Back in my day, my family used our dial-up internet to “block” unwanted phone calls (IYKYK). AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) was how I texted my friends. I blogged on Xanga as a tween, where I first got exposed to HTML and CSS. I downloaded music from Limewire (the OG Spotify) and coped with my teenage angst on Tumblr.

Soft delete my memories. I think I’ve built a decent set of morals over the decades, so it’d be a waste to hard-reboot and lose all that training data. Honestly, soft deleting my memories sounds like it could save me a lot of time and money on therapy.

I can draw an insanely accurate doodle of Spongebob in under 90 seconds. It’s never actually come in handy. Maybe it could help calm down a crying toddler one day, but do kids even watch Spongebob these days?

I’m a recovering social justice warrior. In my heyday, I was blocked by exactly one tech billionaire on Twitter. These days, I’m more interested in calling people in vs. calling them out. I’m more grounded and curious, even when someone’s views don’t align with mine.

No silos. I think the most interesting work happens through an interdisciplinary lens. I don’t believe people should stay in one lane. I like to explore and pull from different fields to shape whatever I’m building or creating.

Become a polyglot. I speak Cantonese and English now, and I plan to become fluent in Japanese and French in my lifetime. I also want to publish my noir-sci-fi-historical-fiction novel and discover a new species of marine life while scuba diving, preferably something weird and quirky, so I can name it after myself.

I fully embrace it. AI feels like the industrial revolution 2.0. Computers are just another form of machinery getting automated, same as the assembly line. The real tragedy of AI is what it did to the em dash. I used to love using it. Now it’s just not cool.

I loved writing as a kid. Still do. I thought I’d grow up to be a writer and think I still might.

I was born and raised in the Tenderloin² in San Francisco, and later my family moved to Bayview. I’m a Native San Franciscan through and through.

My parents were both born in Vietnam and came to the U.S. as refugees. But our roots go back further: my grandparents are originally from Guangdong Province in China. We’re part of a specific ethnic group known as