Last weekend a bunch of Spotify collleagues and I took our first sailing classes at Manhattan Yacht Club in Jersey City. I could get used to this sport. The sun was brutal though. I’ll never get used to that.

In March 2015, about twenty colleagues and I went on a Spotify-organized surf trip to Santa Teresa, Costa Rica for a week of surf lessons. The company, surf, and food were unforgettable. One of Spotify’s social events organizers knew a group of traveling Swedish surf instructors, and helped get a group discount for Spotifiers and their guests. The total cost of lodging, lessons, and daily breakfast and lunch was about $650 for a week.

The relaxing mini-resort where we stayed. It had a pool, lounge areas, and a small cafe.

The best memories I have from the trip are waking up at the crack of dawn every day, grabbing a surf board, and rushing headlong into the water. The sun was gentle in the early morning, but the waves were not. The force and speed of the ocean awed and at times terrified me. I’d paddle like mad to get over waves, but every once in a while, a monster swell would catch me at the worst moment. The crest of the wave would hit me like a hammer and sweep me aside like a match stick. I was taught to cover my head with my arms to prevent the surf board from giving me a concussion. Eventually I learned to do a turtle roll and was able to see a bit ahead of time if a wave would be large or small.

I visited the southern UK with my parents last March. We visited the coast where I took a photo of the English Channel and posted it on Facebook with the caption, “I’m looking across the English Channel now wondering if I have what it takes to swim across to France. It’s 21 miles across at its narrowest point and the fastest swimmer made it across in a little over seven hours and the slowest one was 27 hours. Average water temperatures in the summer are 14-18 degrees Celsius.”

My high school swim coach Jen saw it and said, “If you are seriously considering, let me know — I have many friends who have done this swim (yes I hang out with weirdos)!”. Let’s start with something a bit more realistic I said. Jen encouraged me to participate in the annual Wayland Three Mile Swim which she organizes. The race takes place in Lake Cochituate, a small body of water in Wayland, Massachusetts which borders my hometown of Wellesley.

So I trained religiously for three months. A couple of days before June 19, I took a bus from New York City back to Wellesley for the open water swim that would start at 7:30AM.

Here are the slides from my QCon NYC 2016 talk titled “Reach Production Faster with Containers in Testing.” in various formats. All formats of “Reach Production Faster with Containers in Testing” by David Xia are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

More formats here:

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I’ve had some strange swimming experiences.

In 2012 I vacationed on a tiny cay in Belize with a group of college friends. The island was so small that its surface area was probably equal to that of a medium-sized suburban house. An even smaller cay lay a quarter of a mile away with nothing but white sand, coral reefs, and pristine blue water separating them. One day I decided to swim to the smaller island and back. I wore a long-sleeved shirt and pants to not get sunburned and waded into the water with my snorkel mask. I carefully made my way around the sharp corals near the island. Once the water became deep enough, I was surrounded by nothing but deep blue water. I couldn’t see the bottom or any distinguishable shapes in the ocean.

Photo by Todd Quackenbush is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

I started seeing ghostly shapes swimming around me. I was scared because I wasn’t sure if I was seeing large fish or if my eyes were just playing tricks on me. I had seen barricudas, rays, and sharks in the water on previous days. I kept swimming. By now I was halfway to the other island. After about 20 minutes I reached shore. The ocean’s depths and creatures made me feel naked and vulnerable and at times like I was going crazy. But I stuck it out and felt strangely triumphant afterwards.

I was six and attending summer camp. The counselors occasionally took us to the Evelyn Kirrane Aquatics Center in Brookline, Massachusetts. One day I stepped into the deep-end of a pool without knowing and began to panic. I tried screaming but couldn’t get my mouth out of the water long enough to take a breath and exhale. I started gulping a lot of water. Luckily, it was a small pool, and I eventually made my way to the wall. I was surprised, however, that I couldn’t signal for help and that no one seemed to notice my distress. Later in life I learned it’s difficult for an untrained person to notice that someone is drowning. Many small children drown each year just a short distance away from their parents.

I lap swim regularly at the Chelsea Recreation Center. Multiple swimmers share a single lane by swimming counter-clockwise. One day, another swimmer was swimming towards me in the opposite direction. According to the rules, we each stuck to our respective right-hand sides. He must’ve been a large person because his wake was bigger than I’m used to. I tilted my head to the side and took a breath just as his wake hit me. Water unexpectedly entered my mouth and nose. I was surprised by how my brain went into auto-pilot emergency mode. I tensed up and began to flail involuntarily. The water and lack of breath was a strong signal to my brain that overrode everything else.

