One Ohana Sharing Aloha

Happy Monday!

Recently I went on a sisters trip to Oahu, one of the islands in Hawaii, to celebrate something awesome that had happened in my life, and also because it seems like a lot of the travel restrictions that had been put in place during the pandemic have started to lift recently!

Flying into Oahu is beautiful!

We booked an airbnb in Waikiki, and it turned out to be pretty good place to set up our “basecamp” because a lot of the car/moped rentals were very close to the area and most of our non-Honolulu destinations kind of all centered around the city, so it was a central starting place for a lot of our daytrips 🙂

Our itinerary kind of looked like this:

Day 1

• Waikiki Beach – Waikiki beach is definitely crowded, and for popular restaurants & eateries, the lines looked like they could easily take over 30 minutes of waiting to reach the front :0 The beach itself is also super crowded, and there were so many people swimming and surfing it was kind of hard to see the bottom of the beach and enjoy the scenery; but if you’re interested in the nightlife then this seemed like to be the best place to be!

Maguro Brother’s Poke

Day 2

• Diamond Crater Hike – The hike was really nice, but parking seemed like it’d be difficult with a car! My sister and I took our mopeds to the crater so we were able to easily park in the moped parking, but for cars there was a line entering the park that was just for parking :0 The hike itself wasn’t too difficult, but there was a very long line of people waiting to reach the top closer to the end of the hike, so if you want to see the view from the top of the crater, definitely come early!
• Brief lookaround Chinatown – We didn’t do much in Chinatown other than go for lunch, but it seemed like a relatively quiet place 🙂
• Snorkeling and swimming

Day 3

• Aloha Stadium Swap & Meet – This swap and meet was huuuge! It took place at the Aloha Stadium, all over the perimeter of the stadium, and while it was a bit overwhelming at first, we noticed that a lot of the vendors sell the same things so if you see a good part of the market, then you’ve pretty much seen it all! Some of the vendors will like to bargain, especially if you buy more expensive things/more things in general, so try your luck in getting the best deals! 🙂
• Ala Moana Center – This is Hawaii’s biggest mall, and it definitely was big! It has a lot of stores that you’d probably find on the mainland though, so I’m not sure if it’s a must-see but if you have the time and want to just enjoy a nice mall, then check it out!

We also made a stop at Leonard’s Malasada Bakery!

Day 4

• Makapu’u Point Lighthouse Trail – The views from this trail were so amazing, you could see so far out in the Pacific and fully appreciate the expanse of blue! We didn’t actually reach the lighthouse, because we took a discouraged detour to the tidal pools along the way (which were very worth it and super refreshing during the hot hike * ^ *), but I’m sure the view from the lighthouse is also great!

Day 5

• Haleiwa – We stopped by this small town on our way to the Polynesian Cultural Center, and got some yummy shrimp at Giovanni’s shrimp truck! I think a lot of people stop here to enjoy the beaches near the town, but after lunch we drove through the streets and chose to enjoy the coastal view from the drive instead 🙂
• Polynesian Cultural Center – I absolutely loved this place! In some ways it kind of felt like an amusement park, because there were lots of “attractions” but they were also educational, which is the best kind of amusement park in my opinion :3 I highly recommend visiting the cultural center, I learned a lot about different cultures in Polynesia and the show and buffet dinner at the end were awesome!

Tips for your hawaii trip

If you’re also planning a trip to Hawaii sometime this year, here are some things to be aware of!

1. Plan Ahead!

I think this is the most important, definitely plan your trip ahead of time! A lot of the places we wanted to go to had really long lines where we had to spend a good chunk of time waiting, so if you can either go in the “off-times” (maybe really early to a beach, or an afternoon cup of coffee instead of a morning one?) then you can probably avoid some crowds!

