After the previous year’s exhilaration of being in a radio karaoke competition, I realized that I really had let my love of singing fall to the wayside. So I bought a keyboard, learned a couple of songs, and took part in an open mic night for the first time. (I wouldn’t say that I was great by any means, but it was a start.)

Marriage was a conversation topic that Corey and I would casually visit from time to time, as he was undecided on whether or not it was something he would ever be interested in. Then one April night, in the midst of me being drugged up from kidney stone painkillers, he revealed that not only did he want to get married, but that he wanted us to do so…as soon as possible!

Other girls may have dreamt of their wedding forever, but I wasn’t one of them, so Corey and I purposely kept things simple — we had a private ceremony, then held a small reception following that. Despite restricting attendees to close family and friends, throwing everything together in a month was utterly chaotic. (For the handful of people considering this path — learn from my mistakes and avoid such insanity!) I’m still surprised that everything managed to work out!

Besides the three aforementioned highlights, my earlier half of the year had primarily been a blur of work. For many reasons, I knew that the time had come to move on; I hired a replacement and said goodbye to BillShrink in May.

It was only after I stopped working and had gotten all my green card paperwork mailed out that honeymoon plans began. The Miami part of our trip was fun, but Key West was where our fondest memories took place, and we left knowing that we would return again someday.

With the very real possibility that I would soon be working in San Francisco, Corey and I looked around for pet-friendly places further up the peninsula and ended up landing in Redwood City.

To further indulge my musical tendencies, I took voice lessons for a few months and went on to audition for The Voice. It didn’t work out, but I have no regrets!

We traveled again in September, though this time to Austin, Texas for a good friend’s wedding. Unfortunately, despite delightful hospitality, it turned out that Austin air did not agree with me, as I suffered from extreme hives for weeks and ended up having to take steroids after we got back.

Because two pets just weren’t quite enough, we went and added a Savannah cat to the household. Fingolfin, named for the King of the Elves in Tolkien mythology, has been endless amounts of both fun and trouble, as well as the cuddliest lap kitten to boot.

To cap off the crazy year, after a bit of interview madness and with my brand new semi-permanent residency, OkCupid was the company I started at in December. Or more specifically, OkCupid Labs, which is devoted to creating new products — dating and non-dating — that help people connect online. I’m hopeful that our team will have exciting things to show come late winter/early spring!

Now it’s the end of the year and we’re off to see friends to celebrate!

How was your year?

Interviewing is a bit similar to public speaking — not everyone is well suited to the task and some attempts only make you cringe. Having been both the interviewer and the interviewee, I’ve heard a lot of complaints about potential candidates, but there doesn’t seem to be as much scrutiny upon the interviewers themselves. So now I’ve gotten onto my tiny soapbox to suggest a few pitfalls to avoid:

1. Not being prepared: I don’t expect for a company to memorize my resume or even necessarily remember my name at the time I go in. Recently though, my sole interviewer wasn’t even sure what position I was applying for. There was also the awkward instance in which an interviewer stared blankly at me, clearly at a loss for things to ask, even though we’d been scheduled to chat for an hour.
   • If you’re forgetful or nervous, come up with a small list of questions in advance and bring it with you. Don’t feel like you have to go through all of it; just have the list handy as a fallback and steal glances as needed.
2. Being distracted: The hiring process can be grueling; you often have multiple people to go through and a limited amount of time to spare. Being inattentive and/or unfocused only hurts both sides, as you waste the applicant’s time and your own. The worst case I’ve encountered was when the company CEO continually rushed me through questions and kept calling me “Ella” even though I politely corrected him each time.
3. Asking for a complete resume walkthrough: Or for design jobs, asking for a complete portfolio walkthrough. This is tedious for the interviewee and just comes off as being lazy — even if you didn’t have the chance to look through everything beforehand, you have the resume/portfolio link on hand to peruse at your own convenience. Instead, ask for a brief background summary and ask about favorite/most challenging projects.
4. Forgetting the “sell”: While appropriate, a “business overview” spiel generally tends to be too dry to get me excited about potentially joining the company. On the other hand, genuine enthusiasm goes a long way and I love when employees tell me in their own words why the place is awesome.
5. Not having personable interviewers: As you evaluate the candidate, he/she is doing the same thing to you. That means that you not only need interviewers who are knowledgeable about the position, but ones who can positively convey the company culture. It’s utterly disappointing for me to enter an interview excited about the product and exit feeling let down by the team/environment.

