Phone chat

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A friend and I were catching up over the phone the other day, and we ended up spending over three hours on the phone. I really didn’t think the call would last that long, maybe half as long at most. She’s my friend who wants to be friends with everyone, who wants to give everyone a chance to “hang out” because of her mindset that the more, the merrier. There were brief times in my life when I have agreed with this sentiment, but for the most part, I disagree.

She told me that as she has gotten older, she’s realized that sometimes she really doesn’t want to do any small talk to get to know a new person as bad as that sounded, that sometimes, she just wants to eat and drink with people she knows and ignore the people she doesn’t. Does that sound bad? She asked me.

Not really, I said. It just means you are getting older and have realize that you can’t be friends with everyone, nor do you want to be. It won’t bring more happiness. If anything, it just provides a false sense of security. How many of these people are going to really care or cry if we died tomorrow?

I really am a disappointed optimist.

Upwardly Global gala

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Tonight, Chris and I were invited by a good friend of mine to the annual Upwardly Global gala. My friend actively volunteers and was previously a board member of this organization, which is a nonprofit that helps work-authorized immigrants find jobs here in the U.S. My friend has been actively volunteering with Upwardly Global since 2008, so it’s a cause he’s very passionate about. Unfortunately, the goals of the organization do not jive very well with Chris, who is an immigrant in this country and thinks that the organization glosses over the hardest part about being an immigrant in this country — actually getting into this country and achieving legal work authorization, either via a work visa or the much coveted green card. I agree that the organization does gloss that over, but it’s not what its goal is. I can’t even imagine a nonprofit that actually helped with that process and the types of legal fees and overhead they would need to spend. It’s a separate struggle to get work in this country even with work authorization, and that’s what Upwardly Global strives to do.

What I am not a fan of in terms of nonprofits and donating to them is the perceived “black hole” that donations go into. If I am donating to an organization, I want to know that my dollars are actually going to something tangible that I can see having an effect. The saddest part about a lot of nonprofits is that so many of the donation dollars end up going towards hazy “administrative costs,” and not toward the actual work that the organization is striving to do. I asked my friend where the tickets costs ($500 each) were going, and he said he wasn’t sure and that it would be decided by the board. That’s not really a good sign. I was grateful to be invited and to attend, but I’m just not sure about this black hole. It also didn’t put a good taste in my mouth that all the servers at Guastavino’s barely spoke English and also couldn’t tell me what they were serving. They had no idea what type of fish they were giving me, and when they told me that dessert was pineapple upside down cake, it was actually a horrendous peach cobber with peaches that tasted canned. These are the people we should really be helping through this organization, right? Well, I guess we can’t because these people probably don’t have green cards.

At least I know that one nonprofit I fund raise for, AFSP, keeps its administrative costs below 25 percent.

Time famine

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I was reading this article yesterday on advice that a number of successful people would give the 22-year-old versions of themselves. Arianna Huffington was interviewed for this, and she said that the concept of “time famine,” or not having enough time to accomplish all the things we want in life, can have a very dire impact on our happiness and stress levels. I’m reading what she has said, and I thought, wow, that really applies to me.

I’m always thinking about ways to be more efficient and to accomplish things in a smaller amount of time, whether that means multitasking or finding shortcuts for things. It’s part of the reason I started listening to audio books. I figured that while I am walking or taking the subway from point A to point B, I could get some learning done, whether it’s from a book or a podcast I can listen to along the way. Sometimes when I am catching up with a non-local friend, I will put her on speaker phone and work on my scrapbook as we chat, or prepare my lunch for the next day. And even at work with something as simple as preparing tea, I will steep my tea first while I cut my morning fruit so that once I’m done cutting, I can then add the milk to the tea and toss the tea bag. It’s gotten a little bit ridiculous, but I don’t even think about that process anymore. I just do it.

I’m not sure if being more efficient and accomplishing more is always a good thing, though. My mindset is so programmed in that way that sometimes, when I look back at everything I’ve completed in a day, I am mind boggled at myself for all those things, but then I want to one-up myself and accomplish even more. And then I tire myself out.

“Mother’s Day” celebrating

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Since my mother is a Jehovah’s Witness, she doesn’t celebrate holidays since that’s against their religion. She officially converted when I was around 18, so since then, I haven’t been allowed to say things like “Happy Mother’s Day” or “Merry Christmas” or even “Happy birthday!” to her. However, we should note that just because she doesn’t celebrate these things on the day of, she still expects an acknowledgment of some sort, particularly in the form of a gift. My mother loves gifts. She just doesn’t want them on the day of Mother’s Day or the day of her birthday. Sometime around that date would suit her just fine. So this Mother’s Day, I did wish someone a Happy Mother’s Day, just not my mother. I also didn’t send a gift the week before Mother’s Day because I figured I would send one to her the week after. It just has to be around the day, right? Wrong. She was pissed. I called her yesterday after work, and she irritatingly asks me where I’ve been all weekend and why I never called. “Did you know that yesterday was Mother’s Day?” she said icily. “You never called!” Well, actually, I did call on Sunday, but no one answered the phone. They have caller ID, but she insists I never called and was lying. She’s always right, I guess.

