Christina Chen

22-23

01/01/2024 My dad's life lessons from playing Go

You need to think ahead and anticipate what might happen in the future, instead of being shortsighted and only doing things that seem to benefit you in the short term.
One mistake can be deadly. Things may look like they are going OK, but one wrong move may cost you your life.
The one with the upper hand is the one who has the freedom to go anywhere, instead of having to respond to attack. Offense is the best position to be in.
If you are not connected to your pieces (or your community), you are more weak, and it is easier to get attacked.
You should not put all your eggs in one basket. Spread out and occupy different areas of the board.
Life isn't winner takes all. In Go, it's very rare that the winner takes up 100% of the space. Usually the winner wins by having more space occupied, like 60 to 40. In life, you need to concede. You have to let the enemy have something to satisfy them. This also means, by trying to have everything, you may lose more. You can't have everything.
Go is like Chinese culture, simple but complex. The game has simple rules, but there are many complex scenarios. Like chopsticks, it's just two sticks, but they can handle many complex situations.
Sunk cost – sometimes by trying to rescue your piece, you will actually get more pieces eaten. Give up while it's early, and you have less pieces to lose.
You need air to survive.
If you don't take any risks and always play conservatively, then you will lose. You need to take some risks, but if you take too many risks, you may lose it all.

01/13/2024 I dreamed I was coming back from a trip. There was a shared house. I only have one suitcase – I need to fit everything in there. Someone is telling me that people have to rely on me for help. So I can't go home, I have to stay here. I'm annoyed but I understand. The house is dimly lit. Then, at home there was still brown water coming out of the shower.

01/22/2024 Dreamed I was back working at Wonderland. It was early in the morning, not bright yet. We were there to open Market, but it looked like a mix of Market and Coasters. Somehow, there was a guitar in one fryer and an amp in the other, so I needed to take them out and change the oil, so that the food wouldn't get contaminated.

01/24/2024 In my dream, I was watching a video of an old Broods concert, and they were singing some songs I hadn't heard. I was trying to microwave my food, so I asked my roommate (I don't even have one IRL) to search up "broods all songs" lists on Depop. She was scrolling through shirts with their discography on it, but I didn't see the old songs they had played on any of them.

That was actually the first time I met my roommate, and after that she asked what kind of music I listen to, I said, "Dance music? And some other stuff." She said she listened to bubble rap and bubble music. I said, "What's that?" She explained it, but I didn't get it, so I asked her for some examples of bubble rappers, then she said some names of people I didn't know.

While I was fiddling with the microwave, she told me about how she had lived here for four years and ten months, but was in China on exchange for four months, so actually it was more like four years and six months. She was a US and Canada dual citizen and thinking about moving to NYC, but was still in school, and would see what her mom has figured out. She also started folding kitchen towels and cleaning the floor while we talked.

01/27/2024 I dreamed my family had a rivalry with another family who owned a hotel. We went to that hotel and they argued with them, while I laid in bed and chewed the pillow apart slowly in chunks, from the corner.

As we were leaving the hotel room, my dad was separating the laundry. We passed by one of the rival family members and I mentioned something about the low quality of their pillows. He said they were aware of the issue and working on it, in a polite manner.

02/02/2024 In my dream, we were visiting a middle school. The students kept trying to talk to 0427 and eat with him, saying they think his hair is cool and stuff.

He didn't like it, so he ran out during a talk while people were seated. It was dark outside. He kept running in circles around the school. 0463 came out of the school, leading a line of kids. The kids were worried about him, but I told them he was probably just running to clear his head, and 0463 seemed to agree calmly. Then 0427 started banging his head on bricks and I started to worry. He got tired and fell on me. A group of kids thought he died, but I could hear his heart beat. One of the kids who wanted to be a doctor when he grew up passed by and confirmed he died, but came back to life.

02/03/2024

02/06/2024 In my dream, I went back to Wonderland in some kind of periodic working agreement. I was at the back of Coasters. For some reason, we had to close and then open, so I was there extra early. (Maybe the people who were supposed to close yesterday didn't do their job?)

There were two or three other sups, and we split up the cleaning duties with good teamwork. Then we started to open. I was thinking the fryers got kind of dirty compared to when I worked here full time, whoever maintained this place didn't care about the fryers as much. It had been a while, so I was making sure the oil didn't need to be changed and that the fryers were being used for the right items, like not cross contaminating meat and vegetarian items.

