Saigon Chronicle Month 4: The Saigon vs. Shanghai Battle
November 1, 2019
I’ve just returned from 10 days of visiting Shanghai. This was my first trip back to the city since we bid farewell in June 2018. Since arriving in Saigon four months ago, despite my best effort to be objective, I couldn’t help but compare this new home to Shanghai, a city that I knew so intimately well. I suppose our…
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Internet in China: Life Inside the Great Firewall
May 3, 2019
Less than a year ago, I bid farewell to my established life in Shanghai. Since, I feel like I live in two parallel Internet universe. My China life on WeChat, and the rest of the world on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram. There is very little intersection between the two worlds, and it has me reflect deeply on life inside the Great Firewall. The…
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Shanghai Farewell
June 21, 2018
Today, a friend asked me to sum up my 6 years in Shanghai in a word. I haven’t had much time to reflect since time has been occupied by the massive task of minimizing all of our belongings down to two suitcases and two backpacks. I gave it a quick thought, and the word diverse came to mind. Diverse Friendship…
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Le Wagon Week 8 & 9: Final Sprint
April 30, 2018
Demo Day @ 3pm: We are 4 hours away from final demo day. Phew! My team pushed our final sets of Mini-Program codes to WeChat last night at midnight for approval, and have rehearsed our pitch a dozen times over the last two days. Final version approved this morning, and we are ready to go.
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Le Wagon Week 7: Just Get It Done!
April 16, 2018
Final third of the coding camp! After some much needed solitude last week, I dove right into the project trial week, where we make an AirBnB/Mobike-esque app in 5 days. This practice project gave us a chance to work with our assigned group, to work out any kinks, and to trial run through the entire process beginning from idea on Monday to presenting a working demo by Friday at 6pm.
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Le Wagon Week 6: Epiphany in Coding
April 8, 2018
This past week was both extremely frustrating, yet exhilaratingly rewarding. I took a temporary break out of the coding camp bubble, and made incredible stride. For the first time, all the puzzle pieces emerged and I built a very simple, but fully functioning web app. This is the beginning of the rest of my life as a coder.
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Le Wagon Week 5: It’s a Marathon
March 31, 2018
Saturday morning. I’m stealing some precious alone time at my favourite bakery before heading to Le Wagon for a full-day workshop on building WeChat Mini Programs. Since this is not standard part of Le Wagon curriculum, we are sacrificing two beautiful spring Saturdays. The things I do for this newfound “hobby”.
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Le Wagon Week 4: Get Serious & Guard Your Time
March 25, 2018
Nearly half way through the 9-week camp! We’ve completed the back-end portion of the course (human speak: the brain of an app), and have moved onto the front-end (human speak: the pretty web pages & app interface). Having worked on blogs off and on over the last 10 years, it’s been amazing to finally understand HTML & CSS codes.
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Le Wagon Week 3: Stay Humble, Stay True
March 18, 2018
In grad school, I once had a professor said that in economics, we have complicated terms to describe everyday phenomenon. The ability to speak this language earns us the big bucks. But if I no longer want my life goal to be about making the big bucks, what do I do with this language? Only three weeks into my coding education, and I am feeling similarly about programming.
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Le Wagon Week 2: Shut Down Sexist Jokes
March 7, 2018
Since today is International Women’s Day, the timing is perfect for what’s been on my mind this week - our general lack of resistance to sexist jokes.
Women being a minority in the tech world is no news. During my time at the tech giant, despite being in the non-technical side of the business, decisions makers were still often white & male. No surprise.
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