3K orientation and new school

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This afternoon, we went to the 3K orientation for Kaia’s new school, where she’ll be starting on Thursday. The orientation was straightforward: the administrators explained the schedule, cadence of the year, afterschool program activities and focus areas. The principal made some snarky comments about New York City’s Department of Education (DOE) since their 3K and 4K programs are publicly funded. They provided lukewarm pink lemonade and grocery store donuts. They reiterated the school supplies list, which included odd things (well, odd to me, anyway) like hand sanitizer, hand soap, and paper towel rolls. What is this: the school cannot even afford hand soap after my child poos or pees, so now I have to provide this…? Is this what public school education is like now?

The main reason we’re even doing this double commute down to Chinatown every day is that this is one of just a handful of Chinese immersion schools that is publicly funded in New York City. So there will be an English speaking teacher and a Mandarin speaking teacher in the class to teach the usual curriculum for the school day. Then, in the afterschool program, they will focus on Chinese language, writing/character recognition, and culture. I was so happy to hear that they’ve already set a date for parents to get together with the kids in the classroom for Mid-Autumn Moon Festival and lantern making. I hope we get selected since they said it’s a lottery (not all parents can attend every event, so they rotate). Unfortunately, they were still selecting who would be the Chinese teacher, so that hadn’t been finalized yet.

At bedtime tonight, I talked more with Kaia about how tomorrow would be a big day: she’d go to her new school and have a new classroom with new friends and new teachers. They’d give her lots of yummy snacks and food. She had to remember to pee and poop in the potty and ask the teachers for help. And she responded, “And I get to see Ms. Tanique?” (that’s her former 2s teacher). I lightly told her that Ms. Tanique would not be there. She looked sad and said, “I want Ms. Tanique!” I said again that Ms. Tanique would not be there. Yes, that is sad, but she’d have new teachers that she’d like and get to know. She smiled and then squealed, “And new friends, too!”

This double commute better be worth it. I’m not sure how I am going to feel if she comes out of a year of this and her Chinese hasn’t improved. Some critical reviews of the school said that while it was good, they didn’t feel that their kids’ Mandarin had gotten that much better. They also did not like that when their kids spoke with their friends/classmates, it was all in English. When they switched their kids to 100% immersion schools (of course, private), the kids all spoke in Chinese to each other. We shall see…

Juggling working from home and childcare

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For the handful of days we’ve had in between San Francisco, Ottawa/Montreal, and school starting this Thursday at Kaia’s new 3K school, we’ve had to juggle having her at home since we already ended our time (and payment) with the last school. To say the least, this has been pretty challenging and annoying because I never really feel like I can focus on any one thing while she’s around. There’s the tug of work as in, hey, this is actually a working day for me, and I have things to do even outside of my regularly scheduled meetings. Then, there’s Kaia tugging at me because she always wants my attention, even when she’s doing something separate from me. The weather is still very nice outside, so I still want her to go outside to the park or playground, but between Chris and me, we need to tag team and figure out when the best windows are to take her outside. Since Kaia was a baby, she’s always hated it when we’re at our computers and not engaging with her. Now, she gets annoyed and says, “I don’t want Mummy/Daddy to work.” She knows that when we’re working (on our computers), it means we cannot play with her. She’s even tried pushing or hitting my computer in response. Yes, she’s jealous of an inanimate object.

These several days, while they’ve been fleeting, always made me feel a little guilty that my mind wasn’t totally focused on work or her. But it also made me sympathize even more with my friend who we just visited, who works 100 percent from home but also takes care of her son full-time — all at the same time. She gets zero breathing space from childcare because it’s all consuming 24/7. Granted, her work is a lot less meeting heavy than mine is, but I cannot imagine that she’s ever really able to fully focus on work while her son isn’t sleeping/napping. Even when toddlers do independent play, it’s usually in small bursts (or when they’re up to no good and wrecking the house). And they always want to know that you are paying attention to them or engaging with them.

These experiences also make me respect stay-at-home parents even more and how they’re somehow able to do all the childcare work, likely the majority (if not all) the housework and cooking, and still have it all together with themselves. I can barely clean the bathroom with Kaia around. I just don’t how stay-at-home parents do it all and don’t completely lose their minds even without “paid work.” Stay-at-home parents definitely do not get the credit or respect that they truly deserve. When you think about it, when there’s a stay-at-home parent, they pretty much never get a break. The parent who does “paid work” outside of the home gets an actual separate space to be an adult, do adult things/have adult conversations, and do something completely not child-related. They have the mental and physical space to separate family from work. Stay-at-home parents do not have that luxury when it comes to separating childcare, child’s learning, housework, cooking, grocery shopping, etc.

Shame on us as a society and world.

St. Viateur Bagels in Montreal: The best damn bagel in the world

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As someone who has lived in New York City for the last 16+ years, I can honestly say that while the bagels here are delicious (to this day, my favorite bagel in all of New York City is at Absolute Bagels in Morningside Heights in Manhattan), they are not quite on the same level as Montreal bagels. The reason is really simple: New York bagels are… heavy. Once you’ve eaten half or one, you KNOW you have eaten it. It weighs on you. It makes you feel heavy and like you cannot eat anything more. When you have a Montreal bagel, somehow it manages to be light, airy, and crisp, and you can easily eat 5-6 of them and not even realize you ate that many freaking bagels. I’m going to say it, and I don’t care what you think (especially if you’ve never even been to Montreal and had one of their bagels: Montreal has the best damn bagels in all of North America, if not the entire WORLD.

How are Montreal bagels different from New York bagels? Montreal bagels are wood-fired. When you walk into any St. Viateur, you can immediately see the open wood-fired oven. That’s why Montreal bagels have that delicious crispy exterior, which is then contrasted quickly with its very light and chewy interior. This is all heightened by (what I think is) the best type of Montreal bagel: the sesame. THE SESAME BAGEL IS THE BEST. We came back to St. Viateur after 10 years today. Ten years ago, we visited their location on Mont-Royal Ave E, and this time, we visited their more old-school location on Rue Saint-Viateur O, right in the heart of the Jewish ‘hood, which had at least three thousand more reviews on Google. And for four Canadian dollars, we got three bagels: sesame, all dressed (what they call the “everything” bagel), and apple maple (for Pookster). All dressed was delicious. Apple maple was good. But the sesame – AHHHH, the sesame. The sesame bagel was truly perfect. The first bite was exactly the same as my first Montreal bagel bite ten years ago, everything from the contrasting textures to the taste and the flavor. The toastiness of the sesame seeds on the outside of the bagel just sang. It really SANG. We ate all three bagels just like that. And we didn’t feel heavy at all.

Also, you know how people in New York slice bagels and put the cream cheese in between? Here at St. Viateur when you watch people eat their bagel, they take bites and DIP the bagel into their tiny containers of cream cheese. Yes, that’s how they eat them here! It is no doubt a lighter bagel here in Montreal!

Dreary Montreal

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When I look back at all the major cities we’ve visited in Canada, while I loved Toronto, Quebec City, and Vancouver, for some reason, I do not feel the “L” word is quite fitting for Montreal, and I’m not completely sure why. In 2014 when we first went, it was dreary and raining almost the whole time we were there. I am sure that did not help. But the other part that threw me off was that even though I know basic French since I studied it in school, when I listened to people speaking in French in Montreal, it didn’t sound anything like the French-French I learned in high school. I remembered people constantly bumping into me. I wasn’t sure if they were tourists or locals, but it was really annoying.

