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[catthu]

My Hermione Moment

In the first Harry Potter book, Hermione once expressed exasperation to Harry and Ron by saying, "We could have gotten killed. Or worse, expelled." This moment really exemplified her character.

I had one of those moments today. I came back to the hotel at 11pm exhausted, after the whole day out since 8.30am on 4 hours of sleep, having done some important productive things, and it was Christmas Eve.

Me: I still need to go the gym today. A will kill me if I don't.

A: No, I will just be very disappointed.

Me: That's even worse!

A: I know, that's why I said it.

So off to the gym we went.

A side note on La La Land: it's back in the theater, and I went to see it again today. I wish Mia had stopped and reconnected with Sebastian, instead of staying out of each other's lives.

[catthu]

Just A Normal Day

On the way back from afternoon tea in a Chinese garden with a friend and her parents, we stopped to admire an early sunset over an ordinary, unremarkable river. A few minutes later on the same walk, we stood on the overpass over a tree-lined area of Pudong, gazing at the same sunset. I took a few pictures for the parents. I was already feeling pretty good and relaxed from tea time and from a good 5k run earlier with the friend's mom, now made delighted as they pointed at things along the road for me and taught me how to say them in Chinese. My Chinese was like a little kid's -- all learned from repeating what others around me were saying, without even an understanding of the complete phonetic lexicon of the language. I was illiterate outside of all the characters previously learned from Japanese. And yet being able to learn a new language this way, while unlike all the previous languages I'd attempted, was so fun and engaging that I didn't want to go back to the "normal" way.

I thought about how this was a moment that made life feel worth living. Completely ordinary, yet completely joyful. I had always been spending a lot of time talking to other people about longevity; this last week in Shanghai saw several such conversations. I focused on what was important: the biotech, the bottlenecks. But sometimes I wish we could also convey the emotions of it all: that there were endless joy to experience in this world.

[catthu]

Chenghuangmiao

I hadn't known what to expect when I arrived at Chenghuangmiao to meet up with a friend after sunset. The exterior glowed red and warm yellow with lantern-like lights, a sight I was quite fond of. As we walked to the inside, down streets of shops, kiosks, food stands and trinkets, it dawned on me that this felt like a festival. Sure, it was a bit touristy (or, a lot touristy!) but it didn't feel claustrophobic or crowded. We bought a little bit of fetival-like food here and there at different stalls, got charms and scented pouches, walked on a bridge over a pond surrounded by lantern-lit, large traditional buildings, with zither music in the background. All I was missing were festival games.

I thought about how this was just like the festival scene in Persona 3, then remembered amusingly that the same scene also happened at a shrine.

Being here relaxed me. Time seemed to have halted, standing still, nothing to worry about, and all that was left to do was to soak up the vibe.

[catthu]

An Unlikely Thanksgiving

I walked out of a tiny local coffee shop where I'd been having a work call Thanksgiving evening. The street where I picked up a wine bottle was beaming with people. Holiday lights, lit classic store fronts and the cold air made for a cozy scene, even if I wasn't quite sure whether the festivity was all in my head or inherent in the air. I popped a classic Christmas playlist on my headphones, inspired by the occasion, and couldn't help but think about how unlikely this moment in time was. I was in London for Thanksgiving (an occasion they didn't celebrate), on my way to a Thanksgiving plan I didn't have that morning (and yet the holidays scene around just fit right in), with people I hadn't even known at the beginning of the years (yet had some pretty unique connections with), Americans here on another land.

True to the spirit of Thanksgiving, I left dinner past 1am inspired by how some people there could see the good in everyone, despite flaws and slights.

[catthu]

Unexpected Anemoia

Anemoia means nostalgia for a past one didn't actually live through. That's what I felt walking through the busy street of Istiklal in Istanbul at night.

I do know where the familiarity came from, and what an unexpected source it was. The busy vibe, and the lights, the people, all reminded me of having my character walking down Shibuya's Central Street in Persona 5. When it rained, the similarity grew even more intensely. I had spent so many nights in my 4 weeks in Istanbul walking alone through this street at night, listening to Beneath the Mask from my earphones, blended into the stream of faceless crowd. And somehow it felt like home.