Since it was the start of the day, there weren't many guests yet. I wanted to pre-fry some chicken burgers, to be able to reheat them faster, so that people wouldn't have a long wait when they arrived. I was looking for an extra fryer basket so I could set this up, when an Area asked me why I needed one. Her and another sup, 0466, started saying stuff to me like, "What are you doing? We always have this problem, remember when we tried having the burgers in a steaming water bath? And the time we were using that bean sauce to try to retain moisture? What's your plan?"

And I couldn't get a word in, so I just patiently listened to them. Finally I said, "No, I was just going to dip– actually, you probably already know."

The Area said, in a nice way, "Actually I don't know, please tell me." I replied, "I was just going to cook it like 80 to 90 percent, and then when people come, finish cooking it." She said, "Oh, that's actually a good idea!" And then walked away. I felt good about keeping my composure throughout that entire thing.

02/10/2024 Maybe I will update my website... it's bothering me.

02/24/2024 Years pass by and memories fade while data piles up in servers, old iPhones and hard drives. I want to remember myself from 10 years ago and how I've changed over time. This project is an attempt to organize the pieces I've collected so far.

Found 301 images from 2010-2023, between the ages of 8-22
Used Google Vision API to analyze the sentiment and dominant colour of each image
Plotted images on a graph using the axes of sentiment and time
Image data available on hover, and dominant colour of image displayed below

03/16/2024 Watching Perfect Days with 0399.

03/20/2024 A vending machine is a claw machine that lets you pick what you want.

03/22/2024

03/27/2024 Didn’t expect so many people to see heart browser, I should have made it look better... yesterday I was at work, looking at all the rectangles in my rectangular browser on my rectangular monitor in a rectangular building and felt a bit annoyed, so I made a little heart to escape.

04/05/2024 I was at home, confused about the room shaking, but nothing fell over or anything. I thought the unit above me installed a laundry machine, I was thinking about messaging my building's super. My coworkers said they thought it was construction work, or a truck, or their boiler exploding. But it was a small earthquake.

04/08/2024 View of the eclipse from our office at 3:18 pm.

04/18/2024 Trying pottery-making at a work social.

04/21/2024 Are.na spring cleaning log

Deleted 9 underused channels with less than four blocks, and migrated blocks to other channels
Archived 18 channels (I private and add "z: " to the beginning of the channel name, so it appears at the bottom of my index)
Renamed 4 channels
Moved 10 channels from private to closed
Rearranged blocks in channels for better readability
Connected existing channels to other channels for more discoverability

04/27/2024 In line for Alexander Roth's closet sale.

04/2024

05/16/2024 Plantaingrams games from March 30 to May 16.

05/25/2024

05/26/2024

05/27/2024 Being honest with myself I’m lacking – I can't ride a bike. I can’t drive. I don't cook. I don't wear makeup. I don't have enough discipline. I can't even read everyday. I don't have basic time management skills. I eat whatever.

The question every new grad asks – should start I getting into hobbies? It's embarrassing to talk about how I spend my time. I collect and organize, I make playlists and Are.na channels. What's next? DJing? Photoshop? Learning a language?

There's a lot of things I tried without building any meaningful habits. Playing electric guitar, speaking Korean, making YouTube videos, and abandoned side projects like "Sentiment timeline." I get easily obsessed over things like the NewJeans situation with Min Heejin and HYBE, and the final lineup of I-LAND2. It eats me up and affects my mood.

Too much stuff, and too little making? Under capitalism, we have so many choices. I'm overloaded with information. Bookmark this tweet for later, add this video to "Watch later" on YouTube. To watch, to listen, to read. I gave up a long time ago on "inbox zero." Organizing it all, my camera roll, my Spotify playlists, is it just a way to make sense of everything? Is it possible to live in the present and trust your brain to remember?

I can’t finish anything. There's too much I want to do. It's been one year since I graduated already. But really trying anything seriously will take you years.

06/08/2024 Sutro Heights.

06/15/2024 I'm binge watching this YouTube series where people find dates by going through phones. It's good for finding new apps, seeing different ways to organize your home screen, and being nosy about others' screen time. I think the systems of organization people create, can show a bit of how their brains work. I'd like to see how 100 people organize their phones.

06/22/2024

06/26/2024 Config product launch keynote

The best new Figma AI feature is "Remove background." Now I don't have to use a Figma plugin, or open Photoshop. But, since I probably won't want to pay for the other AI features, I might need to go back to Photoshop after one year, when they make it paid...
The best FigJam improvement is pages. In my job, I regularly use very large FigJam files, and face the dilemma, "Should I make a new file?"
Slides are cool, but I probably wouldn't pay for it.

