2024 is a year of evolution for me. This year, I

• moved to the US
• got my own place
• started my first (and second) full-time job
• became a car owner
• received a decent Bay Area big tech SWE offer
• became a cat owner (of 2)
• started to ski black diamonds

Career

Started 2 jobs this year.

American Express

American Express is a great company. It has good benefits, a great PTO system, and free lunch. It’s a shame that it’s not a tech company thus paying 🥜

Benefits

In Amex, we have 24 PTO, more than most big techs, but observing 0 public holidays, as they convert all the public holidays to PTOs. I absolutely adore this system because it offers maximum flexibility. Instead of having 1 random public holiday each month, we can merge them into a long holiday at any time of the year we desire.

Amex also offers a max 7.5k per year tuition reimbursement which is massive to me as I’m studying UIUC MCS at the same time.

Work Rant

As for the work, it was way too chill. My working hour is 15-20hr a week. It was RTO 3 so I went to the office around 10:30 - 3:30 from Tue to Thur, and then stayed home sleeping or playing video games on Mon and Fri. It was so chill that I started to have a bit of an existential crisis.

There was still a lot to improve in terms of the work culture in our team though. There were way too many time-wasting meetings. There was an 8am standup from Mon to Thur, during which you spent most of the time waiting for your turn to say “no blockers”. There were also like 2 sprint planning meetings each week, a major time-wasting activity. It just doesn’t make any sense to have frequent standups and feature planning meetings involving everyone in the team when this team with 8+ people are all working on different areas. It’s just blocking everyone’s time for minimal gain.

Standups can exist, but only to talk about blockers. The rest can easily be in text form or a simple status change in the ticket. As for sprint planning meetings, the PMs and manager should sync with the engineers individually.

Bottom Line

I had never considered Amex to be a long-term destination. It was just a transitory base for me to establish myself in the US and look for a better job while funding my Master’s degree.

I always told myself that if I didn’t get out in a year I would be very disappointed, and in the end I did get a big tech offer in 9 months.

ByteDance / TikTok

During my tenure at Amex I had been getting TikTok recruiter messages on LinkedIn literally every week, sometimes multiple times a week. I did reply and send my resume to most of them but none turned into anything, except this one.

Interviews & Offer

I got contacted in July, did a call, completed 2 coding interviews in August, 2 behavioral interviews in September, got the verbal offer and negotiated TC in late September, signed the official offer in early October, and joined in late October.

Despite the lurking ban, it was still a no-brainer to join TikTok. The tier and TC differences between Amex and TikTok are just way too large, and I assumed that even if it got banned with TikTok on my resume I wouldn’t have a hard time finding another job. Plus the location is the Bay Area, the capital of software engineers in the world. Finding another job without relocating should be way easier than in Phoenix.

The problems asked in the coding interviews were from LeetCode TikTok tagged past 6 months, and I completed all of them prior to the interviews. No system design question was asked, even though I did prepare for it. The interviews were definitely a lot easier than I imagined.

The initial TC they proposed was also a lot higher than what I thought, and it’s not like I hadn’t done any research. The base was higher than most on levels.fyi, and they also offered sign-on which I thought they wouldn’t. Still managed to raise the sign-on by 10k.

Relocation

The relocation package they offered is definitely top of the industry. It’s a mix of lump-sum and relocation services (tho I would honestly prefer all of them to be a lump-sum). The relocation service includes a full mover service, one-way economy flight, and 30-day hotel. There was a very high limit on the mover service, but none on the flight and the hotel I think, tho they did provide a reference for San Jose hotel which was $350 a night.

Theoretically I received a total value of a staggering $14.5k on relocation, including a $5.5k lump-sum, $2.5k mover service, and $6.5k hotel. However, for the hotel, even though I booked 29-night for a Residence Inn near San Jose airport, I only stayed for 12 nights. I checked out a few days after my mover service delivered all my stuff.

If I could take a 10k lump-sum instead I would have chosen it in a heartbeat. I really don’t need a mover service because I barely have any valuable furnitures in my apartment. Pretty buying new set of furniture would cost less than 1k. And if I moved and bought and set up everything myself, like I did when I move to Phoenix, I wouldn’t need to stay a week or more in a hotel waiting for the delivery from the mover service either.

It was still a pretty cool experience tho.

Work

Work was honestly so much better than what I imagined. On Blind I constantly read about how toxic and intense the work culture was in ByteDance, basically Amazon but worse. I also dmed a few TikTok folks on LinkedIn (mostly NTU alumni) about the work culture during the offer phase, and received similar response.

The reality was a lot more modest. I heard that TikTok had 0 test coverage and no code reviews, but then the senior (ex-Google) I was working with was the strictest reviewer I had ever encountered, even on the quality of tests. I also had pretty much 0 late meetings, though I would probably get some when my responsibilities are bigger.

Even though it’s RTO 5 in my team, people are pretty liberal about the time in office. Some people come early (like 9) and leave early (like 3), some come late (noon) and leave late (after dinner), while some just badge in badge out. I thought the office would be very crowded due to RTO 5 but no there were still plenty of open seats. What’s better is the abundance of meeting rooms. There are always some meeting rooms available, even during peak hours.

One thing that I’m still trying to figure out is the working hours. We don’t do sprints in our team, but tasks after tasks. Thus I don’t really know how much should I work. Currently I’m probably working for around 40-45hr a week, but I feel like I can also work 50hr or 30hr.

Cities and Apartments

Phoenix

Finding an apartment

I was physically in Taiwan and expected to get the keys and move in the day I got to Phoenix, so I had to do everything online.

It was pretty tough. I had to get a US phone number (I used Sonetel) and made a lot of phone calls after midnight. Most places only allowed you to go through the process 30 days before the move-in date so I

Moving in

It took me a week or 2 to settle in. I was moving to Phoenix from Taiwan empty handed, so I had to buy all the furnitures myself and assemble them.

Driver License

Arizona allows direct conversion from a Taiwanese driver license to an AZ one … but they require an official translation from TECOLA, or Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles … so I had to drive to LA to get it. You can also just mail your documents to them but you had to do some notary thing which sounded very complicated.

Apartment

My apartment was in an ungated community with the main demographics being the Latinos. They loved to host parking lot parties, playing loud music while chilling outside. They also love to sit outside in the 110F oven for some reason, probably to save AC cost?

No washer/dryer in the apartment but a community laundry room. Love that it’s payable through an app, tho pretty expensive. $2.25 each cycle. Since it’s a public laundry machine, it’s sometimes as disgusting as those I used in college dorm.

The 1B1B itself was definitely very spacious for a person, with 550sqft. All the floor were of regular tiles, so I had to put a lot of rugs and mats for comfort. This seems to be the norm of Murica, but the lights inside was minimal. No light in the bedroom and the living room despite having a switch, so I had to buy some floor lamps.

The biggest problem was the hot water. It only lasted for 7 minutes. I requested maintenance a couple of times and for the first 2 times they faked fixing some stuff, which fixed nothing. In the final time they just said it’s by design. That little petty water heater just couldn’t last long.

The views outside are pretty nice. You may think Phoenix or Arizona is nothing but desert, but we still have trees. My window faced a few close trees and a dog park where children would play football (not handegg) on in the afternoon. My cats loved watching the birds on those trees.

Phoenix

Phoenix is honestly pretty nice … except for the summer months. I lived in north Phoenix, which is 30min. from downtown or the Asian area (Tempe Mesa Chandler), but the life quality is only better.

I had every shops I need within a 10 min. drive (Walmart Target Costco PetSmart etc.). The regular roads are wide and the traffic is good, so I could typically drive +15mph min from the speed limit. There’s always a dedicated left lane shared by both directions. On freeway I could drive 100mph easily. I didn’t know how good Phoenix’s road system was until I moved to San Jose. Driving in Phoenix is 3x easier and safer than in San Jose.

The street views are pretty bad tho. Everything looks very boring and basic and kind of dusty. The football fields with real grass are also yellowish.

I didn’t explore much but the nature is very good. Within an 1hr drive you can get to the desert-y wild west feel nature, like the Canyon Lake area or South Mountain Park (Dobbin’s Lookout). Within 2hr you can get to Sedona, which has the wonderful and beautiful Grand Canyon terrain. Driving for another 2hr will get you to the well known Grand Canyon spots like the Antelope Canyons & Horseshoe Bend. These are what define Arizona, not the boring and basic city of Phoenix.

