Somewhere along the midterms and infinite homework assignments, I’ve temporarily held off on updating this blog. But I thought it might be interesting to come back with “A Month In My Life” style post. This type of content is often found gobbling up my YouTube subscriptions box, so I figured it might be fun to attempt something similar on here.
Here’s the The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly) in rough chronological order:
1. nwPlus' Local Hack Day: Learn Day
Allison, Nada, Jacky and Amy made the event Kristen and I started greater than what we could have ever done. I had to limit my “proud mom tears”. This also reminded me the importance of passing the baton. Afterall, the race is about the baton, not the runners.
2. David’s birthday!
Consistently one of the highlights of my Octobers. ❤️
3. A.I. For Anyone
I was invited to join as an executive member of an NYC based non-profit, A.I. For Anyone after having volunteered with them for the past 6 months. I love the mission and have been trying to spread it through the creation of our bi-weekly newsletter, All About AI. Learn more about it here!
4. Making music, music and much more music
My friends from SF visited and stayed over at my place. We ended up recording a (I think hilarious) cover of Africa by Toto together.
I bought a MIDI Controller and felt the need to post a cover of Someone You Loved - Lewis Capaldi. 🎹
It was Andy’s birthday, and we made her a little something.
My friend Arden and I made a parody about how Starbucks has us feeling some kind of way during this time of year. 🍂☃️
So why am I sharing all of this? The truth is, I love making music because it brings me so much joy. I think you can tell that I care a lot more about the process of creating music, as opposed to aspiring to be the next Prince. But most importantly, I recently re-stumbled upon Ira Glass’ words on storytelling that really got me thinking:
“If you’re someone in a creative field, you probably started because you have good taste.
You just love radio, TV, writing, marketing so much that you want to add to it yourself. You’re an avid consumer of every piece of content put out in your craft of choice, you can dissect the greatest books or ad campaigns all day.
But when you first start creating… There’s always a gap.
What you make disappoints you somehow when you look back on it. But you’re good enough to know that it’s disappointing to you. Too many people quit at this point, but you just have to keep pushing.
The most important thing you can do is make a lot of work. It’s only through making a large body of work that you can start to close the gap and make something you feel is truly special.”
- Ira Glass.
5. Hong Kong Politics
My dad advised us both not to think about it too much, especially not on nights before my midterms / other special occasions. But I can’t help it. I check the news and my HK family group chat as frequently as I check my email. We talk about it sometimes, but not as much as I would probably like to- I feel so helpless when I’m so far from home. What I feel is nothing compared to the grand scheme of things.
I wrote a song about it.
6. My Uncle passed away
7. Victoria
We took a trip to Victoria- I haven’t felt that happy in a long time. On the ferry ride there and back, we pondered about philosophy. I was proud that I could comfortably partake in the conversation having now learnt a lot more about philosophy. Yet, the more I learn, the less sleep I seem to get.
8. Trivia Night + Duffin’s Donuts (self-explanatory title?)
9. Live performances!
Julia Michael’s Concert
I dragged Kristen to come to this with me because I needed to attend a concert for my songwriting course. We were pleasantly surprised. She also brought out JP Saxe and they sang “If The World Was Ending” live for the first time, ever. I was probably too excited.
Pippin The Musical
I didn’t expect much going into it, but it was really worth watching.
Vancouver Symphony Orchestra
My friend, Shevonne performed! We all went to support her. It was beautiful.
10. CS Coffee Chat
UBC just piloted this coffee chat system where they match senior and junior students together and prompt them to grab coffee together. I ended up grabbing coffee with a TikTok celebrity.
11. Some exciting stuff!
12. I opened up a midterm and realized that I had studied all of the wrong things (well, there’s no way I could have known technically). That sucked.
13. I hosted the Vancouver Azure Meetup
This was my first solo event after having become a co-organizer for > 1 year.
14. I hosted a Major League Hacking Organizer’s Peer Group with Allison
We were invited to speak about organizing a hackathon / Local Hack Day! It was fun to tag team with Allison again. 💖
Devpost also featured me in an email. I don’t want to make a separate bullet for that, but I’ve peaked so there’s that. 🤧
Well, this was definitely more a “Past ~2 Months In My Life” instead of just the past month, simply because I’m not exciting enough for the latter. But I hope you enjoyed reading it nonetheless.
Take care of yourself and the people around you! Enjoy the holidays. 😊