There’s a large chance I’m merely preaching to the choir here; by no measure do I consider my own interviewing style to be remotely close to perfect. If any of these are part of your regular process, however, it’s probably time to reevaluate the approach.

I rolled out of bed before dawn on the 23rd. Every registrant had a specified audition time, and I was lucky enough to draw 7am. By the time I arrived, there was already a line around the building that sectioned off, then wove around the parking lot. My fellow hopefuls and I quickly bonded over nerves, excitement, and feeling slightly like herded cattle. Announcers repeatedly informed us via bullhorn that once we got inside the conference center, we’d have 3-5 hours more to wait (though it turned out to be more like 2-3).

A lot of people seemed unsure what to expect, but thanks to internet nerdery and Google-fu, I’d already found several accounts of this year’s audition process via blogs and YouTube videos from those in earlier cities. It was no surprise when we were eventually sat down in an auditorium and split off into groups of 10 right before lining up to see a producer.

For all the plethora of information, I hadn’t realized that there would be multiple producers; four groups were auditioning at any given time. In the hallway outside the Last Room(s), we heard belters pouring their soul into the approximate 30 seconds or so they had to impress. My group’s door opened, and the previous set of 10 filed out, getting their tryout wristbands snipped off one by one. I knew that not one of them had gotten a callback.

Then it was our turn. We walked into the powerfully air conditioned room and sat down once again in a row. The producer peered at us from behind his MacBook Pro and went through his opening spiel — remember to enjoy ourselves, get to the good part of our song quick, and watch him so that if he held his hand up, we’d know to stop. “If you forget the words to your song, just sing la la la or whatever — just keep going. Now, when I call your name, step forward.”

The producer had each of us state our age and the song we were going to sing. Only the male 17-year-old crooner was asked to go through a second song, although he wasn’t quite prepared for the request for a current number. “I mean, you’re 17, you know?” our judge remarked critically.

I was in the middle of our lineup. As I stepped forward and began Grace Potter’s “Nothing But the Water (Part I)”, my limbs refused to unfreeze themselves from fear, but my voice betrayed no nerves (THANK YOU, daily practicing). To my utter shock, I saw the producer initially register some pleasant surprise in his eyes and nod along, but by the chorus, I could see I’d lost him. I finished my song steadily, though without conviction.

The producer took a breath after Singer #10. “You know, the bar has been set so high from last season… I’m not going to schedule any of you for a callback.” He did ask for the 17-year-old to keep his phone on, just in case, “but if you don’t get a call by about 8pm, that’s it. Thank you [all] for being a part of NBC’s The Voice, Season 2.”

When I looked around, my relative zen was offset by stricken faces on both sides. One girl stayed behind as the rest of us stepped out. “It’s like I said,” I heard the producer explaining calmly. “The bar was set so high…”

Overall, I’m utterly relieved to have made it through without royally embarrassing myself and I definitely had fun throughout the morning. Will I try again sometime? I’m not so sure. Even if my voice somehow gets up to par, it’s still a casting rather than a pure audition, and I tend to favor new situations from which I get to learn and improve greatly, so…we shall see.

Oddly enough, some Facebook friends reacted strongly to my decision. I received a few lengthy messages that closed with well wishes, giving me the impression that I was moving away forever or dying, rather than detaching myself from one online profile.

While I haven’t missed Facebook itself so far, I was surprised by a particular consequence of leaving. Due to the popularity of Facebook’s platform, I’m now either partially or completely blocked from interacting on sites that rely on it (i.e. Techcrunch uses its commenting system while Turntable only allows Facebook for logins). Admittedly, I’ve never been a heavy user of such websites, but that doesn’t mean I want the option automatically removed.

