Comfort food on Saturday morning – boiled nurungji with a small splash of sesame oil and seaweed topping.
The new normal in our apartment elevator. On our way to Fort Greene Park to take a walk. This week I’ve been taking more photos with my Ricoh GR II which I am enjoying! Here are some photos I took around the park.
On Sunday we made a quick dash to our local grocery store. Here we are in line, keeping our 6 ft distance.
A lazy and carb-filled Sunday dinner. I made kimbap with spam and some with tuna-mayo filling, accompanied by shin ramyun. Warm and comforting.
Snippets of my week working from home and social distancing.
The usual breakfast of vegemite and avocado toast.
Time to work.
The left-hand side view from my desk. It was a gloomy, cloudy week.
Homemade pizza by N for dinner!
Finished this manga book. Onto my next Masuda Miri book. I like her contemplative simplicity in her drawings and writing. I try to read 4 pages every morning as my Japanese study routine. Any words I don’t know, I search on the Daum dictionary app and pencil it in.
Garlic clam pasta with white wine by N, of course. My favorite!
After a walk around Fort Greene Park to get some fresh air, N made cookies and we watched ‘Sweeney Todd’ to end our Friday.
Week 2 of working from home and the city is officially in lock down.
This was the first full five-day week of working from home. My friends are tagging me on memes that say: ‘When you find out your daily lifestyle is actually in “quarantine”‘. Pretty accurate. No significant change for me ^^;;
It was nice working in silence in the comfort of my own home, preparing meals, going on (solitary) walks and continuing my homebody hobbies. I did notice Parkinson’s Law in effect and ended up working longer hours. This made me realize the importance of setting up a routine and creating structure, instead of feeling sluggish at the end of the day. I am writing this on a Tuesday and the past two days felt more balanced as I am more intentional with my daily routine.
In saying all this, I am grateful and very fortunate to have a job where I can work from home. I can’t imagine the level of anxiety people are going through with job losses, especially in a city like New York. It’s eerily empty and quiet here.
Saturday solitary walks over Brooklyn Bridge. We wanted to enjoy the sun and kept our distance from others. It was weird seeing the bridge empty midday on a sunny Saturday. Solitary recreational activities are allowed such as hiking, walking and cycling, with daily limits obviously. The one good thing about this is that we are entering warmer months. Maybe it’s time to take my bike out.
Sunday was a trip to Wegman’s again but this time we stocked up on groceries that should last us for a month. N made pizza from scratch and it was, of course, delicious.
So began the weekend after our first week of working from home due to the coronavirus outbreak in NYC.
Saturday breakfast recipe that can never go wrong. After eating and lazing around watching some rabbit movie N had on Netflix, I decided to go on a walk to DUMBO by myself whilst listening to Oprah’s SuperSoul Sunday podcast with Eckhart Tolle as the guest.
Here are some photos I took during my walk. It was exciting to see hints of Spring!
You know you’ve been living in the city for too long when you get nostalgic and giddy standing and smelling the fresh cut grass in a park. I walked a good 8.5km for three hours on a beautiful sunny day. It was much needed exercise after days sitting and working from home.
N made french toast for breakfast on Sunday morning. It was so good. The hint of cinnamon with maple syrup and cream was heavenly.
He also baked fresh bread in the morning. How did I get so lucky?
These three photos from Sunday are from my Ricoh GRII without any edits. My past blogs are from my iPhone 11, all edited. I might start using photos my Ricoh more on this blog.
After a decadent breakfast, N and I walked to Wegman’s where I popped by yesterday during my loner walk. I told him about this expansive supermarket near us and he wanted to check it out too. We bought groceries (and found toilet paper!) for the week as we were both going to be working from home.
The numerous tags we saw on the shelves at Wegman’s. Crazy times.
Afterwards, we sat outside the food market eating pizza and soaked up some sun. People, including ourselves, were religiously sanitizing their hands and some with industry-strength masks on.
It was announced that on Tuesday all restaurants and bars would be closed in NYC. Sh*t is escalating here in this city.
Saturday was spent all day at home – yet again. This has become a pattern where I stay home all day on one day of the weekend and go out on the other. N made the perfect crepes on Sunday morning.
Few hours after breakfast, I went out to get some life admin done. N wanted to join and we ended up going to White Noise Coffee. They have most reliable wifi. It was productive, except I deferred doing my taxes to another weekend.
