02.12 | finding a place was just step one of the journey

There’s room for all of you, and for everything you experience—the grim and the glorious, the wounded, wounding, healing and healed.
– Hiro Boga

✉️ letter #27

Friends, I am very tired.

And since what's been tiring me out has been literally all that I've been thinking about, I'm sorry, but this edition of the newsletter is going to be kind of a navel-gazey dear diary journal entry.

If you thought the process of house hunting was exhausting, it turns out that the process of furnishing an entirely empty apartment, all alone, is even more so.

Again, Pikachu shock face.

Tuesday was my first night in the new apartment. I'd already set up internet (hoorah for me) and spent a semi-successful, if not terribly comfortable, afternoon working from home. Since it took me a while to finish up working, I didn't really get around to doing anything housework-wise until late.

That night I realized somewhat regrettably, that the fleece throw & the air mattress I bought are not warm enough to keep me asleep through the night in the middle of a New York winter, even if the apartment is gas-heated. At about 3 in the morning, I woke up for the fourth time and decided I should probably wear my jacket through the rest of the night.

Wednesday, the day I normally publish these newsletters, was rough. I'd woken up early to do what I thought would be a quick jaunt to a nearby Home Depot to pick up some necessary items for DIYing random things around the house.

Unfortunately, either I really don't understand how Home Depots are organized or they're really bad at updating their own website inventory systems, but virtually none of the stuff I'd gone there to get was available. I ended up last minute grabbing a bottle of bathroom mold cleaner (my shower isn't bad, but could use a deeper clean) alongside some various drawer pulls (none of the cabinets in the kitchen have them for whatever reason) and shoving it into my duffle.

Then, since that shopping trip was so unsatisfactory and there seemed to be an IKEA a 25 minute walk away, I figured I'd take the jaunt. It was still barely past 9:30 at that point so my plan was to reach the IKEA by the time it opened.

About a block away from the IKEA, I noticed that my left leg hurt - like it was getting frostbite. Confused, I looked down and found out that the brand new mold cleaner had not been well sealed, and had begun leaking out of its container. It is a chlorine-bleach based formula and it had soaked through my duffle bag and was now busy bleaching the part of my jeans that rubbed up against it.

The frostbite feeling was that bleach then soaking through my jeans and causing a chemical burn on my leg.

I wrapped my leg in paper towels as soon as I got into the IKEA bathroom. Then somehow managed to get through the entire showroom anyway, grab a giant cart full of stuff I needed, figure out how to ship it back home (it required me ordering some guys in a van, and then ordering a separate uber because they wouldn't take me with them in their van)... and then get back home to change pants and treat that skin burn.

I don't recommend googling "how to treat chemical burns" by the way. All it does is make you paranoid that your lungs are being wrecked by bleach.

And then I discovered that somehow, I had left one of the main items I'd gone to IKEA to buy... at IKEA. One of the more expensive purchases too.

Which meant that on Thursday, I had to make the trek back to IKEA. Luckily, they were pretty understanding, did a quick check of the system to ensure I was where I said I was yesterday, and then let me go into the self-service area to grab that purchase again. In order not to make my trip feel like the biggest waste of my own time, I decided to get some things from their little supermarket before I left - like coffee. Now I have coffee grounds to make my own coffee.

I suppose that sometime between paying for those little extra groceries and leaving IKEA for the 30-minute public transport home, my wallet fell out of my jacket.

So now I'm missing most of my credit cards.

Sigh.

Friday was spent trying not get down on myself for losing my wallet (as well as my pathological need to do everything myself because I am unwilling to reach out for help)... and also killing cockroaches.

Because my kitchen has an entire colony of them, ostensibly fattened and turned brazen from the last family that lived here. The battle to destroy them has lasted all week, but Friday was when the full force of my RAID-assisted wrath was brought upon them. We shall see if they still dare to set foot in my place henceforth.

Anyway. I am reminding myself that I am getting an astronomical amount done in record time, and that missteps are an inevitable part of any process. When you're covering a lot of ground running to a lot of destinations, your risk of tripping gets higher too.