The Human Algorithm with Perplexity and New Computer

New Computer offered an interesting take on the relationship between humans and computers. They view it in a very personal way, which I do not.
For example, they talked about their chatbot Dot helping you make decisions in life, like if you should text your ex. And there are many valid ways that people can make decisions – you could ask your friends, Google, internet strangers, ChatGPT, Dot, whatever.
Personally, I think I would prefer to see my personal data visualized to me, not in a chat format. Maybe a dashboard, or charts, so that I can make inferences and decisions based on the data itself. I'd rather not "talk" to someone about it.
Building a relationship with a computer involves giving it access to your data, but also talking to it a lot, to understand the reasons behind the data. I don't like texting, and I can barely find the time to text my actual friends, so how would I have the time or motivation to text a computer?

From Flash to Apple Vision Pro with Jonathan Gay and Sho Kuwamoto

I learned that Jonathan, the creator of Flash, and Sho, VP of Product at Figma, used to work together at Macromedia, after the acquisition of Flash.
They showed a picture of a beach ball, and then threw a real beach ball in the audience. It was supposed to be some kind of metaphor for VR.
They also showed a DJ set thing in Apple Vision Pro, and it was super cool. It made me want to get one. And a video on the Apple developer website about how different sounds were made, like the kalimba ringtone and stuff.

Jesper Kouthoofd's closing keynote

The CEO of Teenage Engineering is like the coolest person ever. His parents are Swedish and Dutch, and he has a daughter. His dad is an architect, and his mom is a banker. He started off in graphic design, and worked in advertising for like 20 years. Later, he got into videos because it's like graphic design but moving. And then he got into industrial design and electronics, and created Teenage Engineering.
He was talking about how he hires people, and it's just based on vibes. Like, this guy who loves Teenage Engineering was knocking on their door, and they liked talking to him, so they put him on the marketing team, because they needed someone there. Then he sucked at marketing, so they put him on support. But he wasn't good at that either, and now he's their Head of Development, and has been working there for 12 years. Except he still might not be that good at his job, so Jesper sent him to a guitar building class. And they're like best friends now.
At their company, they literally have people who do nothing, but they still work there because they're cool. And they know that they do nothing, too.
Even though he's the CEO, he's doing all the design. The design team is like, "Please, can you let us design?" and he's like "No, learn to play piano."
But also, he's not even really into keeping up with design stuff. One time, Virgil Abloh came to his company to hang out, and he had no idea who he was. But they became friends.

Li Fei Fei's closing keynote

Li Fei Fei is also a legend. Did you know that Andrej Karpathy was her student?
I like the way she started off her talk. She explained how the human eye was formed, and how we can see – and apparently that wasn't enough for us, because now we're trying to build machines that can see.
She gave an overview of the research that her lab is currently working on. One of my favourite ones was for helping patients who are paralyzed. They will be able to send their brain waves to a robot, who can make a sandwich and feed them.
There were many practical applications of her AI research that I felt was very meaningful, like beyond chatbots. So it kind of just gave me more hope for humanity.

06/27/2024

Day 2

The opening keynote with Refik Anadol was cool. He talked about data painting, building a "Large Nature Model", and doing huge projections on buildings. I've seen some of his work before at NYC MOMA!
There were two product-focused talks I enjoyed today – "How to bring the craft back to product management" by Peter Yang, Product Lead at Roblox, and "The heirloom tomato org chart" by Nan Yu, Head of Product at Linear.
I found Raphael Schaad's talk to be unexpectedly relatable. He is the founder of Cron (acquired by Notion). He carries a "field notes" notebook everywhere, and has been doing so for years. He scanned and transcribed them, and put it all into Figma, so he can search the text layers.

06/30/2024 Landed in Philadelphia 30 minutes before boarding ends for my connecting flight. Sat in the plane for 15 minutes before we could get off. Ran 10 minutes to the other gate, and made it 5 minutes before boarding ended. On the plane now.

07/03/2024 At Luray Caverns with my parents.

07/09/2024 Things I'm starting to say to myself

Are you proud of how you spent your time today?
You should be good at your job, but you are allowed to be bad at your hobbies.
You can always do less. Don't be trapped by your habits.
生活就是这样，一点一点变得更像自己。

07/10/2024

07/19/2024 I think I have an aversion to meeting new people, because people = responsibility... I understand why you would quit everything and move to the mountains (or die). You can stop having responsibilities. It's hard to be a functioning member of society, and contribute to your community. I feel so trapped. If I gave up, would you care?