There’s only one weather here: sunny. In summer it’s like an oven with everyday reaching 110F, but winter it’s very chill and nice. No hurricanes, no earthquakes, no storms, no forest fire as there’s no forest, just the sun and the sun only.

Overall Phoenix is much better than I expected. The summer is brutal but as long as you stay in either indoor or in your car it’s fine.

San Jose

Relocation

As mentioned in the TikTok section, I used the mover service and lived in a hotel for 2 weeks. The hotel was a Marriott Residence Inn with a spacey and fully equipped 1B1B room and allowed pets, so it was a nice experience.

After my stuff got delivered, I spent a few days to settle things up, before moving in.

Apartment

Secured a 612sqft at a little less than 2400 USD for base rent. Not the cheapest, but still a bit lower than the average I believe for a 1B1B in San Jose.

Didn’t have the chance to do a virtual tour let alone a tour before moving in except for the 3D walkthrough thing. However, it turned out to be great. The bedroom is carpeted, the main walk-in closet is HUGE, the bathroom is bigger than expected with a set of washer dryer, the kitchen comes with a microwave, and the main window is big sliding glass door leading to the balcony,

The apartment is Phoenix is not bad but this one is just nicer. The neighborhood is 10x nicer as well. In Phoenix my apartment is not gated and there are always some naked latinos out there doing parties at the parking lot or at home while leaving their doors open. Here, the community is gated, full of trees, and the apartment layout is more private, with a little path curving through the complex. In a sunny day the complex looks super pretty. At night it’s also fairly vibey.

Overall tho it still pains myself everytime my rent gets deducted from my checking account, I really like this apartment. Only complaint is that the bathroom fan can’t be manually disabled, and that there’s no central AC but only 1 AC unit in the living room. There’s a heater in the bedroom but it’s super loud for some reason. Hope it won’t get too hot in the summer.

Grad School

Started UIUC MCS as a part time student this year and finished 3 courses, one each semester.

The load is definitely much less than what I imagined. There’s a course review website which includes a self reported time spent per week on each course, and my actual workload is like 1/5 of the average. Granted I skipped classes and cheated whenever I could, but still

The tuition was $2744 per course initially, but in 2024 Fall they changed it to $3016. Amex reimbursed grad school tuition up to $7500 a year so I didn’t spend a dime on the first 2 courses, but unfortunately ByteDance doesn’t, so I had to pay for the 3rd one from my own pocket.

I didn’t spot any significant difference in job searching before and after I had UIUC on my resume, which was a surprise, and a bummer.

Applied Machine Learning

Very stupid and useless course. The courses are unintelligible because the slides are super obscure and the professor is just reading through the slides. I learned nothing from the courses. As for the programming assignments, they’re mostly about implementing some numpy interaction sections while all the other parts are given. Some of them are somewhat challenging.

There are no exams. Definitely recommend it if you just want some easy credit. Workload is 2hr a week or less.

Database Systems

This one is a bit more useful. It first talks about the fundamentals like the ER Model, functional dependency, normal forms, and then the actual databases including MySQL, MongoDB and Neo4j, and finally the index internals. The fundamentals including the index internals (B Trees) are pretty interesting and useful to me because I never really learned about them. The parts about MySQL & MongoDB are obviously not as useful as I have already been working with them for a long time, but I’ve never learned about a graph db like Neo4j. I probably won’t ever encountered it in prod tho.

It didn’t has exams but do have a few assignments and a final project. The assignments were just writing and running some queries. The final project was about building a webapp to interact with a given dataset, stored in MySQL, MongoDB, and Neo4j. I paired with a rando working in Qualcomm and we used Dash Plotly to build the webapp. Zero js was written.

Workload is ahout 2hr a week.

Distributed Systems

Distributed Systems is a good course and particularly relevant to me because it echoes a lot with system design interviews. While system design books tell you about the high level design and features of each component, this course goes into detail and teach you the internals.

It is also the most college like course I had taken in this program. The courses were rigorous, the MPs were system level and hard, and the exams were in written form, long and somewhat difficult.

I watched almost all of the course videos for this one. Workload was like 3hr a week, probably a lot more had I actually done my MPs.

