pepper flakes. Chris felt like we needed some real cheese in this pasta (I used nutritional yeast as a cheese substitute in the pesto making because I didn’t have any cheese on hand and didn’t want to buy any at that time), so he ran out to buy some grana padano for grating, which is basically like a very young and un-aged parmesan.

I realize that my “kitchen sink” cooking can be perceived as a bit uppity, because who really has homemade pesto that just happens to be sitting in one’s fridge, and who has fancy dried pasta brought back from a foreign country in their pantry? But hey, this is how we roll in our apartment.

Thai food in Hell’s Kitchen

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Thai food in Manhattan is mostly like Thai food in any other major city in the U.S.: it’s kind of generic, full of green curries, red curries, yellow curries, pad thai, pad see ew, and all the other ordinary Thai dishes that you would expect. It rarely has the fiery papaya salads of Bangkok or all the other stir-fries and other dishes that would set the average person’s mouth on fire. To get really delicious and authentic Thai food like you would have it in Thailand, you usually need to go out to Queens, either Woodside or Elmhurst, for that food. And when you don’t have time to go there, there’s two spots in Hell’s Kitchen that are good: Pure Thai Cookhouse, which always, always has a wait, even at 4pm on a Saturday; or its new sister restaurant Taladwat, which opened nearby. I originally was able to try it out via delivery a few months ago and enjoyed it, and today, we went in for an early dinner and got Chris’s spicy food craving fixed up. The portions were small, but the food was delicious and spicy, and as an added bonus, the seating was relatively roomy.

It’s hard to give Thai recommendations in Manhattan, but these are two solid ones that are right in our neighborhood that we know we can always rely on.

Coffee back home vs. coffee in Bogota

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This afternoon, I took a break to meet with a San Francisco colleague’s friend who is interested in working at our company. We had coffee together over lattes, I shared with her information about the company, what my role was like, and my general work experiences.

While we were chatting, though, I was thinking about the latte I was drinking with her, and I realized that although it was good, it really paled in comparison to that incredibly smooth and rich latte I had in Bogota just four days before. I felt bad even thinking about it, but I couldn’t help but think about how satisfying every single sip of that Bogota latte was, even after it was no longer hot.

This is really how travel can ruin you.

Sunrise, then long wait in a parking lot

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I scheduled my flight to come back to New York at around 3:30 today so that I’d be able to have time to watch the sun rise along the beach, do a beach run, exercise, eat breakfast, and lazily make myself over to the MIA airport this morning. While I got to do and enjoy all of that since all my customer meetings were yesterday, what I did not enjoy was the total traffic jam that welcomed me back as I got into my Uber in the LaGuardia parking lot this afternoon at around 4pm. My driver and I moved about a few inches every few minutes for over 40 minutes. we had basically gotten from one end of the parking lot to the other, never actually exiting until we reached about 45 minutes of being in the exact same line. I was so irritated.

I guess I could have scheduled an earlier flight back, especially since the sun rises at 6:30 at this time of the year, but I was just being lazy. That laziness ultimately cost me probably an hour in excess waiting time to get back home…. definitely cannot do that again given the LGA construction situation.