seen from Sweden
seen from France
seen from Netherlands
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seen from United States
seen from Singapore
seen from Palestinian Territories
seen from United States
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Checkin’ in
This blog was a great idea but the follow through was lackin’.
During my time in the bay, I’ve neglected to periodically update this blog with my experiences.
My Asia blog makes me smile. It’s great to have something to bring you back to a fond experience.
I will create a system and do better. From the town to the city, come share this experience with me.
I'm still alive
Damn, it has been 4 months since my last post. I'm still alive and kickin in the City. Traveled back to the town a couple of times since. I have a lot to catch up on. Here is a quick sneak preview.
Christmas trip back to the Town
Cousin's wedding in the Town
Experiencing the Town winning the ring in the City
Las Vegas Part 1
Las Vegas Part 2
Russian Hill, I have arrived
Golfing, the new frontier
The Town vs The City
The homies are in the City
Cambos in the City
NickMag in SF
On the mission for a bike
Recently, I discovered the value of having a bike in SF. In a nutshell, it's the fastest way to get around. Frisco is a bike friendly city with lots of bike lanes and places to park your bike. Also, my peers have bikes too and invite me out for rides. With no bike, I can't really ride with them. Lastly, it's a great way to explore the city. To traverse every alley. To discover new views and to capture my own memories in the city.
Where will I find my bike? Well since I'm about that startup life, I need to find cost effective bike. I don't mind second hand since that's how I came up. Plus, I can view it as an opportunity to meet new people, negotiate, and do research on bikes to be able to identify the intrinsic value of a bike. I'll be searching craigslist, local bike shops (LBS), and second hand markets. Hopefully, my shopping won't be long, and I'll be riding soon.
Thus far, these are my requirements
Prefer to be under $500
Road bike from a respectable brand
Shimano Tiagra or better
54in - 58in frame
Dropbar handlebars
Let's see if I can shop then wheel and deal.
The Shooting at The Jewelry Mart
Man, it got real out in here in SF. There was a shooting that took place at 2PM across the street near my startup's office. The details of the shooting can be found here. Basically, a shooter has a price dispute and decided to shoot up the Jewelry Mart and murder 2 people.
We saw from our office as the situation unfolded. From the first cop on the scene to the evacuation and surrendering of the shooter. It was intense and surreal to see it unfold. We witnessed double digit number of cop cars come on the scene, SWAT, gang unit, mobile unit command center, and K9s come on the scene.
I empathize for the families who lost their loved ones that day. My condolences to their family and friends. May there not be another instance like this in the future.
Pictures from the rooftop of our office
Go shorty, it's your birthday
My birthday just passed. The big quarter century hallmark. When I moved down here a month ago, I accepted the fact my birthday would be a lonely: my family and my closet friends are in Seattle.
To my surprise, that wasn't the case. I forgot that in Seattle one of my close friends move to Sf. I was reminded of that during this weekend. He remembered my birthday and put in the effort to celebrate my birthday by organizing a dinner and gather friends he thought I would enjoy their company. He done did a solid for me. On top of that, my cousin joined me since I found out she lives in the area.
Overall, it was a memorable first birthday in SF. I'm looking forward to subsequent birthdays in Frisco!
Over the weekend, I got to be active and have some fun:
JC took me to South Bay (Los Altos) to play flag football
Ate Cambodian food in Mountain View (it wasn't real Khmer unfortunately)
Explored Frisco's swanky night life
Met an interesting group of from Michigan. Solid group of people and they even enjoyed The Wire.
Restaurants
Thanh Long
Local Edition
Novela
Marlowe
Places
Mountain View
Los Altos
Mission Bay
Downtown SF
Sunset
Embarcadero
Independence Day 2013
Rather than try and describe everything, I'm going to try a different format where I list things and comment on the list items.
Work
"The life of a startup. no such thing as a day off".
Constantly working and thinking on how to improve things. Guiding hueristic: identify a measurable goal and improve it. This greatly helps with prioritization
Worked partially on July 4th, weekends, late nights, etc.
"Kaizen == Infrastructure?"
Automate deployment process => repeatable deployments (fabric, AWS, vagrant)
Automate setup of development environment => quicker/standard/common development setup? (boxen)
Establish development workflow => common development/test cycle amongst team? (e.g. vagrant, fabric, etc.)
Most of my contributions have been kaizen/infrastructure.
Naturally, I like to work on infrastructure because I like to improve my personal productivity; however, there is a point of diminishing returns when focus is not improving the productivity for the entire team
Social
"Fireworks, viewed on the bay bridge on the way to Treasure Island with old friends and new friends"
Met DC and Amy
SF traffic on Bridge
Beautiful show
106.1 KMEL plays good ass music
"Ocean beach is the new Alki"
Hike thwarted by SF traffic, settled for beach
Real beach reminded me of LA
Water (Pacific Ocean) hella cold
Hella long beach (longer than any in Seattle)
Neighborhoods
Treasure Island // beautiful place, tourist spot, fun to visit
Ocean Beach // a real beach, place of serenity, beautiful view of pacific
Pride Weekend
Again, I’m slippin’ on my posts. I have a huge backlog (a month behind). I need to be more active on my posts and reduce the amount of time I spend on it. Let’s see if I can find a format that works well for me.
Work
It’s going “okay". I’m satisfied with my productivity. I’m slow, dumbfounded on how certain things work, and I’m getting confused a lot because new technologies; however, I’m going to piece together everything and eventually because fluent in it.
This drop in productivity, I attribute to switching jobs. Every time one switches, the cost assumed from switching is ramping up on the development environment, software development process at your new place, and adjusting to the new culture. I know I can code quickly with quality. Before I do that, I need to refine my skills in Python, Vim, and ops tools. Hopefully within the next two weeks I can be solid on all fronts to really start contribute greatly. I realized I was heavily dependent on Eclipse at my previous employer. Prior to that, Visual Studio. I’ll let you infer my previous work places. Something that I thought was pretty cool was that my CSE dept reached out to us to visit our HQ and interview our team. They added a cool personal interest piece on us on their website. I think that’s pretty legit.
Social
Socially, things are moving fast for me. I was able to bootstrap my social circle with my existing friends/coworkers who live in the bay. Since my last post, I had the opportunity to visit the Tesla HQ in Palo Alto for a CSE alumni event (I got to checkout a Model S, super fresh). Additionally, an old college friend came to visit me for the weekend. At the same time, a person whom I used to play football on weekends came to visit. As a result, it pushed me to checkout the city. The first night, I met up with my friend and her friend near the TL. We ended up exploring the city (albeit, I did a terrible job since I’ve only been here for 3 weeks) and eating Thai food in the TL. We ended up at a roof top lounge area called Jones. That place was a solid spot given that it was a roof top lounge with a cool atmosphere. I wished there was music though. This place was more swanky than anything. Ideal for techies and investment bankers.
The second night, K’vontre, his friend, and me went bar hopping around SoMA(City beer, Bloodhound, Willows) and then went to a block party at a place called Mighty. That was straight up different than what I am use to. It was an electronic/house place. I’m more of a hip hop fan myself. Let’s just say I was open to try new things and can safely cross that one off :).
Later in the night, we met up with my other friend whom was visiting in Castro since it was Pride weekend. That was one hell of an experience. We took muni out there, the train was packed. When we arrived, the station was filled with people. My first sight was a girl on the ground being detained by an officer and her friend yelling "<name> don’t say anything, don’t say shit!". It was real. When we got street side, Market street was filled with people, from hoppers, gang bangers, dealers, gays, lesbians, and even naked people! Eventually, we were able to find my friends but all the places were packed so we grabbed a table and purchased a bottle and drank for the rest of the night. It was an interesting experience people watching during Pride weekend in the Castro.
On Sunday night, my friends and I met with an old college friend in San Mateo to eat some Japense food. The place was really good. It was good catching up with him. He has a girlfriend now, and they are pushing on a year ish. Proud of him since he is more the introvertive type. Looks like the bay area treated him well :).
Neighborhoods
Mission // bars, bars, and bars
Castro // i have no idea what happened that night it was crazy. SF’s first gay neighborhood. capitol hill on molly.
Tenderloin // good eats (Little Saigon) similar to 12 and Jackson, nice bar
SoMA // lots of bars, mid price eats, full of workers from tech and finance
Western Addition (Japan Town) // good japanese/korean eats, quiet neighborhood
Day 1
A bit late but hey that's what happens when you move. Hopefully when I settled in, everything will be smooth and these entries will be more regular, ya dig. Let's get started on my "Day 1" experience in SF.
June 9th, one month before my birthday, I left Seattle (the Town) to pursue an opportunity in SF (the City). For 6 months, I've been in deep thought about this decision. I came to the following conclusion: in life there are opportunities which can challenge you to push to the next level, I believe this is one of them. This opportunity is a challenge for me to prove I am the man I think I am: not just an engineer and a business man, but a person that can make things happen. Turn ideas into reality. To make something from out of nothing. To really push myself to limits I could only imagine. All my life I have pride myself in the fact that I have done this. I was to test if I can do it again and that before it wasn't a fluke. My word is bond.
