Posted 2:18 AM by Andy
Interviews, job fairs, and my private hell. I talked to an SMS text message startup on Tuesday in San Diego. The company's vision is bold, to rule the world as the dominant mobile community. They created an interoperable platform to deliver messages across various networks. Their scope is global, their momentum is swelling. Their pitch? "We can be 10 times as big as E-bay. Everyone needs to communicate. The US is about to explode in the adoption of SMS." Due to its bootstrap financing, the proposition is laced with a lowball salary with accelerated vesting on stock options. Great location, great opportunity, with possibly very little leisure time and cashflow in the next few years.

Taiwanese job fair. Forty-plus Taiwan-based electronic firms recruited in the City of Industry today. Most of the talent search centered on engineers, with a few business/operations or sales jobs. It was slightly disorganized with people calling out empty seats at company tables, at which point the first person to respond from this waiting area gets the seat. I felt slightly odd speaking about myself and my career in Chinese. I spotted a few American-born-Chinese folks in the sea of extremely Chinese job-seekers. I got a few questions about fulfilling my draft duty for the Taiwan military, obviated by my US citizenship. One recruiter encouraged me by saying, "You WILL succeed. Don't go to Taiwan, the US is better. Be patient." I paid my mandatory respects to a friend of a friend of my mom who is a GM of his company. I think all this hunting is retribution for my days at Autodesk seeking greener pastures.

Car Value. I seriously pondered selling my Accord after being hit by a driver backing out on Irving. I was stationary waiting for a parking space when the driver rammed my rear right side. I questioned the enjoyment I was getting from the car. In economic parlance, the utility I enjoyed from owning the car was less than the cash I would receive in its stead. Kelly Blue Book priced it at $16200. I considered trading down to a Civic but was dissuaded by my mom. She vehemently opposed selling due to depreciation and the fact that I may still need the vehicle more than the money. My coupe is in the shop right now so I'm tooling around town in a Saturn. Every time I decide I will not be a slave to material possessions like a car, I see a Carrera pull up and I have to avert my eyes lest my heart short circuits.

SF. I feel a love and connection to San Fran that I don't for LA. One night explains it. I was waiting for Jenny K to view her apartment for rent, but she blew a tire. This seemingly innocuous event turns out to be divinely orchestrated in my mind. With the extra time, I roll to Irving to get a quick bite to eat. I saunter into Taiwan Point straight into three brothers, Eli, Drew, and Mitch at a table with an empty seat. I join them and was pulled into the conversation on a disciple versus a believer. We tried to decipher the meaning and relationship between the two and how to encourage our siblings in the Lord to be disciples. How does the life of a disciple look differently than that of a believer? Chance encounter? I doubt it.

Crews. Your boys. Posse. Homies. Gang. Whatever moniker you assign it, most people yearn to belong to a group that enhances their identities and lends them social clout. They enjoy the solidarity found within a circle of friends with a similar outlook on life and similar interests. I like to be part of a community of like-minded individuals as well but with a strange twist. I love being in multiple communities and having cross-over abilities. I enjoy the access given by friends that take me into new worlds and societies. I befriend individuals. Most people like having a tight circle of friends in their vicinity. I purposefully make friends in scattered locations around the world and sometimes wish people in my life would move to strategic locations. I want to be able to say that each one of my friends is capable of being a leader of their own group independent of the others.

Casino Games. Caveat is I am a novice gambler but possess an inveterate fascination behind games of strategy and choice. Poker is fun because it is a social game where deception and psychological factors are integral to the game. Blackjack is the only game where you can beat the house consistently honestly given the right conditions. Roulette is the game most governed by chance and best game to cheat at. (If I had less integrity, I can live off the casinos.) Pai-gow is the slowest game to lose your money at. The best mathematicians like Pascal and Poincare were gamblers. In fact, they invented blackjack theory.

