3-year doctor’s appointment takeaways

Posted on by
Reply

Kaia had her 3-year wellness checkup at the doctor’s office on Friday. While she has never enjoyed going to the doctor, this visit was by far one of the worst visits ever. At her 3-year appointment, we’re supposed to do a vision screening where the medical assistant asks her to identify shapes on a chart. She refused to comply and just kept saying no. She was also supposed to have her blood pressure taken for the first time. The nurse practitioner kept emphasizing how fun it would be since she could press the black balloon herself. Kaia was not having it; she screamed and cried and moved endlessly; we weren’t able to do either of those things. It was even a struggle to get her to stand on the scale to take her weight. It took me about 5-6 tries to finally coax her to stand on it long enough for them to get her weight.

The nurse says her height has sky rocketed over the last year, but her weight… has not. Her BMI (a shitty and outdated metric for evaluating “health”, but anyway) is just at 3 percent, so the nurse said, “She’s technically underweight for her age.” Then, she proceeded to tell me that sometimes, height takes off first, then weight, or vice versa, and that given Kaia looks healthy and her height is good, she’s not worried. She has an active lifestyle and is a toddler. But, (there’s always a “but,” isn’t there?) just make sure she’s getting a healthy, well-rounded diet that includes plenty of fruits and vegetables, lots of “healthy, lean protein,” whole grains, and all the usual things you’d expect to be suggested.

So I kind of kept mocking the whole line around “healthy, lean protein” while at home until Chris got annoyed with it and told me to knock it off. It just seems so ridiculous to me: Kaia has ZERO problem eating. She eats adult-sized portions of so many things. At school, the admin says she has a huge appetite and eats pretty much everything; she’s never shy about asking for seconds. I still remember one of the teachers — how her eyes bulged out and how big her smile was when I asked how Pookster ate at school: “Oh, she eats!” she responded gleefully, giggling a bit. And given that she gets breakfast, lunch, snack, and supper at school, and she also has breakfast and dinner at home on weekdays, Kaia is essentially getting six meals per day five days a week!

When does the obsession over weight ever end?

Kaia shares and warms up with her frenemy

Posted on by
Reply

For the most part, Kaia loves kids. She gets excited whenever she sees children around her age and slightly above. She loves seeing babies, and she especially loves to call out when she hears a baby crying. She has gotten along well with kids at her last and current schools, and she’s even had “besties” identified by her teachers. She’s a very social child and loves being the center of attention. She’s loud and boisterous, and while she loves her peers, she has also been known to attempt to be a teacher’s hog/pet.

But one thing that has always been a little strange is that with one of my friend’s daughters, who is about seven months younger than her, she tends to exhibit “frenemy” type tendencies. When asked to say hi to her or acknowledge her, Kaia rarely does in her presence. She tries to take this friend’s toys when she’s around. She won’t share toys or food with her, even though this friend will happily and eagerly share with her. Frankly, her brattiness level just skyrockets when she’s around this friend.

But we had a catch up / play date with them today, and for once, she actually seemed happy to see her. She smiled when she saw her and seemed protective over her when she was napping in her stroller. When she woke up, Kaia perked up and got excited. We spent some time in our building’s play room this afternoon, and while they definitely played *around* each other, they also played with each other and chased the other around and around. When it was time for them to go, Kaia was visibly sad. She gave her a hug and said bye. After they left, she asked why this friend had to leave and go home.

“Why can’t she stay here with us?” Kaia asked me with genuine sadness in her eyes.

Well, it’s good to know that she’s finally warming up to this friend… finally. These things always take time.

HK vs. NY: independence always threatened, plus the case for more public restrooms

Posted on by
Reply

While wandering around the streets of Hong Kong and using its fast, efficient, and super clean metro, I thought about how similar New York City is to Hong Kong. Both cities are densely populated. Both have subway systems that the majority of its citizens rely on. Both have a fast paced nature. People in both cities live in relatively small and expensive spaces. It’s not uncommon in either city to hear that people rarely, if ever, cook, and most eat almost every single meal out. Both also are notorious for having very intense, grueling work hours yet exciting and late night party scenes. People also love to say that the people of New York and Hong Kong are rude (as a New York resident, I do not believe this is true. As a former New York tourist, I never thought it was true. And as someone who has visited Hong Kong twice, I do not find people ruder there than anywhere else at all. In fact, I think people are generally kind in Hong Kong, and they are far more kind to those who have young children/are pushing a stroller and who are elderly).