07/21/2024 At Cha-An Teahouse with 0399.

07/23/2024 I'm still thinking about The Volunteers concert last night...

07/28/2024 I'm finally getting around to reading Debt: The First 5000 Years. I'm realizing that virtual money is not new, and credit systems existed long before cash. And the notion of having to pay your debts has more to do with morality than economics. Debt goes hand in hand with relationships... I don't blame you for the scars you left on me, because I left them on you, too.

07/30/2024 Today we were at the WestCap office for our design onsite. We did improv, and I had to talk about a pet peeve. So I picked when people leave ballpoint pens open. Whenever I see one, I can just feel the ink drying up, and it's so easy just to remember to click it shut! But if I tell someone, "Hey, can you close the pen?" then I'll look like the bad person for calling them out over a small thing. And I had to keep talking, so I started rambling about how it would suck if you had a great idea and wanted to write it down, but the only pen around had no ink. We also had to pretend to be flight attendants who were late to a flight, and come up with an excuse together.

I was talking to 0477 about this question she posed – "At work, would you rather be called girl or woman?" We agreed that it feels weird to be addressed like, this is a woman on the design team. But girl doesn't seem quite right, either. Is it that I don't feel old enough yet? Would I use woman for more senior people? What about man? Does that feel less weird? Maybe we're just persons, or defined by our specific roles, like designer, engineer, researcher.

In the evening, we did a cooking activity and got customized aprons! I got to pit cherries using a special tool and it was really fun. We made a three course meal and it was tasty.

07/31/2024 It's been about a year since I moved to New York, and I thought it would be interesting to see how much money I've spent in the past 12 months.

Going into this, I knew I spent a lot of money on clothes, but I didn't realize that it would be more than I spend on tech. Maybe because I buy clothes in small increments, which add up to a lot. And when I buy a piece of technology, it's like a very big purchase. I also feel like buying clothes is a habit of mine, because I used to sell clothes in Canada. I don't anymore, after moving here.

I actually don't mind spending most of my money on clothes, but I do want to buy less items, and put more priority on quality and special pieces. Another thing I buy is books and K-pop albums. I think books are a pretty valuable investment, but I want to spend less on K-pop albums. Last thing – I feel like I don't spend enough money on others. This year, I want to be more generous.

07/2024

08/11/2024 I went outside today and the world was normal. But no matter where I go, I'm trapped. What do I want to remember? The picture is incomplete, but it's getting clearer and growing bigger... How do you go to the past without getting stuck? Today is the future and the past. I think I prefer to live not feeling like anyone owes me anything. Doing things because I want to, not because I expect anything in return. Makes me okay with not owing anything to other people, either.

08/14/2024 Things I talked about with 0112

Health problems
Churches, communities, and cities
Making friends
Films I might like
The film industry – arts & charts, capitalism
Old files

08/15/2024 I had a dream about NewDad, the band. Then I woke up thinking about almond croissants. So ten minutes before the lunch cutoff, I changed my order to an almond croissant and half-size banh mi, because it was under the $20 allowance. But when my lunch arrived, they gave me a full-size sandwich! After, I interviewed my first ever candidate for the role of my future manager. And we played Bananagrams in the office, I've only ever played Plantaingrams online.

08/16/2024 So far, this summer has been close to monochrome, but not in a bad way. I've been thinking about everything like music. Sitting in a park reading a book, hearing the pages flip, the sound of a person walking by watching a video on their phone, footsteps. I'm trying to be okay with the sound of my own voice, played back to me. I always wear pants to work. It makes me feel serious.

08/17/2024 I'm putting stickers on my computer. There are a lot of stickers I've collected over the years. One of them is from a shipping label, when I ordered Blendy stick online. I would usually buy it in person, but I was in SF and didn't know where to go. A long time ago, I redeemed an offer from a cereal box, where I got sent free Cinnamon Toast Crunch stickers printed with my name on them. That was on my old computer, but not this one. I hope I can get some more stickers.

08/19/2024 Things to do on a 22 hour flight

08/22/2024 I like that when you're traveling, your everyday routine gets shaken up. Getting lost somewhere, remembering who you are, noticing the details. The goal is always changing. I'm thinking about people I don't talk to. It always surprises me when people remember my birthday. I probably don't remember yours, so I don't expect you to remember mine.

08/26/2024 I just had the worst nightmare. They reduced Sharebite from $20 to $15, and it got renamed from Sharebite to SHARE LITE. I was arguing with some execs about it.

