Every time I come back to San Francisco, I am pretty overwhelmed with all the options, both old and new, for food. It’s definitely a fun “problem” to have, but I look forward to planning my trips around who I am planning to see, and what I am going to eat and drink. One of the fun places I knew I had to go to this time around was Garden Creamery, which was conveniently located just two blocks away from the restaurant where my friend and I were going to have dinner. It’s known for having a delicious and fun combination of Hawaiian and Asian flavors that change seasonally, from ube and pandan to matcha with toffee bits to kaya flavored ice cream. They use grass-fed, organic and local milk, and they also have a pretty large variety of vegan flavors to choose from, as well.

I chose the ube and pandan, plus the matcha gold (which has toffee bits), and I loved every last bite of each. The owner was actually scooping herself and was really friendly, and I just loved the variety of flavors available; it was so hard to make a choice! I couldn’t remember the last time I just kept licking my spoon after I finished my ice cream — it was that good.

It excites me to see that ice cream parlors are branching out with flavors that encompass how global of a world we live in now. There was not just one, but two varieties of green tea ice cream (the other one was genmaicha, toasted rice with green tea!), black sesame, ube, kaya, and many others that were so tempting and (naturally) colorful).

Day 1 of our conference was officially today, and on the main conference night, we always host a big party with food, entertainment, drink, and dancing. This year’s was at the August Hall venue, and it was pretty well done other than the fact that each floor had a temperature difference of at least 10 degrees each.

I was chatting with some customers who were coming from the same company, and a few of them were hovering around one of my customers, who is a known social butterfly and party animal. Last year at our conference, she partied so hard the last night that the next morning, she missed all the sessions and did the walk of shame out of the hotel room elevator bank at around noon, right when lunch had started. This year, they are all trying to look out for each other, so they told me that they have to keep a watchful eye out for her to make sure they don’t lose sight of where she goes.

This is when I laugh a little to myself about conference culture in general. There’s always going to be booze, and where there is booze, there will always be a threat or hint of inappropriate behavior. So while we say they are great learning experiences and some of the best opportunities for networking, they are also prime places for total debauchery.

Today is technically day 0 of Opticon, but our festivities have already begun with training sessions, happy hours, as well as customer dinners that we’ve organized, which involve getting similar customers into the same dinner venues for mingling and networking. I sat at a dinner table with various customers and colleagues from AT&T, Cricket, HBO, and Showtime tonight, and what seemed to be the unifying theme among all of them is that not only are they all happy customers who love our technology, but they also all seem like very smart, well-rounded, well-traveled individuals who love to share stories and learn. Overall, it was a very engaging conversation.

It was a fun but exhausting dinner. What I’ve also noticed in hosting customer dinners now is that I seem to enjoy my food less at these events. I used to be able to enjoy the food a lot, but now I feel more focused on ensuring there is customer interaction and engagement that I tend to get more sidetracked with my food. We went to a pretty nice steakhouse, but for me, I felt my steak was too rare, but I didn’t want to send it back since I didn’t want to make a fuss and wait to eat.

It made me feel a bit ungrateful. I get this nice, fancy, expensive meal fully paid for, but I’m not even fully enjoying and appreciating it the way I should.

Last night, I met up with one of my best friends from elementary school for dessert in the evening when I got into San Francisco. She had seen me post years ago about losing my brother to suicide, and given we both spent a lot of time at each others’ homes growing up, we also inadvertently knew each others’ brothers pretty well. At the time, she had sent me a heartfelt message about his passing, and since then, has loyally donated money to my AFSP fundraising drive year after year. I never expect anyone to donate to my drive, especially people who are that distant from me, so it’s always been a very heartwarming and touching surprise for me each year. Facebook has certainly allowed for a type of connection that everyday people would not have normally had in my parents’ generation, and I was happy to meet her this evening. Without Facebook, this definitely would not have otherwise happened.

I wasn’t sure how much time we would spend together, nor was I sure if we’d even still feel a connection to each other, but as soon as I saw her, I immediately felt comfortable and like we genuinely were old-time friends. We ended up chatting nonstop for over three hours about everything: school, work, moving (me), our families, now-husbands, our living situations, San Francisco, travel. But as much fun as it was to catch up, I realize that in leaving her tonight, I actually felt a bit sad.

Her family life seems pretty bleak: she lives in a cramped, rent-controlled apartment with her husband, and it was passed on to them from his family, who originally lived in the place when they immigrated from the Philippines. The house is dilapidated, filed with junk to the point where no one wants to do anything to change it. There’s barely even 12 square inches of counter space in her kitchen, so she feels like she can’t even cook or live properly in her own apartment. She has a brother of the same age as Ed, but they are pretty strained in their relationship, as there’s been a lot of verbal abuse in the past that she hasn’t been able to navigate. They’re constrained by money and dysfunctional relationships.

I can definitely understand the dysfunctional family relationships part, but I guess what made me sad the most is that even though we’re older, some of the things that bugged me about her are exactly the same now as they were then. I started remembering what really caused us to drift as friends, and she openly admitted she still did the same thing: since then, she pretty much has made zero friends because she’s spent all her time with her boyfriends, one guy after the next, and so whatever friends he had, she’d gravitate towards, and no one else. I remember the time when we were in high school and I tried to have her come to some events with me, but she refused because she said she’d rather spend time with her then-boyfriend; this was for my birthday that year, too. I was so angry then; we hadn’t seen each other in months, yet then, even though she saw her boyfriend every day, she’d rather blow me off to spend even more time with him. I gradually stopped making an effort to spend time with her, and because I was the only one making the effort, we drifted in our own directions and away from each other. We occasionally reached out to call, email, and then Facebook message, but that was it.

I guess the other thing that made me sad was that it was clear from the lives we lead exactly how different we are. She seems like she has been paralyzed into indecision and thinks she is fully unable to change all the things that have made her unhappy. I feel like I’ve made massive strides in improving a lot of things to ensure that I’m making progress in my life, emotionally and mentally. Here I am, back in San Francisco on work travel, clearly privileged in so many ways, and she’s never left even San Francisco (and has zero desire to and said she wouldn’t know what to do with herself) and is struggling to make ends meet with her rent-controlled apartment payments.

While it was fun to catch up, I don’t think seeing her again regularly would be the best idea for me. I really need to make an effort to spend time around people who exude positive energy, who are confident enough to take control over their lives, and sadly, she is not one of those people.