There are obvious differences, though, other than culture and language: wages and salaries are far lower overall in Hong Kong despite sky-high costs of living, for one. Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region of China, which means that its independence, or perception of, is constantly in threat. Hong Kongers want to stay separate from China, but China sees them as part of “One China.” Some hawker on the street who tried to sell Chris and me some lame shoe cleaner made some small talk with me while in Guangzhou. He asked where we were from and where we had been during our travels. I told him we had come from Hong Kong, and his response was, “Oh, so you were in China. You know Hong Kong is China, right?” Of course, a Guangzhou resident would say that, but I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who lives in Hong Kong who would say the same thing. Being in Hong Kong, it’s like you’re in one country, yet also in another. And the rules can change just like that, and you as an individual would have zero control over it.

The other difference that more immediately sticks out to me as a visitor is this: Hong Kong has endless clean and glorious public restrooms. It felt like every few blocks we’d run into one. I never had to worry about cleanliness or availability of toilet paper or whether there was enough soap. In New York, public restrooms are so sorely lacking that it’s an embarrassment. And when you are able to find one, it’s unlikely to be a desirable or even mildly pleasant experience. And how funny that in the last few weeks, The New York Times published an op-ed to make the case for more public restrooms in New York City; how timely!

Missing freshly pressed soy milk while back home

Posted on by
Reply

This last week back in New York has been a bit of a blur. It’s been a mix of adjusting with Kaia’s jet lag and being back in school, getting back into the swing of daily morning workouts and getting Kaia ready for school, into the usual humdrum that is full-time remote work, and all the usual day-to-day things when you are back to “real life.” Instead of sumptuous and complimentary Chinese breakfast buffets, I’ve been forgoing breakfast as I usually do and having only tea until lunch time. I’ve been having little fleeting daydreams of enjoying freshly pressed, hot soy milk each morning to start my day. Sometimes, it’s just the little things you miss while traveling that stay with you, and this, for me, is one of them.

I had to pick Kaia up from school a bit early today because we had scheduled her for back to back dentist and doctor’s appointments this afternoon. But I asked Chris if there was anything he wanted from Chinatown that I could pick up. He responded and said that given all the great food we’d had in the last week in Hong Kong and China, plus the amazing Asian food we had while in Australia the previous three weeks, he really did not feel like… anything.

And the funny thing was… neither did I. Guangdong and Hong Kong are as close to my paternal roots as I can get, which means that they are really the the main types of food I grew up eating. Yet even I came up with blankness when I thought about what I wanted to get from Chinatown, as well. So, in the end, I actually didn’t get anything.

For our weekly Friday takeout, we ended up having Mexican/Peruvian tonight from a food truck nearby we liked. And yes, it really hit the spot.

Workplace assholes

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve been working full-time almost 17 years now. In that time, I’ve seen a lot of really good, really bad, and beyond egregious behavior. I’ve seen the suck-ups, the people who somehow manage to get by and barely do any work. I’ve seen people who have self-professed themselves to be a “dick” and manage to get away with being rude to almost everyone. I’ve seen people who are awful at their job who still manage to get promoted. I’ve also seen people who truly do go above and beyond get passed up for promotions — time and time again. But what I never really thought would happen is that someone this week would actually have the balls to go off at me for simply thanking them for something they did for my customer.

I’m on the customer success team at my company, which means I manage a book of business that includes a set number of customers. I interact cross functionally at my company with multiple teams, ranging from sales, renewals, solutions engineering, accounting, product, etc., to get my job done. In the last year, there’s been a solutions engineer who has been labeled aggressive, rude, demeaning, and even sexist by some. We’ve gotten along fine to okay most of the time, but I got caught off guard this week when I thanked him for taking care of a customer request in his realm this week, and the response was extremely unexpected.

He responded with, “Why are you thanking me for doing my job? [Insert task] is what SEs are responsible for. There’s no reason to thank me for doing my job.”