There were also a couple places that were reservation only, but we didn’t know until the night before when we were looking up directions on how to get there from our airbnb (; ^ ;), so definitely keep an eye out for those too! A couple examples of places we had difficulty getting to/doing were snorkeling tours and visiting Hanauma Bay 🙂

2. reef safe sunscreen

The sun in Hawaii was pretty ruthless, so definitely make sure you pack some sunscreen for your trip! If you’re planning on going into the water though, it’s super important to make sure you take sunscreen that’s safe for the reefs, since a lot of commercial sunscreen can be harmful to the native ecosystems.

Keep the reefs happy 🙂

3. renting mopeds vs car

The first couple days of our trip, my sister and I rented mopeds at a store near Waikiki called Cruizin Hawaii! The store people were super friendly and nice, and they even helped me out a lot when I lost the keys to the moped one day and needed to get a set of spares, but actually riding the mopeds was an interesting experience.

One of the main pros of getting around using a moped is that parking is super easy! A lot of the places we went to had designated parking for mopeds and other 2-wheel vehicles (like bikes and motorbikes), so we usually were able to park pretty quickly and oftentimes close to wherever we were trying to go. Riding the mopeds themselves is also super fun! It’s nice to enjoy the view without being obstructed by any windows or other parts of the car (?) while riding along the roads 🙂

There are definitely some cons to consider to moped rentals though, one of the biggest being that you can’t ride the moped on any of the major highways or freeways so it’s kind of hard to go far on the island unless you want the ride the moped all around the perimeter of the island D: There were also some pretty hot times of the day where it got pretty difficult to stay out in the sun the whole time, but because we were on mopeds we were exposed to the sun and wind pretty much all day; so if you’re going to be on a moped all day, make sure you cover your shoulders to prevent sunburn and also make sure you have good eye protection!

An accidental burst shot from my phone while using my GPS XD

GeekWire Summit 2019

The past couple days I had the opportunity to attend the 2019 GeekWire Summit, a 2 day conference exploring some key topics in tech, business, science & society.

I generally enjoy attending conferences that aren’t just about tech, since I find that a lot of tech-centric discussions or demos are usually things that I can read about online or aren’t too short for me to really get much out of it.

I’ve found that listening to talks that are more opinionated or vision-based are not only easier to follow up with discussions of my own with the colleagues I attend with, but they’re also often more inspiring and get the gears turning in my head 🙂

A panel about the future of media & podcasting

An interview with Brad Smith, President of Microsoft

The schedule for this year’s summit was pretty great, with a solid blend of tech, business, science, social good, and health. There were also lots fun GeekWire specific events such as the Elevator Pitch (where finalists from several different categories gave pitches to some investors from PACCAR) and the Favorite Inventions segment (a showcase of some really interesting inventions by their inventors) that were fun to watch 😀

There were also some pretty high profile speakers such as Brad Smith, the President of Microsoft, Dave Limp, the SVP of Devices & Services at Amazon, and Mark Okerstrom, the CEO of Expedia, so it was really cool to see them in person and hear about their perspectives on a variety of topics.

One of the most powerful speakers, in my opinion, was Doug Baldwin, a former Seahawks football player and now Senior Advisor of Product Concepts at Intellectual Ventures. He didn’t really talk about anything tech-specific, but rather  about his passion for solving problems that are people-centric. He also emphasized the importance of having empathy for other individuals, making the effort to see ourselves and each other as human beings who are all in it together.

Living in this age where there are especially large amounts of siloizations occurring in many different parts of the world, the country, neighborhoods, and people, I admit I felt a twinge of sadness upon hearing his message and what it said about us as a society that we would warrant such a message, but it was also resolving in a way because it reminded us, or at the very least me, that empathy is a very human trait that we need to exercise more often and gave me a  pleasant sense of solidarity :).

 

Overall, I really enjoyed my experience attending the Summit this year and was pretty happy with the quality of the panels and logistics of it all 🙂 I appreciated the mobile app that was provided by Alaska Air as it made it pretty easy to stay abreast of the different events that were happening during the Summit, and the venue (Hyatt Regency in Downtown Seattle) was also pretty swanky 🙂

 

Harry Potter with the Seattle Symphony :)

Growing up, the magical universe of Harry Potter was my favorite. I was definitely one of those kids who cried on the morning of their 11th birthday because they didn’t receive an acceptance letter from Hogwarts XD.

