I had lunch with Alb. We went all the way to Richmond for this vietnamese place. It was on uh.. noreiga. The pho was meh… but I got two boxes of takeout which is apparently really good. I went to the doctor to get my hep a / hep b vaccines today. Sigh. One medical… and scheduling just drive me nuts. I schedule my doctor appointment for 11:40. Get there for 11:40. See doctor at 11:45… then the doctor doesn’t give me my shots. No. The doctor is too good for that. Instead I need to wait.. and then I waited for 45 minutes. The doctor didn’t even put me into the lab queue. Blargh. Doctors are fail. I can’t wait til robots replace doctors. It’s good that I’m a software engineer… my job will be the last to be replaced. Before that… I need to replace doctors, lawyers and horrible service people with robots.

I did a post code freeze deploy today. I feel so badass. Needed to get the director of engineering to sign off. Too jokes. I woke up extra early to deploy.. but in the end I had to wait. Whatever. It’s deployed and I improved performance while also feeling like a badass. Life is good. I went to spin class today. There was only… 4 people in the class including me. I think that’s what I always expect. That people in general are lazy. I’m planning on going to yoga this saturday which is boxing day. I wonder if yoga will be packed. I’m always so surprised when saturday yoga is packed because… saturday morning.. it’s so hard to wake up for yoga. Even I miss classes half the time.

My sennheiser 650 is heavenly. I’m gradually burning it in… I can’t wait til it’s compeleted and the sound gets even better. I wore my fitbit to spin. Turns out… I only hit 120 bpm or so in spin class. I wonder what my interval training on the treadmill would be. The treadmill says my heart rate was 190. But now I’m skeptical. Since I only hit 120 doing spin.

I got my 2nd instacart order. I’ll be making grilled cheese at home soon… over the break. Even though I don’t have a frying pan. It’ll be an adventure. Looking forward to a nice break of not leaving the house. Doing laundry is still my hardest task of the week. And… I’m mid laundry now. I can’t wait to read some of the books that’s in my backlog while listening to music with my new headphones.

I recently finished Yakuza 5. It’s all about dreams. Working towards your dreams. How your dreams inspire others.

At this point in time… I think I’m almost.. at a crossroad. I’m approaching my quarter-life / midlife crisis lol. I think… I’m like Archer/Faker. All my ideals and goals and dreams… were given to me by others. I don’t even know what I want. I guess… it kinda boils down to free will vs determinism. At this point… I actually don’t believe in free will. If you look at how a crazy person acts. It’s because of their genetics and how they were raised. He’s acts that way because he’s crazy. But… in a way aren’t we all crazy? We all act in the way we do because of our genetics and upbringing. At least… that’s my thought.

I have the next… 3 years all planned out I guess. And I’m chasing my dreams. It’s funny… because when you look back even 2 years ago. I think 2 years ago me… dreamed of what I have now. And… I have what I dreamed of from 2 years ago. Then again… I think it’s the survivorship bias or whatever. If I didn’t succeed in my dreams from 2 years ago… my life would probably be radically different and I’d be homeless or something. /shrug.

It’s funny because… I look around… and I wonder. What are everyone else’s dreams? I mean… I live in Silicon Valley. It’s the land of optimism and dreams. People come here to work hard to achieve. And yet… whenever I go back to Toronto. Or even the regular restarants. I see the same people doing the same thing. I think at some point… people just give up on their dreams. They accept that they can’t do it… or that it’s to hard. They choose comfort and certainty over risk and the unknown.

It’s funny because I act this way too. Rationally… I know that certain action have unlimited upside but limited downside. It’s what been introduced to me in the book the black swan. That’s not the same as buying a lottery ticket… the expected value of a lottery ticket is hella crappy. But the expected value of say… starting a contracting firm or whatever is much better. But it’s… always so scary.

At any given point in time… to grow and get better you’ll have to do something that you’ve never done before. It’s all about that growth mindset. I think… I’ve been challenging myself I guess… as practice for the big leap into the unknown that I have planned eventually. I did a performance workshop just to… challenge myself. At work I volunteer for increasingly difficult tasks. Man… my deploys are getting farther and farther apart cause my work is getting big and crazy. It’s scary…I mean… I definitely wouldn’t have been able to predict my accomplishments… from even a year back.

I’ve just been focusing on growth. I guess… like true Silicon Valley speak. It’s all about them growth numbers. I’ve stagnated in the physical aspect… in a way. Even though I’m currently at a personal best for deadlift. All my other lifts are sub personal best.

Hmmmm. So what is my dream? Shiet… I actually don’t have a real dream. Well… I wanna be a billionaire. So freaking bad. Buy all of the things I never had. But looking around my room. I already purchased everything that I want. Short of owning real estate and a car… all the toys that I’ve ever wanted… exist in my small studio apartment. I’m writing this post listening to my Sennheiser HD 650s. It cost me $400. I got it for myself as a ‘christmas present’. But in all honesty, I could’ve just got it for no reason.

I’ve been thinking about getting a new laptop. But my laptop from the Sandy Bridge era is still fully functional. Man… it feels like I travelled to the future. I still remember doing research for my laptop purchase. I bought my laptop as soon as Sandy Bridge came out. Sandy bridge was released in 2011. That’s exactly 4 years ago I guess. Wow. 4 years.

I’ve actually been researching laptops again. I was tempted to get a… skylake laptop. But then now I’m waiting for Kaby Lake for next summer. Because… it’s always better to wait unless you need it now. /shrug. I think… I’m gonna have to write a future me email for 6 months and a year from now again. The last time…. I was feeling like this… it meant that I wanted myself to kick myself to take action.

I think… I want to be rich. And everything… but to quote motivational videos. I only ‘kinda’ want it. I don’t want it more than I want to party. I don’t want it more than I want to sleep. I think… shit. While I’ve been pushing myself in some areas… I think I’m entering the comfort zone again. Which is bad. It’s horrible. Last time I wrote myself an email from futureme.org. I just read it. Wow. I guess… the only person who can comfort and calm me down is myself now. Words from other people don’t carry weight… since I don’t trust / believe in their competence. I guess it’s good that I have such belief in myself that only I could be trusted. It reminds me of… Artemis Fowl. And how he could only convince himself by recording a video of himself.

It’s almost christmas and new years. It’ll be a time for me to do an annual retrospective and plan out some yearly process updates and dreams. I… almost don’t know what to dream for anymore. I guess… I gotta go back to first principles and the socratic method. And just… find serenity through chaos.

tl;dr - I’ve achieved my dreams of the past… and I’m not sure what my dreams of the future are

So much to be thankful for this week. I had the so much fun at the holiday party. I got to dress up and shit. I look so goood. Tony always said I was a narcissist. So… now I guess I’m embracing it.

I got myself a fitbit charge hr, sennheiser hd 650 and the fiio e10k. Treat yoself. I’m thankful that I can pretty much buy all the toys and electronics that I want.

I’m thankful for Yakuza 5. It’s so good. I’m thankful that someone invented contact lenses. It’s so magical. It’s like I’m wearing nothing at all (nothing at all). Teehee.

I’m thankful for the Silicon Valley life. Like… it feels like I’m living in the Silicon Valley show. I was smoking weed at the holiday party with my coworkers. It’s pretty damn amazing. I didn’t bring a lighter as usual and just borrowed someone else’s.

Watch the video here

I’ve seen this before so I guess this is more of a rewatch to refresh my memory. The big point that touches me is that… changing the way you think changes the way you act. When you think that something is impossible.. you won’t try and it will stay impossible. The line where he went from thinking that something was undoable to thinking that something had to be done. I think… that probably motivates most people. I mean… most people probably take action once they have to do something.

The part where the kid in a wheelcar swims 1.5 miles in the ocean. Wow. I guess for him impossible is really nothing. I mean… when you look at what other people worse than you has done… it’s not really fair to make excuses. I’m too sleep deprived to go to the gym - but a kid with no legs trained to swim 1.5 miles.

