This post is my entry for the BlogBlog 同樂會 February 2026 theme: 只有我這樣嗎？ (Is it only me?)
Here are five things about me that I’m the only one doing it among the people I know but I secretly suspect I might earn a quiet nod of recognition among the internet friends.
1. My Morning Coffee Comes with a Mini Spa #
Every morning, I make coffee with a French press. Boil water with goose neck kettle, pour it in, then there’s a moment right after the hot water hits the freshly ground coffee — a misty cloud of steam rises from the French press. And I love to put my face close to it and close my eyes — almost like an eye spa.
2. Nine Years a Data Scientist, Never Once Studied Leetcode #
I’ve been working as a data scientist for over nine years now. But I have never studied LeetCode. I was able to avoid that in the past and probably in the future for good given the LLM era.
I got my first data scientist job in 2017. I remember the Christmas in 2016, I was thinking that I can probably do the environmental engineering job for another 3 years, but I couldn’t foresee myself doing this for the next 30 years. I wanted something more intellectually stimulating and something I can learn and evolve over time. That was the time data science just became popular. So I started Udacity’s nano degree on NLP and Machine learning, and in March 2017, I saw there’s a hackathon event hosted by IBM Watson and Galvanize. It was a two-day event, the first day they teach you some of the new features from IBM Watson, and the second day you would build something using these new features and compete as a team.
It just so happened that the team I joined has a person who brought his own dataset, and it turned out that he was a CTO of a digital health company. And it just so happened that I just finished Udacity’s project #3, which is a comprehensive end-to-end data science project involving data analysis, machine learning model building, interpretation and data reporting etc. Since at that time, I haven’t learned python yet, I did everything in R language. And it just so happened that the person really liked what I did for the hackathon and his company needs a data scientist who can write R. He asked me: do you want to continue work on this dataset? And I said yes! That was the fastest time I’ve ever got a job. And little did I know, that was the event that sparked my journey as a data scientist, now longer than my environmental engineer career.
I continued working at that company for a year, and then that company got acquired by Livongo, which got further acquired by Teladoc in year 3. It was in 2021, I became really interested in recommendation systems, and a recruiter from my current company just so happened to see my LinkedIn profile and reached out. They do have coding interview, I don’t know if it was from LeetCode or not but it was something I can solve from my day-to-day use of SQL and python. So I’m extremely lucky that I didn’t spend my precious time on the LeetCode grind.
3. I Read and Listen to Books at the Same Time #
For books I really love, I like to get both the Audible version and the physical copy. Then I read and listen simultaneously - which provides a richer experience than just reading alone.
It really hits the sweet spot of stimulation. Watching a video can feel a bit too passive — your brain just receives. Reading a physical book alone, if it’s not a page turner, can feel a bit laborious — I definitely caught myself mind drifting, re-reading the same paragraph, spacing out sometimes. But reading and listening together, the continuous voice with the words in text feels like watching a movie without preset images but with subtitles! (I’m a subtitle lover ^^) It’s even better than watching videos in some way, because you get to make the images in your head! You feel the flow, the speed, the intimacy of your own imagination — basically all the good stuff with a luxurious reading experience~
Especially if the author has a nice voice and reads their own book, it adds extra texture, an emotional layer — it feels like the author is by my side, telling me what happened in their life! It’s hard to describe, you have to try it. Below are the three books I really enjoyed consuming using both listening + reading:
- Big Magic - written and narrated by Elizabeth Gilbert
- West with the Night - by Beryl Markham, narrated by Julie Harris
- The Order of Time - by Carlo Rovelli, narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch (yep, Sherlock Holmes is telling you the story about spacetime)
This is my favourite way of consuming books. Is it only me?
4. I Didn’t Learn to Drive Because I Thought Self-Driving Cars Would Take Over #
I’ve lived in San Francisco Bay Area for over ten years. And I only got my driver’s license last year.
Back in 2016, I was genuinely convinced that self-driving cars were right around the corner. Like, two-to-three-years-away kind of corner. So I thought — why bother paying for driving instructors and learning to drive?
It wasn’t until 2024 — when my husband was sick and asked me to buy medicine, or was out of town and needed me to move the car for street cleaning — that I realized I was useless. And besides, driving is a good skill to have. So I finally started to learn driving with my favorite driving instructor — my husband. And after failing the test once, I was happy to report that I got my driver’s license in March 2025! Hooray!
5. I Recently Started Watching YouTube Videos Without Expanding Them #
I discovered that when I watch a video without clicking to expand it to full screen, there are no ads!