08/27/2024

08/29/2024

09/05/2024 On buying clothes Buying trends every year is not financially and environmentally sustainable, although trends eventually get recycled. Your personal style and identity also evolve, but differently from trends. Like aging naturally, some clothes feel more appropriate. Spending more money on something can make you think more about its longevity. Or sometimes there's an item you buy because you like it or need it for an occasion, and it's not that you don't stop liking it, but you come across a better version... You end up with multiple similar items.

09/06/2024 Today is just one of those days... I was trying to buy Kiss of Life tickets, but somehow my Ticketmaster account got restricted. I tried like three times, and I finally got them. Then I carried clothes to Beacon's Closet. My arms were hurting and the bag was close to ripping. When I arrived, I waited a long time for them to process my items. But it turned out that I had missed the text saying they were ready, so I had sat on the bench for an extra hour.

On the way back, the subway was packed. At Queensboro, I heard some announcement like "This train is going straight to some other station and will not stop in between." I should have gotten off and taken a different train then, but I was so far away from the door and it closed. So I ended up stuck on the train going to the other station and then having to find my way back...

At home, I did laundry and ate 0303's uneaten Sharebite lunch from yesterday, a lox bagel and half a chicken sandwich.

09/07/2024 I woke up and my arms were sore from yesterday. I finished the chicken sandwich, went to sign up for a library card, and borrowed Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. Then I was walking to H-Mart when I came across a book swap, so I never made it to H-Mart.

Later, I made some small updates to my Are.na channels and my website. I ate 0427's leftover natto with toast, and I painted a cork board while watching Nana.

09/08/2024 Today I went to church, I walked to Muji, and bought cannoli for $8. I went home and ate 0417's fried rice from Sharebite. And I started thinking about how to set up Obsidian as a sort of CMS for my new blog website.

09/09/2024 I hear a key turning in the door. At first, I think it's the next door neighbour, but I realize it's my door. Is someone trying to get in? Are they at the wrong apartment? I have a meeting in one minute... There's knocking now, I go to look in the peephole and it's a little boy. Should I open the door? I think he is crying. Do I call my super? I can't tell if this is an elaborate break-in scheme, or if he is legitimately at the wrong door.

09/10/2024 Things I've been talking to people or thinking about recently

Sensodyne and tooth sensitivity in my 20s
A new pillow and inhaling microplastics with synthetic fibers
Decisions and where you started – like what you believe and where you live, and how people choose to live in New York in spite of New York
Prioritizing sustainability over growth, and making for myself as the primary audience over a secondary audience
Living life and making decisions without all the information
Routines & identity
Everyone thinks about God in some capacity
You can just talk to the Internet and someone will listen

09/11/2024 In my dream, I cracked my phone and needed AppleCare. I was in Singapore with 0427 and my parents. I needed to fly back, but everyone else was staying. I woke up (still dreaming), and I hadn't packed yet. But I had to go out for breakfast, and go with 0427 to the hospital. My parents drove me to breakfast, but the hospital trip was postponed.

I'm so close to not making my flight. There's a glass slide that brings you to the gate. You're supposed to go down when it's your turn, but they passed me. All the airport staff started rolling on the ground to get their attention, but it failed.

09/13/2024 Things to do when 0427 is in NYC

09/14/2024 I had some posters up on my wall with sticky tac, but they were hard to rearrange, and would sometimes fall down. I'm also paranoid of leaks in my building, with the water trickling down the paper.

So I bought a roll of cork from Amazon. There were two options I was looking at, 3 mm thick and 6 mm. I got the thicker one, because the thinner one might be more crumbly. I laid it flat on the ground to unroll it, and put books on the edges for a few days. After that, it didn't become completely flat, but it wasn't terrible. I read that you could roll it the opposite way, but I was scared to risk accidentally breaking it. I think you can also iron it – I feel like that's a good option because it'd probably add moisture to the cork, but that just seemed like a lot of effort.

Rolls of cork don't come in a white colour, so I got a paintbrush and some bottles of acrylic paint. For four days, I used up one bottle to do one coat each day. It probably would have been more efficient to spray paint it, or use one of those wall painting rollers, but I just didn't want to set up a plastic bag situation to reduce the mess.

I was thinking about putting this board by my bed, but I was worried about the cork smell, or inhaling paint fumes. I don't know if that's a valid concern, but if I'm pinning stuff, I wouldn't want a pin to fall on me in my sleep, either.

