From the Town to the City

This blog was a great idea but the follow through was lackin’. 

During my time in the bay, I’ve neglected to periodically update this blog with my experiences. 

My Asia blog makes me smile. It’s great to have something to bring you back to a fond experience. 

Damn, it has been 4 months since my last post. I'm still alive and kickin in the City. Traveled back to the town a couple of times since. I have a lot to catch up on. Here is a quick sneak preview.

Christmas trip back to the Town

Cousin's wedding in the Town

Experiencing the Town winning the ring in the City

Las Vegas Part 1

Las Vegas Part 2

Russian Hill, I have arrived

Golfing, the new frontier

The Town vs The City

The homies are in the City

Cambos in the City

Recently, I discovered the value of having a bike in SF. In a nutshell, it's the fastest way to get around. Frisco is a bike friendly city with lots of bike lanes and places to park your bike. Also, my peers have bikes too and invite me out for rides. With no bike, I can't really ride with them. Lastly, it's a great way to explore the city. To traverse every alley. To discover new views and to capture my own memories in the city.

Where will I find my bike? Well since I'm about that startup life, I need to find cost effective bike. I don't mind second hand since that's how I came up. Plus, I can view it as an opportunity to meet new people, negotiate, and do research on bikes to be able to identify the intrinsic value of a bike. I'll be searching craigslist, local bike shops (LBS), and second hand markets. Hopefully, my shopping won't be long, and I'll be riding soon.

Thus far, these are my requirements

Prefer to be under $500

Road bike from a respectable brand

Shimano Tiagra or better

54in - 58in frame

Dropbar handlebars 

Man, it got real out in here in SF. There was a shooting that took place at 2PM across the street near my startup's office. The details of the shooting can be found here. Basically, a shooter has a price dispute and decided to shoot up the Jewelry Mart and murder 2 people. 

We saw from our office as the situation unfolded. From the first cop on the scene to the evacuation and surrendering of the shooter. It was intense and surreal to see it unfold. We witnessed double digit number of cop cars come on the scene, SWAT, gang unit, mobile unit command center, and K9s come on the scene. 

I empathize for the families who lost their loved ones that day. My condolences to their family and friends. May there not be another instance like this in the future. 

Pictures from the rooftop of our office

My birthday just passed. The big quarter century hallmark. When I moved down here a month ago, I accepted the fact my birthday would be a lonely: my family and my closet friends are in Seattle.

To my surprise, that wasn't the case. I forgot that in Seattle one of my close friends move to Sf. I was reminded of that during this weekend. He remembered my birthday and put in the effort to celebrate my birthday by organizing a dinner and gather friends he thought I would enjoy their company. He done did a solid for me. On top of that, my cousin joined me since I found out she lives in the area. 

Overall, it was a memorable first birthday in SF. I'm looking forward to subsequent birthdays in Frisco!

Over the weekend, I got to be active and have some fun:

JC took me to South Bay (Los Altos) to play flag football

Ate Cambodian food in Mountain View (it wasn't real Khmer unfortunately)

Explored Frisco's swanky night life

Met an interesting group of from Michigan. Solid group of people and they even enjoyed The Wire.

Restaurants

Thanh Long

Local Edition

Novela

Marlowe

Places

Mountain View

Los Altos

Mission Bay

Downtown SF

Sunset

Embarcadero 

Man, I fell off on my posts. Roughly speakin', I'm 3 months late in my posts. 

Why am I late: combination of lack of prioritizing and neglect. I want to maintain it as a record of my thoughts during my startup life. I'm not one to journal but want to keep record of this once and a lifetime opportunity.

A raw and unedited look into the thoughts of a champion as he prepares for the Mr. Olympia competition. Shot by his training partner with a phone in the midd...

Each day, I admire and grow more respect for this athlete and person. Kai Greene embodies the mind state I want to achieve in the future. 

I am way behind on my entries, but I have to share this thought that's been marinating in my mind lately. 

