Weekly Clam 14

lots of things to update.

Car Crash - I got cut off, slammed my breaks, car behind me rear ends me. I was originally pissed off at the car in front of me, but upon further reflection i’m pissed off at both. Both of them fucked up. Jesus christ I got fucked for no reason. Thank god this doesn’t tangibly affect me. Just waiting on insurance bullshit. The car behind me is claiming medical injuries. No fucking way, they were fine lol, and no fking way it was my fault. Anyways, thank god Clin saved the day for Aaron and me, it would absolutely suck to plan for a big day, just get in a car accident, spend hours sorting out insurance and towing, only to end up driving back an entire hour to Corona. After I sorted everything out I texted clin to see if we could come over for dinner to salvage the mess of a day, and thankfully he was. It is such a cozy and emotionally safe home, it saved the day. I was emotionally, and physically unharmed, but I think hormonally, my body was high cortisol for a few days, especially following the VC conference the following day. I think up until this past Saturday, like 4 days after, I was still hormonally out of whack.

VC conference- VC conference in San Diego, I was curious how AI has changed the startup world. Honestly not much. AI has not dramatically changed much IMO in terms of ideas for companies. I’m sure it has changed a lot in terms of writing software though. I’m not really in the mood to explain everything else, but tldr this vietnamese woman that invited my dad and me, I called her to talk about, idk, possibly working with her, and idk she wants to start a vc fund, and it just seems like she has no idea how to run one. I got stress hives after it, bc I think it was a real shock to the nervous system to network like that again after not doing it for so long. Also, upon reflecting on the idea of employment, it is very stressful for me to see things in an organization and not speak openly about my opinions of how things should be. Also, it seems like a lot of the jobs I might be suitable to do, I cannot do while living at home. Right now I am primarily interested in maximizing my time at home, globalism was a lie, the idea that most people can maintain deeply intimate relationships long distance is a lie. Maybe I might have that ability, but that doesn’t mean that my uncles or cousins can maintain that relationship with me. Kids definitely cannot. TJ cannot.

Mother’s day dinner at 888. This is an annual tradition for my extended family. Primarily it is for great grandma, the absolute matriarch of the family, as great as my grandma is, my great grandma is incrementally more great in most ways. (I gotta remind myself to talk to my dad about how grandma and her children is an example of a keyman risk — the kids that rose up to the role are great, but there are many that did not, and there are major issues when they do not, a family structure contingent on one person carrying an enormous load across so many aspects of life is not a sustainable one). No real throughline here, Cousin Gordon was particularly more talkative to me, it was notable that his girlfriend was so eager to talk too. He told me how his friend from grade school works at a robotaxi startup and has identified a gap in the market for mechanics shops servicing EVs, and is about to buy one. He needs a man on the ground to run the day to day, and thinks I would be a great guy for that position. Unfortunately, I would need to move to the bay area, and that is a disqualifier. I moved home to be home, not to take a job in the bay. Especially one so operations intensive. He said he would take the job himself, but his dad wouldn’t let him move to the bay. He was jokingly asking his dad at the moment and his dad said, that job doesn’t have a pension. Meaning, gordon has to stay at his goverment civil engineering job because the finish line is his governement pension. They are so hyperfixated on their goverment pension, it seems like they are just waiting around for the 20 year mark to come around. This is a sad life. Also, I won’t go into details, but again like last year, uncle tony and (second aunt/cousin…?) crystal were the only ones drinking, and doing so at the kids table. They are the only 2 divorced people in the family, also the only 2 alcoholics in the family. They both have a clear sequence of events that led to this moment. There were clear signs, many times in the past 20 years, that more intervention, or different intervention was needed for both of them. You need to run towards the smoke, or deal with a large fire in the future. In this case, we have 2 divorced alcholics with kids. This is a big fire to deal with. Please don’t bring kids into the equation if you are a messy person. My family has underinvested in many aspects of life, like most organizations have tech debt, cyber security debt, etc. Companies sacrifice a lot to push out the next product, with the goal of fixing, optimizing, cleaning up things afterwards, but they never do. This is my family now. Everyone was so focused on career, that there are many things that have been neglected. This is not exactly a bad thing. It is only bad if you do not take all your profits from that big product release to go back and clean up all the neglected things. It is not a bad thing that my parents and other people of their generation maxxed out job/career/money. It put our family in a great position to address those other things. Specifically, it put me into a great position to address those things in my family, it put my cousins in a good position to understand the complexity of the ideas I need to carry out. But we must go back and clean things up now. We cannot neglect it for 2 generations. There will be no family left if that is the case. It is much better to money maxx (within reason), and deal with other kinds of non-financial debt in the next generation, than vis versa. I would rather figure out how to get TJ in college, than figure out how to get my parents out of 500k of debt, while trying to pay off my own college debt.

