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[lighthenight]

Why we’re here

I guess you can say I was inspired to write this because I want to make sure I live by one of the mottos and reasons I started this blog in the first place - that my time here can be remembered somehow, whether it’s through my words, photos or bonds that I’ve shared with people. This here, would be my words.

To talk about my life… on a deep level. I believe in connecting yourself to your deeper meaning, and I believe it’s through helping others. I think this is a theme throughout my life and probably in this blog but I want to reiterate on that. There once was a study mentioned in Freakonomics that talked about a murderous felon who had no meaning in life, was given the job of pushing an old man around in a wheelchair. It was meaningless at first, but over time, he developed a connection with the old man and found no need to commit crimes or hurt others anymore. So much so that his amygdala had increased activity over time. Other studies in psychology talk about the basic altruism that’s in children helping others but in adults, it’s so much less. We’re intrinsically built to help others and we find fulfillment in it.

And so I constantly preach this and try to live my life by this theme. I hope to be able to say on the day that I die, my life was lived according to this theme, and that doesn’t mean I’m gonna wait to do this because I never know when I may die.

And this brings me to my current life - I’ve decided to move to NYC in 2024, and it’s been an interesting decision. I came here with the thought that I would be able to intercept my life with so many others, and maybe be able to help more people due to the density of this city. It hasn’t exactly played out this way, however, it’s still been a wonderful experience to see the world through a city lens, one of the greatest.

This city moves fast, so many decisions being made on a daily basis. I think it’s what makes this city so great. You don’t miss an opportunity here, there’s always another one. I guess it has showed me that life will keep bringing you opportunities, you just need to look for it. And here, it’s very easy to find.

On the surface, it just seems like it’s just normal city. House parties, raves, clubbing, networking, nice restaurants, etc. Although, when I look at those experiences they all bring me a sense that it’s endless and plentiful.

I think the key here is figuring out how to help people throughout all the noise. The sounds are organized but put together they become noise. I want to find how the sounds can be harmonized better with something I can provide. And I know I’m someone that can add a beautiful harmony to any scene.

I’ve known my purpose all along - I just want to figure out how to use it in a place like NYC, besides being a positive and supportive friend. But if anyone were to remember me, I hope they know that I lived believing in the altruistic nature of humans and breathed that aura into everything I did and every person I met.

I love humanity and I wish everyone could see how much love there is out there to give. I hope I can make more people see that vision of the world. Cheers to that.

[lighthenight]

Values

It's always such a reminisce to write on this blog, a place where I used to just write my thoughts about everything in high school. And how everything seemed to matter so much back in the day, and now i just look at life and see the essentials.

What are the essentials, you may ask?

Well to start, a community, where friends, family, wherever you are, that you have people you can go to.

Your own well-being. Do you feel good, and if you don't what can help you feel better?

Then finally, some money so you can survive. And if you don't have any of that, well, maybe a job or something to make money.

The reality is that we all simply just seek these things in life, whether you're in a third world country, money for survival is very important, or if you're in an economically strong place like Europe or the US, where money is also a necessity, but well-being becomes even more important, once you're past the basic survival needs. I might be talking about this because to be frank, not everyone has to feel motivated or purpose-driven. In all reality, once you have the above necessities, what drives one to feel motivation or purpose? Often times, that motivation comes from a lack of the necessities. Ie, people are motivated to work if they feel like they don't have enough money to put food on the table, or that people are motivated to learn new things because they feel unfulfilled in their current job or career. I'm at a point where i feel like I have all those necessities, so I'm at a good place and don't feel the need to be motivated or work on my purpose. I can just sort of... chill. It's kind of different being in this state because life just sort of passes you, you feel like you're wandering, with not much direction but that everything that happens is still exciting, but maybe not very fulfilling. I believe there will come a point where that lack of fulfillment will take over and I will want to do more. But for the current moment, I enjoy it, even if it's mindless meandering, but the excitements are still very real and unique in itself. Those excitements are what this new gen Z generation says is what people live for now... not the American dream for a house and 2 kids, but to live for experiences - traveling, concerts, etc.

So... having said all that, I had worked at Caliva/TPCO for about 4.5 years and recently left aka laid off (intentionally bc i really wanted severance) and feel a sense of comfort in my current situation. Do i need to find a job? Not really. Am i happy without a job? Yes, I can sort of do whatever the hell i want. Do I think a job fits my goals? Not really either, because I have my own mission and product ideas that fit my vision/impact.

And so, here I am, in a state of grayness - maybe an in-between, or maybe it's a solid state that I don't feel it is, because I don't really wake up to any internal drive or need to do anything, I just cruise and go with the flow. It feels fluid and somewhat content-less. Whatever I feel like doing, i just do and nobody can really stop me? But what I do, doesn't really fit or serve any greater purpose but to usually survive and enjoy the moment for myself?

