When Kaia summons Alexa: a developmental toddler milestone in the 21st century

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Since our last trip to Australia, Kaia has definitely indicated an interest in wanting to interact with Amazon Alexa (at our home) and with Google Home (Chris’s parents’ device at their house). In Melbourne, she successfully got Google to recognize when she would yell out “Google,” but her command after that was always so muddled that it wouldn’t recognize what she was saying. But she’s gotten better at enunciating her words more clearly, and she’s also gotten more detailed with her asks, whether it’s to a device or to us. Instead of saying “I want plate,” now she says, “I want my blue plate.” Instead of previously saying, “Play ‘Wheels on the Bus,'” now, she says, “Play ‘Wheels on the Bus’ by Mr. Ray (or Coco Melon).” This weekend, she successfully summoned Alexa two times: the first time was when she heard me ask about the weather, and she repeated me and said, “Alexa! What’s the weather today?” Alexa actually responded back with today’s weather report! And then a few minutes later, she yelled out, “Alexa! Play ‘Wheels on the Bus’ by Mr. Ray!” And Alexa obeyed and did it! Kaia’s reached a new toddler milestone in a day and age of voice-activated, AI powered devices! No one would have thought this was a big deal previously, but this does actually mean something: it means Kaia’s speech has become clearer and is understandable to the average person instead of just those who know her. My sweet baby is growing into a tiny human who can have a pseudo relationship with a device now!

Good Friday eats near New Brunswick, New Jersey

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New Jersey is quite far from my favorite state. I think part of the reason I felt strange about New Jersey was how so many of my colleagues have been from New Jersey over the years, and how they only looked at New York City as a place for “work” and pretty much nothing else. They didn’t see the glitz and glam that I saw when I looked at New York with all of its incredible diversity in people, culture, food, theater, and entertainment. They didn’t see it as a land of opportunity, excitement, and fun. Instead, they just saw it as a polluted urban jungle with too many people, too much garbage, and too much pollution. A number of them had said to me that they’d “never” want to live in New York and were completely repulsed by the mere thought of living in the city; one said he’d rather die. Part of me wanted to respond, if you feel that strongly against New York, maybe you shouldn’t work here at all and just get a job in your own state! While not everyone I know who lives in New Jersey thinks this way, enough of my New Jersey-based colleagues over the last 16 years have expressed this sentiment that I just found them to be banal.

So for me, New Jersey has been exciting really only for two main reasons: the delicious Indian and Korean food. Most of the incredible Indian food has been around Edison, New Brunswick, and Princeton, where a lot of people of Indian descent live. For Korean food, the majority has been around Fort Lee and Palisades Park, which also have a large Korean population. Every time we go to these areas, I always marvel not only at the high quality of the food, but also how much cheaper the meals are in general. I can’t believe X dish costs 25-30% less than what this costs in New York City, even in Queens!

Today, we took a day trip and rented a car to go to the New Brunswick area. Chris picked out a “pure veg” Indian restaurant called Indian House of Dosas, and I loved the food so much that I almost licked my fingers and plates clean at the end of the meal. We had two tiffin combo plates of idli, vada, pongal, poori, and masala dosa, which came with peanut chutney, coconut chutney, a rare but interesting ginger-tamarind-jaggery chutney, sambar, and a semolina halwa. And they cost $12-13 for each combo! Along with two Madras style filter coffees and a mango lassi, tax, and a 20% tip, we paid $48. And I was stuffed to the brim at the end of the meal. The food was so fresh, well spiced, and flavorful. I really though the medu vada we had were some of the best I could have had in my life; they were all clearly made to order and extremely fresh. The vada were so hot that they felt like they came straight out of the fryer. If this place were close by to us, I’d likely want food from here at least once a week. I’m still thinking about it long after we have left.

Pre-baby, I would have been happy to occasionally go all out and make dosas and their fermented batter, along with the different chutneys. I did it a number of times, including one interesting variation with a quinoa dosa, which Chris begrudgingly admitted was good. But now, it’s such an event with all the different steps and endless little side dishes. I’d rather just leave it up to the professionals now. Maybe one day I will revisit it, but probably not anytime soon unless something inspires me.

Workplace appreciation: holiday gifts

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Two nights ago, I was getting ready for my nightly candle and reading time before bed when I was going through my small candle collection. I came across a candle that was gifted to me by my former boss at my current company (she’s still at the company, and we still chat all the time). It was a soy candle with a pleasant floral fragrance. I remember it came as part of a larger gift set that she sent as a holiday gift just over two years ago, created by a company that is women-owned and run (of course, she would have the forethought to research this before choosing team holiday gifts). It arrived beautifully packaged with a heartfelt card she sent to thank me for all my hard work over the last year. I also remember I was on maternity leave when I received the gift.

