On the Kindness of Strangers

My life is nothing but a proof of kindness of strangers.

I’m not sure why I’m reminded of this today. I think it’s because I realized, as I carry on the conversation about terms with my new job, I’m guided by my mentor’s advice. He’s no longer here with us — he passed away last July — but somehow he’s still guiding me. I find that so amazing.

His name is Michael P. Johnson, an African American businessman who was retired and serving on the board of Tiger Woods’s non-profit. He once told me, I think way back when I was starting my professional career as an engineer, that you don’t negotiate with people you trust. I asked him what he meant. He said I can ask for what I need and if they can’t accommodate it, I can let them know that I’m disappointed.

In a trusting relationship, you don’t have to negotiate because there is implicit trust that you have each other’s best interests in mind. It’s a conversation rather than a negotiation. Ed Saxon once told me that the relationship you want to cultivate is the one where you look out for each other’s best interests. It’s much stronger than each person guarding their own interests.

On days like today, I really miss Michael. He also once told me to always do the right thing the right way so my soul can rest. I was in emotional turmoil because the shortcut I took went against my values. I followed his advice and everything just worked out.

He was a spiritual man, another contemplative person living his vocation among everyone else. Today I want to honor his memory, and remember all of my mentors — too countless to count — and strangers who’ve helped me even when I couldn’t understand why they were helping me and my family. I love that inherently people are kind, and I find this so reassuring today. Thank you God.

Learning to Act, Learning to Write

Last December, I decided to finally muster up the courage to enroll in an acting class. I’d wanted to learn acting for a long time. My directing professor, Barnet Kellman, encouraged us to take acting classes to learn how to direct actors. When a month opened up free of schedule, I jumped on the acting class as a life line to inject some weekly structure in my schedule. The class, and all that I learned, came to mean much more to me than that.

Actors have many superpowers that I deeply admire, chief of which is the power to put you at ease. When I stand in the company of an actor(s) who have this superpower, I relax a bit. Maybe it’s because they make me feel seen. Maybe it’s their body language — maybe actors are more comfortable in their skins than us. Whatever it is, this is probably one of the things I admire and want to emulate the most.

I also wanted to learn how to confidently speak in public, as actors seem to be able to do. I noticed this in my peers in film school who have an acting background. They’re not afraid to stand in the light and to tell a story. I really wanted to develop this muscle.

I was so privileged to have an unscheduled block of time during the past three months to try my hand in acting. Now that time is coming to an end, I’m more than a bit sad. I really love being with actors — they are very special and I feel seen among them. I will miss them a lot.

Learning the art of acting taught me how difficult this art form is. I will hopefully never again take good acting or actors for granted. It takes so much practice to learn the lines until it becomes muscle memory. I’m still recovering from the six minute scene that I bombed last Saturday. I thought I knew the lines until I stood up on that stage, and then BAM — strong start, then lines left my brain. It was very embarrassing but also so humbling in a freeing way. It taught me that you have to earn the stage, the spotlight. It has to be the most important thing until the minute I get up on the stage. I regret my cavalier attitude to performance.

Acting also taught me what a playable scene is, and how to write one. Knowing what the character wants in the scene helps make it playable. So does conflict. Pauses are hard. Quiet scenes are hard, at least for an unsophisticated actor like me. Playable scene also has beautiful dialogue that has really clear subtext. I’ll never forget that scene from Sideways where the two characters are talking about wine, but they’re really talking about themselves. Acting taught me how to write dialogue — repetition of words, antithesis, rhythm… good dialogue is musical, so much more musical than writers realize. Good dialogue sings. It truly sings. Greta Gerwig writes singing dialogue. Alexander Payne. Emerald Fennell. Michaela Cole. Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Damn, all of them except Alexander Payne are actors. See what I mean about actors having superpowers? One of them is that they’re great writers.

Prior to acting, I thought a screenplay is a visual medium with lots of action lines and some dialogue sprinkled in. Nope. It’s as auditory a medium as it is visual.

Part of me really wants to continue the class, but I know it won’t be fair to the fellow actors, my new manager, my new job, and ultimately to myself. Spreading thin doesn’t do anyone any good. So for now, I’m bidding acting class adieu. Yes, I’ll always remain an amateur in acting in true sense of that word, as its root word means to love. And I think I’m okay with that. But I’ll always appreciate it for what it taught me. It taught me the value of its art form, how to respect its traditions and the people who carry it forward, how to fail, how to be kind to others (actors are so good at this!), and how to write scenes that have, at the very least, germ of truthfulness in them.

On ORIGIN

I just watched Ava Duvernay’s film ORIGIN. And it was absolutely breathtaking and almost heartbreakingly underrated and under-marketed. It’s a film that almost everyone should see, a piece of art as important as all the other arts that have brought on great social change. It’s masterfully rendered, tugging at our pathos, ethos, and logos as a great story does. I don’t understand why we’re not talking about this film enough.