I've recently been dating this girl and she seems fine living with no greater purpose or meaning, and sort of just does whatever excites her and that in itself seems to satisfy her. It's unusual to me and sort of goes against my values and beliefs in people - the belief that everyone serves a greater purpose and is capable of making a positive difference to the world, whether small or big. That belief is just usually blocked by life's necessities and the lack thereof. (refer to the bullet points above) But yes, it's unusual because it feels like it's a life with no meaning, but yet some people pursue that maybe as their purpose? as if an overindulgence of experiences is a purpose? Because that's what some people focus their entire lives doing, just pursue unique experiences that create excitement.

I think I need to stick to my guts here - I know what's right and I know there's the right timing for it - maybe I'm not pursuing my goals now, but I will soon. It's just easy to get distracted in modern society. Other people show you other ways to live, and it's easy to get caught up in that. And when other people are just pursuing excitement, it validates the distractions and the excitements. It's as if we're just lab rats looking for any source of dopamine rush. It's sad but I know there's a world where people see the value of breaking out of that cycle. Because that unlocks true value - where people aren't distracted but that people know themselves and know what they uniquely can do for others. That's a world I would like to live in and I should pursue that too, whether or not others are validating that. I just need to stop with the distractions.

[lighthenight]

Covid

It's crazy to think it's been almost two years since this all started. I took it so seriously and really isolated myself from everyone for close to an entire year, thinking about the risk it could have on my family. We left to taiwan, knowing it was the only safe haven grounds away from all this craziness. We came back to get vaccinated, thinking we could get back to normal life. Sure, we still wore masks and we avoided indoor events and dining, but we felt somewhat protected; that at least the risk wasn't as high for going out. Because yeah, at a certain point, isolating yourself for so long does take a toll on your mind, even if you're not fully aware of it. So here we are, in 2022, and covid is rampant again. All time high number of cases, vaccines not doing much to protect against infection. It really feels like all this time we did so much to protect ourselves from getting it and it's all for nothing because the virus still wins. And that's biology - viruses evolve quick but we don't evolve as fast. They equip themselves with more weapons and we manufacture defenses slower than they can multiply. Although, I am aware that we as a community isolated enough to slow down the initial spread, especially when the virus was more dangerous, and we hadn't been vaccinated yet. It's still a big toll on our mind though. Here's the deal: I'm pretty sure I got Covid. NYE, I went to an SF party with Lauren and it was a concert, much like what you'd expect. If you asked me the normal questions, Yes I wore a mask, yes I tried to distance myself, but i guess it's really hard to stop when you're around so many freaking people. Here's the breakdown of the days after (keep in mind, i'm speaking about this a week after exposure): Jan 1st: I felt perfectly normal aside from the fact that I woke up in the middle of the night feeling like my stomach hurt. Day 2: Woke up in the middle of the night nauseous and puking a little. Stomach hurt during the day and felt nauseous when I had nothing in my stomach. Day 3: Scratchy throat, and stomach continued to hurt. Diarrhea as well. Day 4: Body aches, fever, chills begin, on top of the previous symptoms. Needed painkillers to get through the day. Brain fog in the morning. This was pretty much the worst day. Day 5: Continued fever but less, chest pains when i eat too much, still some stomach pain, painkillers to help with the fever. Day 6: Sore throat, runny nose, cough, but everything else cleared up. Day 7: Feeling about 80% back to normal - just a cough here and there. My take on this whole thing is that it lasts about 6 days total of symptoms, for someone like me. The GI symptoms were the most interesting because they threw me off - I would think it's food poisoning and the stomach flu, and didn't think it was covid because GI symptoms were pretty rare for covid cases. And man this really screwed with me plans too - I was headed back to Taiwan again in 4 days, yet in order to leave, I need to test negative but I don't think I will in time. It's crazy to think this virus really does stay in the body for a lot longer than your normal cold. In the big picture, there's a lot of good news. With omicron growing in case numbers so quick, it means a large majority of people are likely going to get it, and build natural immunity to it, even when vaccines are helping mitigate the symptoms. Omicron is estimated to be the dominant variant for a while, since it is the most infectious, meaning it will beat the other variants to getting into the human population first. Omicron is seen to be a less severe variant which is also great news because people will get it but not die from it as much. The recommendation is still to be vigilant and wear masks. Covid was bad, it sucks, and it was really painful. For a couple days, I just wanted to die and not go through all the suffering. But it just was a matter of pushing through the height of the covid journey. This will be an endemic someday - we will have to live with the fact that it's here to stay. Stay healthy.

[lighthenight]

Hi, I wanted to take a moment to reflect again. It’s been a while, as I always get lazy about blogging, but it’s always on my mind as something I need to do more regularly.

This year has been a roller coaster though, one that I’ve truly grown a lot in and experienced life from a different perspective.

2020: you see, the pandemic was actually exciting for me when it first started. I thought to myself that this would be a moment to take things slow and not feel guilty about it. This world always wants you going out, doing things, but I do appreciate taking life slow too, and the world was suddenly forced to slow down. My dad would always call me 宅男, which means man that likes to be alone and live on his own. He’s not wrong, I was pretty much living that sorta life cuz that’s just what the suburbs condition you to get used to.

From March to about August/September, I was enjoying it, inspired to do new things, like build my first PC, listen to podcasts more, get into the stock market. The world was changing for what I thought was the better, becoming more digital, covid predictions and public health became interesting speculation for how long it would last. But on the other hand, it was endless possibilities for what I could achieve by just being at home while everyone else was too. But I guess we are all habitual people. I did change some things, but the routine started to get boring around September. We went back into lockdown - work became very demotivating… even though there were many changes happening at my company, like 3x online sales during covid and our company going public, the daily grind was just slow and unrewarding. At least that’s how it felt.

Around that time, my parents decided we might think about going to Taiwan since covid had no effect in that area and we hadn’t been in a while - and we realized covid was truly here to stay. I thought to myself “I’m already working from home, might as well work from a home across the world”. And so we decided to leave to Taiwan Jan 12-April 12.

2021: I guess you could say there was a lot of exciting going to Taiwan. I had just hung out with my friends Anthony Chao and Brian Lee, and they asked why I’m going. And I’m just like… why not? Taiwan has no covid and I have a dual passport, I don’t know what to expect when I get there. Lo and behold, when I get there, it’s truly a different world, one that showed no signs of covid. (Besides the 2 week quarantine at home) I was instantly connected with the expat community through a networking event at MOX accelerator. And what can I say, they knew how to have fun… it was clubbing on weekends, bars on weekdays, traveling on holidays. It was endless, I could barely catch a break. But in all honesty, I loved it. I saw myself in a different world, as a different part of myself, the really social version of me living in the city. It was always there when I live in the suburbs, but it always wanted to come out and it did. I probably met a total of 40-50 friends in a matter of 5 months. On top of that, I extended my stay to June 16, instead of April 12. We even had a going away party for me, which I never get.

I guess you could say I found my groove. I realized I have a place in Asia, I know the culture, language and people well enough to integrate into the community, and it’s different enough to stimulate me. But most of all, I become the best version of myself, which is the most active and extroverted version of myself. It’s not asia really, it’s just the city life. So I guess in my mind, I made a decision to move to the city sooner than later.

It’s also dating - I’ve never looked to date and so living in the suburbs never enticed me to look, but I, just like any person, would like to have a partner I can count on for some things. I’ve never relied on it or needed it, but want it. And in Asia and in the city, you just can’t not meet new people and get excited. It obviously helps that I’m Asian, but I love how willing to love Taiwan specifically is. As some people would say, small island makes people more friendly, as the community is tighter, and they actually welcome me into it, even as a foreigner.

So I guess that’s my update - in truth, I was inspired to reflect cuz there’s a person John that’s fucking annoying at work and instills his values and desires into everything, and not in a respectful way. It’s made me realize that my current company is not the place for me anymore because the corporate culture is dominated by fear. Fear mongering I guess. Let’s just say, I hope the next time I write here, I’ll have a new job by then, bc I shouldn’t have to deal with shit like this. Such is life tho, grateful to still have a job throughout the pandemic and to have experienced such a fruitful 2020-2021. Grateful I had a wonderful manager at work, Matt - wouldn’t be where I am with work, if it weren’t for him. God truly blesses me and I need to be more thankful of that.

[lighthenight]

Long time coming

Hey tumblr and blog from over 10 years ago....

This is a post that’s long overdue.

Well, where do I start? I’m 27. I work at a hyper growth cannabis startup called Caliva. I’m single. I’m living back at home. That’s the surface, “what have you been up to?” question and how’d I answer it.

To go off that, basically I officially finished my time at UCSD June 2018. I was ready to grow career-wise, not do one-of contracting gigs, and learn from larger companies and more experienced teams/products. And so I began the job hunt. Not to say that I took a huge break after graduating by just playing games for hours on end...

Job hunt was not as easy as I expected. I remember going into it thinking, well there’s tons of tech jobs and recruiters are constantly hitting me up. Surely, I’ll land an offer sooner than later. I promised my parents it’ll take 2 months after I began searching. I’ll tell you later how long it actually took.

