Career
ByteDance/TikTok
Interviews
I have 4 interview loops this year with at least 1 interview, and I failed all of them. Before that I had 4 consecutive successful interview loops that got me offers so I thought I would be invincible once I passed the resume screening and got into an interview loop, but no.
But honestly, the biggest achievement for me this year was to secure an OpenAI interview, despite me failing in the 1st interview. Never thought I’d be able even interview with OpenAI.
Codeium/WindSurf
Applied for a new grad position last Dec, completed OA in Jan, then received the invitation for interview. I wasn’t really interested in those random AI startups, and the link they provided allowed me to keep rescheduling and rescheduling, so I just kept doing it until April when the news of OpenAI planning to acquire them came out. Suddenly it wasn’t a random AI startup anymore.
Did the interview, and I felt like I did reasonably well, solving a LeetCode hard in around 30min. Didn’t do it perfectly but I did solve it on my own. I had done that problem but 8 months before, so I was satisfied with my performance. But I was still rejected. Thought I could at least progress to the next round.
But then the deal fell off, and the company itself kind of got carved up into pieces as well. That’s what happens when you reject a qualified candidate bro. They should have known better.
Snowflake
Otter.ai
OpenAI
This one was so crazy. I had no ML background but general backend and then one day an OpenAI recruiter just reached out to me via email.
After a get-to-know call, unlike most opportunities, they actually progressed me to the interview stage because the hiring team was interested in me. Made me feel so prestigious.
The recruiter said it’s not LeetCode algo style but more practical, but I still did the OpenAI tagged problems in LeetCode, tho there’s only a minimal number of problems
I then bombed the interview. I really like the question, it’s exactly the kind of problem we could actually encounter in production backend. It seemed straightforward at first, but once you actually look into it you’ll realize that there are lots of quirks and you need very careful design for your solution to work.
Unfortunately I was just not good enough. Preparation can’t help with this, it’s really testing your real engineering skills.
Traveling
I actually went to plenty of places this year. A lot more domestic trips, but still only 2 international trips a year like usual.
Jan to Feb - Tahoe Skiing
See 2024-25-ski-review.
Apr - Europe
Went to Barcelona, Prague, and Vienna in early April, staying around 3 days each.
Barcelona
Barcelona is a bit underwhelming but still good, love the California weather, and the vibe was generally pretty chill. Had plenty of paella but honestly most are too salty. Many of the tapas dishes are good tho.
We went to a La Liga game at the temp stadium of Barca while Camp Nou is under construction, and seeing all the players like Lamine Yamal, Lewandowski, and Pedri irl was absolutely crazy. Our seat was close to the corner so we could see Lamine Yamal so close while he was hugging the sideline or doing a corner kick.
Lewandowski was a towering figure on TV but irl he just looked like another fit dude. The jersey looked very fitting on him.
But the most magical one was Pedri. Seeing him on the ball irl was just something else. The ball seemed to be bouncing on his feet yet never leaving them. There’s a semi-cringe text on the Camp Nou gift shop wall saying “You can’t take the ball away from him but you can buy it”, so accurate.
We also went to the Camp Nou museum of course. Neither underwhelming nor over expectation, just about right.
Transportation was fine but not the best, lacking e-scooter.
Prague
Prague old town was really pretty, walking around felt super comfy.
Vienna
Underwhelming, but the travel fatigue might play a part in this. We spent the whole 2w trips in cities, and I think that’s a mistake. For long trips, I think alternating between cities & nature or activities would be a better approach. Like in switzerland-2023, I spent 5 days skiing in the middle of the trip, while before & after skiing I’d explore the cities & towns, and I didn’t feel any travel fatigue at all.
I really don’t like the general vibe of central Europe, homogeneous, arrogant and expulsionist.
We did go to Musikverein and it was a really great experience.
Jun - Yosemite
A 2-day family trip to Yosemite, the first time in Yosemite for all 4 of us, and my first US national park (as a non-baby).
We hiked the Vernal Fall and Mariposa Grove trails. They’re pretty, but … kind of similar to the mountains in Taiwan, just bigger. We have those red trees in Taiwan too, just thinner.