It dramatized and put to cinematic language all the nuanced moments I have experienced and witnessed as a first-generation immigrant in the United States. The land of irony. It perhaps left out one important subgroup while mentioning so many others in sequence. The undocumented immigrants in the United States. I hope that one day I can fill in this gap. I hope to tell a story that sheds light on the current Caste system in America, which has to do with how we treat over 10 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.

There’s a scene where Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor’s characters tries to convince a Jewish woman living in Germany that the past experiences of Jews and Blacks are linked somehow. The Jewish woman almost cannot accept this. And it rang true. It’s difficult to acknowledge that the parts in us that hurts the most, whether it’s a personal trauma or generational, can be compared and found similar to another subgroups’ sufferings. Sometimes, we become identified with the experiences that have hurt us the most. I don’t know why this happens. Maybe because that particular minority moniker that caused so pain within us becomes engrained in our identity and how we see ourselves. I don’t know why, for instance, my identity as a woman and my identity as a first-generation immigrant is so much stronger than my identity as an Asian. Maybe it’s because I have witnessed and felt isolation and loneliness in these two identities, and became attached to them like a life raft lest I forget what had happened and become complacent. Maybe it’s because I see my vocation as bearing witness to what I’ve seen and felt, and dreaming up what I hope can be different for my younger self and for those who share similar experiences.

I see why Angelina Jolie hosted a screening of ORIGIN recently at The London. Those who experienced heartbreak, which is all of us, can see a film and empathize with the heartbreak of the writer / filmmaker who bled on the page to tell the story. And I hope that the monumental effort that goes into telling a meaningful story gets its moment in the sun. To me, ORIGIN is a type of film that I hope to make someday. It’s more meaningful, more emotional, more engrossing than OPPENHEIMER or BARBIE.

I read one of the reviews for ORIGIN that people walked out of the theater after ten minutes because it was too “heavy”. That’s… I think that’s like being a good German. And that’s what we’re doing as a nation to news about undocumented immigrants. Forever subjugating it to secondary news of non-national importance. We’re so entranced by the world news and what goes on elsewhere. But we’re so afraid of facing what goes on within our own nation. That our caste system is alive and well, and that we’re all participating in it by not speaking up against it. I hope someday I’ll have the courage, the artistry, and the business acumen to speak up about what I have witnessed and what I know to be true. That our nation can be a beautiful place if we only open our eyes to see and accept the injustices that go on.

My thoughts after watching “Leopoldstadt" on Broadway

I bought my plane ticket to NYC two days after reading the New York Times article about Tom Stoppard. The article mentioned his latest, and “most personal” play, titled Leopoldstadt. The theme seemed to be about finally stopping to look back after having lived a life of only looking ahead. It spoke to me.

I feel very pensive after having watched the play. “You live as if without history, as if you throw no shadow behind you.” The entire play builds to this moment and makes me reflect on how I’ve lived my life after immigrating to the United States: only looking ahead, never wallowing or dwelling on people, places, and things we left behind. I still feel this deep loss inside me, and I think it’s what made me a writer.

In the play, Ludwig says “assimilation means to carry on being a Jew without insult.” To live life as an immigrant is to live carefully, without insult. Assimilation has been the goal for my family, but I don’t know if this goal is by choice or by necessity. I think it’s by necessity but also self-limiting. It’s a social contract that we blindly signed when we moved here. I don’t know when the terms expire, or if it’s in perpetuity. All I know is that I’m in the process of remembering and reclaiming my Korean identity.

Leopoldstadt is an important play. There are the playwright’s personal reckonings that we feel, but also an important reminder that history repeats itself and that it’s our duty to know where we’ve been. It’s a reminder I needed to give myself.

What I learned in 2021

Year 2021 taught me many lessons that I want to cherish, remember, and update. I wanted to capture them here as a reminder to myself, as guideposts toward the North Star.

I learned that I am a writer, and that I prefer writing to producing, and producing to directing.

I learned when I live with my parents I expend a lot of my creative energy to appeasing / worrying / anticipating their wants and needs. 

I learned that not writing regularly makes me so unhappy and ragey and inhibits my ability to be productive in any other area in my life. And that that the act of writing gives meaning to my existence. 

I learned that I’m a genre writer, and that genre - specifically thrillers - allows me freedom to explore the shadow side of both myself and others. And that in exploring this, I gain greater understanding of myself as a whole - both light and dark. 

I learned that I love living by myself. But also that it sometimes get unbearably lonely around the holidays. And that having a glass of wine and milk chocolate somewhat helps.

I learned that a movie projector is one of the best purchases I’ve made in my life. 

I learned that prestige, accolades, honor are useless indicators of how good a someone is as a collaborator. In fact they may work to disguise red flags in a person’s character, so they obfuscate rather than reveal.

I learned that I love writing about what it feels like to be a girl in Silicon Valley.

I learned that I love making podcasts, and that its limitation (lack of picture) is actually very freeing for a creative.

I learned that I May Destroy You is about introspection and not consent, and I loved that. 

I learned that I get ahead of myself and land myself in a hole when I get too excited and too ambitious about some future achievement or impressing someone. And that a remedy to this is to let that go and come back to myself, and write just for myself. 

I learned that budgeting sucks and takes a long time. But necessary. This goes for both movies and personal finance.

I learned that my current job is a day job. And that day jobs require a different mentality than a career. It’s not about outperforming to get ahead and earn more money. Day jobs are to be contained, enjoyed, and should be used to support the real job of being a creative. 

I learned that it’s critical for me to be financially self-sufficient in order to create sustainably, and also that best jobs are the ones that allow you to write and give you the satisfaction of meeting other people who are doing creative things. 

I learned that I can cook.

I learned that the sense of safety I have been seeking is from my twelve year old self. And that reminding myself that I’m here in the present and that the current reality is safe, helps me feel calmer. 

I learned that therapy helps. 

I learned that remote jobs don’t work for me because so much of what I am seeking in a job is dependent on interpersonal interactions and connection.

I learned that writing groups really help. 

I learned that when I feel stuck, I can take a day off from work and just be.

I learned that I can walk to museums and many of them are free or have free weekends. And that audio visual experiences are healing and inspiring.

I learned that writing characters that are too dark in a one-sided way lands me in hole that’s non-productive and unhappy. And that the stories I want to write have characters (protagonists, antagonists, supporting) that can elicit my empathy.

I learned that I need to always remember and choose to get the right results the right way. And that taking shortcuts that feel overly self-justified and live in a shady ethical area will cause me much unrest and anguish until I can see what I’ve done, make it right, and surrender it to God.

I learned to say “yes” only to things that deeply resonate in every cell of my body and in my soul. A “Hell Yeah or No” as John August calls it. No to everything else. Remember Oprah’s words: "Never again will I do anything for anyone that I do not feel directly from my heart. [I will say no to projects] in which every fiber of my being does not resound yes. I will act with the intent to be true to myself."

Gardening

My parents let me take over the dirt patch in the front yard when I told them I wanted to start gardening. They even gave me a small seed fund (forgive the pun) to get started. I bought a book to learn more about gardening; the book is called “Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home Scale Permaculture”. It taught me a lot about how nature creates self-sustaining ecosystems. The book appealed to my sense of aesthetic inspired by years of living in Northside Berkeley during college. It made me think of the organic farm co-ops, the Berkeley Rose Garden, and the hills near the Berkeley Botanical Garden and the Lawrence Berkeley Labs. I miss running through those hills and buying produce from the farmer’s market every Thursday morning. So it has been really nice to be able to harvest little things like the red chard from our front lawn. Here are some pictures of the garden that’s been a source of small joy during the pandemic.

My mom makes miso soup with the stalk and leaves of red chard. It gives it a deep flavor as if the miso soup is made from bone broth. Our garden doesn’t produce nearly enough red chard leaves for her soup so we have to supplement the recipe with store bought red chard.

I think these nasturtium leaves look like little puppy paws or a baby’s hand. I high five them in the morning and they bounce up and down and make me happy. I can’t wait to see the flowers in the spring.

I spotted a caterpillar feasting on the leaves of milkweed flowers. The nice thing about permaculture garden is that there’s lots of stuff for critters to eat so they don’t all go for the same stuff that humans like to consume like red chard.

This little bird flew into my shot while I was trying to take pictures of the flowers. The hummingbirds also seem to visit more often now that our front yard has more flowers.

There are two squirrels that think that our backyard is their home, which it is. We have to share the avocados, guavas, and other fruits with them. They also like to hide my parents’ golf balls strewn around the yard. My dad found fifteen golf balls hidden in different places around the backyard. The squirrels must think that the balls will ripen or sprout if they are buried under the dirt.

These flowers are a hit with the hummingbirds. The nice thing is that they bloom all year-round

This is my next project, which is a keyhole-shaped garden in our backyard that will house herbs and salad greens. I am in the process of mulching, which is just gathering leaves and sometimes compost to nourish the soil. The bricks were lying around the backyard, half or entirely buried under the dirt. I dug them up to create a low barrier for the mulch.

On the Plateau of Lourdes

Reading the book You Are Here by a Vietnamese Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Han reminds me of an experience I had at Lourdes in last July.

Throngs of sick people come to Lourdes every year hoping for healing in the miraculous waters where Our Lady of Lourdes appeared to a young peasant woman named Bernadette Soubirous in 1858. I had heard so much about the transformative experience of helping bathe the sick. It seemed that the bathes of Lourdes is the place where you heal along with those who came to be healed.

As a first time volunteer, I was sent wherever the help was most needed. To my dismay, I kept getting sent to the plateau, the waiting area covered by an awning where weary pilgrims seeking healing patiently sit for hours in order to be admitted into the baths.

If the bathes are the main attraction of Lourdes, plateau is the purgatory where the sick wait outside in the sweltering platform for hours and hours. If the bathes are too full. the line closes, sometimes causing a small riot to break out. There are people in wheelchairs and stretchers, children with feeding tubes, cancer patients with their families, and the elderly with walkers. The volunteers distribute water to waiting pilgrims and follow a convoluted system of letting people into one of the three open doors using hand signals that often get misinterpreted.

I stood in front of one of the doors that guard the bathes. The more experienced volunteers stayed inside the bathes, and periodically someone would come out and tell me a number of people we can let in. I would then hold up this number as a hand signal to the person guarding the people at the end of the waiting line.  I kept lamenting the fact that the process was slow. I felt like I could fix it. There had to be a way to make the line go faster, to make communication clearer between the volunteer who’s guarding the end of the line and the volunteer receiving the people into the baths. Optimizing the process would lessen the sufferings of already suffering pilgrims. The engineer inside of me was screaming. If this was an algorithm, it had an exponential runtime when it did not have to be. I voiced my frustration multiple times to the Lourdes volunteer, Tricia, who patiently listened and empathized with me.

I am tired of the plateau. My feet and my lower back hurt. I’m frustrated by the inefficiency of this system. I want to be somewhere else. I want to be inside the bathes, helping the sick, witnessing miracles.

This is what I thought to myself, rather bitterly, on my fifth hour of the second day on the plateau. But God, or the volunteer director at Lourdes, kept sending me back to the plateau over and over again for multiple days in a row. 

It must have been around my fifth or sixth shift on the plateau that I started asking why. Why God, are you sending me to the plateau? What’s here for me? Then surprisingly, I heard a small voice that whispered back to me. I will teach you everything you need to know on this plateau. I will teach you everything you need to know on this plateau.

The next day, where I again found myself on the plateau, a skinny and petite girl with dark unruly strands of wavy hair from rural France stood next to me. Her name was Annelise. She caught my eye because she reminded me of one of my best friends, Maryann. Annelise wore round Harry Potter glasses and started chatting to me about her housemate, a Polish exchange student who always stayed indoors, did not care to dance, nor bike outside even though she was overweight. All this was said matter of factly with genuine bewilderment and without meanness. She offered me a chocolate-covered biscuit during the second shift when I was seriously lacking glucose. I immediately took a liking to this little friend who carried snacks!

What struck me about this petite new friend of mine was that she moved with mindfulness. Each of her movement was never urgent nor rushed. Annelise floated on the plateau like a little angel dressed in white, smiling and gently ushering people to move up the line. She gestured like a ballerina, whereas I patrolled like a traffic cop. And she was suffering from mononucleosis all the while volunteering like a champ with a smile. I figured she was sent to the plateau by God to teach me a lesson in humility.

I started observing and imitating Annelise. I moved slowly with mindfulness, accepting the slowness and respecting the system that was put into place before I was even alive, and trusting that it works. I felt peace in this new way of surrendering to what is. Then insights came pouring in like rain. I finally acknowledged that I was a first-year volunteer, here at Lourdes to serve and not to fix or overthrow the existing system. I also realized that I was being watched. My energy reverberated to everyone around me. When I moved urgently, behaved sternly, or betrayed frustration, the people in line mirrored it. I added to the agitation and suffering of the pilgrims. When I found quiet acceptance in my heart, I could then give peace to those in line. The plateau, all of a sudden, transformed from hell to a place where community of those in seeking healing could pray the rosary together. It became a holy place.

After many days on the plateau, I was asked to serve inside the baths. That too was a spiritual experience. I was privy to vulnerability and faith of those who came heal. I remember my hands; they had never felt so warm with loving compassion. They had touched so many people, helped them in and out of their clothes, their soiled diapers, their thick socks, their wheelchairs, helped bathe the sick, witnessed their prayer, suffering, and deep faith. But somehow that experience, as powerful as it was, did not teach me as much as my experience in the plateau. God finds us in unexpected places. He answers when we ask. Then he supplies us with insights that we didn’t even know we needed. 

When I shared this story with my friend Maryann, she said that everything that happened - the disappointing breakup, my experience at Lourdes, the pandemic, and the indefinite postponement of my thesis film - were all happening for a reason. “Grace, he’s trying to teach you about faith!” She shouted gleefully. I think I know what she means; faith, the kind of faith that frees oneself from the desires and fears. The kind of of faith that will help me confidently surrender to God and allow me to be open to the holy spirit. I am grateful for the plateau and all the events that force me to surrender in order to find peace.

Speaking Up

I feel very careful in writing about an incident and a community outside my direct experience. But I don't want to be complicit by remaining silent. There are so many subgroups in America that live their daily lives in fear, and that is unjust.

I don't know what it feels like to be an African American citizen in the United States, but I do feel a deep sense of kinship to the community.

I grew up in South Korea, a country homogenous in race and in culture. A sense of belonging was never in question but rather a given. But scars of oppression from the atrocities committed during the Japanese Occupation Era still burns brightly in our collective psyche. My family immigrated to Indonesia where foreigners and expats were treated with privilege and respect. Then we moved to California, a state so diverse that we were told we would be protected from racism that is rampant in other states.

California did protect us from outright racism, but we were still part of a bigger system. The United States immigration system leaves immigrants to live in fear of deportation and denies affordable healthcare to those who are ill. The most vulnerable, are of course, the low-income, non-English speaking immigrants in temporary or no status.

This kind of fear that immigrants experience is not exactly the same as the one that black community feels and voices. And yet, I feel that these experiences are somehow related. And in suffering, I dare to say, the two communities are united. And if I had to use the word "against", it would be against injustice and needless suffering in the United States, a country that can do better than this with all its resources.

I promise to myself that when I see injustice or action that goes against my values, I will speak up. Even if it's as small and meek as saying, "Excuse me, but I don't subscribe to this view". Just something to make the perpetrator uncomfortable enough to stop and ask themselves some hard questions.

On the Virtue of Lazy Mornings

In the past few days, I started to remember what makes me happy. It might be that free time has opened up over winter break. The students have gone away and with them the pressure to always be working. Solitude, which seemed so unbearable in the first day or two so much so that I ran away to my parents' house to spend time with them rather than be alone, has once again become pleasurable.

The thing that gives me greatest joy is the hours in the morning, when I get to wake up relatively early and make myself breakfast. I will make my bed (rare), go downstairs to a kitchen that is unoccupied by my housemates (important), where I can make myself a bowl of oatmeal with nut butter and a soft boiled egg. I will enjoy this meal in absolute silence, uninterrupted by anyone, and read few chapters from Murakami's memoir "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running". And I will remember again what gives me joy.

I don't exactly know why mornings, specifically the "lazy" mornings when I can actually cook breakfast, are so meaningful to me. I think back to my undergraduate years at Berkeley when this habit of making breakfast started. It must have started after I read the "French Women Don't Get Fat" book. It feels embarrassing to say that I've read this book repeatedly over the last decade or so. This book is really a meditation on joyful living, as Murakami's book is a meditation on running. I like these stories that talk about the mundane in specific terms. These artists and writers remind me that true joy lies within the smallest moments. And this thought helps me pause from relentless striving and reminds me that being an artist, which I want more than anything, is also living your life artfully with beauty, quiet moments, joy, wonder, awe... all the things that feeds one's soul.

When I look forward to the future into the life that I want to live, I see myself waking up early to spend the early morning hours in solitude writing in a beautiful Maybeck House with tall ceilings and lots of wood with windows that look out to nature. And then the day would begin with a loud, busy breakfast with my family, then continue to meetings with other creatives to collaborate on projects. It would conclude in a long run in nature passing through quaint houses, little hills, small animals, brooks, and lots of trees. And it's important to remember that this kind of life doesn't require fame, prestige, or lots of wealth. It would be more about having the respect of my peers who are also creating, a loving family, luxury of time each day for myself, and moderate savings to live a healthy and balanced life while also being able to help others who are in need.

I don't yet know how the confluence of my training in writing, producing, directing, and technology will come together to create this lifestyle for me. And maybe I already have part of this life, and all I need to do is remember to exercise it. What I can do now is wake up early to write, make myself breakfast, collaborate with lots of creative people, and go for a run even on a treadmill. This is a note to myself to do these small things even when I'm in a funk. To wake up early, make myself some good breakfast, write, converse and collaborate with interesting and creative people, and go for a run to refuel my soul.

Telling Our Stories

_{Angel Island Immigration Station in SF}

Below is an essay I wrote in 2010 as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley for an immigrant student advocacy organization called Immigrants Rising. This piece was written and read out loud in front of the 150 guests at the "Day of Immigrants" event that took place on the Angel Island in 2010.

For my college application essays, I avoided the gloomy topics of immigration and living in a low-income family. Each of the college admissions books I read and internalized had an underlying theme: college essays ought to focus on the positive aspects of one’s life, with humor injected in between the sentences. I simply couldn’t do this with stories about immigration; my memories were too depressing. How could I inject humor into nights filled with anxiety when I overheard my parents arguing whether or not we should give up and go back to Korea, phone calls with my landlord to fight for the deposit she refused give back, or moments of panic whenever I thought about paying for college? I asked my counselor if I should write my college essays on these experiences. “Ten thousand other immigrant students probably wrote about overcoming adversity much greater than yours,” she replied. So I concluded that stories about immigration are all too similar, all too pervasive, and all too serious as a topic to be handled by a teenager. In the end, I wrote about how I played piano for the Alzheimer’s patients at the local hospital, how I won a motor-building contest during the summer technology program at MIT, and how I am the only service-learning teen-ambassador in all of Orange County. And all the essays I wrote came out detached and cliché, as if I was hoping my readers could fully grasp who I was just by looking at my shadow.