I think this video is one of the reasons that I watch ted in my spare time. There’s always one or two things that are really great learnings. And the rest… is reminder. Reminder of how to be great. I guess ted helps you become great in the way that reading books help you level up faster.

I think I bought this back when it was around $40. I bought it on a black friday deal. And I felt so amazed. It was a whopping 16gb usb drive. And it’s lasted me for over 5 years I think. Get the newer and cheaper version here.

It’s so crazy to think that it’s now only $7 with free shipping. And I paid like $50 for it back in the day. Technology advances so fast. You can get a 128GB version for $30. That’s… x8 of what I got for a fraction of the price. Man.

I’ve mostly been using this USB to transfer files between PCs. I normally don’t safely remove and it’s still survives. Plus I’ve been using it for OS installs. I installed various versions of Linux, and even made 2x Hackintosh with it. It still holds up so life is good.

Of course… I’m a sample size of 1 so YMMV. I think it’s lasted far longer than I expected and considering the price it’s totally worth it. Get a cheap USB3 for on the go storage here.

My github streak got ruined. Boo. Well… I let it happen. In a way I guess. Yesterday, I stayed late at work. Got dinner with the team and then headed back to the office and was there until 12:30am. We did a lot of design / planning. It was actually quite fun. Because… it’s interesting to see all the different viable ways of solving the problem and how everyone kind of has a preference towards certain technologies and unique risk tolerance.

I went to spin today. I missed my workout yesterday, but post spin today I snuck in the shoulder workout so I’m gonna mark that down as my 5x5 workout. I’ll probably do a workout this Friday night in order to balance out my Tues/Thursday with Wed/Fri.

The company holiday party is tomorrow. I’m looking forward to just celebrating and kicking back with people. And getting to know people better. And taking lots of pictures since I’ll be dressing up. It’s like one week from Christmas… and I haven’t gotten myself a present yet. I’m eyeing the Sennheiser HD 650. I’m thinking either the Sennheiser HD 600 or Sennheiser HD 650. I’m like 70% leaning towards the HD 650… because treat yoself.

I’ve been playing Yakuza 5 some more. It’s definitely the game of the year for me. It’s so good. The only thing bad about it… is sometimes the mini games feel too forced. And also… the messed up the order of the chapters. Chapter 2 is soooo boring compared to Chapter 1. I wish they swapped it. So I’d be bored and then excited rather than super excited then disappointed. But oh well.

I haven’t had much time to read… I’m still working through the CBT book and of course my backlog of books is like 10ish books still. =/

Wow. The craziest thing happened to me this morning and I feel like I have to write about it. It’ll probably be cleaned up in a thoughts post. You know… the inner lazy monkey voice? The one that when you want to do work tells you to read hacker news or reddit? To eat that cookie? When you want to the gym - it gives you a list of reasons to stay home and you need to willpower it to be able to take action? This morning… my monkey convinced me to go to yoga. It was like… so different. Normally it’s me trying to convince the monkey to go to yoga… but this morning it was the monkey convincing me. The monkey is from this site.

Before I forget.. this is what happened in the morning. Alarm went off. Let’s go to yoga. But I already missed 3 weeks of Saturday yoga. monkey - all the more reason to go. But it’s santa con - you went to yoga on st patty’s day. But I’ll be late - you’ve gone to yoga late plenty of times. but it’s cold - don’t worry yoga will warm you up. but i rather sleep - remember the benefits of yoga and how it’ll help your mind and body. It’s just… too crazy. It’s like… having the monkey on the side of what the proper action should be. I think… that’s probably what people who say follow your dreams and follow your passion means. When you have the monkey on your side… you’re pretty much unstoppable. Also - I don’t think my monkey can be defeated by logic. Because he’s logic and convincing as fuck. Hmmm. Maybe I’m crazy. And only my monkey is amazingly logical. /shrug.