I want to refine my craft (software engineering).

Refine not perfect to a new level where I can develop my own web applications, large scale systems, and infrastructure tools.

Rather than try and describe everything, I'm going to try a different format where I list things and comment on the list items.

Work

"The life of a startup. no such thing as a day off".

Constantly working and thinking on how to improve things. Guiding hueristic: identify a measurable goal and improve it. This greatly helps with prioritization 

Worked partially on July 4th, weekends, late nights, etc.

"Kaizen == Infrastructure?"

Automate deployment process => repeatable deployments (fabric, AWS, vagrant)

Automate setup of development environment => quicker/standard/common development setup? (boxen)

Establish development workflow => common development/test cycle amongst team? (e.g. vagrant, fabric, etc.)

Most of my contributions have been kaizen/infrastructure. 

Naturally, I like to work on infrastructure because I like to improve my personal productivity; however, there is a point of diminishing returns when focus is not improving the productivity for the entire team

Social

"Fireworks, viewed on the bay bridge on the way to Treasure Island with old friends and new friends"

Met DC and Amy

SF traffic on Bridge

Beautiful show

106.1 KMEL plays good ass music

"Ocean beach is the new Alki"

Hike thwarted by SF traffic, settled for beach

Real beach reminded me of LA

Water (Pacific Ocean) hella cold

Hella long beach (longer than any in Seattle)

Neighborhoods

Treasure Island // beautiful place, tourist spot, fun to visit

Again, I’m slippin’ on my posts. I have a huge backlog (a month behind). I need to be more active on my posts and reduce the amount of time I spend on it. Let’s see if I can find a format that works well for me.

Work

It’s going “okay". I’m satisfied with my productivity. I’m slow, dumbfounded on how certain things work, and I’m getting confused a lot because new technologies; however, I’m going to piece together everything and eventually because fluent in it.

This drop in productivity, I attribute to switching jobs. Every time one switches, the cost assumed from switching is ramping up on the development environment, software development process at your new place, and adjusting to the new culture. I know I can code quickly with quality. Before I do that, I need to refine my skills in Python, Vim, and ops tools. Hopefully within the next two weeks I can be solid on all fronts to really start contribute greatly. I realized I was heavily dependent on Eclipse at my previous employer. Prior to that, Visual Studio. I’ll let you infer my previous work places. Something that I thought was pretty cool was that my CSE dept reached out to us to visit our HQ and interview our team. They added a cool personal interest piece on us on their website. I think that’s pretty legit.

Social

Socially, things are moving fast for me. I was able to bootstrap my social circle with my existing friends/coworkers who live in the bay. Since my last post, I had the opportunity to visit the Tesla HQ in Palo Alto for a CSE alumni event (I got to checkout a Model S, super fresh). Additionally, an old college friend came to visit me for the weekend. At the same time, a person whom I used to play football on weekends came to visit. As a result, it pushed me to checkout the city. The first night, I met up with my friend and her friend near the TL. We ended up exploring the city (albeit, I did a terrible job since I’ve only been here for 3 weeks) and eating Thai food in the TL. We ended up at a roof top lounge area called Jones. That place was a solid spot given that it was a roof top lounge with a cool atmosphere. I wished there was music though. This place was more swanky than anything. Ideal for techies and investment bankers.

The second night, K’vontre, his friend, and me went bar hopping around SoMA(City beer, Bloodhound, Willows) and then went to a block party at a place called Mighty. That was straight up different than what I am use to. It was an electronic/house place. I’m more of a hip hop fan myself. Let’s just say I was open to try new things and can safely cross that one off :).

Later in the night, we met up with my other friend whom was visiting in Castro since it was Pride weekend. That was one hell of an experience. We took muni out there, the train was packed. When we arrived, the station was filled with people. My first sight was a girl on the ground being detained by an officer and her friend yelling "<name> don’t say anything, don’t say shit!". It was real. When we got street side, Market street was filled with people, from hoppers, gang bangers, dealers, gays, lesbians, and even naked people! Eventually, we were able to find my friends but all the places were packed so we grabbed a table and purchased a bottle and drank for the rest of the night. It was an interesting experience people watching during Pride weekend in the Castro. 