My gut reaction to this response was, “Wow, you are truly an asshole.” But my general thought was, Oh, my. You must have had some really awful life experiences to get angry at someone for simply thanking you for doing a single deed. Clearly, this guy has a lot of pent up anger that he is choosing to misdirect, and to someone who is expressing a sentiment that is called “GRATITUDE,” that he should be meeting with grace. He is a good example of someone who is sorely in need of seeing a therapist, but is unlikely to have any self awareness to actually pursue to help himself.

We’re really in a questionable work setting when we cannot even thank someone for doing something without eliciting their uncalled for rage. Where do people get this idea that behavior like this is actually acceptable? I do not even want to know what his reaction would be if I actually tried to give him some constructive feedback. I’d likely get my head blown up — virtually.

Jet lag continues for the husband and the toddler, and the attempt to limit screen time for our toddler

Posted on by
Reply

Chris has been pretty sluggish this week. He’s even been napping in the afternoons. Kaia has been napping occasionally at school… and then also almost falling asleep at around 4pm after a period of extreme quietness that the admin alerted me to. The admin was considerate of our need to get her adjusted and sleeping overnight, so she’d nudge her before she’d fall asleep and have her eat the usual scheduled supper before pickup at 5pm. We all knew Kaia was jet lagged, but it’s hard to force her to adjust since it’s just her body clock, and she’s only three years old. The concept of “time” at this age is a difficult one. The first few days of pickup, she’s been so exhausted that she refuses to even walk, so because I rarely take the stroller anymore for school, I’ve had to carry her myself several blocks. It was tiring, especially given she was feisty and almost like dead weight because she’s been falling asleep on the trains. She’s almost 30 pounds, so definitely not a little baby anymore! My arms have gotten an extra workout this week…

When she has been awake in the evenings, it’s been a little brutal. These “thrilling threes” have been full of even more intense tantrums, bigger displays of anger and frustration, and very few things, other then presenting chocolate or screen time, have seemed to consistently help. We did more screen time during our trip because of the long-haul plane rides as well as all the times we’ve had to sit in restaurants and finish our conversations and meals with friends and family, but we’re cutting it all off now that we’re back home. We don’t want to be those parents who just immediately give their kid screens to shut them up every single time they get upset. I was pretty unhappy when we were on our flight back to New York, and Kaia barely ate anything on the entire 14.5-hour-long flight. She mainly just had milk and cartoned apple juice (to my annoyance, this was her very first time experiencing juice boxes, which I’ve tried to hold off on for as long as possible since I want her eating whole fruit only). She was either sleeping or glued to the screen, watching Pepa. This was her very first flight wearing headphones and having sound with her screen time, which she was completely enamored by. The few times I tried to get her attention and block the screen, she got angry with me and yelled, “I can’t see! I can’t see!” (It’s also hilarious because she pronounces “can’t” the Austrailan/British way, not the American way). I do not want her to become a personality-less screen zombie in her youth. That’s one of my many nightmares.

Double Crispy, aka Pu Ta Wang Bing Wu, and its popularity explosion

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve been going to Double Crispy Bakery, also known in Chinese as Dan Ta Wang Bing Wu on Grand Street in Manhattan Chinatown, since at least 2018 or 2019. Since 2020, I started going there more and buying things, partly because I love their baked goods, but also because I got really worried during the pandemic that my favorite old-school Chinese businesses in Chinatown wouldn’t survive COVID-19 and the anti-Asian hatred that was stoked back then. Now that Kaia’s school is literally two doors down from Double Crispy, I go there almost every week. Sometimes, it’s to purchase breakfast items for the whole family; other times, it’s to get a treat for Kaia. Kaia’s favorite bao is pork floss bao, for which Double Crispy does an excellent version. I also love their egg custard pineapple bao, their cha siu bao, and several others. Their frozen cai rou bao and ji bao (pork/cabbage and chicken bao) are also delicious and great value. Although I do not buy their Chinese or Portuguese-style egg tarts that often, they do great versions of both (and I suppose they should given their Chinese name). For specialty items, they do a delicious variety of mooncakes throughout the year and amp up the variety and size of moon cakes around Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. I especially like their durian mooncakes. And you can never go wrong with lotus seed paste.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Double Crispy got featured in the New York Times Cooking section and was in a video they produced that went viral. The video highlights not only the bakery’s intense production of moon cakes, but also the family’s unity, perseverance, and drive to ensure the bakery is successful and that they are producing the very best products for their loyal customers. When I saw it last September, I nearly had tears in my eyes, seeing how much the owner’s sons helped out with their dad’s business and the very clear love they all had for each other and the bakery itself. And since that video came out, the virality was palpable: each day at school pickup when I’d pass by Double Crispy, entire shelves would be wiped clean of their buns, pastries, and breads. It was as though someone had come in and ordered every single darn item on the shelf. I was happy for them and how successful they were; I chuckled to myself when I’d see tourists gathering from outside, confirming this was the same place that was featured in the NYT video, then laugh even more when I saw they weren’t just buying one or two items, but dozens upon dozens of their baked goods.

