The title is a reference to one of my favorite songs by the Goo Goo Dolls— the irony is that “Better Days” came out way after their top-ten hits like “Iris”, “Slide”, “Black Balloon”; the justification is that the song is [possibly] a reference to that earlier time period in their musical career. I’m talking about a generation, a decade that “Here is Gone”—replaced by one that is even better.
Nobody talks about elementary school with such fond memories, but the 90s were great. We could argue about which TV shows were better than others and exchange special edition pogs and Sailor Moon or Pokemon cards while eating Fruit Roll-ups, if you wish. We could even “walk the dog” with our Yomega yo-yo’s and see who lasts longer, or play another round of two square or wall ball while I hit a “double ditch” and you impress me with a “rainbow”—but nothing brings back memories like music and outdated tech. If we ever go karaoking, you can bet I’ll select TLC’s “Waterfalls”, Savage Garden’s “Truly, Madly Deeply”, and Janet Jackson’s “Together Again’ on top of the boy bands and Britney. If you select a rap song to impress me with your wpm, I might just bust out Barenaked Ladies’ “One Week” with my chickity China, the Chinese chicken.
And Blink182 and Smash Mouth fans, Imma let you finish, but Vertical Horizon and Matchbox 20 were the greatest bands of all time. ALL TIME. (That doesn’t mean that I don’t know all the lyrics to “All the Small Things” and “All Star”—or Sugar Ray’s “Every Morning”.) If Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” is a KOIT classic, Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-charmed Life” deserves to be one as well. Our science camp counselor serenaded us with that song and his guitar around a bonfire one night, and it was the closest thing our grade school selves experienced to a titantic love.
2000 was an awesome year. New Year’s Eve, my parents stocked up on water and canned foods while the news ran 24/7 and the world did not crash at midnight. That year, I graduated elementary school and entered junior high, and created my first website…and the rest was coded in history.
Even if phased-out bands (which haven’t quite reached Red Hot Chili Peppers or U2 status) may never come up in conversation again (along with Napster and Winamp—mine was totally skinned), apparently Angelfire, Homestead, even Tripod and HotBot…and our junior high physics teacher’s t-test and Pearson Correlation calculators still do—thanks to the demise of Geocities. My friend, Joe, gives you “The Top 10 Reasons Why the Closing of Geocities is Long Overdue” while Comedy Central presents the same flashback to the past.
I’m happy that Dreambook still exists and hasn’t changed one bit. Apparently, I used to have a website called “Blue Veracity” and then another called “Blue Autumn”, both hosted on Brinkster. I guess my AIM sn was also “blueberriicee”, all thanks to my obsession with the color blue. Before those two existed, there was this, “mai new layout n it aiint geocities n e more!! ^^,” which was apparently built with FrontPage, where I was “sumtimes just editing it by html”. God, gotta love the “requirements: IE, dun use netscape” disclaimer. I dug deep into my old portfolio, and sure enough, there’s Blue Autumn (built with frames…) along with the rest of my graphics-heavy nightmares.
Thank God no one cared who Tomboy Serena was in junior high, so I don’t have much of an archived footprint, but if you google “Serena Wu” now, I take up 7 out of 10 links on the first page (and 7 more on the second) despite Facebook’s 419 search results for “serena wu”. When I die, I hope Vertical Horizon’s “You’re a God” will be playing at my funeral while the slideshow showcases my numerous websites and immortalized self—speaking to ya’ll via tweet captures. (That would be a nightmare, and thank God for Legacy Locker.) But before that happens, Teresa said we should have “a candlelight ceremony honoring the once-omnipresent blob”, and I fully agree since it was not only my Geocities’ mascot but also my AIM icon. Blue blob for Blueberriicee, yeah?
But I also meant to talk about “better days” than elementary school music and junior high “web design”. Saturday, I was hanging out with the Startup School kids when one guy came up to me and said, “Let me guess, you work in marketing?” And I didn’t know how to respond. I probably said something along the lines of “I just graduated from Cal and I’m currently job searching” or “I freelance web and graphics and run a few blogs for fun”, but then I try not to say the latter because my friend once said to me, “Girls go into web design as the cheap and easy way to work in tech.” Dear boys, you’re lucky that I’m actually attracted to geeks (a conditioned taste slowly acquired from living in the Bay Area my entire life), but “you work in marketing?” is nowhere close to a pickup line. If we’ve never met in class, at a ST@B mixer, TC50 or the Crunchies, please don’t introduce yourself with that question.
When PixArt, Oregon Trail, and Carmen San Diego were popular on the colorful iMacs at school, I was also having fun with the earliest versions of all the Adobe and Macromedia programs at home. Back then, our pen tablets and giant scanners plugged in with 9-pin serial ports and every digital work of art that I wanted to tape on my walls took a long time to print. Next to all the HTML and Javascript books on the shelves at home were equally outdated books on C++, C#, Java, Perl, you name it—and if I really wanted to, I could’ve cracked open a few, but I didn’t want to. In high school, I took community college courses on everything from Java programming to Flash animation to 2D design, but what did I find more interesting? Ceramics. I took that twice. Maybe thrice. I created a cookie jar in the shape of a milk carton with black and white spots and hoofed feet. I molded bowls and vases on the spinner’s wheel and decorated them with various glazes. Before that, I sewed clothing and accessories for my American Girl doll and folded origami when bored. In junior high, my history teacher submitted my diorama project to the Alameda County Fair and it won a blue ribbon for God knows what.
I don’t regret majoring in architecture in college, because I can’t think of another major I’d enjoy more; but just because I studied architecture doesn’t mean that I want to be an architect—I just want to create things. What things? I like buildings, interiors, gadgets, shoes, watches, sunglasses, furniture, and more gadgets. I’m the type of person who’ll splurge on an umbrella or a solar charger or iPhone (despite not being an app developer), and I hope to get a Courier as soon as it comes out. I also like social media (not just because it’s a “hot topic” that self-proclaimed “social media experts” are preaching), but just because…I like the internet, since the days of dial-up and @home email addresses, the days of Geocities and Hotbot. (It has also worked in my favor this past year.)
Last week, I had three interviews with different companies, and they ultimately asked me the same questions. “What are you interested in doing for work?” “Where do you see yourself in five years?” “Why did you study architecture and why are you interested in product design?”—which all ultimately led me to ask myself, “How can I land a first job that I want with this kind of recession and competition?”
I typed up two single spaced pages for myself to answer those questions, and I easily defined exactly what I wanted to do. With my experiences at Living 3.0 this summer where I learned about the field of high-tech homes, I have no doubt that this is what I want to make possible:
You’re right, I can’t code software, I didn’t major in computer science. I can’t build gadgets either, I didn’t study mechanical engineering. However, I know people who can, and we can define problems, do research, and try to solve those problems together. With architecture projects, I went to the actual sites to observe the people, the shadows, the circulation, the neighborhood. With Berkeley Innovation projects, I researched ergonomics, read up on Amazon reviews, ran around campus sketching and observing people, and interviewed professors and students. I brainstormed with an entire team and we covered walls and desks with post-it notes. What I couldn’t do, someone else could (and vice versa). What I thought of, someone else added onto and improved or challenged (and vice versa). Being able to draw, make models, and create computer renderings are just some technical skills I can offer, but I don’t want to be just an artist or model-maker or graphics guru. I want to work with others, think, and create together.
For that reason, I’d like to stay in the Bay Area and keep networking with people who work in tech and design, but when opportunity arises in China, I’m really not sure what to choose. My friend, Brian, mentioned to me, “China is good for trade, but for innovation and design, there is no place like home.”
And it’s true. My friend, Alex, who flew down from Seattle (Microsoft) and his friend, Shaneal, who flew over from Cambridge (Harvard), said they’ve never experienced anything like the Bay Area tech crowd. Everyone had an idea and everyone thought anything was possible—and companies knew how to have fun college-style where everyone was “just so chill”.
Apparently, I was droppin’ like it’s hot with DropBox Drew while high on AirBnB’s rooftop. That’s what happens when you party in the sky and take a dive with beer goggles on—no regrets. (Later, I found out that some of the AirBnB guys studied graphic and product design at RISD—proof that I don’t have to go into marketing or be just a “+1″.)