Sunday night, I left the Town and arrived in the City at 9:20PM. Coincidentally, one of the cofounders (there are three) was on the same flight as me and spotted me in the security line. Small ass world right!?! We spoke for a bit and met back up when the plane landed. Our conversation consisted of some small talk, working out, startups, and life. When we touched down my friend, one of the other cofounders, swooped me up his girlfriend and employee 1 (also a friend from college and his roommate . It was dope seeing them. We chopped it up as if we seen each other on the regular. No awkwardness, not a moment of silence. The ride back was completely filled with interesting conversation. Upon dropping off one of the cofounders off at his place in SoMA, we made our way back to my friend's spot in Outer Richmond. This area seriously reminds me of Beacon Hill in the Town. It's full of east Asians (Chinese) shops and restaurants and people. The food out here is cheap ($5 - $7) range for a plate. Bubble tea is like ~$3, and it go hard as hell. His spot is a 2 bedroom 1 bathroom place. It's the lower unit to a two unit building. I want to say its less than 650 square feet. Despite it's size, it's perfect for his needs, plus its only ~$650 a month. It's in a low key neighborhood close to shops and Golden Gate park. The remaining of the night, my friend and I stayed up until 2AM talking about my transition, my experiences the last month, and get an idea of how I'm feeling. I expressed to him my motivation for coming out here. He's a great guy whom I believe in genuinely interested in my well being and wants to help me reach it too. Hell, he also unconsciously want me to help him too!
Next morning at 8:30AM, we headed over to another cofounders house (in Outer Sunset) to pick up my hardware (my laptop) for work. They treated me to breakfast at this Cantonese joint called Lychee Cafe. Cool ass spot that served breakfast for deals. For $5 I got a solid meal: pork chop, ramen, and milk tea. Legit playa. .
We arrived in the office close to 10:30AM and as I walk upstairs, the rest of the team welcomed me. I'm employee 9, including the cofounders. They all welcomed me like family with open arms and showed me to my desktop. I greatly appreciated it because I felt welcomed and valued. I felt like I'm part of the team. I want to prove to them I want to be part of the team and help raise the team to the next level too. On my desk, I already had some good good: 2 27in monitors, keyboard, mouse, headphones, swag, notebook, and a new 15in Macbook Pro Retina. Twowhoo! This setup goes hard as hell. What topped it off was my package, a gift from my best friend, I had shipped down had arrived and was sitting on my desk. This is an upgrade from my previous employer which gave me a 13in Unibody White Macbook and a desktop with one 24in monitor. This brought raised things to a whole 'nother level. Most of my morning was spent getting acclimated and completing a list of items they had setup for me for my first day (development setup, workstation setup, user account provisioning, HR setup, direct deposit, benefits enrollment, permission setups, etc.). The only snag I came across my first day was my display adapters were defective and I couldn't utilize my two monitors. First world problems fam. No worries though, I spoke with our operations personnel, and they did the right thing and purchased me new ones which would arrive in two days. Legit, procurement seems to be a breeze here. This is a step up from my previous place since it usually requires searching for it, submitting a procurement request, or bringing in my own. Either way, it would normally take longer than two days. So +1 to my team. They got it right.
My first meal with the team was classic. Rotisseries chickens from Costco. One of my perks with my team is they provide lunch. Today, Costco delivered. I appreciate the frugal/resourceful mentality since it's not very practical for us to eat $20 meals since we are not cash flow positive yet. I admire the practicality and am down for the cause. Shoot, like my old phrase before, it's free it's for me. Obviously, the we would like to become cash flow positive, but that takes time and effort.
Overall, I think my first day was a success. I was able setup all my accounts, gather/request the necessary information needed for HR, and be able to checkout my team's code on my workstation. Personally, I like their setup a lot. It's modular, decentralized, and for the most part secure. At least more secure than my previous employers. I'm interested to see how it scales though in the future when more employees join.
At the end of the day, employee #1 and me retreated back to his place to rest. For dinner, we ate a local Chinese spot, called Jade Garden, down the street. Funny thing is back in the town we got a spot called Jade Garden, and it hits for dim sum/dinner(well use to). Unfortunately, they not the same. This place did not live up to the expectation the Town had put down. Oh well, there are more places up and down the street. I'll try this place again after I made my rounds. Maybe they have a better dish and I just missed it. Can't win them all.
For desert, we had bubble tea at a spot called Purple Kow for bubble tea. Twowhoo, this place goes super hard. I arbitrary selected a favor (roasted oolong or black milk tea not sure I switched at the last moment), and it was mad good. That's how hard it goes. The remaining night I enlightened myself by researching the development tools my team uses and reviewed my company's website to understand externally what other people see. The website is very simple. I like it. I do wish there was more information or at least examples of what our technology enables. Hopefully, I can help change that soon :).
In all, so far so good! I'm out here doing my damn thing. I'm allin man. My goal: to test my limits and see what I capable of and can achieve in life. Excited, hopeful, anxious, and scared, all at the same damn time. I calm my fear of failure by simply believing there is no wrong going after what you truly want.. I'm going to do my best to make myself, my family, my friends, and Seattle proud.
Every time somebody steps out on the road they bring a little Northwest soul with them, amen
