So I have finally moved. It has been quite a rough one. 2 months ago I agreed to live with a friend in Oakland, and I left some of my stuff there. I told him I will go early September.
Then comes September 5th. Before that my friend was in Taiwan, so I couldn’t really get in touch with him. He told me September 5th he would come back. It all works out. I packed everything I own in the United States onto my car, and I called him to let him know that I will be there the next day. Oops, it turns out that he is shutting the place down, moving his operations elsewhere, and he forgot to tell me. At that point I have already moved out of my apartment, but had no where to move to. My friend is a cool guy, and is extremely apologetic. However, my life became complicated.
After living at various friends’ places in Socal, I started my drive up. I passed by my friend’s 600 acre ranch, and spent 2 days there. I met a lot of great friends from the California Student Sustainability Coalition and connected with some awesome old friends like Michael Cox, Crystal Durham and Nancy Brown. During this time, I still had no idea where would I move to.
Finally, when I got here, my Aunt’s friend knows someone who is looking for a person to occupy a room in her home. It looked nice, so I decided to move in.
It’s a fairly nice place. I have my own room. There are a pair of elder couples, a woman, and a college girl living in this house too, and they all seem extremely friendly. The place is 30 min away from Palo Altos (Silicon Valley and Stanford), an hour away from Oakland, and 90 min away from San Francisco. Not bad at all! Most of all, this is 10 minutes away from Eagle’s uncle’s house. Eagle is our developer from Canada, and he is moving to the Bay Area with me. Being so close to his Uncle, he could probably live with his Uncle and save a lot of costs. I pay $600 a month, which I seem to be able to afford for at least a few months. Everything seems to be working out. Now I just need to figure out what is around, and learn how to use the BART system.
Why did I move to the Bay Area? Because Silicon Valley is the High-Tech Startup Hub. If you want to do finance, you should go to New York. If you want to be a movie star, there is no reason to stay in Arizona. You should go to Hollywood. Similarly, if you are building a high-tech startup, you should go to Silicon Valley. All the infrastructure, support system, talents and money are here. You find others who moved away from their hometown to persue the same dream that you have. I can’t explain what it is, but the 3-4 times I came to Norcal, it really felt like home. The weather seems nice, the sky seems more blue, people are supportive and high quality at the same time…it just seemed like where I belonged. A well respected SEO guy Sean Percival told my CMO Jun that there is also a central startup hub emerging in the area between West Hollywood and Santa Monica, and even though it is second to Silicon Valley, if you start making a name there now, later you can be easily recognized as a big name due to low competiton. With that in mind, I would still like to be up here and seek more opportunities, meet great people, and hopefully create good value to everyone who I interface with in my life.
Anyone, if you are around or know good people I should meet. Let me know! I start afresh here, and would love to meet great people!