So it’s competitive. Figured, right? Knowing that they pay high wages for the tech industry and want the best talent they can get. The gate was really at the technical interview and the fact that I was applying to mid to senior level positions yet I couldn’t prove my worth at the technical interview.

Here were the numbers that I remember off the top of my head: 55 days, 89 applications, 66 interviews, 8 on-site interviews, 2 offers.

I made the two months at least, right? Heh at the time, this was probably one of the most stressful times, and took me on emotional roller coaster for a bit. I didn’t question my self esteem but it made me question my ability as a programmer and that my personality doesn’t really cut it when it comes to technical jobs.... except my current job. But I’ll tell you when I get there.

My job was at Logitech’s HQ in Fremont. Super exciting opportunity, working in technology that I was at the time, really interested in. ReactJS in an electron app. And gaming industry? That’s the life right there. I worked on one of the most important teams, CPG - Creativity, productivity and gaming. So all the gaming mice; that was our shit. We designed the consumer software that controls your devices all in one cross platform app. It’s called LG Hub or Kiros.

Going into it, was super excited, given that they interviewed me in what I thought was the proper way - through a practical reactjs exercise. The interviewer there, Tom, ended up becoming my mentor at Logi. My team there was welcoming forsure and quirky. There was a guy named Jack Brindle who was obsessed with amateur radio... lol and only ever used apple products. Boris was by far the most interesting - Russian dude who did everything off the grid, loud as fuck, and spoke with no filter. It was like a hodge podge of personalities - someone once told me, where google and Facebook takes all the amazing tech talent with wonderful personalities, Logitech, an old tech firm, takes the leftovers. My manager Tanvi, was nice up front but I later realized she didn’t really know what she was doing because she kept people on the team who were way underperforming.

This all goes back to Tom. Tom really showed me the ropes. He showed me the different projects he was constantly building and iterating on, which provided value to the company where the management didn’t initially see. He exposed the flaws of management to me, in as much detail and unbias as possible. He chatted with me about the differences between me and him when it comes to opinions and beliefs. He taught me how to solve problems the “right way”. And not to cut corners, only to create more work for yourself later. I still have the utmost respect for him cuz he cares about the work he does, almost to a fault. I know that anywhere he goes, he’ll be successful as an engineer and I hope to work with him again someday.

That brings me to a point for a lesson I’d like to remind myself: stay in contact with good people in your life. Don’t let them always solely contact you, react out to them.

Going back to Logi, we were rebuilding a new JavaScript team and I was there during the prototyping phase so I didn’t get as much of a chance to actually code out the product. But I provided value in other ways - side projects like yarn integration, interview automation, front end docs, etc.

The story continues... where I basically get hit up by Johnny to go to this “green tech” hackathon. I wasn’t really down initially, especially when I asked mileung for his help and he wasn’t down... gg so... I ended up going, and coincidentally, Charisse misses her bus to her hackathon in sac town and so we end up telling her to just join ours. It was at Yeti LLC, home of Boris’s ex-gf Ellie’s company; fuckin small world. Charisse thinks of honesty a genius idea to make a mobile app to track sleep data and recommend cannabis strains and dosages to the user based on sleep inefficiency. We called it REMedy. Get it? Lol lo and behold, we actually end up winning... to my big surprise.

Amidst that, other than getting a bunch of weed and goodies, we get introduced to the host of the hackathon, Caliva. I was just interested as to why they chose us tbh. They seemed to be interested in my path to programming and why I enjoy it, coming from a psych background.

So... basically Caliva becomes really interested in me and I’m still at Logitech. Some hiccups here and there at Logi, with a confrontation with Boris about him calling me “not bright” and I’m weighing my options at both places. Definitely wanted to stay at Logi and try to get full time, but Caliva went all out on me. I told them I’d need my parents approval to really feel convinced of considering it. Matt, the CTO, took me up on it and offered my parents a tour of the facility. And btw, the facility is freaking amazing, unheard of. Calvin was like “what a time to be alive���, seeing my mom go into a cannabis cultivation room.

I consoled with my dad and he told me one thing. I could always go work for Logi, but there’s only a few times that you get the chance to work for hyper growth companies, and this is one of them. So, I really took his word for it and thought long and hard on this offer Caliva was giving. Made the decision thinking it was a good career move and an exciting opportunity to pursue one of my passions, wellness.

Here I am - it’s been 7 months since I first started at Caliva and it’s even been a bit of roller coaster ride here.

To be continued...

[lighthenight]

Truth about how people should view successes and failures in life.

