July 28th – I had 32 needles stuck in me for allergy testing this morning. Every little prick of the skin was just light enough to not cause pain, but its cumulative effect slowly stripped away at my patience, though I ended up surviving just fine. The lady and I had a great chat, and she seemed much more open minded than others from her older generation, and even recognized me as a “star student” from seeing my face in the newspaper back when I was in high school. Dad started taking his 3rd adjuvant chemotherapy cycle this evening. The painting contractors are now fully rebuilding our rotted wood patio before they get started on house painting.
July 29th – Part of the problem with my pain has to do with the normal flat QWERTY keyboard. The muscle that straightens the wrist when your palm is facing down is one of the ones in pain, and having to type (code) means having that muscle activated constantly (since the majority of my time is over the keyboard). Having a limper wrist helps, but that means an uncomfortable typing position which is helped only by raising the front edge of the keyboard, the opposite of what a keyboard kickstand does (from an ergonomic standpoint, using your keyboard’s kickstand is about the worst thing you can do for your wrists’ health). The ergonomic vertical mouse has been barely helping, so I’ve decided to return it. This evening, I also had dinner with Jason, my childhood friend that I hadn’t seen since I left high school and who has returned to visit after his parents moved away this year. We went to our piano teacher’s favorite local Italian restaurant before discussing life, politics, and our respective futures, and connecting again over our musical past.
July 30th – Our old tenant just moved out, and we finalized a new tenant for move-in on Aug 2nd, meaning this whole weekend will be spent learning about home ownership (namely, cleaning and fixing broken things–again, quite similar to what I’d already been doing at our current residence given everything breaking here anyways). We call Stanley Steemers for a carpet deep-clean, I spend the afternoon vacuuming all three floors, and in the evening, I’m rewarded with a Cleveland Orchestra concert with yesterday’s Jason, as well as more high school friends: Chris Oh, Andrew Hu, Sandy, and her family who was brought along for her brother’s birthday. In catching up with those old folks, I find out that our high school’s New Dimensions teacher, Mr. Chiorian, now includes Joe’s Shanghai as an annual staple during the class NYC trip, of which I am responsible for getting him addicted to those delectable crab and pork soup dumplings.
July 31st – Got another new bike off of FB Marketplace for Wilton, something more his size with 24 inch wheels. I plan on swapping all the good parts from his old bike onto this one and then selling the older, less shiny one. The rest of the day was spent at our rental securing various fake window shutters whose fasteners had rotted away. Two of them (on the lower half, luckily, so that my dad didn’t have to jump off a tall ladder) had wasps’ nests behind them! The July summer sun is no joke.
Aug 2nd – Woke up at 7:30am to meet the new tenants while they started moving in. In the middle of all this, my dad was resetting all the locks in the house to work with a new key, but managed to screw up when resetting the front door, which now meant none of the keys work with it, and will require disassembly. He’s also finally feeling the chemo effects of this cycle and had very little appetite today.
Aug 3rd – Arm pain back to painful again. Just looks like it’s number of hours worked = more pain. Tenants complained that the washing machine smells bad so I drive my dad over to the property at 10pm this evening to go wash it with bleach, since the tenants still hadn’t fully moved in yet and were still staying with their own family nearby.
Aug 4th – Don’t think it’s covid but worried I have a stomach flu or something. Mild sore throat and GI problems. Covid test negative the following morning, right before my dental work appointment. Seems like I just ate something bad.
Aug 5th – Crown prep, fillings, and a nightguard mold. Total was $1800 since I don’t have dental insurance as a student or an Amazon intern (benefits only applicable to employees working longer than 90 days, which I’m not), and I certainly can’t afford marketplace insurance rates. Why we tie any form of insurance to work is just another consequence of Reagan-era politics that chain people to our jobs. It’s only a little weird that I knew my dentist’s daughter who was also a violinist in COYO, and he also kept complimenting how well I take care of my teeth compared to other college-aged boys.
Aug 6th – Arm pain worse again. Dad has been fixing our broken garage door opener all of today since it broke yesterday.
Aug 7th – Arm continues to worsen. At least I don’t have work today. I spent the whole afternoon finishing the installation of a new garage door opener with my dad. Moving my work desk out of my bedroom and into the upstairs office space. As stereotypical immigrants, my family insists that the cause of the pain is from “damp wind getting into my arm” from working in my room which is part of our walk-out basement (we only have two floors in our house).
Aug 8th – I go to my primary care practitioner about the pain before work in the morning. He prescribes a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug for me and asks me to see how it helps after 10 days, with the possibility of physical therapy after that time. I expected him to prescribe these, though I’m worried it’s only going to mask the pain and not the real problem, which is musculoskeletal in nature. Helped my dad again with more construction work—bad idea. Wake up in the night from the pain of rolling onto my arm. The pain has definitely taken over my life, just like it did with my Dartmouth roommate in 2021, and I’m highly worried it’ll turn chronic if I don’t get it resolved. I can barely play piano for 5 minutes, all the while being in pain.
Aug 10th – It seems like the drug may be helping a bit. I notice less pain in general, but again, I’m worried it’s only masking the true damage. Ergonomic keyboard arrived. I’ve gotten an app to use my iPad as trackpad, so I’ve ditched my old mouse and keyboard entirely.
Aug 11th – Did you know air conditioning units need regular cleaning? (Which hadn’t been done in the 25 years since it was installed at our house). So I got to take apart the outdoors compressor portion and spray it with a garden hose and cleaning solution.
Aug 12th – Namjun is back in the US from his 2 years of civil service for the Korean military. I haven’t seen that bad boy in 2.5 years! I grabbed dinner with him at a nearby Mexican restaurant, and afterwards, met up with his and my old buddies, Dave Cho and Zilai, along with some of their friends at our old, now demolished middle school, and reminisced.