Thrill seeking. At some point in most people's lives, they want to test the limits and seek out activities that will give them extra adrenaline rushes. During my days in LA this past summer, I certainly grew more experimental in my search for thrills. Top atheletes have the thirst for competition. I have that to a degree. What would give you the most thrills? Surfing the waves at North Shore? Street racing on the Pacific Coast Highway at 2 a.m.? Skydiving in Monterey? Crushing a test after making a bet on your exact score? Going all in with your chips in Texas Hold 'Em in Monte Carlo and taking the pot? Hitting the game winning shot after multiple overtimes? Asking a girl for her info as an afterthought after she tells you her life story during the first meeting? I have lived some of these events and have been prevented from acting on others by God's mercy. But the most sustaining, most fulfilling, the most exhilirating, the thing that gives me the deepest joy is leading someone to Jesus Christ. Nothing else compares to the moment of recognition when a person crosses from darkness into light, when a prayer is uttered to seal Christ to a soul, when a life is reborn. This is the thrill that fired apostle Paul's imagination, ignited the worldwide movement of the Christian Church, fueled the Reformation, and burns in me. Jesus, make your glory known. On earth as it is in heaven.

Posted 1:05 AM by Andy
I just submitted an application to the CIA for the political or foreign area analyst position with a focus on China. Besides the fact that sometimes I find what the Agency does unsavory, I am still strangely attracted to the opportunity to study current events for a living. There was also a career matching survey on its website that suggests a possible path for you. After I meticulously answered the questions for team orientation, professional skills, outside interests, and language abilities, the answer came back: Excellent match for clandestine service. Yikes. I am intrigued and scared at the same time.

Tracing back my conversations over the last few weeks backwards, starting with Dave L. He is a pastor/missionary with a passion to plant churches in North Korea. He sees me as being in a good place now despite my lack of a vocation. He suggested a few things I can do in the meantime. Travel is fun but expensive. Finding a mentor and attaching myself to him is a great idea but difficult to implement with my disparate interests and the busyness of successful men. Starting a business is very compelling and so I have been churning on this for the last couple days. The most logical business for me to start is an SAT prep class. I know the test cold, and its simplicity is beautiful. It's a basically a matchmaking service to pair young adult tutors with high school students. Of course there are different models that you can establish with classroom versus private tutoring and agreements to seal to secure a location but the numbers make sense to me. This was instigated by yet another interview with an SAT prep firm yesterday. The two guys who started this firm are undercutting Princeton Review and Kaplan on price with better quality in service. Apparently word is spreading and hence they initiated the urgent hiring process. After giving my spiel on the Nash equilibrium to demonstrate my public speaking skills, I thought I can replicate their success in Norcal. I need to talk to my friend Mike T who has started his own service a couple years back to propose joining forces. At best we will steal a niche from the big players, at worst I will help Mike out with some fresh ideas.

Margaret. I showed up at a dinner where I knew nobody and at the end of the night made two solid friends. It was a small group outing for a new group forming out of Newsong. I found out she was my sister's teammate on InterVarsity's global missions team a few years ago. I had seen her but didn't remember her visage. She quickly warmed up to me after we made the connection. She teaches second grade and loves to travel. After dinner my friend John and I played foosball and ping-pong at her place. She decimated us in foosball but I held my own in table tennis.

Anna. This Korean physical therapist is the essence of elegance and class. She showed up at dinner dressed in a nice vest tank top and skirt while I lounged in my faux polo shirt. She shared her initial struggles to fit in with her snobbish colleagues at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Beverly Hills before slowly being included in the group. When asked whether her job is stressful, she explained her main responsibility as helping patients recover from cardiac arrest. Oh, you mean it's only a matter of life or death?

Janet C. On a Saturday afternoon, at a new boba cafe in Palo Alto, she saunters in and sits down at my table. I discovered she was a visitor from Beijing by way of Manhattan and Ithaca. We compared notes on our experiences in the various cities. We discussed M&A (her professional training), my career (meandering), and recent developments in Beijing.

Melanie C. After a year where I saw very little of her due to conflicting travel schedules, we met up for lunch at One Market Plaza food court, ironically the site of my first job out of college. She expressed her recent turmoil with work (Visa sponsorship issues, an unethical manager) before we segued into her views on dating. I agreed with her that dating shouldn't be a taboo subject in fellowship among young adults but also realize that the stigma of failure attached to broken relationships is difficult to overcome which leads to the hush-hush atmosphere.

Roland and Judy's wedding. Simple, exquisite, and Christ-honoring. The second slideshow was an interesting twist to the festivities where the couple recounted their romance from its earliest stages until the present time. Judy is an amazing woman who is brilliant but humble. That's why I never knew what she is capable of until her sister toasted her. The one minor complaint I have is being seated at a couples' table. Leon quipped, "What did you do to Roland?" in response to my plight.