Extroverted introvert

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This week, I’ve spent four intense days in our San Francisco office, and also at our offsite at the Grand Hyatt in downtown with my team coming from across the globe. It’s been extremely enjoyable for me to connect in person, in meetings and over tea and meals, with my colleagues, some of whom I call friends. It’s been non-stop catch-ups and walks with so many people since I’ve arrived. I love seeing colleagues and friends I have not seen in a while and reconnecting with them. I enjoy sharing random anecdotes, travel and customer stories, and laughing about ridiculous experiences. I love learning new things about people that I didn’t know before. I’m always curious to find out more about everyone, to uncover the things that others do not know. As an extrovert, I derive so much energy in the presence of others, particularly those I find intellectually stimulating, humorous, and fun to be around. But as an introvert, when all of this is done, as it is for me tonight as I am headed to the airport to return back to New York on a red eye, I relish my alone time and enjoy not speaking to anyone, putting my earbuds in and listening to my book or my music. I enjoy being in the company of no one I recognize or know, and not being obligated to speak to anyone or have any type of conversation. Though I am the type of person who enjoys striking up conversations with complete strangers, when I’m in transit, especially when flying, I’d prefer not to chat at all unless it’s initiated by someone else.

I feel my extrovert and introvert all the time. They’re not necessarily at odds, but while some like the labels of being one or the other, I feel very firmly in the center of both.

Some edibles gone wrong

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I unknowingly accompanied some colleagues to a dispensary after our company happy hour en route to El Farolito in the Mission last night. I didn’t realize what he was talking about when he said he was going to “buy flowers.” He named the place, and to me, it sounded like a bar. So I thought, sure, I could hang out at another bar before my burrito!

I walked in, got IDed, and immediately knew this was not a bar. They were there to buy weed and gummy edibles, and I was just there for the ride. We walked into the smoking parlor next door, and they all began to smoke and eat their gummies. I was debating whether I wanted to try them. I’d had a puff here and there before, but it was never enough (or, well, strong enough) to do anything for me, so I never really cared for it. When I was in first grade, my dad enrolled me i an anti-drug program where I’d get pulled out of class for a few hours each week to attend lessons on why drugs were bad for me, and why I should never try them. Since then, I’d had no fascination with any recreational drugs even though I could easily have gotten access to them. And to this day, I can say with complete honesty that I’ve never even smoked a cigarette. It just doesn’t interest me. And the smell is absolutely hideous to me.

But today, I just thought, meh. I can do this. I’m 32. What’s the big deal, anyway? People take this stuff to relax, as medication. I can do this just fine. And so, I did, and also had a gummy. I was already relaxed from the two cocktails I had at happy hour, but then after this, I felt even more mellow and happy. Hmmm. This isn’t so bad, I thought. I won’t do this often, anyway, so it’s not a big deal.

We went and had our super sized quesadillas with shrimp and steak. I enjoyed my horchata. Then, we went back to the hotel. It wasn’t even 10:30 and I was already sleeping.

Well, then I woke up at 3am with agonizing pain in my left lymph node. My lymph node was swelling, clearly enlarged like a golf ball, and it felt like there was liquid moving around in it. The whole left side of my face hurt. Opening my mouth was painful. I applied some cold compresses to it to make it feel better, but the pain was not residing. Great, I thought. This is what I get for taking what is supposed to be legal recreational drugs in the state of California while in California. Please go back to sleep, fall asleep, let the pain go away, I kept thinking.

I eventually did fall back asleep. When I woke up, the swelling had gone down, but the pain was definitely still there. If someone were to poke me right there, I’d probably scream.

Is the moral of the story here to never do this ever again? Or did I just finally have access to the “good stuff” as some of my colleagues called it to elicit a reaction from my body like that?

 

 

Not all Asian people look the same, and the failure of “Diversity Inclusion”

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Within an hour yesterday of arriving at our company’s headquarters in San Francisco, I was chatting with a few of my local colleagues when one of my Amsterdam colleagues walked up to me to hug me, and he said, “I just saw you three weeks ago, and we meet yet again!”

I was so confused. I hadn’t been in the SF office since February when we had our annual sales kickoff. What was he referring to? “No, I haven’t been here since February,” I responded, unsure of what he was referring to.

