I’m sitting across from Ben Hon, better known by his 34.4k followers on Instagram as @stuffbeneats, inside the Vietnamese restaurant Madame Vo, a local East Village hotspot whose menu featuring long-standing family recipes never fails to draw long lines. We’re taking photos of the carefully arranged dishes in front of us, I with my iPhone 6 and he with his large Fujifilm camera complete with a set of three lenses. Next to us, two girls are pointing and whispering, until one o

As I close out The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, I wanted to turn the page by reflecting on fresh starts of mine. It’s easy for me to get stuck on endings, so in the spirit of trying new things, I’ll highlight just the opposite. Big or small, these beginnings of the past week have brought—and hopefully will continue to bring—me happiness in some way. First time reading a book that explicitly studies happiness. First time eating at Xi’an Famous Foods. Those hand-pulled