As some of you may know, I left my startup a few weeks ago. I’ll be moving back to NYC in a few months, and in the meantime, I figured it’d be the best use of my time to write logs for each day, similar to what I did for startups. This’ll give me some excuse to try to log everything I do on my mega trip and hopefully force me to take more high quality pictures—a secondary benefit of this is helping improve my recall, which I’ve been more conscious of working on.

Day 1: Thursday, June 1, 2023

I spent the majority of this day flying from SFO to Hawaii. The morning was quite tiring as I saved all my packing for that specific morning. This was mostly because I had such a busy week prior to this—I had made my best effort to hang out with all my California friends before I left on my big Asia trip, but this resulted in essentially 4 days straight of heavy drinking which was honestly quite brutal. I honestly don’t remember the last time I’ve drank that many days in a row (normally even two in a row is a stretch).

06-01 My dog seems to also want to be packed on my trip.

Day 2: Friday, June 2, 2023

First full day in Hawaii was pretty chill—I just stayed home and fished all day. I brought my fly rod because the last time I was here, I saw the tilapia feeding a lot on the surface. However, it turns out that they’re not quite as keen on biting top water flies as I thought they would be. I also tried fishing some nymphs but it didn’t really work out as anticipated. My first impressions upon returning is that there’s a ton of tilapia fry that’s quite tough to get through—last time I was here, the tilapia were much bigger so it was easier for them to eat the bait. Now, there are huge schools of baby fish that just swarm/peck the bait, making it impossible for the larger tilapia to get to my bait.

For lunch, I bought a pound of salt and vinegar chicken wings for $5 at Safeway, which was kind of a ridiculous deal. It’s predicated on you getting a (free) Safeway membership however, so my hypothesis here is that it has to be some sort of loss leader in order to get people on the membership (and thus increase loyalty).

06-02 First fish on the fly, although floating a piece of white bread on a bare hook was definitely much more effective.

Day 3: Saturday, June 3, 2023

Honestly, I don’t really remember too much about what I did this day. Sophia and her mom went to check out a new ceramics place that they just got membership for—while I waited for them, I walked their dog, Pudge, in Chinatown. I was warned that Hotel St was kinda sus, but when I ended up there on accident, it was fine. Honestly, it felt similar to the average street in SF.

I went to a nice cafe with Sophia and got some poke for dinner before she dropped me off at home. I spent most of the rest of the day chilling with the dog and fishing—I’ve been having a super relaxing week.

06-03 Plant cafe with Pudge.

Day 4: Sunday, June 4, 2023

Sophia really wanted me to do ceramics with her and her mom, so that’s what we did in the morning. Afterwards, I helped move furniture out of her grandma’s apartment—it was rather physical labor, but I’m really glad I was able to help out. It’s the least I can do for how they’ve allowed me to crash at their apartment all week.

06-04 Morning routine

Day 5: June 5, 2023

Honestly, I thought I would be a lot more productive this week, but I’ve just been fishing all day and looking after their dog. It’s a nice life though—I love fishing, but I think I would eventually get bored if this was my entire life.

06-05 Man. Fish. Dog.

06-05 *Sophia’s mom makes very aesthetic meals. I love mackerel too.”

Day 6: June 6, 2023

I went to Muay Thai with Sophia today—this was pretty much my first time doing martial arts since I was in elementary school. It was definitely an excellent workout and it was moderately fun (definitely more enjoyable than running). However, I didn’t have so much fun that I would be positive that I could sustain the sport for a long time when I’m back in NYC. It did make me start thinking about what sort of cardio activity I could do in Manhattan that I would legitimately enjoy/sustain for a long time—the only thing that comes to find is like super amateur/beginner friendly ultimate frisbee with friends, although I don’t know how possible that sort of thing is.

Day 7: June 7, 2023

Today was the first semi-productive day I had in a while, which is kinda surprising that it’s taken me this long (but in retrospect it makes sense). I went to a cafe in the morning and called some friends, did some due diligence on some work-related things, and generally practice some more math. However, in the afternoon, I played some TFT as a form of a break, but I got rather addicted/started to tilt queue which was a bad idea.

Day 8: June 8, 2023

Sophia spent the day with her grandma, so it was just me and her parents today. The nice thing about this was that I was able to have a Japanese lesson with her mom. The phonology of Japanese is actually much easier than I expected (easier than Chinese), although I feel that I’m still quite far from being able to follow along with conversational Japanese.

After that, I was supposed to spend some time learning the alphabet for Japanese, but truth be told, I spent way too much time playing TFT (tilt queueing into the afternoon). I took a brief fishing break before I walked Pudge, which was a fun activity (I caught probably the biggest tilapia this trip yet on this session).

Japan pt. 1: June 10, 2023 - June 20, 2023

Note from 12/23/23: I never ended up journaling the rest of my Asia trip. I kinda regret it, but at the same time, keeping up with writing every day while also being super tired from travelling was near impossible.