I went to the gym yesterday night at my usual 1am. I’ll really miss the late night walks in almost utter silence. There’s always cars. But it’s always silence. And the buildings combined with the fog just makes it so nice. It’s like art you know… the architecture and the backdrop. I’ll miss SF.

I worked from home today because I woke up feeling sick and shitty. Then… I got food and boba delivered. Only in SF I think. Where else can you get rice/ramen delivered along with boba. I tried out teaspoon which is a new tea place in SF. The delivery. So good man. Although it turned out to be $7 USD boba. Treat yoself.

I just bought 3 games for $6 off psn. Megaman X4, Megaman X5, and Digimon Arena ps3 or something. I can’t believe I can buy Megaman X4 and X5 for $5. It’s like crazy. I remember buying the pirated version as a kid. PSX games were $8 a disc. And now… the hd version is $2. Legit. I guess it pays to be legal.

Steam is pretty awesome like that too. It only takes about 3 years for a new game to hit sub $5… and since I’m way behind on games I basically always have new $5 games to play. Except now I’m on pure linux. Still worth it though.

I’m so thankful for the high quality marjiuana that’s available in california. I think that’s something that I’ll miss so much when I’m in Canada / Japan. The drugs. Thug life chose me. Lol.

I think I’ll eventually write a megapost about all that I’ll miss in SF. I guess this will be part one.

I think we should hire her because new grad and diversity. I actually said that today. Ummm. I’m officially living in Silicon Valley.

New grads are choosing us over google. That’s… kinda crazy. Well… I guess I’d choose us over google too. But still.

I had coffee with our VP of product. Apparently he doesn’t read any product books and he was trained by Jack Dorsey and Gokul Rajaram. Moral of the story? To become great just find outstanding mentors. Hmmm. Hmmmm.

Holy shit. It’s already mid march. In 2 weeks I’l have a performance. And 3 weeks I’ll be in dominican republic. Mind blown.

So I just paid $90 to have my apartment cleaned. It’s kinda crazy. I guess it’s the time of skill specialization. Cleaners make $45 an hour. And I’d totally pay that amount considering how clean my place it. It kinda blows my mind that I did this. Well… it doesn’t. But it’s not something that I would’ve imagined in the past I guess. $90 is a lot of ps3 games that I could’ve bought.

The other day I was talking with a coworker. She told me she’d really like to have a personal chef one day. And the idea just incepted into my mind. Now… I want a personal chef in the future. I wonder if in another 5 years I’ll reach the level of having a personal chef. Or maybe paying a chef $90 a meal to cook me a meal or something. Who knows.

I’m thankful that I got to wfh today. It was a much needed recharge and I got to uh… clean my apartment. Or get my apartment cleaned. I have to interview someone tomorrow at 10am. Which means that I gotta wake up at like.. 8:30am. That’ll be the earliest that I’ve woken up in like… the longest time. Blargh. But whatever. I should be thankful that I get to interview and meet potential future coworkers in advance. Maybe. So far I haven’t met someone that impressed me yet though.

Yesterday I made a huge mistake. I took a nap at 10pm. Then I woke up at 12. And then couldn’t sleep until 5am. Luckily today was a WFH recovery day. I ended up watching the GSL RO16 group selections. Too jokes. Taeja makes the group of death then gets swapped out. What a master troll.

This weekend is my final weekend of oncall before my dominican republic vacation. Oh. I picked up my drugs. Who knew that for malaria you would neeeeed to fridge the live bacteria or something.

I think I really needed this reset day. I was trying really hard to deploy my code but then the vpn was down and I was like… fuck it. I’ll just crush it tomorrow.

I think it’s similar to what I said before with going full throttle vs taking it slow and steady. When you go full throttle… sometimes you gotta take a step back and recover. I feel that I’m sufficiently recovered now. But probably not at peak ability still.