A lot of people in general take for granted corporate gifts and holiday gifts; they’re just things that are given and done as a generic token of appreciation. But since I started at my current company, it suddenly dawned on me that for my entire career to date, which spans five different companies, that my current company is the only company I’ve ever worked for that did company-sponsored holiday gifts for employees. It’s the only company that thought that giving a token of appreciation at the end of year to employees was valued and necessary, and so the expense was deemed worth it. Two companies ago, when I was a manager, I became a manager in my third year at the company. In that year, management decided that managers would be responsible for choosing team gifts for everyone on their teams during the holiday season. The catch? The managers of the teams were responsible for paying for the gifts out of their own pockets, so I had to pool money with the two other managers on my team to buy gifts for my direct reports. I don’t remember how much I was forced to pay out of pocket, but it was at least $110-150. That’s on top of any holiday/Christmas gifts I spent on my own family and friends that year. And it was not fun. Why should individual managers be responsible for paying for holiday gifts on behalf of the company when the employer is too cheap to foot the bill for these things? The individual contributors aren’t working for the managers; they’re working for the company.

So I lit the candle that was gifted to me by my former boss that night and gave thanks for working at a company that values its employees and shows it through these gifts. I’ve gotten a lot of gifts while working here, not just during the holiday season, and I’ve never taken any of them for granted. I have a lot to be thankful for where I currently work. There are so many terrible companies that don’t value their employees out there and do nothing to give thanks for their hard work. I’ve worked for many of them. And these companies all need to go evolve or die.

Good in-laws, bad in-laws

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Today is my mother-in-law’s 67th birthday. Since she’s in Melbourne, time-wise, she is ahead of us, so we called her on Whatsapp video last night to wish her a happy birthday. Pookster was acting a bit faux-shy, and despite our practicing saying “Happy birthday, Suma!” the night before, Kaia didn’t really carry this through on the call.

Earlier in the day, I was rummaging through a drawer I rarely go into, and I found a bunch of random knick-knacks that Chris’s mom had gifted me over the years. Some were from travels, while others were gifts just-because. Amongst these items were a maple leaf painted case to store tiny items, a carved moose envelope opener, and an outdoor-themed notepad. She had also given me a number of kitchen items, ranging from a collapsible cloth bread “basket” she got in Portugal, cute character designed bag clamps from Korea, and a set of French cheese knives she picked up while in France. Everywhere she went, she seemed to think of me and get me something, even if it seemed completely random or impractical; it’s the thought that counts at the end of the day. She never had to get me anything, ever. I always thought it was cute… even if I never used most of the items in a practical way.

I told Chris about how I found the moose envelope opener. “It’s such a random thing to give!” I exclaimed, smirking and then laughing. “Who uses letter openers anymore?”

“Well, the drawer full of stuff I’ve gotten from your parents…. well, it’s empty except for one San Francisco hat,” Chris retorted.

Part of me chuckled when he said this, but part of me just felt annoyed. Chris and I have been together over 12 years now. My parents are really so divorced from reality that they have no idea how little regard they have had for their one son-in-law. My parents have never wished Chris a happy birthday or a merry Christmas. They have never given him any gifts whatsoever, other than the San Francisco Giants hat they gave him the very first time they all met. While they have paid for some meals for him, there was always a hidden cost: getting angry at me later for him NOT paying the bill, accusing him of “taking them for granted,” or insisting whatever Chris had paid for them was insignificant or “nothing” compared to whatever they’d made up in their head that they’d done for him. They never call, text, or email him to say anything at all, or even just to check in to see how he’s doing. Yet my mom remains delusional, saying that Chris’s parents “do shit” for me and that they treat Chris far better than his parents will ever treat me. Nothing could be farther from the truth: as far as I am concerned, Chris pretty much doesn’t have parents-in-law considering they have pretty much no interaction ever.

While Chris gets annoyed by this, occasionally, his mom will text or email me directly to check in with me to see how things are going, how Kaia is, and how work is going for both of us. And she doesn’t just ask high level and generic “how are you?” questions, but instead, she asks specific questions, like about Kaia’s school applications, my work promotion and what that means for my job, or Chris’s job search. When people ask you specific, detailed questions about your life, it’s because there’s real concern and love; otherwise, why would they take the time to ask, or, why would they even care to hear about it at all? Chris gets annoyed because he thinks it’s a bit intrusive or nosy, but what he doesn’t seem to recognize is that his mom doesn’t have to check in with me… at all. She doesn’t need to reach out to me directly without him involved. She has no obligation to have a separate relationship with me. She does all this because she genuinely wants to and cares (plus, she wants in on information that Chris doesn’t willingly share, but that’s another story). These are all the things Chris’s parents do for me that my parents would never do for him. I think it’s something to be happy about and grateful for.