In addition to Harry Potter, I also really enjoy seeing live music, which is why I was so excited when my friend told me that the Seattle Symphony was performing the soundtrack of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban live while screening the movie :D!

The concert was absolutely amazing and it was one of the most unique movie-watching experiences I’ve ever had. The conductor watches the movie from a small screen on his podium that gives visual signals on when the music should start and also keeps him on tempo with little blips of the screen, while the rest of the orchestra & choir watch the conductor for cues on when to play.

Benaroya hall, the concert venue and (I think) where the Seattle Symphony usually plays from, was also really cool, and the acoustics were pretty awesome within the hall. There was also lots of food and drink stands both outside and inside the hall where people could grab some bites before the concert or during intermission, where I bought a couple of yummy cookies! Some of the food stands inside the main hall area was also selling Harry Potter-themed snacks which was really fun to look at 😀

There were long lines for all the concessions stands, and the hall was completely full with Harry Potter fans!

Snitch rice krispies! 🙂

Broomstick pretzels!

 

I really enjoyed the experience and had a newfound appreciation for all music in the movie. Until I saw the soundtrack being performed live, I never realized how much chorale stuff was in the soundtrack and also just how much music is in the movie at all. There were also times when I would forget that it was a live performance because it was just so seamlessly integrated with the movie screening and the performance was just absolutely wonderful ❤

 

When the Seattle Symphony does another one of these movie in concert series, I definitely want to check it out!

Weekend Excursion to Vansterdam! :)

Hi! I hope everyone had a great 4th of July weekend!

This weekend I took a trip up to Vancouver to visit my old roommate and her boyfriend who recently moved to the city 🙂 I wasn’t sure what to title this post so I looked up nicknames for Vancouver and found out that Vansterdam is one of the more well-known ones! Apparently Vancouver is very liberal with recreational drug use, hence the nickname haha XD

 

The last time I went to Vancouver was when I was really young, so I didn’t remember much about the city and went on the trip not really expecting anything 🙂 A couple of friends at work had told me that there’s a huge Chinese population there, so that I should definitely try as much Chinese food as I could, but that was pretty much all I knew about Vancouver going up 🙂

 

I took the Bolt bus up to Vancouver from the Seattle Uwajimaya bus stop 🙂

The Bolt bus drops you off at the Pacific Center station!

 

I arrived pretty late on Friday night, so we didn’t do too much that day other than go out for some light bites, but on Saturday we had the whole day to explore Vancouver! The first thing we did was go for some congee in Chinatown, because I looooove congee and also there was a really yummy place right next door to my friend’s apartment!

 

Next we headed over to Gastown, a place my friend explained to me is like Vancouver’s equivalent of Cap Hill here in Seattle 😀 The area was really lively and bustling with people, and it seemed like one of the main tourist districts in Vancouver 🙂 We passed by a lot of really chic stores as well as the statue of Gassy Jack (which Gastown is named after) and the famous Gastown Steam clock :D. The steam clock plays a few notes every 15 minutes, and I think it plays a short song every hour (?) but I wasn’t around to hear the longer song so I’m not a 100% sure :3!

A status of Gassy Jack

Gastown was filled with these cute boutique stores!

The famous Steam clock in Gastown 🙂

 

After Gastown we wanted to go biking around Stanley Park so we looked for bike rentals nearby and found a company called Van City Bikes. Renting the bike was a pretty speedy process and we rented it for the rest of the day at a pretty affordable price 😀 Once we were out of the pedestrian heavy area of the city, we got on our bikes and off we went around Stanley Park! We’d been worried that it would rain during the bike ride but fortunately the rain let up just before we started the ride! The view was also pretty great and it was very refreshing to glide past the seawall on our bikes and breathe in the fresh air 🙂

The bike map that Van City Bikes gave us!