[lighthenight]

In Bruges

I recently traveled to Europe last minute because I felt like doing something I might not be able to do later in life, and also because it’s something different. No, I wasn’t looking for some life lesson, neither was I trying to follow what other people do. I really just felt like “well, why not”.

A lot of people say traveling alone could be scary. I met a Turkish guy in Bruges who told me that I’m brave. I didn’t really feel that way. But who knows, maybe I am brave. I could see how it could be scary if you are often anxious or alone; but me, no, I rarely feel either of those feelings. I’ve learned that this is one of my strengths and it’s what keeps me so strong in everything I do. Nothing can stop me and nothing can stop my optimism because I always believe I can get through anything without too many problems.

So I’d like to talk about my trip and I would like to highlight the big lessons I actually unintentionally learned along the way.

Iceland has beautiful design and is fucking expensive. That’s my conclusion for that. Beautiful design as in beautiful interior design, fashion, etc.

Amsterdam was an overall wonderful experience. The first place in Europe that I basically landed in, aside from Iceland. The architecture there is just amazing; a city full of tall buildings side by side to each other and not too orderly, some tilted, some shorter. People there are super friendly and want us (tourists) to just have a good time. Coffee shops felt a bit overrated and touristy; I had a “space cake”, that’s what they call the weed brownies there. That thing got me ridiculously high at Van Gogh Museum. I had good company, two Canadian guys, Scott and James. Riding a bike in Amsterdam is the real experience. You’re pushed to the side if you ain’t fast enough because over there, the bikes are the cars over here in California. Bikes have full reign over the streets. Red light District was ridiculous and seeing so many girls try to lure you in was unheard of. Met 3 guys who talked about how awesome it was banging one of the Ukrainian girls there. They loved it so much one of the brothers (two of them were brothers (locals), one looked hispanic) even wanted to marry her.

Brussels was lesson 1. The story goes a bit like this: It’s a cloudy day and I’m walking out of my hostel a bit past 11. There’s about half a mile distance from my hostel to the city center. As I walk towards city center, a well dressed french guy (well dressed as in Gucci Bag, matching blue sportswear outfit, and gel-ed up hair) comes up to me and asks me a cigarette. I say no and he asks me where I’m from and I say I’m from Cali (I should always say I’m Canadian from now on). He goes like “oooooh, Californiaaaaa”. He gets distracted by some homeless guy and walks away. A couple minutes later, he walks past me and turns around and asks “Do you have a cigarette?” but he then gives me the gesture that he had already asked me. Then, he asks if I like music. And out of my oblivious self, of course I said I liked music. He then goes on and begins dancing with me by hooking my arm with his arm and hooking my leg with his leg. As he does this, I get instantly suspicious and I grab my pocket. That’s when I feel his hand on my wallet. This is what’s called the “Football trick” or the “Ronaldinho”. Pickpocketers learn it in Spain and it has traveled across Europe where pickpocketers reside.

Brussels had good beer, good chocolate, and beautiful buildings. The Grand Place Town Hall was a sight. Royal Palace was as well. Two guys, Florian and David Schmoll. Honestly, the most wonderful guys I had met on this trip, so easy to talk about culture differences and so easygoing on everything. They even made me a KILO of spaghetti! Shared so many good laughs together (HALIGA SCHISSA = holy shit), I hope to keep in touch with them. Riko was also a memorable experience because she took me around Brussels for a bit, chatted about what’s great about Brussels vs Japan. A little about her relationships and how guys don’t really like her but they act like they do to get in her pants. She seems very open to hooking up and not participating in Japanese culture as much.

