I’m someone who really lives my life in narratives; it’s all a unified story (with some side-quests, but nonetheless, one cohesive story). I’ve always meant to snapshot who I am and what I think my life’s been like. I had a doc in my old Obsidian where I meant to regularly do this at various wordcounts (to see what was most important to me at the time). But I never did. Somewhat inspired by 36 questions which lead to love, here’s a basic 4 minute summary of my life story.
I was born in Calgary to two Chinese immigrants, and went to a Catholic school from k-4; my mom worked there part-time (still does!) I was fortunate to get into GATE, so I did gr 4-9 at Hillhurst and Queen Elizabeth with some of the most intelligent, competitive people I’ve ever known. It was an extremely formative experience; when going, I told my parents “as long as I’m the second stupidest, I’ll survive”. That’s an attitude I’ve taken through life. My most notable achievements then were in grade 6, when I wrote a book, and sang the lead male role in our 2hr long school opera with Calgary Opera to ~1k in attendance. I then went to Churchill for HS. I absolutely massively tryharded; I had a 100 math and physics IB average. But then, COVID cut grade 10 short. I’m an intensely competitive person, and at the time, I was massively jaded that everyone had the same grades as me after cheating on online quizzes, despite not putting in the hard work. I lost my sense of pride; what I’d worked for all 16 years of my life had been a waste, diluted to zero. It made me realize that grades were bullshit.
Out of complete boredom, I got into programming during COVID, thanks in large part to enjoying CS class at school. Within 4 months of “hello world”, I’d gotten a silver medal at my first Kaggle competition, as well as first in a 400 person hackathon. I eventually worked my way up to top 0.6% on Kaggle, and tens of thousands won from hackathons. I got my first internship doing OR scheduling for 3 Ontario hospitals; Pedro was the best boss I’d ever had until then, he taught me linear algebra during work (he was an IMO medallist). But even through all of that, it wasn’t enough. I was a terrible student in grade 11, given I did all my coursework in the final few days, and focused on coding. I’d gotten rejected from every university. And I couldn’t see a world in which I’d get a job in ML; there were higher barriers back then, with every position requiring graduate degrees.
I needed change. I tryharded grade 12 again, and was going to go to UBC. And I somehow stumbled into the most meritocratic industry of all: crypto. I flew to NYC for a hackathon to sleep on the couch of a guy I’d never met in person (thanks Eugene), and miraculously won said hackathon. I got an offer beyond my wildest dreams as the first employee of a hot new startup. For the first year, I travelled the world (Hungary, UK, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, Canary Islands, Dominican Republic, Mexico) for free. I thought that was it; I’d made it. Oh how wrong I was. The next year was brutal soulsearching as I questioned why I was burning my life on an unprofitable b2b SAAS startup. I’d wanted to travel and buy certain items (Leica camera, Macbook, etc.) for so long, that after achieving it, I didn’t care nearly as much about the money, but moreso valued quality of life. In hindsight, this was maybe moreso a figment of having an awful “irl” social life and a horribly unbalanced life; I didn’t see my friends from 2020-22 (apart from a singular week in NYC). This meant that the only people I interacted with daily were in their mid 30’s; that was pretty formative for who I am maturity-wise, and also in the way I speak. But I quit in March 2024, and joined two friends for a startup in SF. That’s going pretty well. We’ve gotten 190k users and made $2m since then. I’m much happier now, playing badminton, running, cycling, and meeting people whom I enjoy the company of weekly.
Even though I’m still figuring out what’s most important to me, life’s pretty great and only getting better.
Played badminton for a few hours, met a new friend who’s down to string my rackets for $15, lfg. I went to McDonalds after and got SIX COOKIES for $4, and some ice cream from Village Ice Cream. Worth it. Had a fun time by myself.
I reconnected with Stanley Zhang after I saw his insta story of him cycling; he literally got his first road bike last week, so I’ll probably go cycling with him in the next few days. I wanna do my first 100km ride.