I wonder how many immigrant students feel as if we ought to bury our painful memories and underscore the humorous and hopeful moments of our lives. It is easy to write about wonders of a new land, the nice neighbor who taught you English, and the teacher who changed your life. But there is nothing harder than sharing your experiences of extreme anxiety as you sleep in fear of deportation, or the feelings of guilt and bitterness at making your parents pay so much tuition when they already work ten hours a day just to put food on the table. With happy events, words pour out like honey and milk. There is no need to worry that you might sound self-pitying, no need to recall unpleasant events that will drain you emotionally. But by focusing on the happy and hopeful events of our lives, by pretending we are the same as stable and happy middle-class American families, we unconsciously erase the sacrifices our families have made to get us to where we are today. We erase ourselves. Writing about past experiences, whether pleasant or unpleasant, forces us to reflect and re-evaluate the past and the present, as well as what we truly want to achieve in the future. So let us rely on words and their ability to capture even the most fleeting emotions, no matter how sad or depressing they are. Let us preserve our memories before they slip away into oblivion. Let us preserve ourselves.

Ode to New York

Everything about New York blows me away. The diversity of people, amazing art collection, bookstore with history and charm, delicious food, the lights of the Times Square and Broadway, music of the NY Philharmonic, impressive skyscrapers, historical buildings, parks with so much character. I can't count the ways this city draws me and charms me. The four days I'm spending here turned out to be the best weather New York has had in a long time. It was preceded by a thunderstorm and temperature drops. The only side of New York I have seen is a city saturated in vibrant colors under warm and bright sunlight, and I feel impelled to to move here immediately.

The city somehow injected me with energy and health that I haven't had before. In two days it satiated the artistic paucity I felt for years. Surely it can't be all roses to live here, but it's unfair that I only get to see the best that New York has to offer because somehow I got lucky with the weather. I wonder if money would be a deciding factor in whether one enjoys New York or not... and I feel very lucky to have the means to go to the concert and not worry about starving for the next month.

It's eleven pm at night but I feel like I want to step out again, to gaze at the city from the top of the Empire State Building, to admire the Art Deco floors and the golden statue in front of the Rockefeller Center. And it's amazing to behold the sight of Broadway and the Times Square... I wonder if you can feel lonely in the middle of all the warm glow of lights. I'm sure you can but tonight I just felt alive and happy to behold the sight in awe.

The ode to this city has been sung many times by writers (E.B. White "Here is New York), filmmakers (just see any Woody Allen film or hear him open his mouth), artists (Winogrand), jazz singers, pop singers, musicals, tv shows, etc etc. With all this hype from so many self-professed 'New Yorkers' and admirers of the City,  I thought I would feel blasé and I am so surprised to find myself so in love with a city and long to be with it as if it were a human entity. It's a weird feeling.

So here is my ode to the great city, in the form of a blog post and couple pictures. And someday, I will have to move and work here and earn the claim to 'know' the city like a true New Yorker.

Italian Cinema Scores by NY Philharmonic

The Program

My friend brilliantly noticed, while traveling in NYC in August, that NY Philharmonic was scheduled to do a night of Italian Cinema called "La Dolce Vita", including a piece from Cinema Paradiso. It was a two-day event with amazing violinist Joshua Bell, vocalist Josh Groban, and soprano Renee Fleming scheduled to perform. The last day of this event fortuitously fell on the day of my arrival at New York City. So despite the jetlag from time difference and flying the red-eye, I attended the event at the Lincoln Center.

I guess I should disclose that I have an on-going love affair with Italian Cinema. I haven't seen enough of Italian Cinema yet to qualify myself as an aficionado, but I find myself extremely attached to the ones I have seen. The one in particular is Cinema Paradiso, which captures the wonderment of childhood, and is steeped in beautiful nostalgia and melancholy over the innocence and naivete that often inevitably goes away as we grow older. But truthfully, these movies would mean almost nothing to me without the scores by Ennio Morricone (Cinema Paradiso, Once Upon a Time in the West), Nino Rota (Fellini's films like 8 1/2, La Dolce Vita), and Luis Bacalov (Il Postino).

New York Philharmonic did this very smart thing where instead of playing the footages from the movie like SF symphony does to scores, they commissioned an Italian film director Giampiero Solari to create a visual screen play for the performance. I felt that I could really experience the power of music and its role in cinema without confusing which is influencing me more (was it the images or the score?!?!). Tonight, music assumed a leading role in the world of cinema and made it clear to everyone in attendance of its power in storytelling and provoking deep emotions that transcend time and space.

Joshua Bell performed as a violin soloist on the Suite from "The Anonymous Venetian". It was heart-wrenchingly beautiful, and I think I had to actively fight the tears from flowing. His violin seemed to be telling a beautiful story, and all I could do was empathize with its melancholia, its vulnerability, its passion as the song played.

