Fireworks at 12:09 a.m. from Gibson Flats, 7th floor

we visited the capitol building, which is the largest in the US. then had lunch at 1618 restaurant, which my parents said had better food and service than mansion and 5x cheaper. then dropped sis at the south terminal, got some stuff at walmart, and returned rental car. my dad and i got on lime scooters and rode back home in the cold. at 12:02 i woke my parents up to see fireworks at skyview 7th floor. that marked the end of 2025.

a short reflection on the year

places

i visited more places in the US this year than any other year. a few snippets of memories and emotions tied to each place

SF (jan-jul)

Screenshot of my google maps of SF

i moved to SF in july 2024 and landed in chinatown with W, my best friend from malaysia. we never planned to live there – it just happened to be available on craigslist and wasn't a scam. for $2300 a month, the 2b1b apartment sandwiched between ccsf and other apartments, was dark gray and minimal like an ikea showroom. not much light could get into the apartment. it did come furnished with an ikea desk and chairs, and two airbeds, left by a startup founder who left the country for reasons we were not aware of.

we slowly built a small personal map of chinatown, pinning down spots like grocery stores with the lowest price for a certain ingredient – Hua Xing sold bitter melon and vegetables the cheapest, Dong Hing, right next door, had the lowest prices for tofu, Sheng Hing is where i bought cherries, one time for just $1.29 a pound. Wo Chong, for homemade soy milk. inside these stores, you would see old aunties and uncles, wrapped in thick jackets, pulling large trollies, pushing and squirming to pay. the cashiers would be hostile, and if you're too slow, they'd have an exasperated look on their faces, telling you to hurry up. sometimes the best thing you can do is just to hand them your cash and coins, and they would count it for you, and it would be time for you to scurry off.

mona lisa salon, where the lady there would roast your hair style and deliberately ignore your instructions and cut your hair the way she thinks is good for you. Yee's where you would get free soup and amazing stewed beef, Capitol with the best fried chicken wings in the bay, Gourmet Kitchen which sells a rice with two dishes meal for only $8 dollars, Hon's wun-tun with killer pan-fried pork buns and ginger and clam soup, and Ma's dimsum & cafe that only accepts cash, gives you a taste of real claypot rice that you get in hong kong.

chinese united methodist church where i had the pleasure and privilege of serving there with the worship team, in cantonese and in english, i didn't get as involved with the young adults as much as i wanted, but every now and then when i go back to sf, i would attend church, and their face would light up when they see me. every week i would go to their mandarin service, a way to practice my mandarin, and a chance to write out the language on my remarkable tablet. although it was hard to follow since the pastor often spoke in idioms.

outside from chinatown, i loved going to the ferry building to write this blog or read, i finished reading mere christianity in the common area in between the bookstore and a restaurant. i loved walking through the little stores on each side, selling expensive olive oil and chocolates and empanadas oozing rich smell of butter, therapeutic window shopping.

i would also frequent japantown. forest books which smells like a buddhist temple, kinokuniya where you have a big collection of art and design books, the stationary store, the tea store, and marufuku ramen. nijiya market where i would get a big bottle of oolong tea by itoen, and miso paste and wakame and japanese curry roux. the social study cafe where i would hang out with friends, and hotel kabuki where we would cowork at their lounge below the ground floor, one time being asked whether we stay at the hotel, probably because we looked too student like.

by the time after we graduated after a year, and me and W were looking for a new place to live – he searched in mission while i searched in presidio – i was ready to move on from chinatown. i miss a lot of things, one thing i did not miss was old couple below us that would harass us by dropping weights on our rooftop, one time at 1 am for an hour. we had a brief stunt of buying a camera and placing it on the roof, hoping we would catch the man red handed. we never did. i have ptsd whenever i hear sounds on the roof.

taiwan (jun)

a street in taiwan near my hotel

the loudness of the streets and the motorcycles after living in sf for a few months. the humidity. the 7 eleven and family mart at every corner. taiwanese mandarin accents. the hospitality. NTU ER. the narrow streets. old worn out buildings. the efficient train system.

i was in taiwan for a couple days to meet with T and had lunch with her parents. the lunch didn't go so well, and i also ended up at the ER because of my throat and could barely speak. but it was nice to experience taiwan together, this time as a couple. my fondest memory was getting a film camera, and only having 27 shots, and we would take turns, taking photos around zhongshan, in thrift stores and bookstores, and feeling the weight of time on us, and the magic of every moment, as we counted down to my eventual departure.

washington, dc (jul)

Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum

i had the opportunity to visit DC for the AAPM conference. i was eager to go back to washington, chinatown in particular. i remember visiting back when i was 15. i remember the street crosswalk had the chinese zodiac patterns, and when i got there i kept trying to look for it, but never saw it, i later found out it was just worn out, and it's part of a larger issue of chinatown dying in washington. i remember how humid washington was, it was basically like KL. i saw the nicest apple store ever. went to the national art gallery and the smithsonian's national air and space museum. i had the most fun on the first night, where i went to play ping pong and just had a blast.

austin (aug - ?)