Anyways, I was envisioning it to be like Bristol board or cardboard, so I could move it around and lean it against the wall. But I didn't realize that cork doesn't work that way. It rolls over very easily and doesn't really stay up, so you do have to stick it in some way. I first used some cheap masking tape – I was scared that it would fall off overnight, but it actually held up the whole night. Except the next day at home during a meeting, it fell down. So I got a double-sided wall safe tape, and that seemed to hold up pretty well. Then, I ended up cutting off side pieces of the cork to make it perfectly fit on the wall space. In hindsight, I should have planned for that earlier, because the pieces I threw out were a waste of paint, but it's fine.

Another thing I realized is that the normal length of pins is about 8 to 10 mm, and this cork is 6 mm thick. It's not the end of the world – the pin does stick out a bit, but since there's tape at the back, it doesn't stick out too much. It would be more secure if I looked for a thicker piece of cork to begin with, but that would make it heavier.

As I collect more stuff, I'll put it up here. If I don't mind poking a hole into something, I'll pin it up, but if there's papers I want to keep more intact, I'll just tape it to an existing poster.

09/17/2024 I dreamed I was in a black shirt with no pants, and I lost a shoe. I was taking the elevator. 0427 was there. My armpit was bleeding. I had a new roommate, which happened to be a coworker.

09/18/2024 I had a good day. I brought mooncake to work, and we ate it while playing crossword. During design review, we talked about filters, and I got a lot of things off my mind. 0463 said I had a great idea for one of our team sessions at the October onsite. Are.na posted a picture of signatures collected so far for the Annual, and mine and 0427's are there! I wrapped up my Polyvore archiving on Are.na this morning. More people than I expected are following the channel and connecting my old sets.

09/19/2024 Today, my friends were going through all the emotes I added in Slack. At lunch, 0469 was giving us advice about how your interests change over time. But unfortunately, I think some of my stomach problems are returning as I'm starting to eat more FODMAP foods. I took the last kombucha in the fridge. What if you came home and your house was just filled with ants?

09/23/2024 Consumption and other thoughts

Just because you like something doesn't mean you need to buy it.
Stores can be like museums.
Taste is overrated, just like what you like.
My neighbours are always leaving things they don't want on top of our mailboxes downstairs.

09/25/2024 I've been filling the spaces between my memory, taking my time to find the narrative in the data.

When I was a kid, I thought it wasn't in my nature to be a nice person. I wasn't mean, but just not nice in the way some of my classmates were. So I felt like I was always trying to be nice. Not because I wanted people to like me, but I didn't want people to think I hated them.

09/30/2024 Back then, why did I hate going to Chinese class so much? And as a parent, how do you get your kid to learn something that they don't want to? Would it have helped if they introduced me to Chinese TV shows, books, or music? I guess we did watch Chinese Idol together. And some kids might actually like the social environment of a classroom.

Now my perspective is more like, I want to know different languages so that I can understand people better, and experience different ways of thinking. The only thing I remember my parents telling me was, "You'll regret it if you don't study Chinese now. So-and-so 姐姐 is older, and she got mad at her parents for not forcing her to learn Chinese when she was younger. She wants to go to China now, and it's hard for her to learn on her own."

OK, and? That's this 姐姐, not me. Just because she regrets it, doesn't mean that I will.

I'm probably around 姐姐's age now, and while I can understand her regrets, I don't really feel the same way. Maybe I learned enough Chinese to get by, or maybe I don't blame my younger self for the way I spent my time. It's not like learning only happens in the first 15 years of your life. If anything, I feel like I have more time now than I did in elementary school. Or maybe I'm not old enough yet for the regrets to catch up with me.

Anyways, I'm not saying my parents weren't creative. They tried many things, to get me to do what they thought was good for me. But they've also told me that, somewhere along the line, they just gave up and let me do whatever I wanted to.

You're allowed to change your mind. I didn't want to learn Chinese. I hated doing the dishes. I wanted to be a Computer Science major. Sometimes it's about learning styles, sometimes it's about your environment. When I'm alone in my apartment, I don't mind doing my own dishes. Traditional college classes weren't for me, but I loved art school.

10/06/2024

10/08/2024

Bad things happen to good people.
Life is fair that way. Bad things happen, no matter if you're good or bad.
The incentive for trying to be good shouldn't be for your own benefit. If life worked that way, where good actions always lead to good results, then there would be no point for people to be bad.
It's up to you to figure out your own motivation for being good or bad. (Or somewhere in between, which is probably where most people are.)

10/09/2024

10/10/2024

10/12/2024 The gates open at 3 am, I'm past security at 3:11. I like taking my time to walk through the quiet airport. I'm listening to Sleep Away by Lexie Liu.