Research

I almost forgot about it but my IEEE TNSM paper (submitted on August 2023) did get accepted this January … after only 1 revision. This is honestly so wild. Normally a journal paper needs 3 revisions. The post-doc supervising me had also submitted to the same journal the year before and his required 3 revisions.

It’s nice to have a journal paper under my name I guess.

From my 3 reviewers on my one and only revision:

The paper is ok. Fingers crossed.

The authors have addressed the provided comments in great detail. The reviewer has no further concerns about the paper.

The authors has addressed all previous comments and can see the improved work clearly. Thank you for your hard work.

Cats

Spent 7-8 months with the 2 kitties I adopted this year.

I’d always wanted to get a cat since childhood, but my parents don’t like cat. After moving into my own apartment, getting a cat seemed like an obvious course of nature, but I still contemplated for a while because of a tiny childhood trauma when the beetle I kept died, and I felt like it’s a huge responsibility to be taking care of another life.

But still, I decided to get a cat after a month of moving in, having everything settled.

Ragnar

I got a 8-month old orange tabby (M) from the PetSmart close by. Apparently every PetSmart would partner with a rescue and have the rescued cats displayed in the shops.

His original name was Red, which I quickly changed to Ragnar because, Ragnar the Red, and it would be so funny for a cute kitty to be named like a fierce Viking.

First few days were touch for a newbie like me who had never have a cat (or dog tho dogs are very different). He barely ate anything until the 4th or 5th day, despite showing progress of opening up each day. By the 4th day he became confident walking around the house and would play with the feather rod toy fully committed.

Arya

Around a month later I got another cat, because I’d done a lot of research and for a kitten it’s best for them to have a playmate, and it kind of broke my heart thinking about him being lonely in the apartment alone. Also I really didn’t enjoy playing with cats. Having only 1 cat means that I HAVE to spend some time every day to play with them, but it’s just not fun for me. But if there are 2, then I can just leave them to playfight with themselves.

It’s a 3-month old female Siamese mix this time, from another rescue partnered with another PetSmart. My goal was to find a cute little kitten because Ragnar being 8-month old was already at his adult size tho technically still a kitten.

She was named Louise, but I decided that her name was Arya before even getting her, because I love the name (no I haven’t watched A Game of Thrones and have only read half of the first book).

I’ve done research and generally follow the recommended steps to introduce 2 cats to each other. They spent 3 days segregated with some tightly supervised meet and greet sessions. On day 4 I let them meet without any interception after reading about an anti slow introduction Reddit thread, and despite some hissing they didn’t really fight. I let them free roam for the night. They would chase around and Ragnar would sometimes gesture to slap Arya but never really did.

Arya opened a lot quicker than Ragnar. She ate a lot, started to play and enjoyed my pet since day 1. I thought it’s because she’s just a 3-month kitten but now I know it’s more about their personalities.

For the first few months Arya was unable to fight back due to being much smaller than Ragnar, but when she got to 8 months old she became adult size tho still a bit smaller than Ragnar and could finally properly fight.

Review

Will probably have a dedicated cats review post but overall zero regrets getting not one but two cats. The emotional value they provide through their cute and innocent face, soft and silky fur, and hypnotic purr is unmatched.

Gaming

This year I mostly played the games I’d either watched or partially played before, with the exception of Jedi Survivor.

Baldur’s Gate 3

One of the best games I’ve played. I have 400+ hours logged on Steam, tho probably half of that was AFK. For this kind of slow burning games I would often leave it open while doing other stuff.

I’ve never played DnD before, even kind of despised it, thinking only some stupid smelly fat manchilds living in their mom’s basement would play it. But it’s actually pretty fun, at least in video game’s form. I really fail to imagine how a game like BG3 could be played on tabletop tho.

The story is really stupid, probably the most retarded of all the video games I’ve played, but the gameplay, visuals, and voice acting are top notch.

After the first super long playthrough, I tried a couple of new playthroughs, including honor mode and dark urge ones, but I soon stepped into the world of mods and the game got kind of ruined by them. For example I have the mod allowing you to bring everyone and also the mod to boost enemy health for balancing, but then the combat just became super long and repetitive with each turn taking forever because you have 10 characters to control. After that I became too afraid to open the game again.