Aug 13th – Before he departs Ohio, I organized a large gathering of lots of previous Hudson and COYO friends of Namjun and I, and we grab dinner before heading to a Cleveland Orchestra concert for the ages at Blossom. Expecting to see Rach 2, we get scammed after being told that the originally scheduled pianist, Daniil Trifonov, was unable to come play, and were treated to a rather-unknown replacement, who was still great. The pianists of the group finally managed to educate the rest of the unwashed string players in the beauty that is Rach 2. Per Blossom concert tradition, I bumped into other old friends and COYO members there, like Catharine Baek and David Li. Afterwards, we head to Zilai’s house to chill for a bit, playing Mafia with everyone. Check out some more videos of the month here.
Aug 14th – The very next day, I head in the opposite direction towards the Cleveland Institute of Music to accompany Wilton for his first ever recital with his new violin teacher. I bumped into another old COYO member, Hansen Song, only to be impressed by his maturity in the three years since I last saw him. I heard someone practicing Chopin Etude Op. 10 No. 4 (piece I played like 6 years ago) in a practice room while there. These past few days filled with music have made me quite nostalgic for all the good experiences I’ve had, as well as angst for the arm pain that currently prevents me from continuing my own journey.
Aug 17th – After 8 weeks on the job, I’m reminded why I didn’t like front-end development, though at least I can say I’m better at it. Arm pain stable, not worse, not better. Fixing Wilton’s new bike for hopefully the last time. One year ago today, I arrived at Hong Kong International Airport, marking the start of one of the happiest periods of my life. I never got the chance to fully process those fleeting months though, as the lowest lows of my life began only a month following my return to the states. As I look back, it’s hard to describe just how much life has changed, only that so much of it has that it’s hard to keep track of. I can only look back with nostalgia and think back to happy times, though it comes at the cost of remembering where I once was compared to the present—simultaneously reinforcing my current sadness and that nostalgic feeling of looking back to times that seem so far out of reach with rose-tinted glasses in a never-ending positive feedback cycle, as if I’ll never be able to find joy that can match the feeling of freedom I had while I was there after going through these past few months. No family obligations, no brother to raise, and no stress of a ticking medical timebomb (both my own and my dad’s). But I simultaneously acknowledge the fact that time can only move forward (as far as current physics knows), and situations can only improve with controllable action and not twitter doomscrolling, forcing me to actively try and reinternalize my locus of control.
Aug 19th – Dentist appointment for my permanent crown—it’s funny that it’s way whiter than my other teeth, making it look out of place (at least it’s a molar, so it’s not too visible). Also got my night guard which is meant to prevent more tooth damage from nighttime bruxism. On top of all that, I got another 4 fillings. The good thing was that today was a “Self-Development” day at work, usually reserved for SDEs to go and brush up on their development skills, though which is usually treated as a half-day for most people on my team, meaning I didn’t need to do much. On one of the fleeting days that he’s back in town and not at UMich, Terry, one of my close high school friends and the only one which I hadn’t called or seen in person since 2020, got dinner with me. Our conversation gave me an insightful look into a solar car engineer’s life. He’s also graduating in 3 years, apparently, and likely going to be working at SpaceX after graduation, if what he says about “SpaceX teams being filled with UMich alumni” is true. I’m a little worried he might burn out before then but he seems to be handling his 60+ hour work weeks with solar car pretty well.
Aug 20th – Spent the afternoon washing the BMW, at the behest of my mother who wants it sold ASAP. Rain storm and lightning proved disastrous and we were turned away at the Blossom Gate after 40 minutes of traffic, being told that the Harry Potter and Chamber of Secrets concert was cancelled. (it seems like it wasn’t actually cancelled after all and they just needed to keep people from entering to save enough seats for the lawn folks to come into the pavilion to escape the rain.) Pirated harry potter and sorcerer’s stone at home after getting back (I even managed to find chinese subtitles). Andrew Tate banning has made me think about how to keep Wilton off the alt-right pipeline. As an aside, I guess I made it to the point in life where one’s mother begins nagging about finding a partner.
Aug 21st – Lunch with Sean Scarnecchia, the dude who referred and got me my Amazon internship. Caught all up with him about life at Michigan, his recent summer at Facebook, and his struggle with RSI as well. Retry attempt for the Harry Potter concert—this time, we were successful in getting inside, and the later thunderstorm made for a chilling 4D atmosphere, what with the rain, wind, and all spraying in from the outside during the second half of the movie. Our family friend’s 9th grade daughter I brought along is really way too preoccupied with “looking pretty” and “not like a nerd doing their homework while waiting for the concert to start” than learning how to solve simple arithmetic series like a(n) = 25, 30, 35, instead asking a college senior to do her homework for her instead.
Aug 23rd – My second meal with Yuhan Kim, who’s finally back from his summer exodus to Yeongse University. I felt like he and I came to similar conclusions after our foreign studies—America has tons of catch-up to do compared to cities in the rest of the developed world. He enjoyed it so much that he’s even considering moving back to Korea in the future for work. Also passed a former classmate who I never expected to see again while biking back from dinner, stopping only to express our mutual surprise and say hi before zooming off so I didn’t end up as paste at night under a suburban SUV. Coincidentally, she’s also leaving for a study abroad in South Korea at the end of this week. Dad’s MRI from today is stable (no change from last time).
Aug 24th – Call with a HS student from Mentor who wanted to ask about my Dartmouth experience. Haven’t done one of those talks in a while, but I was brutally honest with him about everything that I could. The ergonomic keyboard doesn’t seem to be helping significantly, and I plan on returning it by the end of this week.
Preview of what happened the following day: