"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well."
-Virginia Woolf
Coming soon* (*in grad school time)!
This area is currently under construction... my apologies for the appearance and thank you in advance for your patience! This is where I will be sharing new recipes I'm trying out and my review of them. This is also where I will be sharing recent cafés, restaurants, and food trucks I have tried (mostly in NYC) and what I would recommend. All pictures are my own, unless indicated.
The text bracketed above has been left unchanged for a little more than 2 years. That is, this area has been “under construction” for so long that it might as well remain as a permanent exhibition as is. When I started this blog, I was sure that I would have more time as a grad student than I had as a high school teacher. When I sit down to really think about it, however, I’m not sure when I was busier—now or before. In any case, I definitely am not cooking regularly. Quite the contrary, in this time of the enduring COVID-19 pandemic, I have been investing my basically-minimum-wage part-time dollars on takeout from a few local businesses, where I have achieved the status of “regular.” I call my parents every week or so to check in, but I have come to realize that our calls are more about them checking in on me and whether I’m eating well. (I’m from a first-generation Chinese household, in case you are new to this blog). Anyhow, I have decided to keep this page as is, along with all the other “street smart” pages that have remained untouched with months, if not years. Rather than erase the past—and some of my cringe-worthy projects/ambitions—I will continue to reflect on it alongside where I am in the present. After all, this is a blog about my wonderings, wanderings, and becomings—and the multiplicities of them all.
Here are 12 of my favorite places (organized by neighborhood, beginning with the one in which I reside) to daydream, read, doodle, and get work done in New York City. I acknowledge that there are likely hundreds of similar blog posts out there with recommendations of places to go in the city for these purposes. What I am offering is the perspective of a 29-year old teacher-turned-student who has lived in the city now for a little over a year, who is a self-identified introvert, an enthusiastic user of public transport, and an avid people-watcher (i.e., ethnographer-in-training).