Table of Contents
2025: Provenance
Dec 31, 2025
If this is what would eventually motivate me, or what would eventually defeat me, or convert me to Socialism and Christianity. I don’t know.
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Together Again
Nov 20, 2025
I know that nothing remains, that everyone can only be with you for a part of the way. And so I ache to speak — to say something that might outlast the moment, that might reach back across the water to everything I've left. What can I say. What would I say. I have nothing to say, and everything, and the wind takes it all away.
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Something I've Been Waiting On
Mar 14, 2025
I don’t have to live in extremes. I don’t have to take on the world alone. It’s okay to depend on others, to say, I am worthy of being held. It’s okay to choose the easier path. To surrender to comfort, even if it’s temporary. Especially because it’s temporary.
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2024: Risk
Dec 31, 2024
So I lean in. I shoot my shot, and think I have it. I used to, every day, wake up thanking god I was alone, now I just wake up and thank god.
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Vertigo
Nov 07, 2024
After all, we define ourselves in opposition, not in concordance. What is life without a bit of death, what is success without a bit of challenge, what is harmony without a bit of chaos? What is certainty if it’s never been shaken by doubt?
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Right On Time
Oct 02, 2024
Every pleasant memory is a lamp against the darkness should misfortune bring nightfall. Reminder of the faith you’d convinced yourself of that one scorching afternoon six years ago soaked in a fortuitousness that’s almost too good to be true. The bottomless mimosa lingers at the tip of your tongue.
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The Tortured Poets Department: Price of Going Public
Jul 09, 2024
Meet someone, kiss someone. Love someone, lose someone. How do we record history for our future self? How do we project from now into eternity? How do we preserve the vibrations of emotions through time? What can we do but pen it all down.
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Everything Everywhere All at Once: Be Here, With You
Mar 14, 2024
Chooses to believe, despite being in an absurd world turning to shit. Chooses this life, despite her success and wealth in many other universes. Chooses to “be here, with you,” despite knowing everything we do might get washed away by every other possibility.
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2023: On the Road
Dec 31, 2023
I stand amidst the ambiguity, holding on to my stone. The adventures have only made me more sure of why I started, more certain of my way. I now know the world is much more alike than it is different. The unknown doesn’t tickle me so. I am still at peace.
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Waiting for Spring
Oct 28, 2023
I’m sure, in fact, I know magic is happening. Politics is happening. Sex and the City is happening, in real life, in one of those squares of light in the sea of squares of light. But I am not witnessing, uncovering, or holding. None of those belong to me.
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One Last Spell
Jun 25, 2023
I wish I had the chance to scribble on Grandma’s hand and blow onto her forehead. Put a spell on her, keep her here a little longer, ease the discomfort from weeks of illness, make sure she wasn’t scared during those nights alone on the hospital bed.
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The Things I Didn’t Know
May 30, 2023
The gift of not knowing is hope. Thinking back to the moment when I got shivers while listening to Long Live in my bunk bed in suburban Los Angeles just after coming to America — I didn’t know what was ahead of me then — but I can still feel the hope that filled my iPod, my bedroom, the little bits of that immigrant heart.
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Why I Still Use Snapchat
May 17, 2023
One day, I got drenched in the Spring rain on the way back, with osmanthus oil still lingering in my hair from when I put it on after swimming. It teleported me to Fall in Shanghai. Wrong season, I know; not that I’ve ever been to Shanghai in the Fall, I know. But this, somehow, felt exactly how it’s supposed to be.
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More Will Go With Age
Feb 16, 2023
I didn’t want to cry — it felt like a self-important gesture, crossing a line of sorts, assuming the place of someone close to him. But even with this distance, for someone who I’ve simply admired from our simple interactions, I felt my defenses crumbling. Death broke the truce in a smug triumph.
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2022: A Rock Can Be A Star
Dec 31, 2022
For many of my friends, pop-rock was a phase that came and went. I guess not for me. I’m not exactly sure why the bombastic melodies and edgy lyrics still have such a hold on me, but they do. In both Chinese and English, they do.
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Blow-Up: The World In My Head
Jun 22, 2022
But is perception reality? Our knowledge of reality is grounded in our perception, so what if there is no material reality beyond our perception? That’s what Blow-Up led me to think about.
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Bye Bye, Baby
Mar 14, 2022
It really is tragic, when one day you feel like you are finally ready to free the grand romantic in you, but the romantic in you is gone after many years of wear and tear, struggling and crawling in the dire reality.
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Norman Fucking Rockwell!: Coexisting Hope & Despair
May 17, 2020
After all, it’s not just you and me who are not going anywhere: “no one’s going anywhere,” and as Lana famously said: "the culture is lit.”
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At World’s End
Apr 13, 2020
The quarantine has made me realize that, in these tumultuous times, monotonous routine contains familiar joy. Having a roof over your head and being able to see your family every day — so much to love already.
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Covid, College, and Us
Mar 20, 2020
It was cold. I was alone. My bags were drenched. But I enjoyed having the streets to myself — it felt regal, and I liked how the lights were blurred by downpour, then reflected by puddles, which were then shattered by droplets. Light On reminds me of the rain that night.
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Being Earnest
Mar 04, 2020
You cannot decide what other people think of you, or what they see in you, but you can change how you act. It is our own responsibility to lead a genuine life, to be earnest.
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Suburbia
Jan 23, 2020
You realize the planet is filled to its brink with extraordinary people doing all sorts of things. That’s why you would, while traversing the vast and lonely world, reminisce more furiously about suburbia.
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Projects
Atlas Sky
2025
Browser-based flight logging app. Built with Next.js and Mapbox GL. Also available as a Progressive Web App. [Closed Beta]
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Wall (on Rails)
2024
Microblog powered by Ruby on Rails, as another iteration of Wall. Allows user registration, content management, and discovery. Let me know at law@rence.la if you are interested in joining.
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Playlist Anatomy
2022-2023
Expansion on Spotlist that offers insights into user created playlists, such as genre, history, popularity, and more. Built with Next.js and Spotify API.
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Wall (2022)
2019-2022
Type-foundry-esque platform for logging daily thoughts, monthly playlists, inspirational quotes, and spontaneous audio. Powered by AWS Amplify.
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Spotlist
2020-2021
Retrieve information about any Spotify playlist because Spotify makes it really hard to copy song names and I cannot type Korean. Built with React.
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Regarding
I am a pragmatist. I wonder about structures and narratives. I drift
between optimizing and wandering. I wish I could
know it's for the better.
I am a fan of the world wide web. I am sad that it may die someday.
Below are some of my interests.
PRODUCE
CONSUME
USELESS
USEFUL
architecture
Chinese cinema
jewelry design
lifting
liminal spaces
oranges
aviation
Chinese poetry
Cities Skylines
interior design
everybody else's business
world building
floor plans
grand strategy games
historical fiction
hotels
maps
karaoke
origin stories
perfume
political economy of China
science fiction
song lyrics
tea
the European Union
web development
Software Engineer, ART19
B.S. Computer Science and Economics, Yale University
B.A. Political Science, Yale University
LinkedIn
B.S. Computer Science and Economics, Yale University
B.A. Political Science, Yale University