You can’t be a part of a religion that refuses to celebrate holidays and then expect an acknowledgment of the holiday on another day and with a gift. That’s not really how religion works… or should work. Either be a part of your chosen religion and accept the things it forces you to do or live without, or be free and do what you want!

“The subway is so gross”

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Today in the elevator going up to my office, I’m standing with two women, both of whom do not live in the city and made that very clear. They’re both grumbling about how warm it’s becoming (New Yorkers never seem to be happy with the weather). This is the conversation I overhear:

Woman 1: It’s getting really hot outside (makes a face). Did you take the subway here?

Woman 2: Eww, no! I walked. The train is disgusting!

Woman 1: I know. It’s so gross. I walked here from Grand Central, too.

Why do people work and live in the New York City area if they are going to complain about how “gross” and “disgusting” the subway is? The New York City subway is one of the most extensive subway systems in the world, and we’re really privileged to have it and not be forced to drive everywhere in massive congestion and road rage. Some people seem to love reveling in their ignorance and ivory towers. Stop complaining, everyone. Just take it for what it is, or leave.

Mother’s Day

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Today, it is Mother’s Day. It doesn’t mean that much for my family or me given that my mom and closest aunt are Jehovah’s Witnesses, so I can’t really wish them a Happy Mother’s Day or send flowers or gifts. But it’s a reminder to me yet again about the hard life my mother has lived and all the pain she’s endured that I only know a fraction of.

She doesn’t celebrate Mother’s Day, but I know she thinks about it. She probably thinks about her life as a mother to Ed and me, and how Ed is no longer with us. I’m sure that hurts a lot to know that you gave birth to and were a mother to your son for over 33 years, and then he took his life by jumping off a bridge. That son is no longer here. He’s dead. I feel a lot of pain when I think about the sequence of events even on the day of and leading to my brother’s death. The more time passes, the less it’s really about pain for myself and my parents as it is for pain for Ed, to think about how he felt, his suffering, and how he just wanted all the pain and agony to end. He just wanted some quiet. When I think of this, I feel even worse and think I could have done more. I get angry at myself because I know I had only spoken to him briefly on the Friday before that Monday, and at length on the Wednesday before that Monday. I knew he was reaching his limit. It’s a terrible thing to feel powerless to help someone you really love. And it’s even worse to think that as a mother, you cannot help your child enough to save him and his life.

Being a mother – what a scary thing. I’m reading Elizabeth’s Warren’s A Fighting Chance now, and I just finished reading Wendy Davis’s memoir. Like they say, being a mother never “ends,” and it rarely gets easier, especially from a emotional level of attachment. Maybe when your child is a teen or a full grown adult, you won’t need to spoon feed him or change his diapers or rock him to sleep, but that doesn’t make him any less your baby. Ed will always be my mom’s baby, just like I am, even if he isn’t physically here anymore.

Recipe for love

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Yesterday, I was reading one of my favorite food blogs, Smitten Kitchen, and Deb, the blogger, says in one of her posts that the sour cream coffee cake she makes could be the dish that made her now husband realize she was The One. She said that after she made this cake for him, shortly after, he asked her to marry him. And so began their journey cooking and photographing together in their tiny Manhattan kitchen. The coffee cake became the reason he married her, or so she wants to believe.

I thought about this in the context of me and Chris. Since we have moved in together about three years ago now, I’ve made so many different things that I can’t really keep track of what has been his favorite. I’ve made more use of this teeny tiny kitchen than probably anyone else in the history of this building even existing. This kitchen has seen some crazy three-day process dishes, as well as complex pastries like croissant. I asked him if he could name a dish I’ve made for him that he’d say was the one he’d name as the The Dish, and he said that I rarely make the same thing twice, so it was hard to name. Now that I think about it, the only real repeats this apartment has seen are banh xeo, appam, Kerala chicken stew, banana bread, pumpkin bread, pad thai, and different versions of oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies and fried rice. Nothing else has ever been a repeat.

It’s hard to repeat a dish when there are infinite recipes out there on the internet that I’ve bookmarked, as well as too many cookbooks here in the apartment that I neglect as a result. I guess Chris can’t name a favorite dish because they’re all his favorite dishes since I made them. 🙂

DNA testing

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Chris and I are undergoing DNA testing via a DNA kit we are using from 23andMe. I was a bit skeptical about it at first, but I realized that it may actually be helpful and interesting to know for our future children and things they could potentially be at risk of. I’m already aware of things that they may be at risk of based on our family histories: heart disease, high blood pressure, prostate cancer, crooked and ingrown teeth, gum disease,near-sightedness, and potential depression and mental illness. That’s a long list of negative things to be at risk of and covers quite a variety of health areas.