And somehow, similar things happened this time around, too! On our first day in Montreal, people were constantly bumping (or almost bumping) into me on sidewalks and streets. It was as though they lacked peripheral vision. Then, the weather was also crappy this time around, as well! It nearly poured within hours of our arriving, and we ended up having to duck into a little Italian cafe to avoid getting drenched by the torrential rain. Plus, with the rain came lower temperatures: it’s at least 10 degrees F lower than what the weather report showed for this area before we left. I was being stupid and naive when I packed for this trip, and the heaviest thing I brought for myself to wear was a flimsy cotton cardigan; the part that annoyed me the most about this is that I usually always pack an extra layer or two just in case (it’s my San Francisco “you can’t trust the weather” mentality). I have no real shoes and only two pairs of sandals. I was freezing here today.

I don’t know when I am going to Montreal next, but I do hope that if and when that next time comes, that the weather actually holds up and I’m not constantly getting wet while I’m there. Because if you are walking around a city as a tourist under dressed and freezing, it will never bode well for how you remember it.

Toddler moments in transit and the big “hotel-o”

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I don’t think this is a shock to anyone, but Kaia is obsessed with planes. She always looks forward to being at the airport. She loves watching planes on the runway and in the air. She knows how to identify a gate. She loves talking about going on the airplane and to the “hotel-o.” She’s also had some toddler demands and comments in terms of travel.

“Don’t say no to me; that’s not nice!” she said assertively while in the backseat of an Uber ride. Yes, I say this to her jokingly sometimes.

“I want to go back to the hotel-o!” she yelped, in the car on the way back to our home.

When we checked into the hotel in Montreal at midday today, Chris was unhappy with the supposed “upgraded” room we got. I think the hotel asserted it was a room upgrade simply because it was a higher floor (the worst – who the heck cares? In this case, I think size matters most, especially when you have a young child). Chris went back and forth with them on the hotel app, and finally, they gave us an upgraded room, but not just any upgraded room: the vice presidential suite on the highest floor just below the club lounge floor. When we took our bags from the original room into the VP suite, Kaia ran around excitedly in this new monstrosity of a suite: It had a large entry way, a huge living room, dining room, small kitchen, and 1.5 bathrooms. The en suite bathroom had double sinks and a separate large shower (Chris’s favorite) and a soaking tub. She kept on giggling and squealing over and over while running, “This is a big hotel-o! This is a BIG hotel-o!” I did some crappy un-athletic “cartwheels” for her to revel in our ridiculous amount of open space, and Pookster followed and attempted her own toddler versions.

Because we strongly restrict how much packaged food/sweets Kaia gets, Chris had this idea that when we offered to give her something like a fig bar, we would just let her “hold” it and not actually open and eat it. The way we’d get her to calm down in the midst of a tantrum is we’d tell her “as soon as we got on the bus” (“we’re never getting on a bus!” Chris retorted), then she could open the fig bar. And so she’s kind of gone along with this and not really called us out on our bs yet. I told my friend this, who has two littles (one who is one year older than Kaia), and she laughed and said, “You know that’s not going to last, right, and in the next year, she will call you out and realize you’re lying?!”

One time, I tried to change it to, “You can open it when we get on the train.” She corrected me: “No, we open it when we get on the bus!” she said in her declarative statement tone.

I just love these moments so much. How is she developing her sentence structure so much?!

National Gallery of Canada – free art-making night

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While wandering around Ottawa on foot, we stumbled upon the National Gallery of Canada across the street from Ottawa’s Notre Dame Cathedral on our first day in town two days ago. We noticed there were long lines to enter and was wondering what interesting exhibits might be attracting such a diverse crowd. As Chris suspected, it was a free night: every Thursday night between the hours of 5-8pm, all national museums in Ottawa grant free admission for all. So, we got to enter the museum for free and enjoy music, drink, and an art-making session. There was an open airy space in the gallery where you could sit, drink, people watch, and grab some black paper and a tray of crayons, and just draw. I originally grabbed the paper and crayons for Kaia. Sadly, she lasted about one minute before she grew bored and just wanted to run around and wreck everything. So instead, I ended up using the crayons myself and drawing some different flowers and butterflies. And although I didn’t do it for very long, I actually enjoyed it a lot and found it quite freeing. It was like my mind was unloading all of the crap I had on it from San Francisco the previous week. It reminded me of the trend a number of years ago around adult coloring books: these types of mindless doodling and coloring activities can be a form of therapy. They are soothing, relaxing, and enjoyable to do.

We just ordered Kaia a couple new crayon boxes for her new school’s supplies list that was just shared. Who knows – I might end up “borrowing” some of her crayons for my own art projects in the near future.

Back to Canada after five years

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Back when we first got together, Chris and I established some travel goals (at least in North America): we wanted to visit every U.S. state and every Canadian province and territory. Unfortunately, the last time we visited Canada was all the way back in August 2019 when we visited the beautiful and delicious Newfoundland and Labrador. Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island are some of the provinces far less traveled to by those outside of Canada, but they were likely some of my favorite places we ever visited up north.

Chris booked a long weekend / Labor Day trip for us to visit Ottawa, the capital of Canada, and Montreal (we had to fly in and out of Montreal since no flights worked that well between New York City and Ottawa). After two days here, I feel about Ottawa the way I did about Canberra, the capital of Australia: while it doesn’t seem particularly exciting or glamorous the way its larger and more traveled to cities are like Toronto or Montreal, Ottawa seems extremely livable and comfortable, with lots of green and outdoor spaces, eclectic and delicious eateries, and diverse people given that it is a government city.

While researching food for this trip, I was a little surprised to read that in Canada, Ottawa and Montreal have a bit of a rivalry when it comes to who has better Vietnamese food (who would have thought that?). Ten years ago when we visited Montreal, although we did have Vietnamese food (based on my photos and saved business cards in my scrapbook; I have very little recollection of that meal), I don’t remember reading about any Ottawa vs. Montreal rivalry. I do love reading about city rivalries though. I had a spot bookmarked on my list in Ottawa Chinatown, but when Chris saw that it had a 4.1 overall Google rating vs. a 4.5++ rating like a spot he quickly Googled called Pho Tuan, I decided I didn’t have any loyalty to my bookmarked Eater recommendation and just went with his.

And, as Chris would also gloat about since he “found it,” Pho Tuan was quite spectacular, likely one of the best Vietnamese restaurants we’ve ever eaten at outside of Vietnam, hands down. It looks quite simple and casual from the outside and the interior decor, but the food was anything but. I ordered two of the specials of the day, the bun bo hue (spicy and lemongrass-y Hue style beef noodle soup) and the bun cha Hanoi (large fat grilled pork meat balls served with sliced pork chop, rice vermicelli, endless herbs, and a semi-sweet dipping sauce), plus an appetizer of the bo la lot (grilled beef patties or rolls, wrapped in betel nut leaves). It seemed like a bit too much meat, but I rarely see any of these things on Viet restaurant menus (and if you do, the execution is usually subpar), so I had to jump on it while I could. When the bo la lot came to the table, it looked quite lackluster… until I dipped it in nuoc cham and put it in my mouth. I was completely floored: the flavor was perfect – grilled, smoky, with good texture. The bun cha Hanoi meatballs were the very best ones we’d ever had outside of Hanoi: I couldn’t get over the little crunchy and chewy bits of the meatball. Someone clearly hand kneaded and rolled these meatballs to perfection. And the bun bo hue broth was incredible, likely one of the very best bun bo hue bowls we have ever had, period. It had the perfect balance of beefy broth and lemongrass grassy-citrusy flavor. I could have just slurped that broth all day long and been really happy. It reminded me of that scrumptious (and super cheap!) bun bo hue we enjoyed back in a Vietnamese neighborhood in St. Louis, Missouri, about ten years ago. And while we were busy slurping away at our noodles and munching on our meatballs, our server was hard at work making our two Vietnamese iced coffees to order. Delicious things take time, and cafe sua da is no exception to this. We were probably over halfway through our meal when our server brought them over and apologized for the wait. But the coffees were worth it: they had a good balance of sweetness from the sweetened condensed milk and richness/bitterness from the coffee.

