The Archives - 2015
2015 (19 posts)
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12 years ago this time I was deciding where I should go, what I should study, at university. I was also four months away from deciding I would try to be happy in spite of my newfound queerness. 11 years ago this time I was in Kolkata, volunteering with an organization, not knowing I would go on to…
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I do quite a few things. Run a startup. Run two non-profits. Mentor queer kids. Spend a lot of time with my family, partner and our dog. Play video games. Paint the house. Cook for friends. Take my dog on long walks. Even, gasp, sleep! A lifetime ago on my first entrepreneurial rodeo, I did not know…
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It seemed like a good idea to quad-bike around parts of Turkey, 2009. The difference between travelling alone, which I’ve done plenty of, and exploring possibilities alone, which I’ve done less of (but gotten more from), lies in how much of a sucker punch those decisions give me, specifically in my…
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I’ve been publishing on the web for the last 12 years. It was because I wanted to write and publish on the web that I learned to look under the hood and build things. Which is why I do what I do now. This is a list of stuff over the last 12 years. 2003: Stupid and heartbroken at 18 An Exercise of…
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For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to be somewhere else. In all of my childhood day dreams, of which I had many, daily, and often, I imagined being an explorer out at sea. Being a pilot about to set off for yonder. Even the short stories I scribbled all had to do with stowing away,…
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Love and losing from somewhere else. If you were to look into the ISD/STD phone booth in Park Street, when it was flooding in Kolkata one year, I was there. My heartbreak was metered: sixteen paisa per second. Whatever they were saying on the phone, I can’t remember. I just know it was raining and…
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First, meet a girl for the first time on the lawn in front of her house. Sit very closely by each other. Say hello, I'm a poet. What do you do? When she replies, I'm an entrepreneur. But I also run a charity. Laugh, and give her whisky, the same one that you've been nursing. She comes and she gives…
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I had one of those days today. The day when your to-do list is piled so high that you can't see the end of the tunnel. The day when your caterer cancels your big order a few days before Culture Kitchen. The day when all of your mega business problems are on the verge of getting solved, but almost.…
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Every morning, I get on a bike to work. Except I don't ride it. I bargain with someone on the street, or use an app to book one at other times. Do you want masker? They ask. It's the Indonesian word for face mask. Gak mau masker, makasih pak. Sekarang pergi ke Jalan Hang Tuah bisa? A string of words…
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If it has ever occurred to you to start something, you know how lonely that can get. If you do that chronically, you probably over-estimate your abilities, have a high threshold for pain, or you're downright insane. The truth lies somewhere in the middle. Welcome Drew Graham. Let's kick some…
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When my people speak of who we are and where we come from We do not say, China. When my relatives reclaim our collective past, Those words—China—dance on our lips, foreign. We do not say China. We do not say China at all. Instead, we are the people of the coast. We are the subjects of the Tang…
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It is a well-documented fact: multi-lingual people have multiple personalities. I am no different, though I was only recently cognizant of that. Of how my languages affect the way I perceive myself, present myself to the world. How I trade, make contracts; how I fall in love. For as long as I can…
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When I was growing up, I thought all families had the same weekend lunches as mine: a giant cauldron of yellow noodles, simmered so long in an anchovy broth that they fell apart when you picked up your noodles with chopsticks. You had to use a spoon. Ah ma made them every Sunday, but ah gong made…
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Going to the mountain. In all of my 29 years, my grandparents had been such a big part of my life that I could have never conceived of a life without them. Like the 1128-episode TV serials they watched, Ah Gong and Ah Ma just went on and on. In the background, their voices blended in with the voices…
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I've been selling and hustling for much of my young life. I've learned loads from each part of it, no matter how small or insignificant it may have been at the time. I sold cable car tickets. iPod cases. DVDs. Button badges. Most things, really. In hindsight, they've come together to define what I…
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Dear (your name here), Imagine for a second that the year is 2000. Holding hands with your girlfriend in public is either an act of defiance or shame. The world is years away from The L Word: nobody knows yet that it sucks, that lesbian life does not have to be "like that". (Bette Porter…
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There's a wealth of literature out there about this, but it can never be said enough. Too many people work with assholes. You see them everywhere. The cafe owner that takes a shortcut by hiring an asshole barista? The barista plays shit music at your cafe and nobody wants to go there. The startup…
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Some time ago, some people (read: entrepreneurs) I follow on Twitter posed a seemingly innocuous question. What drives us, as so-called entrepreneurs, to do what we do? Is it hubris? Ego? Is it an out-sized and unrealistic view of one's abilities? For most of us, choosing this life also means the…
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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was a bit of both, really. I'm not one for the mumbo-jumbo of the Myers-Briggs test, but I suppose it was striking that when I did it before my startup I rated very strongly as INFP, and yet now I'm very much on the ENTJ spectrum. It appears…