Life lately
I have more time and less time at the same time.
At my graduation
8 months is a long time to disappear. What’s happened since then?
- I continued working at You.com
- I graduated from mechanical engineering at UWaterloo
- I handed over WatArrow to the next cohort of talented students
- I took my grad trip to Korea and Japan
- I flew around North America and Korea to speak at AI conferences
- I flew around 24 times so far this year (and my body is probably radioactive)
- I went on a road trip to Balls Falls
- A whole slew of other things I’m probably forgetting
Work
I’m losing count of how many countries and cities I’ve been to this year, how many Air Canada flights I’ve been on, and how many hotel receptionists I’ve spoken to.
Presenting at AI Summit Seoul 2026
I’ve pushed beyond my comfort zone. I’ve presented to large crowds, spoken to leaders, and worked with smart people on domains beyond what I’ve learnt so far. I’ve been feeling grateful for the opportunities I’ve been able to have because of my work.
I’ve learned a lot, yet I feel like there’s so much more learning still to do. Sometimes I’m the expert, sometimes I’m the imposter, and sometimes I’m the dummy.
School
Capstone Symposium with group members
I worked on my capstone project with my group members. It’s called OpenPFO , Open-source Parametric Flow Optimizer. The premise is simple: you’re designing something that will be subject to a flow, can you use automation to simulate and optimize different variants of your design based on your specified parameters?
At its core, this is a simple optimization workflow using the NSGA2 optimization algorithm. The difficult part was learning and integrating each step of the mechanical engineering design and optimization process into it.
We learned about so much related to computational fluid dynamics, how the modeling, meshing, computing, and post-processing all work together (and just how annoying it is). We also got to run our swarm of simulations on Nibi, the school’s HPC cluster. For our biggest run, we simulated 30 design variations in parallel per generation for 30 generations, simulating 900 different configurations in total. Each variation ran with about 128 cores, and 512 GB of RAM for around 4 hours.
All in all, I got to combine my mechanical and software engineering knowledge and pour it into a unique project to wrap up my degree! We also won 1st place in the ANSYS Design Analysis Competition for $2,000 which was also rewarding. I also got to work with amazing advisors: Dr. Jean Pierre Hickey and Jimmy-John Hoste .
Iron Ring
Iron Ring ceremony
I got my Iron Ring. The process to get the ring is quite interesting… I honestly wasn’t sure how much I would put the ring on after the ceremony. In hindsight, it has clearly had some impact on me because I don’t think I’ve missed a day wearing it since I got it.
They say the ceremony was designed the way it is so you are fully reminded of your responsibilities as an engineer. Even if their methods are controversial, I think they’ve done their job getting the message across. Now, whether I’ve actually been a more responsible engineer since then though…
WatArrow
WatArrow at SAE Aero Design 2026
Something something Gorilla Glue Advertisement
Preparing the micro class for flight
We went to Lakeland, Florida to compete in the SAE Aero Design East 2026 competition. This is the third year of the team competing and my last year on the team. There’s much more to talk about here, but for now I’ll leave it at this: this was the largest group we’ve brought to the competition and we had a blast.
A lot of people give me shit for liking the Gorilla Glue photo but it’s honestly one of my favourites. I think it was a pretty candid photo of us having fun, watching everyone’s hard work lead up to something, and disassociate from the intensity of school. So if you think it’s cringy, fuck you.
Korea
Gwanghwamun Gate
I usually go to Korea every 3 years: 2020, 2023, and 2026. However, after my trip to Korea in May 2026, I had to go again for work, making it a trip to Korea just 3 months after my previous visit. Perhaps, at some point I will have to do two trips with a 3 week gap to keep this pattern up.
Visiting again in such a short gap was quite interesting, it didn’t really feel like I was going back at all. Even after landing, I just felt like this was a routine visit to New York City. It was an odd feeling that I couldn’t shake off until I left 2 weeks later.
It shouldn’t be a surprise to be honest, visiting Korea should feel somewhat routine. I’ve lived there for 7 years. I had part of my childhood here. I know the culture intimately. I did not feel like I was traveling anywhere, which is why I could not stay there for the entirety of my 4 week trip.
So I spontaneously booked a 10 day trip to Japan.
Japan
Sensō-ji Five-Storied Pagoda
Shibuya Skyline from Miyashita Park
First off, Japan was exactly what I expected it to be. The cultural norms are very similar to Korea, I understood almost nothing of the language, and transportation is arguably better than Seoul.
I don’t think I’ve ever had this much fun in my life. There was always something unique about Tokyo no matter where you went. Amongst all places, learning about the history of Shibuya was my absolute favourite. Yes, I hear Shibuya is many people’s favourites, but here’s why.
I wasn’t too sure where I would end up staying so I kind of just picked the hotel which was most central and had the nicest view, which happened to be the Sequence Miyashita Park hotel. The photo above was the view from my hotel room. It was such a nice experience, I even saw Mt. Fuji on my first day there.
Through the Shibuya Night Free Walking Tour I really got to understand how Shibuya was transformed into a city for youth in the 1970s, the sheer chaotic nature of the layouts, and the quite visibly apparent focus on fashion.
Thousand Torii Gates
I won’t lie, I have like at most 5 photos of Kyoto. Surprisingly I did not have a good time. The city, while beautiful, felt like it lacked the infrastructure to handle tourists (like me). Getting around meant being stuck in a subway car and navigating historic streets packed with people.
The only time I got to take a breather was towards the top of the mountain where the Thousand Torii Gates were, which is where I snapped this photo. The other time I was able to have lots of fun was unironically the Train museum, where I got to geek out about trains in my own time.
I think I’d consider coming back in the future if I run out of places to go in Japan. Hopefully by then, the public transit infrastructure scales up.
Chill deer
Growing up, I went to Fairview Public School in Mississauga. If you’re from Mississauga, you know that the city has a park called Kariya Park . I used to go to this park almost every day during and after school. There’s a long history about this park and Mississauga’s sister city relationship with Kariya, you can read up about it here .
Considering how much difficulty I had getting around Kyoto, I figured, why not take the Shinkansen to Aichi and then the local train to Kariya to visit Mississauga Park .
Mississauga park centre and Muskoka Chairs
Miniature version of Mississauga City Hall
Maple leaves along the road fences
For those short 2 hours, I felt like I was actually back in Canada. The park brought in lots of Canadian design and symbols like the Muskoka chairs and city hall that I see so frequently. It was a nice home away from home and alleviated the small amounts of homesickness I felt during the trip.
I went in to the park centre and tried speaking with the attendants there. Unfortunately, they couldn’t speak English, but we greeted each other through a translator. They were very excited to know that I was from Mississauga, joked about why I traveled so far for this park, and wished me a great trip.
Kariya is also a small city, I was probably the only English speaker there, and yet, the city was so active with baseball games, people on walks, and even an amusement park. I think I got a view of an average rural Japanese experience in Kariya.
Miyajima Torii Gate
The last part of my Japan trip was in Osaka. Similar to Kyoto, Osaka arguably had more people and it was pretty difficult for me to get around. The heat was also much more intense, considering that Osaka is more south than Tokyo.
I did the usual walking tour and explored the city. The food was excellent, but part of me felt like that was it. Osaka definitely had a rougher and more aggressive culture than Tokyo felt. Whether that was because my tour guide fed me that information or not… not too sure, but I definitely felt it.
With the time I had, I thought it would be a better opportunity for me to take a day trip to Hiroshima, after all, it was directly along the Tokaido Shinkansen route and I really wanted to go to the atomic bomb museum. Hiroshima was amazing. Miyajima island was beautiful, the Okonomiyaki was delicious, and the atomic bomb museum was moving.
Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Dome
Admittedly, I did not take as many photos in Japan as I thought I would. I was too busy touring and immersing myself that I forgot I had my camera. Fortunately, I’m going back in December, so hopefully I have a lot more to show the next time around.
Gratitude
The road to get to this point was not easy, I’m honestly not sure how I survived 2 years of full-time work and my degree. Not to mention, my design team WatArrow (which has a blog post coming soon). Looking back, well… it’s all a blur, so there’s not much to look back at.
What I remember is not the amount of time or effort I spent on anything, but who I got to spend that time with. Getting coffee together when I managed to find the time, spontaneous trips to Toronto, texting across timezones, catching up when I visit during business trips, and obviously my family. There are too many to name, but they know who they are, and I feel grateful for them.
Hopefully I don’t forget about writing again after this 8 month hiatus. Until next time.