I think to experience the most growth… you really got to be pushing you limits and standing on knife’s edge. The thing though… while that gives you the most gains… it’s always the most dangerous. One misstep and you’ll pay a pretty big price. I experienced the price previously when I kinda got really burned out at work.

I never make the same mistake twice. Well… not never. Generally not. Unless the mistake is trivial or doesn’t bring enough pain. Suffice to say that I don’t think I’ll ever burn out from working a software job. Probably. So my thought today is… I think that the knife’s edge isn’t actually that good. Well. It’s great for as long as you can stand flawlessly on it… until you get a hurt real bad. Then you need to recover. I think it might be safer and better to just go for the smaller gains. The smaller consistent gains compound and maybe it’ll be worth it. Probably will be.

I think… the previous method that I used to push myself to the limit. It’s like… running like the hare. Or basically… big steps forward and small steps back. But maybe continous small steps forward is the way to go. On the other hand… the big steps prepare you for the big jumps… which you need to take. If you only consistently take small steps forward. Sure you’ll go far. But to the guy who can do mega jumps. You probably won’t ever catch up.

I guess it’s a balance of big jumps and small steps. You always want the small steps forward… but you wanna train yourself to be able to do the big jump. And recover from possible injury of the big jump.

Sigh. Watching parasyte. The character is so retarded.

This guy could be a mutant human eating alien. Instead of telling anyone… I’ll ask him all about it in person alone. And if he is an alien… I’ll ask him to peacefully leave the earth. There’s no way he’ll try to kill me. OMGWTFBBQ. You deserve to die and I wished you did die. Anime sometimes makes me sad. It makes stupid people live when they don’t deserve to live.

Wow. I uh woke up and got to do yoga at home. It’s so amazing. I got a recording from one of my favorite yoga instructors and now it’s as if I have yoga class on demand. Mind blown.

Now I can do yoga on saturdays rain or laziness. If I sleep in like I did today I can still do yoga at 1pm. Sometimes I think that everything is just going so well and I think having yoga on demand is just a reminder of how nice I have things.

Cooked myself a delicious meal that I’ll be having later. Then I’ll be celebrating my friend’s birthday tonight.

I’ve been watching the uh… Lee Sedol vs Google games and it’s kinda crazy. Well… one is that the computer actually beat a human go player. I remmeber growing up as a kid and everyone was saying it wouldn’t happen in our lifetime but it freaking did. And the other thing is… all the technology behind the google computer… I understand the concepts of it. Like.. neural networks, monte carlo tree search, and other things.

I’ve always wondered how musicians can stay alive for so long by alive I mean relevant. And then it occurred to me that as the musicians get older the audience gets older with them so the following doesn’t really diminish. Even without many new fans… musicians will generally have their old fans and stuff. Crazy stuff yo.

Gonna watch parasyte and some movies now. Oh man… being able to watch movies on demand. Netflix is like… so good. And of course the internet. All hails the internets.

I just got my saturday back. Woot. Woot.

I think… it’s good to plan for the future and imagine what it’ll be like. But at the same time the future is unpredictable and no point in projecting too much success or failure. Plan but don’t project too much. I was all like - life sucks cause I gotta work 3 weekends in a row. But now I got my saturday back. So I only have to work 2 weekends with one week break in between. Life is good.

Just got back from shuffle. Today I learned the spin. Woot. Woot. Sigh. I really didn’t want to go because… of the back injury from playing laptop starcraft. But then I told myself that I’d just go and do everything at half speed and learn the spin at half speed. So I went. And it was great. Even though I know the right action I still struggle man… the struggle is real. Even though I’ve built the habit of going to the gym… I still much rather stay home and play video games… even though I know that after the gym I’ll feel like da MVP. I still feel hella lazy sometimes. Man. I guess it really never gets easier. Sigh.

Work has been crazy. I had to do a revert today… and it was a revert on code that I reviewed and helped deploy. I do think that you should feel comfortable deploying the code that you reviewed because you are responsible for it. But damn. My perfect revert record is ruined. Ruined. Actually… I probably had to revert before this but whatever. I just don’t remember it.

