Over the years I deleted a lot of links from this page, including people I used to look up to. What I looked up to was their schools. Back then I kept thinking, someone with my background getting to be friends with people from top universities, what did I ever do to deserve that. Don't laugh. I just thought very little of myself.

Time with friends changed that.

Hitomi told me his own links page was never really meant to go live. He called it a someday project. We went to Beijing for a competition together with his head wrapped in gauze, he had slipped in the shower, so he wrote code with one hand and still hammed it up for my camera. We came home with first prize and the grand prize.

Shaoxing's site returns a 404 now (writing this in 2020), but I keep the link. He is in Shanghai these days, working hard for his own life. He has always been a quiet person, silent most of the time, and I genuinely suspect he is the real thing when it comes to social anxiety, since he speaks very, very softly. But he has ideas. I learned a lot from him. Going to Nanjing together, the concepts he handed me, all those hours of him showing me something new. We wrote code together the whole summer of our second year, and I gave him rides to work on my scooter. He warned me that if I ran one more red light he would stop working with me. I argued back that rules are made by people. At an empty crossing with the light against you, do you go?

OrzFly is a seriously strong engineer, and he taught me a different attitude toward the craft. His talks and his posts changed me. His love for computers is something I still admire. He pointed me at a competition in Shanghai, I got lucky and won, and that turned into an opening I never expected. I have been in Hong Kong three years now because of it.

The world is enormous, and the people around you never stop bowing to whoever is one rung higher. These three gave me back the belief that I can do things myself. Look humility and timidity in the face. Don't be afraid to compare yourself with anyone, and then losing stops being frightening too.

I would love to go back to those college years. That is a selfish thing to want and it isn't going to happen, and I don't know whether that time was as good for them as it was for me. I have rewritten this paragraph too many times, so I'll leave it here.