Best part for me is driving on the road in the valley and seeing the majestic half dome & el capitan. It’s not something you can see elsewhere.
Overall kind of underwhelming. I feel like it’s just a tourist spot for those farmers in the mid west who haven’t seen a mountain in their whole life. If you grew up in the mountains or visit them a lot, Yosemite is not something you have to visit.
Aug - Dunlap Paragliding
My first flying outside of [[Bay Area]] and my first thermalling experience.
The landing zone is just beside a campground. It’s not a fancy campground, just some open space for cars & tents and some 懶人露營蒙古包, but not bougie as there’s no AC or shower inside, just a bed
We did 2 flights on Saturday, morning & late afternoon, and 1 on Sunday morning.
We drove 2 trucks up to launch, which is around 2500ft vert from the landing zone. The launch is a big flat open area with 1 流動廁所 and a mild slope
There was plenty of thermals on Saturday morning. Everyone managed to thermal under our instructor’s radio coaching, even total noobs like me who just got their P2. I didn’t had a vario and had zero experience thermalling then so I just did whatever the instructor told me to do, turning when I was told to, and managed to thermal with the folks.
I honestly didn’t feel fun while thermalling, you could get a bit dizzy and you had to try hard to maintain the rotating position, and when you were dropping you’d be stressed. Felt more like work.
While I was still busy thermalling the instructor told me to head back to launch because he thought I wasn’t controlling enough. I reluctantly did that, but around “Last Chance”, the ridge line close to launch, I did a 360 because I thought I was climbing, but I wasn’t. I flew toward launch thinking I would probably still make it, but I didn’t. There was a hill with some trees before the launch and I had to land on the hill. It wasn’t a lot of trees but just gladed so I didn’t have to land in the trees but some grass. Then I stuffed my glider into my stuff sack and did a 5min hike back to the launch.
It was greed. And in the our flight in Sunday morning another person was caught by his greed to, but with a much worse fate. He was trying get to another person’s thermal while already low, didn’t get anything, and had to land on some random fields, but it might be too tight of a space for him, and he ended up stalling a bit while trying to sneak in and dropped on his butts or legs. The ranger had to go retrieve him.
I had a pretty great flight during that time tho. I didn’t manage to thermal like the other dudes in front of the LZ, so I had to head back to the LZ. But then I found some lift in the knob close to the launch, so I started thermalling, and soon another guy joined, and we had fun thermalling together for 10min, going from 3300ft to 5000ft which was above launch. We also drifted quite a bit while thermalling
After the thermal died, I started to feel dizzy and had the urge to throw up. Pretty sure it’s because of the beers I had in midnight.
This flight was only 30min, but a milestone for me because it was the first time I thermalled on my own without any instructions.
We also did a flight on Saturday afternoon, but the wind was blowing from the back. We waited for a while, and did quick forward launches when the wind was off for a while. Zero thermal, so just a 10min sledge ride back to the LZ.
Sep - Chicago
We had a family gathering In Chicago, where my sis is based in rn. I didn’t know much about Chicago before this and had no expectations, but Chicago is a really unique city.
The only skyscrapers I’d seen before were those modern glassy ones, but Chicago’s were just of like traditional European buildings but tall, very interesting. tbh I don’t think they look good in day time, they look kind of old and dirty and definitely not as pretty as the regular European architecture. I much prefer the modern glassy ones. But at night they look absolutely phenomenal.
We took an dusk architecture boat tour, starting in day light and ending in city lights. At night all those skyscrapers become stars, and in the heart of the river, you’re surrounded by all those skyscrapers. Absolutely breathtaking. It’s like you’re being swallowed by the stars.
And many of the buildings have pink crowns. They honestly don’t look good but very interesting.
The vibe was completely different from other modern Asian cities with lots of skyscrapers when walking or riding a bike through the city. It felt old and kind of dilapidated. Definitely prefer the modern Asian cities, but it felt super unique.
The lake side area was really nice tho. It was super windy but it’s very pretty in a bluebird day. The Navy Pier area reminded me of Port Vell in Barcelona & Pier 39 in SF a bit.