Austin from Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge

the river. the people. the anxiety of an interview in person with strangers. the price of the food. fusion restaurants. the odd weather patterns.

the humidity was the first thing that hit me. then it was south congress E 7th street, walking down the street close to midnight to the cvs was terrifying, i did not feel safe. then it was the lack of asians everywhere, the only asian that was in my sight was at whole foods. i said to myself that i was never going to move here and it was unlivable for me. but i was overreacting. it was tough not seeing the familiarities of my culture and roots around me anymore since moving to austin, maybe deep down i was worried that meant i would lose my sense of self and identity even more. i quickly got over it once i start work and spending almost all of my waking hours to work helps distract me from that fact.

i did see some nice sides of austin like botanical garden and parks when T and my parents came over on separate occasions. i find it hard to have a reason to go out on my own. i would rather devote my full attention and focus on doing a good job at oe.

austin chinese church was a place that felt the most like home, but it being so far, and not having a car was a big blocker for me. i wish i could've gone to that church more and made some friends there.

most days in austin were home -> office -> home. and i would get the view of the bridge, watching over it from the firmspace office like a lifeguard, people watching, pickleball court on top of a parking lot, and people lining up on the bridge to see the bats, and people rowing their kayak and boats.

cambridge (sep)

view from CIC boston

a colorful coworking space. an actual office. a nice window view on the top floor of boston marriot. it was my first time meeting people from work. i wasn't sure how to act, when you're new you don't know where you fit, and people don't know where to fit you as well. i volunteered for a project while at cambridge and stayed up till 6am to finish it. oddly serene, working in my hotel room with the faint desk lamp, with the sun coming up, and me going to bed. it was also my first time trying out Dig Inn.

seattle (oct)

E Harrison St

rain and wind. the first night i landed i was welcomed with the wind so strong i could feel it piercing into my soul. i did not have any thick jackets, and i've never felt more cold. food wise, terrible malaysian food, some good korean and japanese restaurant like Seoul Tofu & Jjim and Kobuta & Ookami Katsu and sake house. Avoid Asean Streat Food hall at all costs. i had trouble walking with my injury, and that affected my overall mood, not to mention the work, but the fiery colors on the maples and ash trees made up for it.

miami (nov & dec)

Crandon Beach

i visited miami twice. the first time living in East Miami in key biscane, the second time in midblock. miami feels like a different country. you hear spanish everywhere, the cashier at Trader Joe says "hola" to you, instead of "how's it going". it's tropical, vibrant, and artsy. especially in wynwood, where graffiti is on every single wall, everywhere. design district, once a pineapple farm, now an 18-block packed with luxury stores and art galleries. now that i'm moving here, i feel like i'm pulled even further away from my roots, from chinatown, to austin, and now to miami. i'm not sure where this leads me, my life is becoming more uncertain than ever, nothing in my life since graduating has been planned, and maybe that's not so bad after all. who wants to have their future planned out.

santa fe (dec)

Santa Fe Museum of Contemporary Native Arts

i went on a roadtrip with my family to santa fe, where most of the drive involved getting out of Texas, it's nice there. i like the pueblo revival architecture, the earthy tones and flat roofs and exposed beams make the entire city feel like it's a fictional place, and you time travelled back into history, it also feels more peaceful. a treasure trove of art and culture.

work

clinical trials matching

the idea of my first job was always daunting to me. i kept telling my friends and family that i had to get the best thing. because the first job is what determines everything else, where you land, who you meet, and what you learn. it defines you. now it doesn't mean that if you somehow get a subpar job, then your life is ruined, but i always had this high bar to work at someplace great.

i never knew what that was exactly. i kept bouncing around different fields, from climate, to big tech FAANG, to AI labs, after my research with UCSF, i had a strong desire to work in the intersection of healthcare x AI. i started going down the rabbit hole of ai healthcare companies like abridge, ambience healthcare, charta, hippocratic AI, etc. nothing panned out, and i was supposed to be the first engineer at an early-stage pre-seed startup in presidio, but a twitter DM turned into an intro call, and a coding test turned into an in-person interview in austin. somehow by God's grace, i was given the opportunity to join as their 17th engineer.

working at OE felt like a dream, it checked all the boxes, and more, and it felt like my life was set. but soon came the insecurities and the responsibilities, and the overwhelming pressure to achieve their high bar of quality and quantity of work. where working every day, from morning to night, became the norm even though it wasn't on paper. and it happens naturally if you're driven and wired in a way to do things. this was my first time working in a real job, my tesla internships didn't really count since it wasn't very structured and ucsf research was just meetings with my professor.