Look at this view from Stanley Park!! It looked like it was low tide, so we saw a bunch of moss and seaweed on the rocks 😀

 

After making a roundtrip around Stanley Park, we rode our bikes to Granville Island! The island itself is not super huge, but it was bustling with storefronts and people, so it had a really nice vibe and was like a little oasis in the middle of the busy city around it 😀 We stopped into a lot of the little stores and tried out samples of stuff, and eventually made our way to the Public Market on the island 😀

Granville Island welcomes you! 🙂

cute handmade goods 😀

they sell lots of fresh food in the market too!

We wanted to spend some more time on Granville Island, but our day had to draw to a close so we rode our bikes back through the city to the Van City Bikes rental area and after returning them, ended the day by watching season 3 of Stranger Things XD

 

I liked Vancouver and would probably go visit again sometime this year or next year! Thank you, Vansterdam! XD

 

Hiking Mount Si

It’s been a while since I posted in my blog, but I’m excited to start writing updates again! 🙂

A colorful Ben & Jerry’s bus for pride weekend!

Vendors were setting up pretty early for the Pride festival

Summer is here in Seattle and with it came some amazing summer weather! One of the ways I’ve been wanting to take advantage of the weather and all the things the Seattle outdoors has to offer is to go on more hikes in the area, so yesterday I went on a hike to Mount Si!

Did you know that Seattle operates a trailhead shuttle that takes you to a bunch of different trailheads :D? Yesterday I took advantage of the service and took a bus from Capitol Hill to the Mount Si trailhead!

All aboard the Trailhead shuttle 😀

This bus fit 26 people 🙂

There are four different routes that the trailhead shuttle operates for: Mount Si, Cougar Mountain, Mailbox Peak, and Issaquah Alps. They run pretty often (it seemed like there was one every 30 minutes) and you can even transfer from one shuttle stop to another.

The bus driver was telling us that it’s pretty useful for some of the further hikes, such as Mailbox Peak, because instead of going all the way to Issaquah, which is where the Mailbox Peak bus starts its route, you can take the Mount Si shuttle bus from Capitol Hill and then transfer at the Issaquah station to Mailbox Peak 🙂

This is the fare chart (accurate as of 6/30/2019) for a one-way ride on the bus, and you can pay with your standard ORCA card or with cash 🙂

The bus is smaller than the usual Seattle buses and so it doesn’t seat many people (capacity said 26), but it was enough for all of us 🙂

 

 

The Mount Si hike itself was pretty difficult, with an elevation of around 4,000 feet with a distance of around 4 miles. There are lots of different routes you can take up around the mountain range, but we pretty much just stayed on the Mount Si trail all the way up to the peak.

The first half of the hike is not too bad, and at the end there was a little makeshift picnic spot with logs for seating in a clear area. A lot of people seemed to hang around here and then head down. If you’re up for the challenge though, you can continue on to a little bridge area.

This is the start of the steep incline up the mountain, and it’s also where most of the elevation was achieved. When I was struggling up this stretch of the hike, I saw some super amazing people running on the trail, and in fact I saw them two more times throughout the hike, just running around the trail! I was so impressed and amazed by their stamina and energy :000

When you reach the end of the steep incline, there’s one final stretch of incline that you need to go up before you can say you’ve really reached the peak of the trail. I believe it’s called the Haystack, and it’s essentially a rocky part of the trail that ends with the peak 🙂

Here’s what the top of the Haystack looks like 😀

It was a really clear day, and you could even see the Seattle and Bellevue skyline from the peak :00

I’m looking forward to going on some more hikes this summer!

SakuraCon 2019!

This weekend I went to Sakura Con at the Washington Convention Center!

It was my first time at the convention, and I had a really nice experience! There were so many interesting panels that were being hosted, a really good lineup of other kinds of activities (like arts & crafts, a manga library, and an open karaoke room), and a ton of really awesome cosplay!!

 

Anime feminist panel, I’m really interested in checking out their blog!

