Hello!
I’m writing to you as I wrap up a really good weekend, and the first cold-ish weekend too. I just finished watching Season 1 of Broadchurch and I just can’t get over how good it was. A while ago, I went on this whole thing about how much I loved “The Missing” and this is so, so similar to that: a small British town mystery and a lot of drama. Every time I watch a new British mystery drama I’m like… ok… I know how this is gonna go… but I never ever do, so it’s always a pleasant surprise.
Anyway! The highlight of my weekend was, without a doubt, getting to see Ken. He was in DC for a conference event type thing and we got some decently yummy but very spicy thai food last night. I absolutely loved catching up and cracking up over the silly things that tend to happen when we’re together.
For example, when I arrived at the restaurant, he told me that he initially walked into the wrong restaurant!! So, let’s back up a little: I had never been to this place before—my roommate has like newspaper/magazine clippings of restaurant recs on the fridge and this was one of them so I was told to pick a place so I was like ok sure! I told him we were going to Baan Thai but forgot to tell him that it was on the second floor. I swear there aren’t that many thai restaurants in D.C. but it just so happened, there was another completely different thai restaurant right below the restaurant I picked and he walked into that one by mistake. He had apparently already been seated when he saw that the menu said Thaitanic, hahahaha. When he asked the waitress if this was Baan Thai, he said she rolled her eyes and took the menu away from him, LOL. It didn’t help that Thaitanic was pretty much completely empty and Baan Thai had a line!
Dinner was good! We both got papaya curry, I learned about his life at Columbia (have I mentioned that he’s at Columbia getting his PhD??? I’m SO proud of him!) and told him about work. Mandy joined us for dinner because she was also in town, so that was nice. She’s still a junior at Penn, so it was kinda nice to be regaled with tales of awful management classes and all of that again for a bit.
After dinner, we went to Momofuku Milk Bar, which was so awesome because their cereal milk soft serve is one of my favourite things ever and I didn’t even know they had a store in DC until I was browsing Google Maps for places to eat. I feel like I should probably be bored of this ice cream by now but… I’m really not. It was still so good. Ken had some and he was like “hmm it tastes like something I used to eat in the morning” HAHA. We ended up standing around in the small, crowded store for an hour before I went home. (I’m so happy I get to write about hanging out with my school friends again!! when we were walking around, it really felt like we were in Center City like the old days lol)
Also noteworthy, today I decided to venture into Georgetown. It’s a bit of a hassle to get to but I didn’t have anything else planned for the day and it was too beautiful a day to waste indoors. I’ve been to Georgetown before, once, with Shahirah. We visited DC for fall break our sophomore year. I completely forgot how beautiful it is. The flowers, the buildings… the variety of shops! It’s like better than any British high street could ever be, to tell you the truth. I really just liked walking around and taking in the sights of the pink flowers on the lamp post against the blue sky.
So yeah, it’s been a great weekend, alhamdulillah. I’m just about to prepare myself for the work week ahead. Work’s been picking up! I’ve been getting to do some more new things and I know I haven’t hit like a… “responsibility plateau” yet so things will still be picking up for a bit more which will be interesting. I haven’t felt totally overwhelmed yet, but that’s not to say that I’m underwhelmed either, because I’m definitely not. I’m just very perfectly whelmed (this is a Clueless reference). I feel like I’m learning a lot because I’m constantly being pushed to try new things and take on more tasks, but I also feel like it’s not totally clear to me what I’m learning or how I’ll use these lessons in the future (what I mean is sometimes you don’t know what you’re learning until you get to apply that knowledge).
I mostly love that I don’t yearn for the weekend, I don’t count the hours until I get to leave the office and I don’t dread Mondays. I’m not particularly excited about commuting back and forth every day either but I definitely don’t mind it because spending so much time helping to make podcasts mean that my commutes are when I get to actually listen to them.
That’ll be all from me this week, I think. Until next week!
P.S. My name was featured in the credits of the show for the first time last week! Go give it a listen here!
Dayana Writes 