i made a few silly mistakes in the past months, and had a supply chain attack happen where i was right at the center of it all, and i still feel like i don't know how to fit in with the people here, but i'm growing and i'm constantly learning. and that's all that matters. everything else is an added benefit.

the worst thing in life is to stay stagnant, whether that's in work or in relationships, if you're not being challenged, if you don't feel like pulling your hair out, or get so overwhelmed you feel like you're going to explode, then you're not becoming the best version of yourself. of course feeling that way all the time is unsustainable and you should probably seek professional help for your mental health. the key is to balance between speed and quality. that's the push and pull at the center of all the work i'm doing.

one fun thing about working at an AI for doctors company is i get exposed to a ton of medical information and literature, not all of it sticks, but i've been exposed to more clinical content than ever, and i know acronyms and terms that i never would've thought i needed to know. and i've stared at more cancer guidelines than any other content i have in my life. and i still have no idea what most of it means.

this slows down my rate of progress since i require doctors and MDs to work with me to eval everything i do to achieve the level of excellence, because chatgpt and claude can only bring you so far, so a lot of my time is spent on evaluating llms, both in the code it writes for me with cc, and in the responses and answers.

fundamentally, i'm picking up the skill that you really only learn when working at a fast-paced and small team of talented engineers, where given the constraints of time, where you're already juggling multiple tasks, sort them in your head by level of importance, and figure out the best solution for it with a level of taste that is acquired from intuition and heuristics. and another thing is to anticipate things so that you solve the problems even before they happen, and once you reach this level, you're capable of a lot of things.

i'm still learning how to be willing to look dumb, and to not let your insecurities stop you from doing excellent work, how to cope with stressful situations. communication is hard on many levels, i didn't grow up in the US, and a lot of the culture and language was picked up only a few years ago, and since i don't interact with people that much in my day to day, i lag a lot and overthink about what is "right" to say and what isn't. almost as if i have to process a translator engine on top of my existing one, so i'm able to be understood better. and that's tiring. it's one of the challenges of being an immigrant. that shows up in the way i present in demos, i'm more safe, and the fear of making a bad joke or come off the wrong way outweighs my willingness to also partake in the art of making fun presentations.

writing good code became less about knowing the right patterns, but more about codebase understanding. your level of code is capped by your ability to know what are good patterns that exist, and the right people to reach out for advice and code reviews.

some lessons and takeaways from my patterns at work

1. not let work take over my entire life, not feel a jolt of anxiety at every slack notification, carve out sacred hours on Sundays for God, and for hobbies.
2. not let fear be the driving force for my work, but do things from the perspective fun and play. the work is important and crucial, but don't forget to enjoy the process, and not focus only on the destination
3. stay curious all the time. applies to fixing bugs, to building features, to talking to people. don't just end at the first obvious conclusion or answer, there's always something deeper. keep pulling on the thread. do not delegate understanding to AI. people also like you more if you ask them questions.
4. stop overthinking, instead of letting your insecurities stop you, just say what you think, be true to yourself. or you'll regret it later and replay back conversations in the shower.
5. if you're tired and context-switching, it's your body telling you to take a break. no you won't be more productive by trying to squeeze out more lines of code or more PRs, the quality of your work is correlated with your health, physically and mentally. go take a walk.
6. try to relax, when you're given constructive feedback or asked for an explanation, or a highly unrealistic deadline. you're not being condemned. it's not a courtroom where you're under oath. sound confident, even when you're not. but don't over do it.
7. spend more time designing the system. i jumped into a lot of tasks without putting much thought into the best way to do things. if i just spent 15 mins chatting with someone, or drew the thing out, it would save me a lot of pain in the future. i find myself redoing a lot of my past work.

i'll end with a few quotes from Tim Keller's sermon on The Search for Achievement

On the brutality of work (Ecclesiastes 2:22-23):

"What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? All his days work is pain and grief and even at night his mind does not rest."

Studs Terkel (from his 1972 book Working):

"This book being about work is by its very nature therefore about violence. Violence to the spirit as well as to the body. It's about ulcers as well as accidents. It's about nervous breakdowns as well as kicking the dog around. It is above all about daily humiliations. To survive the day is triumph enough for the walking wounded among the great many of us."

On work failing to deliver what it promises:

"Success fails on its own terms... We expect work to bring us satisfaction to give us recognition and to make a contribution... And what he shows us basically... they fail on all three counts."

On the identity vacuum driving work:

"The thing you're actually manufacturing is not a product. You're manufacturing a self. You don't know who you are. You are trying to prove yourself. And your work is never about you. It's never about others and it's never about the work. It's always about you."

On the need for rest in work:

"You need a rest from your work in your work. Do you hear that? You need a rest from your work in your work."

On the solution:

"Better is one handful of tranquility and a handful of work. That's the balanced life."

And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ.

— Colossians 3:23-24