It’s hella fun playing with mods tho.

Ghost of Tsushima

I played this game in my friend’s house on his PS4 before, but didn’t finish it. So I bought it and replayed it after it was ported to PC.

It’s basically Assassin’s Creed style open world but with decent melee combat, so a pareto improvement. The combat also has a posture system but it’s really more like Jedi Fallen Order / Survivor than Sekiro, tho I’d say it’s less satisfying than either. It’s more grounded and with less flair.

Since it’s not a fantasy story like FromSoft’s or Star War’s, boss fights are mostly the same. A little more variety would definitely be appreciated. I mean you don’t necessarily need to be too over the top to create a fun and novel boss fight. Many Sekiro fights are pure sword play with zero magical abilities yet feel so incredible, like Armored Warriors, O’Rin the Water, Genichiro Ashina phase 1-2, Sword Saint Isshin phase 1, Emma, Isshin Ashina phase 1, etc.

All in all it can’t remotely scratch your Sekiro itch but it’s a decent open world game, definitely much better than Unisoft’s, tho that’s a low bar to meet.

Civilization 6

Spent another tens of hours after securing the TikTok offer. Had a lot of fun nuking everyone in late game.

The Last of Us Part 1

I’ve watched the play through a long time ago, but never had the chance to play it. Now that I have a high-end PC, and that the remastered version came out on PC, I bought and played it.

Great game, as I remembered. Great visuals.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

Open world game built on top of Jedi Fallen Order, tho I’d say the overall experience for me is pretty similar. Blaster stance is nice, but I still use single stance for the majority of the serious fights, so I don’t really care about the new stances added in this game. I do love the abundance of shortcuts and the new air dash ability in late game.

Don’t really care about the open world stuff nowadays so it’s not a plus for me over Jedi Fallen Order. The bosses overall are better than Fallen Order I think, a lot more fun and memorable fights like Degan Gera and Rayvis. Enemies are more varied also I think.

The board war mini game is actually pretty fun.

Story wise it’s worse, the Bode arc made little sense and the ending was lackluster.

Customization options are much better in this game, no more stupid ponchos.

I played on a high-end PC which is known to be a shit port. In some sections it would constantly crash, especially the Darth Vador fight, and it also stutters occasionally. Still fine most of the time.

Overall a 8.5/10, slightly better than Jedi Fallen Order. Have around the same hours on Steam for the 2 games.

I may still visit it from time to time because the purity perk in NG+ which makes bullets and light saber actually lethal transforms it into a different game.

Reading

I read close to nothing new this year. I started multiple books but finished none, though I did reread a lot of 金庸.

I reread 神鵰俠侶, 射雕英雄傳, 天龍八部, and 笑傲江湖, and I enjoyed them no less when I was a kid. 金庸 really is the master of storytelling. It’s peculiar how he can make you binge read it as if you’re going to die tomorrow.

I did finish The Claw of Conciliator and continued to read the next installment in The Books of the New Sun, The Sword of Lictor, but only made very little progress. I read 3/4 of Permutation City, but it was kind of a slog. I started to read Game of Thrones because I really wanted to watch the show and I can’t watch it until I finished the books, but I soon DNF.

Sad year for reading.

TV Shows

Merlin (rewatch)

Reviving my childhood memories. When I was a child we always watched this during lunar new year (the tv control was always in my sis’s hand).

Morgana’s transformation made no sense to me. She really just became a cartoonish evil witch, evil for no reason (or an extremely weak one).

Such a shame because she had the potential to be written as a really great character with complexity and depth.

This show truly has one of if not the most epic theme music ever.

3 Body Problem

Not a masterpiece but The Three Body Problem book 1 never was. The real show has always been in the 2nd and 3rd books.

Would rate it a 7.5/10.

I’d say it’s a successful adaptation. Not much to complaint about tbh. But I’m a bit disappointed that there’s only 8 episodes. They could have easily make a 10-episode season and explained some stuff in more details.

To conclude, the bads about this show

• some CGI scenes are fake af
• a bit rushed

I also tried watching the Tencent adaption because many Redditards claimed it’s better … but it’s so fricking amateurish and cringe. So try hard.