The piece I was looking forward to, called "Se", from Cinema Paradiso, ended up disappointing me. Possibly because I have heard that piece on youtube so many times (possibly around hundred times) without the singers (and with Ennio Morricone conducting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FzVWlOKeLs). The singing somehow took away from what was already perfect, or that was how I felt at the end of that piece...

The NY Phil also played a piece from Life is Beautiful, and the gorgeous footages from the movie played (instead of the animation), along with the piece that ebbed and flowed, swelled with the crescendo and made our hearts melt into pools of emotions.

So these are the movies on my to-watch or re-watch list:

• Life is Beautiful

• Cinema Paradiso

• Il Postino

• Once Upon a time in the West

• Incontro

• Amarcord

• Profumo di Donna

• Juliet of the Spirits

Supporting the Pavilion Lake Research Project

I am in the middle of a two week-long field work in Pavilion Lake, British Columbia, Canada. This is my first official "NASA" field test trip in a remote site and I am very excited to be here with the xGDS team from Intelligent Robotics Group (Tamar and Dave) to make sure our software helps the scientists operate smoothly as they collect and analyze data about microbialites.

Pavilion Lake, BC, Canada

Microbialites are rocks that are formed by bacteria. They are most often found in very harsh environments and are often many million or even billion years old. The ones in Pavilion Lake are especially of interest to the scientific community because they grow in fresh water that also support other living species. From what I understand, studying these microbialites provides an understanding of really ancient microbialites that were formed billions of years ago on Earth, and it may provide clues to origin of life on Earth and ultimately clues to life on other planets.

A better / more accurate understanding of microbialites can be found here: pavilionlake.com ;)

Microbialite sample

The software my team and I wrote is called Exploration Ground Data Systems (xGDS). It's a pretty amazing tool that helps scientists plan their flights, take time stamped notes, view and analyze video data, images, and basically whatever data they collected out in the field. They use it to plan, execute, and review the entire research project.

Allyson, a scientist, uses xGDS to take timestamped notes while viewing video and noting the location of the ROV via xGDS tracking system.

There are many things I really enjoyed and learned from Pavilion Lake Research Project, and one of them was observing how effectively this tightly-knit group of scientists and engineers were led by Darlene and her team. We operated on a tight, busy schedule that began with a 7am meeting, then a morning flight with divers in the lake with xGDS supporting, then lunch, then an afternoon flight with divers and xGDS support, then dinner, then evening debrief at 8pm (after which  our team would go back to the trailer to code some more). The days were busy and hectic, and I am slightly woozy from lack of sleep my eye and hand are swollen from the mosquito bites. But it was so exciting!! And I learned so much about team work and productive work schedule from her team.

Science team meeting at the end of the day.

In the previous years, the underwater data was collected using a manned-underwater vehicle (basically a submarine). During this year's test, however, we used underwater ROVs' (remotely operated vehicles) with cameras to collect footages and sensor data underwater. There are three ROVs' and you can see one below (his name is Seamor).

Seamor is a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) that goes underwater to collect various data including video and sensor data.

Sometimes the weather in Pavilion Lake would  be freezing and windy. But the next day, the weather would flip and we would get nice sunny weather like you see below!

Enjoying the sun after days of rain and cold wind.

So checkout pavilionlake.com for information regarding Pavilion Lake Research Project. It's been a great fun so far, sprinkled with lot of laughter, jokes, and lots and lots of adventure coding :) And I am super excited for this network of scientists I now know. They are the greatest, funnest bunch :)

Picking up the brush again...

It's been about four years since I've drawn/painted anything. I think I couldn't justify the act of drawing/painting - I mean, I wasn't going to become an artist. My profession is clearly in computer science and everything else seemed like such a waste of time. Recently though, I met someone who convinced me to pick up the brush again and get back to painting. I watched Casino Royale with him and the image of Vesper Lynd stayed with me. It sort of shocked me that a Bond Girl can be witty, brainy, and vulnerable (as well as beautiful - I think you have to be if you are a Bond Girl). Anyway, Here are the paintings:

SIGGRAPH 2012 Recap

SIGGRAPH [Sig-Graph]

Definition: Name of the annual conference on computer graphics (CG) convened by the ACMSIGGRAPH organization. Dozens of research papers are presented each year, and SIGGRAPH is widely considered the most prestigious forum for the publication of computer graphics research.

Our paper, Updated Sparse Cholesky Factors for Co-Rotational Elastodynamic, was presented at SIGGRAPH. Here's a picture of me and Florian (first author) doing a silly 40-sec advertisement of our session during Tech Papers Fast Forward.

SIGGRAPH ends up being a big re-union of friends since graphics industry/academia is so tightly knit. The left half of us met at PIXAR during the Summer Internship. Lot of us ended up in the visual effects studios including Pixar, Weta, and Bungie and we started our new jobs within few months of each other. The right half are my friends from Berkeley Graphics Lab. Everyone loves technology, art, and being a nerd. I loved spending time with these like-minded people. 

