Author: stlplace

Categories
Chinese articles Saint Louis

圣村华人教会的兴衰

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昨天一个偶然的机会，我开车经过圣查尔斯，看到圣路易斯华人浸信会教会 St. Louis Chinese Baptist Church 的教堂⛪️。我没有去过那个新教堂，但是多年以前我有去过他们在Page/Ashby 路上的老教堂。我记得出生于香港的黄英杰牧师讲道：我还蛮喜欢。我也记得在换教堂期间，就是老教堂已卖掉，新教堂还没落实的时候，他们每礼拜天租用了highway 64 旁边的美国人教堂：我还去过几次。前几年听说他们搬过去新堂以后，后来就有一些问题，好像黄牧师也搬到外州去了。我好像在脸书上还看到过教堂荒废的照片。

其实我听说村里的另一个华人教会圣路易斯华人教会 St. Louis Chinese Christian Church, 有时候华人会说CCC, 我记得当时是自己建新堂的，近年也因类似的原因衰落了。我也去过那个教会，参加过团契，英文崇拜，好像搬新堂的时候还去帮忙打扫卫生还是搬东西。08年汶川地震的时候我和我太太还去参加过那里的聚会/讲道。

这是两个我在圣村二十多年多多少少参加过的教会。村里还有其它的一些华人教会。有了孩子以后我们去过橄榄村的路德教会的基督之光教会，严格来说基督之花不是一个独立的教会，她是路德教会以马内利橄榄村教会 Immanel Lutheran Church Olivette 的分支。后来主要因为疫情和其它政治原因（华人教会里有较多的川粉），我们也就不去了。这个教会其实离我家非常近。

PS: 网上查询黄英杰牧师的时候看到一篇说他坏话的文章。我的直觉是北美保守评论是一个在美华人基督教徒的一个极右组织。

油管：我今天早上也在散步的时候想到这个问题，就说一下吧。

Categories
uber-and-side-hustle

More Uber Driving Tips

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(Update 03-19-2025) I paused Uber driving for last few days since the power outage as a result of the powerful tornado hit STL on Friday 03/14/25 night. I resumed it today (this morning). And I made a mistake – I turned off the Cellular Data for “Uber Driver” app as a measure to save the cellular data usage. I used up about 5GB one day without realizing it until I already used it – I thought playing from YT Music is not using data – my assumption was not correct – it doesn’t use data only when I played it from “Download” folder on the YT Music app.

The problem this morning is as soon as I drove away, my Uber Driver app stopped working. Eventually I stopped at the Stacy Park, and thought maybe I would just do morning walk. But at that time, I realized my cellular data setting and turn it back on. And I went back to the Uber app (after closing the app and re-open) and the trip was still there. So, I proceeded as usual. The lesson for me is I should not turn it off at the first place.

Also, came across this sad news – Father of Houston rideshare driver speaks out on son’s death during carjacking – FOX 26 Houston via YT.

(Update 03-08-2025) Today I drove a bit on gravel road the 1st time as Uber driver. Note gravel road is not popular in America, but there are still some in rural areas.

Be relaxed

A few things came to my mind. Recently sometimes I don’t want to drive far out of way, and then come back home empty handed. So I screen the ride requests carefully, sometimes I stop the car and wait in the parking lot, and only accept the ride I liked. This morning is a good example, I declined a few ride requests before getting a one at Dobbs tire shop, at Olivette, near where I live. Second trip was driving from near the Dieberg’s at Craig to the La Boone Bouchee at Olive and Tempo Dr. I even got tips from both trips. I was not expecting, but I guess when I am relaxed, customers (passengers) may feel that way too.

So this is about “take it easy”. Not solely chasing for the money – honestly I still feel Uber driving is not an easy way to make money or bring bread home.

Again I do understand I am probably lucky in a way because I am not going to kill myself to make money via driving for Uber. Somedays if I feel not like it, I can just do my other things, such as exercise instead of driving. I think I am going to do that tomorrow morning 🙂

Audio

Also, about audio. I think ideally I want to have one AirPod in my left ear, so that I can listen to the passenger just in case. Because I have a 2012 model car, the build in audio is not that sophisticated, so I just use my iPhone and AirPods.

Uber App Notifications

I realized I don’t need the instant notification. I just need to turn on the notification summary. This way I can save quite a few “surge” notifications during my normal work day.

