I covered a giant watch party for the premiere of Fresh Off the Boat at the start of the month--it felt sort of like an unofficial premiere party with folks like Eddie Huang, Randall Park, and Hudson Yang at the event. You can read/watch my report here, and check out my last blog post on it here.

Spent an afternoon in Chinatown with Tiffany buying small Lunar New Year trinkets. Here's a photo Tiffany took of me in a shop on Mott, overwhelmed by the choices of red envelopes.

And here are the red envelopes I settled on!

Back in good ol' Sacratomato for LNY...

恭禧發財!

Na and I got to help with NYE's dinner this year. And by help, we mean we flitted around the kitchen bothering Mom while she tried to cook.

Nom.

Nom nom.

Nom nom nom! All of the dishes represent different things for the new year, from prosperity to longevity.

Family photo! No getting up until the first bowl of rice is done!

We also got to celebrate my mom's birthday while I was home :)

New Year's day! We were recreating this photo.

And then I came back to New York for more cold and snow...and Zander asleep on the couch. Again.

At the end of the month, I celebrated my birthday with an open invite to my friends to join me at one of my favorite Upper West Side bars. I always feel weird about doing stuff like this because I never know if anyone will show up (I have deep memories of "friends" not showing up for birthday parties when I was in grade school). 

So this year, I threw out an invite...and the night was pretty great! We managed to take over the back half of the bar for about six hours in the night and a lot of people from all different parts of my life came and went, from work colleagues to college friends to new friends...

This may be one of the only non-dark photos from the night. I'm anti-camera flash because I'm narcissistic. 

It really is a small world! Turns out Michelle's cousin is a friend of Yin's from Beijing. Crazy.

Clearly, I'm not mad at this dude anymore for the day he tried to get me to walk around in the blizzard.

And then the next morning, I rolled out of bed, waffled around with Mengfei and Hillary, and then went to the Village for fancy oatmeal and to do more waffling with Yin back home. 

Classic.