A panelist presenting abusive relationships in shojo manga; she was my favorite panelist at the convention 🙂

There was also a karaoke contest at Sakuracon, and it was pretty fun watching the contestants perform! : )

There was also a pretty extensive exhibitionist center where a lot of people were selling official merchandise from different randoms, as well as an artists’ gallery where artists were displaying their different artwork 🙂 The exhibitionist center had a lot more stalls and merchants than the artists’ gallery, but they were both really fun to browse through!

One of my favorite stalls from artist’s gallery! 🙂

 

There were so many people at the convention, and I particularly noticed that Saturday was the most popular, which made sense since most people have to go to work on weekdays and Sunday is more of a rest day than anything else 🙂

 

Overall, SakuraCon was a really nice experience! At times it was a little overwhelming because there were so many people, but I really enjoyed attending the different panels and admiring the different cosplays present at the convention 🙂 I’m not sure if I’ll attend it again next year, but it was a super great weekend! Next year I think I’m going to attend Emerald City Comic-Con and I’m already looking forward to it! ❤

 

 

Beacon Food Forest

The past weekend I spent my Saturday volunteering at the Beacon Food Forest! They refer to themselves as the BFF, which I thought was sweet 🙂

The Beacon Food Forest is an entirely community-driven park in the Beacon Hill area of Seattle and its goal is to create an edible urban forest garden where locals can come harvest crops, take classes on how to start their own gardens, and volunteer in many different ways to give back to the community.

Apparently they have committees that meet fairly regularly to determine what type of work needs to be done to maintain the forest and also decide which crops to plant, but I think the coolest part about the food forest is that it’s entirely driven by the community. Even the money to fund the forest comes from the neighborhood’s budget for community improvements, and most of the work that’s done is done by community members or volunteers who are just interested in helping out : D

 

Volunteer check-in stand!

You can see downtown Seattle from the Food Forest 🙂

The core volunteer committee explaining the different projects at BFF

This area was set aside for planting some new crops 🙂

Tea time! ❤

I was there volunteering with my Seattle Teamworks group, a group that volunteers at a different location once a month for 4 months (more information about Seattle Teamworks here!), but apparently BFF hosts a volunteer party every 3rd Saturday of the month where anyone’s welcome to help out with the forest 🙂

I could really tell that they had done this multiple times before because the day went really smoothly and they had a lot of different kinds of projects that volunteers could choose from, such as creating mounds for the new round of crops, making compost piles (the first ones for the year!), weeding and pruning, and building new walls for an expansion of the food forest.

Around noon, the core volunteer committee serves a vegan homemade lunch (that was super yummy!!!) and everyone takes a break to just socialize and talk to other volunteers :D. There’s also coffee and tea that volunteers can drink throughout the day too if they ever need a break or just want to hang around the water cooler for a bit haha.

I worked on creating some new trellises for the DNA Helix part of the food forest (named as such because of the way the irrigation pipes criss cross each other), and there was some leftover bamboo at the end so I took some pieces home to try make something out of it and ended up making a little soap holder 😀

Overall, I think the concept of the BFF is super cool and I love how much emphasis they put on forming a community and also building a sustainable food forest. I could just picture lots of families coming to the garden during the spring and summer seasons to pick some harvests and also school field trips to learn more about where food comes from and how they grow; it’s a great mission. : )

 

 

Skiing on Crystal Mountain!

Over the past weekend, I went on a ski trip to Crystal Mountain! Some really good friends from Austin and Portland also joined us and having them there really made it a blast 😀

The last time I’d skied was around 7 years ago. I used to go with my family fairly often, but ever since I started college I don’t think we’ve been to a ski resort except to maybe just enjoy the view of the mountains and stay at a cozy winter lodge, haha 🙂

I only know how to ski, but on the first day of the trip I actually decided to rent a snowboard because I wanted to give something new a try :0! Before I left for the trip, one of my coworkers told me that I’d be falling a lot, but that was definitely an understatement – I was falling on my knees and butt every few feet down the bunny slope, and for a while I had a really hard time figuring out how to get back up after a fall or even how to move forward after getting back up from a fall :/.