There are the good in-laws, and there are the bad in-laws. Chris’s parents are the ones to model behavior from. My parents are an example of how not to be an in-law.

High-end candles: a sign of being in my 30s

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On Saturday, I was supposed to take my friend on a food crawl around Jackson Heights as a day out during her visit. Unfortunately, the weather had other plans for us. I didn’t want to deal with the stroller in pouring rain, nor did I want to risk experiencing any subway flooding, so I suggested to my friend that we have lunch at the Singporean Urban Hawker center instead, and then figure things out from there. The MoMa, which was our original after-lunch plan, was immediately x-ed out: the line wrapped around TWO BLOCKS, even with the pouring rain. So instead, we went window shopping at Nordstrom and in Time Warner Center instead. We spent at least 15 minutes inhaling every Voluspa candle on display in the home wares section; the Saijo Persimmon and Mokara were definitely my favorites. I told my friend about how I’ve been burning a scented soy or coconut wax candle every night the last few months while I’m reading before bed. Everyone likes the mood and ambiance that real lit candles bring, and the scent is always soothing at bedtime.

My friend laughed. “This is such a sign you are in your 30s; only people in their 30s-plus can appreciate high-end, fancy candles!” she said. She agreed, though, and said that she also started appreciating them in the last few years.

Okay, so maybe it is true. In my twenties, I never thought anything of candles and didn’t understand how they could be so expensive. I didn’t understand how Diptyque could have multiple boutiques across New York City, JUST selling one item (candles!). It always evaded my comprehension. Then, I didn’t understand the difference between paraffin and soy/coconut wax. The idea of spending $50-75 on a candle was insane to me. Now, while I still think that price point is high, I do appreciate them so much more. A high quality, perfumed candle is not just a thing, an object to display in your home; it’s also an experience, a somewhat sensual one at that. The one candle I own now that I did buy before I turned 30 was a lavender soy candle purchased at a Tasmanian lavender farm in December 2015. I still burn it occasionally and am obsessed with the scent, though I am sad I’m reaching its end. What was also remarkable about this candle was that despite it being very high quality and having a good “throw” (that is candle speak for “the scent travels through the room it’s in and isn’t weak”), it was actually quite inexpensive in U.S. dollars after the conversion from AUD. Now, I may end up seeking high quality, scented candles elsewhere where I can get them cheaper. 🙂

“Don’t hit me,” says your toddler

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The other day, I was changing Kaia’s diaper at our changing station, and she was being extremely unruly. It’s clear that she hates having her diaper changed now, and she’s increasingly becoming more self conscious of wearing a diaper as well as her poops. She was moving around precariously and squirming everywhere, which wasn’t fun for me considering it was a huge poop diaper. She ended up smearing poop on the changing pad cover and all over her legs; this was not fun for me. She flipped herself over, butt in the air, and just lay there, staring up at me as though she was just a little angel. I looked at her sternly, then tapped my finger on her back firmly.

“That is very naughty, Pookster,” I said to her.

Kaia looked up at me with a serious face. “Don’t hit me!” she exclaimed, turning away from me. “Don’t do that… AGAIN!”

Wait, what? Did she seriously just say that I HIT her? I tapped her back, and she thinks I actually hit her…? My child thinks that I hit her….!!!!

And then it occurred to me that this was probably language the teachers use at school when the kids get chaotic and start hitting each other. And Kaia was just parroting her teachers. But it still didn’t make me feel good. What if one day, she randomly decides to tell a teacher at school that “mommy hit me,” and then they call Child Protective Services on us, and someone has to come “observe” us at home? Talk about a nightmare waiting to happen!

Chinese cuisine: a cuisine that deeply appreciates textures and “delights”

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Back in high school, I remember a friend that I made in journalism who was a third-generation Italian American. Her mom used to make the most incredible Italian-American feasts, many of which I was invited over to enjoy for their annual Christmas celebration each year. Although she loved food, she mostly really loved Western European food and found a lot of things about Cantonese Chinese food so puzzling. At that time, most of the Chinese people in our high school were Cantonese, and most of the Chinese restaurants in the city were also Cantonese. One day, she went on a rant against bean sprouts, also known as mung bean sprouts, especially in “Chinese chicken salad.” She was debating the idea of them to several of us in the room, most of us being Chinese.

“I just don’t understand bean sprouts!” she exclaimed, annoyed, picking them out of the salad she had purchased from the food court at Stonestown Galleria, the mall next to our high school. “They have absolutely NO flavor and add nothing to this salad at all!”

I looked at her, a bit amused. “They don’t have much flavor, yes, but they add a really nice crunch to the salad.”

“Who cares?” she retorted, clearly not liking my response. “It has no flavor, so it serves NO purpose in this or anything!”

What I didn’t realize then, but I realize now, is that to many non-Chinese or non-Asians, the concept of something being “delicious” is directly related only to a flavor. So if something does not have an actual distinct taste, there is no way that something can be delicious. Adding texture doesn’t add “flavor,” and therefore isn’t valued in western food. But to the average Chinese chef or Chinese person who appreciates food, texture is actually extremely important and part of what makes something “delicious.” The root of the word “delicious” is actually “delight,” as Fuchsia Dunlop so eloquently explains in her latest book, Invitation to a Banquet. So for something to be delicious, it doesn’t necessarily have to have a “taste,” but instead, it just needs to bring delight — if you stick with the definition of the word. Chinese people appreciate all textures, whether it’s a crispiness from a just deep-fried prawn, the crackle of a roast chicken skin, or the creamy wobble of a custard. Those are textures that Westerners generally appreciate. However, what Chinese people appreciate that the average Westerner will not are textures like the sliminess of taro (I LOVE THIS), or the crispiness of silver ear fungus (a clear fungus/mushroom that is oftentimes in Chinese tonic or dessert soups that I grew up with, but has virtually no flavor whatsoever; I had an addiction to this stuff as a teenager).

Fuchsia Dunlop asserts that one is unable to fully begin appreciating Chinese cuisine if one is not able to appreciate mouth feel, or what Chinese refer to as 口感, or kǒugǎn. You must be able to appreciate the pleasure of texture, otherwise Chinese food in its purest, most authentic forms will be incomprehensible to you. As someone who studied 3.5 years of Mandarin Chinese in college and grew up knowing how to speak Toisan and understand some Cantonese, I will never be fully fluent or literate in the language. But even if I were, I found out that even the most fluent, literate Chinese person may not even know how rich their language is, as there is an endless lexicon of Chinese words not just for “mouth feel” but also for different ways of cutting and cooking foods that are unique by REGION or town of China; a Sichuanese chef may have specific words for julienning vegetables that just do not translate up north in Beijing! I was just blown away by this part of the book.

One of the great interpreters of Chinese culture for western readers Lin Yutang wrote in his book My Country and My People: “If there is anything we are serious about, it is neither religion nor learning, but food. We openly acclaim eating as one of the few joys in this human life.” So I thought back to my high school friend’s diatribe against mung bean sprouts while reading the section about mouth feel. I hope she has moved on from her narrow view of bean sprouts and embraced the texture; who knows, maybe since then, she’s actually eaten more varieties of Chinese food and gets why that “crunch” is important in the context of that salad. But if she hasn’t, I suppose she will just be one of the many westerners who is never able to fully embrace Chinese food due to her own mental block the way Fuchsia subtly warns against.

A home cooked meal = a simple pleasure

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Since college, I always knew that once I graduated and started living on my own that I’d cook most meals at home. While cost is certainly something to think about because no one has unlimited funds, that was actually never my first concern. My first thought was about knowing what I was eating and what was going into it; almost all pre-made food outside, whether it’s pre-made food at a grocery store or takeout from a restaurant, will have far more salt, oil/fats, sugar, or all the above added to it. Oftentimes weird preservatives with names that no one knows how to pronounce are used to keep things edible longer. And in a food supply as frustrating as this country’s, I think we’d all be healthier and happier if we ate more home cooked meals. I did exactly what I thought I’d do: since I moved to New York, I cook most of my meals. It helps, of course, that I love cooking and find it very fun and therapeutic. And with tiny human in the house, I really want to make sure the majority of her food is homemade, too. So it’s easy for me to forget sometimes that for the average American, they are *not* eating homemade meals as the majority of their diet. And then somehow, I get surprised, and then I forget once again.