We also went on a small excursion to Holy Hill and Miwaukee. The forest around that area was really pretty in that season with the red maple trees, and I lowkey like Miwaukee.
I tried driving by all the quant offices in Chicago, and they’re all super low profile. Only logo I could see from the outside was Jump Trading.
Overall I definitely wouldn’t want to live in Chicago. I love my suburban sprawl in Bay Area, for real. I didn’t come to the US just to be cramped in another high density concrete jungle. But I love that this unique city is part of the US of A’s portfolio. But if I were somehow offered a 600k quant job there I would gladly sell my soul for a year.
Nov - Chile Paragliding
Dec - Tahoe Skiing
Planned to visit Tahoe in Thanksgiving like last year, but the early season snow this year was non existent.
By 12/5 at least the lower Ridge Run in Heavnely was open, so we did a weekend trip. During that trip I confirmed that I enjoyed skiing much more than snowboarding, so I finally decided to buy the equipments.
I then spent the whole Christmas week in Tahoe. Bought my own boots and skis and spent a few days fitting into my new boots.
For the first half of the week it was still very dry, but then it finally snowed, and it snowed HARD.
In the weekend after Christmas I drove to Truckee for my avi 1 course, and they’re both bluebird pow days so I really couldn’t have picked a better date for my first backcountry experience. It was absolutely surreal.
We hiked up Castle Peak in the first day. I did not expect skinning to be so fun, even lowkey beating downhill skiing. It being a bluebird pow day helped it a lot for sure.
The final section where we skinned up a very steep slope was super scary but also exciting. It was my first time skinning and I slipped a few times on that steep slope. But others gave me some tips, like having your weight on the heels not the forward, and it helped. And completing kick turns on the steep slope felt so rewarding
The descent didn’t feel as satisfying tho. Sure it’s thick pows, but it’s also Sierra cement, and I was still not very good at skiing powder let alone cement. It’s pretty hard to turn. And after the open bowl in the upper section, it was some woods, and I really struggled through it, even had a face plant.
Then we skinned back to the main trail, from the big open meadow to the woods. Beautiful.
The final descent on the skin tracks to get back to the starting point was an absolute chore tho, almost invalidated the whole positives of backcountry for me.
2nd day we had the proper avi trainings, practicing rescues and digging snow pits. Pretty fun. And tho it didn’t snow the day prior, the snow was still as good.
Sports
Got into paragliding and deeper into skiing this year. I think both of them can easily be my life long hobbies.
Paragliding
Started in May, and got more than 90 flights and 30hrs of flying in the next half a year.
Paragliding’s utility definitely comes late. It does not offer the adrenaline or fun when you just start and are doing sledge flights down the training hill, unlike other activities like skiing or regular sports. It is slow and smooth. I dod my first and only tandem back in Taiwan when I was like 15. It was a 10min sledge ride down the mountain and I was not impressed for this reason.
I’m a P2 stepping toward P3 now. I’m not good enough for all those tricks you can do to give you adrenaline yet, so my utility mostly comes from the views from the sky and the sense of achievement when you work hard to find thermals to stay in the sky.
Kiting is surprisingly fun as well. As a beginner, kiting is where you can get most active in this sport, particularly in high winds situations. When kiting in high winds you are using every muscle and skill to get it under control and move where you want it to go. When you’re bad at it you can also get dragged and flipped around which is honestly super fun.
The only trick I know by now is flying in reverse, which is pretty fun and cool but useless.
I can definitely see myself doing this for the rest of my life because there are plenty of people in their 50-60s in our flying community and it promotes a healthy life as well because you can do hike and flys with your the heavy paragliding gear on your pack, so it’s a good exercise.
Skiing
I’m not sure if I actually progressed in a significant way in terms of my skills, but I definitely did in terms of experience.
This year I started skiing double blacks and started my backcountry journey with an avalanche lesson. I also finally bought my own gear. Having your own gear isn’t only about the comfort and performance but it’s also the only reasonable financial move once you know you’ll ski enough days each year.
The backcountry I did in the avi course was super fun and I definitely look forward to doing more of it. I think it can definitely be a life long hobby as well as it’s hiking with skis plus skiing powders down. As long as you don’t ski steep chutes and cliffs people in their 60s can definitely still do it.
