Category: life
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What are we optimizing for with career?
“You should travel!” It’s summer 2021, and I had taken a 3-month leave of absence from my job. With warm weather and the idea of a few months of “free time,” travel was the most common suggestion from people around me on how I should spend my time. The idea of a few months without…
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Are We Intentional With Our Lives? Thinking Backwards and Forwards.
Note: I’m trying out Substack as a publishing platform going forward. Subscribe here: timk.substack.com/ It’s happy hour at a hip Thai restaurant in Fremont, Seattle. I’m seated at a table perched on a platform with a view of the entire restaurant. The appetizers on the table have gone cold and I’m clutching my beer like…
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How My Worst DJ Performance Was My Best
The room had a low red glow to it. Lights flickered across the dance floor, fluid visuals floated on a screen above, and the music blared over the speakers. My eyes were fixated on the laptop in front of me, heart racing as I searched for the next song to play. I had already stopped…
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When Sh*t Happens. Overcoming Adversity.
It was a warm summer evening in Toronto. As I sat on the park bench I felt light headed. My stomach felt knotted and I was short of breath. I was confused. My life was derailed forever. I was 16 years old and my girlfriend had just told me she wanted to break up. For months…
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What 500 Japanese Lessons Did to Me
I noticed today that I passed 500 Japanese lessons on iTalki, the platform I’ve been using to learn Japanese. Combine that with my previous lessons on Verbling, and my total lessons as of today (Jan 2019) comes to exactly 680 lessons over 2.5 years. 500 lessons seems like a lot. It’s been a slow and…
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This is What it’s Like After 2 Years of Studying a Language
As of 2018, it’s been about 2 years since I started learning Japanese. I study for about an hour each day and wrote more about the process of setting goals on autopilot in a prior post. One of the most common questions I get asked is “How is your Japanese going?” How is your Japanese going?…
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How to Prepare and Deliver a 5 min TED Talk or Ignite Talk
I recently had the opportunity to participate in a storytelling and speaking event at Amazon. The event itself was like a TED talk or Ignite talk showcase of various Amazonians and their stories. The talks ranged from the competitive world of sport cup stacking, to dealing with disorders, to ironmans for the rest of us.…
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Startup No More – Shutting Down Mason Park
On a cloudy morning in San Francisco, my co-founder and I huddled into a conference room within our work-space. We had recently finished our latest round of user feedback sessions and feature tests and were discussing what was next. On the glass walls of the conference room we were in, we sketched out everything we…
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Reasons I Love Tech: Becoming Conversational in Japanese
I’ve studied some languages before – French via the Canadian school system, and Mandarin via a mix of self study audio courses and classes. However, in neither case would I claim knowledge of the language. I’ve definitely been scolded more than a few times by French and Mandarin speaking natives for not having better knowledge…
Tim Kung 