10/21/2024 I went to 0385’s birthday party. She's really good at organizing events and getting people together. The theme was “k-pop idol birthday cafe.” Every person got a Polaroid taken with 0385 in front of the balloons, like a meet-and-greet. There was hwachae served in cups with her face on them, and a cheese platter.

About 20 people were there, although I didn't know anyone very well. I talked to 0470 and 0471 about One Direction, and finally met 0472. He said, "You're the one that uses Are.na a lot, right?" I think 0472 is pretty similar to how he is on Twitter.

Me and 0471 realized we've almost crossed paths many times:

We technically met at a design dinner, but we were sitting at opposite ends of the table.
We both worked at Wonderland – I started in 2017, and she started in 2018. She was at Alphorn Funnel and Starbucks, where I've transferred to a few times. She's also helped clean Marketplace before. 0317 was her supervisor at Starbucks, and I worked with 0317 at Coasters for two seasons! We talked about the Areas, like 0315, 0213, and 0473. And how the veggie poutine at Cornerstones was so good.
She interviewed for the product design internship at Addepar the same year that I did.
She works at a studio with 0474 and 0475, who work with my boyfriend, because one of their clients is the startup he works at.

After cake, we played Jeopardy. I was on a team with 0385's roommate, 0472, and 0476. The first round had general categories, like k-dramas, Toronto, Internet trends, and music. I learned a new term, ‘mewing.’ This was in the internet category. I had never heard of it, but everyone had their hands raised. The second round was specific to 0385 – her favourite things, life events, and habits. I was surprised that I actually knew the answers to most of the questions, because I’ve only known 0385 about four years. But your team loses points if you guess incorrectly, so I didn’t want to take the risk most of the time to say what was in my head, even though it ended up being right most of the time.

By the third and final round, our team was dead last. In this round, you can choose to bet however much you want, so we went all in. We had something like 4800 points. The leading team had over 10,000, but they didn’t bet everything. While people were deciding how much to bet, 11:59pm came around. We took a break to countdown to 0385’s birthday.

The last round was a single question. Originally, the plan was for 0385 to think of a number between 1 and 100, and the team that guessed the closest number would win. But for some reason, people didn’t like that. So instead, we decided to guess the total number of photos in her camera roll.

0385 said that she has the 1 TB iCloud storage plan, and that was the only hint she gave us. I was thinking somewhere between 30,000 to 40,000? Because I think I have about 10,000, but I actively delete and store photos elsewhere. She seems like she would take and keep a lot more photos. Her roommate on my team guessed 37,421. I thought that was a pretty good guess, and it was in my range. We went with that, the other two teams guessed something around 11,000 and 40,000.

Time for the final reveal. 0385 started from the last digits, 960. It could still be anyone’s game. Then she said it – 37,960. We were pretty spot on.

Because we went all in, our score doubled to 9,000 something. And the previously leading team lost points, they went down to 7,000 something. So in the end, very unexpectedly, we won.

We had a prize – a group photo with 0385, and we got to pick the photocards first. You can’t have a k-pop birthday event without photocards. 0385 signed it for me. After that, it was getting late. I hadn’t packed my stuff for my flight yet, so I said goodbye.

10/28/2024 My high school was a private school, although I don't consider it to be a very fancy one. We had class in what used to be a warehouse, and sometimes the roof would leak. It's funny how water can destroy so many things, but you need it to stay alive.

In university, people always told me that my writing "sounds like myself." You don't need ChatGPT to sound like yourself. It's kind of like this: do you want AI to pick the clothes you wear? (Well, maybe some people do...) but I want to dress myself.

Recently, I've been working on our design team's website with 0416 and 0478. Feeling like I was born to web surf, forced to Webflow.

10/30/2024

11/02/2024 New suitcase Last year, I had to calculate the percentage of time I spent in different places to determine my tax residency. (I think the total is over 365, because some days I was in two places.)

Canada, 184 days
New York, 169 days
Japan, 12 days
California, 7 days
Boston, 3 days

This year hasn’t ended yet, but based on my travel plans, 2024 is something like:

New York, 270 days – around 100 more than last year!
SF, 44 days
Toronto, 41 days
Singapore, 11 days
Montreal, 4 days
Virginia, 3 days
Japan, 2 days

I was never one to dream of travelling the world, but I guess this is just how it turned out. My parents grew up, moved to the other side of the world and had me. Once I finished school, I also moved. But I hope I can keep going to the same places, multiple times.