Delicious food is everywhere. We just have to keep our minds and stomachs open to it everywhere we go.

Family reminders and life savers

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Every time I come back from my parents’ house, I always feel like I need to give my mind and body at least several days to detoxify and de-clutter. The whole Marie Kondo idea of having a clean, tidy, uncluttered space to have a clean, tidy, and uncluttered mind is a thousand percent true. I never feel comfortable or free in my parents’ home, and it’s not just because of who they are and how they treat me; it’s also due to how much junk is everywhere in the space they call home.

I’d already tried over the last ten-plus years to suggest to my parents to de-clutter and give away things. While it did look like some random things were gone (like a tall broken floor clock that my mom took, BROKEN, from my aunt’s house up the hill), it somehow got replaced by even more crap. There really is no light way to tell them that they cannot take all this stuff to the grave with them. My mom says to just be peaceful. My dad has repeatedly agreed out loud to me that they need to throw out stuff… but instead, he ends up collecting more junk and piling it all on top of each other.

So I thought about maybe having my aunt or uncle suggest it in some way to my dad. I texted my uncle. Unfortunately, he also knows my dad way too well given they are brothers, and he told me that there’s pretty much no one who can tell my dad what to do or how to live his life: wanting to un-clutter his life will have to come from himself.

He did remind me that this conversation brought up the one, single time that my dad actually was not stubborn: it was almost exactly 10 years ago, in the fall of 2014, when my uncle emailed him to get himself checked out and insist on a stress test from his cardiologist. My uncle said, “He could’ve stuck to his stubborn ways and emailed me back and said there was nothing wrong with him. He never replied but went and did what I strongly suggested. A month had gone by when I emailed him again if he ever did what I suggested. That’s when he replied that his main coronary artery was also plugged and his two auxiliaries were barely passing blood to his brain and that he was going to have a double bypass on that Thursday.”

His bypass was in November 2014. I came back home for two weeks to be with them. It’s one of those times when I really thought, maybe, just maybe my dad and uncle could mend their relationship. My uncle’s suggestion is ultimately why my dad is still around and humming ten years later. But unfortunately, the romantic thought I had in my head was just that: a thought. My dad never truly expressed any gratitude or emotion to my uncle in insisting he move forward with that procedure. It always made me sad and angry for my uncle, but as my uncle and I both know: my dad is beyond stubborn and will always do whatever he wants regardless of the situation.

I am still not sure what my dad has done that has either been productive or made his life happier or better in the last ten years outside of that bypass surgery. But, given that he’s still here and seemingly healthy, I think he owes quite a bit to my uncle. I don’t think he will ever acknowledge it, though.

Imposing our likes and dislikes on our children

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Just over a month ago, I went to a friend’s child’s 2nd birthday party, and they asked me to bring some snacks for the kids. So I brought some veggies that Kaia likes: roasted bell peppers and sweet potatoes. The sweet potatoes were roasted in olive oil and tossed with cinnamon, nutmeg, and some allspice. When the birthday girl was eating the sweet potatoes eagerly, her mom asked how I had prepared them. I told her, and she seemed surprised that I used cinnamon. Later on, her husband (my friend) told me that because his wife doesn’t like cinnamon that their child had never been exposed to it. I was a little bit shocked that she hadn’t offered it since cinnamon is pretty ubiquitous in the U.S.; plus, her kid was already 2 years old now! Anyone who has read any baby solids feeding guide (and no, not just baby-led weaning or Solid Starts) will see that cinnamon is one of the most common and popular recommendations to introduce babies to (not hot) spices and build a varied palate.

