Thirty-two

I’ve recently turned thirty-two years (32) old. As some of you may know, I’d write something on my birthday or relatively close to it. I’ve just gotten back from snowboarding in Lake Tahoe. Kirkwood resort, to be precise. It got some snow last week, which was why I went, and it was great! Kirkwood is known to have decent snow based on its location since it’s at the highest base, 7,800, and its summit is at 9,800 feet. So, I went up there and boarded all the way from top to the bottom. It was fun and I’d try to do little jumps off bumps, and switched on both stances—goofy and regular. It’s amazing to see how far I’ve learned in snowboarding and I am trying to do more jumps with bigger air. It just takes practice and commitment to improve upon yourself. This year, I am staying local as I am saving up money to go to Japan later this summer and climb/hike Mt. Fuji. It’s been a goal of mine and I want to do some extra traveling around in Japan. Also, my sister and her family just moved there, for her husband’s Christian services. I hope to be in a good shape by then and will be training for a marathon in SF before that. A good friend of mine, Jess Conboy, will join me in the race. It’ll be his 9th marathon and his life goal is to qualify for the Boston marathon someday, with a time of 3:05 or faster. This one will be only my second, ha. I plan to run in a few races before the marathon to help me get ready. :) So, I’m trying to stay active, do fitness things because I realize how much I spend sitting on my ass by the computers. Not kidding you.

I’ve been living in SF for over a year, well almost two years, and yes, I’m one of these Googlers who takes the shuttle bus down to Mountain View, as my commute. It’s pretty nice except traffic is godly horrible. So I try to read news or a book. Sometimes, I do some work in the bus but the constant bounce in the ride makes me dizzy, so I’d sit quiet and look outside, enjoy the daylight, and just think generally, and be ready to hit the keyboard once I get in the office. Speaking of working, I’d need to make some statistics of my work and use it for a summary report once annual performance hits. Google is still a great place to work, although I’ve been on the horizon for something different, something more personal, like giving service to the deaf people or help with their program funding. Last summer, I actually went to the NAD conference in Louisville, KY to give a workshop on the new Google products—Google Plus and Google Hangouts–and also showed third-party plugins that connects you to an interpreter from VRS and another in captioning. It was a cool experience and was nice to meet some familiar faces, as deaf community is small. Plus, I also contacted several people from Diversity team and asked for a grant. So, this is something I’d like to do more, getting more grants and help support deaf programs or organizations.

As I’m getting close to the halfway between 30 and 40, I’m starting to realize that I’m not as young as I used to be. I remember before, I’d be pretty careless about my age. Nonetheless, I’m becoming more conscious of my age, which does enable me to know more about myself and what I’d like to do. Getting into Google was great, moving to California was great, working abroad in Korea was awesome, now I’m back here in CA and in the heart of San Francisco. I’m trying to go out as much as I can because I know not too far ahead, I’d probably have met someone and likely will have a family. How that will be, I have no idea but I’m up to the challenges and experiences it may present.

-nathan