Current Aspirations
I am currently working for Sonera in Berkeley as an IC design engineer. It is my first full-time role since
finishing my undergraduate degree at Cal in May of 2023.
I am plan on continuing to work full-time while beginning to pursue a master's degree starting this Fall.
I am also practicing music again, and plan on performing live shows again in the near future.
Bio
I was born and raised in San Jose, California until the age of eight. In 1988 my father got a new job that took us to the dry heat summers of Antioch, back when there were still mostly orchards surrounding us, and a population of ~25,000 people.
I lost interest in academics during high school, instead focusing on football, wrestling, and racing cars; and not in that particular order. I also began to teach myself programming languages for fun, in which I made silly programs using Visual Basic during the America Online era of the Internet.
Barely graduating from Deer Valley HS in 1999, and not knowing what to do with myself, I began to attend Diablo Valley College to take computer science classes. However, I did not enjoy the classroom as much as my bedroom in the middle of the night. I did not enjoy school, and at that time in my life I was not interested in applying myself. I was more interested in modifying and racing cars.
I moved back to San Jose in 2001, working full-time at a gas station while now attending West Valley College in Saratoga. On the weekends I would go to the race tracks with a group of friends that all owned MKIV Toyota Supra turbos. One of those friends that would significantly alter my direction in life. He loaned me his classical guitar.
I quickly became obsessed with learning the guitar and playing music. I dropped out of college and practiced at all the hours I could when not working at a gas station, delivering flowers, and as a security guard at Altera--way back before Intel acquired them.
In 2004 I left San Jose, and moved to a campground in Tuolumne, which is close to Sonora, and about an hour from Yosemite. I lived a minimal and simple life so that I didn't have to pay many bills. This way I was able to devote most of my time developing as a musician. I began cooking to earn a living, and also raked pine needles, as it is a lucrative business for folks surrounded by a forest.
In 2007 I moved to San Francisco to attend the Blue Bear School of Music, and began to play with other people in bands. Through Blue Bear I was blessed to meet Johnny Nitro, who took me under his wing and started letting my play with his band throughout the Bay Area, and at the Saloon in North Beach. The Saloon is one of the oldest blues bars in SF, and Nitro played there every Friday and Saturday night for over twenty years until he passed away in February of 2011.
Johnny passed the torch on to me during those few years I got to know him, and he taught me how to really play the guitar, and with other musicians. I moved to North Beach shortly after he his death, and began playing at the Saloon with my own band that same year. I feel very fortunate to have been able to do so, and I had many great experiences there.
I love music, and I especially love playing music for other people. When you get into a groove with your bandmates, and the audience responds to you, there is no better feeling in the world. But for some reason, I started getting the urge to go back to school around 2014. I always loved math and physics when I was in school, even though I didn't apply myself. I also started feeling age catching up with me, and I was definitely living the starving artist lifestyle.
I had actually registered at City College of SF in the summer of 2014, but I didn't follow through because of a full-time job opportunity that came up. It was with a start-up company in SF that only lasted six months, and I was back to scraping by in 2015. I lived that way for two more years, never pulling the trigger on going back to school because of feeling like I couldn't afford it.
Then in the summer of 2017 I saw a poster for the new Free City program from CCSF. Community college tuition was going to be free for SF residents starting in the Fall. Immediately this felt like a sign, and I registered to go back. I was still working full-time as an assistant head chef of events for Foxtail Catering, so I only went part-time for the first year. I only started with physics and math (had to start with trigonomery and algebra), and I also always wanted to learn Spanish. I thought I would just get an AA in physics, so that I would complete a goal, and be done with school.
After the first year my passion for education was reignited. I kept gradually increasing my units each semester, and at the same time decreasing the hours I worked. Eventually engineering became the path I chose, because it combines math, physics, and actually fabricating physical things. I was not expecting to get accepted to UC Berkeley, in fact I was really just hoping that San Jose State would be in the cards. But I decided to apply anyways, and fortunately I was. I had to sacrifice playing any live music gigs for almost four years. It was an arduous journey, but well worth it. I am also able to make my own amplifiers and guitars now. How cool is that?