I suppose I shouldn’t be that surprised, though: we’re all humans at the end of the day with our own preferences for things. It’s only natural that we’d try, consciously or subconsciously, to pass them to our kids. I have hated ketchup since even before I could speak, so up until last week, Kaia had never had any exposure to ketchup. But, I will say that given ketchup does have extra sugar (that’s what gets kids hooked on it…) and salt, there was no real reason to give it to her and even more reason to withhold it from her. While I was at my work offsite, Chris had to make his customary visit to In N Out while in California, so he went to Fisherman’s Wharf to get his fix. While he did that, he let Kaia have some fries and suggested she dip them in some ketchup. He even took a video of it to prove it to me. On the one hand, I was proud that she was finally getting into dips and “dipping” since she seems to have some aversion to sauces and mushy things like avocado and egg. On the other hand, I was completely grossed out that she actually seemed fond of that American monstrosity that we call ketchup.

If Kaia likes to dip an occasional fry into ketchup, I guess I will have to just suck it up and turn my eyes (and my nose, ugh) the other way. But, if she even attempts to squeeze ketchup onto her white rice or add it to steak…. then we will have a very serious problem on our hands that will need to be addressed as soon as possible.

“No alone time to talk”

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My mom called this week to vent to me. Predictably, she was annoyed we had limited 1:1 time while I was in San Francisco since I was out and about with Kaia and friends. So she used this time to complain about my dad, how filthy and unmotivated he is, how almost all their rental units are vacant. She complained about all the mice in the house, the lack of care being done to their own living space, my dad’s general lack of empathy and feeling around everything, including the recent death of her sister. “You think that when your sister dies, your husband would say things to comfort,” my mom lamented. “But no, he just says things to hurt.”

As though to criticize and defend him in the same breath, she also started preemptively saying that regardless of all his flaws, she still needs him to drive her places, to pay all the bills, to take care of the property (not sure what he’s doing in that regard, but this is what she said). She said her back is in bad condition, so she even needs him to help bathe her. But I insisted to her that all the excuses she makes can be taken care of; she can get a scrubbing brush to clean her own back. She can find and hire support online for things like cleaning or sending money to Vietnam. She just got angry, as per usual, and said I didn’t understand. I don’t have wisdom, she said as always, so I wouldn’t know.

It’s the same annoying conversation every time I come home, except now that I didn’t spend time talking to her at home, it’s a post-visit “talk.” And luckily for me, it didn’t go long enough for her to start criticizing me and my life and my choices as it usually does. I understand that my parents both come from places of trauma. They were both unloved and barely cared for as children. They barely had enough food to eat growing up and were both constantly criticized. But I always hoped that one day when they got to retirement, they’d actually start… trying to enjoy life. But as my therapist once said to me, maybe my definition of “enjoying life” is different from theirs. Maybe they’re just very content constantly complaining about and to each other and living in filth and squalor. Maybe they are so used to each other and each other’s snapping that to know anything different is to be in a terrifying world.

I know I am lucky to be in my late 30s and still have both my parents living, even if I am not close to them. A number of friends, former classmates, and colleagues over the years have lost one or both parents. But I always wonder what life will be like for one of my parents once the other one dies. It’s unlikely that they would die at the same time unless a freak accident happened. So how would one handle the other’s death? And what expectations would they have of me in that event?

My mom used to say that if she died before my dad, she would expect that I would quit my job in New York and move back to the house in San Francisco and take care of my dad. I openly scoffed at the idea to her, said that was ridiculous, and I’d never do it. She got upset, responding somberly, “You’ve changed. You’re not the same as before,” in a negative way, clearly.

I don’t know what the future holds for any of our deaths — when, where, how. But I do know that I never, ever want to move back into that awful, decaying house ever again. I call it that because that is what that house is: a place of constant decay where nothing will ever grow or flourish. It’s seriously in need of a thorough Buddhist cleansing or something equivalent so that anyone who chooses to live in a future iteration of it at least has some shot at happiness and success — however they want to define either of those two terms.