When your presumptuous assumptions were wrong

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I wasn’t sure I was going to enjoy this trip to Michigan for these three days because I was planning to travel with a colleague I’d never met before. We’ve been working together since January, yet she’s been camera shy when doing video/voice calls while using Zoom, and I could hear her strong midwestern accent every single time we spoke. She’s a remote employee based in Columbus, and I really had no idea what kind of person she was at all. All I know is that Ohio is a swing state, and there was a 50/50 chance that she would be a Trump supporter. And the idea of not only traveling with her, but also being in a car ride that would last 2.5 hours from Grand Rapids to Detroit yesterday with her, would be absolutely agonizing if I found out she really was a Trump supporter.

Luckily for me, during our first morning meet up yesterday, she started complaining about President Dipshit and in general, the Republican Party, so I knew it would be safe to talk about politics with her without either of us murdering the other. We talked a lot about our personal lives, where we grew up and have lived (she spent over 15 years living in San Francisco and the Bay Area), and our general opinions about politics, culture, and travel. We even spent nearly three hours voluntarily at dinner together at Roast, a Michael Symon restaurant that was attached to hotel we stayed at last night in downtown Detroit. It was funny to sit at the bar of this restaurant eating with her, as I remembered the first time I visited Detroit with Chris back in June 2014, we ate at this same restaurant and loved it.

When the trip concluded today with our final customer meeting and her driving me to the Detroit airport, I hugged her, thanked her for driving me all over Michigan, and departed for my flight back to New York City. And honestly, I felt kind of bad about my potential hesitations of who she was as a person. I actually had a lot of fun talking to her and getting to know her, but then I questioned myself and wondered… if she WERE a Trump supporter, how exactly would I have navigated that? Could I have handled it appropriately, especially given we’re colleagues and thus in a professional relationship? Not everyone I meet and work with is going to agree with my view of the world. That’s just reality. But when that time comes at work, what am I going to do then?

Cafe miel

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I really lucked out during my 24 hours in Grand Rapids since after a delicious dinner last night, I strolled around the downtown area and found a fun coffee shop called Madcap Coffee. It’s been around for the last 11 years, and they’re known for their spacious, modern decor, strong and delicious coffee, and friendly service. They even make their own yogurt in house (for a coffee shop, that’s crazy!) and fresh fruit/granola blends.

One of the things that caught my eye on the menu this morning before I left for my customer meeting was the cafe miel. “Cafe miel” just means coffee with honey in French, but I haven’t been used to seeing this offered on menus anywhere before (no, having honey at the counter with the lids, straws, stirrers, and napkins does NOT count), so I decided to try it. Not only do they make your latte with honey as a sweetener, but they also add in some cinnamon and nutmeg to spice it up a bit. It was completed with a cute heart-shaped foam design on the top, and I enjoyed it with a cup of their house-made yogurt topped with marinated rhubarb, strawberries, and nutty granola.

It was a simple breakfast, but it was so satisfying, especially knowing that the yogurt and fruit blend was all house made, and that the coffee drink was so lovingly made with a unique twist.

I was also completely wired for the next four hours after having that cafe miel, so not only was it one of the most delicious coffee drinks I’ve had in a while, but it was also one of the strongest!

Making business travel more bearable

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When I tell people I do a moderate amount of work travel, they either have one of two reactions: a) they think it’s glamorous and exciting, or b) they think it must be painful and annoying to have to travel away from home, in an unfamiliar place with likely few to no one you know, to do one’s job. I have a lot of colleagues who absolutely hate work travel, and they grumble when I tell them I’m not going to be in. But, at the same time, they see my Instagram stories during my work travel and accuse me of playing hooky because of the things I post. As someone who had done quite a bit of it after nearly 11 years working full time, I can certainly say that the only thing “glamorous” and “exciting” about doing work travel is the amount of frequent flier miles and hotel points you can accumulate from business travel (and thus, free hotel nights/flights/flight upgrades during personal travel).

There have been times when it’s been lonely and annoying, especially in places that aren’t as metropolitan as New York or San Francisco, but the way that I’ve made it into something enjoyable is to fit in a few things that I can do for myself that I will enjoy. It could be a walk through Olympic Centennial Park while I’m in Atlanta visiting a customer, a run on the beach during sunrise in Miami, or a stroll to see the Bean, one of my all-time favorite public sculptures (I don’t care how “touristy” it is) while in Chicago. Another thing I like to do is find a good, interesting local spot to eat at and/or enjoy some local well crafted coffee or tea. I have to eat anyway, and it’s nice to try something that is local and well loved by the people in the area.

Tonight, after sifting through a lot of generic and boring sports bars and “American pubs” in the downtown Grand Rapids area on my Yelp app, I came upon an interesting “new American” restaurant called The Little Bird. It just happened to be about three blocks away from the hotel where I was staying, so I figured I’d pop in for an early dinner and sit at the bar. The restaurant, which is open for all three meals of the day, had such a fun and worldly variety of plates on the menu ranging from pork katsu, Scotch eggs made with locally sourced sausage, to Spanish tinned sardines imported from Spain. I ordered the lamb meatballs served with grilled eggplant, curried lentils, feta, cucumber salad, and yogurt, and was really blown away by the combination of flavors, the spice of the lamb, and the texture of the eggplant. I could honestly say that I wasn’t sure what I enjoyed more, the eggplant or the meatballs. And the craziest thing was that only a few of the tables in the small restaurant were occupied. If this same restaurant were in New York, I’d bet that it would be packed to the brim by the time I left at around 7:30.