The more I think about future children, the more terrified I become of all the things I hope they don’t have to deal with. I think about the mental breakdown my dad’s mother had when she was in her late thirties and how she was hospitalized for over a year when my dad was a little boy. I think about my mother’s traumatic experiences in Vietnam, and Ed’s initially gradual and then quickly escalated decline and eventual death. Maybe there’s even something dormant lingering in me somewhere, and it’s just waiting to unleash itself with a given external event that needs to happen. All of the mental illness that has been exhibited in my family stares at me grimly in the face when I think of having babies. No one wishes that their child inherits anything like this, but we have zero control over it. And while nurture has a strong role in shaping a child, nature does, as well, and the strength of nurture versus nature in a child’s upbringing in determining how healthy and happy and functioning he becomes is still quite hazy. So, it’s scary to do this testing because at some point I will be reading these results right on a computer screen. But it’s probably better to know than to remain ignorant.

Aftermath

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So the dinner with my parents, Chris’s parents, Chris, and even my aunt happened last night. From what Chris and his parents said, it was a “lovely” and “enjoyable” evening getting to know each other over some great food. Chris said all the predictable things happened in terms of topics of discussion and gift exchange, and I wondered what my mother would have to say about all this after I left work today.

So I called her, and one of the first things she says to me is, “Have you talked to Chris’s parents?” I told her that they texted me to say it was a fun evening. “Did they say anything? What did they say? Did they say anything about me or your father? Anything about how nice we are?” And so it goes. My mother is interrogating me because she was expecting Chris’s parents to write a full detailed report on the evening, how it played out, and most importantly, what they thought of my parents as people and as future parents-in-law to their precious first born. I felt tired hearing all the questions coming out of her mouth. No, they didn’t tell me lots of details. All they did was text me a simple line to let me know dinner was great! Why is this so hard to believe? I’m not withholding any information!

As Chris and I know, all of these questions and comments are coming out of my mom’s insecurity and lack of confidence. She is just so eager to be praised and to be told that she is, in fact, worthy.

So at the end of the conversation, my mom says that she thanks God that I am able to marry a boy who comes from such a good family. “It’s Jehovah’s blessing,” she said calmly.

She’s right. Well, sort of. It is a blessing from God. It’s a blessing from God that I am not marrying into a family anywhere in the universe of dysfunction as my own. It’s also a blessing that I am marrying a boy who is even willing to arrange a “meet the parents” dinner without my presence. As my friend told me the other day, “You’re really lucky with Chris because if that were me, I’d be outta there.” This boy of mine clearly has balls.

Questions

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My mother is clearly on edge because she knows she will be meeting Chris’s parents tonight. I can tell she feels pressured to make a good impression… because she thinks that if she and my dad do anything to offend Chris’s parents, Chris’s parents will then inform Chris that they don’t think this is a good match and force him to end the engagement. That sounds a bit antiquated given that we are in the year 2015, but hey, that’s what my mother thinks. We have to let her think what she thinks.

When I called her after work yesterday, she asked me so many questions that I had to keep a straight face and try to answer all of them patiently so that she wouldn’t yell at me. It went something like this:

Mom: So… is there anything you want to tell me?

Me: No, not really. Everything is fine. Nothing’s new.

Mom: Oh, well, I mean about Chris’s parents.

Me: Oh. What do you want to know?

Mom: Um… who talks more, the mom or the dad?

Me: Dad definitely talks more, but that doesn’t really matter, does it? They both talk! He just talks a lot more than she does!

Mom: Well, I don’t know! That’s why I’m asking. What do they not eat?

Me: They eat pretty much everything. Tony doesn’t really like to eat with his hands, but he can be forced.

Mom: Does that mean he won’t eat crab or lobster?

Me: He’ll eat it if Chris is there.

Mom: What does that mean? Why will he eat it only if Chris is there?

Me: Ugh… He’s just like that! (Note to self: stop telling her things that are too complex and have too much of a silly story behind them).

Mom: I will invite them to come over to the house after dinner. Is that okay?

Me: That’s fine, but it might be a bit late after dinner, and they will be tired and will want to go back to their hotel. It’s out near the airport, remember?

Mom: Well, it’s rude if we don’t invite them to our house. You have to show respect and invite. They came all the way over here. We must at least ask.

Me: I never told you not to invite them! I just mean that if they decline, you shouldn’t be offended.

Mom (voice sounds shrill now): They told you they don’t want to come to our house?

Me: MOM! I never said that!

And so we begin a night of Cantonese dining on the edge of the Richmond district in the lovely City by the Bay tonight, without me.