High Speed to Tainan

On Wednesday afternoon Kenny and I headed south for his four-day break from school. He still wasn't feeling great but had gone to the doctor for medicine.

The HSR system is particularly effective. It only took us two hours from Taipei to Tainan (at the other end of the island). Trains run frequently and a very clean.

Even though this is my trip from Koahsiung to Taipei, this video will still give you a good idea of how fast we're traveling:

Great start to my Taiwanese adventure!

After 24 grueling hours of travel, I'm happy to report that I'm safely in Taipei!

On my arrival, an older Taiwanese gentlemen offered me a ride to the city in his town car. In any other situation, I may have hesitated. Parents always teach you never to ride with strangers but this is Taiwan. A place were I've quickly learned individuals go above and beyond to help you out.

After scoping out the area around my hostel, I met up with my brother. His hair is abnormally long and his ripped cargo shorts have now been patched up with jean squares. At 6'3", he is an unusual site to behold next to his surrounding Taiwanese.

Besides the jean patches, my brother has grown up a lot. This is going on his second year in Taipei and watching him interact with everyone is incredible. For those of you that don't know, Kenny is over in Taiwan taking an intensive course to learn Mandarin Chinese. He has been trying to teach me a few phrases but the tones are so important in this language that I keep saying the phrases wrong. Kenny says that even if you have a great vocabulary it really means nothing if you are not able to get the tones right.

Kenny has been a great host so far and has all sorts of fun things in store for me. The first night in Taipei, Kenny took me over to his friend's house. Graci, a Korean-born New Zealander, works as a foreign diplomat for her country. She's over here for two years before moving to Beijing to work in trade relations. If you didn't think that was impressive enough, she's also a budding YouTube star with her own cooking program, has the coolest Frenchie named Yoda, and was bumping '90s jams when we arrived! Think Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls and Usher! Here is one of her most recent episodes. Notice the tall, skinny white boy scarfing down his food in the program?!? :)

Here are some pictures from the dinner we had that night:

We took off early in the morning the next day for our Hot Springs Adventure. Kenny had been planning on taking me to Wulai Bayan but the previous evening one of Graci's friends had mentioned another hot sprints off the beaten path. He drew a map on a sheet of paper and gave us the number of the bus we were supposed to take out there.

The bus took over an hour and climbed into the hills behind Taipei. As we got further and further into the hills, the weather became more damp and foggy. Kenny and I were not sure what was in store for us when we got off at our bus stop to find that we were out in the middle of nowhere.

Looking at our map, we managed to put the pieces together and find the trailhead. We passed a "No Trespassing" sign and had to wade through a small river (where I almost chucked one of my shoes into the water):

The Trail

 $15000 NTD?!?!?

 The River We Crossed 

 Walking around in my bathing suit bottoms after the river crossing!

THE HOT SPRINGS!

We were blown away when we got to the hot springs. This location was especially cool because the natural hot springs met up with the river and the only other people there were a local Taiwanese family.  Here's a video: 

Later that evening, Kenny took me out to a noodle restaurant in Shida night market and had me try something that he thought I might be repulsed by...

Pigs Blood

Of course, Kenny was still hungry after having a regular order plus an extra order of noodles so we stopped on our way home for a little snack! 

It's the morning of the third day now and I can't wait to see what Kenny has in store for me today. It's fifteen days after Chinese New Year and the celebration ends with the Lantern Festival! Stay tuned!

Brother & Sister Bear Taking on Taiwan Begins

The day is finally here. With 22 hours of travel time ahead of me, I can't really say I'm very excited about the next 24 hours but the reward of seeing my brother at the end definitely makes it worth it.

I leave today from Seattle at 5:55pm. I travel to San Fransisco, where I have a four hour layover. I leave for Taiwan at 12:05am on the 21st and arrive after a 14 hour flight at 6:00am on Friday the 22nd. I must really love my brother.

From there I'll make my way to my hostel, which of course would be called Eight Elephants & Dream Dragon (awesome!), hopefully for a few hours of shut eye. Brother is going to meet me there at 4pm that afternoon at which point the true adventure will begin! 

My bag is packed, I'm ready to go and I can't wait to see how much it weighs at the airport! :)

Bon voyage! 

Back to Being My Own Boss

 While this year got off to a rough start, I’m really optimistic about where it’s going.

It was less than a year ago that I started my new gig at Family Tree (LiveFamily) and it was definitely the experience I was looking for. I learned so much from my coworkers about product development, team building, and company culture. In that short period of time, the Family Tree team was able to transition the product from New York, move databases, reskin the app, and launch a pretty complex new feature. I could not be more proud of what we accomplished. However, Family Tree was an acquisition that didn’t quite fit into the company’s core focus so as of 2013 everyone is moving on.

What's next?

That is a good question and one with a couple different ideas brewing. But the truth is I want to go back to what I love. Building my own business. 

You can follow more specifics of that journey here on my second blog. 

Next up: Taiwan

(Courtesy of Wikipedia) 

My brother has been in Taiwan for over a year. When I studied abroad in the UK, he came with my parents to visit me and I really appreciate now that he was able to see where I lived and went to school.

I secretly hope that being exposed to it had an impact in his decision to live abroad. Although he obviously took it a step further and decided to live in a country that was not only culturally different but also spoke a completely different language. One that was not Latin based and even more challenging, one that was tonal.

Last year, we were able to travel around Vietnam together but I regret flying all the way over to that part of the world and not being able to see where my brother lived and studied Mandarin! I'm so proud of him and for some reason felt that the only way to truly show him that was taking the time and spending the money to visit him to see him in this new environment myself! Even though I had an amazing time in Vietnam, part of me left disappointed.

Fortunately for me, I'm getting a second chance! Kenny stayed in Taiwan for a second year to continue his program and I'm taking my opportunity to see the country that my brother has called home for the past year and a half! So get ready for more whacky blog posts and pictures from my brother and I at the end of February! I can already tell it's going to be another fantastic adventure!

A New Year: 2013

Like many people, I believe that writing something down is a form of personal accountability and while I don't necessarily agree with New Year's Resolutions, this time of year provides the perfect opportunity for one to reflect on what they have or have not done and what they would like to do in the future.

2012 was a rough year for me. I could sugar coat it but as social media has created such a chasm between reality and what we choose to share with our online communities, I think there is a growing need for a bit of truth and honesty on the internet.

I'm not going to go into details but 2012 broke me. I played a large part in that. Stripping myself down to the bare bones in an attempt to discover who I really am and what I really want from my life. I still have a lot of work to do but feel (and hope) the hardest part is behind me.

Which brings me to 2013. While I understand a quick turnaround is unlikely, I realized something incredible at the turn of this year. Something that I didn't understand and took for granted before. I have an incredibly solid foundation in the form of my family and friends. On any given day, I can count on them to provide me with support, encouragement and unconditional love. I'm so grateful that my first hope for 2013 is to give back that same support to them.

This new realization has had some interesting side effects. What I became aware of was that while 2012 was tough for me there are so many other people in this world who are struggling who do not have the solid foundation of family and friends that I do. While I work hard for what I have, I was born into this life. I don't deserve my good fortune more than anyone else. I just got lucky and because of that, I think it's incredibly important for me to give back to the people who are less fortunate than I am. 

I'd like to set an actionable and achievable goal for this particular sentiment since it's really important to me that I follow through. Several years ago I was introduced to a program called Christmas Cheer. Every year, since 1960, the Dallas (in Oregon) community comes together the day before Christmas to collect, allocate and distribute food and gifts for families in need in their area. Not only is it a great tradition and opportunity for the community to come together during the holidays but it reminds those young and old of how grateful they are for what they have. My family lives in San Diego and now I celebrate the holidays down south. They have nothing like Christmas Cheer in their area so what I'd like to do in 2013 is bring that tradition to their community.

Another reflection that I continue to work on but still struggle with is judgement. It's so easy to do and happens so quickly. I've missed judged a lot of people over the years and I finally realized it was an issue for me at the beginning of 2012. Since then I'm really proud to say that I've made progress. The opposite of judgement is seeing beauty in each person. What I was surprised to learn, as I stopped judging people and opened myself up to all of these wonderful and unique perspectives, was that I was the one who benefited the most. In the past year, particularly at work, I've been able to build stronger, more open relationships with my coworkers than I ever had before. That being said, I have a long road to go. The other evening I said something so rude and judgmental to a friend about another friend's new girlfriend that I wanted to run into a hole and never come out again. My friend is a good person and called me out on it immediately. The shame has still not gone away from that moment. So I want to continue working. Continue to improve! I'm not sure how I can make this one actionable but as I mentioned before, writing it down is a start!

To recap, for 2013:
1.) Show my family and friends how important they are too me every day.
2.) Give back.
3.) Continue to work on seeing the beauty of every individual as opposed to judging immediately based on my own insecurities.

That is where I'm going to start. I think it's still a tall order but I'm excited about it!

Reflecting back on 2012, I'm very fortunate to have a younger and MUCH wiser brother, who provided me with this tidbit:



He didn't realize I was going to make it the closing to this blog post. Until now. Love you so much, Bro!

A Year of Progress: Reflections on Women's Leadership Summit 2011

It’s strange to think that it was only a year ago that I attended Shandel Slaten’s Women’s Leadership Summit (Read my initial reaction here). Reflecting back on the year that has passed since I’m going to attempt to describe the monumental shift that has happened in my life.

A year ago, I was exhausted, emotionally drained and extremely unhealthy. Having co-founded my first company a year and a half prior, my main priority at that moment was my business. We had gone through our share of the usual start-up woos and my partner and I were devoting every bit of our energy to get the company to the next phase. I had let my family, friends, and health slowly slip away from me. I didn’t realize how detrimental those decisions were at the time.

The Summit was a wake up call for me. A lot of things in my life were wrong but I couldn't put my finger on what, why or how to fix things. As I spoke to different women at the event, I realized I wasn’t the only one going through these issues. I wasn’t alone. What’s more, some of the women I spoke with had taken steps to identify what they didn’t like about their life and had changed it.

What Shandel said on stage that day had really resonated with me so I asked if my company would sponsor some coaching sessions with her to see if I could get to the bottom of some of my issues. The first couple of sessions, Shandel listened and asked questions to push me to explore certain topics more deeply. I remember now that all I talked about those first couple of sessions was who or what was holding me back.

On the fourth session, reality struck. I will never forget the feeling. It was terrifying and empowering at the exact same moment. I had finally found the problem and the problem was me. I was pointing my finger at everyone else but not really taking the time to point inward and look at myself. You’ve probably heard this a thousand times before. It’s not you, it’s me. But it’s not until you decide to look at yourself through a very, very honest lens that it really makes a different.

Suddenly, I could breathe again. You can’t control every situation around you but you CAN control how you react to them. Even though my self-esteem was at the lowest it’s been in a while, I was relieved and suddenly able to let go of all of the negative energy I was holding onto.

This was huge for me and allowed Shandel and I to move onto the next step of the process. Rolling up our sleeves and really starting to dig into me. Who I was. What I believed. Most importantly, what I valued.

Values are your foundation. As you solidify your values, you have a whole new way of filtering all of your decisions and to really start defining what you want out of your life. What do I mean by this? My personal values consist of my family, my friends, my health, my growth and helping others grow. Last winter, when my younger brother who had recently moved to Taiwan to study abroad asked me to travel with him somewhere in Asia, the decision was a no brainer. I went to Vietnam with him for two weeks.

After Shandel and I worked on defining my values, I was finally able to look at my life and identify what needed to change. I prioritized calling my family and connecting with my friends. I started make sure to leave work in time to make it to volleyball. I started investing in reading material that wasn’t work related. I eventually decided to leave the company I co-founded in order to explore more growth opportunities.

I still have a lot of work to do. I just finished taking Shandel’s Life 301 course, which has added an entirely new level of defining what success in my life looks like. This is a daunting task for me but just another step that I know will bring clarity to my life.

People in my life have noticed that I smile more. It’s easier to wake up. I have more energy. I’m a better friend. I’m a better listener.

So if you feel exhausted, stressed and without any direction, I’d recommend that you start by attending this summit. Come open minded and see where it takes you.