Bruges was lesson 2. I’ll start with the fact that girls in Bruges tend to be a bit flirty as it seems. Maybe because of it being a small town, the young locals really look to connect with anyone that comes from outside the town. Anyway, the first night, I’m hanging out with Salma and she takes me to a bar that’s basically a club. We’re outside drinking and she introduces me to all her friends. Small town, so everyone knows the beatboxer, Packo. Packo and his friends invite me to smoke with them and we sort of just chat about differences in culture and being Flemish and such. The next night was basically hanging out with the 4 guys, Simon, Billie, Joey, and Bram. They invited me to smoke as well and I offered the rest of my space cake to them (I had half left from Amsterdam). They all sort of laugh at the fact that I sucked at smoking but honestly, they just laughed at everything. They say they have a culture of laughing at everything (not sure but I’ll take it). We go to a bar and drink and party, Billie seems to really enjoy talking to me and telling me what these boys are like (their personalities). Then, they go to an old man’s house, whose name is Frederick, and they say he’s a pedophile because they watched him try to mack on a really young girl and they had to stop him and take him home. Small town, so they know where he lives. They ring his doorbell at 2 am and they’re looking to just barge in and drink his alcohol and take his stuff? I’m totally sketched out by this but I go along with it. Next, two of the guys, start fighting and it seems like they are serious, but they end up just playing it off like it’s fine. Afterwards, we get some food (Doners in Europe are amazing). As we get food, these two British guys are trying to get cocaine but we don’t have anything to offer them. This is where lesson 2 begins. These two British guys are visiting Bruges from Leicester City because of a soccer game going on between the two cities. These two guys walk up to us and say “you guys have an cocaine?”, we say no, and they say “Are you guys weird, how can you have weed but no cocaine? we’ve been on coke since we were 14″. We were so high we were just laughing at everything. Next, he asks everyone’s name but skips me. He later on asks “So what’s your name, Chang?” I reply, “Michael”. “Oh when did they start to have English names?”. His friend says “Nah, we’ll still call him Chang, Chang Michael.” Then he asks “Do you even understand what I’m saying?” And i say “I understand you perfectly”. They have a full on surprised look on their faces. That’s basically the end of the night because everything after that was just not as interesting (we visited Frederick again and Bram took me home).

London. Great hostel with really friendly hostelmates, aside from the stairs that I had to climb everyday. Hung out with Grace and Jordan, two military participants who understood a good amount about my personality, personal growth and the way I treat women. Women in London seem to me to be very forward and just go for what they want. A taxi driver told me it has to do with the culture there and how people don’t have much time and go about a lifestyle of just going for what they want and skipping all the other nonsense.

Trip back home, I met some wonderful Punjabi couple from London on the plane to Iceland. The guy even poured whiskey at the airport for me. The mom was very understanding of my liberal ideals and it was great to hear that she could relate her kids to my values in this world.

Finally, on the planeflight from Iceland to SFO, it was Alicia and Adam, the couple from Santa Cruz who had just had a baby called Beckett. Really taught me about how to love a child to its fullest and having both parents really onboard on everything.

That’s a breakdown of my trip in a jiffie. “In Bruges” is the name of this post because people know Bruges for the movie and Bruges was one of the more memorable cities on this trip even though Amsterdam was probably the best city I visited this time. Next time, Vienna and Prague.

[lighthenight]

Revive

Hey blog,

It’s funny, I created this blog such a long time ago thinking this would be my life diary for a long while, but somewhere along the way, it died. Pretty sure it was sometime in college. 

This post is called revive because of my attempts to revive this blog; i’ve revived it like 10 times now and it seems to never work. But everytime I revive it, it’s an update on my life.

So, I really don’t know where to start in this past year but I’ll give it a shot and try to finish it off as to why I’m writing right now.

During the end of my previous college career, I really was wasting my life away. Being blessed as a young healthy individual with a strong financial background, I’ve never really thought about my career as an important aspect of my life. Until this year. Nothing financially changed in my family, but it was the decision to make my own money and support myself. Long story short, I realized my parents liked to really use money as a threat for making me do things their way. Their defense to every argument is, if you don’t want to do <insert action here>, then go support yourself and live on your own. I realized that many parents, not just mine, use that as a threat. It’s fair, really. Nobody likes to be wrong and it’s such an accessible threat. It’s what lead me to conclude that independence is such an important growth process in a person’s life. If you never gain true independence, you’ll never have the ability to do what you want to do and instead be always under the influence of your parents or anyone else, for that matter. 

And that leads to relationships: relationships, in my opinion, are apart of independence. You choose who you love and you choose who to spend your time with. However, once you indulge yourself into the relationship, it isn’t independence anymore. It’s being independent together and slowly building a dependence on each other. One thing I’ve learned to accept is that everyone needs help. It’s really hard to get through life witout it. From a baby, you’re dependent of your parents and after that process and you leave your home, it’s learning how to be independent but also being able to depend on someone when you need it. 

I don’t really know if that makes sense but I’m in a realtionship right now, and it’s something the both of us are learning about. Being independent together but learning when to depend on each other. It’s what I think makes up a part of love. Knowing you could depend on each other and not feel judged by one another.

With all of the previous theories in mind, it’s what leads me here today to write about my life. I’m in conflict with my parents and it’s a struggle to decide if I should completely break off from my family and build my own life or to still be integrated within theirs. I’m a family-oriented guy, at least I think I am, and yet there are too many conflicts to even fathom continuing to live with them. 

