He spilled words. Words that described a love lost. A love that he found and put aside for so long. Then how he suddenly returned to it to find that it had already drained away. His voice eloquently described the pain, the indecision, and the mistakes. The words did not quiver, but I saw his eyes glaze as he described the passion that he wanted. “I want to be one,” he said. He wanted to be consumed and overwhelmed by love. “I did everything for her,” his words seem to say. “And she didn’t do enough for me.”

As a platonic friend, I sat across from him. “Are you disappointed?” I asked.

He hesitated. A look of surprise crossed his face. Then he agreed.

Then the words kept tumbling out across the solid wood table, wandering over the delicately placed raw fish, and towered over the steaming cups of tea.

“You will be okay,” I said. “Really. It will be okay.”

…my imagination goes wild. I dream of what I can do with my potatoes. Salted. Fried. Sliced. Baked. Steamed. With chicken. Roasted chicken. Marinated chicken. Chicken tikka masala. Fresh tomatoes. Seasoned with masala. Paired with a salad. Cucumbers and red onion. Olive oil. Sizzling with bell peppers. Jalapeño pepper. Strawberries and jalapeño.

I am suddenly starving as I write this.

When I don’t cook, I look at my refrigerator and my mind only thinks this: There’s nothing to eat!

Because it was nearing the start time of 9 AM, I walked quickly to the screen right near the entrance. “Excuse me,” I said to a nearby bellhop. “Where is the Stanford room?”

“It’s one floor up,” he answered.

I scanned the lobby confused, searching for the way up.

“The stairs to your left,” he added.

I bounded up the stairs and found the room. As I was about to enter, a volunteer jumped in front of me and sent me downstairs again to register. I returned and found a single seat. In the back, squeezed between two people. As I stepped in, people sat in rows. Almost all women and about two men. Mostly white. My parents’ age. I wondered what their topics were like. The struggle of parenthood? The divorcees? Cancer? Maybe I did stereotype them quickly.

To my surprise, stories of living with cult bounded out. A story of living on the same street as the Beatles slipped out from an Liverpool woman. Then there was the father who was telling a touching (but stereotypical) story of his daughter who was misdiagnosed with a debilitating disease and now studies at Stanford.

I was impressed. Although like my own stories, everyone’s story started faltering into “woe is me, because I am victim.” And that’s exactly what the instructor focused on—to tear away from the desire to whine, to complain, but to present a story that is compelling and engaging to the reader.

To begin, let’s say this: “My dad always served ice cream after dinner.”

Until the moment that they were everywhere.

You see, I am a child of technology. That is, technology shaped me. By the age of 13, I was surfing on the web and chatting with strangers. I found it easy to communicate on the Internet back in 1998, preferring that to whispering vocal words to people right next to me.

When new technology (as long as there was no cost), I would hop on it. I joined every social network I could.

Then the smart phone. You see, I had one of the early smart phones. A windows CE phone before the iPhone changed the landscape and how information was distributed. In the month that I had it…I was suddenly taken in by the ease of communicating…and the absorption that I found myself in the screen.

I hated what I had become in the mornings, turning over and reading my email right away.

I swore off smart phones quite immediately after that, claiming cost. I didn’t get a smart phone again (of my own that is) until 2010. And I found myself tapping, scrolling, swiping. As if I couldn’t get enough information. I wanted more. I always wanted more.

But now, I am at my brink. Even though I work in the industry (freelance, that is), I don’t want to be enslaved. I want to talk to people. I want people to see me in the eye. I want people to stop capturing the moment. I want people to stop trying to validate themselves. I blame the phone for this easy validation.

I want the phone to put aside. Because you know, this way, we have to face our own fears.

I wish that every place had a box like this.

What can I say? I walked into a big startup tech party last Friday, mostly because I got in for free. First, I can’t turn down anything free. Second, I like to watch (disaster). Third, someone asked me to come.

But as I walked the mile from my office, I smelled the douchebaggery.

I remember this back in 2006 when I attended a pool party sponsored by a startup organization. Back then, I was a little bit more naive, a bit more bushy-tailed, and very dense. The only people in the pool were giggling girls who seemed more like admins or booth babes. Everyone else was dressed for the South Bay summer in the geeky way that most of us were—fully clothed. I remember thinking, “This is it! This is how my life is going to begin!”

Then shortly after that, guys talked to me about the most boring topics ever. “Let’s talk about my business idea!” one proposed.

“Okay!” I said obliviously and agreed to dinner on a Saturday evening in Berkeley.

Needless to say, I almost brought my laptop. I almost had an approach from my UX experience. Until there was that non-oblivious side of me that called out, “um, there’s something wrong with this picture.”

So for nearly 7 years, I never went to another event like this again. Until last Friday. Where I saw a mechanical bull. Where I saw…booth babes? Where I had to navigate through crowds to find anything interesting. Where I desperately wanted to leave within an hour. At least, I got chocolate-flavored coconut water. Now, that was interesting.

“Do you want to stay dry and cozy or do you want to ride in the rain to get all slippery and wet?” the contestant read from a card during a “Singled Out” game at tonight’s SFBC V-day event.

I would always want to stay dry and cozy. Several years ago, a friend challenged me.

“Ride in the rain,” he said. “You’re alone. You’re powering through. You find your strength.”

He said it with such emphasis that I filled with guilt when I would just take the BART or muni instead. But there are times that I would do it. I would ride letting my jeans soak and the water spray everywhere from my rear wheel (if I was riding my canondale). I hated it.

And avoided it for a year. Until today. I had forgotten why I disliked it. Today, I didn’t realize that it was going to rain due to California’s unstoppable drought. Then I walked outside. And it was. And because it was a bike coalition event, I couldn’t very well just wimp out and drive over. So instead, I hiked up my courage and rode in the slippery roads.