Somehow, it feels like everyone I know is in a different place. There are friends that, everytime I hang out with them in person, it’s in a different city than when we last saw each other. You have your physical neighbourhood and you have your internet neighbourhoods. I’m lucky when those intersect, but most of the time it’s one or the other for me.

I think choosing your location is pretty similar to choosing any other thing in life, like your relationships, your career, or your beliefs. By default, you have where you were born and raised. Where you started, which was mostly out of your control, but has a big influence on where you end up – the visas you can get, the language you speak, the lifestyle you’re used to, the opportunities you’re exposed to. You can travel to different places to experience new things, but eventually you need to decide where is home – at least, until you move, or if you move. Sometimes you just know, it’s hard to explain but it feels right. Other times you need more time to know if it’s the “right” decision. And you’re not always going to love everything about it, 100% of the time. But you also probably wouldn’t love some other place 100% of the time. Either way, every day you spend is a choice that you make to stay, whatever your reasons may be.

The first time I came to New York, I was here for a week and only used a 32 litre Carhartt backpack. (Technically, it was the second or third time, but I don’t count when I was younger because I don’t remember what I did back then.) Anyways, I used to think travelling with a suitcase was too bulky and troublesome, but now I’ve converted. Even if a carry-on suitcase has the same volume as a backpack, it’s much faster to walk with and hurts your back less. But this new suitcase I got can hold forty-something litres, to be clear.

Recently, when I’ve been packing, I’ve been thinking about my suitcase like a playlist. There’s a certain theme to the trip. I pick out what clothes to bring, like picking my favourite songs, that match the vibe of the playlist. They should work in different combinations, like on shuffle. And there needs to be enough outfits for the duration of the trip, like how you want all the good songs to play before the night ends. In middle school, I used this website called 8tracks. You could make playlists there, but it didn’t have to be only 8 tracks. That might have been the minimum.

I got a new carry-on suitcase because I didn't like my old one. It was dented in a bothersome way, even though I guess I bought an even more dented one. And it was pink, so it didn't always match my outfits. At the time I bought it, I didn’t put much thought into the decision, because I just needed a suitcase. After some use, I didn't really like the material either. I had my eye on the silver Crash Baggage for a while, and my computer (which I bring everywhere) is silver anyways, so at least it would match that. I do also like the look of a suitcase without stickers, but I’m always scared it will get confused with someone else’s luggage.

11/04/2024 My method of language learning?

Watch TV shows, movies, and listen to songs
Change your phone language
Write to-do lists
Read social media comments and articles
Practice speaking to people

11/06/2024 Recently, I've been trying to "kill many birds with one stone," by multitasking and combining multiple things I like. It's a type of efficiency that really scratches an itch I seem to have.

I wanted to learn bookbinding, so I organized a company-expensed workshop and got to do it with my friends.
I'm decorating my room and making a video about it.
I'm improving my Chinese, by changing my phone language and writing in my planner in Chinese instead of English.
While scanning documents, I've been watching movies or YouTube videos in my "Watch later" playlist.
I've been reading books on the subway.

11/07/2024

11/14/2024 In my dream, I was on a field trip with the design team. There was a box with four green sticky notes inside. I was trying to understand – if I duplicate the box, will it also have four sticky notes? Meaning, I could get unlimited sticky notes just by duplicating? But no, the sticky notes would get split evenly across the boxes. The more I duplicated, the smaller the pieces would get. Then, we were in a food court.

11/23/2024

11/30/2024

12/04/2024 2024 Spotify Wrapped.

12/13/2024 Every night, I go on my computer and get sucked into a time portal. Going through memories is slow, like digging treasure. Then I wake up in present day, and I go to work.

In my class photos, it feels like I get shorter every year. How many photos am I in, that I don't know about? Whether they're held by strangers, acquaintances, people from the past... we're all connected. An email goes two ways, a memory is shared. If you forget something, the other person can help with the missing pieces.

12/14/2024 In Montreal with 0399.

12/22/2024 I'm poking around with the idea of "font consulting." First, a free resource could be my list of type foundries, which I actively maintain. There could also be an opportunity for "font referrals." Maybe, I can also write a list of things I typically consider when picking fonts.

12/25/2024

12/26/2024 Me, 0136, and 0427 were talking about the different scenarios that a class reunion could happen:

Someone organizes a reunion (unlikely)
A wedding (whose?)
A funeral (hopefully not anytime soon)
Our class is specifically targeted by hackers, and must come together to discover why and defeat them
A filmmaker randomly selects our class from a long list of high schools, to make a movie about us

older