On Sunday night, my friends and I met with an old college friend in San Mateo to eat some Japense food. The place was really good. It was good catching up with him. He has a girlfriend now, and they are pushing on a year ish. Proud of him since he is more the introvertive type. Looks like the bay area treated him well :). 

Neighborhoods

Mission // bars, bars, and bars

Castro // i have no idea what happened that night it was crazy. SF’s first gay neighborhood. capitol hill on molly. 

Tenderloin // good eats (Little Saigon) similar to 12 and Jackson, nice bar

SoMA // lots of bars, mid price eats, full of workers from tech and finance

Hot damn, it's been a minute since we last spoke. Why the MIA? My schedule has been hectic, and I haven't prioritize my blogging (but that's going to change). My schedule has been so inconsistent. I have been taking advantage of every opportunity that comes my way. But enough of the explaining, let's get to talkin'

I've been more social since the last we spoke. There have been a lot of social functions. However, I'm still maintaining my priorities. One, push myself technically and business aptitude to help my company grow. Two, push my self socially to help grow my personality. Three, enjoy SF and what it has to offer!

Work

My work schedule is starting to stabilize. I put in ~50 hours a week. Start from 10 end at 7 or 8PM. Despite working over 40 hours a week, I'm cool with it because it's fun. The work is fun, and my team makes it interesting too. In contrast with corporate life, I prefer this  more. My takeaway is that it is more personable, self filling, team cohesion, and overall ownership. Plus, I'm constantly asking myself a new question. It's no longer how I can grow. It's how can I help this company grow. This change in mentality I think it was starts to set people apart from corporate and startup.

On 6/18, we had a team morale event at ATT Park. We got to watch Giants (SF) v Padres (SD); however, 1/4 of the team was watching the NBA finals on their phones. The view from the park though, oh snaps, too legit. That night was deals too since we got $5 off concession food per ticket, so we loaded up on garlic fries, hot dogs, nachos, and beer. The food there is good but the garlic fries in the Town go hard especially with the apple.

As for new learnings at work, I'm still working on sysops items. I was responsible for deploying our latest product, called Dashboard (an application for doing analytics on attendance data to identify trends for absences). I over promised and it ended up being a day late. Note to self: under promise over deliver. Another thing to mention is I got to experience how a startup practices being Agile (a software engineering concept that describes an approach to developing software). It's free form, no clear structure yet. It can definitely be improved to track engineering efforts and aid the business team (biz dev) in planning. Ideally, we want to be in a place where we can accurately and consistently cost features so that biz dev can plan accordingly. I would like to be more efficient at work since I feel inefficient with my time spent. 

Social

A lot has happen socially for me.

For the first time ever, I went on a bike ride through the city from the office all the way north to Saulsilto/Tiburon, including cross the golden gate bridge. I rode with two coworkers and a coworker's friend. We tried to go up Hawk Hill, but I went up like 1/10 of the way and was like oh hell no, no mas playa. That ride was fun but at the same time painful (I cramped up in both quads halfway between Saulsilto and Tiburon and took the ferry back). Do not attempt to try and bike after cramping, even after a trivially amount of rest (like ~20 minutes). So painful. Overall, I clocked like 20+ miles on the ride. New respect for cyclist man.

That night, a coworker and I and his friends went to go see Man of Steel at AMC Metreon 16. Super nice theater with everyone dressed up for some reason (I have no idea why). At the end of the movie, I did see a guy struggling at the sink. I think drinking and 3D movies don't go well with each other.

