Hello Everyone!
My favorite part of each holiday is the day-after holiday clearance. Every year, without fail, I head to the store the morning after a holiday to stock up on all the themed candy that’s suddenly 50–70% off. This Monday, I made my usual post Valentine’s Day run and got candy at half the price. It feels super silly, as it is the same candy with a heart slapped on it, but I am not going to complain about a deal. It reminds me of the instant depreciation that occurs when you drive a car off a lot, but instead, it happens as soon as the holiday clock strikes midnight.
Anyway, let’s find out What’s Up With Will…
Tough Guys Use Pink Notebooks!
Research shows sour stuff can block anxiety (Maybe? IDK?)
I walked on campus to find that it was the once-a-semester Poster Sale, so I dropped in for a glance on my way to classes. There were the classic band and fandom posters, but sprinkled in the hundreds of posters were some diamonds in the rough, like Dogs Playing Poker (which I do not think Cleo would be a fan of) and a Giant posterized version of Where’s Waldo (I could not find him).
In the class I am teaching, this week marked the first in-class speech: the “I Am” poem. In this assignment, you simultaneously that gives students the space to explore identity through poetry, practice talking about themselves, and explore aspects of a performative speech. I took inspiration for this assignment from another professor, and it builds into a later group “We Are” poem speech assignment. I originally chose this assignment because it serves as a creative outlet for students and a way to talk about themselves (which is surprisingly hard). However, over the course of the speech, I also recognized that speaking through poetry creates a unique kind of vulnerability, allowing students to play with and analyze their identities in a way that a traditional speech cannot.
One of the days was a workshop day, as I wanted students to have space to work on the assignment in class rather than wait till the last minute. From my own personal experience, I find that having an accountability partner and the technique of body doubling (the act of working alongside others to sustain focus) work wonders for me, and hopefully, this workshop space also helped my students stay motivated.
Since this is my first time teaching, I do not have a repository of previous assignments to use as examples, so I had to create a rough draft on the BART ride over. Here it is:
“I am an apple a day, because apparently it keeps the doctor away. I am taco soup and sweet potato casserole, recipes acquired over the years from family, both biological and adopted. I am the oyster I first had at five, eyes watering from the massive dollop of horseradish, all to the chagrin of my father, who was proud to have another “foodie” in the house. I am Georgia Peaches, Appalachian moonshine, and California burgundy, all from the places I have lived.
I am a knight in shining armor with my toy sword, vanquishing eight-legged foes who enter my domain. I am a San Francisco Lego set, which, even to my partner’s standards, was a model beautiful enough to be displayed, but building it is how I played. I am dollar store sunglasses, or I was, I think I just lost another pair.
I am from car-dependent suburbia that many called “utopia”, only to later find out that for me it was dystopian. No, I am from the city. I am the hustle and bustle. I am the bodega I go to for late-night munchies. I am the ballpark that cheers on the home team. I am the museums and restaurants, exploring new cuisines, cultures, and histories.
I am my mother’s midwestern politeness and my father’s New Yorker directness. I am walking here, I say without the accent. I am a family spread across the US, cramming 20 people into a three-bedroom rental during family reunions. My parents say that I am a good bit Irish, and a little bit of a lot of other things. Truth be told, I am unsure of what I am.
I am smart, yet I am clueless. I am expected to have the answers. I am confident yet am afraid. I wear confidence even as my hands shake. I am sometimes flying high and other times down in the dumps. I am figuring things out, though. As long as I am me, everything will be okay, as I am the story I keep rewriting about myself. At the end of the day, all I need to remember is the time-honored motto ‘Where there’s a Will, There’s a Way.’”
Unlike my quickly constructed poem, I was incredibly impressed by the student “I Am” poems. I would say these students are poets, whether or not they know it! Unfortunately for me, Dr. Seuss is one of the only poets I could think of, so I made a lot of references to him in my class feedback. I need to brush up on my poetry knowledge…
My gender studies class was cancelled this week because of the Lunar New Year, so I got to go home early one of the days. On a similar note, my Methods class was moved online. Unlike my gender studies class, though, I did not get the memo.
I rolled into the classroom right as the seminar started to find absolutely no one there, and because my commute is so far, I had to take my class alone in the very non-virtual empty room. We continued to discuss observational study as a communication studies methodology (looking at a reading observing Quakers’ use of silence as a communicative practice, known as “the sense of the meeting”). My classmates must have been practicing their observational skills, as they astutely noticed that I was alone in the lecture hall.
In other news, I am going Full Steam ahead with a wine-based project for my methods class. While I am finalizing what exactly I am going to study, my current idea centers around the intersections of wine and community.
Lastly, my friend Judith got me a Rainbow Ikea tote bag for Valentine’s Day! She told me that she has a matching one, and we are abso-freaking-lutely going to twin!
I knew this week was going to be a busy one, work-wise. I purposely did not plan any mini-adventures to go on. Yet, by the middle of the week, I was itching for a break and went on a walk to see where the day would take me.
I stumbled on a recently opened a retrospective exhibit on Viola Frey at the Bedford Gallery.
Viola Frey was a Bay Area artist who played a major role in shifting ceramics from the realm of craft into fine art. At a glance, I would hardly say her sculptures resemble the clay pots that get conjured in my head when I think of ceramics. She treated clay surfaces like canvases, layering glazes, paint, metallic lusters, and even airbrush techniques to create dynamic and colorful works. Walking through the exhibition, I was struck by how visually powerful the pieces felt. Her later works, though, pushed ceramics even further. Frey hand-built massive human figures in sections, fired them separately, and then reassembled them, transforming ceramics into something that felt monumental.
I also could not help but chuckle a little when it described Viola Frey as first and foremost an observer of the world.
Feeling parched on my walk, I decided to stop at Yi Fang Tea, where I selected a Taro Tea Latte with actual taro in it. Now, it is important to note that as I ordered this, a big disclaimer came up saying that this drink, “IS NOT UBE”. I think there have been one too many customers assuming that taro is, in fact, the more trendy purple cousin, ube. It is not. While both taro and ube are root vegetables, ube has a sweeter, more vanilla taste, while taro is much more earthy and starchy.
The only way I could describe this tea is if someone shoved leftover sweet potato casserole into a glass and served it with milk and tea. I do not say this in a bad way, but rather in the “next time Thanksgiving rolls around, I might have to try this” kind of way. I probably am going to get some looks if I do it though…
(I also want to stipulate that the title was not clickbait, and I did spill some of the tea on me as I was grabbing a straw.)
For our date night, we went to True Foods Kitchen. It is a smaller-scale food chain specializing in making “real food” as opposed to “fake food”. Thank goodness.
Despite the extreme health-conscious consumer branding, we really enjoyed the in-house-made hummus (with gluten-free pita bread), a Turkey-based lasagna with both pesto and red sauce(a combo that I have never had but was bomb), and a chocolate torte made with local chocolate company TCHO chocolate.
After our dinner, we walked to the Lesher Center to see 6-time NYT Crossword Puzzle Answer and newly minted Delta Silver Sky Medallion Club member Ana Gasteyer (you might also be familiar with her work on SNL, Mean Girls, or on Broadway in roles like Elphaba in Wicked). Her show was a mixture of comedy and show tunes. She interwove stories from her show tours and mishaps on theater stages while singing some of the Broadway classics. At the beginning of the show, she also made sure the audience knew that it was okay for us to film as she was desperate for attention.
Over the course of the show, we learned that the saxophone player went to SFSU and had a killer solo! Go Gators!!!
As a Valentine’s Day gift, Rylee wanted to get me a gluten-free cooking class. Yet even in the Bay Area, one of the most gluten-free-friendly places in the US, she could not find a class. Instead, she found a behind-the-scenes factory tour of one of our favorite gluten-free bakeries, Third Culture Bakery!
The tour was led by the owners themselves, who shared the story of how the business began. One of them began selling French pastries, but being in the Bay Area, they were constantly asked whether they offered anything gluten-free. Eventually, he decided to revisit a recipe from his childhood in Southeast Asia and transform it into a muffin. To their surprise, this pastry quickly became the bestseller, often selling out well before the more intricate and labor-intensive French pastries. From that success, Third Culture was born, built around showcasing Southeast Asian ingredients that were not widely used at the time, such as guava, passion fruit, and coconut. The name “Third Culture” itself came from a sociological term coined in the 1970s, referring to people who grow up blending multiple cultural identities.
We were introduced to the bakery’s four main ingredients. They use rice flour from Koda Farms, the oldest Japanese American rice farming family in the United States. Instead of cane sugar, they rely on coconut sugar, which has a more mellow, molasses-like flavor. Pandan leaves, described as a kind of Southeast Asian vanilla with a slightly yeasty aroma, are another cornerstone. I realized I had tasted pandan many times in drinks without ever really knowing what it was. Finally, there were the sesame seeds sourced from Japan. These seeds were noticeably plumper than the typical sesame seeds found on hamburger buns in America. The owners joked, “Once you try one of these, you’ll never be able to have any other sesame seeds.”
We then toured the bakery itself, where they produce between 12,000 and 15,000 pastries each week. The process begins with mixing, using a massive Hobart mixer (nicknamed “the Lamborghini of mixers” because it’s the largest commercial model available). From there, we observed the piping, baking, proofing, and glazing stages. It happened to be pandan day, and the aroma filled the entire kitchen as we walked through each step. We also loaded up on free samples of the original mochi muffin and a seasonal black sesame muffin for Lunar New Year’s.
It feels almost impossible that someone might not of had a root beer float, but then I have to remember that the drink is mostly a US thing. It goes to show that even something as seemingly mundane as a root beer float can be exciting given the right context.
