What’s this blog about?
Hey guys, this blog will be a bit different from the ones I made before. Rather than sharing some interesting technical stuff, I want to share my life since the Covid-19 pandemic.
Why?
No reason. However, it’s been over five years now, and IMO, this five-years period has been the hardest for me (yes I’m still young, but still…). Anyway, if you don’t find it important, then don’t read it. If you want to read it, then thanks I guess? It’s fine either way lol.
My final year in high school
July 2020. Because of the pandemic, I attended online classes. Classes were OK-ish: it’s just as it has always been for the past 11 years, only this time it was conducted online.
Because it was twelfth grade, people ocassionally ask one another about which college they want to go to.
I’ve always wanted to go to America, because a lot of my heroes (Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Henry Ford, Wernher Von Braun, etc.) are Americans. To me, Americans are the crazy weirdos who come up with new ways to do things, yet 10 years later, the rest of the world follows suit, making their “weird ways” the new standards.
However, a four-year tuition at an American college is very expensive, and I think my greatest mistake in high school was I didn’t give my all to pursue my dream: back then, I didn’t even bother taking the SAT because my thought back then was, “Why bother? I won’t be going to the US anyway.”
In late November 2020, I eventually gave up and decided to apply to Singapore’s NTU. My thinking was, a lot of American companies set up regional HQs in Singapore, so maybe if I work there, I can be internally transferred to their US offices after a few years.
So that’s settled. First, I need to pass NTU’s entrance exam. Since I was late in making up my mind, I had fewer time to prepare for the exam. Even when knowing this, I didn’t give my all: my teacher told me several times to ask for study materials from other students, yet I never did. I only rely on the one my teacher gave.
Needless to say, I failed the exam. Yet, I was as carefree as ever. I remember being sad for two days, then I went back to feeling normal.
What was crushing to me was when I figured out one of my classmate, who was my crush at the time, actually made it to NTU. I didn’t even know that she applied. One day out of the blue I heard the news that she got admitted on a full scholarship.
Because I only applied to NTU (I applied to NUS & HKUST, but didn’t submit all of the required documents), I haven’t been accepted to any schools yet. Additionally, since it was already April, most schools have closed their admission.
Eventually, I enrolled at CUHK Shenzhen.
My first three years in college
My first few weeks of college were normal, up until the midterm exam announcements: for Maths, I was only in the ~50th percentile. For Biology, I didn’t remember what my percentile was, but I think it was quite low as well.
After some reflection, I decided that I have to change. I want to give my all, because I remembered how it felt when I want something but couldn’t obtain it (in this case, I could’ve gone to the same university my crush went to, yet I couldn’t).
In short, I knew how bad failure felt, so I will do my best to avoid it.
Therefore, to discipline myself, I set up a goal: to get a high-paying job upon graduation. To this end, I’ve been trying my best to get internships. I took Chinese courses so I can intern in mainland China, went to Hong Kong several times just to attend company visits, etc.
Thing is, I never really enjoyed them. Originally, I wanted to be a web developer (spent my rising sophomore’s summer break learning web dev), but soon found it boring since much of the work is just about importing modules. Still, I decided to continue.
In my rising junior’s summer break, I couldn’t get any internships, mainly because of my lack of Chinese skills. I eventually got an offer as a data analyst, though.
Originally, I won’t accept non-technical roles (from my view, data analytics is a mix of tech & business. semi-technical, if you will) because as a fresh graduate, I will most likely get a lower salary if I work a non-technical job. But in the end, I did accept it.
Why?
Not because I didn’t have any other offers (I would honestly continue the job search), but because my crush originally wanted to be a data analyst (but only got into NTU Accounting), so my thought back then was, “I can do what she couldn’t do; I’m awesome”.
Final year
Early on in my final year, I still wanted to pursue data science as a career. I still considered software engineering, but given that I had no relevant internships, I made it my second choice. The coding assessments were harder for software engineering roles anyway.
It all changed when I took CSC3150 (Operating Systems). I was supposed to take this on my Junior year, but decided to postpone it.
Anyway, I remember for the first homework, my professor asked the class to develop a kernel module, which is essentially a Linux driver. The task was simple: print “Hello, World!” in kernel space.
Yet, for reasons I don’t know, I find it very interesting, and I decided to learn computer systems on my own, by trying to develop my own OS.
In my final semester, I’ve been thinking on what to do next. In addition to the OS, I also wanted to develop my own computer hardware. Conveniently (or not-so-conveniently), I haven’t gotten any jobs yet, so pursuing a masters in electrical engineering is an option for me.
I asked some professors on what I want to learn and what I plan to do to achieve it, and one of them actually suggested that I go to industry instead (he didn’t say why, but I’m guessing it’s because developing my own computer hardware is more practical, so academia won’t do me good).
Since I have no relevant experience, I doubted it would work, so I decided to apply for a masters at CUHK. I applied for their part time program, because I was hoping I could spend the extra time experimenting & work to cover some of the tuition.
ODDLY, I didn’t get admitted. One of my classmates, with lower GPA & no internship experience, actually got admitted into their computer science program, which is way more competitive than electrical engineering. I think it is a discrimation, but I’ll never know. I couldn’t be bothered to fight back anyway.
With all my options exhausted, I reconsidered my professor’s advice. I then thought, “Let’s try to include my ongoing OS project, and who knows, maybe one company will consider my application.”.
I then submitted my applications to some companies, among them Apple, Huawei, and Nvidia.
- I got rejected by Nvidia.
- I failed Apple’s interview.
- I passed all of Huawei’s technical interviews (with one HR round left), but due to internal adjustments, they couldn’t give me the role at the OS team. Instead, they moved me to the browser team.
I thought that if I want to learn hardware, I must work at these companies since they can make their own technology. Specifically, I apply as a software engineer, and gain mentorship from the hardware engineers. I even declined an offer I received from a start-up company (to be fair, it’s still a verbal offer) because I keep on clinging to the hope that I can get admitted to one of these hardware companies.
Thankfully, the last one worked. It took some time, but on August 18, 2025, I finally got the offer from Huawei.
Moving forward, I hope that I can learn a lot at Huawei, specifically in browser dev, and of course, hardware engineering.
Conclusion
I’m not sure what to say here, but if there are two very, very important things that I learned from this five-years period, they are:
- I must give my all, else I might regret it in the future.
- I have to pursue what I liked. Otherwise, I just won’t perform.