We walked through the Dekalb shops and came across a pleasant surprise – McNally Jackson bookstore opened! I refrained from buying any books or stationery. The bookstore is a lot more expansive than it look from the outside. There is a reading nook with a large table upstairs. I made myself comfortable and finished “A New Earth” I have been reading for past few weeks.
It was ten years ago when I read Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now”. During that time I was going through some typical twenties crises and this book helped me to manage my thoughts and emotions, to separate the situation and my thoughts. It was so powerful I purchased copies to give out to my friends. Fast forward ten years, having experienced much more of life’s lessens, this book enlightened me to a whole new perspective of how to, in essence, live day-by-day and navigate this life with my consciousness and with humans that I will interact with in various situations. I loved it. I don’t think I’ve highlighted so furiously on my kindle before.
Life becomes stressful and anxious when my mind is dwelling on the past, or trying to live in the future when that obviously cannot happen. Being frustrated, offended or feeling any negative emotions towards a person no longer needs to linger internally. All I have to do is identify the ego that is talking, observe why it’s reacting in such manner (most likely because it’s in reaction to the other person’s ego) and to just be aware and conscious of it and let it go. If you no longer identify yourself as the ego, that is when you are in complete consciousness. Growing up at church I remember the sermons about being humble, that “the last shall be first and the first last” and how we should follow in Jesus’ steps. It’s one of those things that you know it’s “good” to be humble, but you don’t truly no why. In the Bible it says “Blessed are the humble, for they shall inherit the earth”. In the older version the word was “meek” instead of “humble”. So who are the meek or humble? It is those who are ego-less. When you let go of the ego and the form, stop behaving from the conditioned mind, I can instead live a life of peace that’s true to myself.
There is a chapter on life’s purpose and that was transformative for me. By living in consciousness, i.e., ego-less, it will begin to flow into what you do, and in the modalities of awakened doing – acceptance, enjoyment, enthusiasm. That’s it. That’s the purpose of being. It’s a new earth of freedom and peace.
So yes, that was the book I finished over the weekend. You know what else I finished over the weekend?
A K-drama called “Crash Landing on You” that’s on Netflix. It’s so cheesy but cute. It works because of Hyunbin.
Friday on the way to work with my little fruit basket
Saturday brunch at Olea. Such a good spot. The weather was beautiful and we all went walking around Fort Greene. I went home and had a sweet three-hour nap. Don’t you just love weekend?
From ‘A New World’
On Sunday I binge watched ‘Cheer’ on Netflix. It will make you laugh and cry, squirm in anguish and have your heart broken and be so inspired as you follow the college kids’ courageous stories. I also need a Jerry in my life. I miss him already.
A surprise dinner at Cote Thursday night. He knows the way to my heart. I felt very spoiled, the surprise continued (with Mejuri pieces). He knows my style. He knows me well.
Saturday morning was lazy and slow. We then viewed a few apartments down south of Prospect Park. After a quick bite, we met a friend and went to the Brooklyn Museum – at last!
Sunday was the same, with no luck with the apartments. We went for a walk through Windsor Terrace and had a late lunch at Giuseppina’s oven-brick pizza. You can say we were very, very satisfied.
Monday was a public holiday. I avoid Manhattan and prefer staying in Brooklyn or at home. That’s exactly what I did on our day off.
A never-ending to-do list that keeps getting pushed back. We did try to pickup some momentum.
Saturday: worked out and went to a housewarming. Sunday: went to view an apartment, walked through Prospect Park and watched the Oscars.
‘Parasite’, a South Korean film, won 4 Oscars including Best Picture. The first non-English film to win the award was a South Korean film. These people who I grew up watching with at home with my parents (or Korean friends) were on the same stage as the Hollywood celebrities, giving their speeches in Korean. If you had told me this 20 years ago as a teenager, I would have said you’re crazy. Growing up, when kids would call me Chinese, I’d always have to correct them and say I was Korean, that not all Asians were Chinese. Yet, majority of them didn’t even know where South Korea was on the globe. Fast-forward twenty years, here we are with South Korean groups performing at the MTV Awards, Korean beauty brands shelved at Sephora and Korean films winning the Oscars – and that’s only just a few to be noted out of the many fields. So proud to be Korean.
