Whew

Well, 2022 has been a year of settling in with change. Moving to Seattle has given me many “firsts” - first time moving to a new city, first time in a long time of living alone, first time voting outside of Texas, etc. etc.

Before I get into anything else, I’ll start out with a set of videos starting with my actual move from last October:

After that, I spent most of the winter/holidays alone (intentionally, since I did a lot of travel before the move), but I met some new friends and we had a wonderful New Year:

March and April were busy with back to back visits from friends and family:

Which is also when I unfortunately finally got Covid and had to skip out on some further trips/events. But, I managed to survive!

I’m looking into taking some time off of work this summer with plans TBD. I feel like life in America/the world right now is just filled with back to back traumatic events and we’re all gaslighting ourselves into somehow still being productive and moving forward.

In many ways, I feel like America is moving backwards and that’s tough to see from someone who grew up with seemingly unstoppable progress. I know I took that for granted now and I’ve typically been an optimistic, but it’s hard for me not to be pessimistic about the country since 2016.

In contrast to so much of what’s happening elsewhere, my personal life has been going well, which brings on some amount of guilt and feelings of helplessness. I’m hoping I can resolve a lot of that positively in the coming months/years. There’s still a lot I’m thankful for and potentials I’m excited about, so we’ll see…

❤️

The end is near

I’ve become increasingly frustrated with the state government in Texas. While a difference in opinion of policy is one thing I can generally live with, it has been increasingly obvious that Republicans across the United States and particularly in Texas are attacking the right to vote. Then, they use the reduced accountability to enact unpopular policies.

Perhaps in years past, I could give the benefit of the doubt in that we disagreed with election procedure rules, but the latest batch of proposed bills are so obviously anti-voting it is beyond the pale. In a historic year for a multitude of reasons, cities like Houston increased voter turnout by running 24/7 voting locations and offering drive-through voting. In Austin, we’ve used mobile voting centers that went to churches, parks, libraries. All of these demanded the same voting requirements as normal locations and no proof has been presented that these led to significant amount of fraud.

In the past legislative session and the current special session, Texas Republicans are trying to ban all of these efforts in addition to other election changes in the name of “election integrity.” On top of that, AG Paxton outright insinuated that if they had not blocked efforts to make mail-in voting easier, they may have lost Texas in the 2020 Presidential election. While Republicans, including Trump, love to conflate ballots and ballot applications, we were talking about applications in Texas. In order for these to have been used, these voters would have already had to be registered, submit the application to get a mail-in ballot, then fill out the ballot and return it. The clerks merely wanted to pre-emptively send the applications, making it easier, particularly for the poor or elderly to request a ballot. The issue here is not that these votes would have been from illegitimate voters. The right for these citizens to vote was not questioned. While the Texas courts sided with Republicans here on what clerks were allowed to do, this was not an effort to prevent illegitimate votes. It was a legal maneuver to suppress legitimate votes.

Texas voter turnout is, by most metrics, horrible. Despite record number of voters in 2020, it still stands at bottom 15% when compared to other states. About 40% of elligible voters in Texas don’t vote. There’s a plethora of low-hanging fruit we could implement to dramatically increase voter turnout. Instead, Republicans are committed to implementing further voter restrictions that have an outsized negative impact on urban voters. That is anti-democratic, not the America we should be striving for, and outright despicable. When those in power are no longer accountable to voters, the whole system falls apart.

I’ve loved Austin, my home and neighborhood, and many people here that I’ve known for most of my life, but I’ve had enough. I will no longer share my financial success with a state that is outright oppressive to its citizens and rigs the game in order to avoid accountability. Texas has shown it is afraid of the will of the people and so I will no longer entrust it my taxes. Godspeed to those sticking it out and fighting the good fight.

I have weighed various options over the past few months. This past week, I visited Seattle and pulled the trigger on a house. It’s exciting and bittersweet at the same time. I’ll be moving later this year and would welcome visits - I’ll have plenty of space for guests!

Called out

This past week, President Fuckhead got impeached, so I guess we have that going for us. Here’s to 2020 and America not making me feel like I should leave.

I also went to see the most hyped movie of the year on opening night along with a theater full of adoring fans. I also went to see Star Wars. The Alamo Drafthouse put me on blast due to my movie-going decisions:

If you’re like “oh well, that could be any Oliver, you’re just joking around.” Well, let me tell you, I have receipts:

Yes yes, I was so committed to this endeaver, I went to two different Drafthouses in one day and drove all the way to Lakeline for Cats. What did I think? Well, Cats was all kinds of creepy and certainly had moments of horrible CGI, but otherwise was just the musical IMO. This moment, gives me all kinds of confusing conflicted feelings:

Am I a furry now? I think I’m angry? I’m really confused. Please make it stop. My head… my… heart?…

After the movie, I walked out all alone in the moonlight
I can dream of the old days
life was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
let the memory l̴̛͎i̵̻̓v̶͉̊e̴̞̚ ä̸́̏g̸͌͝a̵̋͊ḯ̵̕n̶͒͌

Christmas in India

Last Christmas, Viraj decided to get married on the other side of the world, so a few of us gave up time with our families to go to his stupid wedding.

Tonight, I finally went through my video from the trip and so now you too can see our Christmas in India…

President Fuckface

My intention is to not clutter up my blog with mention of President Fuckface news, but it seems disingenuous to completely ignore. This is a post I made on Facebook a few days before inauguration. I think it captures a lot of my thoughts on the topic without being just bursts of anger, so I’d like to keep it around here, if only to look back on someday (hopefully).