Cleanliness of the car

I washed my car (2012 Toyota Sienna minivan) as practically as possible. Due to snow and the road salt, the car looks dirty from outside, finally I was able to clean over the weekend, due to the warmer temperature. One thing, I noticed, is unfortunately the faucet for the garden hose was broken during the extreme cold weather, and the ice inside the faucet. I am researching and will hopefully come up with a good fix soon.

I may summarized more and refer to my earlier Uber driving tips.

Categories
Business Technology

Switch of software or IT vendor

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Sudden Change vs Gradual Change

I have seen a few sudden changes of vendor in my career. And this is usually sign of either “not thinking through” or “the bean counters are in charge”.

Once at Ascension Health, it seems they only implemented the Okta two factor authentication for a few days or a few weeks, then suddenly they switch back to Microsoft AD (Active Directory). It seems to me this one was due to some executives have second thought on Okta. They want to go all in with Microsoft in terms of authentication (and authorization) as well, and they built a layer on the top of Azure AD B2C (and named it as AscensionID).

Now I think about it, in a way “sudden change” is probably easier than change an entrenched software (or rewrite), or trying to slowly change a software or app. Because the “sudden change” approach is somewhat like “just rip off the bandage”. In the case of the example above, because it barely went into production, it was not entrenched.

On the contrary, I have seen in a few cases in my career, we were trying to rewrite an app or a software, only end up going nowhere after spending quite some time. Re-write has its own challenges, btw.

In fact, in most cases: I realized we end up not switching – note this is after decent or significant efforts (in terms of money, multi-millions dollars). If it’s my money, I don’t think I would spend it like that.

FAA (Key Officials)

About 2 years ago, I recall this incident – (CNN) Aging, outdated technology leaves air travel at risk of meltdown. Quote:

The glitch at the center of this week’s headache was a corrupted database file in a pilots’ advisory system that issues warnings, known as NOTAMs, of various hazards that could affect a flight, ranging from notices of closed runways to the presence of nearby construction equipment. The damaged file was also present in the FAA’s backup system, a source familiar with the matter told CNN, which first reported the detail on Wednesday.

Officials moved to reboot the main NOTAM system early Wednesday morning, but it failed to be completely restored by the time rush hour began on the East Coast, leading to the FAA ground stop. A senior US official told CNN Wednesday there was no evidence of foul play in the incident, a detail the FAA later publicly confirmed.…

The NOTAM issue occurred just days after the FAA had said an “air traffic computer issue” was responsible for hours-long flight delays to Florida airports on Jan. 2. That system, known as ERAM, is responsible for tracking hundreds of flights at a time and is considered a critical component of the FAA’s efforts to modernize the US airspace.

More recently, I heard that the DOGE or more precisely Elon is going to fix the old systems at FAA. See below. Note this is different from the system above: also current system is neither Verizon or Starlink.

(Twitter/X) The FAA is close to canceling a $2.4 billion contract with Verizon and HANDING IT OVER TO STARLINK.

(Politico) Musk slams a Starlink competitor amid questions about $2.4B FAA contract

(Rolling Stone) FAA Officials Ordered Staff to Find Funding for Elon Musk’s Starlink

Quote Rolling Stone here:

Elon Musk’s satellite business Starlink may not have officially taken over Verizon’s $2.4 billion contract with the Federal Aviation Administration yet to upgrade the systems it uses to manage America’s airspace. However, on Friday, FAA officials ordered staff to begin finding tens of millions of dollars for a Starlink deal, according to a source with knowledge of the FAA and two people briefed on the situation.

The sources note that these internal directives have mostly, if not entirely, been delivered verbally — which they say is unusual for a matter like this. The source with knowledge of the FAA tells Rolling Stone that it appears as though “someone does not want a paper trail.”

I can recall in a few other cases “verbal instructions only” are used, e.g., the dismantle of USAid, CFPB by the DOGE team.

And last but not the least, Protest held at South County Tesla dealership.

Full disclosure: no stock positions on $MSFT, $OKTA, $TSLA and $VZ at this time.

Categories
Life

Sad story Gene Hackman and Betsy Arakawa

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(Update 03-09-2025) LA Times – His wife dead, an ailing Gene Hackman was stranded alone in his house for days, authorities believe.

