Today, we had brunch downtown with two of Chris’s brother’s friends who have moved here from Hong Kong (and are originally from Melbourne). Before they moved here, Chris had never met them, and this was my first time meeting the guy in the couple. It was hilarious to see exactly how much he has in common with Chris’s brother. The two of them have been friends for over ten years now, and they’re so similar. They both love sport. Their intonations are similar, and how they tell stories (long-winded, weaving in and out irrelevant past stories) are the same. Their Australian accents even sound the same. Even the way they pause and say, “uh/um” is the same! It’s as though I met Ben’s white Australian equivalent.

And after our brunch ended together, his wife says, “Yes, Chris is just like Ben,” but she’s obviously joking. They’re quite opposite, and the “opposite-ness” is even more pronounced when Chris is there.

“Do you think you’ll settle down here?”

“Are you planning to stay here and raise kids?”

“Do you foresee yourself going back to San Francisco and settling down?”

The question of “settling down” is constantly being asked of me; by friends, friends of friends, colleagues, Chris’s colleagues, Chris’s family and friends — you name it. Chris hates the idea of “settling down” because it’s almost like you’re resigning yourself to a life of monotony and the same ol’ same ol’ every single day, and that grates on his nerves.

So, it’s sad when we hear that two good friends of ours are leaving to “settle down” across the country in the Sacramento area. One of them will be leaving in a few weeks to start looking for a new job, and once he gets it, his wife will be joining him out there. It’s a bittersweet time for us given how much fun we’ve all had together the last two years.

But that’s life, right? People come and go, and especially in a city like New York, there are plenty of transients. That’s what cities like this are made of. We get bored of the people who are New York lifers and are attracted to the people who came here from other parts of the country and world. I suppose that’s how Chris and I came together.

We’re not really “settled down” yet. Maybe we never really will be. I hope we can find other people who aren’t yet “settled,” though, here.

One of the worst things about moving into our new apartment was having to deal with Con Edison, the crappy monopoly of an electricity and gas provider, again. While living on the Upper East Side, we paid a flat amount for electric and gas to our landlord, so we were completely oblivious to all the fluctuations, especially in the summer when we’d have the air conditioning on a lot. It was a really nice perk to not have to deal with yet another bill to pay, yet another provider to gauge us for money when we have literally zero other options to choose from.

So I was pretty mad when I received my bill for electricity late last month to find that it was 25 percent higher than what we paid for the average summer bill. That made zero sense. Why would the bill be higher during the winter than during the summer when gas, which provides us heat, is supposedly covered by our rent? Our building manager told me that they pay for the gas that provides the heat, but we pay for the unit that circulates that heat through the apartment. That still should mean that the bill should be higher during the summer than during the winter. And the bill breakdown was the stupidest: it said something to the effect of, “your bill is higher than average. Three percent can be attributed to weather changes, and 20 percent can be attributed to ‘miscellaneous.'” What the heck does “miscellaneous mean?

I called ConEd to speak with one of their service representatives, who basically told me that our bill is anticipated to be higher during the winter due to using our heat. We do not pay for gas in our building, I said to him. That makes no sense. You can see it right there in the bill — electricity only. I told him the inane breakdown on the actual bill, which contradicted what he literally just said, and he insisted it was correct. “Ms. Wong, we double checked your meter. Your bill is correct. Do you have any other questions for me?” I wanted to strangle the guy.

I just don’t get how people in services roles can be so flippant and incompetent. I work in a services role at a technology company, and if I operated that stupidly, I’d be out of a job.

This year for my birthday dinner with friends, I decided for the third year in a row to drag everyone out to Elmhurst again, and this time, it would be for Indonesian food. There really isn’t any Indonesian food in Manhattan, and even if there were, it would be much more expensive than in Elmhurst. With our party of nine including tax, tip, and a lot of Thai iced teas, we managed to spend just $22/person on dinner tonight. For the amount of food we had, I doubt we could have had a cheaper meal anywhere else. That’s the thing when you organize a group dinner: you want a place that is affordable and isn’t going to make anyone feel poor after.

No one gets excited about Elmhurst, but I still do because of the variety of the cuisines and food, the low price points relatively speaking, and… well, this was my original ‘hood when I moved to New York City. So it feels comfortable to me, like another home neighborhood in my heart. Even though I’m not close to my cousin who is here in New York, he’s actually the reason I even considered this neighborhood in the first place because he lived here, and I feel like I got a more “local” experience because of that. Locals know and would consider living in Elmhurst; people who move to New York for the first time would never even be aware that it existed. And.. it’s kind of their loss because of how rich the culture is there. I’m proud to have lived there for my first four years in New York and have zero regrets.

As an adult, I’ve gradually started learning to like a lot of things I never really was interested in at all as a child or teen. These things range from oysters (raw and cooked), stinky French cheeses (I love blue cheese now!), mustard (I especially like the French mustards… American mustard is still pretty boring to me), fois gras, and now, caviar. Caviar is one of those things that I’ve enjoyed the very few times I’ve had it, but I cannot really say that I fully appreciate it enough to say, spend $120 on a little tin of it every other month. Chris took me to L’Appart, an intimate Michelin-star rated French restaurant downtown in Brookfield place, to celebrate my birthday tonight, and one of the things they are known for is their caviar selection as a course you can choose before the actual tasting menu. The French caviar was served in its tin on ice, along with four long brick-like Brioche toasts that oozed with buttery richness, and a log of different toppings ranging from whipped avocado, hibiscus-pickled cippolini onions, to a chive-specked creme fraiche.

Each bite of caviar, on a spoon made of pearls, no less, was creamy, a bit briny, and decadent. I don’t know how we as human beings decided that fish eggs would be such an expensive delicacy, but I could certainly get used to enjoying this every now and then as a pure indulgence. Who knows what nutritional value these things have, anyway?