Growing up, I’ve always felt positively about the country I’ve lived in. There’s always corruption in the world, including here at home, but we were steadily moving in the right direction despite the stumbles along the way. In history class, we learned about slavery, the Nazis, world wars, dictators and presidents of the past. We’re told “those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.”

I consider myself incredibly blessed to have the life I’ve had in the US. While I’ve faced mild racial mockery, mostly as a child, I’ve never felt being Asian has significantly limited me, and certainly not impacted my safety. I know that’s certainly not the case for everyone. You can blame the media, Trump putting on a show, or whatever, but this past election cycle shook something in me that I’ve never really had to deal with before.

I see the messages Trump sends. Either willingly, ignorantly, or whatever - it doesn’t matter. I see the creation of divisions between our neighbors and fellow Americans. I recall that as American kids, we take a pledge holding our hearts and state “with liberty and justice for all,” but not really too long ago, America fell into deep fear and rallied up thousands of Japanese based solely on their ethnicity and imprisoned them. I see Trump making broad statements on Muslims, on Hispanics, on women. I see him instigating China, a nation I have no association with other than my lineage, and for the first time in my life I’ve asked myself whether I’m still safe here.

I’m not trying to be alarmist. If I truely thought I was in significant danger here, I would not be typing this in my home in Austin. However, I felt the needle move in the wrong direction, even if minutely. The trust I had in us not repeating mistakes in the past I never thought were possible is now not quite as solid.

My hope is we as people continue to push forward and progress. However, I also see many warning signs with the incoming administration and they are difficult for me to ignore despite my temptation to be blissfully ignorant. Hopefully they are just warning signs, but if they are not, I will strive to be on the right side of history.

As such, I will be traveling to DC on Thursday to take part in inauguration protests. I plan on taking a lot of photos. I expect the day to at least be historic and I consider it no harm done in showing our government there are those who will resist should we turn our backs on the ideals we teach our children.

Happy MLK Day, everyone. “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

The photos I took are in a FB album that starts here:

Unfortunately, I planned my trip before I knew about the Women’s March, so I was on a plane heading back to Austin during all of those. Would have loved to capture pics in either DC or Austin of that.

Overall, it was actually a pretty interesting experience and I’m glad I went. It made me realize that it’d be really cool to be present when we elect our first female President, especially if I felt positively about her.

Holidays

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

This year, everyone corralled in Austin and we gave each other terrible (awesome) gifts and played lots of Magic.

Magic:

Christmas 2015 - 005

Franklin’s brisket on the deck:

Christmas 2015 - 006

Hats:

Christmas 2015 - 034

Crazy onesies:

Christmas 2015 - 042

Trailer:

Some other notables:


  • Oriana loves Wonderful Christmastime and begged me to play nearly a dozen different covers of it in a row

  • To satisfy Oriana’s love of Taytay, I gave her a Saint Taylor Swift candle, a Taylor Swift blanket, and a Taylor Swift “haters gonna hate” mug. She loved them.

  • Mozilla thought the world was ending last night (NYE)

  • I’m quite fond of the new Star Wars. It has its flaws, but I just had a blast the entire time watching it.

Doing my big brother duties

State Fair 2015

We had our traditional annual Dallas trip this past weekend. Usually we go OU weekend, but there were too many conflicts this year, so we ended up doing it a week earlier. I flew into Dallas directly from SF to join up with the gang, made Oriana pick me up, then we watched UT get slaughtered and hung out at the State Fair.

State Fair 2015 - 002

State Fair 2015 - 009

State Fair 2015 - 017

More photos on the flickr. Here’s also a video of Sam:

And… I’ve started to populate viraj.fail!

More Magic!

A whiles back when Jonney, Mark and I competed in a team Magic tournament in Portland, some of the bounty we got was a bunch of planeswalkers toys. We’ve now got them stationed above their appropriate poster!

omg such nerd

A photo posted by Oliver Wong (@owiber) on

NERD OUT.

NEW JOB

This month, I started at Stripe! I’m currently in the middle of a three week stint in San Francisco. The scent of piss is not uncommon here, but the city is very nostalgic for me, so I guess that at least evens things out, haha. I’m enjoying my time here, but I miss my Mozilla. On the plus side, I’m really excited to work with my new teammates and Stripe has great food (breakfast, lunch, and dinner!).

Last weekend, I strolled on over to Chinatown and found that unsurprisingly Golden Gate Bakery was on vacation. My hit rate is probably around 50/50 now, or perhaps a little worse. I debated bringing my camera on this trip, and ended up doing so, but I have yet to take it out of my bag. I’m going to San Diego at the end of the month with my new Stripe team, so perhaps I’ll put it to some use there.

Before starting at Stripe, I had roughly a month off. I did a lot of bumming around, playing some Minecraft, and went to Los Angeles and New Orleans. LA featured the debut of this video:

and resulted in this one:

I’ve got a bunch of random clips of Sam from NOLA where we tried really hard to make him out to be a racist, but I’m not sure what I have gels well, so it may not end up anywhere. I did, however, rummage through a lot of old media and came out with this:

NEW HOUSE

Mark and I have purchased a sweet house and we moved in last weekend. We’ve still got a number of things on order that have yet to arrive, but it’s pretty great. It has two master bedrooms, so it was convenient to co-purchase. Here’s a video of when I took Mozilla to the house shortly after closing:

This is a Facebook album of pre-closing photos.

And here are some photos of the game room: