{"id":656,"date":"2016-08-09T08:10:43","date_gmt":"2016-08-09T13:10:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sunapi386.ca\/wordpress\/?p=656"},"modified":"2017-02-25T03:17:33","modified_gmt":"2017-02-25T08:17:33","slug":"how-i-met-sophie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sunapi386.ca\/wordpress\/how-i-met-sophie\/","title":{"rendered":"How I met Sophie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is a tale about how I met my Sophie.\u00a0Happy Valentine, Sophie! \u60c5\u4eba\u8282\u5feb\u4e50\uff01<\/p>\n<p>In February 2016, I spent the first two weeks travelling in China and celebrating Chinese New Year. Having family across the world felt great, and I could visit them any time. China is in an economic boom, and growing very fast. It felt good to be connected to other parts of the world. I had recently graduated university and moved to the Bay Area for just about 3 months. I still felt there was a lot of travelling I could do, to explore the world. But travel is costly, from the time and financial perspective. Is\u00a0there is another way?<\/p>\n<h3>Becoming a hosting on couchsurfing.com<\/h3>\n<p>From December to end of March, I was renting the master bedroom in a two bedroom apartment. Since our apartment\u00a0had\u00a0two couches, I felt I could\u00a0make use of them to use it to host some couchsurfers and make friends from all over the world. So I subscribed to the couchsurfing email newsletter.<\/p>\n<p>One day while scanning through my email of couchsurfers looking for hosts, Sophie&#8217;s profile photo caught my eye. She was very pretty. Her profile described herself as a high level headhunter, ambitious, eager, and interested in startups.<\/p>\n<p>I offered to host her on the first day she lands in US.\u00a0But she replied with\u00a0moderate\u00a0interest, and describing an overly ambitious schedule of visiting too many cities.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, she had found a host already, but she was willing\u00a0to\u00a0meeting up for coffee. We met\u00a0on Sunday Feb. 21, 2016.<\/p>\n<p>That Friday and Saturday, I was hosting my first couchsurfer, Satoshi, from Japan. His profile described him as an aspiring entrepreneur visiting SV. I was hosting him, my friend Shaon was looking to buy a house. While we drove around, I was messaging Sophie to see when and where she can meet up with us.<\/p>\n<h3>Meeting\u00a0my 2nd couchsurfer<\/h3>\n<p>At the end, we settled for meeting at my home, and both Sophie and her host met my friend Shaon and Satoshi.<\/p>\n<p>When I first saw her, I had two\u00a0impressions: &#8220;oh my goodness she is beautiful, cuter than her profile photo&#8221; and followed by &#8220;oh she&#8217;s shorter than I thought&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>After getting acquainted, we all went on a spontaneous trip to see\u00a0Half Moon Bay\u00a0and try to\u00a0catch sunset. I briefly chatted with Sophie in the backseat, before doing the driving myself.<\/p>\n<p>Returning, we\u00a0went to\u00a0visit Facebook, which was a fun place and suitable for visitors. Apple had no such open door policy. Sophie and I chatted some more about who we were.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_659\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-659\" style=\"width: 972px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sunapi386.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/facebook.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-659 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/sunapi386.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/facebook.gif\" alt=\"Taking silly photos at Instagram HQ\" width=\"972\" height=\"972\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-659\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Taking silly photos at Instagram HQ<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Towards the end of our visit at Facebook, I had made a good impression with Sophie. She had changed her mind about not staying over and asked her couchsurfer whether it was okay to stay with me. Of course it was.<\/p>\n<h3>First impressions<\/h3>\n<p>We chatted late into\u00a0the\u00a0night. And as I closed my eyes, I knew I liked her. A lot.\u00a0I was so excited that I woke up at 5 am to blog. And then after I was done, I woke her up to chat.<\/p>\n<p>We had talked and next thing I know, it was morning. I still had to work, but I decided to take half day off to get up later, show\u00a0Sophie around my office, then\u00a0drop her off at Stanford University. And I missed her immediately.<\/p>\n<h3>Date #1: Las Vegas<\/h3>\n<p>Immediately after dropping her off, I convinced and coordinated with her so I can come to Las Vegas and travel together. Below is a cute video taken at Hoover Dam. I had rented a yellow Camaro. I had always wanted to drive a yellow sports car!<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Sophie at Hoover Dam\" width=\"660\" height=\"371\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/PLNBQVTTIxQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>After this trip, Sophie had returned to China. We decided to try long-distance dating, and we did video calling consistently, about 3 times a day, 30 minutes each time.<\/p>\n<h2>Date #2: Hawaii<\/h2>\n<p>After a while, we wanted to meet up again. My family wanted to do a big vacation, and we settled on going to Hawaii. I invited Sophie to meet with my family.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-693\" src=\"https:\/\/sunapi386.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/in-car-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"625\" height=\"469\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sunapi386.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/in-car-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/sunapi386.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/in-car-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sunapi386.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/in-car-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/sunapi386.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/in-car-624x468.jpg 624w, https:\/\/sunapi386.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/in-car.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 625px) 100vw, 625px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>After the trip to Hawaii, we still continued to do long-distance, and we meet up again. This time I wanted to meet her parents. So I visited China.<\/p>\n<h2>Date #3: Shanghai<\/h2>\n<p>Being with Sophie in China is like being a tourist. Although I had gone to Shanghai before, having Sophie show me around is a completely different experience.<\/p>\n<p>I had remembered to take some videos this time. (I didn&#8217;t have videos from Hawaii trip. Shame.)<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"A walk with Sophie in Shanghai Part 1\" width=\"660\" height=\"371\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/acga6j23NxQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"A walk with Sophie in Shanghai Part 2\" width=\"660\" height=\"371\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hFIl_ywugc0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>We are now progressing well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a tale about how I met my Sophie.\u00a0Happy Valentine, Sophie! \u60c5\u4eba\u8282\u5feb\u4e50\uff01 In February 2016, I spent the first two weeks travelling in China and celebrating Chinese New Year. Having family across the world felt great, and I could visit them any time. China is in an economic boom, and growing very fast. It &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sunapi386.ca\/wordpress\/how-i-met-sophie\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">How I met Sophie<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunapi386.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunapi386.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunapi386.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunapi386.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunapi386.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/sunapi386.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":695,"href":"https:\/\/sunapi386.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions\/695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunapi386.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunapi386.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunapi386.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}