(Update 03-7-2025) Huff Post: Gene Hackman And Wife Betsy Arakawa’s Causes Of Death Released. It seems to me in other words: Mr. Hackman who is in his 90s and has dementia, appears not aware of his wife’s passing and lived one more week on his own after his wife (who is 30 years younger) died suddenly. 用中文来说，有老年痴呆症的老先生好像没有意识到比他的年轻30岁的日本裔太太已经突然去世。虽然平常是他的太太照顾他，他自己一个人生活了一个礼拜。不知道他这一个礼拜是怎么过来的。而且因为他们是非常有钱的人，房子，院子也是巨大无比，我估计邻居一是平常不一定有交流，而是不会很容易看到他们家有啥异样。最后还是打扫院子的工人透过玻璃（窗或是门）发现的。当然类似的事情美国以外也偶尔有发生。

Alzheimer’s Expert Suggests Caregiver Emergency Plans After Deaths of Gene Hackman and Wife Betsy (Exclusive)

(CNN via YT) Actor Gene Hackman and his wife found dead in their New Mexico home || The CNN YT Video showed a lot of Tom Cruise and my memory of Gene Hackman is this move The Quick and the Dead.

(People Mag) All About Gene Hackman’s Wife, Classical Pianist Betsy Arakawa, Who Died Alongside the Actor and Their Dog

Gene Hackman Wikipedia

(Huffington Post) Close Friends Of Gene Hackman, Betsy Arakawa Recall Family’s Last Conversation With Couple

Some of my thoughts

It sounds to me they committed suicide(s): but we will have to wait what the police has to say. Refer to CNN: Actor Gene Hackman and his wife were found dead in their home this week under ‘suspicious’ circumstances. Here’s what we know.

This also exposed one problem that’s hitting our modern society – and my dad (who lives in China) mentioned it in recent years too: that is the loneliness of elder/older people.

Also, I saw a unique problem in America: some people are dependent on, or more precisely, addicted to the prescription drugs and hard drugs such as Fentanyl. This is happening to people of all economy backgrounds: I recall Michael Jackson died from drug over-dose years ago.

For substance abuse, e.g., Fentanyl, Peter Santenello (YouTuber) has a good documentary Inside America’s #1 Epidemic. In St. Louis area in recent years, I saw increasingly some (homeless?) people asked for money at the busy intersections. I hope they are not on drugs. A related problem/issue I see (or I don’t understand) why the states are making cannabis (marijuana) legal in last few years – it seems both Dems and Republicans are supporting that.

References

(YT: Dr. Josef)10 MOST Dangerous Prescription Drugs

Categories
Politics Saint Louis

华人亚裔们如何在生活工作中避免川普2.0带来的一些弊端

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美国最近一个月，川普他胡汉山又回来了。他这一卷土重来，可谓是来者不善善者不来。基本上把联邦政府翻了底朝天。他最近半年来宠幸的世界首富马斯克，带着一帮美国红卫兵，直接关了两个机构（USAID和CFPB），裁了所有的试用期的联邦政府员工。同时所有的机构包括国防部都要裁员。对华人来说，在高校研究机构工作的人，有不少是拿联邦政府的grant, 一般是通过NIH（卫生部）和NSF（国家科学基金会）。她们中应该也/已有一些收到直接间接的影响。有点搞笑的是，其实华人中有不少是川粉，或者是投票给川普的选民。这下好，搬起石头，直接砸自己的脚。这个让我想到前两天看到一个博文下的两个有点意思的评论：

如果川普发动战争，让你儿子死在战场，川粉会说，如果没有川王保护，我们会全家覆灭。奴才永远没有清醒的能力；


川粉但凡有点思考能力就不会是川粉了。川粉醒悟不了，有个关于美国农民的新闻里说得挺好，被川虐待千百遍，仍待川普如初恋。

安全

我97年夏天来美国，经历过克林顿（三年多，小克第二任任期是从97年1月20日开始），小布什（8年），奥巴马（8年），川普 1.0（4年）， 拜登（4年），接下来不出意外川普2.0还有3年11个月。

其实我刚来美国的时候，我在罗拉 University of Missouri at Rolla (后来改名为 Missouri University of Science and Technology: 一般现在简称是 Missouri S&T). 罗拉是一个小镇，97年是美国发生9-11（2001年）之前，所以在那里当时总的来说我感觉并没有什么歧视。我现在想想，那时候没有感觉受到各种歧视，尤其是种族歧视。我猜主要还是因为我们那时就是穷学生，尤其从经济上来说，当地美国人心理上对我们其实是有优越感的。

Covid

I recall lots of unprovoked violence towards Asian and Chinese during pandemic, especially the early days (the shutdown phase). Note for many Americans (white, black and latinos), they cannot tell the difference between Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese.

这不，醉心村(Creve Coeur) 的高档超市 Dierbergs 上礼拜五就有人在打移民，嫌犯被警察给抓了 – Man arrested for ‘discriminatory’ grocery store attack in Creve Coeur。引用一下KSDK：

“I’m tired of foreigners, man. Walking all over the place, making our money cost so much more than it should. F—ing people trampling over us.”

这个应该就是在 Marshall’s, TJ Maxx 所在的购物广场，BJC West，醉心村 Millennium Park 的对面。我以前就住醉心村：醉心村是圣村/圣路易斯郡当中不错的居民区，也有不少移民，包括华人，印度人，其它亚裔等；犹太人也不少。

我也没啥好的建议：我想大家能低调还是低调吧。还有可以考虑练一下防卫术，美国尤其是密苏里不禁枪，所以。。。大家心里有数。实在忍无可忍的时候是要自卫的。

PS: actually, now I have read the KSDK article, and I recall I had a similar incident at the Busch stadium probably in year 2008. A white man said something racist to me, and I talked back. At that time, we didn’t have kids: just me and my wife. So, something to keep in mind, if you have small kids (hint: the safety of your kids is probably the most important).

Reference

Federal Shifts in Higher Ed: A Survival Guide for Academia Kindle Edition by Ruopeng An

西裔女童遭同学威胁向ICE检举“抓你全家” 轻生身亡 || School district confirms bullying occurred after investigation following Texas girl’s death by suicide (CNN) || After 11-Year-Old’s Suicide, School Confirms She Was Bullied — but Claims There’s More to the Story. Her Mom Denies It (People)

My point here is always pay attention to your kids’ mental health.

Categories
Software development

Two observations on software engineering

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For a guy with a hammer, everything is a nail

Use SQL for everything

At Mastercard, I used to have a colleague who is great at SQL. And once I realized he used PL/SQL for quite complex business logic for a “promotion build” and it backfired. The customer noticed there were some inconsistencies and notified us. Upon further examination from yours truly, it appears the code has some logic flaw. Note the flaws in the PL/SQL is hard to detect, compared to code/app written in a more general purpose programming language such as Java and following proper testing procedure. The cost of that mistake is we end up sent about $40 k to the business customer (a bank). I can understand why PL/SQL is being used there, because that’s the main skill my former colleague had, and in other words, he has this hammer (SQL), and he was using it at every place possible. A second reason is my manager was probably under pressure to deliver that functionality, and he probably was not willing to or getting help from the dev team: and I knew we have quite a few Java developers there, and some of them are pretty good.

Performance Testing went too far

This applies to performance testing (JMeter is a popular tool). When I worked at Ascension, my boss likes running performance testing via JMeter. Also at the time, we have an engineer who knows the tool. And once we ran performance testing without realizing that we sent emails in our testing, and our testing brought the company outlook server down to its knees 🙁 In hindsight, I felt this kind of testing is not really necessary. You can read some of the examples I listed in my blog post too. The lesson here again is: someone fell in love with the performance testing, or performance of the system. I am not saying it’s a bad thing, but the approach they were taking to me is very amateurish. And as you can read from my blog post, that’s one main factor a multi millions dollars project failed. Somehow the recent DOGE efforts in finding fraud and waste in the US government reminded me of that failed project.

Layoff to cut cost

Now Elon’s DOGE team seems got obsessed with cutting staff (hammer) in the federal government: which was first used during the Elon’s Twitter takeover. He is using that hammer again from his previous experience. In short term, if you cut staff, you may get some more productivity from the remaining staff, because the remaining people will be scared and have to work harder to make up the slack etc. But there will be longer term consequence. I don’t think it’s as straightforward as cutting staff at Twitter (X). But again Elon only knows hammer. He really doesn’t have other tools in his toolbox.

I am pretty sure this “hammer/nail” mentality applies to other fields as well. For example I saw quite a few Asian parents pushing kids to work harder (the main reason is those Asian parents mostly worked hard to get here), without realizing “work smarter” is actually way more important.

How to measure the productivity of software engineers

My short answer is you cannot. But for managers they cannot take this answer, especially at the places they have mandatory quota based layoffs, in America I recall Jack Welch is the one who started it: refer to Jack Welch: how he justified his famous ‘fire the bottom 10%” and Short-term profits and long-term consequences — did Jack Welch break capitalism?

And at Mastercard, in early 2019, yours truly was hit by that too. I was Lead Software Engineer at the team, but unfortunately I got into some “grunt” work, not necessarily code related, thus my GitHub stats was not great.

What are the grunt work? You may ask. And since you ask me: I would ask google. Here are the answers from Google’s Search Labs | AI Overview

======

“Grunt work” in software development refers to the repetitive, often tedious, and basic tasks that are necessary to complete a project, like data entry, basic code cleaning, configuration management, or setting up initial infrastructure, essentially the foundational work that needs to be done before moving on to more complex features or design elements. Key points about “grunt work”:

Example of grunt work in software development:

======

So my lesson learned from there, along with a similar lesson I learned from Ascension Health, is: coding more, and do less of the grunt work.

At least, when a manager who only cares about those stats come by (aka, someone like Elon Musk), I can point to the source code repository, and show her/him the stats.

In reality though, layoff is more than just the stats.

PS: came across this YT video – Aging Software Dev – Can You Still Compete After 40?

Categories
advice and tips Life Tips

Kids or younger folks used apparel shoes resell stores

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Not a complete list

Online

I am aware of eBay, Etsy, PoshMark. But I learned couple new ones.

Curtsy : our 14 year old (when she was still 13, but almost 14), bought a nike puffer jacket

Depop (wikipedia, just realized it’s a subsidiary under Etsy) – our 14 year old tries to sell her Lululemon shorts from Plato’s closet (too big)

Offline, brick-mortar

Plato’s Closet: seems heavily gear toward teen and 20 to 30 years old younger adults

Categories
Life Politics

Muskrat, the higher ups’ kids are more precious

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Tom Krause – CEO, Cloud Software Group – finance guy – Princeton U alumni – Now you know not all ivies have high moral standards, because Tom is obviously a #muskrat or a fat cat in the corporate world (ABS News). Quote the ABC news article a bit:

One former Cloud Software Group employee said she hid her pregnancy for fear it could make her a target of layoffs. An ex-manager said they dreaded filing performance reviews of subordinates, knowing some workers may fall victim to the next cycle of cuts. Another former employee said they avoided expressing unease in company emails or in the messaging app Slack out of concern that it could jeopardize their job.

Oligarchs and ordinary people

When I was watching the “Surviving Black Hawk Down” on Netflix last night, I just realized all the US presidents (since I came to the USA) and all the billionaires in America never sent their own kids to the war zone. John McCain is an exception, but he was a multimillionaire.

Meanwhile, how many regular folks’ husband, wife, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters etc. died in Afghanistan and Iraq (thousands, refer to US casualty in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War). As I say this from time to time, the loss of one soldier usually impacts more than one person: because the fallen solider could have parents, wife, kids, siblings, and so on.

This sounds like today’s Russia: obviously they have even higher casualty in the Russia Ukraine war. In the case of Russia, they are so short of soldiers in the now: because they cannot incentive people in the Moscow and St. Peterburg area to fight, so they are getting all the young folks from less developed areas, such as Chechen and Syberia, plus North Korea. Just like the US sent soldiers from Missouri to Afghanistan. I recall in year 2021 a young marine from St. Charles County died during the fanatic Kabul Airport withdrawal. In total 13 marines died in that suicide attack: there are very little mentioning in the US news media 2021 Kabul airport attack – Wikipedia.

PS: I wrote a bluesky thread on the topic above too.

Categories
Stocks

WeChat stock group chat 橄榄村美股群

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Not financial advice. This is the most important thing you need to know.

Your money your decision. Try not to be forever diver 不要做永远♾️的潜水员. 

11-15-2025

I maintained a page for Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. I understand I need to clean up the page a bit. But the two thanksgiving letters from Warren Buffett are worth to read.

10-31-2025

My personal portfolio allocation: S&P 500 index fund or similar stock funds about 80%, Berkshire Hathaway B share, about 10%, the rest about 10% are other stocks for fun (bigger players include $KO and $OXY).

Also, please note your peace of mind is the most important thing, and it will impact your portfolio performance too.