“Yes, you were here three weeks ago!” this Dutch colleague insisted. “We were working on our side project together.”

And that’s when it hit me. Damnit. He’s mistaking me for another colleague… who is very likely another Asian female.

Our colleague visiting from London knew immediately who he was mistaking me for. He pulled me aside later and said, “(Insert Dutch colleague’s name) thought you were Diana,” he said in a hushed voice.

So, that’s when I decided to post on our company’s Diversity Inclusion Slack channel this message:

“So @jess asked me to be more vocal on this channel given my experiences in general, and so I think now that it’s my first day back at Optimizely SF since February…maybe I can ask this question: Should I be getting used to the fact that as an Asian American woman at this company that I should be confused for other Asian women repeatedly?”

It received a lot of reactions, many of which were other people of color getting mistaken for other people of a similar color. It was just so stupid and senseless. No response from HR was seen, just more outrage from other employees who were not white.

We have a diversity inclusion group at work, which frankly, is more for show and venting than it is for actually solving issues around diversity in the workplace. To make matters worse, it’s only in San Francisco, which is our headquarters. As one of my colleagues said to me when I shared this repeated experience of getting mistaken for other Asian female employees, our company fails to handle diversity management in a productive way that actually effects change. This Slack channel is mainly a steam valve to let people complain together. If our Human Resources team were serious about doing something, they would hire outside professionals to not only come in and do these trainings, but also advise HR on how to handle these issues, as they will constantly come up.

But, that isn’t happening. So, I will continue to be mistaken for other Asian females, and other Asian females will get mistaken for me. Because in a white people world, all people of color look the same to them. We’re not individuals. We’re just a single race duplicated into multiple bodies.

 

My brother stood out.

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After lunch at home with my parents yesterday, we went to the Columbarium to visit Ed. After spending some time cleaning the glass of his niche and peering into the little world I built for him, it was time to bid him farewell for now. On our way out, I went into the main building and ended up meeting the new family service counselor. She’d actually been there for a couple years now, and we had just not met yet. Part of her job is to go around to each of the halls in the Columbarium to do routine checks of each niche to make sure each is in good shape. She asked me what my brother’s name is, and I told her. “Edward?” she repeated, surprised. “Wait, is he in the Hall of Olympians? He’s the one who has the Simpsons family with him?”

I almost lost my breath. I just stared at her and felt chills all over my body. How is it possible that in what is probably thousands of niches throughout this historic building that she could remember Ed’s over all of the others?

When she first began about two years ago, she walked around and browsed the niches, trying to get a feel for the place that she called her new workplace. She said she immediately noticed Ed’s niche. Ed’s niche was the one that touched her the most, and she kept wondering what happened to him and what the stories were behind the Simpsons and the other trinkets that decorated the surrounds of his urn.

She said that she felt for me because she also lost a sibling recently, as well. A couple of years ago, she was on a family vacation with her four siblings and parents when suddenly, one of her sisters was found dead in her hotel room by their father. She was just 34. “34?” I said. “Ed was just a month shy of his 34th birthday when he died.” Our eyes just locked. “That is just too strange, too much of a coincidence,” she responded pensively. Her sister also had a decades long struggle with depression. Another sister had attempted suicide. It was all too real for her, too.

She told my dad and me that we did a really good job decorating Ed’s niche. My dad shifted a bit and cracked a little smile. “Well, that was all Yvonne,” my dad said, looking down, still smiling. “Yvonne did everything and organized it all for him.”

“Well, then, you did a really great job,” she said to me. “I don’t think you realize how many people you unknowingly touch and how they can feel your brother through his niche.”

She said she was so happy we met, and that she got to meet the person who decorated that memorable niche. I’m still feeling strange that this meeting occurred, that we have these tragic commonalities, that she was so touched by my brother’s niche that she’d remember it and say it stood out from the others. I wonder if Ed was listening to that conversation.