The green field tributing to bugs scene in the last episode (E30) is especially so fucking cringe omfg

Shogun

Cool show. 8/10. 德川家康 is pretty epic.

The Boys

Homelander is an AMAZING character. Incredibly well crafted.

Started out as kind of a mockery to all the stupid superhero films, but from S2 it became really political. And then from S3 it became more and more like the traditional Hollywood action superhero movie.

I’m all for them to mock the Republicans, but imo it didn’t really fit in the narrative of Vought, built up in Season 1 & 2. They are not anti-woke or alt right at all. And Homelander’s sudden media personality transformation toward Trump made zero sense.

The show also became much less appealing when it was all superheroes fighting each other in S3 S4. You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain moment.

The End of the Fucking World

Very funny and cute.

Season 1 is a good dark comedy. I’m not particularly into teen drama, but still find it really good. Season 2, however, really was just milking the drama, purely for fan service, because after season 1 everyone wanted to see what happened to them and how they finally got back together and living a happy life etc. etc. Basically a fanfic.

If you didn’t watch season 1 you probably wouldn’t care less about them, and I think that’s a pretty good measure on if a show was purely doing fan service or was actually trying to explore something new and interesting.

Season 2 is still not bad though. I’d give a 7/10 for season 2, while season 1 is 8.5/10.

Also each episode was barely 20min., so you can pretty much finish the whole thing in a day.

And it’s from channel 4. Early (& good) Black Mirror is also from channel 4. Love channel 4.

Steins Gate

Finally watched this anime, widely regarded to be in the anime GOAT list. Season 1 is really great, but I made the mistake to watch season 2 (Steins Gate 0) … it’s full of smelly disgusting weeaboo anime tropes, is super cringy, and world settings and logic is not consistent with season 1, probably even self-conflicting.

Regardless, if we can pretend that Steins Gate 0 is just a fanfic (I mean it indeed is only fanfic quality), not canon, then Steins Gate really is a very good show, and blows the usual animes out of the water. The logic is consistent, the plot is epic, the character development & writing is nothing crazy but decent for a show, while exceptional or maybe even unheard of for an anime. The character writing really doesn’t feel like an anime / manga / light novel at all.

8/10

I did feel the illustration being dated at the start since it’s an 2011 anime, but toward the end I got used to it and didn’t feel anything weird. The MC looks like 27 or even in the early 30s tho, never an 18.

It’s definitely a super soft sci-fi but at least it’s consistent with its own logic.

Peaky Blinders

Love Thomas Shelby, or Mr. Oppenheimer. Cool vibe. Abandoned in the 2nd season tho.

South Park

Heard about it a lot but never watched South Park before. When staying in the hotel when I moved to San Jose, I opened the TV, saw it playing South Park, and got absolutely hooked. I then proceeded to watch a lot of episodes myself. Season 11-14 are gold, satiring so many issues that are still relevant today.

Traveling

This year I had 1 big international trip, 2 skiing trips, and 2 domestic trips, not counting day trips of course.

January - Los Angeles

In Arizona we can directly use the Taiwan driver license to get an AZ one, but it requires the official translation from TECOLA, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles. You have the option to mail documents to them, but it requires some notary stuff which seems kinda complicated. Since my work hadn’t started then and I hadn’t been to Los Angeles since I was born, I took a 3-day trip to LA.

I drove from Phoenix to there in the 1st day, my longest drive ever. It was pretty brutal for me. And I was shocked by the immense price increase of gas just across the AZ CA border.

On the 2nd day I went to Hollywood, Dodger stadium’s gift shop, TECOLA, and experienced the insane traffic on the highway.

The road winding up to Hollywood really does look like the one in GTA V with narrow roads, trees, and beautiful houses. The views from the top were really stunning. The car windows flickering down in the city looked pretty amazing.

There were a lot of young Japanese girls in the Dodger Stadium gift shop. Bought some merch.

TECOLA is super funny. They only work 4 days a week, the staff there is clearly from Taiwan with pretty meh English, and they work pretty slowly. You can’t even get the translation documents right away. I got it a week later in my mail.

Drove back the 3rd day.

February - Sedona & Page

Went with my parents, visiting from Taiwan, and my sis, from Chicago. Amazing views. I was shocked when I saw abundance of snow in Flagstaff. When we’re hiking in Sedona it even snowed heavily for a while, rendering the path into a land of fairy tale.

After a while, the snow stopped and it became so sunny suddenly. Surreal transformation, as if someone used the clear sky shout.

On the 2nd day we went to Page for Lower Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Blend.

Lower Antelope Canyon is a very deep but narrow valley, only 407 m long apparently, but it took a long while to walk through because you’ll have to stop every two seconds to take 10 photos.

It was truly a magical place. Every single shot by a random device is like wallpaper.

Horseshoe Blend really is magnificent. The layout of the spot is sort of like a bigger Jökulsárlón. There’s a surrounding the water body area and there’s also a small hill for you to climb. We spent a lot of time there.

July - Amsterdam, Norway and Stockholm

Took a ton of PTOs and went with my gf. Landing in Amsterdam while spending the majority of the time in the Scandinavian Peninsula may seem to be an odd choice, but I just really wanted to visit Amsterdam.

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is an insane city. It’s both super pretty and super high tech. It soon became my favorite city in the world (of the ones I’ve visited). It’s two levels ahead of being walkable, and beautiful canals are everywhere, on top of the typical beautiful European streets.

Also had a technological shock here.

I was standing beside the little glass covered elevator platforms staring at them in awe for a minute, trying to comprehend wtf did I just see. Like a dude just drive in with his Porsche, left the small glass building, and the platform just went down revealing the underground multi-layered complex. Next, a guy stood at the other side of the building looking down the complex. I thought it’s another tourist in awe of the Dutch technology like me but before long, the platform rose again, this time with an BMW. The guy walked inside the now opened glass building and drove his car away. It’s like living in 2030. Hardest shit I’ve ever seen.

https://topgear.nl/autonieuws/automatische-parkeergarage-amsterdam/

Norway

I’ve been on a Scandinavia trip with my family when I was a child, and I fell in love with the beauty of the fjords in Norway. This time, we rent a car and drove around western Norway along and through countless of fjords.

It’s definitely the best drive of my whole life. I also never knew you had to drive on a lot of the small ferries to get across the fjords.

We also took a Fjordline cruise from Bergen to Kristiansand, because taking the cruise in my childhood trip have been one of my favorite memory. I gotta say, the cruise was pretty much the exact same as in my memory, even the awesome buffet.

Stockholm

Our final stop was in Stockholm, where we spent a few days exploring the city. Tbh it didn’t leave me a lot of impression when I first visited it as a child, so I was surprised when I found out how awesome it is during this trip, even becoming my top 3 cities in the world alongside Amsterdam and perhaps Edinburgh.

The city is big and busy, the streets are nice and clean, the transport (love riding the e-scooters) is good, and the waterfront is chill and pretty. It’s like a very balanced city, modern while preserving the old beautiful buildings, and good for both living and tourism.

Winter - Lake Tahoe & Whistler

I originally planned to do 2 week-long trips in Lake Tahoe and Whistler in December with a week apart, using all the PTOs left in Amex, but after jumping to TikTok, I only got 3 PTO days to use for the rest of the year, so I had to make full use of the public holidays, which were Thanksgiving and Christmas.

With 2 public Christmas days, I can get a 9-day trip by adding in 3 PTOs, so I decided to do a 4-day Thanksgiving Lake Tahoe trip (0 PTO) + a 9-day Christmas Whistler trip (3 PTO) instead.

I’ll leave the details in 2024-25 Ski Season Review.

Music

It’s a quiet year for music. I didn’t discover any new major artist this year, tho there’s some change in my top artists.

Mental Health

I graduated in 2023 June, but then spent 4 months in the military camp and then 2 months traveling and chilling. 2024 is the first full year I’m out of the student life and live (mostly) by myself.

Leaving student life let me break the shackle of the constant FOMOness, while living by myself gives me a lot of peace. My mental health has never been better. Although I’m working full time for almost the whole year, I never made any attempt to make any friends or even get to know somebody, and being free of social interactions (being with your partner doesn’t count) is the best thing ever.

