What a wild year 2020 has been! I rang in the new year in Taichung, Taiwan, helping my parents settle back into our home after 20 years of living in the United States as immigrants. The homecoming was bittersweet for them, and I was grateful to be there as emotional …
We can read all about an experience, but until we’ve lived it ourselves, it’s just a story. Nomad Envy I have wanted to travel full-time for years. I read blogs and watched vlogs of people who trot around with their life’s possessions in a backpack (or a suitcase), and call …
Recently, I’ve received requests for informational calls to discuss my “career path”. I’ve happily obliged to pay it forward, since I myself had requested many of these calls while in grad school. A pattern soon emerged. Gleaming from my resumé, people apparently think I had some master plan to weave …
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 …
Last week marked 10 years since I left the comforts of American suburbia for a different life. It was 2008. I packed up two massive bags and flew to Philadelphia to meet a bunch of strangers, some would later become lifelong friends. From there, we got vaccinated and were inundated …
Isn’t it ironic that I am leaving a tech giant to go learn tech? Life is ironic that way.
It’s no secret that I had been thinking of all the ways to pivot my way out of being a sophisticated bean-counter. For a while, I even worked 15-hour days, volunteering my time to another group within the company, hoping for an opportunity to pivot. Alas, it didn’t work out.
Today, I walked away from the fancy corporate job, counting beans for that tech giant of a fruit company. It has been 1,683 days or 15% of my life that I’ve worked in a job for the sake of earning money. $120K of debt and a substantial saving later, I unchained from the golden handcuff.
I turned 20 in London. It was junior year of college, and I was on an internship program at the U.S. Embassy. The night before turning 20, I met a boy. That boy liked me and we had a lot of fun for 4 months. He liked me so much …
I haven’t been this excited, yet simultaneously anxious about anything since I decided to join the Peace Corps. This is the story on how I decided to move to Shanghai on the day that I moved to Washington, DC. A little over a month ago, I decided to move to …
Live every day as if you are moving away. I dislike the common saying of “Live everyday as if it were your last.” Why so morbid? Moving away forces the same level of appreciation on the present, and less all-or-nothing. I always find that I truly appreciate any place that …