But I should probably take at least one or two less crucial things off my plate until I'm more settled here. And so I'm going to take a break Wednesday with this newsletter. I leave you with a picture of one of the success stories of the week: these plants I bought off Facebook marketplace.

See you again in late February!

🌱 the ethical ideas newsreel

• I'm in several Facebook groups for women in the writing field, and the topic of how much you pay a remote worker is constantly brought up. Yes, the "cost of living" might be cheaper in Nairobi or Manila, but if the work they are doing is of the same quality as someone in San Francisco, why should you expect to pay them way less than American minimum wage? This article goes deep into the issue of location-based pittance wages  and the exploitation at the heart of books like Four Hour Work Week.
• Remember nuclear fusion? Suddenly, shockingly, it's back on the table as a possible zero-carbon, limitless source of reliable power! Scientists in the UK have created a machine that could make it viable.
• Thomas Piketty believes "we need a socialism that is decentralized, federal and democratic, ecological, multiracial and feminist." I am inclined to agree!
• Eileen Gu has been the talk of the town for all China watchers watching the Olympics, mainly because she's now a Gold-medal athlete who did something that sounds crazy: play for Team China instead of her birthplace Team USA. A lot has been made of the "citizenship" question, but the conversation has tended towards being... kinda racist? Like The Economist even included this really unfortunate image in its article regarding her national status.

Yeah, that's hugely cringeworthy. They've now quietly replaced this image and scrubbed it from the interent, but not before we got a screengrab.

In any case, citizenship is complicated. Here's a great twitter breakdown about how it can be especially crazy for kids born in the United States of one Chinese national parent. And here's a great podcast episode to listen to for discussing the whole context of it and the Winter Games in general.

As for my take: I think the world would be a better place with more fluidity in nationalities to begin with. We should make it easier for people to belong everywhere. Anything to get people to think twice before jumping into an Us v Them mentality.

🎵 song of my week

Did I get this week's song from a commercial? Yes. Sorry! But it's been bumping around in my head ever since Matthew McConaughey showed up on my TV screen representing a Salesforce astronaut who's more into creating sustainable solutions on Earth than "Mars or the Metaverse."

So kudos to that creative team. There's just something about a chill & groovy version of one of the most dramatic songs ever created that hits different.

✨enjoying: one final piece of pop culture fun

I love ice skating, so I just want to dedicate this section to Team USA in this Winter Olympics... which also happens to be an insane power house of Asian-Americans (and mostly Chinese-Americans)!

NBC is being weird about letting people embed their Olympics videos so I guess I'll just call out the team (and link to their videos, for people who can watch it in the USA - you'll have to find it on your own feeds in other countries):

• Of course, there's Nathan Chen, who's freestyle skate for the Gold had me in tears. It was an amazing usage of Elton John's Rocketman, plus the absolute joy on his face during the performance... even thinking about it afterwards gives me all the feels.
• Karen Chen's team free skate was a great comeback for her, and it was done to one of my favorite Chinese orchestrals: The Butterfly Lovers. It helped secure the silver for the team.
• Vincent Zhou also chose a popular Chinese-inspired tune, utilizing the theme from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I think he did lovely in the team free skate, and it's really sad that he tested positive for covid and couldn't continue with the rest of his programs.
• I actually can't tell which of Madison Chock (and partner Evan Bates) ice dances I liked better! The Daft Punk one that got the team silver was super fun (and also god the connected one foot steps are so fricking gorgeous), but that Billie Eilish mix was fantastic too

Anyway, how far we've come! It's been 24 years since OG Chinese-American skater Michelle Kwan won her first Olympics medal, a silver just behind Tara Lipinski's gold that prompted MSNBC to release the disastrously bad headline "American Beats Out Kwan."

It's amazing that a generation later, not only is ice skating so very Asian-American - "vividly overrepresented" if you ask the New York Times - but folks are actually angry at Asian-Americans who decide to play for other countries.

Did you enjoy it?

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