D line- absolute game changer. Went to la republique, finally, it looks cool, I will have to go back and actually eat something lol. I only got one little donut. LACMA is finally accessible on the train. LA feels like a real city now. Train GOAT. Also met Leilani’s friend’s friend again, megan, she is cool, she is a white girl who works in fashion and went to berkeley and it is always facinating to me that I can hang with white people now. Leilani’s friend jake is also cool, he likes me, we aren’t quite friends yet. I rarely text him. I think I send him a meme like once a month. I took some decent pictures. Also transplants suck. I literally don’t know how to form an emotional connection to transplants. jake is cool bc he has a lot of local friends, bc he grew up in northridge.

Lincoln heights hike, last sunday I found a great hike with uncle tony. I found one in lincoln heights, where my dad’s family lived for years, in North east la. It used to be a really rough neighborhood. We still own an apartment there. But i found this hike, that I didn’t know existed even though i’ve hiked all over NE la, dozens of trails and little neighborhoods. It is a great hike. Very good view of LA and emotionally relevant to my family. Cool houses too. It was so good that I went again with my dad on thursday to show him, and uncle tony also came along and enjoyed it again. He normally doens’t like to hang out that much with my dad but the hike really helped. Hiking is a great way to bring people together.

Elysian heights hike- I hike every sunday with uncle Tony. This time, because he was so excited to hike with my dad in lincoln heights, and because 888 mothers day dinner was on the previous friday, he went around talking about how great it was and so we got a crew of 4 brothers to go, plus me and one wife. It was amazing this morning. They had so much fun looking at houses. They rarely do anything as siblings, but to hike around an interesting neihborhood with cool views of LA and cool houses with interesting engineering, it was great. They like houses bc they all invest in and renovate houses. Big credit to Leilani, my weekly hiking with her has opened up an entirely new genre of hiking which seems to resonate deeply with my uncles. And she is the one that first showed me this area after I passed by an interesting road there. Once again, I have found so much value myself in the act of trying to help someone else. Me trying to get Leilani to hike with me has brought me a lot of joy in round-about ways. My relationships are never transactional, aggresively not transactional, but they paradoxically bring me so much more value as a result.

After the hike this morning at elysisan I hung out with Duke and Lan, they wanted to go to lunch+look at plants with grandma. That was good, grandma was eager to leave the house, we tried a new teochow restaraunt next to bubble republic, it was decent and then walked to blosoom market hall. Grandma had never been??? (also i just found out on IG that patiserie too’s old place is replaced with a cafe, which also has the cute shaped cakes and $1 egg tarts). Grandma liked that a lot. She seems to be more willing to leave the house lately. Also grandma told aunt lan that she is excited that I am at grandma’s house a lot to watch basketball. I am so bored of it, but it I am so glad that it is appreciated. (gotta think about what the fucks gonna happen after bball season, how do i manufacture reasons to come over then? maybe TJ will be in summer and have time to hang out with me? idk). only good things can come from spending more time at grandma’s house.

At lunch at the teochow restaraunt, aunt lan and uncle tony talked about how my dad trailblazed the way to making the family so comfortable with pushing our horizons, with traveling, with having an element of exploration, seeing the world. My dad would plan little day trips, to joshua tree, santa barbra, solvang around college, shortly after college. He was finally making some good money from his internships and engineering job (so they finally had a token amount of disposable income), he had a sense that his world was bigger than what was around him, and he was astounded by the idea that the cost of gas could transport you to another world. So he would plan these day trips, and I finally got to ask uncle tony how these trips were percieved. Did people groan at the idea of sitting in the car forever? Were they excited? Uncle Tony said, it wasn’t really an option to complain, and alluded that it wasn’t particularly hard because my dad was making good money and everyone was young and active, in stark contrast to how old and hard to accomidate my grandma is today. Reading between the lines here, my dad very much lived up every bit to his “eldest son” reputation at the time. It was spectacular that he landed a real engineering job, it was spectacular that he went all the way to berkeley for college and graduated so high in his class. Grandma and Grandpa leaned on him heavily for many things, like the decision making in purchasing their first home (an apartment complex we still own today), helping guide the family into a new country, a new society. My dad was in a position of great respect and influence as a young adult that he earned, when my dad told everyone that he planned a trip to solvang (without the internet!), they listened to him. Possibly they understood this was part of assimilation, of learning about America, and it was. Aunt lan went on to talk about how when she was dating uncle duke, she was exposed to this world of traveling and exploration, and she loved it. Slowly it influenced her, and consequently she started to get her own family to take more day trips, and even longer trips (she mentioned going to boston when she was in college). This was extraordinary for that generation of immigrants. Most people never even left LA city limits. My dad taught his family how to travel, how to see the world. He was a trailblazer in the family, and his reach even extened into Aunt lan’s family. For a long time, I was preoccupied with the amount of damage one emotionally unwell person could do. Alcoholic uncle tony, undiagnosed adhd mom. I am seeing how far reaching a great person can be. My dad. Grandma. So many of my friends have brought postive impact into my world, and that has leeched postive things into my family. I aspire to be that kind of person. I want to create the kind of positive influence that is infectious, that creates postive reinforcement loops. But right now, it seems that my primary concern is chasing after smoke, putting out embers before they become fires. TJ needs to become an engineer. Ethan needs to get his ass out of the house and become an adult with the capcity to be independent, who understands how the world works, ideally by getting into medical school. Paying back the accumlated non-financial debts in my family.

^^related to that, my mom told me to get a job a couple times in a short amount of time, and so I ranted to my dad that I am annoyed that my mom doesn’t understand my blog. I cannot talk to my mom about my career, about my life plans if she cannot begin to understand my blog. I told him, there are cracks in the foundation of this family. To stay in california, to bear the burden of the cost of living here, on top of a job market that is not particularly catered to my skillset, where I am not really a super sought after job candidate, I need to bet on my family being worth it, that I am betting that I don’t want to build my future alone somewhere like texas or utah or colorado or arkansas. But I cannot bet on a family with cracks in its foundation. I cannot bet on a company with all sorts of non-financial debt. I don’t want to be the person who needed to dive into my uncle’s drinking problem, to decipher the root causes of it, to decipher whether or not it is an issue that affects the future of this family. This is not more fun than having a corporate job in a fun city like Austin. It is not fun not having money while I sort all this out. But this is (probably) the correct thing to do. My mother will never understand this. She has no capcity to understand abstract theories. She is stuck in survival mode, she is caught up in saving her own soul and cannot have a meaningful vision for the future, she has limited capacity to invest emotionally in a future.

TJ summer school — I think he’s just gonna go to summer school at PCC? I hope we can figure out the registration process fast, so spots don’t fill up for the fun classes. He seems to be warming up to PCC summer classes. I just didn’t want to force him into something, he wouldn’t have liked that. Even if I picked what I know he would like, he would just like it a lot less because it wasn’t his own decision. Also i don’t remember if i talked about stem fair a couple weeks ago with TJ, but tldr, we found some undergrand CSU long beach clubs there, and we talked a lot about engineering at CSULB and the clubs there and it seems like a really good school for TJ, I hope he can get int.