I wonder if, even though I know i’m not wrong, and my parents think I’m blatantly wrong, if I should still apologize for something I don’t think I did wrong. In my upbringing, that is what should be done because children need to listen to the “wiser” parents, especially because they raised you. Their struggle raising you is just a pity when you grow up only to make them more angry. So i wonder if I should just give in for my parent’s sake, or should I leave and show to them that I can do things my way and still make it in life. Either way is good for them but the latter will definitely bring them more unhappiness and it just makes me feel anxious of the possible regret I could have with my parents if it ruins their health or lives (especially knowing that asian parents care for their kids so much). 

I’m a software developer now. Never would’ve thought I would end up here. Studied neuroscience, only to find out I had no idea what I wanted in life. Led me think my future would be intertwined with my parents and that’s okay. 

To those of you in school, if you don’t know for a fact what you want to do in life and what sort of impact you want to make in society, take a year off and work/travel in different places. You’ll definitely get perspective and much more motivation to study what you want to do in life. Studying won’t feel like such a pain, it’ll feel like progress. It’ll feel like flying to your destination. It wont be what you think it is; all you need is perspective.

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Don’t follow your passion

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Tijuana

First things first. This trip was kinda bomb. Trip to Tijuana, spontaneous and sorta scary at the same time. Really didn't plan anything but just decided to go to a random land in which we could not communicate in. We arrive through the Mexican border and it pretty much is just a couple Mexican soldiers standing there. HUGE difference from the American border to the Mexican border. One land is developed and one is obviously not. The prices drop in a matter of 100 yards, from San ysidro to Tijuana. We taxi to revolucion and check out the tourist attraction (we got ripped off, shoulda been $4) and not 5 for the taxi. The tourist attraction place was full of hustlers and pretty much a shopping plaza. There were tacos, sit down bars, plenty of mini shops and fcking loud ass live music. We ate some tacos and he bill only came out 5$ per person which was so surprising. The service was great and our server Gary was super thankful of our generous tipping. Afterwards, we walk down the road and look around, and looked around the artistic walls and alleys and public day life in Tijuana. Got some ice cream drinks, got tijuana's tacos el gourdo, and was told that their red light district is near and is full of amigas. Red light district was unfuckingbelievable. Hookers just on the street hanging out all over. It reminded me of the game grand theft auto but in real life. The girls wouldn't hustle but they would stand there looking pretty, guys walk up to them, they would act all reluctant to say yes to the guy but then give in for the money and business. Next, was the business district. We watched "maleificient" for 4 dollars in a very modern looking theater. Afterwards, bars and drinks; we get drinks at the local bar and their drinks were literally on fire. Then we go clubbing. First club we went was sorta empty and small with a lot of Mexican music. The second one on the other hand, was two stories with two live bands and played electro music. There were a lot of people dancing and people all over the tables drinking and socializing. Two girls approach us and call us puto and they kinda try to dance with us but we like not really interested hahah and one of the girls was married so it didn't make sense to us. Sorta get hungry so we decide to just get some tacos outside and they're cheap as hell so we sit down and eat them adobada and crane asada tacos. Next was strip clubs. Biggest difference of my life. To be continued

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Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994 After all, we are all just but one spec of a pixel in the universe. Treasure it, as this is the one and only home that we know of. 

