12 Mar 2018 |
Life
It’s practically the middle of March already, but I feel like I finally have a slight breather to get back on track with respect to goals. Or I could be fooling myself, and the moment I start listing out all my upcoming plans I will melt in a puddle of overwhelmed-and-doesn’t-want-to-do-anything-ness. It’s been 2 full weeks since my trip to Japan and I’m only just finishing up my journal entries about the trip. I just finished a weekend of tabling and networking at SCaLE 16x.
Goals need to be updated, for sure. I just wrote out the things I need to take action on in March and there is TOO MUCH.
（ノ ﾟДﾟ）ノ
Not sure how to turn this into a goal, but Lawrence brought it to my attention that I should un-jargonize my language. I agree. I listen to myself speak sometimes, and I wonder at who this person is… throwing around these words.
07 Mar 2018 |
Life
Whenever the subject of childhood crushes comes up, my mind always goes back to one incident in middle school. A boy (who had a crush on me) asked me if I believed in love at first sight. I thought the concept was dumb, completely irrational and rooted in superficiality and an absorption with one’s own fantasies. For someone to say they love me after having only seen me in passing, barely ever talk to me (much less exchange deep thoughts), and not know anything about my personality and background first-hand… I thought it was the height of hubris. “Loving” someone at first sight was the result of projecting your fantasies onto someone that satisfied your requirements for outer physical attractiveness. What it said was that my intelligence, my personality, my wants, my faults, everything that makes me, ME, doesn’t matter because you decided you loved me based solely on what you saw on the outside. And if you thought that meant you loved what was inside, then you were delusional because you didn’t bother to find out what was inside first.
Over the years, I’ve adjusted my take on the whole interaction and I’ve done a lot of self reflection over my own reaction. The interesting conclusion I’ve come to is that I felt so strongly in this way beause I felt that my outside did not reflect my inside. I was still searching for my identity and the balance between figuring out who I was and who I thought I was expected to be. There were so many pressures to be certain ways - from my parents and family, from my teachers and classmates, from society at large, from the media I consumed. I didn’t feel free to explore who I wanted to be for fear of letting people down, or for fear of being seen as an imposter. How early my imposter syndrome started! As I get older and I care less about conforming to how I think I should be, I’ve realized how constricted I felt in the past. I knew it was the case, even if I didn’t think of it that way. It created a cynicism in me that I called being a “realist” or just being “unromantic”. For all the fantasy and sci-fi books I consumed, I thought romantic fantasies were for dummies.
In meeting, interacting with, and then having to rely on so many different new people over the last several years, I feel that I’ve built up an ability to size people up within the first few minutes of interacting with them. I worry that I’m doing the exact thing I railed against, but these opinions are based on years of experience. When you’re a teenager, you don’t have those years of experience. Even so, I know that I have to not get ahead of myself in judging people. I also need to stop swinging to the other extreme in assuming people are more fantastically capable than they are as a response my own insecurities about myself. Balance!
28 Feb 2018 |
Community
Last night, Ramy Kim from OpenOakland and Nick Kaufman from Code for Maine dropped by our downtown hack night! We had some great discussions, shared projects/initiatives, and got excited for future endeavors!
26 Feb 2018 |
Life
I’m officially back from my 2-week hiatus from life. I feel like a broken record, but Japan was amazing. It was everything I wanted and expected, and then some. I have so many thoughts, it’s going to take time to organize them and more thoughts will keep surfacing as I recall them.
Some initial thoughts:
- Of all the places I’ve been, being in Japan was the first time I thought about wanting to create a library of sounds. Their trains play a melody before the doors close and they are often specific to the station you’re at. Within many of the stations, they pipe bird songs to help direct blind passengers. Large intersections, such as those found in Shibuya, have video advertisements that play on the buildings AND they blast the sound too! There are so many different competing noises in addition to the sights, I feel the sounds in Japan need their own encyclopedia.
- Walking down random side streets in Omotesando is an activity unto itself! No need to plan or research, just walk down whatever streets catch your fancy and be amazed at all the cute shops and cafes scattered amongst residential buildings.
11 Feb 2018 |
Life
It’s been an emotional roller coaster this past week - campaigning for NAC elections, preparing for Japan, Leonard moving away, talking about work with Omar, seeing my parents for the dual events of Chinese New Year and the 10-year anniversary of my grandfather’s death.
I finally made it to Mortified, Leonard’s show, and I saw him perform. He was awesome. My parents are actually fairly tolerable today. I brought up Hack For LA and the NAC elections, and I think this time they finally tried to pay attention to what it was. That’s not totally fair of me, I’m sure they would have been more interested in the past if I were able to explain it to them in Chinese.
I freaked out the other night over preparing for Japan. Lawrence calmed me down. My list of what I really must do there:
- eat saucy tempura-don in Tokyo
- eat delicious tsukemen
- walk through a bamboo forest
- make my own custom journal at Kakimori and custom ink next door at Ink Stand (need a reservation)
I think that’s it! Everything else will be gravy. Bowing deer in Nara, snow monkeys in hot springs in Nagano, street food in Osaka, Tsujiki Fish Market in Tokyo, geisha in Kyoto… all gravy.