This used to be my garden

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When I was little, I used to spend a lot of time in the backyard of my family’s house. Then, when I was wee tall, it felt like a big garden, a place full of mysteries and things to be uncovered. I played with different bugs, chased butterflies, smashed snails (no one likes these hideous things eating our plants), dug holes and buried things. I occasionally tried to grow plants. Some worked out (snow peas, cherry tomatoes, and some didn’t (endless variety of flower seeds that I cannot even remember all their names). I rode my tricycle in ovals around it, failingly attempted to learn how to bike in it (it was too small), and horsed around with my brother and our super soakers. When Willie, my incredibly intelligent pet parakeet, was around for seven years, he used to sun, sing, and take little bird baths out there and keep me company. Once, he even escaped from his cage and chased a hummingbird. That yard is full of fond memories for me. It was like my happy place in a not so happy home. My grandma made that yard into a true garden filled with gladiolus, birds of paradise, Chinese new year pink blossoms, her very proud apple tree (which produced dry and tasteless apples, but at least it looked good), Asiatic lilies, dahlias, and other gorgeous plants.

Once she died, the garden died. The entire place went into disrepair because my mom didn’t have the time to maintain it, and my dad didn’t care to take care of it even though he talked about caring about it. Weeds overtook the blossoms, and the flowers gradually stopped blooming. My dad occasionally tried his hand at things like rhododendron, lilies, hybrid tea roses, and star jasmine, but it never really stuck. The place of calm and beauty that was once a part of that house was gone.

When I came back home this morning after an early morning flight, I went downstairs into the yard. It just looks worse and worse every time I go home: the fences bordering off neighbors are chipping and discolored. Piles and piles of dirt are everywhere. It’s weeds galore no matter where you look. What was once grass is now a bunch of yellowed, hay-like crunchy stuff. But there are some hints of life of things my dad has tried and successfully grown, such as rosemary, English lavender, and a single Double Delight hybrid tea rose shrub that is managing to survive despite having most of its leaves covered in some speckled black disease. There’s even a beautiful cymbidium orchid that is now blooming in the corner of the yard, away from what you’d see when you take a quick glance around. It still looks like hell, though. This is certainly no garden or paradise, and I’m certain if my grandma were to be reawakened from the dead to see the state of her yard, she’d probably drop dead on the spot.

It’s strange, though, to think that this yard used to feel so big to me, and now it feels so small. Yes, I’m bigger and obviously an adult now; decades have passed since I used to spend long hours out here. But the way I look at it is so different, everything from the size to the scale to even the way the apple tree and the fences look. It used to be so comforting, a mini escape. But now, it’s not happy anymore. It’s depressing and not even a fraction of what it used to be to me.

It’s like that Madonna song “This Used to Be My Playground,” with the chorus that goes:

This used to be my playground (used to be)
This used to be our pride and joy
This used to be the place we ran to
That no one in the world could dare destroy
This used to be our playground (used to be)
This used to be our childhood dream
This used to be the place we ran to
I wish you were standing here with me

It’s all been destroyed.

Memories, the colors of my mind

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Chris and I met my friend for afternoon drinks and an early dinner this afternoon. This friend and I met about seven years ago during the summer at another mutual friend’s housewarming party, and we clicked immediately when we met. We had a lot of interests and outlooks in common, and it just felt really easy to spend time together. And unlike so many other people I’ve met in New York City since I moved here about ten years ago, he wasn’t flaky and always committed to spending time with me. It was a refreshing friend experience to have in a city that is so full of people, yet at the same time, ironically, can  feel so lonely.

It’s another bittersweet period, though, because he’s now leaving us for a new job in Seattle. His girlfriend will be joining him by the end of the year, so that’s another set of friends I am (at least locally) saying farewell to. When he messaged to tell me he got the job offer and would be moving this month, the selfish part of me felt so sad. I spent some time reflecting on our shared memories together, even the awkward times when I was not in a relationship, his was ending, and I wasn’t quite clear if he had feelings for me or not that went beyond friends. I still remember one thing he said to me that made me smile and feel so odd… seven years ago. We were talking about our full names and what their origins were. We discussed how my first name was chosen, and that my middle name is Vietnamese.

“Your first name is French, your middle name is Vietnamese, and your last name of Chinese. Your name is like the United Nations!”

He’d likely never remember he said this, but I still remember this quote and smile to this day. I wasn’t sure if that was meant to be a flirtatious comment, but it made me feel weird nonetheless. Those words, that sentiment, stayed with me.

