Registered this domain about a year ago, hoping that I will use it once the world is back to some level of normalcy. After November and January, I felt a greater hope of reaching that goal.
One year
Planning
If you don’t have a plan, don’t expect thing to work itself out.
A plan is nothing, the planning is everything.
Overloaded
Put on my sunglasses and realized that I have the earbuds in and mask on. My ears are overloaded.
Heroic Act
Something is wrong when there is an on going heroic act within a team. One or a handful of people keep working overtime to keep the team moving forward, or just running to stand still. The one person knows how the critical system works can be very efficient, yet also the bottleneck for scaling the product and teams. However, we do need heroes once in a while to get us out of a jam, push project forward.
Lost in 2020
So much was lost during the 2020 pandemic, including the Zappos founder Tony Hsieh. I have heard and read many stories surrounding Tony, like how he put company culture as the first and foremost important thing in driving Zappos success. Story about the Las Vegas Downtown Project, about how he intentionally create collisions for people to run into either other. Also, the dark side of the Downtown Project involving several suicide of the founders.
Reading his book “delivering happiness” learned that he was born in Urbana, IL to parents of UIUC graduate students from Taiwan. He absolutely shined brightly during his lifetime.
A really sad lost.
Normality
Was on an interview at 11 am and the first thing the candidate said was that we have a new President at that moment.
It was so tense in the last few days, the storming of the Capital Hill on Jan 6 and the rumor of possible armed protests across the county on Inauguration Day. Yet, the day turned out to be uneventful. Such a strange overwhelming sense of relief that all is quiet. A collective sigh of relief across the country.
Normality.
Eagerly Await
Twenty twenty is finally behind us. Still, New Year’s day is just another day on the calendar. Regardless of when the pandemic ends, I am most looking forward to traveling internationally.
First, of course, going back to Taiwan to visit my families. Next on the lists are
Vancouver, BC – we really liked the city and it’s the last city we visited at the end of 2019.
Anywhere Europe – last trip to Europe was in 2016 to Abisko, Sweden. Berlin would be a great place to go after reopen.
New Zealand – of course.
Aside from leaving this bubble of quarantine, I look forward to the physical interactions with others, a hand shake, a pat on the back, or an embrace.
Point of View
Riding an Uber to the San Antonio airport for the early flight back to Chicago for the Thanksgiving week. The drive was freely sharing his opinion of the current state of the election.
“The Democrats are turning America into a socialized country, because that is what they want”
“Look at Venezuela, that’s what happened”
“They are taking my guns away, but I am not a killer”
How very unfortunately of the human nature, every election campaigns always turned into spreading of negativity. Let’s rise above the negativity and find the best in us. Let’s reach for the higher standard.
1461:1
Probability factor 1461:1, normality restoring.
We were in San Antonio moving into my apartment on Election Day. For a few nail biting vote counting days, we see decency prevailed. On Saturday while walking around the courtyard of the San Antonio Museum of Art, the word came in WE WON! Normality is getting restored!! We still have a long road to go, but normality will be restored!
San Antonio
Took the night flight to San Antonio. This time, with Shin-Shin. We finally made the trip to San Antonio together to see this new city that we will be the residents of.
We will be apartment hunting this weekend, around the Pearl area. When I was here in September, walked by 120 Ninth and was impressed by its marketing when researching it. Later found a few troubling reviews, like thefts, break ins and rooms got rented out for Airbnb. Found a few more newer apartments in the area through an Yelp user, who was apartment hunting in San Antonio in June and wrote reviews for all the ones she went to. Her preference seemed to match ours nicely. We will be looking at Jones & Rio, Southline Residences and Can Plants this time around.