It’s fun, eclectic places like this that keep me going during my work travel, even in places that initially may not seem to be the most exciting. You really have to do little things for yourself while traveling alone to make it more bearable and interesting.

Chocolate chip cookie memory

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I went back to the doctor for a follow-up appointment, and to reward myself (for nothing really), on my long walk back home, I decided to stop by Levain Bakery to pick up a few of their famously oversized, gooey chocolate chip cookies.

As I sat at my kitchen counter and ate this after dinner tonight, I suddenly remembered the one time when Ed baked something: he made chocolate chip cookies once, and only once. At that time, we didn’t have a regular oven since our oven was broken, and our family, being cheap and Chinese, not only had no use for a regular oven, but didn’t want to replace the broken one we had. But what we did have was a small convection oven, which was mostly used for dishes like roast chickens or other cuts of meat. Convection ovens aren’t typically used for baking, but it was all we had access to. So Ed went ahead, bought his chocolate chips and other random ingredients he needed for cookies, and went about making them.

At that time, I’d baked quite a bit with my aunt, but despite my experience baking, Ed insisted he wanted to do this all, step by step, by himself. So in between homework and other things, I’d stop by the kitchen to see how he was doing. He would carefully measure out each portion of flour, sugar, and other ingredients, then double and triple check the recipe to ensure he got it right. And at the end, when the cookies came out of the oven, I went into the kitchen to see how they’d turned out. They looked pretty good… but I noticed that the cookies were a bit paler than normal.

“Did you remember to use brown sugar?” I asked. “These don’t look that brown the way they normally do.”

“Oh, crap! I forgot the brown sugar!” he exclaimed, looking embarrassed and annoyed with himself at the same time. “Well, sugar is sugar, right?”

Well, not really. Brown sugar has a richer flavor, aids in caramelization, and because it has less moisture in it, it tends to lead to taller, cakier shaped cookie. White sugar has more moisture and less acidity, so your cookie will be paler, spread more, and also be more crisp.

I still commended him for baking since he’d never done it ever before, and had never expressed any previous interest in it. We both tasted them, and they were quite delicious (but when are they not right out of the oven?).

“Well, I did it!” he said.”I succeeded! I wanted to make cookies, and I did it!” He had this big, goofy smile on his face. He was clearly so proud of himself.

I thought it was cute at the time, yet a bit pathetic. He was already an adult by then, and it seemed a bit funny to me that he would get so excited about something as simple as this. But in retrospect, I just feel sad thinking about it.

In Ed’s life, he had little validation. He just wanted to know he was able to accomplish little things that meant something, and unfortunately, our parents weren’t really capable of doing that for him. His teachers weren’t capable. No one really did it. I guess there was the occasional positive validation from his cousins and me, but that was really it.

I wish Ed could taste this Levain cookie now. He might obsess over it, wondering if it was really cooked through enough (well, “enough” is subjective, right?), but I’m sure he would enjoy it just as much, if not more, than I am right now.

Hoping for a better tomorrow

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Today, in light of the recent one-year anniversary of Anthony Bourdain’s passing, I re-read one of my all-time favorite profiles of him done by (of course), The New Yorker, entitled, Anthony Bourdain’s Moveable Feast. The article describes Anthony’s travels as “communion with a foreign culture so unmitigated that it feels practically intravenous.” The writer says he “makes a fetish of authenticity,” which I can completely relate to. As someone who loves to travel, I think I’m also obsessed with finding authentic experiences that aren’t just about being catered to in a specific way just because I am a tourist, but rather because I want to do whatever that local person is doing or eating. But that desire could easily be read as homogenized, which defeats the purpose, in many ways, of travel.

I’ve never really been that sad by any celebrity’s death, but his passing was just so horrible to me because even though he’s a white man, he embodies what I wish every traveler could be and what I want to be when I travel: the kind of person who wants to fully immerse himself in the culture he’s in, who isn’t scared of eating or doing the things that local people do in their local towns and cities, who doesn’t assume an air of superiority because he comes from a rich, westernized, and overprivileged nation. He also doesn’t make dangerous, sweeping assumptions about the places he’s been that generalize and reduce them down to stereotypes. Why can’t more people be like him?

10-min meals

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One of the biggest game changers for me with Indian cooking was the Instant Pot. Since we purchased one last summer during a big sale on Amazon, my life has forever been changed when cooking Indian food, especially when it comes to stews, beans, and biryani dishes. Another game changer was finding this incredible Indian cooking blog called My Heart Beets, which is hands down one of my all-time favorite food blogs. One of the best recipes she has on her blog is for onion masala, which basically has key components distilled down into a masala mix of tomatoes, onions, garlic, ginger, and various common Indian spices, all cooked in an Instant Pot, then frozen into 1/2 or 1/4-cup portions so that you can fish them out of your freezer and use them at any time to make authentic Indian food faster and easier.

I’ve since made a batch of this onion masala and have already used it for several dishes. The most rewarding dish I’ve used it for was just this morning, when I made Indian-style shakshuka in just 10 minutes! I took out about one cup of onion masala and defrosted it overnight, then I used that as the base for my shakshuka, just adding some crumbled sausage into the tomato mix, then eggs, and topping with cilantro and salt and pepper. It was one of the simplest, fastest, and most satisfying fully-homemade meals I’ve made in a long time.

The only way to have quick homemade meals is to do a lot of meal prep beforehand and in bulk, and this onion masala is definitely a key to that. Luckily for me, we have a much bigger freezer than before, so we can store things like this.

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.