My life in 5 minutes
I was born 27 August 1999 in Hong Kong, the middle of three brothers—older brother above me, younger below—which meant shared rooms, louder meals, and early lessons about compromise. My first friend, Joshua and I met at three-ish and never really fell out of contact; longevity with a mate is quieter than trophies.
Math clicked early for me—not prodigy folklore, just something I liked. Nights disappeared into forums, playlists, anime, then League, then Minecraft. Weirdly I burned more weekends installing mods and map packs than “finishing” the game; coaxing buggy ZIP files into behaving was oddly satisfying foreshadowing for later tinkering careers.
After high school I picked up Japanese entirely on my own—honestly because I liked anime so much it stopped being guilty pleasure and became homework I actually wanted. Progress was uneven; I studied on and off, then about three years later I passed JLPT N1. Vanity aside, passing the hardest level didn’t magically make conversations effortless, but it proved stubborn hobby hours could tally into something respectable.
I entered adulthood sure I belonged in neuroscience-flavoured lab work. Pipettes cured that fantasy within about a year. I jumped to HKUST’s dual degree (Computer Science plus Business Management) and stopped treating faith like background radio—baptised 17 June 2018. Turning twenty scared me honest enough that in 2019 I scribbled rules for myself for the decade ahead half as promises, half as argument starters with future me.
Exchange at DTU meant Copenhagen and living with Danish hosts—the Branners—who spoiled me patiently. Suddenly Hong Kong adrenaline felt optional rather than heroic. Covid emptied the streets afterward; solitude was uneven, occasionally lonely, occasionally clarifying like cold water. Around then I drained my wallet on a Sony RX100 III (pocket powerhouse) and later a Fujifilm X-E4. Either one still slows me enough to admire wet pavement glare or someone's laugh across a tram—cheap gratitude, but genuine.
Back in Hong Kong through the Covid stretch, in 2021, my mom adopted Ding Ding—our family’s first pet ever, and the first time the apartment had a heartbeat that wasn’t a Yeung. I fell completely. I treated him like my own son: feeding him, talking to him like he could answer, photographing him with the same care I’d give a person, learning the small set of moods he had patience for me to learn.
2022 was ugly-beautiful. My parents divorced; that sentence lands flat unless you lived it, because it rewired my default assumptions without asking permission. Walking through it also left me sharper about how fragile and precious family ties are—they’re among the best gifts we get as humans—and not something I ever want to take for granted again. Somehow the same twelve months swallowed final-year projects, two degrees stacked on the wall, a tech startup stint at Wemakeapp, and falling for Natalie—we started dating 9 July 2022. At Wemakeapp, I grew quickly—both as an engineer and team lead. There were times I doubted whether I had what it took, but the trust and encouragement from my manager helped cement a real sense of confidence in my ability to deliver and support others.
I slipped out of Wemakeapp in 2023, wrestled visas for Canada, and landed as a Learning Technology Specialist at TWU in 2024 wrangling LMS plumbing so faculty get fewer nasty surprises mid-semester (glamorous on nobody’s Instagram, oddly meaningful to me). The hardest part of that move wasn’t the visa stack or the apartment-hunting—it was leaving Ding Ding behind. He still lives with my mom in Hong Kong; she sends me photos, and I still think about that little face more than is reasonable. Separation by a continent remains one of the most painful decisions I have made.
Natalie and I married on 9 February 2025. By then we had already dragged tired suitcases through visas, thin-walled rentals, and the kind of arguments that only mean something when you still choose the same person after the noise dies down. The day itself was small and ordinary in the best way—family, friends, vows said clearly enough that I couldn’t hide behind clever wording. Natalie is the one who makes Vancouver feel like home even when my Cantonese brain misfires in English, who reads my drafts when I’m too proud to ask, who turns weeknight dinners into the bit of the calendar I guard first. I’m giving this its own paragraph because everything above is résumé scaffolding if I tuck her into a dependent clause.
There’s still much work to do. I’m excited for what the next decade of my career asks of me—releases, migrations, the kinds of problems that punish vanity—and for doing my honest best to grow into a husband Natalie can lean on when spreadsheets and time zones get loud.
Maybe I didn’t leave HKUST chasing the neuroscientist story I walked in with, but I’m damn proud to be an engineer. I’m enormously grateful to my parents and brothers—even the years when trust at home wobbled—to Joshua for never quietly evaporating after we met as kids, and to strangers on the internet who showed me you can teach yourself almost anything if you sit with broken builds long enough.