Lately I've been thinking more and more about my future. What will come in the next year. At this point, I'm not entirely certain. It is something that I will definitely need to figure out though.

What I do know is that no matter what choices I make, those decisions will be made based off of my own personal core values. Sometimes you have to make the tough decisions in life, but as long as your decisions were following your personal values, then it doesn't matter which path you choose to take. You were faced with a situation and you made the best decision you could with the information that was available to you at that point in time.

More to come,
Raymond

Thoughts on starting a new blog + the last 6 months of life (or so)

Hi there blog,
It's been a few months since I've last posted on here but I just wanted to write something here in hopes that it'll inspire me to do something that I've been thinking about doing for a while now.

but first, before I go into this, I just wanted to bring you up to date on the last few months.

In March, Gabby and I had our Shanghai wedding. It was really fun, and we even had our friends from Rose lane come to Shanghai to experience it with us.
When we came back from Shanghai, Gabby's Mom and her best friend Yiping came back with us to visit the USA for 2 weeks. Thinking back, not much else happened between April - May. At least, not much that stands out. May came, and I guess June hit before we knew it. Gabby finished her Spring semester, and I continued working at UC Berkeley in my HR position. In June, Gabby and I on a last minute trip went to Las Vegas to EDC. It was pretty fun, although I wish we had a group who all went together. I think it would have made the trip a little bit more crazy/interesting. July came around, birthdays, Vegas trips, and Gabby left to go to Shanghai in mid/late July. This left me alone for about two weeks - the longest I had been without her. For those two weeks, I felt like something was missing, and for the first time in about 2 years, I felt like I had to fill my time when I hadn't had to think about the question: "what do I do with my free time?"

We planned our Honeymoon for August, so after those two weeks passed, I was pretty excited about going to Shanghai to meet Gabby for a few days. August 3 - 6: Shanghai, China
August 6 - 8: Athens, Greece
August 8 - 11: Santorini, Oia, Greece

August 11 - 15: Prague, Czech Republic
August 15: Arrived back home :(
I wish I already had the pictures uploaded to my computer - I might save the pics for a hopefully soon future blog post. We were able to meet up with friends/family in Shanghai, see lots of historical sites in Athens (it was unbearably hot though), relax and sightsee in Oia, and take in a bit of history and city life in Prague. Overall, the honeymoon was too short... Also, we were able to take business class for a mini-round the world itinerary:

SFO-TPE-PVG = EVA Business 777 and 747
PVG-HEL-ATH = Finnair Business A350 and A320
PRG-FRA-ORD-SFO = Lufthansa Business A320, LH First 747-8i and United First 757-300

More stories about the honeymoon coming soon.

Anyways, getting back to my main point:

I've been thinking about starting a YouTube channel and travel blog. I think that the last few years and especially last 9-12 months of churning has given me a lot of perspective about what I personally have a lot of passion for - and to be honest, I'm more passionate about travel than I am HR, or at least, I think that this is my new calling. While I still like HR and I think that it'll stay as my main career path, I think that travel has become my #1 hobby and I think that writing about travel (past experience and future plans) would give me the proper creative outlet that I think that I've been missing lately...

We shall see... I'm going to say right now, that in by next week, I want to have a new YouTube account created and a new blog site created. I just read about WordPress and I've heard that it's a very popular option - we shall see. I still have a special place in my heart for you, blog.

Til next time. Good night.

Dear Blog...

Well, it's been a while since I've posted anything here. I only had one post in 2016. Well, here's my first post for 2017.

I wish that I posted more often, but life keeps moving, ya know?

Two weeks from this Friday, I'll be headed back to Shanghai with my wife and we'll be hosting our "Shanghai Wedding" on March 24, 2017. I have my Rose lane friends (John, Dat, Cindy, Javier) and my Altawaty cousins coming (Dahlia, Yasmeen, Omar) coming to see me get married. It's gonna be a fun trip and I'm sure I'll have many pictures to post when I get back. I need to get back to writing about life here. It felt good. I felt based when I came here a lot... It was and still a place that has meaning mostly and only to me.

Married life is great. I couldn't be happier with my wife. She really gets me and knows me better than anyone else in this world and supports me more than anyone else in this world. I write this as she's laying down on our bed at home in ElSob... Hopefully we'll be adding a new addition to our family in the next 18-24 months... I'm pretty sure I've already mentioned this but I always wanted to start a family earlier than later and I think I'm mentally ready to become a father. Maybe not financially ready, but I think that as far as parenthood goes, I want to create a bigger family with my wife.

Anyways, It's late and I have work tomorrow. More to come...