Curiosity landed on Mars succesfully on the first day of SIGGRAPH. There was a viewing session set up at the Geek Bar in Los Angeles Convention Center. A fair amount of people came, including my family who snuck in to the geek bar to watch the landing with me. I believe my mom cried during the landing. It was so emotional and I felt so proud to be an engineer.

And I got some quality time with my family and my parents' not-so-small-anymore pug. It looks just like Frank the Pug from Men in Black. This pug changed our family dynamic from a grouchy family to a loving family. It loves everyone it meets. Here's me pinching its velvet-pin-cushion cheeks.

One of the best things about SIGGRAPH is the screening of selection from the SIGGRAPH Animation Festival. I got to watch Disney's new short Paperman, which is screened in front of Wreak it Ralph. The style of it was an interesting blend of 2D and 3D framed in photographic black-and-white. I watched it three times, and during the third one I teared up a bit. It moved me in the best way. Definitely a dreamer and romantic's pick of the evening.

I also loved the style of Twinings commercial called "Gets You Back To You". My favorite part is when her feet plunges in to the shallow ocean. Makes me want to walk along the shores of Seal Beach before I head back to Silicon Valley.

During downtime, I wandered into the SIGGRAPH Bookstore. It's awesome because someone already did the work for you in selecting the books in your interest range. I ended up buying bunch of them:

C++ Coding Standards: 101 Rules, Guidelines, and Best Practices

Herb Sutter, Andrei Alexandrescu

I heard of this book through an amazing coder I programmed with at Berkeley. He was a C++ guru and when I asked him how he picked up C++ (Berkeley doesn't teach it to you) he mentioned that he read a red C++ book over Summer. I assume it's this one since it's one of the more well known red-books on C++.

The DSLR Filmmaker's Handbook: Real-World Production Techniques

Barry Andersson, Janie L. Geyen

I am considering purchasing a DSLR and shooting videos in my spare time (weekends tend to be open). Reading a book about production usually doesn't help with the process unless you absolutely have no clue as to where to start. Well, I have zero knowledge and any starting point will probably help.

An Interdisciplinary Introduction to Image Processing: Pixels, Numbers, and Programs

Steven L. Tanimoto

Can't wait to read this book. It looks at image processing from creative and artistic as well as technical point of view. 

3D Engine Design for Virtual Globes

by Patrick Cozzi

My friend Josh bought this book. I picked it up again at the store and read couple pages and realized that it's directly related to projects done by my team at NASA. It covers terrain reconstruction among other topics. I can't wait to read this one and hopefully implement it for planetary bodies. 

More detailed blog on technical talks at SIGGRAPH will be coming soon, including the ones on Mobile GPUs. So stay tuned...

As an Outsider Looking In.

It’s beautiful and tragic to stand against the wall, hearing your friends talk about the most vulnerable stories of their life, their suffering, and their private sorrows. It’s beautiful because it enables you to love that person for sharing a part of themselves so freely. It’s tragic because you are the outsider looking in, wanting the change to happen now so you can obliterate the cause of suffering. But we all know that this is wishful thinking for now.

The stories were about living in the United States as an undocumented student. By now, I feel familiar with these stories and half expected myself to feel a bit blasé. But these stories are somehow endowed with new meaning from each retelling. They present new revelations about life and about your friends. You marvel at the things you didn’t know even after knowing your friends for more than two years.

Stories were read aloud as part of the reception for a new website launch, www.thingsillneversay.com.  The purpose of the website is to share the personal stories of immigration, especially from the undocumented students, with the wider audience. Many of the stories on the website are from peers who attended the same summer writing workshop I attended. We gathered in San Francisco and critiqued each other’s stories about our lives as immigrants.

It was a bond forged in sharing the most intimate part of our lives. The darkest periods that we vowed never to think of again and tucked safely underneath our consciousness. I remember how difficult and frustrating it was to bring them to surface again. But we agreed tonight that the experience of writing and reading them aloud healed us in many ways. The broken immigration system in the United States had scarred us in ways that we were not aware of until we reflected and shared. We healed through opening up and acknowledging that there is a community of us who went through the same trials.

The stories are usually about parting with loved ones. Grandfathers and grandmothers whom we left behind, knowing we’ll never see them again. It’s about the everyday objects from our previous lives that seem so precious in our memory now. The sibling who’s left behind without visitation rights. About wanting to apply for scholarships that demand social security numbers. The feeling of being considered an unwanted outsider even when we are not.

My friends ask me what I’m up to these days. I fumble through my answer, feeling tremendous guilt by the fact that I have a job at NASA when my friends are barred from working anywhere. Our only difference is the nine-digit number that grants a work authorization. We all find it silly and confusing that these nine digits can hold so much power. I feel as if I am looking in from the world of opportunity, only nine-digits away from the world that stops dreams midway through their fruition. I’m looking forward to the day when this separation no longer exist; a land where all of us live free of anxiety and fear, a land where everyone is truly equal.