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My thoughts on software development, design, and life.

Cover image for The Monday Letter (March 9th, 2026)
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The Monday Letter (March 9th, 2026)

March 10, 2026

Michael reflects on the importance of consistent practice in honing skills while sharing insights from his weekend skiing trip and current reading pursuits.

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Day One: My internship at Amazon

August 23, 2022

📅 Despite the edited date, this post was actually written and published on August 23rd, 2022. It's been about two weeks since I wrapped up my position as a Software Development Engineer (SDE) Intern at Amazon, and I wanted to reflect on my time there this summer. I often get asked about the full end-to-end experience of my time at Amazon, so before I get into what I worked on and what I learned, I'll first do a full re-wind to my initial application. Working towards a FAANG offer In recruiting ...

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The rescinded internship offer playbook

July 18, 2022

📅 Despite the edited date, this post was actually written and published on July 17th, 2022. This upcoming fall, I was set on making a number of fairly major life changes. Firstly, I was about to move from one of the world's largest technology companies to a cryptocurrency start-up. Secondly, I was going to pack my bags and move from Canada to Palo Alto, California. And thirdly, I was going to do it all basically on my own. As of Thursday, I've been thrown back to square zero. Due to pressures i...

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Fill your cup

July 3, 2022

📅 Despite the edited date, this post was actually written and published on July 3rd, 2022. Every single day, you start out as an empty cup. Humbling, right? Beyond your laundry list of personal to-dos, slog of tasks at work, and mountain of messages to which you need to respond, you actually need to focus on just one thing each day. And that's filling your cup. The inspiration I came across an idea loosely linked to this end product from YouTuber Ali Abdaal. His rather simple, but genius sugges...

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ProjectTechnicalSchool

Predicting Credit Card Defaults

April 19, 2022

The following blog post was written for the final homework submission of CPSC 330, UBC's "Applied Machine Learning" course. In the course, my partner Max and I got a hands-on introduction to machine learning with Python via sklearn. hw6.pdf Problem Defaulting on a credit card payment is a challenging situation for all those involved. The individual who defaulted is tasked with rebuilding their credit score, and the issuer is laden with the debt. Ideally, a financial institution could predict whe...

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ProjectTechnicalSchool

jCite

June 5, 2021

Create and manage your citations without all the headaches! Background This project was made for CPSC 210, a UBC second-year course focused on software construction. The course uses Java, and likewise this project was made using Java and JavaFX for the UI. I asked my girlfriend if she had any project ideas, and she mentioned she struggled keeping track of citations for her assignments, so I wanted to build a tool that could meet her needs. I felt the exact same feeling when I wrote my 4,000 word...

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ProjectTechnical

groUber

August 7, 2020

groups + Uber = groUber. Source code available here. groUber is aimed to help event planners create carpools and was built for To the Moon and Hack, an MLH event. (If you're going to use this project to plan your event, remember to stay 6ft apart!) Motivation This project was built by a group of 5 students from UBC in Vancouver, BC who love automating things. And one horrific task all of us have run into when planning our events is creating a workable carpool schedule. It's a great option for ge...

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My COVID summer

July 18, 2020

📅 Despite the edited date, this post was actually written and published on July 18th, 2020. It's a Friday after classes. I'm grabbing a quick bite at one of UBC's only on-campus sit-down restaurants with a close friend, and a Gmail notification appears on my phone. As soon as I saw "UBC" in the subject line, I already knew what it was going to be. Students had already been buzzing about it for the past week, and I even tweeted about it. We were finally going online. Classes are suspended at the...

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ProjectTechnical

Massive Volunteering

May 4, 2020

A website built to connect high school students with organizations actively searching for volunteers. Here's the GitHub repository. Background In high school, I completed the IB program. For my Computer Science Internal Assessment (IA) I decided to build a website for a club I was also helping lead. The basic goal was to be able to allow organizations looking for volunteers to advertise opportunities directly to high school students. Usage Volunteers can create an account and profile. Organizati...

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ProjectTechnicalWork

CSV Upload Tool

April 30, 2020

Upload and match CSV data. Simple, but practical! Check out the project for yourself, here. Background This project was made for Artesian software, to be used in a more large scale project. Usage A user can upload a CSV file with any data, and then can match their "headers" (the columns) to the one's anticipated by the app. With these pairings, the app then "reassigns" the user's data with the new headings and saves it to a SQLite database. Check out some screenshots below! How it's made The pro...

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