I haven’t written since I got to SF and I have nobody to blame other than

my landlord.

My room for these 3 months came with no desk. And this has been a constant source of trouble. I have a strong separation of work, sleep and play which means the minute I’m on my bed I am fast asleep. So my hybrid work schedule meant me going into the office 5 times a week. My pursuits to do anything on my laptop outside of work resulted in a snoozefest.

Regardless, I have forced myself to write an update and to get back to writing more consistently as well.

So what have I been up to this summer?

1. I have been working

I wouldn’t say a lot. I got to the office at 7.30am and I was usually out by 5pm. I loved my work. I loved what I got to build for my team. I basically created something from scratch so I got to decide what I want to do, and how I want to do it. In short it was an MCP Server to help my team during a migration. Doordash was fun, the engineering was a marvel and I was in amaze as to how everything came together. It’s the work that I was proud of and I got quite a few compliments on what I built as engineers started using it so it definitely fueled some need for validation within me :0 I also got 25$ to Doordash whatever I want so that was fun. I also realized how much of a privilege it is to work in tech - something I will definitely think about a lot.

The recruiters hosted fun socials for us :3

2. I talked to Claude more than I talked to my mother

This might come off as ‘damn she doesn’t call her mother enough’ but my summer was a lot of Claude Code. I used $2,200 in tokens in a month. That’s more than rent. Nobody is writing code anymore and that’s just the reality. I did write code but there is an expectation to not ‘waste time writing code’. The biggest battle of my summer was balancing my velocity with my learning. Frankly I think that’s a battle I am going to keep fighting for a very very long time.

3. I walked a lot

I didn’t realize how much I missed walking until I got to San Francisco. I lived in Russian Hill - I may be dumb but that actually translates to Russian ‘HILL’. I walked up the hills of SF everyday. I hiked through the beautiful trails, I walked across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito. I’ve walked till my feet hurt, till there are no more hot takes to be spoken of and I’ve loved it. Being in a walkable city means it takes so little to ‘get your steps in’. I hope that I don’t need a car until I’m 30.

4. I don’t exercise my free will

Even though I could doordash anything I wanted for lunch - I felt really guilty eating anything unhealthy on a random Tuesday afternoon. THRIVE Protein Bowls became my goto and I was on a quest to find a decent salad (which I partially failed). I hated feeling unhealthy. Even when I craved something, I had a tough time actually ordering it. My ‘cope’ became eating unhealthy on Fridays.

5. I went to a lot of bakeries

SF has good food but it has amazing bakeries. I have stood in line for 1-2 hours for some goods and I have no regrets. I’m going to miss all the croissants this city offered me dearly. I’m going to miss all the amazing ice cream here too particularly Salt n Straw. It’s not from SF but god it’s so good.

6. I cursed the public transportation frequently

Buses in SF frequently come EARLY! Why, how - I will never know. 4-5 MUNI lines (the light rail) all run through the EXACT SAME street. Probably historical but again - not a good layout at all.

7. I housed a lot of friends

When you have a roof in a frequently visited city, you house a lot of people! That was fun :) I was running my own Airbnb in my temporary housing. I showed around a lot of friends and I don’t think I’ve yet to fully see the city.

8. I read a lot of HackerNews

I was hit by all this downtime at work as my Claude Agents were running. It was surprising and new to me so I browsed and read a lot of HackerNews this summer. To be completely honest, I don’t know if I’d recommend it or if it’s a good thing to be ‘educated’. I think it reinforced to me how I truly live in a bubble and makes me feel very doomsday about my employment, my career (one that I have yet to formally begin), and my choice of a passion. My days were bouncing between the spectrum of hope and complete despair depending on whether I was hiking or staring at a screen. This was the craziest read. This was the one I took to heart the most.

I think the hardest transition of this summer was to not be a student. All my life I was in institutions like nursery, kindergarten, board examinations, sophomore year Data Structures. I was placed in environments that pushed me to learn and prioritize my learning. It took me a while that a job would not do that unless I do it by myself.

So that was my summer! All in all, I loved it. I created a lot but I consumed a lot more (tokens).

We played ping pong for National Intern Day - a sport I enjoyed while being absolutely terrible at.