Quarterly Update Q2 2026

Fun

I’ve been continuing to golf more and more. I hate to admit it but it’s very fun and I’m very motivated to get consistent and good enough to beat my friends. It’s also been a great way to hang out with guys I don’t normally see very often. Golf really is a way for four guys to hang out and talk about nothing for hours. It’s great.
Roslyn and I joined a big group of friends to go see Martin Garrix at The Gorge. The venue is beautiful and well worth the trip. Unfortunately, I discovered that I don’t vibe with Martin Garrix’s music and he played a three-hour extended set. There’s like zero to no lyrics and it’s just beats. Anyway, I still had a lot of fun with everyone and got to eat something called brick fries which is literally a ton of french fries fried into the shape of a large brick. The miso poutine brick fries were incredible.
I went home in early June as a belated Mother’s Day gift. I took my Mom out to a nice dinner and spent time at home after not being back in six months. I played some golf with my friends back home which was really fun. I also got very drunk with my Mom and her old boss at a steak house. He really wanted to meet me after many years of working with my Mom and I was trying to get him to hire my friend at his company. We had a great time drinking some excellent wine from a winery he’s a member of, some of the best port wine (30 year aged!) I’ve ever had, and some whiskey. It was a great trip home.
The World Cup has been happening and this is the first time I think I’ve ever become invested in soccer. I probably won’t become a super fan or anything but I’m definitely interested in going to see the local Seattle Sounders play in Lumen Field. Seeing all the tourists and locals in Seattle enjoy the games and the city is really beautiful and I love seeing the city so alive. I’m delusional but holding on to hope of the US men’s soccer team going all the way.

Fitness

I was running fairly consistently for about three months until I injured myself. My left calf had consistent sharp pain even when I walked. So, I stopped running for a while. I want to start incorporating strength training for injury prevention. Every time I start running I inevitably injure myself in a completely different way than before. One day I’ll run out of ways to get injured and then I’ll be unstoppable.
Roslyn and I got new tennis rackets and have been playing a little bit as the weather has become warmer. I forgot how good it feels to play with a newly strung racket and my old one was definitely not suited to my play style or strength. I’m excited to play more!

Career

I’ve been leading and contributing to this project at work for about six months now. It’s been a long and stressful project but we’re finally launching our initial version this July and I’m very excited. There’s still so much more work to be done but I’m hoping this goes well and helps me earn a promotion at the end of the year!
My team has been doing a lot more team bonding activities and I’ve been enjoying them quite a bit. It helps that the “xiao peng you,” the name we gave to the group of new grads, are much more social than rest of the team and they’re pushing for these activities.

Life

I’ve been learning Mandarin with a textbook that is really helping me understand how to read and pronounce pinyin. Roslyn has been critiquing me while I practice. I can’t wait to whip out the mandarin when we go to China at the end of the year. I need to learn how to say “Can a white boy speak a little Chinese” in mandarin.
We finally got the engagement ring! It’s been many months but they finished and we picked it up in the middle of May. Roslyn and I celebrated with a nice evening dinner at Takai by Kashiba. After a second time dining there we both agree it’s not as good as we hoped and not worth the price unless we use dining credit from our credit cards.

Interesting Links

How American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were. A great analysis of the way parenting has changed between generations and why it seems like modern parenting is so exhausting yet fulfilling.
- Derek Thompson also has a related quote from another piece that I find uniquely beautiful. “When you become a parent, you meet your child. And then you meet your child again. And again, every day after that. You will never stop meeting your child. That is one reason to become a parent: To have a child is to fall in love with a thousand beautiful strangers.”
I haven’t read much science fiction but I was recommended this small short story by Isaac Asimov, arguably the most famous science fiction writer ever. The Last Question is wonderfully written and beautiful. I can see why he has such a reputation. I’ll definitely be reading more of his writing in the future.
I thought this piece America needs more statues was really interesting. I hadn’t thought about the visual and historical interest they bring to cities and towns. It’s fun to stumble upon a statue and learn more about the subject and place. Statues seem like an underutilized piece of civic infrastructure.
How GPT, Claude, and Gemini are actually trained and served - Reiner Pope is a great explainer about model serving inference and the tradeoffs AI infrastructure makes in order to serve millions of users at the same time. It gets very into the weeds but I found this a worthwhile watch for those interested in this technical subject matter.
I started receiving the Works in Progress magazine in physical format so I need to remember to share the articles I enjoyed here via their digital format. I love almost every article in this publication but I’ll stick to just two from the most recent issue.
- How Alberta eradicated rats is such a unique and fascinating read. I had no idea Alberta is essentially rat-free and they maintain the blockade at a fraction of the cost of other areas that essentially mitigate rat damage rather than seek to eliminate rats altogether.
- How the Squamish struck gold in Vancouver is an article near and dear to my heart. The Squamish have been granted rights to land they’ve laid claim to for hundreds of years and immediately decided to build high-rise apartment towers. Local Vancouver NIMBYs are powerless to halt the construction, Squamish tribe members get to live in beautiful newly constructed towers and reap the benefits of renting out the rest of the apartments. It’s a win for the Squamish people and a win for housing-constrained Vancouver. I can’t wait to visit the site.