June 11, 2022

March 2022

Life

Getting COVID was unpleasant, but overall it was actually a better experience than the flus I used to catch once a year. My symptoms were pretty mild: my body temperature went up, but not technically yet at a fever level, for about a day and a half. After that came the sore throat and blocked nose for a handful of days, which was annoying but bearable without the fever or lethargy looming over. By the end of the week things were back to normal.

I also felt an odd sense of relief. The way I see it, it’s only a matter of time before everyone gets Omicron, so the guaranteed immunity (at least for a few months) is a settling fact especially when making larger plans like for traveling. I’ve also noticed that I feel less anxious about things we’ve been primed to avoid over the last 2 years, like large crowds or people not wearing masks.

Two weeks after I first tested positive, I took a quick weekend trip to Cincinnati, which sits on the border between Ohio and Kentucky. Cincinnati is a strange city - it was once the sixth most populous city in the US during the 19th century and was grandly named the “Paris of America”, but it isn’t exactly a city full of rich history. I remember walking down the old Millionaire’s Row to disappointedly find out that it was half empty without much preservation. At the same time, Cincinnati feels like a somewhat global city - it is home to the headquarters of large corporations like Kroger and P&G, and has an unexpectedly large and modern airport. There was also a sign by the river displaying its many sister cities, one of which is Kharkiv.

Swing House

I spent my day in Cincinnati walking, and it was filled with pleasant surprises. I started at the American Sign Museum, an awesome and quirky exhibit featuring the history of signage over the last 150 years. Then from a brochure of local activities given to me at the museum, I stumbled upon the Swing House, which just happened to have its monthly open-house on the day of my visit. The house itself is an art project, and the realization of the artist’s childhood dream to place a swing in his room. Originally close to disrepair, the 3-story townhouse was emptied out to have a gigantic swing hanging down from the roof. Nowadays it’s a wish-list AirBnB that you have to book months in advance.

After the Swing House, I walked along more half-abandoned industrial and old residential neighborhoods, had some beer at a brewery, then took a tram towards Downtown to cross the “mini-Brooklyn bridge’ (named after the architect of both bridges, John A. Roebling) into Covington, Kentucky. At a coffee-book shop hybrid, I scanned through a cool book called Kinfolk Travel: Slower Ways to See the World that featured articles like the Joys of Airplane Food, before crossing back to see the Gilded age architecture downtown. It was a productive day in Cincinnati.

Adeena came to NYC for spring break, but because she arrived on Monday from having her flight cancelled the day before, we didn’t do much during the work week, except work I guess. The week after, I flew to San Francisco for a work colocation trip, opting to spend both weekends in SF.

Sunset at César Chávez Park in Berkeley

It was my first time back to the Bay Area since I moved to NYC, and there was some catching up to do. I also had a mini hit-list of personal favorites that I had been craving – the first day back, we walked around campus and got World Famous HotBoys, probably my favorite fried chicken place. We also visited Umami Mart, a Japanese spirits shop in Rockridge that also runs a bar in the back on Friday and Saturday afternoons, to try out different types of whisky highballs. The next day, we enjoyed some lovely Asian-inspired breakfast pastries from Breadbelly out by the Sutro baths near the SF oceanside, had some pastries from b.Patisserie, then headed down to Palo Alto for some macarons from Chantal Guillon. I suppose this itinerary also doubles as my “Bay Area must try” list.

Colocating is a novel concept outside of consulting – an invention in the post-COVID world that brings project teams together in person at some office when client travel is unnecessary. While my manager was based out of SF, most of the 20+ person team was in Toronto and were already often in-person. Consequently, it was mostly a ‘change of scenery’ trip for them, and definitely felt a bit like a work-cation. Our productivity was pretty low that week since the novelty factor of both SF as well as meeting people you’ve never seen before (but have been working with for the past 6 months) can derail things. There were also elaborate team dinners scheduled every night, so..

