I went out to lunch with a group of colleagues today for a going-away celebration. The one who is leaving — she’s my age and in a semi-long-term relationship with a guy that so far, has lasted eight months (I say that because she said she doesn’t know how long this will last, and their upcoming five-day trip to Iceland together may be a maker or breaker of their relationship). An Australian colleague of ours asked if she thinks he may propose during the trip. My colleague responded and said she highly doubted it and would be completely shocked. In addition, she didn’t really care to get married anytime soon.

“The greatest thing about New York City is that you can be 48 and single, and no one cares!” the Aussie exclaimed, who is around 32 or 33. “You don’t need to get married! It’s so great here!”

We talked about friends or friends’ friends of ours who have gotten married much younger, anywhere from 18-25, many of whom are already divorced but with kids. “I just got bored of those people back home (in Brisbane, Australia) and outgrew them,” my Aussie colleague said. “That’s not the life I wanted, and I never want to go back, ever.”

To contrast this, I had dinner with a good friend of mine who is 38, single, and having really terrible luck finding someone just to date regularly. “What is wrong with women?” he said to me over dinner tonight. “They are so hard to read.” This friend really wants to get married…. like, five years ago. I wish had some normal, single girlfriends to set him up with, but unfortunately, my network is too small.

The last girl he saw is now officially history. They had two seemingly strong dates, which ended with her making comments like “I had an amazing time” and “That was the greatest date ever,” which somehow transformed in a few days to “I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

Sometimes, I would think it would be harder to be single and female given societal norms that men have to initiate everything from the first date to the marriage proposal. But when I see my friend flailing, I feel so sad for him and don’t know what to do. He’s a great guy — ultra successful in his career, progressive and egalitarian, has many hobbies including world travel and film producing, donates and contributes personal time to charities he is passionate about. To add to that, he’s also white and pretty darn tall (as sexist as this sounds, what woman doesn’t want to be with a tall guy?). There’s my Aussie colleague on the one hand, 33, single, and loving the New York City dating scene. Then, there’s my Pittsburgh-raised male friend, 38, single, and about to swear off women forever.

Human relationships are way too complicated. Maybe arranged marriage wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

My boss is on vacation this week, which means I am taking over most of her usual tasks and responsibilities, including approving last minute paid-time-off requests from her direct reports. One of them came to me today asking me if it would be all right to take two days off next week when he originally planned to work remotely. He gave a long-winded rationale as to why he needed to take the days off instead of working remotely, and I paused for a second, thinking in my head, why is this guy coming to ask me if it’s okay? And why does he feel the need to tell me a long explanation? I don’t care what the explanation is — just take the time off!

I’m clearly a product of my generation. In my parents’ active working days, they always had a very fixed (ten days, yep) number of days off in a year, and they always had to give a reason to take time off. Working remotely was not an option then (how do you cut a client’s glass remotely, in my dad’s case?), and in my mom’s very traditional company, she could never have done her secretarial duties from home. From an intuitive perspective, we’re all adults here, so why do we feel a need to explain why we are taking time off to our employers when it’s a right to take time off? It is so strange to me, and I always feel a little strange when people who report to me feel like they need to explain every single day off. Sure, if you want to tell me you’re going away for a wedding or for an African safari for conversational purposes or because you want me to get to know what you’re up to, I understand that. But to tell me as a reason because I need to think it’s “valid” is so odd to me. Everyone knows what work they have and don’t have and how much time they have to get things done. I just don’t think managers should make their employees feel like every day off needs that level of scrutiny.

When I was little and got sick (which was pretty often, sadly), my mom and grandma would prepare a host of different things for me to eat that would soothe and nourish me that I now look at as comfort foods, which include jook, plain clear Chinese soups, hot ginger-honey-lemon “tea,” and oddly enough, chicken noodle soup. Chicken noodle soup is the all-American comfort food, the one that Campbell’s soup commercials always featured on TV. The smell and taste of it were always so satisfying when I had it, regardless of whether my dad prepared it from scratch or if it was made the short cut way via store-bought chicken broth and fresh pieces of chicken and vegetables my mom would cut up. And then all my happy thoughts surrounding this soup were destroyed when Chris called it “absolute shit.”

His hate for chicken noodle soup is not against chicken or the broth itself; he claims he doesn’t like it because it’s so “bland and boring” compared to all the other soups out there in the world. However, when you’re sick, you don’t necessarily want super spicy, complex soups or cream-laden dishes, as these may unsettle your stomach. So despite knowing he claimed to dislike it, I still went to Sable’s this morning to pick up a quart of their homemade chicken noodle soup for him. He whined and whinged about it, but after I insisted it would be good for him and he tasted it, he said he wouldn’t mind having it again the next time he might get sick.

I love changing people’s minds about food. 🙂

Chris’s cousin is in town from London this weekend, so tonight we took him to the Comedy Cellar. It never fails to be a fun night that leaves my face hurting in the end from all the laughing that we do. One of the comedians in the line up was actually Ronny Chieng, who is a correspondent from The Daily Show who I really like. He spoke a lot about his initial confusion about Asian stereotypes… since in Malaysia, where he’s from, pretty much everyone is Asian, so why would they all make fun of themselves? What really made me think for a bit after his routine was an idea that he brought up that maybe one day, there could be a Chinese American president, and then Asian kids around the world could think, hey, maybe one day, that could be me!

It was a big deal when Barack Obama became the very first (half) black president of the United States. So many people were emotional and crying when he won the election, and then again at his inauguration. And today, it’s a huge deal now that Hillary Clinton is the first female presidential candidate of a major party in the U.S.; if she wins, I can imagine myself getting emotional about it because I could potentially have children who will be raised in a world that has already seen a female president of the U.S. So they may take it for granted. But a Chinese American president of the U.S. — that’s a hard one for me to see happen in my lifetime. Yes, Asian Americans do well from a socioeconomic stand point, but to have that type of visibility is generally not one that Asian Americans as a group seek out. Who knows — maybe it could happen, but my pessimistic side doubts it. In a world post having our first black president inaugurated, the tea party came about, the political parties have been more divided than I can remember in the last 30.5 years of my life, and Black Lives Matter is coming out against all the discrimination blacks face in our society. And then there are real people who believe that Donald Trump would be a great leader and take our country to a better place. This is a candidate who got the endorsement of the American Nazi Party. I don’t think the world (or really, the U.S.) is ready for an Asian American president.