December 2021
Life
Looking back at December, it was the calm before the Omicron storm. I felt a sense of deja vu as the variant started showing up around the world, and consequently a helpless admission of ‘here we go again’. Knowing that our newly regained sense of normalcy was about to be restricted again was an uncertain feeling. But at least there was a silver lining this time - news soon came out that while Omicron was far more infectious had fewer severe symptoms.
I took a weekend trip to Kansas City, motivated to tick off 2 states that I had not yet been to – Kansas and Missouri. Only upon arrival did I learn that there are two Kansas Cities, one in each state, and the bigger one is (counterintuitively) in Missouri. I was pleasantly surprised by KC; I didn’t expect to feel a need to return, but my short weekend there turned out to be very insufficient. There were many interesting and niche museums from the Toy Museum to the TWA museum that I didn’t get a chance to visit, partly because they were closed on Sundays (that was a big theme). I highly recommend the Arabia Steamboat museum, a unique display of the treasures – from fine china to preserved pickles – from the Arabia steamboat that sank in 1856. It’s also a museum that details one family’s ambitious efforts taking on such a large excavation – in fact, there are plans for a few more digs over the next few years.
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| The Kansas City Public Library |
After coming back from Kansas City, I flew out immediately the next morning to Toronto for a work colocation trip. It all started because I accidentally responded Going to a Toronto case team event thinking it was online, but my Canadian colleagues were like “why don’t you just come over?” One thing led to another and I ended up applying for a 3-year work permit, just to see a Toronto Raptors game.
Going to Toronto made the work on my case feel much more ‘tangible’. I met colleagues that I had only seen on camera and also visited one of the stores of our grocery client. It was like any other grocery store you’d find in the US, but I felt like I was Yeltsin visiting a grocery store for the first time, amazed at the mundane things like the assortment of sections or the variety of products just for frozen pizza. I also remember the first in-person meeting I had in Toronto – probably the first in-person meeting I had since the pandemic started – we were discussing some complex subject, and just headed over to the whiteboard to draw it out. In that moment, a wave of nostalgia on how many meetings used to transpire at DSUS came back.
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| Toronto sunset from the office |
The Raptors game wasn’t really competitive - they beat the Sacramento Kings convincingly in front of an energetic home crowd. I think it was the day after the game that Ontario announced future games would be empty due to the rising Omicron variant.
After I came back from Toronto, a friend came to visit, then Adeena right after. With the case’s billing break in effect, I became a tourist again that week in NYC, seeing the Christmas tree at Rockefeller center, doing more than 26k steps walking from downtown to Central Park, and traversing the high line twice in a span of 3 days.
For Christmas break we spent 10 days in Colombia, a worthwhile country to visit but not particularly exceptional in any regard. Booking the cheapest flight to Medellín included an overnight layover in Charlotte (ticking off North Carolina) and a half day in Miami, which allowed us to see the iconic art deco buildings along Miami Beach while lugging our suitcase around. Some day I want to revisit.
Our schedule in Colombia was packed, visiting 4 cities: Medellín, Bogotá, Santa Marta, and Cartagena.
Medellín was probably my favorite. It’s a very green and colorful city that sits in the hills, the second largest city in Colombia. When we were there on Christmas day, it felt like every household owned an industrial-grade stereo (that they blasted festive music with). In between the countless nativity scenes and big pots of Christmas stew cooked right on the sidewalk, we really got a sense of a Latin American Christmas. One more thing to add about Medellín: these days it’s a true digital nomad city, which probably tells you a lot about it – low cost of living with good value, young and lively, and safe (despite what you might have imagined from the effects of Pablo Escobar).
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| Medellín |
Bogotá is 8661 feet (2640 meters) above sea level, and you feel it: any type of rigorous exercise gets you out of breath quite easily. There isn’t that much to see from a tourism standpoint - the gold museum is a must, and I suppose so is the old town area. It reminded me of Mexico City from its colonial Spanish influences in the architecture of some neighborhoods, and 70’s style skyscrapers in others.