Facebook’s pervasiveness bothers me. I’d prefer that no online monopoly ever forms, given that no single social network will ever be able to appeal to everyone, even when you limit the definition of “everyone” to include only those who would be interested in social networking at all. I’m not sure what will eventually happen to social networks in the future, whether there will remain a number of disjointed services or one to rule them all, but in the meantime, I’ve stopped being a part of one that I just don’t like very much.

It’s probably unfair, but for the longest time, I’ve felt like my whole life was defined by one man — ironically, a man whom I’ve not seen nor heard from in almost twenty years.

My father is a paranoid schizophrenic who has never wanted to face his reality. It was on a whim that we arrived in the US when I was five years old. Another impulse would result in my family staying — an incident by the side of the freeway wherein my father was spotted striking my mother. This was not the first instance in which he displayed violent tendencies.

He was arrested and after hearing our story, someone said to my mother: it’s now or never. So she took my sister and me and we ran. We stayed at a women’s shelter initially, then made our way to relatives in California. I have been here ever since.

Through high school and college, I had only one real priority: to stay in the country. I focused on finding a career path that would allow me to transition easily from a student to work visa, initially choosing accounting because of my mother’s assurances of its stability. It was a disastrous venture though, as I became dangerously depressed and my plummeting grades threatened to derail my visa status. Eventually, I followed my instincts and switched to web design and development instead.

In the midst of my chaotic life, while I was focusing on every other aspect, I met my now-husband (on the internet, no less). As the cliche goes, we fell in love and realized that we wanted to spend our lives together (a separate story for another time, perhaps?).

Now my green card paperwork is processing, and for the first time ever, I can actually step back and relax a bit. I have loved creating and improving user experiences on the web (and more recently, on mobile), but it was something I chose partially under pressure. I’ve waited a long time to be free of the legal constraints that come with immigration, so now I want to take the time to ask: what is it I really want to do in this life?

On a totally unrelated note, this year’s Halloween theme was harajuku. My favorite part was having to go to an auto place in costume because my car battery died and having the employees gape at me but say nothing out of fear that I was actually in my normal wear.

(A parody of the “Will It Blend” commercials. Photo credit: Wirehead)

If my condition had a Twitter account, today it’d be filled with riveting details such as: Managed to migrate self from bed to bathroom. Success! [12pm] and Why am I getting hot flashes? Can’t possibly be close to menopause, but having it as another of many symptoms is just mean [5pm].

It’s just a shame sheer willpower isn’t an adequate fix. But I suppose if I can’t just feel better and be out getting things done, at least I have good material for a neglected blog and potential awkward moments to create with acquaintances who ask, “So how’re you doing?”

Things I’ve been up to lately:

• Adopting a kitten with Corey and adjusting our household to her feisty moods
• Delving into design again at work (I was initially focusing only on UI implementation here) and learning to suck a bit less with/at jQuery/JavaScript
• Researching musical keyboards so that I can finally hunker down, buy one, and hopefully create something halfway decent. Hopefully?

Things I hope to get to at some point, but just haven’t made a priority (aka ‘I know I’m lame, and what I would like to do about it’):

• Actually keeping this site updated/making it not embarrassing for myself to look at or point people to
  • Good news: do plan at converting this into a tumblelog. Have yet to decide whether I want to create a Tumblr theme or delve into the functionalities of WordPress 3…

Today, Facebook removed its users’ ability to control who can see their own interests and personal information. Certain parts of users’ profiles, “including your current city, hometown, education and work, and likes and interests” will now be transformed into “connections,” meaning that they will be shared publicly. If you don’t want these parts of your profile to be made public, your only option is to delete them.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, on some of Facebook’s latest changes

Got to catch Florence and her machine live last night (from the very front row). She was adorable and fun and now I envy that voice even more.