29 and beyond!
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I had the pleasure of celebrating my 29th birthday last week surrounded by all the good friends I’ve made over the last 6 years in Seattle. 
My birthday extravaganza started with a house party that Craig organized, followed by a 3 day trip up to Vancouver to visit my family. Craig, Gu and Chaitanya came along with me for the road trip and I got a chance to show them Vancouver from my perspective. In those 3 days, we got to eat some really great food, watch the new Transformers movie and even got to visit all the significant sites of my childhood. It’s funny realize that the first 20 years of my life essentially place in only 12 square miles.
It’s amazing to think that I’ve been in Seattle for nearly 6 years. Time has just flown by so fast it’s hard to keep up sometimes with everything that’s happened during that time.
2001 was a big year for me. I finished my degree off at SFU and moved away from home for first time in my life. New country, new people and a brand new shiny job. Within days of moving to Seattle, there was a new report about the police finding a crate of dynamite on the side of the road off the I-5. “Where the f* did I move to?” was my first thought.
I initially joined the Windows Live ID team (then known as “.NET Passport”) right in the middle of the Hailstorm (aka “.NET My Services”) meltdown. In a not-so-surprising turn of events, Hailstorm ended up finally rolling over and dying in the spring of 2002.
During my 5 year tenure on the Windows Live ID team, I learned what it meant to be a good program manager, how to ship great software and how to mentor others. Lessons learned from absolutely fantastic colleagues keep occurring over and over 
again, even to this day. I’ve managed work on some very cool projects that I’m proud of over the years, ranging from research on password strength and web phishing to the shipping the authentication service for the Xbox 360.
During my first 4 years in Seattle, I was in a long distance relationship back in Vancouver which kept me out of town nearly every other weekend. This made forming friendships in Seattle very difficult during that time and I’m thankful to those friends that put up with it and are still my friends to this day. When I look back now at the latter part of my life, and my career at Microsoft, it’s not really the work that stands out. Instead, it’s all the great people I’ve met and formed lasting friendships with.
It’s a funny thing to come to Microsoft in your early twenties. You get a chance to interact with people in a fairly wide age range that you wouldn’t normally be able to otherwise. The work environment helped me to transcend the age gap very easily. While I may not hang out regularly with many of my friends I’ve met with professionally, they still hold a special place in my heart and are often some of the first people I go to when I need advice, whether it be professional or personal.
As I get older, I find myself reflecting on my life a lot more and am getting more thankful for what I have in my life. In particular, I feel especially lucky to have met the people I have and to have the friends that I do. Despite having gone through a few personal hardships the last few years, my friends and family have really been the ones that got me through it all. This sounds so cliche, but this birthday has been the best one so far. Thanks to everyone for making this year so special for me.
If you didnt’ make it to my birthday this year, you’ll have 12 months to free up your calendar for next year’s extravaganza 
I’ve titled this post “29 and beyond!”, but when I think about it, it’s not entirely accurate. Thanks to Buzz Lightyear for helping me adorn my 30th year with a line so befitting. — To 30 and beyond!
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