The following Friday, I went to go see a movie with my coworker and his circle of friends from startup weekend and a toastmaster like thing. We watched World War Z. But before that my friend and I went to go eat in the Mission (Mission District) at this mexican place called, El Farolito. Oh snaps, GD, what's up, that good good, burrito went so hard. I had a carne asada, spinach, extra hot. And it was cheap too. It's definitely a  spot for the homies. Favorite burrito joint secured.

The next saturday, my homie from the Town to the City for work and was supposed to arrive early but he missed his flight. He had to take standby and basically was coolin' at SeaTac for 7 hours! When he arrived we ate at a local French spot in Portero Hill called Chez Maman. Oh wee that place hits. Favorite French place in the city. After, we attend my friend's house party function where 3 people coordinate to house hop over the night. Cool ass idea. I met some really interesting people with admirable academic backgrounds: alumnis from Harvard, Stanford, UPenn, Columbia, UIUC, UT Austin. It's a humbling experience to meet them all since I admire them for their accomplishments thus far. It also encourages me to equally push hard for my dreams and desires. I'm sure at one point in their life getting into those colleges was their main goal. Therefore, my main goal is to help grow my startup.

The next day, the homie and I went took the Bart out to east bay to see Cal (UC Berkley) to explore the campus and the life over there. On the way over, I got to see West Oakland. I can see why my peers make their comments about Oakland being a hood ass spot that they never want to go to. But I do want to explore it and find its hidden value. They had beautiful graffiti. But back to Berkley, beautiful spot with lots of offering: cheap eats, heart of Berkley, cool campus. We ate a spot called CREAM (Cookies Rule Everything Around Me, a play on the Wu-Tang acronym CREAM, cash rules everything around me, a belief I use to by exclusively) and a Louisiana joint called Angeline. All extra good. Want to visit again during the daytime. 

So far in the social scene, I'm improving and doing well :) Each week I've been meeting new people and putting myself out there (introducing myself and joining conversations). Not going to lie, I get anxious and nervous at first but that's why I'm out here right! An artifact of growing is feeling uncomfortable!

Neighborhoods 

Saulsilto // nice area north of the city. similar to Madrona/Madison Valley, upper middle class area

Berkley // home of Cal, like u-district (even got a University Ave!), lots of good food and sights

Daly City // south end of city straight up like Southcenter/Northgate: plazas, locals, consignment shops

Portero Hill // quiet spot in the city with small shops kind of like rainier valley

Mission // trendy spot like Capitol Hill. cheap eats, good bar/club scene

Random

Disclaimer: This post is about 3 weeks old. I've been so busy and without a consistent schedule I had a hard time finding time to refine my post before it was "post" ready. Enjoy! I got a few more coming today! ha ha ha

It's been almost a week since I have moved from Seattle to SF. Since I arrived, I've dove right into the Learnsprout culture, experiencing what they been living for the last two years. Additionally, I have sampled a bit of the city but haven't taken a large bite out of it yet because I'm still shy to venture on my own. I ain't no bitch though, I'm going to set a challenge for myself even if it is as superficial as sayin', "I'm going to visit a new neighborhood every weekend". As long as it keeps me out I'm happy.

Work 

I jumped right and did some pair programming with the CTO and learn some new system operations (sysops) tools: Boxen and Fabric. Both are really interesting, and I want to setup my own Boxen config for my personal setup. Basically, the library and tool automate the setup process for new machines(automatically installs software, automate relatively simple tasks). I can see these tools being essential for having a repeatable and reproducible. One thing that was extra week though was my brand new work laptop (15' inch MacBook Pro Retina) had an issue where it couldn't charge, so I had to get it repaired at the Apple store. While my laptop was out of commission, I paired program with the CTO, and together we worked on writing a small feature. So this week was a success since I was able to launch my first feature...without actually typing the code! Furthermore, the lifestyle at my work is vastly different than it was previously. It's more personal. Everyone  genuinely greets everyone else. Breakfast and lunch are generally provided plus snacks (string cheese for the ma effin win fam). On Friday, they held a BBQ (no reason in particular), and I really enjoyed it. It's an opportunity for me to see everyone in their social element and meet new people. Personally, I love BBQs and the atmosphere it encourages. It enables me to be comfortable and let my character shine(for my farewell event, I held a BBQ in Seattle at Alki beach). I also got to learn to play Cities and Knights (expansion of Settlers of Catan). Let's be real though, that shit is confusing and chaotic, oh man.

Social Scene

Socially, I haven't yet experienced the scene in the city. On the weekdays, I finish work pretty late (come in fairly late ~10:30ish). My circle consists of my coworkers. While they are dope as hell, I need establish my own social scene outside of work for diversity.  I should mention though, that my friend from my old neighborhood was in city for the Apple conference. So we met up for dinner in Tenderlon (TL) at this crackin' ass crawfish joint, Red Crawfish. We ordered a lb of crawfish, a lb of shrimp, and a 1lb of the seafood combo, and 2 bowls of garlic noodles. I wish Seattle had more places like that. I'll be real though and say I couldn't handle their hottest. Like a bitch, I asked the waitress to make it less spicy after eating a 1/4lb of crawfish. I've tried a few other places in Richmond to eat after work with my coworkers. They aite but not the best. Their bubble tea pops off though, ooh wee. Still on mission to find my favorite spots though. Must find best sandwich place. Candidates thus far: Ike's (haha yeah only 1 thus far)

Neighborhoods I visited:

SoMA // something like a SLU. gentrification. changing quickly, new place to kick it

Outer Richmond // straight up like beacon hill. lots of east asians and chinese food spots

Inner Richmond // lots of local food option (not tourist)

Downtown (Civic Center) // cool ass attractions: city hall, library, museum, courthouse

TenderLoin // seems to offer lots of good eats with dope boys on the corner 

  Random:

A bit late but hey that's what happens when you move. Hopefully when I  settled in, everything will be smooth and these entries will be more regular, ya dig. Let's get started on my "Day 1" experience in SF.

June 9th, one month before my birthday, I left Seattle (the Town) to pursue an opportunity in SF (the City). For 6 months, I've been in deep thought about this decision. I came to the following conclusion: in life there are opportunities which can challenge you to push to the next level, I believe this is one of them. This opportunity is a challenge for me to prove I am the man I think I am: not just an engineer and a business man, but a person that can make things happen. Turn ideas into reality. To make something from out of nothing. To really push myself to limits I could only imagine. All my life I have pride myself in the fact that I have done this. I was to test if I can do it again and that before it wasn't a fluke. My word is bond.

Sunday night, I left the Town and arrived in the City at 9:20PM. Coincidentally, one of the cofounders (there are three) was on the same flight as me and spotted me in the security line. Small ass world right!?! We spoke for a bit and met back up when the plane landed. Our conversation consisted of some small talk, working out, startups, and life. When we touched down my friend, one of the other cofounders, swooped me up his girlfriend and employee 1 (also a friend from college and his roommate . It was dope seeing them. We chopped it up as if we seen each other on the regular. No awkwardness, not a moment of silence. The ride back was completely filled with interesting conversation. Upon dropping off one of the cofounders off at his place in SoMA, we made our way back to my friend's spot in Outer Richmond. This area seriously reminds me of Beacon Hill in the Town. It's full of east Asians (Chinese) shops and restaurants and people. The food out here is cheap ($5 - $7) range for a plate. Bubble tea is like ~$3, and it go hard as hell. His spot is a 2 bedroom 1 bathroom place. It's the lower unit to a two unit building. I want to say its less than 650 square feet. Despite it's size, it's perfect for his needs, plus its only ~$650 a month. It's in a low key neighborhood close to shops and Golden Gate park. The remaining of the night, my friend and I stayed up until 2AM talking about my transition, my experiences the last month, and get an idea of how I'm feeling.  I expressed to him my motivation for coming out here. He's a great guy whom I believe in genuinely interested in my well being and wants to help me reach it too. Hell, he also unconsciously want me to help him too!