I used to tease him about always alluding to things but never actually digging deeper. “What are you, like a robot?” I would say, smiling and laughing. I knew he was capable of having emotion, but he didn’t like to express it, and when he did, it was obvious he was being asked to exit his comfort zone. I realized later it was a defense mechanism he admitted to using so that he wouldn’t get attached to people, especially as someone who had a childhood where he always had to move for his father’s job every few years, which spanned not just cities, but countries. It was too painful to become close to people and be forced to part ways at any given moment. He eventually did open up a bit and gave me credit for trying. He also tried to get to know me more. I was never one for superficial relationships. As a close friend of mine once observed and said to me, “You’re such an intense personality; you will either go all in or not go at all.”

He even called me when I broke up with my last boyfriend that year. He was texting me because he knew the day we’d meet to break up, and we talked on the phone for a good hour while I was in San Francisco and he was in New York. It was so late where he was, but he stayed up just to talk to me. I think of these moments now and wonder what was going through his mind then. But then, it seems silly to think about because our lives are in such different places now; we’ve both changed jobs twice since then, I got into a relationship immediately after, then got married; he started his own relationship that had its ups and downs. They bought an apartment. Chris and I moved into a new apartment. He and Chris didn’t originally get along. Now, they do just fine. A lot has changed. I wonder what it would be like if we had a “trip down memory lane” conversation and how that might actually go.

Time goes on. Life goes on. Memories, as Barbra Streisand sang, are the colors of my mind, of the way we were. But life doesn’t stop for these memories or thinking of the past. Instead, it drags us by the legs to open the doors to our future, which will become new memories for us.

Modern poetry

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A couple of months ago, I was at an Amazon book store at the Time Warner Center perusing different books, and I came across a collection of poetry by Rupi Kaur, a 20-something best-selling Canadian-Indian poet-illustrator-performer who travels the world sharing her poetry and doing spoken word. She made a name for herself via social media, particularly her Instagram posts, which juxtapose both her poetry and her illustrations. I wasn’t sure what to make of her until I realized I’d read a few of her short poems before. These are some examples (they are much more effective with their accompanying illustrations, though, as the illustrations are meant to heighten the feelings derived from the words):

the irony of loneliness

is we all feel it

at the same time

together

 

Then, there’s this one:

i don’t know what living a balanced life feels like

when i am sad

i don’t cry i pour

when i am happy

i don’t smile i glow

when i am angry

i don’t yell i burn

the good thing about feeling in extremes is

when i love i give them wings

but perhaps that isn’t

such a good thing cause

they always tend to leave

and you should see me

when my heart is broken

i don’t grieve

i shatter

Rupi Kaur gets a lot of criticism from people who view poetry and writing in a more traditional way, but I think part of her appeal is her simplicity, the fact that she uses simplicity to push meaning and emotion onto you very quickly, and what better and more effective way of doing this than doing it via an Instagram post in 2018? In today’s world, attention spans are shrinking; so few people I know even properly read news articles from start to finish, even the shortest ones, and even just skim headlines (yes, not even read headlines in full).

One of the few modern day poets who has been able to make a comfortable living I’ve read, Billy Collins, who is also a former poet laureate of the U.S., was once quoted having said, “Certainly one thing a poem can do is give you an imaginative pleasure by taking you places very suddenly that prose can’t take you, because poetry enjoys the broadest and deepest and highest and most thrilling level of imaginative freedom of any of the written arts … (poetry) connects you with the history of human emotion. That’s why at critical points in our lives, at funerals or weddings or other rituals, often a poem is read. The poem shows us that these emotions, love and grief, have been going on through the centuries; and that the emotion we’re feeling today is not just our own emotion, it’s the human emotion.”

I think this holds true with Rupi Kaur — her words, however short, however sliced into whatever lines and italics and lack of punctuation that people want to slam, immediately inject emotion into you. These words, reduced down to their purest form, can take the most emotionally numb out of that state and make them feel once again. And that’s poetry.

Derailed sunrise

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I set my alarm for 6:30am in hopes of watching the sun rise over the East Coast in Miami this morning, but was disappointed when instead, I was awoken by the sound of thunder and rain on my hotel windows about half an hour before. I looked outside and saw dark grey clouds and realized that my desires for a gorgeous early morning sun and sky would not be satiated this trip. It was the first time I’d been to Miami and seen this type of miserable weather.