I had a lot of fun learning how to snowboard though, and by the end of the day I wasn’t falling as often which was awesome 😀 But eventually I got tired of getting bruised so I switched over to skiing so that I could start going on the higher slopes 🙂

Discovery is Crystal Mountain’s bunny slope, where a lot of beginners were practicing 🙂

If you take the gondola up to the restaurant at the Summit, there’s a really great view of Mt. Rainier!!

 

Overall, I had a really nice time on this ski trip – it was really great spending the weekend with people I cared about and enjoyed spending time with, learning something new by trying out snowboarding, and getting better at skiing! I went on my longest run ever with the combination of the Forest Queen route and Quicksilver, and I didn’t fall down once which I was pretty happy about :3

 

Here are some tips if you’re planning/interested in taking a trip to Crystal Mountain!

Driving Over

The drive over was really nice! Initially we were worried there might be too much snow on the road, which would’ve been a problem for us since none of us really knew how to drive in the snow, but fortunately the weather and roads were both all nice and clear! 🙂

Clear roads and skies all weekend 🙂

On the way to Crystal Mountain, we passed a city called Enumclaw, where we saw a “Log Show” – basically there was a big log in the middle of what looked like a little baseball field where you could sit and watch the log from some bleachers. It was interesting XD

Staying at Crystal Mountain

Crystal Mountain has 3 or 4 different options for lodging, and they’re all at the base of the mountain with convenient locations. There is also another lodge that is fairly close to the resort called Alta Crystal Resort that has a little grocery store which is super nice.

The lodge we stayed at, Quicksilver Lodge, didn’t allow people to cook in their rooms. This was pretty lame because it pretty much forced you to eat at the restaurants at the ski resort. To get around having to eat at the restaurants for all our meals, we packed a bunch of snacks that didn’t require any/much cooking, such as fruit, some bakery items, and a lot of cup noodles :3. One night we did have a really nice dinner experience at The Snorting Elk, one of the main restaurants at the resort – I really recommend their Face Plant drink, it was really yummy!

The entrance to Quicksilver Lodge 🙂

Someone made an igloo in the front yard of the lodge 😀

Mmm~ warm and toasty

The lodge itself was pretty cozy, especially the lounge area in the middle of the second floor! There was a very cozy fireplace (which also was almost too extremely effective in warming up the entire lounge), a lot of comfy seating, and some board games that you could play with your friends/family :).

The rooms were pretty spacious but the loft rooms, which were the ones we were staying at, have a really weird layout where the first floor is a mix of a bunch of things.

It was a good space for all of us though, so I can’t really complain too much! 🙂

Renting Equipment

If you’re planning on renting equipment while you’re at Crystal Mountain, there’s a conveniently located rental shop right at the base of the mountain. They rent out both ski and snowboard equipment, and I think they rent out clothes as well – if you don’t have goggles or gloves though, you’ll have to buy them at the equipment store upstairs since they don’t rent out those :(.

With the rentals, if you’re borrowing them for more than one day, then you have the option of doing a multi-day rental instead of a single-day rental. The multi-day rental is useful because it allows you to hold on to your rented equipment for multiple days instead of returning them at the end of each day and then having to rent them again at the start of the next day. The rental assistant told me that it’s the same price as doing daily rentals so if you’re going to be needing rental equipment for more than one day in a row then there’s really no reason to not get a multi-day rental 🙂

 

 

In general, I kind of enjoyed the intimate nature of the experience at Crystal Mountain. It is a lot smaller than the ski resorts I’ve been to before, but the small scale of the resort lended itself to a cozier atmosphere, and it was a lot easier to find and meet up with each other after we’d come down a slope 🙂

I hope these tips help in planning a trip to Crystal Mountain, and as always please feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions! 🙂 Have a safe ski season everybody!

 

Advocating for Women In Tech

A couple of events happened over the course of last two weeks that got me really thinking about how much I’ve grown and learned since I started working at my new company, which was about 9 months ago.
In the past 9 months, I’ve learned so much from working with a lot of technologies and tools that were new to me, and I’m really happy about the opportunities that I’ve had so far. But the area of growth that I’m most proud of is a change in my mindset when facing uncertainties and an increase in self-confidence in my skills and validity of opinions.

