About Me — Sheldon Cooper
my name is actually not sheldon cooper
hey! my name is actually Gabbie. my username is a reference from my fave show Big Bang Theory.
the reasons are twofold 1) i am hyperactively conscious of how i am perceived to people in real life social interactions so i fear that they’ll find my content here too (as i’ve mentioned in this blog post) 2)for humbling reasons, when i become famous in the platform (lol jk) i don’t want to be accredited for the fame.
nonetheless, i was born in the Philippines but migrated to Hong Kong (now a citizen) as early as 4 years old so I have almost zero recollection of my birth land. i don’t go back as often as i should be but it is what it is. so, fun fact: i can’t even speak my own native language too.
i luckily never had felt the need to box my identity into being a Filipino because i prefer to use chopsticks instead of forks.
however what troubles me the most is that while i identify myself more Chinese than Filipino, i physically look like a Filipino so technically i am an ethnic minority in Hong Kong and that can sometimes get tough living in a endearing dynamic city because oftentimes you can get quashed and largely unrecognised.
while i can go on to discuss the woes of being an ethnic minority, it isn’t the only thing about me (but you can read more here).
when i was 7, i decided that i wanted to be a hip hop dancer while my sister hoped to be a penguin. i am now one my way to, hopefully, becoming one heck of a lawyer while my sister is a rising senior. so funny how that turned out.
i use to hate school like i hated it but my migrant parents pushed me not to waste time wallowing and pitying myself. instead to convert that energy into doing something actually good i.e. studying lol.
so i did that and won multiple of awards — i went to an all-expense paid to a Harvard Conference in Japan to compete, led my team to win hong kong’s largely competitive Moot Trial, and lived up to my title as a championed youth trail runner (but you can see that the grass was not greener on my side from this post).
other than trying to not be a disgrace to my household, i do marketing for nonprofits and (now) startups as well as run my freelance web design business.
after living for 17 years, i realised that the world is incredibly big and i’ve found my Achilles Heel.
it’s that i find everything incredibly interesting so aside from naively narrowing down my interests: i *currently* enjoy hiking, blogging on Medium, testing no-code tools, using Notion, dreaming about bootstrapping my own startup, being a part of the hacker community (well trying to be at least),and reading.
see here a gallery of my life:
but this didn’t mean a lot because i was very close to not getting admitted to university. i am very fortunate that i did in end was able to study Economics at one of Hong Kong’s top schools and although one works hard, luck has its play in most things so pick clumps of yourself up and keep trying :)