I walked into the shop today to pick up a loaf of bread and was happy to see that one of the owner’s sons was manning the cash register. I greeted him and congratulated him on the NYT feature and said that I was proud to be a loyal customer for years and years before that video came out last autumn. We made some small talk about the business and how they could barely keep up with demand, and he thanked me for my repeat patronage. And as he bagged up my bread, he neatly wrapped two egg tarts for me and added it in. “This is just a little thanks for your loyalty and support all these years,” the owner’s son said with a big grin. “We wouldn’t be here without customers like you.”

That was so sweet and totally not needed at all; free egg tarts or not, I’d still support them anyway. And if I didn’t, Kaia would just repeatedly run in there and demand every bao on the shelf to eat! One of her favorite things to do on warmer days is to run through their open doors (only open during warmer months, obviously) and point at all the different baos she wants to eat!

Jet lagged toddler, jet lagged husband

Posted on by
Reply

The last couple nights’ worth of sleep has predictably been broken. Kaia has lasted at most, four consecutive hours in her own bed before screaming and crying, taking at least three to four of her stuffed animals, and dragging them to our bed. Then, she’s been waking up anywhere between 3-4, wide awake and alert, demanding to be fed immediately.

“I want cheerios. I want milk. No milk?!”

“I don’t WANT mummy to sleep. I want mummy to GET UP NOW!”

“I’m hungry! I wanna eat NOW!”

A lot of demands, a lot of whining, and lot of “the world revolves around me” comments. ‘Tis the world of a thrilling three-year-old child.

The first night back on Sunday night, Chris woke up to Kaia’s demands for food. Because the apartment is absolutely freezing, unless we have the heat turned on in each room, the unheated rooms will be frigid. So, instead of setting up the high chair in the lounge area, Chris set it up in our main bedroom’s ensuite bathroom with the light on. That way, Kaia could get residual heat coming into the bathroom from our bedroom and actually see her cheerios, and I could get darkness while sleeping in my bed. As for Chris? Well, at 3am on Monday morning when Kaia was digging into her dry cheerios in her high chair in our bathroom, Chris was in bed, on his phone, digging into a bag of Australian All Naturals fruit gummies.

This was my world the last few nights with a jet lagged toddler and a jet lagged husband.

Hidden hotel floors in Hong Kong

Posted on by
Reply

I feel like in the last two years, I’ve really grown an affinity to the term “if you know, you know,” aka #iykyk. The 2025 articles I keep seeing are listing “#iykyk” as an overused term that is “fini” for the new year, but I don’t care: it most definitely still will resonate. The reason for this is that… unless you are aware of certain things or certain events, you cannot fully appreciate something that you see or is shared. Why not? Because… you just didn’t know!

Here’s a case in point: at the hotel we stayed at during both legs of our stay in Hong Kong, the Renaissance Harbour View Hotel Hong Kong, which is part of the Marriott group of hotels, appears as though there are only 41 floors in the building. Floors 40 and 41 are the Club Lounge, where those guests who have a certain level of status get access (like us), or those who have purchased a hotel stay including club lounge will have access. Chris added a request for the second leg of our stay to be upgraded to a suite if one was available, and he was granted his request: we got a suite… that was on the hidden top floor 42.

I didn’t realize this until we came to the hotel on Saturday evening. Chris rarely shares these things in advance, as he loves to surprise. He pressed on the button for the club lounge floor to end the evening. I had originally thought he wanted to stop by to grab a beverage before heading to our room. But what ended up being the case is that floor 42 is not accessible by the regular elevator bank; you have to take the main elevator to floor 41, then either take a second elevator up just one level to 42, or walk up a short flight of stairs to 42. Once we got to our room, we were in what could have been an extremely spacious New York City apartment: 1.5 bathrooms (one of which could easily be the size of a bedroom, with a standalone soaking bathtub, his-and-her sinks, and a roomy rainfall shower), a massive living room with a dedicated work space, a large king-sized bedroom, and floor-to-ceiling windows that gave a full, unobstructed view of Hong Kong Harbour. The living room was so large that it had two doorways you could choose from to enter the bedroom. Kaia loved this so much and constantly ran in and out and around in circles, giggling and singing nonstop, relishing every inch of this newfound space she could enjoy for just a single night.

If this wasn’t enough, on our small dining table, the hotel management left us a tray of tasty delights: two beautifully packaged chocolate bars — one flavored with Taiwanese oolong and one with Sichuanese pepper; a small jug of Hong Kong style iced milk tea, a platter of fresh fruit, two crispy almond cookies, and two fresh, flaky coconut tarts. If this wasn’t the ultimate “welcome back to Hong Kong” experience by a hotel, I wasn’t sure what was.

“You live a really good life — far more luxurious and better than any of your cousins,” my mom once said to me back in 2019 when she learned of all our points-paid hotel nights, hotel room and flight upgrades, and all the little gifts that hotels have given Chris and me along the way for our loyalty. I suppose what she said is true. But a big part of the reason I have all of this is Chris: he always knows how to play the game, the system, when and how to ask. I’d honestly be lost navigating all of this if it weren’t for him. So really, he is the one who actually knows; I’m just coming to tag along and enjoy it all, and so is Pookster.

Last bites in Guangzhou and back to Hong Kong for juicy buns, bouncy beef balls, more English/Cantonese on menus and signs, and a crab dish that unexpectedly broke the bank

Posted on by
Reply

Guangzhou came and went so quickly that it felt like we blinked and suddenly, it was already time to leave. We woke up earlier than usual this morning for our last breakfast and meal before taking the train to go back to Hong Kong for one night tonight. I got to indulge in my last breakfast buffet of dim sum delights like nuo mi ji (sticky rice with chicken and mushrooms, wrapped in fragrant lotus leaves), nai huang bao (hot egg custard buns), and decorated congee. I also had my last fresh sweet soy milk in Guangdong while dipping a you tiao (fried cruller) stick into it. Hot, fresh, sweet soy milk and a you tiao stick are extremely nostalgic for me, as they always remind me of my early morning walks alone around East China Normal University in Shanghai that summer of 2006, grabbing an early breakfast off street vendor carts and taking in all the chaos and fun of a new country. At that time of my life, I had never left the U.S.; that experience was my very first experience of China, as well as the world outside the U.S. Growing up, I enjoyed sweet soy milk as a stand-alone drink when my mom would buy it fresh from a local market. But we never dipped you tiao stick into them. Instead, when my mom or grandma would buy freshly fried you tiao sticks from a Chinese bakery, they would snip them into bite sized pieces. We’d then toss them into jook/congee for extra indulgence and extra texture/crunch. This seemed to be the Cantonese way of enjoying you tiao sticks. Well, I embrace every which way of eating you tiao sticks as well as drinking freshly pressed soybean milk, so I definitely do not discriminate.

When we originally left Hong Kong on Wednesday to arrive in Guangzhou, the biggest differences I felt immediately were:

  1. Less signs and/or no descriptions in English or even pinyin at times
  2. Squat toilets were the majority; seated toilets were the minority (if any) in a given restroom); most public restrooms here, unless at a nicer establishment, did not even have soap or toilet paper
  3. Cashless payments via WeChat or Alipay in Guangzhou only; virtually no cash, whereas in Hong Kong, endless businesses are cash-only
  4. More Mandarin Chinese spoken in Guangzhou predictably, but still a good amount of Cantonese spoken
  5. No Uber in Guangzhou; we used DiDi

So goodbye to squat toilets for us heading back to Hong Kong, and hello to more English and spoken Cantonese!

After we checked into our hotel, we went out and about again on the MTR, this time to Tsim Sha Shui (or Jian Sha Ju in Mandarin) on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong. We stopped at Cheung Hing Lee, a popular spot for Shanghainese sheng jian bao (fried, thicker skinned soup dumplings) at the recommendation of my friend who lived in Hong Kong for about nine months. The baos were exactly as advertised: thin skinned, super crispy bottoms, lots of clear, clean flavored broth that literally squirted out of the bao with each bite, and tender, fatty, tasty pork inside. And afterwards, we slithered our way into the Haiphong Road Temporary Food Market just a few minutes walk away, where we ate at Tak Fat (De Fa) Beef Ball stall, in what is now a semi dai pai dong.

