A Day in my Silicon Valley Life

8.30am Sharp. Alexa’s unpleasant alarm reminds me of the start of yet another wonderful day in the heart of Silicon Valley. I spend the next 20 minutes checking my Facebook feed and Instagram Page on how many new likes my online content generated while I slept. “Only 28?? Gosh, my followers in Singapore don’t understand Bitcoin at all!”

Unsettled by the poor performance, I spent another 10 minutes convincing myself that content building takes time. I browsed through The Entrepreneur Daily, and read the ‘Your Guide to Growing Stronger, Feeling Better and Bouncing Back’. 2 paragraphs in and I felt good already.

After grabbing some Captain Crunch cereal, I hailed for an UberPool ride. I hope that I get a ride without sharing it with anyone. However, luck was not on my side. I ended up having to share it with an engineer who works at Palantir. Or I think he is an engineer since that is the most common living thing in Silicon Valley. After puppies, that is.

I finally reached office and got to my desk. I set down on my chair and thought about what to do. Of course, i uttered, it’s time to read all the Venture Capital news so that I can sound knowledgable when talking to people. I opened up my gmail and start going through the Elizabeth Yin, Mattermark and CBinsights newsletter. By the time I am done, it was lunchtime. Great! Feeling accomplished already.

I decided to useDoorDash for Lunch. Why walk when someone else can do the walking for you? I went with the ramen since it stated that it was gluten free. Seems healthy. Decided that I also want a drink from a Bubble Tea shop along University Avenue. A quick search on Ubereats revealed nothing; dang, they are not on the platform as yet. Dang it, I have to walk.

I spent 10 minutes to decide that I want Oolong Milk Tea. Nothing too fancy since I like my tea to be tasteful. Should i add White Pearl or the 3J? Ah, decisions. I guess I go without; it is just tapioca balls with sugar. I know that because I worked in Koi back in Singapore. I saw that they accept Android Pay. I switched on the NFC on my Samsung Note 3 (not 7) and tapped it. Beep! USD 4.75 just got deducted.

Walking back to office, I checked my calendar and saw that I needed to head to Stanford University to meet a friend at 3.30pm. Should I use Bikeshare or Zipcar to get there? I pinched my abdomen area and felt something I never knew existed until I came to the Valley. The bike it is.

Upon reaching Stanford, I started getting my afternoon pings from gmail on my phone. I regretted syncing all 4 emails to my phone. Determined to let entrepreneurs know that I am a busy man, I swiped away all the email notifications to pretend that I’m too busy to read. Then i got bored staring at the tourists at Stanford and decided that it’s better staring at my screen instead. I loaded up Snapchat and spent the next 15 minutes there.

Finally, I finished all the stories and with a sigh, I went to my gmail. An entrepreneur wanted to connect with me. I quickly browsed through the pitch deck he sent. Hmm, frontier technology. This seems interesting. I cc-ed Mimetic to schedule a meeting with them. As i was scheduling, I realised that they were based in San Francisco. Dang! That’s far. With the unusual amount of rain in the Bay Area these days, I wondered if I needed an Umbrella. I check with Allo:

Do I need an umbrella in San Francisco for the next few days?

Allo replied: Sorry i don’t quite understand what you said.

I sighed. It really isn’t that smart. I started thinking about that Black Mirror episode titled “Be Right Back” and wondered if I will ever want to build a chatbot that talks like my dead friend. Probably not, I convinced myself, since I don’t have many friends anyway.

Suddenly, my Mint app distracted me with a notification just when I was getting all philosophical about chatbots. I looked through my spending in the Mint app and saw that I was spending too much on shopping. Further scrutiny identified that it was that Soylent monthly delivery package that I made on Amazon Prime. I quickly made a mental note to block that website on my Apple Macbook Pro that still has an Escape Button. But I probably will forget about it. Like how I don’t remember which cereal I ate today morning.

What did I eat yesterday? Oh, i remembered and exclaimed loudly to myself. Cockscomb in San Francisco, that Impossible Food Meat Patty that you will need to spend 5 minutes convincing Vegans that it really isn’t meat. ‘Weird’, I thought to myself, ‘I won’t spend more than USD 8 on Vegetarian food but I was now more than willing to drop USD 15 for a vegan-ish thing with blood.’

Anyway, I realised Tim who went with me to have the ‘ham’ burger hasn’t paid me for the meal. Funny how I remember money issues more than anything else. ‘Let me look at my receipt.’ I thought, which should be in my wallet. Where is my wallet? I hesitated. Then I realised that I used Android Pay and my receipt is an e-receipt in my gmail. I sighed a relief, scolded myself for being so backward and sent a Splitwise amount of USD 23.25 to Tim. Tim responded immediately with payment to my Venmo account. Great! No more long term hassle of chasing money.

The individual meeting me at Stanford finally appeared and we started having a hearty discussion about big world issues. Issues such as Singularity, China and Trump. He also tried to sell me his startup since I work at a Venture Capital, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him that his dating app for seniors probably wouldn’t work.

It was time to go home. I had a free Lyft ride from the T-Mobile Tuesday app and decided that I should use it. The ride arrived in less than 10 minutes. The driver was really friendly and chatty. She told me a few jokes that made me laughed really hard so i tipped her 2 dollars at the end of the trip.

I reached home, totally exhausted from all the intellectual work that I did. Yet I still had a virtual meeting with an entrepreneur. Sigh, I really do work hard. I opened up my GotoMeeting program and spent the next 45 minutes hearing her pitch. I was glad when it was over.

I had a nice warm shower before heading off to bed. As I rest my intellectual mind on my normal IKEA pillow, I wondered when the technologically advanced The Purple® Pillow will arrive after backing them on Kickstarter. I convinced myself that it will come in the next 6 months and proceeded with launching the Soundcloud App to play the Techdirt podcast. ‘Hopefully, this podcast will work better than Alexa’s one minute meditation’. 30 minutes in, the eyelids felt heavy. I quickly told Alexa to turn off the Philips Hue lightbulbs and to set the alarm for 8.30am tomorrow.

And as I lay there in the dark, I felt happy to be part of this crazy journey. Can’t wait for this to repeat again.