Two weeks ago it can be easily explained; I was at the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. And while that in itself could be a separate post, last Friday was also my last day at Yahoo!. Yes, again.

Which is why I’ve been pretty quiet, I guess – the first time around, I made these giant waves about leaving Yahoo! to go to start a new life in Canada, blogging as if I was riding off with some mountee into a ridiculous maple-leaf colored sunset. When that didn’t work and I was back in the Bay Area, I decided to move to San Francisco and try to have a low profile, working for Yahoo! Brickhouse. Except for the fact that Brickhouse isn’t exactly low-key. So, now I’m leaving Yahoo! again and I kinda feel like the boy who cries wolf, except replace the word “cries” with “quits” and replace “wolf” with “giant Internet conglomerate.” (For those that care about the status of BravoNation, Gordon, who left the same day as I did, wrote a blog post on the matter.)

As for my opinions of Yahoo? I still have a lot of friends there, people that are still passionate about what they do from day to day stuff. They are good folks, and I’m going to miss them terribly. But morale is low, and as for all the corporate stuff and the possible Microsoft merge, well, no comment.

That’s all I’ll say about that. I’m moving on.

My new position will be as a Developer Advocate at Ning, a social software platform company based in Palo Alto – it’s kind of a hybrid role between web development and community management and support. I’m not going to jinx it so I’ll simply say this: the stuff I want to do seems to be right up my alley, the company looks to be in a good place right now, and I’m looking forward to the opportunity. The commute, not so much – I don’t think I’ve been at the office at 9:00am in a couple of years, no exaggeration – but I’ll get used to that.

Kinda cool, huh? Kind of like that scene from Jurassic Park where that eight year old girl says she knows Unix. (And if anyone wants an invitation, let me know still.)

As far as the possible news about layoffs? I’ll deal with it when I get there. I’ve dealt with it before.

(I’ll make this post short and sweet, as I accidentally lost my previous blog entry. And honestly, I’m getting tired of seeing embedded videos of myself.)

But yes, I can now officially talk about BravoNation – the project a group of us been working on in the past couple of months and one of the main reasons why I returned to Yahoo! after a four month stint working in Canada. The product is currently in a closed public beta, meaning we’re currently offering invitations for people to check out the system and give constructive feedback. (And yes, if you want an invite, go ahead and contact me – I’ll see what I can do.)

What is BravoNation, you ask? BravoNation is an achievements community website and API platform. Andy Baio has written up a pretty in-depth overview of the system, and Gordon talks about it a little bit on Yahoo! Next* as well, so you can read all about it there. For those of you that aren’t so much techies as you are gamers, think “Xbox Live Achievements, but for community websites.” (For those of you that aren’t gamers, think “the bastard child you get when you cross a thank you e-card with Magic: The Gathering,” or something like that.) If it sounds like there’s a lot of gaming elements in the product, it’s because there is – most of the team are huge gamers, and we adopted a lot of gaming principles into the application. It’ll be interesting to see what crosses over well and what doesn’t. It’ll also be interesting how the product – and our roles – will change and evolve over the next couple of months. And by “interesting,” I mean a mix between “exciting” and “petrifying.”

For those that couldn’t give a shit about BravoNation, I offer this personal moment: everyone on the team sits together. We also just happen to all be Asian American. And because we’re politically correct like that, we called ourselves “Chinatown.” Gordon even brought moon cakes once for the Lunar Festival! Seriously, you should see us do a dramatic recreation of San Francisco’s Chinese New Year’s Parade – it’s good times.

(Somewhere in Sunnyvale, someone at the Yahoo! Human Resources Department just buried her face in her hands and started sobbing.)

But in the meantime, yay us. I’m going to bed.

1. This is the first time I’ve eaten out alone. Well, okay, the first time I’ve eaten alone that isn’t a fast food restaurant or a burrito truck or coffeehouse, but an actual restaurant where the point of the institution is to sit there with someone else, eating food together. Eating out has always been a social activity for me. I don’t go to bars alone, don’t go to movies alone and have never gone to a nice restaurant alone before. And yet, here I am, taking blurry camphone photos of myself while the two Japanese girls in the school uniforms roll their eyes at me.

   For one reason or another, I thought it would be more difficult than it actually is. As I end up more and more in strange cities where I know very little people, I figure I should start getting used to this feeling; being strangely alone, but not necessarily lonely. (Or is that the other way around?) Now all I have to do is be able to stand hanging out at a gay bar by myself and I’m all set.

2. Someone told me that even the bad sushi in Vancouver is great sushi. THIS IS A BOLD-FACED LIE, especially if you go to that one sushi house on Main Street and Broadway. Bacon-wrapped scallops should never be in a bento box. EVER.

Alas, no heroin-in-a-tube this time around; I’m sure she’ll be back tomorrow or the day after to resume the search. She’s here, of course, because I now “work from home.” Once you officially take on the “work from home” moniker, it gives your parents full permission to come to your house at all hours of the day. You warn them about work hours, but when they see their child sitting at a desk typing on a laptop, he’s simply on the computer; he’s not working. Today, my mother brought over bedroom curtains. (Mandarin, like always, in italics.)

E: Why did you bring bedroom curtains? I didn’t ask for curtains.
Mom: Your bedroom lets in too much light. When I’m in your room and I look at the window, someone’s always outside, looking in.
E: Uhm, when are you in my bedroom? How often are you in my bedroom? Are you coming in my house when I’m not at home?
Mom: (skirting issue) You need curtains for your safety. SAFE-TEE. Maybe if you knew any karate I wouldn’t be so worried about you. These curtains that I bought aren’t long enough. I’ll swing by tomorrow.
E: …

You know the sad thing is? At least I can laugh at the outrageousness of conversations with my mom. Because conversations when my father is over? Well, they happen a little differently.

E: Dad, how was your day-
Dad: Your mother and I are getting old, and you will need to take care of us, but only one of us. Will your mother be moving in or will I?
E: …

And on days such as those, heroin-in-a-tube doesn’t sound so bad after all.

Since I’m fairly new to the world of Mac, I got to participate in my first video iChat ever this week. This ruled, because while I can officially say it was done to facilitate the need for face-to-face communication while working remotely, it was really just an excuse to play to my inner camgirl.

One thing I didn’t realize is how distracted I would be that my own image was in a corner — not so much because of vanity as much as it is being self-conscious. Does my face really look like that? Goddammit, am I gaining weight again? So while my co-workers are talking about deadlines and priorities, I’m trying ever-so-quietly to turn the laptop so it shows the side where I have the least amount of chins. I’m sure the novelty will wear off and I’ll get over it; that, or I’ll buy a backdrop.

(And yes, you might be interested to know that this is exactly how we look during development meetings. We’re a wacky bunch.)

But working at a cafe, skipping important meals of my day, is better than my alternative: sitting at home and having my parents invite themselves over since not working in an office means that I’m not really working.

A couple of months ago I gave my notice at Yahoo! because, among other things, I needed a life change-up. Well, a life change-up is what I got: I quit smoking. There’s a very real chance I might be relocating to Canada. I’m cramming Ruby on Rails like a Japanese 3 year old studying for his Kindergarten exams. I have a shiny hipster MacBook. Sure, my personal life might be suffering a bit because of my annoying habit of being obsessed with work stuff, but at the very least I have something productive to obsess over. (As a small tangent, Ariel has gone through this before and talks about some of these issues on her own blog.)

Every once in a while if I let myself, I get these OMGWTF moments, and while I know it comes from a variety of sources – nicotene cravings, the fear of the unknown, stuff like that – this is merely a side effect of what I’ve wanted all along: a change. This is what I’ve asked for. And if things don’t work as expected, I figure it out then. I try to keep reminding myself that every day.

PS: As a side note, I was at the ceremony in Vancouver when they unveiled the countdown clock to the Olympic games and the counter-protest that ensued. For the record: Canadian protesters can’t hold a CANDLE to American protesters. THREE people arrested, because someone screams the word “FUCK” into the microphone? THAT’S IT? Christ almighty, Berkeley protesters would have at least brought Israeli & Palestinian flags and posters of unborn fetuses (Not related to the Olympics? Who Cares?), some television camera-friendly slogans and some red paint to represent the spilled blood of the First Nation. Lame, lame, lame.

I’m going to be working at a food based website named Rouxbe, pronounced “Ruby.” (Get it? Roux, like the sauce? It’s a pun. Yeah.)

Rouxbe connects professional chefs with home cooks: people like you, who love food and are looking to expand their culinary repertoire and improve their skills in the kitchen. We offer online instructional cooking videos that walk you step by step through each delicious recipe. And our video recipes provide what no cookbook can: audio and visual cues that professional chefs use as their guides to preparing great recipes.

The website only recent went live a month or two ago to investors. My official title there is “Lead Community Manager/Developer,” although I’m not a huge fan of titles – my job will be to develop features to compliment their fantastic video recipes and to help manage the community that will be using the product. It’s definitely a website with a ton of potential, and I’m going to do my best to make it an even better product starting the end of January.

Oh yeah, and after my tech interview, I almost passed out from a glass of champagne at a dinner. But that’s for another blog post entirely. Or not, after the jump.

As you may or may not know, I have Asian alcohol red-face syndrome carry a “defective” copy of the gene for aldehyde dehydrogenase. Different pockets of friends have at least one story of me getting plastered off half a beer, me passing out after having a Smirnoff ice on an empty stomach, the tragic story of me “binge drinking” two tequila poppers and then throwing up for three and a half hours on my friends pants. (Sorry, Mel.)

Coincidentally, the night I flew up to Vancouver for my interview with the team at Rouxbe it was also the night of the Rouxbe team holiday dinner. And since Rouxbe is an online cooking website, OF COURSE the food would be fantastic. But first, a delightful glass of blackberry flavored champagne…

See where I’m going with this?