Santa Marta is where you go if you want to enjoy the nature of Colombia. Sitting by the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, it has the most diverse flora and fauna of Colombia. We woke up at 5 AM to go on a bird watching tour because Colombia has the most diverse species of birds in the world, but instead enjoyed perhaps the most diverse array of mosquitoes in the world. We got like 100 bug bites each (I’m not exaggerating) in the short 2 hour span we were out. Our legs were like painted with polkadots. We also went out to Tayrona National Park, which offered a fun 4-hour hike in the waft of horse dung and stunning beaches – much better than the beaches in Cartagena.
Cartagena is your stereotypical tropical party destination. The beaches are subpar, the infrastructure is basically entirely set up for tourism, and yet there are still far too many tourists. However, the Colonial old town is very picturesque and colorful, a much livelier version of San Juan’s that I had visited over Thanksgiving. I would definitely recommend visiting during non-peak season; having some quaintness in the streets allows you to better appreciate the town.
Leaving Colombia felt like we were leaving paradise. It was partly because of the weather, partly because our days in Cartagena were very relaxing without much planned, but perhaps most importantly because we knew we were going back into quarantine.
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| Tayrona National Park |
Food
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| My scallion oil noodles with some store-bought char-siu and roast pork |
- 葱油拌面 (Scallion Oil Noodles) (Home, NYC): I learned how to make this classic Shanghainese dish at home, after ordering far too many subpar versions of these at Shanghainese restaurants in NYC while eating soup dumplings. Turns out it’s super easy to make - you just need some good vegetable oil and an abundance of scallion. I feel my scallion oil noodles are better than that of most restaurants here, but that’s probably because I like mine a tad sweeter than how most places serve it.
- The Antler Room (Kansas City, MO): The vegetable plates at this new American place are stellar.
- Peter Luger Steakhouse (Brooklyn, NY): A NYC institution. The signature porterhouse steak comes to the table right out of the broiler, and continues to sizzle as the waiter pours on melted butter. The steak is minimally flavored with just butter and salt, while the secret ingredient of dry aging accentuates the raw meaty flavor while making it more tender.
- Chocolate (Medellín, Colombia): This was probably the strangest ‘fine dining experience’ I’ve had, in fact it recently made the top of r/StupidFood. It was supposed to emulate a spa: you first washed your hands with the chocolate sauce then ate the remainder from your hands. My hands definitely felt pretty moisturized after. The sauce was rich and creamy, not too dark, which contrasted the coffee grinds later poured onto the hands as texture. It was a bit wasteful though.
- Leo (Bogotá, Colombia): An exotic and intellectual gastronomic experience, presenting the diversity in flora and fauna of Colombia. Frankly, I wasn’t prepared to best appreciate each dish, which draw on indigenous influences as well as native produce that I had never heard before. There were dishes including a curry made from the digestion of cows, oyster with salt from the Galerazamba pink salt flats, and bread made from the bark of a rare local tree.
- Tempura Matsui (NYC, NY): Overall a disappointing experience given the price point; there are much better meals to be had for ~300 per person. In general, a consistent tempura skin wraps each piece of tempura, with not much surface area for flakes or crunch. The skin wasn’t too crispy either, instead often feeling quite oily. Quite a few pieces were often on the side of overfried. Service was good, but not at all personalized; the dishes were hastily explained.
Misc
My new nomination for best still water: Saratoga spring water.
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| Where are these mangoes from? (The Chinese says Thailand Mangoes) |
There are 3 things I noticed about downtown Toronto’s urban design:
- Downtown is full of residential skyscrapers, with many more being built. I’m a fan - this makes luxury condos fairly affordable. I suppose zoning laws are also much more lax in Toronto.
- There is a large underground tunnel network (PATH) connecting the central business district, which helps connect all the buildings in the winter and also adds an additional dimension of real estate space for businesses.
- There are frequent streetcars running along the major axes (east-west) of downtown, which is very convenient.
December was unseasonably warm. It was above freezeing when I visited Toronto in mid-December. NYC saw a 15 Celsius day in mid December too, with very few days going below 0.
When I ate at Leo, they would not let me in without a collared shirt. I had to run to the mall to buy a shirt, which cost a third of the meal.
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| Can you spot the toucan? (hint: it’s sitting on a branch right above the center of the viewing circle) |
I made a video about my 2021. Check it out here.
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| Cosplaying as skyscrapers at the skyscraper museum |