This is a story of I jumped through countless complex bureaucratic, legal, and financial hurdles of Murphy’s Law and emerged with less liquidity and more debt. OK. I’m being facetious, but what happened to me is the easiest and most straightforward way to buy a property. Seriously. The events below transpired in New York City. The buying process may be different in other areas, but the most of the process such as contract of sale and mortgage application is the same across the U.S.

By RKO radio pictures (eBay item photo front photo back) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Promotional photo of Cary Grant and Myrna Loy for the film Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948)

• My mother found an affordable co-op unit for sale while browsing StreetEasy on her iPad during Christmas vacation in 2015.
• We noticed the listing was made by the seller himself. I emailed him that night.
• The seller promptly called me. I scheduled a viewing of the unit which is at the top of a six-floor walk-up.
• My parents and I climbed the six flights of stairs and met the seller who was a nice man named Alan. We walked around and inspected his unit.
• We asked Alan about the apartment’s condition, the co-op’s financials and rules, the property manager, etc.
• We sat down with Alan, chatted, and negotiated. My mother pointed out neither party has a broker which is good because brokers take a 6% commission. We felt out Alan on how many offers he’s received and what they are.
• My mother verbally offered Alan 94% of the listing price. He said he’ll see. My mom seemed confident he’d take it. I was impressed by her ability to knock off over $20K right off the bat.

I can’t believe it’s been four years since I started working at Spotify. Every Friday, the Technology, Product, and Design group at Spotify’s New York City office gathers to eat freshly catered snacks, introduce new hires, announce “wins of the week,” and commemorate the anniversaries of existing employees.

Last Friday was my turn to stand before the couple hundred members of TPD. It’s customary for people celebrating their employment anniversaries to speak about their favorite Spotify memory. I don’t get many chances to address so many of my colleagues at once. So I took this opportunity to prepare a short statement. It went something like this.

What’s my favorite Spotify memory? I have a hard time with this question because I don’t have a good answer. There’s so many.

I find another question more interesting. That question is, “What, after four years, makes me look forward to getting up every weekday morning and working at Spotify?” Four years is a long time to be doing anything continuously.

I can tell you what’s not the main reason. It’s not the snacks or perks or the amazing office. It’s not even Celebration X [Spotify’s massive 10-year anniversary party in Stockholm]. These are all great things, but they’re not the main reason I show up everyday.

The main reason is values. I’ve never been at a place where I share so many values with my colleagues and the company. My teammates like Matt and Staffan and Mats share my values of hard work, competence, and personal responsibility (and beer). The company constantly strives to become a better version of itself through being risk-taking, passion, and compassion.

Every day is a new memory. Every day I feel blessed to be here working with all of you. Thank you.

On April 16, seven friends and I went skydiving at Skydive the Ranch in New Jersey. We rented a black SUV (a Hyundai that had terrible acceleration and braking) and each did a tandem dive. It was a first for many of us including me.

My takeaway was that tandem diving out of a plane at 14-thousand feet is easy. The instructor takes care of everything. I just had to sit back and enjoy the view. If anything went wrong and I died, I wouldn’t feel that bad about it because I wasn’t the one who screwed it up.

Driving seven of your friends out of and back into New York City is nerve-wracking, on the other hand. I was personally responsible for everyone’s lives. Trying to return the rental car on time while driving through Union Square in Manhattan where there’s a pedestrian fair going on, ambulances and cop cars, and drivers double parking wherever they want is very stressful.

Hopefully Avis doesn’t notice the small white scratch on the mirror of their mint condition car (18 miles when I got it) that was left when I managed to squeeze through two city buses before they crushed me.

Thanks to Nanette for editing and agreeing to let me publish this and to my friends who gave me feedback.

“It’s almost 2016. Let’s reset our relationship next year. OK?” Nanette asked me two days before Christmas Eve. I couldn’t bring myself to say yes. I felt I would be lying.

I told Nanette we should break up. We spent the next two days crying until our eyes became red and puffy. I had bought bus tickets for the night of Christmas Eve to travel back to my family in Boston. It was cold and pouring that evening, but Nanette still accompanied me to the bus stop. I got on the bus and asked her to go back home. She stood outside in the rain waiting for the driver to pull out while looking at me through the windows. It broke my heart to see her standing on the sidewalk, her tears mixing with the rain.