So, I’ve been traveling for the past four or five hours, and I haven’t had a bite the entire day; on the other hand, you can’t NOT have a half glass of champagne, right? To keep up appearances, and everything. And so, we do a delightful toast, I drink the delightful champagne, and we make delightful banter, the kind of banter that one has when you’re drinking champagne.

“Hey, I’m doing pretty good,” I think to myself. My face isn’t red, I don’t feel like I’m going to throw up on any executives. Ten minutes later, I excuse myself to smoke a cigarette outside. I walk outside the house and the freezing air hits my face as I take a drag of my cigarette. “Oh hey,” I say to myself. “I think I’m a little dizzy.”

Three minutes after that, I calmly try to walk into the house. “Oh hey,” I say to myself. “I think I’m going to pass out.”

For the record: no, I did not pass out. I did, however, “turn white while my lips turned black,” according to Ritchie. I don’t remember this, of course, because I’m slowly rocking back and forth with my hands between my knees on the living room sofa, repeating my mantra of “OH MY GOD, I WILL NOT THROW UP IN FRONT OF THE COMPANY I’M INTERVIEWING WITH.” The fact that I’m now dripping in sweat like Bobby Brown in a 20/20 Interview doesn’t help, either.

“Dude,” Ritchie whispers to me. “The washroom is down the hall, eh?” He hands me a glass of water, someone else hands me a piece of bread, and as I come to my senses, I try my best to pretend that nothing EVER happened, and to casually downplay the fact that my shirt collar is DRENCHED WITH SWEAT. And I think I do an okay job at it.

A couple of days later, when I meet up with the company founders for a follow-up interview, Joe starts off with, “So, I guess we should avoid serving you champagne, huh? Ha ha.”

I apologize for the next fifteen minutes. And they still offer me a job position anyway. Good people, these folks are.

Leaving a company like Yahoo! after three and a half years of working here is never easy; I’ve made, literally, hundreds of friends; brilliant and talented Yahoo! employees and the passionate people I have interacted with through Yahoo! 360. So why am I leaving? All the drama Yahoo!’s had in the news? More money? Peanut Butter?

Actually, it’s the combination of a lot of things. But the kicker? Personal growth. No, seriously.

About two years ago, I wrote this on my blog regarding my work on the yet-to-be-released Yahoo! 360:

Regarding [Yahoo! 360], there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and even if this project falls on its face and fails miserably (which I hope it doesn’t do, of course) I think I’ve realized that I can be passionate about something that doesn’t involve pop culture or making fun of episodes of Entertainment Tonight. And it might be naive of me, but I’m hoping something good does come out of this in one way or another – whether it’s directly from the project I’m working on or what I’ve learned about myself from it. I’m paying my dues, so to speak.

According to an article by the New York Times, the public is to believe that Yahoo! 360 did, indeed, fall on its face, which I have a response to, but won’t post here. None the less, I’ve learned a LOT being on 360: about community, about programming, about myself.

But here’s the deal: I’ve lived in the Bay Area my entire life. I grew up near Berkeley, went to college an hour from there, and because the industry that I work in just happens to be in the Bay Area, I lived here too. My parents helped me buy a condo ten minutes from their house, and in 10-20 years, it’s expected that I will be taking care of them. My life can very easily be laid out in front of me, no exaggeration, for the rest of my life.

And I don’t want that. I don’t want to be 45 and look back and say, “I sure wish I didn’t play things so safe.” I’m young and I’m not tied down in a serious relationship right now, for better or for worse. “Safe” is the last thing I really want to be doing. So I’m going to take a huge risk, go for it, and if things don’t happen the way I expect it to, personally and/or professionally… well, I’ll figure it out from there.

Until then, I’ll see you on the flip side. Wish me luck.

You know, having a badge is a way of life in corporate America. Like you, I also have to prominently wear a badge that has my name and photo somewhere on my person. And wearing your badge on your belt often makes for a convenient place to have your badge, considering it is also used to gain entry to the buildings here.

But please, anonymous co-worker, I have a suggestion: If you’re going to have a bowel movement and sit on the toilet stall, can you at least HIDE YOUR badge so I don’t have to know who exactly is taking a dump next to me?

Understand that I’m not trying to look at your badge. By no means I’m not. But our badges are purple and they draw attention. If you’re outside of the corporate buildings trying to quickly gauge whether another person is a fellow Yahoo! employee, that’s great. But when you’re using the bathroom and your pants are around your ankles and your badge is dangling by your feet, it says a message. And the message says, “HELLO, MY NAME IS _____, MANAGER OF _____, AND I’M TAKING A CRAP, RIGHT NOW. THOSE GRUNTING AND FARTING NOISES? THAT’S *ME*.”

And that makes me uncomfortable, especially if I have to work with you. Because now, in my eyes, you’re not ____, esteemed co-worker, but ____, co-worker who obviously didn’t have enough fiber this morning.

So please – if you’re going to be using the bathroom, and you have your badge by your belt, put it in your pocket before, uhm, going. You win, I win, the company wins. That’s all.

Okay, I’ve vented enough. Move along, people.