About

I was born in Shanghai, China, and moved to Vancouver, Canada when I was 11. I count myself among the lucky few who get to call both places home, having benefited from two distinctly different cultures and systems.

I grew up playing sports and LOVED competing. Basketball was the main one through middle school and high school, then golf, and more recently tennis, after I peaked early (in height) and got capped at a 5'9" frame. But I'd say the competitive, self-improving spirit and the sportsmanship and leadership abilities have helped me reach far further than my wingspan.

Besides the court and fields, photography and videography are my biggest creative outlet and for a while were my biggest passion in life (see the visuals section). I pursued it semi-professionally during the latter half of my high school journey and throughout the COVID years, and learned one of the biggest lessons of my life, the one that made it impossible to keep pursuing it as a career — perhaps more on that in the writing section. But the places and perspectives it brought me, and the people that I got to meet and work with (very very different from who I work with and how I work these days), are again things that I will carry forward with me.

I'm also an avid coffee lover and amateur barista — a cortado is my favorite coffee drink — yes I sometimes get pretentious about my beans and extraction :)

Perhaps by the same token, having recently lived in the Bay Area and being so close to Napa, I've spent some time in the valley and have gotten quite interested in winemaking and tasting. I definitely see myself going through official sommelier training perhaps before the year ends...

Oh and I have again reached a phase where I am reading a ton (mostly classic literature, fiction, and a little bit of philosophy). My recent favorite is The Fall by Camus, what I believe is his best work. Will always welcome any book recs.

This is yet another creative outlet for me, and a place where I can voice my opinion, share what I've built and created, and honestly show who I am beyond a resume.

So I don't plan to confine this site to purely academic or passion projects relating to my career and tech; it is also a place for my creative work, opinions and essays, and potentially more.

And a perhaps unnecessary, but important disclaimer I have to make: so far everything you have read in this introductory "About" page is written by me, with no AI generated content AT ALL. This will be the case for ALL of my creative work, and personal written pieces.

For tech projects and outputs that are more career / academic oriented, AI assistance is used as it should be. The project write-ups under work were drafted with AI assistance from my own repos and notes.