Kensington Chinatown

I woke up at 8:30 am.

I decided to skip the sessions before lunch, I can just watch the recording anyways.

I walked to Yin Ji Chang Fen to eat some rice noodles. I got some pork baos too. I chose take out, so I could eat it at a park in UofT.

I walked through the campus and saw many Romanseque Revival-style buildings.

I walked 20 minutes to Queen's park, and saw a protest going on. I sat down on a bench and ate my rice noodles.

I went back to my Airbnb to keep my baos for later.

I went out to get my haircut. I went to People's Salon and got a haircut for 20 CAD.

I went back for a quick shower, and started off to the conference.

I stopped at the chinese bakery to get some pastries.

I got an egg tart, a bbq pork pastry, red bean pastry, lotus, and wife cake.

I walked to the Marriott while eating all the pastries I bought.

I arrived at 12.

I met a Singaporean girl, she was working at a startup in Toronto while taking classes. She's studying statistics in NUS. She was a year younger than me. She might be the youngest person at the summit.

I couldn't eat any of the food at lunch, but sat down with her and talked about a lot of things.

We walked out to a korean restaurant and I ordered Bibimbap for takeout.

We talked about our careers, about how I don't have a strong accent, about the weather.

I went back to the hotel to eat my take out, while she went to the sessions.

I went for the use cases sessions the entire day with her.

After the last session, we went to the after party at the Sheraton.

We walked past the skating rink with the Toronto sign, and took a picture.

We got to the hotel, went up the escalator, and got tickets for the drinks.

We went out into the patio and saw multiple food stations, a charcuterie station, and a live band.

It was time to network.

I initiated a conversation with a chinese guy, he works as a privacy engineer at Snapchat.

After talking briefly about his work relating to user data privacy, he went to take a call

I went to another table and talked to the guy who gave the one of the opening talk on open-source.

I asked him for advice about open source, how it makes money, whether there is enough support for contributors, about his favorite project, the next up and coming programming language, and about LLMs space.

I awkwardly left the conversation, and went found the Snapchat guy again.

We continued our conversation for the next 30 minutes or so, talking about his time at Google, his time at Snapchat, and about a lot of other things.

It was close to 8:30 p.m., and I started looking for C, but she went home.

Before leaving, I felt a sinking feeling, that I didn't talk to enough people.

Networking is hard, you need to find the right exploit vs explore balance. You have to have a long enough conversation to build rapport, but not too long that you're stuck with one person.

I had an idea about asking people directly if they were hiring, maybe that would be a good idea.

As a last-ditch effort, I went to the Astronomer booth and asked if they were hiring.

The marketing new hire put my information down in her notebook. I suspect it'll be buried in that page with no hopes of seeing the light.

I walked home, and stopped at a pan fried bun restaurant.

I ate the buns as I walked home.

It wasn't as sketchy as I thought it would be, there were people walking around, and the streets felt safe.

I got home and my airbnb host was in the kitchen.

He's from Paris, and has been living in Toronto for the past 7 years.

He works at UofT, and is an actor, and paints in his free time. I asked to see one of his paintings.

He showed one painted on a plank of wood. I asked what inspires me, he replies the wood. The patterns of the wood, the grain, and whatever comes to him.

I went into my room to finish my buns and the sesame pastry.

I took a shower, and finished up some homework.

I didn't feel like sleeping when I was there.

I watched new girl again.

I went to bed at 2 something.