Not interacting socially with friends and strangers frees me from FOMO, not interacting with my family frees my soul, tho being alone sometimes brings in another dimension of FOMO … which is eliminated by having a partner (and not scrolling Instagram too frequently). So for the whole year I’m almost never with any social stress. I don’t have much work stress either, so it had been probably the best year for me since I graduated from the pure and happy childhood.

My worst moment this year was probably when I was a few months into my first job at American Express, working only 3 5-hour days each week, while getting zero replies from my cold applications to tech companies, leaving me way too much free time in my hand, so I could only play video games. During that period I felt soulless and unfulfilling, living in a backwater without any purpose of life. Thankfully that only lasted for a small while because I later got into the TikTok loop and was grinding really hard, giving me purpose again.

From that I learned that WLB means work & life being on a balance. When you have too much life and too less work it’s not a good WLB, at least for me.

Reevaluating Life Goals

When skiing in Whistler I took a hard look on myself and reevaluated my life goals. Since the 3rd year of college I had been stuck in the grind, thinking about LeetCodes, applying for jobs, getting referrals, interviews, offers, pumping up TC and prestige, but not about my actual life and dreams.

Now that I’m in Bay Area and working for a big tech, I should reallocate some focus to my life goals.

What are my life goals? Getting my NW to > 1M before 30? Reaching a TC of 500k? Maxing out my mega backdoor Roth IRA? Buying a house? Churning credit cards to have a 10% or more effective cashback at all times (well I kinda want this honestly)? Having a family? No. Those have never been my dreams.

Doing various extreme / adventure sports have been a consistent dream of my life. When you see people doing 3 backflips after skiing off a cliff, mountain biking down a steep and rocky mountain, wingsuit flying through chutes and valleys, skydiving above the Grand Canyon after dropping off from a hot air balloon, flying in a hang glider like an eagle, or paragliding across the Alps, and then you take a look at your MacBook thinking about what parameters should we have for this API or what percentage should I have for after-tax contribution which will automatically roll over to Roth IRA, it’s clear which is life.

The ones that sparkle my interest the most are parkour, skiing, hang gliding, skydiving, and wingsuit flying. I’m already on a steady path to skiing in expert terrains. As for the others, after doing some research, many of them are actually quite achievable.

Hang Gliding and Paragliding

Hang gliding is way cooler but paragliding seems to be more practical, convenient, and economical. If you want to own a hang glider, you’ll need a big space to store it and a big car to drive it around. As for a paraglider, you can just carry it like a backpack and even take a bus with it.

To get to P2 certification in paragliding, the min level to be able to fly independently, you need around $2k on lessons, which isn’t that much. There’s a school in Milpitas, which is pretty close to San Jose, so I should be able to spend a day or two each weekend learning it. The lessons to P2 take around 7-12 days so I can learn it 1-3 months.

My goal is to learn it in 2025.

For hang gliding, maybe I’ll try out a lesson or two and evaluate.

Skydiving

To get the A license, the min level to be able to fly solo, you need around $3k in lessons and 25 jumps. Seems fine, but the closest school is in Tracy, which is like 50min. from my house, so I’ll probably go there 1 day a week max.

I can either learn it in 2026, or 2025 after learning paragliding.

Wingsuit Flying

Wingsuit Flying is a life dream, not a short or mid-term goal, because it requires a lot of commitment and progression. To be able to learn wingsuit flying, you’ll need 200 skydives within 18 months. So it’s a lot more commitment than getting an A-license for skydiving (25 jumps).

Goals by 25

Here are the things that I anticipate myself to achieve by 25:

• Skydiving A-License
• Paragliding C2 Certification
• Able to ski most double blacks comfortably

The 3rd one is probably the hardest. I have 2 seasons left and currently I can only ski the easier blacks comfortably. With double blacks being a super wide band, I really doubt I can do that. I’ll be happy if I can ski the easier double blacks with ease by 25.

Dreams by 30

Following up on my goals by 25, here are the things I wish to achieve by 30.

• Learned wingsuit flying
• Expert level skier
• Get to advanced level in another extreme sport

Since these are very far beyond my current states and capabilities, and are heavily influenced by reality, whether it’s work, relationship, health, personal skills, or even a change of interest, these are not necessarily achievable and are just my current dreams. That said, if I don’t achieve them by 30, it probably means that I never will.