My friend is in town visiting from the Bay Area for the next several days. We ate out together on Thursday night, and on Friday, I suggested that she come over for dinner. I’d make food, but we’d also get a couple dishes for takeout from a nearby spot. On Thursday during our meal, she told me that she and her boyfriend, who she lives with, rarely cook at home and eat pretty much all their meals out. They barely have any food in the fridge, and their pantry is pretty bare. So I hoped she’d appreciate the home cooked meal more given this. For dinner on Friday, I made za’atar roasted chicken thighs with lemons and red onions, Middle Eastern-style eggplant with tahini sauce, steamed beets, charred bok choy with Sichuanese chili crisp, and pea pulao. Chris ordered some lamb manti from a nearby Turkish restaurant. We had freshly cut mangoes and pineapple for dessert. It was kind of a hodge podge of dishes without a real united theme, but I figured it would all still be tasty. While my friend enjoyed all the food, surprisingly enough, what she seemed to enjoy the most (and had fourth helpings of!) were the steamed beets. It was, by far, the simplest, easiest thing on the table, yet she was obsessed with them.

I always forget that the simplest dishes seem to please people the most. But I was happy to feed my friend a homemade meal since she doesn’t get them very often at all. Though I do hope, for her own health, that she and her boyfriend will try to make more food at home, even if it’s an activity they can do together. It would help them spend less money and also be more healthy. Who doesn’t want to be healthier and spend less money on frivolous things?

Kindness: often appreciated, not often duplicated enough

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I was on a work call earlier this week with a customer who I was meeting for the very first time. He actually let me know that he was leaving the company in two weeks, but not by his own choice. The company was going through a reduction-in-force (RIF), aka a layoff, and unfortunately, he was one of the unlucky “chosen” ones. He had been at the company for over 40 years and never worked anywhere else; he said he wasn’t sure what his next steps were going to be and who would want to hire someone at his age. We spoke a bit about that and I shared my concern and tried to wish him the best.

“Yvonne, I’ve just met you, but you have really made my day,” he said. “I really mean it. Not to say that people at your company aren’t kind, but you are incredibly kind, and I will remember your kindness. I feel like even though I just met you, we already really know each other. It’s really going to help me get through the day and my remaining days here.”

It’s so easy to be kind and supportive, whether it’s for a second or a minute, whether it’s leaving a door open for someone, helping someone with something they’ve dropped on the street, or even saying a few supportive words in a time of vulnerability. Not everyone does this, though, because they think it’s “an extra effort,” an inconvenience, or just won’t be received well. But when this man said this to me, I could tell he really meant what he said. We’re essentially strangers on a video call who will unlikely ever meet each other in person, yet he said my words really helped him. Sometimes, it really is the small gestures that we perform that stay with people. And they really are worth the extra effort or seconds it takes us to do them. As much negativity is shared on social media and in the news, I feel like almost every day, someone random on the street, all strangers, does kind things for me, whether it’s a little smile, making extra space for me in a crowded elevator, playing peek-a-boo with Kaia to get her to cheer up in the midst of a tantrum on the train, or assisting me with the door at the daycare when I’m struggling to keep the door open while also getting the stroller in/out (and they’re just a passerby, not even someone trying to get in/out of the school!).

Kindness is its own circular economy, one that each of us needs to contribute to in order to create a better world for us all.

Cheerios and Quaker Oats linked to reproductive issues – God help us all in America

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Even when you try to be healthy in the U.S., you are still slowly killing yourself.

CBS recently reported a study that a chemical called chlormequat has been detected in 92 percent of non-organic oat-based foods that were tested in May 2023. This includes mainstream foods that many Americans, especially young children, eat, including Quaker Oats and General Mills’ Cheerios. Chlormequat has been found in studies to damage our reproductive systems and to disrupt fetal growth in animals. The chemical is supposed to only be used on ornamental plants only, not on food crops. Yet somehow, the chemical is being used as a growth regulator for the commercial production of grains to make it easier to harvest crops.

It’s deeply unfortunate and horribly infuriating to learn of this news. We are just getting through a 10-pound package of oats that are Quaker brand. We’ve been buying Cheerios for Kaia since spring of last year since Solid Starts had said that of all the “O” cereals available that Cheerios had the highest amount of vitamin/minerals being fortified in it. Even when you are trying to do the right thing by feeding yourself and your children seemingly “healthy” foods, we are still damaging our bodies. It’s like we can’t trust anything in the food supply in this damn country. Now, I need to switch to organic-only oats and an organic version of an “O” cereal – this will obviously be more expensive, but I need to have better peace of mind around this crap. And you know what that means: if only those who can afford it can have healthy, organic, “clean” food, then we’re in a truly screwed up state of this country where the poor and less fortunate are left to suffer.