So yeah. I went to yoga this morning with a big boost from my monkey. So I’m thankful that my instant gratification monkey is sometimes on my side. I just got back from lunch and some grocery shopping. I’m thankful that i-tea is between me and grocery :D. I’m thankful that I got my Chase Sapphire Preferred. I’ve gotten all my dream credit cards from a few years ago now.

I was playing Yakuza 5 yesterday. I finally finished the download and install. And I’m thankful in so many ways for Yakuza 5. I’m thankful that I have the fastest internet that I’ve ever lived with. I currently have 50M down with no download limits. I downloaded an entire PS3 game without having to leave my house. That’s pretty crazy. Yakuza 5 is such a good game. I just love the japanese voice acting and how it really feels like your transported in japan.

Yesterday I was the stage manager for the dance performance at CCSF. I’m thankful that I got to meet so many people and I can’t wait to perform with my group.

I’m thankful that I get to work with smart and talented people. At work I’m on this team that’s working such challenging things. I like working with people who are much better than me cause then they expect me to be as good as them which forces me to improve at a much faster rate. I think that’s the case with whatever that I choose to persue. Programming / Dance / Running etc.

On a side note - I’m thankful that UFC 194 and that no injuries happened. I’m so excited for Weidman vs Rockhold and Aldo vs McGregor. Weidman vs Rockhold is exciting because Weidman hasn’t really been challenged by anyone except Silva in his first fight. And Luke dominated Lyoto. That was some crazy shit. It’s like two fighters in the absolute prime who surpassed the previous generation. So excited. And then Aldo vs McGregor. I actually think Aldo is gonna dominate this fight. He’s been untouchable and is basically Anderson Silva Jr.

I’m thankful for all the friends that I’ve made. I ordered a charge HR so soon I’ll be able to monitor my heart rate 24/7. As well as my sleep. To determine if I’m actually sleeping enough.

I was planning on starting to write about ted talks… but it’s now 3am and I’m feeling really lazy.

I went to the gym today. I feel like such a badass. It was raining like crazy today. And I stayed at work until like 9pm. I was planning on skipping the gym again. But then I have a some beats none and never miss twice inspirational quote just lying around. I told myself I would just do stretches and then… some pushups at home. But then I just decided to go for a walk. To buy some milk… since that was 3 blocks away. Bought milk, came back. And decided it was time for the gym. Got to the gym at 12am. Worked out until about 1am. Came home. And then started watching some ted talks.

I’ve been meaning to write about my thoughts on various ted talks. Since I spend a lot of my time watching ted talks instead of tv shows. I guess that’ll wait til the weekend. Lucky for me I have tomorrow off… which is why I managed to get myself to the gym I guess. It’s all about the process. Hard work and dedication. There was a time when I thought I hit my physical plateau. Then… I realized I was going to the gym 6 times a month instead of 12 times a month. Or more.

You need a good amp to go with the Sennheiser 598. The Fiio E6 is an amazing cheap and lightweight amp that does the job. It even has a bass amplifier.

The thing is charged via usb. And the battery life is about 10 hours. One of the best things about it is highly portable. So you can bring it on the airplane so that the max volume doesn’t kill you. Whenever I take airplanes… I’m watching a movie or listening to music.. and then the announcement goes to max volume and freaks me out. So… with an amp you can actually lower the input volume to something that you can listen to. The other good part of this is that there is a bass boost. I think there are some headphones that I own that aren’t that bassy… and this amp helps out with that aspect.

The amp actually makes a noticable difference in powering the Sennheiser 598s. It makes the music sound much cleaner as opposed to it being slightly muddy / blurry. It’s so good for so cheap. You should just get it.

tl;dr - get this amazing cheap amp here

Hmmmm. It’s my 3rd day of work. And… I already missed my Tuesday workout. I didn’t go to the gym yesterday. I think… I just spend way to much mental effort at work at I’m too exhausted to go to the gym at night. My sleeping… it’s been really off. Mostly because I’ve been relying on coffee to sustain my brainpower at work. Coffee and boba. Oh well… it’s not works fault that I missed gym. It’s my fault that I missed gym. I went to spin today… so that was good.

Inheritance is horrrible. I already wrote about this in a separate post. But I’m trying to untangle some inherited classes… and it’s a real pain and annoying to like… trace through everything and make everything separate again and then remove the base class.

I’ve been reading this book on CBT. It’s called feeling good the mood therapy. It’s basically used to treat depression. Sometimes… I think I’m depressed. After reading this book… I think I might be depressed? But at the same time… it’s like I lived my entire life this way so then… I’m like used to it. Anyways… there’s this chapter on uh… what’s the word. Approval. I just realized that I’m approval seeking. And love seeking. Hmmmm. It’s like… I’m approval seeking… but I deal with it in a… bad way. I just make it such that I value no one. It’s like… I was approval seeking growing up since asian parents? But anyways… the way I dealt with it in real life is… say I want approval from someone. And that someone doesn’t like/approve of me… I just cope by downgrading said person. Said person who disapproves of me is worthless thus their approval is worthless. And… in the end I’m not approval seeking… but I also see almost the entire world / population as worthless. Hmmm. That’s probably bad.

I think I might have the same thing with love seeking. I’m like.. just a dog chasing it’s tail. On one hand… I don’t value love since it’s not really an emotion that I experience… probably because you can only love from a vulnerable position and I don’t like to be vulnerable / weak. /shrug.

I’ve been disappointed recently. I guess it goes back to being approval seeking? It’s like… I think of people as friends and I treat them as friends. But then the friendship is one way… and I guess that’s disappointing. But at the same time… I’ve done the same thing to other people. Looking at the point of the book… it just means that other people don’t think I’m good enough to be their friend or something. But even if that were the case… I have plenty of friends and whatever. So it’s like… I dunno why it’s even affecting me. Maybe it’s just the concept of fairness… I discovered that despite the fact that I believe that I’m purely logical or whatever. In the book predictably irrational. If you and someone else are offered free money. And the other person decides to split it or whatever but you get to decide to accept or reject the free money. If they offer a 9/1 split. You get $1 free. Everyone should accept the $1 free. But then… since the 9/1 is perceived to be unfair - you end up rejecting it. Logically… it doesn’t make sense because you’re comparing $0 and $1. I dunno… I’m just surprised that I have the biased sense of fairness despite the fact that I believe in cold hard logic.

The other thing on the book on depression is that you shouldn’t base your value / worth on external stuff. A lot of people base their value on their achievements in careers or whatever. It’s like… if I have the wealth, status and ability or whatever. Then life will be good. I think… I’ve just been chasing after the unreachable. I want to be rich, and smart, a strong, and fast, fluent in Japanese, programming, and piano. I dunno. So much that I want to achieve… and I guess… chasing after the status and wealth… isn’t good. To quote the book - you can always do better. Whether you’re a billionaire, or a genius. There’s always something you could’ve done better. So I guess… you’ll never be happy cause you can always be better? /shrug.

I saw 10% happier by Dan Ariely on my coworkers desk. I think I’m gonna get it and put it on my reading list backlog after my current depression / CBT book.

I’m excited for this Friday. It’s my dance group’s dance performance. I’ll be a ticket usher. My first chance at doing manual labour. Since I never worked a labour job. Only programming jobs. I guess it’s just been a brain dump.

So I returned to work after my break today. It was good. I moved to a new location and new team and I’m ready for new challenges. I think my goals of getting better and the company’s goal of building stuff is aligned so life is good.

The thing that I wanted to write about today is the mythical 10000 hour rule to mastery. I’ve already put in my 10000 hours into programming and building cool stuff. So in a way… I’m already a master of software development. I did the calculation like so. I have about 5 years of full time experience. That’s 40 hours per weeeks x 52 weeks x 5 years or 10400 hours. I’ve been programming on weekends for side projects, reading programming books and articles. I’m fairly certain I have much more than 10000 hours of programming. Yet… I still think that I have so much to improve on. On one hand, I think working in Silicon Valley is the equivalent of the NBA / UFC of software engineering. It’s like… the biggest league that you can play on. But on the other hand… I feel that I’m still so far away. If I’m a master… there’s a grandmaster tier above me and a uh… world champion tier above that.

I guess the grandmaster tier of software engineering is like… when you have so much experience and knowledge that you just build things better and faster. And you also see connections before the path gets fully explored. I was just put on a new team and we were discussing algorithms and plans for this project. And then it was like… how come you don’t do it this way? And the guy was like… oh yeah because of x reason we don’t do it this way. And x reason… it’s something that I understand, and I think I would arrive to it… but I’d have to explore and actually build out the initial plan… before realizing it was a dead end. I guess… grandmasters are just more experienced and slightly smarter? And of course… world champion is like… Guido or uh… Jeff Dean.

I did some rough math… I guess it takes about 5 years of intense practice to become a master at something. I’m already 27. So in addition to programming… I can only become a master at 2 other things before I’m… 40. O.o. That’s… kinda a depressing thought. Well… I think I could become a master at piano again… only because I was once really good and I think I put in at least 800 hours towards that. I think I can still put in the years to become a master of MMA. But… the wear and tear on my body… not sure I can handle it anymore.

Whatever. Life is good. Time is valueable. Become a master.

So much that I’m thankful for. First… I guess I wanna write down my thoughts on the performance since it was today and it’s fresh in my mind. I didn’t really have a goal for the performance… it was mostly to have fun. I guess… I didn’t want to aim for perfection since perfection isn’t really possible. There’s always gonna be a better and a worse. I think I performed in the range of expectations which is not too good or not too bad today. It was so much fun. I got to sit for the tech… and uh watch the other group perform. I think… I’m finally starting to understand dance / choreo. The thing is… learning new pieces was always really difficult because for me it was always learning arbitrary moves paired with music. I think it’s because I didn’t understand the basics / underlying principles. After watching most of the shows… I think it’s obvious that the moves are synced to the music in a sense that a beat / drop is usually associated with a strong / step move. Mind blown. I guess it’s good I’m starting to see a pattern and not seeing it as a series of random movements.

The other thing is… all the other performers were really really good. But like… they were also practicing for months and most of them had years of experience. I guess… it’s unrealistic to expect that I could become as good as people who started dancing when they were 5. Oh. Also the opening was a kid’s dance to Michael Jackson songs… they were hella good and hella cute. A lot of people see the performance… and then they want to be as good as the performers… but then they don’t see the years of practice and hard work that allowed the performance to happen. The other thing is… I recently finished the book Software Project Survival Guide by Steve Mcconnell. And I find that a lot of the concepts apply to real life more than projects. Well… I’ll write a full review on the book… but I think the book is mostly targetted towards medium / large corporations and not really start-ups. Anyways… it’s much cheaper to catch mistakes early on. If defect that slips in the planning stage… cost 200x more to fix in the development stage. And… I suddenly thought of the dance choreo and uh. Learning new things. If you learn the dance choreo wrong / not well in the beginning and you just practice… towards the end it gets much harder to get it right. So don’t just approximate the moves… always learn it correct the first time. I think… my deadlifts / squats need a rework. I think I might have learned some wrong stuff.

Well. I’m thankful that I got to work with an awesome dance instructor and meet some really cool people as part of my kpop performance dance workshop. I’m thankful that I got to see the tech reharsal of all the other major dance groups. Like… it feels like VIP to sit in an empty theatre and watch the dancers perform. I’m thankful that I have amazon.com and amazon prime. I just ordered a lumo lift for posture and a box of lindt chocolate and it’s expected to arrive tomorrow. I remember…. growing up as a child Lindt was considered gourmet chocolate since it was expensive and I/we couldn’t really afford gourmet chocolate. I gotta remember to take pictures with everyone tomorrow.

So… dance performance tech is in… 1.5 hours. Performance is in less than 24 hours. And 2nd performance is Sunday. Blargh. Hmmmm. It’s been awhile since I performaned. I guess the last time I performed was piano when I was uh… actively practicing as a kid / young adult. Hmmmm. I think… I’m just much more confident in piano since I have more experience with it. Dance I’ve only been doing for a few months. Shrug. Whatever. Even if I fail spectacularly and just end up doing the african dance off beat I think it’ll be okay. I guess there’s nothing to worry about. Maybe I’ll become the William Hung of hip hop.

Today I visited SFSU. The campus was okay. I think every american campus that I’ve visited thus far is nicer than Waterloo simply by virtue of location. I mean… I remember lining up for the Burger King grand opening in Waterloo. Burger King opening was a… major event. Since burger king represented one of the top food choices available on campus. That’s… kinda sad but whatever.

My sennheiser 598 arrived. I realize now… how crazy spoiled I am. I just threw away my Sennheiser CX-200 earphones. I think they were $30 when I got them. But at this point… I have so many pair of earphones… that the fact that one of the ears stopped working made the $30 earphone disposable. Back in the day… I would only buy $5 earphones. I guess… I’ve 6x my income and spending since the poor college days. Well… probably more. But whatever.

I forget what I wanted to write about…. hmmm. I saw a doctor today. Neosporin… I’m allergic to neosporin. Bleh. I was wondering why my cuts were mind blowingly itchy. I guess now I know. I was worried that I have a flesh eating itch bacteria or something. I also uh… asked about vaccines / drugs for my Dominican Republic trip in april. I think I might need to get a Hep A vaccine.

I also finally got the Chase Sapphire Preferred 50k points. I was approved for the card a few days back. I’ll probably write a post on the thankfulness of achieving my dreams. I guess. When I first moved here in 2013… my dream was to get the Chase Sapphire Preferred, the Citi AA, and the Baraclay World card. And now… I have all 3. I have all 3 + British Airways CC. Wow. All my CC came true. It’s crazy that… by having more income… you get access to more free stuff and more free money. I guess that’s why billionaires get to go to fancy parties and have caviar for free.

Gonna take a nap… I’ll plan to write more organized posts in the future. Right now it’s just freeform I guess… since I want to develop the habit of writing… before I try and write well.

I think everyone agrees that sleep is really important. I just wanted to write down some of my personal experiences on sleep that has really messed me up.

First a short side story since I really want to talk about the time I did the uberman sleep cycle. I did the uberman sleep cycle for about a month in college. It wasn’t that hard since I lived in a secluded and quiet place and I skipped 95% of my classes anyways. I remember it well… I would sleep every 4 hours from 12. So 12/4/8 am/pm. Getting on the schedule was a real pain. My body would always feel cold like it was shutting down or something. But then… at some point in time… it started working. Every 25 minute sleep for me… was a lucid dream. That was mind blowingly amazing. It’s like… whoa. And then… I started having all this extra time. And sometimes… depending on the nap / time of the nap. I would have 3.5 hours of like peak mental performance. I even went to the gym and yoga during the uberman. Because 3.5 hours isn’t that short.

I kinda miss being able to sleep whenever and wake whenever. It’s pretty amazing. I think that I have… a natural sleep rhythem that’s longer than 24 hours. So I end up staying up later and later and waking up later and later to the point it’s a whole new day. Since I’ve been on vacation… I’ve been following the sleep when tired and wake when good schedule. But then I’m trying to get ready for work… at waking up at 11am is so hard. I’ve been trying to go to bed at 3am… and I don’t really get to sleep. Blargh.

So the other day (Monday) I knew that I had yoga at 1pm. 1pm is quite late… so I figured I’d be able to sleep at 5am and then life would be good. But when I went to sleep at 5am… I couldn’t sleep. Blargh. And then when my alarm went off at 12:20. I was soooooo tired. I really really wanted to go to yoga class. The monday yoga instructor is my favorite yoga instructor by far. I feel so zen and calm after going to her classes. And even though I woke up… even though I really wanted to go. I ended up sleeping. I guess… lack of sleep is like… the worse.

In my mind… there’s so much that I want to write on sleep. I think the crux of it is that lack of sleep actually leaves me with close to no mental energy / willpower. I stop going to the gym. I start eating junk food and chocolate. I stop meditating. Lack of sleep just wrecks all my good habits. Okay. Feeling tired so I’m just gonna sleep now. This has been a good practice in writing even though my writing and thoughts are so unstructured.

I just finished meditating. I did end up buying the Sennheiser 598 Black edition. I had kpop dance practice today and it was the final practice before the tech which is this coming Friday. I was reading an article on poverty on hacker news about how some people who grew up with poverty identify with poverty and thus are labelled as poor and mistreated by society by having to overcome barriers. Extra paper work at hospitals etc. Because they are perceived as low literacy or whatever.

I also recently read this article on hacker news about this italian programmer who struggled to learn English. He became fluent at the level of being able to communicate his programming ideas but not fully fluent. And I guess. It made me not realize… but like remember the fact that I’m really lucky and I have lots to be thankful for. I was born in Canada. I guess right now… sometimes I wish I were born in the America… (I hope that statement doesn’t disqualify me for future TN visa..). Being born in Canada with universal health care and a good public education system. Well… good is subjective I guess but it worked for me. I got access to tax paid public school education… and went to the University of Waterloo. I paid for tuition mostly by myself and graduated with really little debt.

I’m really thankful that I can speak fluent english. I think… something like that gets… discounted. I mean. I grew up in Canada and although the first few years of public school…the teachers said I had poor english or whatever. My dad was like “I’m more worried about my son not speaking Chinese” and I guess his worry was correct. I speak english order of magnitude better than chinese. But like… being able to speak fluent english is a pretty big advantage over the rest of the world. I think having any type of foreign english accent is probably detrimental to job searching. Even though it shouldn’t be the case.

I think I have a tendency to be negative. Probably like most people. Instead of appreciating the fact that I was born in Canada which is a really good place - I just think if only I could be born in the States. Or Japan. I mean… going to school in Japan would’ve been amazing. Like… the 3 school terms with a few weeks of vacation. The school festivals and uniforms. I’m gonna pull a my boss my hero and enroll in a Japanese high school at age 30. Lol. Instead of appreciating how hard working my parents were and how they sacrificed to raise me… I tend to wish that I had even better parents that were smarter, better and more supportive.

I’m really thankful for all the amazing people that I’ve met. And for all my uh… hunches and faith to have come through. I recently took 3 weeks of unpaid leave.. and it’s really great that my company lets me do that. Prior to this… I just quit my job and decided that I wanted something different and to challenge myself. I quit my job before I found another one because I had faith in my abilities and I knew that I could find a better job easily, and one that would satisfy all the requirements in my decision matrix. And everything worked out. Well. I guess that’s survivorship bias right there. But - I seem to always survive. And when I don’t survive. I guess you won’t be reading what I’m writing.

It’s the final week of my vacation. And it’s undoubtedly gonna be a jam packed finish. I got 3 books to finish. And a bunch of people to catch up with over lunch and stuff. This break has been so amazing to my recovery. I guess it’s true that you just need to take a step back to appreciate what you have. Amazon.com is so amazing. I need to just appreciate how great it is. Moving from amazon.ca to amazon.com. I think that alone is almost 50% of how great america is compared to canada.

I was too lazy to leave my house to walk 2 blocks to buy milk. And so… I got postmates to deliver me milk today. I feel so spoiled. I’m so grateful that… the technology exists for this to happen and that I can afford to use such a technology. I ordered some guess boots from amazon and it arrived so fast. I look hella good in my dance performance outfit. Folllow me on instagram to eventually see me post the picture. :)

tl;dr - I’m hella appreciative of the small things that I often neglect. Being born Canadian. Having a family that raised me without having to worry about food or shelter. Life is good