Chan's Personal Blog

This evening while I was enjoying my dinner, I found myself rudely interrupted by an earthquake. Yes, you read that correctly. It probably shook for a minute or so? Ironically my immediate reaction after the quake wasn't to go outside to survey the damage. My reflex was to go online and scan for news stories and earthquake reports.

I came across this news article, "Moderate earthquake hits Northern California." Here's also a map of where the earthquake hit.


Don't worry, everything is absolutely fine. There was no damage at all where I live. But, it's probably the strongest quake that I've felt in a while.

Near the top of my priority list after I landed in the US was to get a cellphone. Psychologically, this was a hard thing to do as I absolutely hate cellphones, and I never had one until now. I find it extremely annoying when I'm at dinner with friends, and they're busying texting other people, or answering phone calls over dinner. It's even worse when a group of friends are doing it as the whole night is filled with random beeps and rings. It's really disruptive and it's poor social etiquette.

Nevertheless, I had to get a cellphone as I am rarely home. I started shopping for a cellular provider and I visited AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, etc. One thing that I hadn't counted on was the fact that they needed a social security number to run a credit check on. At the time, I didn't have this number, so this was going to be tricky. Without any credit history, I would have to put down anywhere from $150-$1000 deposit for a wireless contract depending on the carrier. This was an unpleasant reality, and I hate having cash tied up in deposits as cash was sparse at the time.

Thankfully I found a very helpful sales rep at AT&T Wireless which changed everything.

Time for a general update about life in California. The first thing that I'll bring up is that I finally received my social security number (SSN) in the mail. Thank you sweet merciful Jesus. Not having this number has been a constant source of frustration as a ton of stuff relies on this number. I can't open any investment brokerage accounts without one, can't get a driver's license. It's ridiculous, even one of my bills couldn't be paid online because they required a SSN. Why are they making it intentionally difficult to accept money?!

In either case, things are going relatively well. Still getting settled in. Every month is completely different than the previous month as many things are still in a constant state of change. The rest of this blog entry will be answering questions that I constantly get from friends.

How's Work Going?

Overall, things are going pretty well. My hours are less crazy than they were a month ago. The department that I'm a part of has a lot of smart and talented people in it. I really enjoy the lectures/talks/training sessions that are given at Yahoo as they're practical and intellectually stimulating. I've mentioned to that it's interesting that lectures here seem more interesting than lectures in academia, given the fact that you're attending these lectures out of interest, and there's no homework to worry about.

I still have a long way to go in learning everything since a search engine has a ton of different moving parts to it. A veteran Yahoo engineer recently joined our team, and he said this was very different from a lot of the stuff he had worked on in the past. He mentioned it's quite interesting when you go from a team where you knew everything, to a new team where you're the newbie again. I guess it's going from "big fish in little pond" to "little fish in ocean." I definitely feel that.

At times, it's intimidating being around people who come from fancy schools like Stanford or Harvard, or people who have a ton of seniority in the company. For example, in the adjacent row of cubicles sits Sara who's a star of the open source community as she's one of the top contributors to the PHP programming language, and she's written books about the subject.

Last weekend I had an unsettling revelation. I finally got my bathroom scale from IKEA out, and decided to weigh myself. In the back of my mind, I assumed I gained a few pounds because I've been eating well at Yahoo, and I haven't exactly been working out as of late. My co-workers have also informed me that they had gained on average 10 pounds after joining the company.

So, on the scale I went. Something didn't seem right when it said that I gained 20 pounds in 6 weeks. History has shown in the last 7 years, my weight hardly changes because I'm blessed with good metabolism. I found it hard to believe that my metabolism decided to just shut off in 6 weeks. I started starring into the mirror, wondering where that weight had accumulated. I didn't see any visible difference. In theory my clothes shouldn't fit either, so something must be up. My assumption at this point was that the scale was broken.

On a quest to find the truth, I went to some store which was selling digital scales, and I weighed myself. According to it, I had gained no weight since I left Canada. Needless to say, I breathed a sigh of relief. It looks like my cheap IKEA bathroom scale has a +20lb margin of error.

Upon returning home, I looked at my scale again, and on the side there was a label that prominently said, "Scale not for legal trade." How true that is. If you used this thing with a 1lb bag of coffee, it would probably read 21lbs.

One good thing that did arise from this experience was that I finally went to the gym to workout as this was a bit of a wake-up call, albeit a false alarm.

Well, work has briefly slowed down a bit, so I had a chance to do something fun. Last week, my fellow Yahoos and I went to Planet Granite for some rock climbing classes. This is something that I've never done before.

The first time we went, their classes were all full. So, we weren't able to rock climb because we didn't have proper safety certification. Instead, we went bouldering which is climbing rock walls, but the height is less, and you don't need a rope and harness.

We went back the following Monday for the beginner's rock climbing class. We learned all about the safety equipment, climbing techniques, belaying, and tying different knots. We have to go back to do our final test to get certified.

Rock climbing is kind of interesting because I think a lot of it is psychological. A seemingly scary and difficult climb isn't as bad once you start scaling the wall. Rock climbing also seemed easier than bouldering for me, and I think it's psychological. With rock climbing, you have a safety rope and a harness, so falling isn't really a big deal. Whereas bouldering, you have no harness, and falling means trying to land on the crash mat safely. So, I think with bouldering, I take less risks which make the matter harder.

The overall rock climbing experience is pretty fun and unique. I think the worst part about it is coming down once you've reached the top. You have to lean back and let go of the wall, and let your partner lower you down. There's just something inherently counterintuitive about letting go, and entirely trusting your life to someone else.

Good times. I'll be back to rock climbing this coming Monday to pass my safety test.