Istanbul vibed, in a grand way. Working in between the tesseract-like bookshelves and stone walls of Minoa Pera was a vibe. Running through the busy Galata Bridge to a historical view of mosques and busy bazaars on the other side was a vibe. Running in a park under the sky gondolas going from one part of the city to another was a vibe. Catching up with people over coffee next to a gigantic glass window looking over the Bosporus river with both Asia and Europe in view, definitely vibe.

I understood now why people enjoyed Istanbul so much. It had shortcomings, for sure, but I wouldn't mind going back here.

[catthu]

Where it all began (the Marathon, in this case)

After my evening 10k race in Athens, I came back the next morning to watch the Marathoners at their finishing spot: the first Olympic stadium. Going to the Athens Marathon had been on my wishlist for many years now, from before covid. I'd planned to do a half, but unfortunately there was no half this year so I settled for the 10k.

Athens was a historical spot for the Marathon. The origin story of the race occurred here, when Pheidippides ran from Marathon to Athens to announce victory against the Persian. But this was also the site of the very first Marathon race, taking place at the first world Olympic games. Runners ran from Marathon and finish in the stadium. Every year now, runners ran the same route, and finished the same way in the -- now known as -- world's very first Olympic stadium.

People in Athens really went all out cheering for runners. The last miles in the city zoomed through streets lined with people drumming, marching, shouting "Bravo"s. The last hundred feet into the stadium was full of cheering, with the view of the Acropolis on their right if they cared to watch, and ended as they ran into the stadium with 20k people on the bench cheering and clapping.

I learned later that this year's winner set the record for this course, beating the previous one by 3 seconds. I was there to watch it.

Even just a couple years ago, I wouldn't have thought of running a marathon -- or even just being a runner -- an emotional experience. A lot of people did track; running seemed natural for them and for everyone else on Earth. But here I was, crying as the marathon runners streamed past the finish line, more touched than finishing my own race. The historical significance of it all played a big part. But there was also something profound about running. Running was a solitary challenge: we trained alone, showed up to races alone, struggled alone. But we also got unconditional support from everyone else. No matter who you were or your running ability, people cheered for you wholeheartedly because they understood that you were in a challenging struggle where the only enemy to beat was yourself.

[catthu]

Bass Memory

I walked into a ukulele class in Istanbul, in a room equipped with multiple musical instruments and picked up the bass to join a jam session. I didn't think about this at the time, but it'd been 15 years since I last played this instrument and equally long since I last played it in a band-like setting. It felt just like yesterday. My friends became impressed with my playing; the musical talented ukulele instructor commented that I was a really good bass player. This meant a lot to me.

[catthu]

Too Little Time to Work on Longevity

I haven't lied awake at night pondering life and death for a really long time. Earlier today I visited the Mutter museum of medicine, which then reminded me of a friend who died of lung cancer in her 30s. It wasn't aging in this case; still, cancer sucks. And tonight I'm awake thinking about this whole thing.

An overwhelming portion of everyone's life is defined by health, sickness, aging, and death. There's no bigger root of suffering than aging (and death). Even if someone is not attracted to the vision of an immortal society, they should still be able to see that setting ourselves free from aging and sickness, both for ourself and our loved ones, makes life 1000x times better. Sometimes I'm bewildered that people don't see this -- until it happens to them.

I've focused on quite a few problems in my life, but nothing has felt quite as pressing as longevity. Everywhere I look, there's constant reminders, at a visceral level. It always feels like I'm not making fast enough progress, and I have to try harder.

[catthu]

Across the Universe

This one time, a good friend rode me around Texas Hill Country in his convertible with the roof down. It was late at night, everything was dark and the stars were bright. The highway was not a big highway, but a two-lane road where cars were going at 80mph. I tilted my head back to look up at the stars above. At the speed we were going, the streetlights on both sides and the occasional neon signs looked like bright strips of light outlining a cyberpunkish track for us to zip through. I couldn't see the street and the cars around us, only the strips of light and the stars, and that created a trippy illusion that we were floating on a racetrack in the middle of a galaxy.

I found this very moving and exhilarating. I thought about how I'd seen setups like this in racing video games sometimes, but it was so much more to be there. Sometimes my friend would shout out something, which I couldn't hear in all the winds coming at us. But I became reminded of his presence, and that delighted me. Somehow having a good companion to share this illusory moment with made it more profound and meaningful.

[catthu]

On Longevity

Even when I was small, my dad drilled into me that I had to focus on very few things to become the best at them. Unfortunately, I found almost everything in the world so fun and interesting. As I got older, my interests expanded instead of narrowed. I came to the realization that I’d never be able to do even 1% of what I wanted to do in this life… with a normal lifespan. So after a few years jumping between interests and careers, ironically I dropped everything to focus on the single mission of longevity, so I would be able to live long enough to do everything.

My interest in longevity started in this selfish way; I’d be lying if I said there were any more noble intentions in the beginning. That said, the more time I spend in this field, the more it becomes apparent, painfully obvious really, that our lives are defined, in a tragic way, by aging and death; this is the number one cause of suffering in the world. When I was 7 or 8, I read a book on HIV/AIDS and cried, not because of HIV, but because I realized for the first time that we would all die, with or without HIV. I asked my mom not to die so we could spend endless time together. Everyone truly working towards radically extending lifespan has a similar story and, I suspect, so does everyone else. The difference is at some point, my friends and colleagues and I realized we could do something about aging and death instead of just coping.

From the time of Gilgamesh, immortality has been the oldest quest in the world. In modern times, it is unfortunately vilified. Mentions of longevity evoke numerous bad associations: that it heightens injustice and inequality; that those who want it are selfish, fearful, calculating; that an indefinite life exchanges ephemeral meanings for eternal boredom; and those who reject the desire to live forever are wise, enlightened, and morally pure. I think this is just all of humanity conspiring to cope – the collective “you can’t reject me, I reject you!” strategy when it comes to not dying. As we’ve seen with penicillin, with vaccines, with surgery, with organ transplants — every single time we’ve made a breakthrough in helping individuals live longer, humanity wholeheartedly embraced it instead of rejecting it. But we can do more. We don’t have to wait until our bodies break down and wither in misery. We can stop aging, but we have to be brave enough to admit that we want to be immortal, and that immortality will be a blessing, not a curse.

[catthu]

Random Childhood Memory

Sometimes some random event or reference just triggers long forgotten pathways in my brain, and I am reminded of things I hadn't thought about for at least 15 years now.

In high school, I was very into this MMORPG called Priston Tale and spent a lot of time on the Vietnamese server. I didn't realize this at the time, but the social scene, social order, and social games of such a microcosm was so fascinating. I played an archer and created a clan for archers called [A]vengers with my other archer friends. I also joined a Vietnamese community full of people who were into digital painting ("CG", as we called it at the time) and started practicing to create fanart of the game. I created a deviant art account that didn't get any art until much later -- all my initial work was uploaded on this other Vietnamese art website whose name and url I can't remember. And if I can, it probably doesn't exist anymore anyway!

But I did make some friends on the site, and even met up with them in person! I admired a particular archer and artist on the site who went by the pseudonym flute, the first time I saw his oil painting of his girlfriend (titled "She"). I don't remember how, but we became friends and spent a lot of time chatting on Yahoo Messenger.

Another archer friend flute I had was called Akari. Years later, when I wanted a book to study for my Physics SAT 2 (back before the days of Amazon), Akari found the book in Hanoi and sent it to me as a gift.

Flute, Akari and I, along with another person who I cannot remember at the moment, started a project together. We wanted to create a wiki of mythologies related to the game -- god, goddesses, prophecies, clergy, legends, and so on. We never got anywhere with the project, but flute painted a very cool artwork of the team represented as four elementals. Flute was earth, Akari was air, the person I can't remember was fire, and I (the only girl in the group) was water.

I've forgotten a lot of things, but strangely, I can still picture this artwork really well in my head. A swirling dark blue / black landscape in the background, with the four elementals centered and taking up most of the screen. At the bottom was flute, a brown earth elemental half-burrowed, pushing up from the ground glowing in lava. Left was Akari, a wispy air elemental with the most angular face, just like his real face, and an all-knownig smirk. Top was the fire elmental, whose details I can't remember much, just like the person he represented. Right was me, an all-blue water elemental (Avatar color, but transluscent) with a mermaid tail, sleek back long hair and a head too big for her body.

I spent some time looking for this painting or other references related to these people on the web, but unfortunately most of it has disappeared. Ah, I'd have loved to be able to see that painting again. But it's strange to think how I haven't thought of it in 15 years, and all of the sudden it's all I could think about for a couple of hours.

[catthu]

Spontaneous Stargazing

A few days ago, when walking to my cliffside wood cabin at 1am after working with friends, I ran into a group of people looking at Saturn with a telescope. The telescope was situated by the path along the cliff, overlooking the valley. I got a glimpse of Saturn's tan body and its bright ring.

When waiting for the telescope to get set up, I gazed at the milky way. Just a day earlier, I couldn't tell where the milky way was since I'd expected something much brighter than a faint cloud. But the night before when plunging in the pool in the dark with my dog and another friend, he pointed out the milky way to me and now I couldn't unsee it.

From Calvin and Hobbes: "If people sat outside and watched the stars each night I bet they would live a lot differently."

[catthu]

Genetic Shortcomings & Blessings

My work recently has brought to me a ton of awareness about health, fitness, and genetic. I’ve confirmed my suspicions long ago that I have a lot of suboptimal genetics, including a slow metabolism, high risk for diabetes, cholesterol and more. Sometimes I think of people I know who can eat 3,000 kcalories a day and have 15% body fat, or can abuse their body eating all sort of unhealthy food and stay in peak condition for well into their 30s; then I cannot help but feel like I’ve been dealt a pretty terrible hand.

But once in a while I’m reminded that my genetic has a lot of positives, too. My brain chemistry is such that my stable baseline is a very happy, optimistic state (95 percentile, as my friends would agree). This is a huge blessing, especially when I see how many people around me are burdened by their depression, outward distrust, trauma, negativity, anxiety. As a friend in my regular circling group said, it’s unfair that I won this genetic lottery, I haven’t put in the work to deserve it (this is his system 1 feeling, his system 2 doesn’t endorse it of course).

So, win some, lose some. I think overall I came out pretty well. At least biotech and medical technologies are getting pretty close to radically changing the things I consider my shortcomings -- and if they aren’t, I am fully in control of mitigating the bad things by changing my lifestyle and diet. Negative brain chemistry on the other hand... not much medical interventions can do yet, and you’re pretty much out of luck if you want to change anything about it yourself.

All considered, I’m pretty happy.

[catthu]

Part of this World

A feeling that I’ve regained in the last few years, and have experienced often nowadays is connectedness: that I’m part of this world, connected to other humans, and to a shared history. This feeling comes naturally to me, I’ve had it before when living in the bay, but there was a break of 3 years or so when I was in a bad relationship and my world shrunk.

That’s the first observation: what we do day to day influences whether we have this feeling or not. When I think about people disappearing into their gated yard with one spouse and 1-3 kids for the majority of their lives, forming almost no new deep, meaningful relationships and put existing meaningful relationships on “maintenance mode” -- no wonder we feel isolated, our attitude about other people and humanity takes an adversarial turn.

Silicon valley used to be the place of noble ambitions. Now it’s full of people out to make themselves rich, using the guise of noble ambitions. Many people like an ex of mine -- saying that his want in life is to “save a billion people’s lives” but when talking about using small amount of money for productive causes (not even charity -- can even be investments that help others!), say he’d rather “donate to [his] checking account.” When faced with the freedom to use his time and expertise however he saw fit, he chose to chase status and the opportunity to enrich himself (again, under the noble guise of personal freedom for everyone -- there’s always a noble guise, and even they themselves believe it).

Not to be too critical on silicon valley, because it’s still where noble ambitions are, just saturated with other types of people. I live here surrounded by people in AI safety, animal welfare, EA, and longevity. Those are not fields that generate wealth or status; the people in it are on a shared mission (and, opted to live relatively close to each other). People want to live in the same group houses with their coworkers or people in the same field because, as I’ve often pondered, it’s that lack of boundaries that make one feels alive. But we can’t just live with any coworker -- living with 5 of your coworkers who work in a SaaS company serving ads or something would be quite awful, because that’s not a profession that encourages connectedness and a sense of camaraderie from a shared mission. 