The last two weeks in Miami, according to my customers in the area, have been dreary, grey, muggy, and needless to say, unpleasant. Miami residents are so used to clear blue skies and the sun that when periods like this descend over their palm tree-lined city, they start getting depressed. And hurricane season is nearing us in a couple months in August, where they’ve all advised me to stay far, far away and to postpone any work visits until after the last month of summer has ended.

It’s funny to think that no matter where you go in this country, there’s some natural phenomenon that everyone loves to hate on who is not local: in Florida, there are hurricanes; in New York and the northeast in general, there are snow storms; in California, we have earthquakes. But the locals just think it’s another part of their lives and are unphased by them. It’s their reality. It’s like accepting that you will wake up every morning and sleep each night. Earthquakes don’t scare me as someone native to California, and snow storms are just another day in the life in New York City, especially since I don’t have to shovel or salt anything.

Between the World and Me

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This month, I’ve been slowly reading the journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book Between the World and Me, a collection of letters he’s written to his young son to prepare him to be a part of a world where white people dominate and black people have historically and through this day been discriminated against. It’s not a long book at all, but it’s one of those books that you have to digest a little bit at a time because its sentiments are very painful and raw. It’s taken me some time to fully take in what Coates is expressing. It’s a bit jarring to think that we live in a world where the color of our skin really matters so much  many decades after events such as the abolishment of slavery, the Civil Rights movement, and even having a half-black president of the U.S.

I’m disgusted, but not surprised, to see the negative reviews of white readers who have read Coates’s book on Amazon, stating that they felt that Coates was attacking them for being born white with inherent privilege, that they should feel guilty for being white and never knowing what it’s like to be discriminated based on skin color. It’s one thing to be aware of one’s privilege; it’s another thing to altogether act as though it does not exist and to be defensive about it. It’s as though they are blind to the pain of people of color solely because of their own privilege, or they choose not to see it. The inability to see what causes pain, even when it’s right in front of our eyes, is obviously a very human reaction, a sort of defense mechanism to protect oneself. But being defensive, however human that reaction is, fails to serve anyone well or to help our country or world progress. We need more empathy, a stronger and greater desire to understand the experiences we personally have not experienced ourselves, but experiences we are cognizant exist and are the everyday reality for others who look different from us, who lead completely different lives from us, who see the world through a different lens because their world, frankly, is not the same as ours, even though we may ignorantly believe we all live in the same reality.

This is one of those books that I think everyone should read, but I know not everyone will.

 

Potent dried chilies in transit

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Unfortunately, we had to depart Mexico City midday yesterday, and on our route back, we stopped over in Dallas. After going through Global Entry and clearing U.S. Customs, we re-entered domestic airport security to board our flight back to LaGuardia. For whatever reason, my big bag of chilies and other edibles I’d purchased in Mexico set off the security machine, and my backpack had to get inspected.

Of the edible delights I’d purchased in Oaxaca and Mexico City, I got dried chilies of the ancho rojo variety, which are dried poblanos known to be sweet and meaty, with a medium spice profile; morita, which are short, fat, smoked and dried jalapenos that are spicy, toasty, and roasty in flavor; pasilla, which are chocolate-colored, slender, and add richness without heat; and guajillo, which are a vibrant red hue with moderate heat, and slightly acidic in flavor. Of these, I’d used ancho and guajillo before, but the other two were new to me. They’re popularly used in moles, sauces, and various types of Mexican salsas. I also purchased three types of Mexican chocolate and some extremely fragrant and fresh dried oregano. The dried chilies’ fragrance was rich and unmistakable; they scented up all the clothes in my backpack, for better or for worse. As soon as the security agent unzipped my backpack, her eyes widened immediately, and she smiled and asked if these were dried chilies. I told her they were, and she asked where I was coming from. I told her, and she laughed. “Of course, these are from Mexico. This is potent stuff! The smell is so, so strong!”

I was so proud of my purchases. If I’d carried more than just my backpack and work carry-on, I definitely would have purchased more dried chilies, but alas, I had to exercise self-control in an effort to be a light packer. Chris made fun of me and likened me to an old grandma carrying a raw chicken across state lines. I’m just being an avid, international cook.