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Restart this thing

Hi, I've decided to restart the blog i created in my junior year of high school. holy damn, this blog is already 6 years old. time really flies. Renewed passion for programming. i know, it never was something that I thought I'd do but I've always had a burning desire to do things with computers and hack them. I like technology and that's that.  I've gotten several offers for jobs and internships already which is good news. When I was in Physiology and neuroscience in the past 3 years of my life, I realized that I wasn't going anywhere I wanted and wasn't motivated to find jobs and opportunities to grow. Here though, there are so many more options and I only been learning programming for some months and I'm already getting offers. It's overwhelming how strong the software field is in terms of jobs. Not to mention having a home in the bay area doesn't hurt. Someone once said, the software field right now is one of the most over-rewarded fields of all time. Some idea gets thrown out and someone makes an iOS app and venture capitalists are like OMG i'll give you 200k to build it into a company.  Programming just stimulates a part of my creative mind and I need that. I've always been a much more creative person with all the "collecting and hoarding things" all my life: rocks, batteries, flyers, cameras, etc. And playing with photography, singing, dancing, and more. I've just always thought nah, i'm not an engineer, i'm not nerdy, i won't be good enough to be a doctor. Honestly, yeah if I were a sociologist, that would be my ideal career: talking and analyzing life and society, but it's not a demanding career. My parents have always been pressuring me to work towards a career with opportunities and I understand that but they also didn't let me do what I wanted to do which I can't blame them for but I regret not making my own decisions earlier. Instead, I was scared to switch out majors or else my dad wouldn't support me throughout school. Asian parents pressure. And so I went towards doing something I didn't like. Also, when i went to college, I didn't even really care about my career but rather just cared about "living life" and now that's kicking me in the ass. Pretty much, I wanted to do psychology when I first started college and my parents legitly didn't let that go. "what're you going to do when you come out?" shit like that. And then my counselor said to think about "cognitive science" which NOW is an awesome major I totally could've done. But no, parents said they've never even heard of that major. They are the wiser ones in the end so they'e just trying to help me choose the right decisions. But in the end, it sets me back more because I feel like I'm choosing things for them rather for me.  And so it came down to neuroscience, that was the closest to what I wanted to do. But it was biology and science based which I knew would be super hard but I went for it knowing that. They were okay with it and after mentioning it to their friends about my neuroscience major, they became all proud of me cuz their friends all thought it was such a good choice. That pride added to my fear of disappointment from my parents. And my amount of care for my parents' opinions stems from the amount of decisions and things they took care for me. I never had to worry, my parents would pretty much do everything for me, including even my SAT's.  Few few years of college were a breeze and I never really had to study. And simply put, I never expected what was coming. The more I got lazy, the more it set me back. and when upper division science classes came along, I ACTUALLY needed to study and boom, I was stuck. I wasn't doing well in my classes but I didn't want to switch my major because I never wanted to make that decision without my parents' approval.  Then my friend told me something PPL just needed to tell me. "I need to make my own decisions for myself". I pretty much did a lotta thing highly influenced from my parents. From girls to school; I chose girls that I knew my "mom" would approve of because I didn't want to go through the nightmare of a relationship my previous one was. And so, i chose a girl with a full family, asian, going to good school, etc. But was that what i wanted? not really. I also wanted to date white girls, hispanic girls, girls that were in the arts, etc. And so pretty much for the important things in life, careers & relationships, my parents sorta restricted a part of me. I'm glad they're slowly learning to let go of that after my realization of my identity flaws.  I said all this because it got me here, where I'm about to graduate with a neuroscience degree but I don't want to do anything much in my biology-related field, I can't stand my classes, it's too late for me to switch majors and there are barely any job opportunities for me with my experience. Majors don't even matter that much when you go into the workforce. Majority of people go into other fields that they didn't even study. As cliche as it will sound, the lesson to anyone who still reads this blog, pursue what you love. Even if you don't know, try everything. From rock climbing to programming to blog posting. If you pursue elsewhere, you're just going to waste your time because you're unhappy and you'll want to give up everyday in your life rather than want to live everyday. Everyone wants to be happy, and you'll attain that in your career if you're motivated in what you love doing and you're working with people that love doing what you do. It becomes much easier. Happiness is a choice; you can always choose to be happy for any situation and in this case, choose to go for what makes you frequently happy. Til next time.

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for everything he says, amen. so much truth, said in such great articulation. it's not about the fantasies, it's about the grind if you want to get what you want. it's about accepting the minefield of society and working your way up, then being a role model for society. don't victimize yourself and give excuses to be lazy and be "real". some people are special and you can't always be them.

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random day where i just felt like crap. dunno why. i feel more and more stressed and the more stress, the less i want to work. i've gotta just push through this year and i should be good. just like this blog's name, i'm going to stick to what i know...being optimistic. keep it up, michael

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Why do we do what we do: It's about your decisions that shape your destiny that shapes your resources; it's not lack of resources but rather resourcefulness. Passion, creativity, curiosity, love, etc. Certainty & uncertainty, self-significance, love/connection, giving.

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what to take away from this: he developed a model, vision and platform for what he would do ever since before this video was even made (1990). he said he would develop a platform for both interpersonal computing (he compared it to spreadsheets for finance) and to make a more efficient platform to develop applications with (Mac OS) separate from the PC. he believed that multitasking would be important and establishing strong tools to be creative is important. the comparison between old and young using devices is important in his way of studying his users; the young seeing "what they can do with this" rather than the old seeing "how was this made". Interpersonal computing is now mainstream but he built the roots of the model. To have it where companies are not restricted to their location or managers and can work together based on a computer network.  I personally loved the idea that anyone who builds anything off a computer is an artist of the current century. Previously, people shared art with paintings but now you become an artist that shares art through applications. "there has been a new medium that has appeared to express oneself to one's fellow species. previously, these people would be poets or painters." It is also important to note the basis on why he made his first computer. he called it the "bicycle of the mind". humans are one of the least efficient beings on the planet in terms of locomotion to energy (the condor being one of the highest) but yet, once paired with a bicycle, the efficiency skyrockets. It is simply ingenious for this guy to think of these things starting at 12 years old and then building up such a vision that holds steady even until today. 

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Brings back such memories. Much reminisce, such time.