Dai pai dong is an open-air food stall, and a term that was created in Hong Kong. In Cantonese, the name refers to “big license stall,” and they were historically tucked into alleys, next to buildings and on streets. What makes them fun, delicious, and nostalgic for many Hong Kongers is not only their cheap prices, but the “wok hei” flavor in many of the dishes offered, which were quick to come out and be devoured. In the late 20th century, the Hong Kong government started restricting the operations of dai pai dong to remove them from public streets; there were concerns around hygiene and sanitation. Given all this, many relocated into indoor cooked food markets that the government built, or they shut down altogether. The experience of eating in one, even a “semi” dai pai dong like Haiphong Road Temporary Food Market, feels fun, lively, chaotic, boisterous, and reminds many people of the old-school Hong Kong days when this was pretty much how everyday people ate and mingled with each other. It didn’t matter if you earned pennies or were a millionaire; you were eating at a dai pai dong. Back during our 2015-2016 trip, we ate at one dai pai dong, I believe either in Central or Sheung Wan. But I think this experience was even more fun and chaotic. I loved the hustle and bustle of the place, the quick turnover of the tables, the super fast ordering and serving of food. I even like the way the payment was set up, all centralized at one spot across all stalls. When we got into the eating area, Chris got us a table quickly, but it wasn’t assigned to the food stall I wanted to eat at. When I realized what had happened, I asked one of the servers if we could still eat at that table and order. She said it was fine. But apparently, the server I asked was for Tak Fat, not for the one we did NOT want to eat at. So while she was perfectly fine with it since her business would benefit from our seating arrangement, the place we did not want to eat at was not okay with it. So we ended up having to move tables. It was still very quick, and we were seated at a new table immediately. The hustle was real!

We had two Hong Kong style iced milk teas, one order of beef ball and beef brisket noodle soup, and an order that I was not 100 percent certain what I got, but ended up being exactly what the Chinese said, word for word: Fried chicken egg noodle soup. When this finally arrived a while after our noodle soup and teas came, it was two perfectly fried to order chicken wings and one fried egg on a plate, and a bowl of chicken broth with instant noodles in it. It was kind of hilarious, as I wasn’t totally expecting that, but it was truly a literal translation of the Chinese. It was a typical cha chaan teng meal, and one that Chris found very peculiar. We all enjoyed the chicken wings. The beef balls were very flavorful, super springy and bouncy. The beef brisket was also delicious — melt in your mouth tender and well seasoned. I can still smell the five-spiced / star anise aroma as I am writing this. Kaia really enjoyed the beef broth, and she tried to steal the bowl from me as I was enjoying the beef brisket and beef balls!

Our last meal of the day was at a seafood restaurant closer to our hotel, which I will definitely remember, but not necessarily for culinary or taste reasons. It felt very local and was in an area that had virtually no tourists. Plus, you had to go up a discreet elevator to get to the restaurant. Chris asked me what I wanted to eat as a last dinner before we left, and I told him we hadn’t had any crab, so I’d like to eat Cantonese style crab. Well, I didn’t realize that yet again, even after my first experience with our overpriced steamed whole fish at Shenggengwan Restaurant in Guangzhou, that “market price” can be a very dangerous label on a platter of seafood at any restaurant. I ordered the fried crab with ginger scallion. The sauce was delicious, as was the crab (which I pretty much ate all by myself since Chris thinks crab is just okay; he also hates all the work of getting the crab meat out of the shells and the mess… definitely his dad’s child). It was sweet, juicy, and perfectly cooked. I made a total mess, but in the end, it was enjoyable. Unfortunately, that single crab set us back $160 USD, which I found out when I went to pay the bill. That’s probably the most expensive crab I’d eaten in my entire life! My parents or grandparents NEVER would have paid that much for ginger scallion crab! At least I was on vacation, so I can justify it as a “vacation” expense.

Next time I order “market price,” I am most definitely asking for the price before committing. Ouch. Tasty, but still… ouch.