Ten years ago or so, these people were also my friends, and together we were quite in our own world. But nowadays, we keep our nerdy selves but are quite down to Earth, or at least the part of Earth that feels meaningful. We go climbing and running, we cook and eat well, taking care of our health body. We talk about interpersonal relationships, trauma and coping, self awareness and respecting each other’s boundaries. People don’t disappear into a 4BR house in a walled garden with their 2.5 kids. They stay close and help each other, commit to life projects together, bring kids to late night philosophical conversations, all trying to build something different and enriching.

It’s a magical time, I’ve never felt so empowered as an individual yet so connected to this world and everyone around me.

[catthu]

Seeing everyone’s truths

Everyone’s perspective holds some truths; seeing all these different truths is the first step towards having informed opinions. It’s entirely possible to see and empathize with someone’s truths and still on net hold an opinion the same person would find disagreeable (and if necessary, unpack all the nuances in the view). It’s unfortunate that modern discourse is polarizing and leans into totally discrediting and demonizing the “other side.” 

[catthu]

random thought about poetry

I had this random thought about good poetry.

Writing good poems is about striking the Goldilocks zone of words: general enough so as many people as possible can relate to the entirety of it, but also specific enough so that as many people as possible perceive a rare connection, an unusual instance of feeling seen and understood in a way they hadn’t been before, and to do this in the least words possible.

“I feel sad” is relatable to everyone but is nothing rare or special

“I wish I had moved to Europe instead, so I would not have gone to the supermarket last September and ran into him” is too specific, most people don’t relate to that without many more words around it for context

“It takes a piece of me away, but wish we had never met” in the right context is relatable and special

[catthu]

There is only life

A quote I came across a while ago stuck in my head:

> There’s no work-life balance, there’s only life.

This speaks to me so much that for years I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. The only change is that I’ve come to view not just work, but other aspects of life the same way: friends, family, kids, leisure, etc. Modern society artificially compartmentalizes important aspects of our lives. This worsened (or, dare I say, caused) the loneliness crisis and the meaning crisis.

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit as I’ve been pondering what the best way is to raise kids. One thing I love about the Bay Area is the abundance of co-living and co-parenting communities. People are realizing that the “American dream” way of life lacks fulfillment, and now organizing themselves into community living situations that remind me of Kibbutz in Israel: communal living, working, and child-rearing. These communities are still seen now by the mainstream as weird, “hippie”, but I think over time it will penetrate mainstream and become the new norm (or, at least, one of the norms).

I have a thing about work, too. Many people in my work community are rallying to get people to move to the same city (or at least, their choice among 2-3 hub cities) as we work to build a real longevity network state. Good friends of mine are now talking about investing together in a large longevity lodge in a very outdoorsy area. I like this idea a lot. My dog likes the area, and I find living with people sharing the same mission very motivating. People whose mission is radical life extension understands that it’s literally do or die; we are very serious about it and want to find as many people as possible to be serious together. Commitment is easy because working on longevity is all of us’s first priority.

How does this fit with kids? I quite dislike the modern separation between kid-life and work-life. The shift towards remote work / white-collared work also doesn’t help: it’s hard to involve kids when all you seem to be doing is talking to rectangles on your computer or editing documents on your computer all day. This is where having a co-living community, that’s also your work community, really excels. If I had kids, I and the other adults in the community would surely tell them everything they want to know about longevity science. We’d happily bring kids into our meetings, whiteboarding, and labs.

Our education system used to be apprenticeship; now, kids aren’t learning about real work and much real work is hidden behind proprietary veils. Parents going to work put up an invisible barrier between that part of their lives and their kids, and then many don’t get enough parent-kid bonding time. To think there was a time when as a kid you could stumble into to a smithy and ask the blacksmith if you could try your hands at forging a dagger, and the blacksmith would say yes.

A life that appeals to me is this: no separation between work, family, kids, leisure, rest. There’s only life. I am fortunate that with my work community, my personal relationships, my resources, this all seem very possible (although not immediately). All I need to do is to put everything together and make it happen.