09-17-2025

一般情况下不要去short 股票，比如S&P 500 index fund, 或者MAG 7的股票。原因主要是the upper side of shorting stocks is limited (100%), while the downside could be unlimited. 打个比方说，最近热炒的 $OPEN (Opendoor Technologies), 如果你在五块钱的时候 （8/22）去short 它，今天 9/17 收盘价 $10.21, 不到一个月就已经亏了100%了（total loss）。如果你不想认输，等它到$15, 就会亏200%。以此类推。反过来说公司股票要清零（公司破产）一般来说没这么快：我看到我家门口的骗子公司Benson Hill 大概最后也花了一年时间破产。

02-21-2025

每个人都可以自己的炒股风格：但是归根结底，不管黑猫白猫，会抓老鼠🐭的猫才是好猫。

要做好风险控制：拿每个人可以接受的钱去炒股票，一般不能all in. 尽量留一部份现金等等。

02-15-2025

1. Be happy; 2. 赚钱是王道：don’t lose money; 3. Refer to rule 1 and 2. 

01-16-2025

My top 3 stock positions (excluding the stocks indirectly hold in various S&P 500 index funds): brk/b, KO and OX. 

Some learning resource: 活到老学到老：这一点也很重要，沃伦巴菲特和查理芒格都是学习机器。

他俩主要的学习手段是读书，读年报，再加上自己独立思考。

Warren Buffett reads a lot of company’s annual reports: mostly to learn. 

I found listening to companies’ Earning call to be educational sometimes – 

EARNMOAR – YouTube 

Fyfull – YouTube  

奶头乐级别: “NaNa 说美股” 每天市场评述，mainly entertainment value –  ; 

“小lin说” various topics, mainly entertainment and education value –  个人感觉小林讲的一般不深奥，主要是入门知识，但是她讲的还是有干货的；

美国年轻人Joseph Carlson Show and Joseph Carlson After Hours 他好像有两个频道 – stocks, food for thought – 比如这个油管视频： 

 Please note one goal for many content creators including YouTubers is getting eyeballs 👀 👁️ and making💰. So keep this in my mind when you consume the online content. 

我又想了一下。我觉得网上多数视频包括CNBC Jim Cramer 的mad money，包括Nana 的油管每天更新，还有其它很多，教育或有启发的东西不是很多。娱乐的成分倒是不少。可能有点这个短视频的”奶头乐”的味道吧。或者相当于麦当劳🍔的快餐。光吃那个或天天吃那个可能不是最健康：因为营养成分不够丰富。还是要自己做饭，或吃一些更健康的食品（少吃垃圾食品，少喝可乐等等）[捂脸][呲牙] 

Together let’s share some 💡 and make some 💰. 

We try to keep the America (US) politics at a minimum here. 

I believe everyone is entitled to her or his opinion including political views and affiliation. 

But those are best kept to yourself. Probably religion too. 

I recall 20+ years ago one golden rule is not to talk politics and religion at work. 

Also, we will try to keep out many fake stuffs on Internet or from social medias.

PS:

Hard core MAGAs may find it hard to stay there sometimes because I am “woke”, or Hua Zuo if you will (I may 🙂

Not directly related to this: but I managed to clean up WeChat contacts today (from 321 to 250). I recall research saying that a person can have meaningful relationship with 150 people – so probably I need to further cut down that number, because this is just my Chinse friends. Most people on WeChat are Chinese, which is not a secret.

Previously like I said on the top, if I join a group, my intension is to learn by joining the discussion. If I feel I cannot contribute or if the vibe in a group is totally out of my comfort zone, I leave 🙂

Categories
advice and tips Career Life Tips Software development

Layoff and other forms of rejections in life are not the end of the world

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What doesn’t kill us can only made us stronger — German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche — his original words are: “Out of life’s school of war—what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.”

Five years ago today, 01-23-2019, Wednesday, I was laid off from the company I worked for about 3 and half years. I saved the below email in my Gmail account.

Hi Minjie,

You mentioned to me this morning that you had a work computer at your home. I wanted to let you know we’ll be sending you a pre-paid box for you to send it back in.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Thanks!

…………

That being said, if you were working for the federal government and recently got laid off because of Elon Musk’s DOGE’s purge, and if you like to talk to someone – I am available.

Potentially I can provide some advice re: how to get back to your feet quick. I can buy you coffee, do mock interview during lunch (I will pay), and pay your Uber ride fee, if you have an onsite interview and need Uber/Lyft.

In my career, I navigated layoff situations a few times, and I was able to find something relatively quick mainly in the area of software development. I understand right now it’s a very tough job market in the USA. But it’s still possible to find something. I am a strong believer of 树挪死人挪活。I believe layoffs are usually blessings disguised in curses. Somewhat like divorce during a truly horrendous marriage.

Reference: I talked about more about layoffs here in my 2023 blog post.