I don’t know what it is specifically about working in STEM, but a lot of women in the industry, especially early on in their careers, have a tendency to have lower self-confidence levels compared to other men they work with. I also definitely felt that way when I was first starting out my career; I would have times when I didn’t want to speak in meetings because I didn’t think my ideas were that great or times when I would let someone else take my idea and present it in front of people because I was worried that if I did I would expose the gaps in my knowledge or understanding of how something works.

It also didn’t help that I was one of the two women on the dev team at the time, and I was often passed up by managers when looking for people to lead bigger initiatives or work on projects with higher visibility to upper management, despite my repeated attempts to have more responsibility at work and requests for bigger opportunities. Both of these things perpetuated a negative feedback loop where I felt frustrated about being glossed over by management, which would then make me believe that they were right in thinking that I wasn’t good enough to work on bigger, more complicated things, which in turn just made me feel worse about myself and my competency.

But now I don’t feel or think that way. Granted, there might be times here and there where I find myself hesitating before saying something or making sure I have all my ducks in a row before doing something, but that’s just part of who I am and what makes me feel comfortable. But rarely do I find myself doubting my own self or comparing myself to others and thinking that I’m not good enough to contribute to discussions or meetings.

 

There are lots of different factors that have helped me reach the state that I am in now, but I would say that most of them boil down to two main things:

None of my coworkers make me feel like I have to prove myself or feel dumb for asking questions; instead, they’re always willing to teach me things or explain concepts, specifically in the way that I learn best.

My company has a culture that’s really focused on life-long learning, which means that everyone is always curious and interested in something. It also means that at any given point, there are going to be people who are really knowledgeable about a certain topic that others aren’t, or people who are interested in learning about something and looking for some mentorship from experts in the field at the company.

A big aspect of our learning culture is actually about being a coach to others through teaching or mentoring, and there’s a big emphasis in coaching others in the way they would best understand it. So if someone is a visual learner and you are trying to explain system architecture, draw it out! Or if someone prefers face-to-face communication but you personally prefer messaging over Slack, go talk to them and explain things in person!

The reason for this is because we want to maximize the efficiency of learning and communication; after all, you can say or do all the things you think you should do, but if the recipient just isn’t getting it then what is it except for a big waste of time?

This sort of culture has really helped me feel comfortable in being open about things I don’t know or asking for help with things I want to know, and everyone has been so great about taking the time to teach me or explain how things work to me, something that I’m super grateful for.

Not only does fostering a culture where people are not afraid to say they don’t know something and feel comfortable in asking for help really go a long way in making sure everyone feels secure, it also helps senior devs and managers fill in the gaps in understanding of the people they mentor since now they’re privy to the extent of understanding of their mentees.
I’ve met many other people who were vulnerable and told me that they’d felt the same feelings of self-doubt and low self-confidence, but most importantly, I heard this from both other women and other men.

I didn’t realize how much this helped in boosting my self-confidence until I really thought about what I wanted to write in this post, but let me tell you, it really, really helped.

Prior to working at my new company, I’d never met anyone who said they had the same worries and fears that I had regarding their competency and confidence in themselves. I’d always felt like everyone knew what they were doing, or if they didn’t know exactly what they were doing, they at least had a pretty good understanding of the basic concepts underlying different things.

At my new company though, suddenly I was hearing a lot of phrases like “I’m not following your explanation, could you say that again?” or “Did that explanation make sense to you? Let me know if anything didn’t make sense and we can try to go over it again.” I was also hearing a lot of encouraging remarks from senior devs and mentors, such as “Don’t be afraid to say you don’t know something; our job is to help you grow and succeed at your job, so if we don’t know what you don’t know then we won’t be very good at helping!”

To give a very concrete example, I had a 1-on-1 with the manager of my project, and when I asked him for some feedback on how I could continue to grow on the project, he said something like:

“To put it bluntly, don’t let your inhibitions get in the way of achieving things. I know you think Bob and Larry (names edited for privacy, lol) have more technical expertise or knowledge than you, but that doesn’t matter! There’s a lot more to being good at this job than being the most technical person in the room or being the “smartest” person in the room; I know you can do it so you shouldn’t let yourself hold you back >:(“

I’d already been feeling pretty good about my current state of mind and level of self-confidence, but hearing something like that from him was so nice to hear and I really appreciated his trust in my potential 🙂

 

If you are a woman in tech, or in any industry, really, and feel uncertain in yourself from time to time, I think that’s totally normal and isn’t necessarily a bad thing – it may motivate you to expand your understanding of something or pursue knowledge of a specific subject, both of which are awesome things! But if your lack of confidence in yourself prohibits you from voicing your ideas or makes you feel negatively about yourself, I really really want to emphasize that what you feel, other people feel too.

True, you may not know everything about everything or be an expert in anything yet, but that’s totally fine! Nobody! is an expert about everything in everything and there are a ton of people out there who don’t know what you know or have what you have, so feel proud in your achievements thus far and switch your focus to appreciating the knowledge you do have and maybe on the things you want to have 🙂

Experiences with Homeshare

For those of you who don’t know, I live in Seattle! I recently saw an article online saying how while Seattle doesn’t want to become the next San Francisco in terms of cost of living and housing, a lot of other cities don’t want to become the next Seattle with its rapid rise in cost of living and housing in the recent years.

When I first moved to Seattle from Dallas, I was definitely shocked by how little apartment (and of pretty bad quality) I could get in Seattle with the same amount of money I could pay in Dallas for a nice apartment.

A really nice Dallas apartment for ~$1000/mo ❤

But where does the bed go? And why is this $1000?

Another problem I had in trying to find a place to live when I first moved to Seattle was that I didn’t know many people in the city who I would want to live with/ask to be my roommates :(.

I tried looking for existing housing situations that I could just join as a roommate or find potential roommates through platforms like Facebook and Craigslist, but most of the listings were either for places that weren’t super great or there were too many roommates or even worse, actually looking for literal roommates (“Looking for someone to share a room with me for $500/mo!” – no).

Enter Homeshare! I randomly stumbled on their website while looking for affordable housing options in Seattle (I’m pretty sure my Google query was “cheap nice apartments Seattle” and it ended more as a question than a demand), and I am really glad that I found their site!

To put it simply, Homeshare is a company that partners with luxury apartments in cities that are known for high cost of living, specifically luxury apartments that have a lot of common spaces and amenities, and lower the rent for everyone in the apartment by putting a partition in the living room and renting it out as a bedroom. This helps subsidize the rent for everyone in the apartment, since now 3 people are sharing the rent cost of a 2 person apartment.

Each type of room has a different monthly rent, with the partitioned room (or what Homeshare calls the “converted” room) being the cheapest and the master bedroom (the bedroom with a bathroom) being the most expensive.

Homeshare also provides roommate matching, where they ask everyone to fill out a living habit and roommate preference questionnaire. Once they get your questionnaire response, they try their best to match you with roommates who are of similar personalities or has similar interests as you.

Batik Apartments

Thanks to Homeshare, I was able to find some roommates that I ended up getting along pretty well with, and a really nice apartment that I definitely enjoy living in. My two favorite things about the situation is are that I get to live in an apartment that’s really nice but also super close to work, and I don’t pay that much in monthly rent ❤ !

If you’re someone who wouldn’t mind (or even enjoy) living with random people and want to pay affordable rent for a nice apartment, then I definitely recommend checking out Homeshare and signing up for a tour (<– this is my referral link for Homeshare)!

Homeshare currently has apartments in these locations:

 

If you have any questions or want to hear more about my experience at using Homeshare, leave me a comment! 🙂

 

 

UPDATE: Homeshare no longer provides bill payments through their Portal, announcement that was fairly abrupt. They have also had other experiences with being very disorganized and unprofessional, so as such I would not recommend it as much as I previously did.