I found out on June 27, 2024 that my best friend Chieu passed away.
What are the odds of a CH-named Vietnamese refugee born in Lugano (in a rare Italian-speaking canton) of Switzerland who would later migrate to Houston - meeting a (norcal) valley girl mad-scientist-entrepreneur born in Taiwan with a Turkish name of Yosun - at Google I/O of all conferences on June 26, 2014?
Being more of the intrepid indie type at this point, my friends were starving artists and hungry hackers - not Googlers or suits. But albeit having made it to noogler status, Chieu would be poor for a bit longer. Shortly after, Chieu began her 9 month long waiting period as Google struggled to figure out how to place such undefinable brilliance.
Chieu followed me to her first hackathon, where I made fun of her for being the "useless girlfriend at a hackathon, watching anime in a corner." Somehow I convinced her to learn (something perhaps a bit too hackneyed practical for her obscure puzzling likes) a frontend javascript UI framework