I also plan to exploring more ski resorts in the US and the world agressively. I really want to do all the Colorado & Utah mountains on Epic Pass this season plus Les 3 Vallees, and then switch to Ikon pass next year to ski Palisades and SOTA resorts like Aspen, Jackson Hole, Snowbird, Lake Louise, Chamonix, St. Moritz etc.
I feel like alternating between the 2 passed could be a good idea as they both offer really great selections, and it would be dumb to just block yourself from either forever.
Snowboarding
Picked up snowboarding through 2 90min lessons in Boreal for cheap, and … I like skiing a lot more. It may be a skill issue, or it may not. On skis you can just be a lot faster and do more nimble turns, I think that’s just the physics not purely skill issue.
And the overhead and hassle of snowboard are just joy killers. Before and after each lap you’d have to strap or unstrap, super annoying, and on flat ground it’s a huge pain in the ass. Meanwhile on skis you can just do laps after laps without having to touch your boots at all, and on flat ground you just use your poles or skate it out
The inability to traverse really is one of the biggest dealbreakers because I love to explore the mountain, skiing through the woods and stuff, but I really can’t imagine how you can traverse and explore effectively on a snowboard
In the avi course when we skied through the woods, there were some flat traverse and the splitboarders all had a really hard time. So for snowboarding to make sense for me, you either only ski on the piste on the fall line (but then you still have the huge overheads before/after each lap) or that the fun of snowboarding is just so significantly superior to skiing that you can justify all the inconveniences.
The former actually works for me as I have a pretty good time snowboarding those long and relatively straight black runs on the backside of Northstar, but the latter isn’t valid as skiing is still a lot more fun to me.
So I think moving forward I might do snowboarding once in a while when conditions met, but I’ll still focus on skiing mostly.
Gaming
Expeditions 33
Most discussed game of the year, and rightfully so. It definitely deserves winning the Game of the Year awards, but it’s also a bit overhyped. It’s a good game, not the second Jesus coming.
Like a lot of the games I played this year, my biggest complaint is that it’s too forgiving (on the highest difficulty as always). It could be Sekiro, but they chose to give us a character that can do infinite heals, so instead of keep and dying until I learn the patterns of each boss and getting good, I just kept getting smashed and letting Lune or Sciel do the heals, rinse and repeat, and defeating most of the bosses in the first try, which was not very rewarding. You should at the very least lose all chroma when you die like in Souls so you don’t gain levels so easily. They also give you way too many luminas (for equipping perks) and weapon upgrades. And many perks are too good.
If the game removed the healing abilities, then I would definitely enjoy this game more. Yes I could have limited myself to not use the heals, but that’s not how it works. As a player it’s my responsibility to use everything I get to defeat the enemies, except for the summons in souls games because that’s cheating. Lune & Sciel’s healing abilities are real in-game mechanics so I had to use them, at least in the first playthrough.
Outside of the combats, it’s a beautiful game with a beautiful world, great soundtracks, immersive voice acting, and a well written story. I’m not a fan of the JRPG style overworld, but the enclosed mission areas are so wonderfully crafted.
A solid 9/10 for me.ki
Stellar Blade
I’d been wanting to play Gooner Blade since it came out as a PlayStation exclusive, and then it finally released its PC port in 2025.
Overall I’d give the game a 8/10. It’s not really Souls like or Sekiro like. It’s leaning toward Sekiro with the focus on parries, but it also leans heavily on combos and skills. Combat is cool and flashy and satisfying, but ultimately too easy and forgiving (on the highest difficulty yes).
I read somewhere that the difficulty ramped up toward the end, but no it didn’t. The few final bosses were a bit tougher, but still very easy when you used your full arsenal. By endgame it’s so easy to just spam skills after skills, in combinations with grenades, overwhelming the bosses. Naytiba Raven took me like 5 tries, armored core 3 tries, the rest still 1st try. Would be a lot more fair if the game doesn’t let you resurrect like in Sekiro.
The game gives a lot of Horizon Zero Dawn + Jedi Survivor vibe with the world & controls. The open world part has a lot less quality than Horizon Zero Dawn. So many parts of the wasteland and great desert are super low fidelity. The controls are very similar to Jedi Survivor with the double jump + dash and the robot. But the combat is still better in Jedi Survivor. In Stellar Blade you can spam block to trigger parry, which is ridiculous. Also you don’t feel the weight of your attacks and parries in Stellar Blade. It’s more of a greatly improved mobile game combat system than a true Souls game.
One of the best features in this game is the ability to enter photo modes in cutscenes, and the ability to save your configurations. Never seen these 2 features in other games
The game did a lot of stuff exceptionally well. Notably the outfits, puzzles, and soundtracks.
I’ve never seen a game with so many great free outfits collectables, except for modded Skyrim with Apachii Divine Elegance Store.
Divinity Original Sin 2
I spent over 400 hours in Larian’s 2023 masterpiece, Baldur’s Gate 3, so I thought I should try out their earlier work, DOS2, which many people claim to be better than BG3.
And it is, in terms of the story and the gameplay, anything but the production quality. The production quality isn’t even that bad, but it’s just not able to get me addicted like BG3 did. I’m not at act 2 and I still plan to finish it, eventually.
Cities Skylines 2
After playing this game, I finally understood the complexities of traffic management.
I poured 60 hours creating a mega city incorporating NYC, Palo Alto, SF, some industrial shithole, Prague, and stuff, and in the end the traffic just sucks everywhere. I even had to look up on traffic managements in this game on YouTube, and it’s really complex.
I was really invested in it while building out my city, but after creating all the stuff I wanted, I just kind of lost any motivation in continuing. This game definitely does not have a lot of replay value, as you can try out everything in a single playthrough/city.
Crusader Kings 3
From the same publisher of Cities Skylines 2, Crusader Kings 3 is another slow burning addictive game. I have 100 hours in this game, first creating a Scandi Empire starting from a small county in South Norway, and then created my own queen of Italia full of cheats, like having all positive traits in the game possible.
Pretty fun, but like Cities Skylines 2, it’s very repetitive and with no objectives, just sandboxing. Once you did a playthrough, there’s really no need to do another one.
Nier Automata
Many people say Stellar Blade is a Nier Automata knock-off, so I had to check it out. Unfortunately, the combat was so shit that I had to ditch it before even getting into the real story.
The production quality also seemed to be a lot worse than Stellar Blade. There are lots of 2D sections. The game overall just felt so cheap. Theoretically the story should carry it through the bad production quality, but it failed to captivate me in the first few hours, and I just cannot invest any more of my precious time into it.
Oblivion Remastered
I love Skyrim and has 400 hours on it, but it’s mostly because of the mods. Oblivion Remastered, while looks visually much better, is lacking in mods. It also doesn’t look as good as the other recent modern games still, and the combat is still shit.
So I just ditched it after 10 hours.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows
Actually the best stealth in the whole Assassin’s Creed franchise. Being able to prone feels amazing and on nightmare it’s absolutely essential. The nightmare difficulty is very well done, the enemies finally feel smart. When you’re standing or crouching on a rooftop, they can actually spot you instantly, feels so much more realistic than previous games and stealths in other action adventure games. The assassination animations are also super smooth and stylish and real.
They improved the melee a bit as well, definitely the best in the series, but it’s still pretty bad compared to other games.
I like the customizable base as well. Always like that sort of thiings.
Unfortunately the exploration is pretty bad compared to the recent RPG entries like Origins and Odyssey, I mean it’s pretty grounded and that’s good but it’s just not fun. Adding that tho the stealth feels super grounded, it’s not exactly fun either, I ditched the game after 50 hours as I picked up Rise of the Ronin, which has around the same level exploration, much worse graphics, much worse stealth, but far more fun and better melee.
Rise of the Ronin - GOTY
Rise of the Ronin is definitely a top 5 game for me. It is incredibly fun. People shit about the graphics but it’s really not that bad. Many texture is low-fi, but the world can look pretty at times, and the character models are superb. Plus the gameplay makes up for it.
The meat of the gameplay is the stance system. Each stance has a completely different moveset, and for each moveset you have 4 skills that you can use. The difference between different skills is honestly just the animation. Some are flurry attacks quick as lightning, some are slow but powerful, and some provide range. You can also switch between stances mid-attack, and when you do that, the character would do a fancy spin, making it look super seamless. Aside from switching stances, you can also switch between your 2 weapons at any time with the same flashy animation.
The game encourages you to switch between stances & weapons as well, as when you do that, you’d recover some ki i.e. stamina. So once you master all your stances, you can seamlessly switch between the 2 weapons and 3 movesets for each, mixing and matching the 24 skills to craft out a super epic combat flow, destroying enemies like an artist dancing round the battle field. Absolutely peak gameplay, even rivaling Sekiro tho in an almost opposite way.
In Sekiro, the flow of a combat is provided by the enemy’s artistic & flowy movesets, while all you do is parry and do basic attacks. But in Rise of the Ronin, YOU are the artist.
Biggest issue and what if in this game is the parrying animation. It’s called counterspark in this game, and the animation is super bad. It looks and sounds blurry and muffled while in Sekiro it feels so clean and stylish. Many enemies in this game have fancy attacking patterns as well, but because of the bad parry animation it doesn’t feel rewarding when parrying the attacks at all.
It also features a paraglider for traversal, adding an extra dimension in approaching the battle field. You can climb up a tower to assassinate the guard, and immediately jump off to fly to another complex and air assassinate the enemies.
And when you finish a combat, you can long press the sheath/unsheath button to trigger a flashy chiburi (removing blood from the blade). Ghost of Tsushima has this too but Rise of the Ronin has a few different chiburi animations for each weapon, not just one.
Reading
I reread some 金庸 and finally finished Permutation City. That’s literally all. Sad.
TV Shows
The Mandalorian
Watched this show for baby yoda because it looks a lot like my cat. Every time baby Yoda was on the screen I was screaming my cat’s name
But it’s a very mid show.
Game of Thrones
Finally watched Game of Thrones. My policy had always been that, if a show/movie was adapted from a book, then I had to read a book first. I tried, reading half of the book 1, but the adult me is just too adhd to complete any long fiction, so I decided to just let go of the imaginary constraint.
It’s underwhelming. It’s a good show, but I thought it would be 10/10 Jesus’s second coming best show I’ve ever watched, but it’s far from it. Not even in my top 5. It’s a good show and that’s it.
8/10
Super Pumped
Watched a bunch of tech dramatized documentary end of the year, starting with Super Pumped.
Great show. Feels like a genuine show. Some of the stuff Travis Kalanick did were insane.
The Dropout
I never really looked into what Theranos was all about. Now that I learned about it, I still cannot comprehend how this can happen in a real world. If it’s a fiction I’d be pointing out all he plot holes.
The actress Amanda Seyfried was absolutely amazing. One of the strongest acting I’ve ever seen in all television/movies, really acting out an awkward and dysfunctional character.
I’d give 9/10 to [[Amanda Seyfried]] and 8/10 to the overall show.
WeCrashed
WeWork, another big real life tech drama under the same VC as Uber, Benchmark Capital. There must be something wrong with them.
I don’t really like this show, focusing on how annoying and disturbing his wife is too much. Maybe it’s like that irl as well, but when several episodes only focused on that it’s just not fun to watch.
The Social Network
Finally watched it. Didn’t know Zuck was such an ass.
Not really a good movie tho. Just too jumpy without a concise and focused storyline. It’d be so much better as a tv series.
7/10 at most
Cats
Having cats is really so rewarding because they’re so slow burn. Over the course of 2 years they slowly became more and more affectionate, tho I’m not entirely sure if it’s just because of time or also about age, like them becoming more social as they grow up.
Being stepped on by your kitties while you’re sleeping is one of the best feelings in the world.
Music
I embarassingly got into kpop this year. I had always been an avid kpop hater because I just hated the culture and the music was very shit to me.
But this year I got exposed to Le Sserafim on TikTok, and gradually starting to like some of their musics. There is a Easy Crazy Hot acappella-beatbox mix that absolutely got me hooked (to Chaewon’s voice). And then I got exposed to ILLIT as well.