I hated how it sprayed in my face and the world seemed to glitter so dangerously.

…and I’ll never drink Coke again!”

While sitting at a Super Bowl party, I browsed through my Twitter feed and came across an outspoken friend who retweeted that tweet. I held a breath. Knowing that he often is ironic and comedic, I wanted to know whether he was serious and whether he supported that tweet. As I clicked through, I found more tweets about their anger against the offensive ad.

“Want a drink?” Chris asked.

“I don’t know!” I exclaimed. “I am not sure if I can drink Coke again. Do you have anything else not from the Coca Cola Company?”

He brought some amber looking liquid that was still not beer. As I sipped it, I softly played the ad on my iPod Touch. Not being able to hear over the beer pong players, I watched various clips of people. “Um, what’s offensive here?” I asked. “This is just bunch of people. I guess that it’s depicting Muslim girls eating street food?”

It took me almost 10 more watches (and finally without beer pong players present) before I heard why. Not English. Not all White people.

I instantly thought about my grandparents who barely spoke any English. And my mom whose job as a nurse at a public hospital requires the English language…yet she powers through anything that requires communication. I never had to be that Asian kid that had to translate for the parents. My dad spoke fluent English, and my mom just powered through anything through her thick accent without any shame or embarrassment. They’re American and so are my grandparents.

As a progressive Asian American, I had trouble understanding what was wrong with the America the Beautiful ad. Doesn’t that say something too?

I tasted my salted caramel ice cream again today after dinner. The one where I had mixed bits of leftover sponge cake from a failed swiss roll experiment (the cake wasn’t bendy enough and fell to pieces when rolled). In the small moment, memories of all my ice cream moments blasted through me.

You see, it has been slightly over a year since I launched the Kickstarter. And like many projects, it got more complex than I anticipated. I wasn’t happy with it exactly. And the years trained as a designer, I felt unease.

But you see, the project all started with a simple taste of ice cream. Probably when I was younger. When my dad generously put scoops into plastic bowls that perhaps came from an airline meal. Our mom was most likely at work at her PM shift as a nurse. And it was the father only evening. There I probably had ice cream. Most likely storebought. But it’s memories of those evenings where we weren’t rushed, pushed to do anything.

I remember tasting freedom.

Let me be honest even though I am well trained to be respectful during user research: There’s some days that I want to just say: “THAT’S SO STUPID.”

But then I catch myself and tell myself to stop being so critical.

I hear things like:

After they say that, I grit my teeth as they stare intently at me. Sure, I could design it that way. But after years of experience, I know that modes and those “simple” but in reality complex interactions don’t work. Yes, exactly…why can’t thinks work magically? Why can’t there just be one button? Because simply put, you will be frustrated with that one button, because it won’t allow you to do the thousands of other functions you want in one button? And why not something that adapts to the time of the day…because, you puny human, your actions are so unpredictable, so random, so irrational, so illogical that no designer and engineer can ever figure out what you really want to do.

A few months ago, a friend in book club brought up Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting. The only mother in our book club vetoed it, saying that it probably is more appropriate for parents.

Yet, I was intrigued. Not only because there’s baby fever going around my social group, but because I really want to understand how I came to be and why I came to be. How did my personality and decision-making principles come out from my life experience? That no matter what, a clone of my genetics will never be quite the person that I am.

I have always been intrigued by impulse control. The one highlighted by the Stanford marshmallow experiment where young kids were told that they could have a marshmallow in front of them if they wait several minutes, then left alone for those minutes. It turned out that kids who were able to wait had better impulse control in life.

I would like to think that I was a kid that waited. But I am pretty sure that if I did wait, I was afraid of something. Afraid of the adults of what they would think of me. Afraid of anything. That I didn’t feel comfortable in my own skin. But there’s a lot of deep stuff there. Rather, I had control.

I would like to think that.

In the book, the author talks about how French kids are taught to “wait”. That they can wait for their rewards and desires. That American kids, on the other hand, are catered to every demand and need. As a result, they rarely know how to manage their disappointments and failures.

When I was younger, my parents claimed that they rarely bought toys. As evidenced by our small stockpile of toys growing up, I didn’t even have a Barbie until I was nearly 11. The one time that I desperately want a doll that I saw on TV…I felt so guilty about demanding it and playing with it for less than a month. I never asked for it. At a Chinese supermarket, my sister and I would go down the candy aisle and load up our shopping cart with bags and bags of candy. Snacks were never present in my house growing up. As a small subtle suggestion. My mom only would occasionally say “well ok, just one small bag of peach gummies.” I saw many commercials and other things for Mcdonald’s Happy Meals, but I just thought, “Oh my parents just wouldn’t get that for me. They just wouldn’t.”

I have always wondered if it was this sense of we just aren’t that type of people or I truly believed that I didn’t need it.

Yet today, after almost 8 years of working professionally (in the real world), I stomped around my apartment desperately looking for snacks. It drove me crazy. I wanted the snacks. The random Red Vines. The jar of peanut M&Ms (and I hate chocolate covered nuts). The plastic clamshells of blueberries, raspberries and strawberries. Chips, yogurt, cheese sticks. I was going out of my mind. I wanted it right then.

I mean, the reason that I didn’t have any was because simply put, I didn’t want myself to gorge on them. But at that moment, a tantrum wanted to burst open like the American kids described in the book. Then I settled down. Because I can be patient. I can wait about 12 hours until I walk into the office and take a handful from the jar downstairs in the kitchen. I have turned from the person who never snacked to a person who wants to snack every 30 minutes.