Next morning at 8:30AM, we headed over to another cofounders house (in Outer Sunset) to pick up my hardware (my laptop) for work. They treated me to breakfast at this Cantonese joint called Lychee Cafe. Cool ass spot that served breakfast for deals. For $5 I got a solid meal: pork chop, ramen, and milk tea. Legit playa. . 

We arrived in the office close to 10:30AM and as I walk upstairs, the rest of the team welcomed me. I'm employee 9, including the cofounders. They all welcomed me like family with open arms and showed me to my desktop. I greatly appreciated it because I felt welcomed and valued. I felt like I'm part of the team. I want to prove to them I want to be part of the team and help raise the team to the next level too. On my desk, I already had some good good: 2 27in monitors, keyboard, mouse, headphones, swag, notebook, and a new 15in Macbook Pro Retina. Twowhoo! This setup goes hard as hell. What topped it off was my package, a gift from my best friend, I had shipped down had arrived and was sitting on my desk. This is an upgrade from my previous employer which gave me a 13in Unibody White Macbook and a desktop with one 24in monitor. This brought raised things to a whole 'nother level. Most of my morning was spent getting acclimated and completing a list of items they had setup for me for my first day (development setup, workstation setup, user account provisioning, HR setup, direct deposit, benefits enrollment, permission setups, etc.). The only snag I came across my first day was my display adapters were defective and I couldn't utilize my two monitors. First world problems fam. No worries though, I spoke with our operations personnel, and they did the right thing and purchased me new ones which would arrive in two days. Legit, procurement seems to be a breeze here. This is a step up from my previous place since it usually requires searching for it, submitting a procurement request, or bringing in my own. Either way, it would normally take longer than two days. So +1 to my team. They got it right.

My first meal with the team was classic. Rotisseries  chickens from Costco. One of my perks with my team is they provide lunch. Today, Costco delivered. I appreciate the frugal/resourceful mentality since it's not very practical for us to eat $20 meals since we are not cash flow positive yet. I admire the practicality and am down for the cause. Shoot, like my old phrase before, it's free it's for me. Obviously, the we would like to become cash flow positive, but that takes time and effort. 

Overall, I think my first day was a success. I was able setup all my accounts, gather/request the necessary information needed for HR, and be able to checkout my team's code on my workstation. Personally, I like their setup a lot. It's modular, decentralized, and for the most part secure.  At least more secure than my previous employers. I'm interested to see how it scales though in the future when more employees join.

At the end of the day, employee #1 and me retreated back to his place to rest. For dinner, we ate a local Chinese spot, called Jade Garden, down the street. Funny thing is back in the town we got a spot called Jade Garden, and it hits for dim sum/dinner(well use to). Unfortunately, they not the same. This place did not live up to the expectation the Town had put down. Oh well, there are more places up and down the street. I'll try this place again after I made my rounds. Maybe they have a better dish and I just missed it. Can't win them all. 

For desert, we had bubble tea at a spot called Purple Kow for bubble tea. Twowhoo, this place goes super hard. I arbitrary selected a favor (roasted oolong or black milk tea not sure I switched at the last moment), and it was mad good. That's how hard it goes. The remaining night I enlightened myself by researching the development tools my team uses  and reviewed my company's website to understand externally what other people see. The website is very simple. I like it. I do wish there was more information or at least examples of what our technology enables. Hopefully, I can help change that soon :).

In all, so far so good! I'm out here doing my damn thing. I'm allin man. My goal: to test my limits and see what I capable of and can achieve in life. Excited, hopeful, anxious, and scared, all at the same damn time. I calm my fear of failure by simply believing there is no wrong going after what you truly want.. I'm going to do my best to make myself, my family, my friends, and Seattle proud.

Every time somebody steps out on the road they bring a little Northwest soul with them, amen