ILLIT’s songs are honestly so good musically. They just feel so soothing and comfy. Absolutely love Minju’s cursive singing. The mixing is also top notch, very magnetic and dreamy like a midnight fiction. But it doesn’t mean that I am now into kpop in general … most of the other groups’ songs are still pretty shit to me.
I really wish those great kpop groups vocalists like Chaewon & Minju can just leave their groups and go solo immediately. Or maybe the kpop groups can just become traditional bands where there’s only 1 main vocalist and other people just be dancing or showing off their makeups. All kpop songs would be so much better if exclusively sung by the main vocalists, rather than forcedly passing mics to mid/shit singers like a circus.
I still remembered my first impression of BTS being so bad because my first and only exposure to themw as SUGA’s voice from Halsey’s “SUGA’s interlude” and compared to Halsey’s angelic soothing voice he sounded like a teenage boy during his voice changing phase. But then I listened to the main vocalist Jung Kook’s solo songs and he can actually sing so well.
Other than Le Sserafim & ILLIT, the ranking mostly stay the same. Mree, Aurora, and Radiohead are still my top artists … and 2023 was actually the same as well. It’s pretty impressive that Mree managed to be my top 1 for 2 consecutive years tho.
Aside from Mree, Radiohead has been my top 3 for 5 years, and Aurora for 4 years.
Goals & Dreams
Reviewing 2024 Goals
My goals by 25yo in 2024 was
- Skydiving A-License
- Paragliding P2 Certification
- Able to ski most double blacks comfortably
I’m not sure why I didn’t include backcountry skiing, maybe I didn’t know this then? But my actual actionable goals for 2025 throughout the year were just getting Paragliding P2 & Avi 1 (avalanche course/cert level 1 for backcountry skiing), and I achieved bot of them.
2026 Goals
I would turn 25 at 2026, and I still plan to get the Skydiving A-License. As for skiing most double blacks comfortably, I’m not too sure because I’ve already hit a plateau in skiing. I can ski very easy double blacks like Gunbarrel/The Face in Heavenly, but “most double blacks”? Certainly not. But goals shouldn’t be all 100% achieveable, so I can keep it on the list.
I also want to shift some focus to backcountry skiing. When I first learned snowboarding in Feb, I thought I’d do skiing 2:1 snowboarding in the future, but it’s really not that fun for me. The insane overhead at the start & end of every lap kills all the joy already, and it’s also not as nimble as skis.
For paragliding, it’s fun, but I honestly don’t find thermalling alone that much fun because you’re always on an edge, trying and working hard to stay up. But I find the little cross-country flights I did in Chile very enjoyable. Very fulfilling. But for now I still enjoy skiing more, so I wouldn’t use PTOs in winter for paragliding.
So here are my goals for 2026
- at least 1 paragliding trip
- at least 1 backcountry skiing trip
- get paragliding P3
- ski most double blacks comfortably
- get skydiving A license
- (career) get to mid level
Dreams by 30
This were what I wrote down last year
- Learn wingsuit flying
- Become an expert level skier
- Get to advanced level in another extreme/adventure sport
I think these largely stay the same. I now know that BASE jumping is like the most dangerous sport out there with considerable risk of death associated with every jump, but wingsuit flying doesn’t need to be from BASE jumping, it can also be from a plane like regular skydiving, it’s just less cool. In fact wingsuit base jumping is more like the extreme version of regular wingsuit flying.
I don’t really feel the desire to do BASE jumping. It’s like how I love skiing but don’t really want to do cliffs and chutes. I mean I can’t even if I want due to skill issue.
I listened to plenty of episodes of Adventure Sport Podcast this year and I feel like I should try out an adventure sport every year. Aside from skydiving, whitewater kayaking seems fun. I tried commercial whitewater rafting tours in Taiwan and Philippines as a child and they were super fun so I’m sure I’d enjoy white water kayaking.
I haven’t heard much about mountain biking but I think I’d enjoy it as well.
As for career, my dream would definitely be finding a remote high paying job and then move to like Utah or Colorado if staying in the US, or Switzerland or Norway if not limited to the US, and do all sorts of adventure sports.