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 to connect to my Unity app at a HP Sprout hackathon in 2014. We won - but it wasn't a first place so I must have left in despair before the group photo. Later, we would also win Best Buy First Place at Jason's Launch Hackathon in 2015.
Chieu and I traveled on the cheap. She refused to learn Esperanto so it seemed awkward to use the Passporto Servo with her, but we found cheap ways to see the world: budget airline, transit hacks, crashing with friends (eventually "Google Hotels"). Our first major trip involved the traversal of every single region of Finland by train - being an early virtual reality dev, I found it amusing that it was called the VR, albeit the experience was real. When we got to Rovaniemi, we found it amusing that the signage included Japanese, because apparently they loved Christmas. We tried out both saunas at various friend homes - and for the one region we couldn't figure out accommodations or crashing on the train, we got a hotel - and to our delight, it had a sauna in its ensuite bathroom! We saw brief glimpses of the aurora in October and wondered about future travel - neither of us would expect that I'd not get to visit Japan before her passing.
I somehow convinced Chieu to spend on fine dining, as a form of ephemeral artistry. We tried Kajitsu, and then shortly Chieu converted from vegetarian to pescatarian. Eventually, Chieu would introduce me to Dominique Crenn, with whom I'd collaborate on HoloYummy with.
By this time, I was becoming somewhat notorious for winning too many hackathons and had some trouble with stalkers. Chieu helped me try putting a civil restraining order together. I never got to thank her properly for this, but also, I realize I had lashed out at several paramours at the time for not helping.
What people talk less about is Chieu's aromantic asexuality. I had suffered from the type of breakup where it felt like I'd lost a lung or a heart in 2014 - Chieu found such traditional relationships horrific and explained that asexual relationships are always and forever. So in a way she had taken the gauntlet, done what my boyfriend at the time should have done.
Chieu and I were again in a sauna - this time at the Santa Clara Marriott, after Augmented World Expo 2015 - reflecting on Metaio's acquisition by Apple (to become ARKit). Just a few years ago, everyone was basically indie and the now-corporate conference was all just people meeting up and showing cool AR projects. But also, I wanted more - I sighed - When would I ever figure out my game as a founder?
9 years later, and I'm not sure if I've figured it out. I've won bigger hackathons such as TechCrunch Disrupt Grand Prize - and I've also won a SIGGRAPH Best of Show at Real-Time Live - and I'm somehow working on a self-funded startup at the intersection of two hard fields - XR and AI 3D. And yet it is the raw invention of a new innovative product that drives me. I am starting to embrace the possibility that I am an artist whose art is mistaken as funded startups, but yet, there is a workaholic part of me that incessantly tests out the model zoo of gen AI 3D the way Chieu methodically travels.
And thus, I returned from my time away from checking non-startup-core messages, to find that my friend Chieu had gone on without me.
That elusive day never arrived.
Chieu once remarked at the unlikely odds of either of us existing and less so, us meeting. She has always been meticulous about being comprehensive on every single city or country list, and she was going through the peakbagging list.
For fun, I have been creating various AI characters, and I'd like to invite anyone to send me the archive of Chieu communications for me to add to "ChieuLLM's knowledgebase"
And: The last link I sent her was regarding the public ceremony in September to deposit at the Arctic World Archive - https://arcticworldarchive.org/deposit-information/. If you have any Chieu information you'd like to deposit, let's do it!