🎻 I fiddle #
I love playing the violin and occassionally make videos of my playing.
By my mother’s influence, I’ve always loved classical music. She encouraged me to start on the piano when I was 13, now she is taking weekly piano lessons.
After moving to Seattle in April 2018, I walked into David Stone’s violin shop and got a starter violin on the second day I settled down. The very next day, I dropped by unannounced to Beverly Gilyeart’s violin studio asking for violin lessons.
I’m fascinated by the history and craft of violin and bow making. Over the years, I’ve tried many violins and bows, and maintain a small collection of mostly contemporary violin bows. I commissioned a violin in 2019 from Denver based violin maker Eduard Miller who delivered the violin just before Covid brought the world to heel. I’ve been playing on the same violin ever since.
💻 I code #
I’m a software engineer by training.
After finishing grad school at UCSD, I worked as a full stack and mobile development engineer at Whitepages, Inc from 2018 to 2019, then at Amazon’s AWS and PXT orgs from 2019 to 2024.
I took a leap of faith and left Amazon in June 2024 to take a sabbitical. While I’m not looking for full time work, I’m motivated as ever to stay engaged with technology and continue to develop my skills. I’m currently helping at a friend’s startup on a part time basis while picking up bits and pieces of knowledge on artificial intelligence I learnt in school.
🖋️ I write #
My dad has a deep love for literature and is dedicated and keen to share his love. As a result, I grew up very fond of writing as a kid. One of my parents’ proudest memories was me publishing 2 poems and 2 short essays on 2 different local newspapers when I was in 5th grade. Unfortunately, that love washed away over time by an education system that disproportionately favored natural sciences over liberal arts.
In recent years, first inspired by Ryder Carroll’s Bullet Journal, then by my friends Allen and Weichen, then by wonderful contemporary authors such as James Clear, Morgan Housel and Derek Sivers, I feel reinvigorated to pick up the pen and renewed my love of committing words to paper (both literally and figuratively speaking). I started keeping journals, jolting down ideas and learning the art of writing as a craft.
More about me #
- I’m a Stoic. I bought my first copy of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations on my 18th birthday. I subscribe to Stoic’s notion of living a good life through virtue and tranquility.
- I enjoy solitude. It doesn’t mean I’m anti-social. I like hanging out with friends, but I recharge through solitude.
- I’m quiet. I’m a listener. While I worked at Amazon, my managers often gave me feedback that I should speak up more. To it, I like a quote by Zeno of Citium : We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen more than we say.
- I speak softly. I’m not a loud person. My voice has the volume of a house cat. That’s what I’m comfortable with and I’m okay with it.
- I hate noises. I don’t like crowds, bars, parties etc. Since I speak softly, I struggle keeping conversations going when it is loud.
- I’m non-confrontational. The only form of arguments I’m okay with are intellectual. I avoid verbal or physical confrontations. Barring from few extraordinary circumstances, I rarely engage with a person or situation I do not enjoy – I just walk away.
Timeline #
- 1992: born in Wuhan, China
- 2001: travelled out of home province of Hubei for the first time to Beijing
- 2005: started playing the piano
- 2011: moved to Singapore for college
- 2013: summer exchange in Berkeley, CA
- 2014: two public piano duo performances
- 2015: internship at Rolls Royce
- 2016: started grad school at UC San Diego
- 2017: internship at Mitek Systems as a software developer
- 2018: first full time job at Whitepages, started learning the violin with Beverly Gilyeart
- 2019: started working at Amazon AWS, first orchestral performance with Amazon Symphony Orchestra
- 2020: covid, got into cooking and baking
- 2021: picked up reading and writing again
- 2022: switched teams from AWS to PXT, performed a solo violin piece to the public for the first time
- 2023: adopted a cat named Henry
- 2024: became a permanent resident of the United States, quit my job at Amazon