During my second weekend in SF, we completed the Tomales Point hike in Point Reyes, which brings you to the tip of the Point Reyes peninsula. I had attempted the hike twice before but did not finish the 10-mile roundtrip both times, so we were particularly determined this time. Unfortunately, it was a pretty foggy day so the views – with the bay on one side and the ocean on the other – were basically non-existent. At least it was cooler this way.

Point Reyes Lighthouse

Food

The three-way with oyster crackers

• Three-way (Cincinnati, OH): A Cincinnati staple, the three way is not objectively ‘good food’ but the quintessential American comfort food. Consisting of 3 components (hence its name) – spaghetti, chili, and cheddar cheese – it’s a confluence of three classic American ingredients. The combination is tasty, very crave-able, and particularly hearty. The spaghetti base is intentionally cooked past al dente, but it is supplemented by the texture from oyster crackers that also add additional savoriness. It’s topped with an obscene amount of shredded cheddar, and hot sauce is optional.
• San Ho Won (San Francisco, CA): An excellent interpretation of Korean BBQ by Corey Lee, the chef at the Michelin 3-starred Benu. There are two things that set San Ho Won apart from other KBBQ places: for one, there is no grill at the table; instead, the meat is cooked over a large charcoal grill in the open-kitchen. The other is that the cuts of meat are much thicker, so that they come out at the ‘medium rare’ level in consistency.
• Harmless Harvest coconut water (San Francisco, CA): there is harmless coconut water at the San Francisco BCG office. I probably drank like 20 bucks of coconut water a day when I was colocating in SF. Harmless coconut water is sourced from Nam Hom coconuts, which aptly means ‘fragrant ones’ in Thai. They are naturally sweeter and more fragrant than any other variety.
• Empress by Boon (San Francisco, CA): Everything that wasn’t the food was perfect at Empress by Boon - the service was excellent, the setting was stunning, and the attention to detail was remarkable. In fact, I wouldn’t mind coming back on these factors alone because they were so stellar. The food wasn’t objectively bad by any means, but rather uninspired. The flavors were uninspired - leaning towards pure savory without further direction in quite a few dishes. The dishes were also uninspired - fairly unremarkable takes on Cantonese cuisine. For the auspicious price of 88 dollars with dessert not included, the tasting menu didn’t feel much like an exploration of modern Cantonese Cuisine.
• Flour + Water (San Francisco, CA): An excellent Italian restaurant. In contemporary Italian fashion, each dish creates striking and creative combinations from only a couple of ingredients. They were all executed perfectly.
• Uluh (NYC, NY): A Sichuanese restaurant serving authentic flavors with creative twists, comparable in flavor to restaurants of its type in China. The chili fried chicken is a classic dish from Sichuanese cuisine (LaZiJi), and is executed faithfully with much more dried chili than chicken in the bowl. Pineapple is added as a twist, and it does wonders.

Misc

Flying through a snow storm feels like you’re traveling through space-time.

There have been 4 stages to sign lumination in the last century. The first was the lightbulb era (1900s-1930s), when lightbulbs would be placed in or around signs. Next came the neon era (1920s-1960s), followed by the plastic era (post WWII - 1980s). Nowadays, we mostly use LEDs for signs.

A sign that was originally lit by lightbulbs, but then retrofitted to include neon.

The airport at Cincinnati feels like one of those grand infrastructure projects in China. The airport is huge and new, which is especially stark without the apparent traffic to justify it. There’s even an airtrain system.

Styrofoam is much more popular as a takeout container material in the Midwest.

Another fun sign fact: neon lights are naturally yellow, while argon lights are blue. All other colors are created by changing the color of the glass - cool colors use argon, while warm colors use neon.

Guess if I ended up getting this flavor.

I’ve been staying at quite a bit of Hyatt Regency’s lately, and some of them have an iconic grand atrium, a legacy of the 1970s. Here’s an interesting article I read recently about the history of the American atrium hotel.

Office bringing in some sass.

I lost another pair of Airpods on my trip to Cincinnati. Onto pair #5 now.

Making cocktails with Adeena.