Another Love Letter

Six More Things I Don't Hate at All

Feb 18, 2025

Happy belated Love Day!

In 2022, when this blog was just a baby (as opposed to the petulant teenager that it is now), I wrote a Valentine’s Day post called Love Letter in which I recounted a few things I love, or more accurately, a few things that feel like heaven on earth. It included such things as instant oatmeal and sending voice notes.

That post was inspired by this bit of poetry from Elizabeth Barrett Browning, which remains one of my favorite excerpts to this day:

“Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”

Years later, I continue to love the idea that routine things become all the sweeter when you recognize them. Like a fire, when you take off your shoes and hold your bare feet to the warmth, it becomes even warmer on your skin.

So, my Valentines, today I get all sappy and bring you Another Love Letter, with six more entries into the “exceptional common things” hall of fame.

Getting very silly about the Twilight Saga

This month, my little friend group has been engaging in a time-honored movie marathon tradition. The crème de la crème of Silly Girl Time. To know them is to love them (and to quote them incessantly). The sparkling, quivering, muttering, mouth-breathing masterpieces that are the “Twilight” movies.

Just yesterday we finished Eclipse (arguably the worst of the five) over Indian food, and last week New Moon over bao buns. There is an unmatched coziness and comfort to this kind of activity—an unnecessary, giggly, weekday movie viewing with friends. I’m reminded of Sundays watching America’s Next Top Model with my friend Sarah in middle school. Or hungover sprees of The Carrie Diaries in college. Or the one particularly weird time Edie and I finished Band of Brothers in something like three 6-hour sittings (pandemic mania at its finest).

The magazines I love are lately obsessed with telling me that people are lonelier than ever. The Ringer recently informed me (yes, me personally) that teens today are “hanging out” 50% less than 20 years ago. “Hanging out” is the key term here, as it encompasses a type of socializing that exists somewhere between alone time and organized fun. It’s passive companionship, and I find that it makes me feel even less lonely than my best-executed theme party.

The unmatched comfort of alternating between silence and cringing in each other’s company, of making a really big deal out of a movie for no particular reason, of sharing a laugh over Edward Cullen’s pained grimaces. I’m not saying a Twilight gathering could solve society’s existential loneliness problem, but I’m not NOT saying that.

Olives

And more precisely, the fact that kids can put an olive on each of their fingers and hold them up like monster hands. And MORE precisely, the fact that some foods exist which beg to be played with. For another example, I present to you: orange slice smiley faces.

There’s also string cheese, roasting marshmallows, and dangling two French fries from your upper lip to look like walrus tusks. What a joy and an honor.

My space heater

Space heaters are often wasteful and largely inefficient, and yet my dumpy heater is the primary earthly comfort that has been tethering me to earth this winter.

Winter in Hanoi is deceivingly chilly, and my drafty, poorly insulated apartment, like many, does not come with heating. Sometimes the inside of my house feels somehow colder than it is outside, and there’s something particularly unnerving about coming home and still being chilly.

Enter: Sunhouse Infrared Quartz Heater, which I plug in as close to my bed as is safe and curl up next to like Laura Ingalls might cozy up to a roaring fire after a long day on the prairie. This December, when I was in the throes of reading Jane Austen, I would do so with a cup of tea by the glowing orange light of the heater, as if I am, in fact, Emma Woodhouse, enjoying the comforts of 19th-century wealth.

Lunch dates

Never underestimate the romance of the middle of the day. Of course, nobody looks their best in noon’s direct sunlight, but besides that, I think meeting for lunch is sneakily one of the most delightful things two can do, whether it be romantic or platonic.

Lately, Sean Foley and I have been going for bun cha at lunch between one and three times a week, because our evening and weekend schedules haven’t been lining up splendidly. It breaks up my day so charmingly, and we get 45 minutes-or-so of casual but deliberate time for chit-chatting, making snide remarks, and smoking a cheeky 1 p.m. cigarette (typical for him, very scandalous and exciting for me).

Last week, we had lunch bun cha on Valentine’s Day itself. I like to imagine the pork meatballs were heart-shaped, but they were normal. Bun cha itself is also a great example of heaven on earth.

The small liberties of adulthood

Lately, I’ve been experiencing random spasms of gratitude. I chalk it up to the fact that I’m a very sentimental bitch, and I’m starting to sense that my time in Hanoi is wrapping up. My nostalgia muscles are twitching big time.

But the things I’m feeling appreciative of aren’t really “Vietnam” things, but more the small things about the phase of life I’ve grown into since living here. That is, the little freedoms of being a “grown-up.” Don’t get me wrong, there’s part of me that would do anything to be a useless toddler again, playing hard with no thoughts and being taken care of. But more than ever I’ve started to have thoughts along the lines of “Wow, adulthood… kinda rocks.”

I experience this feeling when I absentmindedly unlock the gate to my building in the afternoon and recall that my apartment is mine, and filled with all the things that I like. I can clean it if I want, or I can just lie in bed. If I want to read, I can choose from the stack on my bedside that I picked out for myself, to indulge in my own curiosities and whims.

Or when it seems like it’s going to be a nice sunset, so I can just leave and drive myself to a cafe to have a juice and watch it.

And perhaps the greatest luxury of self-governance: when I’m hungry, I can choose what I want for dinner. Anything, if you think about it! This month I’ve been obsessed with giving rein to my mealtime cravings, with some regard to expense but none to health or reasonableness. I can, and do, have Indian sometimes three times in a row, or pad thai for breakfast, or pho every single afternoon for weeks until I get sick of it. These indulgences have begun to feel urgent, perhaps because my time left in Hanoi is so short, or perhaps just because life is.

Plain Ruffles potato chips

Finally, I only recently rediscovered the divine deliciousness of this snack, which I’d long considered boring compared to my beloved Jalapeno Cheetos or Doritos dipped in salsa.

But plain potato chips, the thick kind with the ridges, are so good. Especially if it’s a hot day, and you’re sweaty and tired and dying for a snack, and you pair them with some kind of nauseatingly sweet gas station beverage, like a can of Arizona iced tea. You know what they say, snackiness is close to godliness.

What little thing have you been loving lately?

Kitchen Sink

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