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June 3, 2026 1:30 AM
"Being inefficient is my form of luxury"
Simone Giertz is like, my favorite famous person, and she made an instagram post that really resonated with me.
I must get it from my dad. He's always saying to take time, don't rush things. And he takes it farther than I do. If I'm dealing with a task I hate, like paperwork, I definitely want it to be over as quickly as possible. But any time he mentions more paperwork, he always says "whenever you have time." I've never filled out the paperwork too slowly for him.
Wanting the luxury of inefficiency is one of the reasons I quit my job about a year and a half ago. But then I took on two volunteer jobs and I felt the need to go go go to hit my deadlines. And I have spent much of the past year and a half kind of unhappy with that initial decision to quit my well paying job.
So, it's June now. Life is still a little overwhelming, and I have some complicated feelings towards certain aspects of my life. But I think I finally feel happy that I don't have a normal job right now. Yeah, it's taken almost a year and a half to feel this way. And while this isn't one of the reasons I quit, the number one reason why I'm glad I'm not working now is because I'm not forced to use AI.
I did quit my job to be able to work on my projects. My own projects. The Space was not one of them. What Teochew Say was not one of them. I'm still very much committed to them, but I needed to prioritize my projects over these. My own journey in learning teochew. My food blog. This blog.
Just this past week I spent 5 days working on a site revamp for flailing in my kitchen. I barely did anything for The Space or WTCS during those days. But I did practice my teochew every day and I also exercised almost every day. And that all ended up being perfectly okay. I finally got to implement an idea that I had many months ago, and it was so nice to just work on something where I didn't have to worry about what anyone else thought.
I did laundry yesterday. For most of my adult life, I actually really enjoyed doing laundry. I loved folding clothes. But in the past couple of years I grew so tired of it because of how much laundry I was doing. It felt like the hamper would get full in two days, and there would often be some sort of issue with the shared laundry in the building. But I did laundry yesterday. And it also felt okay.
Yeah, I still have bad days. But a cat on a card reminded me that that's okay too.
May 15, 2026 12:57 PM
prioritizing myself means deprioritizing everything else
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i'm still trying to find the right balance
May 9, 2026 6:10 PM
the confidence of a white man
I was invited to be on a Women in Tech panel for one of NCWIT's Aspirations in Computing event. The organizers provided a list of questions to answer, to talk about my experiences in the field and to give advice to the young students. But the main purpose of the event is that it's an awards ceremony for high schoolers that are involved in technology, who have already shown great promise and accomplishments at such a young age!
When I was in high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do for a career. Sure, I did well in school, but I didn't even think about college until the summer before senior year. I hadn't done any computer programming yet. And these kids, they're leading computer science and robotics clubs, and they're teaching other kids about programming.
What advice would you give to a woman studying computing or tech today?
I looked through your bios, and I have to say, you're all doing such great things and are already so far ahead of where I was when I was in high school. I don't think you really need my advice. So I'll just say something that my little sister has told me (and I hope this is appropriate) but sometimes, you just gotta approach things with the confidence of a white man.
May 6, 2026 3:02 AM
Some good things
A lot of things kind of feel like a mess right now--stress about all the things I need to do, my indecisiveness, not getting enough exercise, my sleeping schedule, my struggle to find a new apartment, having things be up in the air and incomplete when I just want to check a box and not have to keep worry about it...
But there are some good things
I feel good about what I'm eating. It's healthy, and I'm actually not stressing out about trying to figure out what meals to cook, which is the complete opposite of how I've been feeling for the past year, maybe even longer. I'm not making anything too crazy, but it's so satisfying to only ever have a small amount of ingredients in my kitchen and to use them up. I don't waste food!
I am back to practicing Teochew regularly. It's not quite every day, but I'm trying to make it a priority. And honestly, I look forward to it. I'm trying to keep it small and not give myself specific goals. Before I would try to add like five new words at a time to my site and to always post an update about it, and I realized that at some point it ended up just feeling like some daily quota that I needed to reach. And I am not about to put up with that emotionally manipulative duolingo learning tactic again.
Talking to people is good. I'm trying to make sure I keep doing that.
Today I was in a totally normal and uninteresting coffee shop, just getting some work done, when I noticed something about the music playing. It was pretty quiet, but it sounded...Cambodian. Like I'm brought back to memories of childhood, being at a Chinese restaurant during a wedding reception and people are dancing. I actually downloaded Shazam, but it was too late and the song ended and the music switched to something else. Oh well.
Ten minutes or so later, I'm listening and I'm like "no this totally sounds like a Cambodian song". I managed to Shazam it in time and it's "Old Pot Still Cooks Good Rice" by Ros Serey Sothea. (apparently it's a classic!) Why is this cafe playing Cambodian music?? I walked up to the (white) person working there, and they were playing songs from a playlist called "60's-70's asian psychedelia". "Yeah, I wanted to try something different, and I kinda dig it" Incredible.
May 4, 2026 2:13 AM
Spring
Why is it so COLD??!!
I was telling myself that it is MAY and I am NOT turning on the heat.
Well, I gave in.
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