I started doing the design interview at work recently and today was the 2nd candidate that I interviewed. It’s good that my intuition is correct. I was a no on him and I think the general consensus was that he was slightly weak / junior and we’re already out of junior training capacity. I’m still hoping to meet a candidate that’ll put me in awe. But I think it’s… statistically unlikely but I can only hope.

Sundays has been my chores day and Saturday is now a work day. It’s crazy because… I woke up saturday earlier for work than I ever did even for yoga. Like… I prioritize work over yoga. Bleh. Next 2 weekends are still work before I can take a breather. So looking forward to a true weekend where I can just do nothing and play video games. Soon. Soon.

I’m thankful that I was invited to super duper’s birthday party. I really thankful that I met such a cool mentor. I met him when I was 23 and first moved to SF and spending time with him is like looking at my life in the future in a lot of ways. I get to learn from other people. I think that at any point in time your opportunities are great but looking back you can only take one path you know - so you want to make sure you’re going down the path you want for yourself. And then I see people who have lived the amazing life vs people who just did whatever and ended up where they are.

Super duper was a mentor and a dear friend and I’m really happy for him. He’s living the dream. Working 2 days a week and playing starcraft. What a baller. What was I saying….. oh right. Looking back you can only take one path… so you’ve already neglected and lost time and shit. So you don’t want to lose time on the wrong things. At this point it’s already impossible for me to do some things. Some of my friends got married at 25 and I know that that’s not the path for me I guess.

Anyways… super thankful that I met such a wonderful person and that we’ve been friends for 4 years. I’m thankful that I live in silicon valley where I can see all the types of people that I could potentially turn into. Do I wanna be a 30 year old engineering director or a 35 year old CTO? Nah. I don’t think so. But it’s good to know that that’s the current path the ship is taking. I gotta steer the motherfucking ship.

Yesterday I went to the birthday party and just played Starcraft 2. It was great. But then… I played on a laptop with shitty gear and posture… and now my back hurts. Blargh. I’m old. I’m thankful for all the great people in my life that I’ve had the chance of meeting. It’s really weird because… everything is like random chance. The interview where they asked you that random question and you just answer with the first thing that pops into your mind. Or whatever. Serendipity in real life.

I went to spin today… was hella sick but I went. I’m thankful that I know that even though I really want to sleep… in the end going to spin is better for me both mentally and physically. Even though it’s not what I want to do…. it ends up being the best choice. Which is a lot of things. I don’t want to do - ends up being the best choice. That’s some gold right there. Alright. I’m thankful. Life is good.

I wanna be like Kanye. So good. Just so good.

I wanted to write about not rushing and being patient. Whenever you rush you make mistakes and rushing tends to cause tunnel vision and stuff… but then I was watching Parasyte and then there’s a even bigger mistake than rushing which is denying reality.

Reality is what’s in front of you. There’s no point in denying reality. Those that deny reality are crazy… and yet so many people choose to not accept reality as it is. In the show… when an evil person appears… the guy doesn’t believe that evil person exists and subsequently gets stabbed in the gut. He totally deserved it for being retarded. And yet… so many people don’t accept reality.

On the other hand… I’m a big believer in the interpretation of reality. Which means that you can look at the same reality (event) from different angles in order to make your life better. The other thing is… I think that to become great - like top 10 in the world great… you need some type of crazy belief system. Like how McGregor believes that he’s unbeatable even though he was beaten previously.

tl;dr - don’t deny reality but interpret reality in a way that benefits you

I just got back from the gym after not going for about a week. And I’ve already lost about 10% of my strength. I can’t tell if getting weaker is because of lack of sleep, poor food, and work stress or simply not working out. I’m guessing it’s probably a combination of both. I wonder how badly your skills deteriorate over time. I mean… it can’t be 10% weaker every week can it? That would mean that a one month vacation would take me to 65% strength. That’s kinda a scary thought… but then I actually think I observed that happening that one summer that I went back to Toronto.

But then what about skills like cycling, skiing or playing the piano? I haven’t touched a piano in the longest time and now I’m kinda scared to try and play piano again. I’m sure that I’ll pick it up quick though. I just thought of this because… it means that I can’t alawys be peak ability / the best that I’ve ever been if this is the case. Or… can I? Well… I guess I can’t. Since in order to advance and practice in one area.. you need to spend less time doing other things. I’ve been focusing a lot on Software Engineering. Hmm. I think I should focus on uh… investing and learning the stock market. But then… what will I need to give up?

Uh. I wanted this to be thankful but I tried to type Thankful Saturday and I kept defaulting to Saterday. Like… it looked wrong… but it took my brain 10 seconds to figure out the correct spelling for Saturday. Sigh. I am really really sleep deprived right now.

I went into the office today for work. Blargh. It’s actually not too bad. Had cookies and donuts and turtle tower with the team. We had the retrospective today and I’m thankful that I worked with such smart and nice people. I was kinda out Friday and didn’t do much so I felt bad but you can’t really do anything with you’re running on fumes.

I’m thankful that I’m wearing semi clean clothes. Lol. I’m literally wearing my last pair of clean underwear. Tomorrow I need to do laundry… but it’s also going to rain the entire day so I’m hoping that there’ll be enough of a window for me to do laundry. I watched the UFC today and damn. Holm and McGregor both lost. I think the moral of the story is that you can never give up. True champs fight to the end and it was so impressive to that Miesha got the 5th round submission considering the fact that she was on her way to defeat and getting punched in the face by a champ.

I started watching Parasyte. On my way back home from work I realized I was being retarded. I was really annoyed that the lyft driver didn’t stop on the right side of the street because it was raining like crazy. But then I realized I should just be thankful for the existance of lyft and the fact that I can cheaply and easily get access to car rides.

I’m thankful that I’ll finally get to catch up on sleep. Probably gonna sleep close to 15 hours soon. Oh man… kinda crazy sleep deprived.

I went to the gym and it was great that I went. Had delicious lunch today eating noodles, dumplings and uh… fried pancakes. Ooo. I went to house of pancakes.

Got mauled in magic the gathering. Blargh. Tomorrow is the first saturday of OT. Man. I’ll have 2 saturdays of overtime followed by a weekend of on-call. That means I’ve been working 5/6 weekends. Sigh. I work way too much.

I just got back from shuffling and I feel freaking great. I was sleep deprived and feeling crappy for most of the day. I think it’s because I missed 3 workouts. I think something that I’ve learned multiple times is to always follow the process no matter what. It’s like… whenever I get tired and stop working out… it just becomes a death spiral. Whenever I get lazy and stop meditating… I just go into rage mode spiral.

I think… working out when sleep deprived and stressed out at work all the time paradoxically makes me more energetic. I mean sure… It takes energy to go to the gym and stuff… but 2 hours of sleep is probably worse than 2 hours less of sleep with a decent workout and meditation.

I took a video with Miles sensei to mark my 2 month progress. It’s pretty neat. I gotta work the next two saturdays. Blargh. I’m not the type to complain.. but I do think the workload is intense. At the same time… there have been people that work longer hours than me at my company. And from what I hear of other people who work 80 hours a week.. I guess it’s not too bad. It’s just that I really miss having a nice day on the weekend just to go out and read a book in a coffee shop. I’m down to my last two pairs of underwear. Which means I gotta spend all of Sunday doing laundry. /shrug.

Everything is easy. There’s no point in thinking it’s hard. Cause it’ll be hard if I think it’s hard and it’ll be easy if I think it’s easy. So why make it hard on myself. Tomorrow is gonna be easy. Saturday is gonna be easy. Then laundry sunday will be easy. Life is fucking good.