FOLLOW YOUR CURIOSITY · 77 POSTS
Identity, retirement, and the continuing practice of beginning again.
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↗Kefei introduces a new way to explore Koffeemocha through a question, a topic, a remembered passage, or a connected reading path. He explains why publication order cannot always help a reader find the idea they need today.
↗In the reconstructed bedroom at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, a quiet window onto the garden creates an unexpected sense of spaciousness. A visiting tour group changes that feeling without changing the room.
↗At the Mer de Glace, the ice cave’s apparent permanence gives way to a different reality: a moving glacier requires a newly carved entrance each season. Machinery and protective coverings become part of the story.
↗A transfer day becomes an unexpected invitation into Toulouse’s evening life. Music, runners, volunteers, and a cheering crowd interrupt a carefully planned route back to the hotel.
↗A road trip through France begins in Barcelona, inspired by the Tour de France’s Grand Départ. The changed route brings practical complications and a more meaningful kind of preparation.
↗After nearly six months away from publishing, Kefei prepares to return through travel. Family rhythms have shifted, a new journey is approaching, and ideas developed in quiet now need to meet everyday decisions.
↗Borrowing the engineer’s idea of a safety factor, Kefei examines the margin between life’s demands and the capacity to absorb them. He reflects on cash, systems, and identity as three kinds of personal buffer.
↗Between individual habits and civilization-scale ambition lies the world people actually inhabit. Kefei brings the series back to that middle scale through the engineering idea of simulation.
↗Writing aboard a ship bound for Nassau, Kefei reflects on the ordinary pleasures of being a grandfather and the growing harmony between his Shanghai, California, and New York identities.
↗The opening Engineering Greatness essay starts with attention: a walk, a cup of coffee, a detail usually overlooked. Meaning grows through small practices that can be repeated and adjusted.
↗A memory of Urquhart Castle meets the story of Gatsby. Kefei considers the strain of a self built around performance, the wish to reverse time, and ambition that has lost its grounding.
↗A performance of The Great Gatsby prompts a return to the foundations of a meaningful life. Kefei traces a path from structural engineering through cloud systems toward the work of reflection.
↗A conversation or essay may resonate briefly and then fade. Kefei reflects on writing as a rhythm that lets meaning return, and on readers who carry an idea into another life.
↗A reunion brings Tongji alumni to Shanghai Tower forty years after graduation. A sculpture near the summit prompts a reflection on strength, restraint, and the possibilities of an encore chapter.
↗Approaching a fortieth university reunion, Kefei returns to the language of his offshore engineering education. The ocean, structures, and uncertain forces become ways of reflecting on a life.
↗This October 2025 letter records Kefei’s early experiments with Sora 2 and the possibility of expressing reflection through short moving scenes. It invites readers to treat creativity as something to practice.
↗A guide to reading Being Bold with a particular need in mind. Kefei organizes earlier essays into pathways for momentum, perspective, courage, quiet, and designing an encore chapter.
↗Two years in New York become a chance to consider what Being Bold means. Writing connects memory, identity, family, and the move from a professional career into an encore life.
↗A family outing on the Serpentine turns comic when a drifting pedal boat needs help and its rescuer slips into the water. Kefei and his wife eventually free themselves by reversing, adjusting their steering, and coordinating their effort.
↗The fairy tale of the Bremen Town Musicians gives Kefei a way to reflect on second chances and belonging. Its aging animals discover companionship before reaching their intended destination, a story that resonates during his anniversary journey through northern Germany.
↗Eight days of travel become a series of imagined conversations with figures including Luther, Gropius, Wagner, Bach, and Goethe. Kefei explicitly presents these AI-assisted passages as literary reflections, using the journey’s places to explore courage, clarity, silence, and change.
↗The Egypt series closes with an undignified travel mishap: stomach trouble, an urgent restroom visit, and a pair of communal slippers near Cairo’s Al-Azhar Mosque. Kefei finds himself laughing at an experience far removed from the grandeur of temples and monuments.
↗Exhaustion in Luxor interrupts a journey filled with monuments and reflection, bringing Kefei’s attention back to the body carrying him through it. His interpretation of Ramesses II and the Sed Festival becomes a personal metaphor for renewal.
↗A friend’s offer to order coffee produces an ambiguous reply: “half and half.” The misunderstanding sends Kefei into a reflection on writing, interpretation, and the space he leaves for readers to bring their own experience.
↗Returning to the Met after Egypt, Kefei finds a personal mirror in the reconstructed sculptures of Hatshepsut. His reading of their fragmentation and restoration leads to questions about belonging, unconventional leadership, and the pieces of identity that survive disruption.
↗A visit to Taipei after Shanghai prompts Kefei to compare his impressions of movement and stagnation with his first year in New York. The anniversary of his transition becomes a chance to ask how much reflection has turned into action.
↗Tea, humid air, and a view from Jiufen slow Kefei into a different way of inhabiting the present. Comparing that experience with Shanghai, he uses geography as a metaphor for the difference between familiar roots and a changed inner posture.
↗A surprised remark about Chinese television in a Shanghai Disneyland hotel sends the family into laughter. For a moment, Kefei’s familiar association with Disneyland has placed him on the wrong side of the world.
↗Early departures, heat, and fatigue make Egypt a setting for Kefei’s reflection on deliberately chosen challenges. He considers the difference between meaningful effort and strain that simply depletes, including the need to listen to the body and rest.
↗Marking the newsletter’s first anniversary, Kefei revisits his move from structural engineering into technology, the dot-com collapse, and the financial crisis. He recalls how uncertainty reshaped his understanding of adaptability, leadership, and the value of continuing to build.
↗A narrow opening in a limestone wall at the Met draws Kefei toward a partially hidden statue of Kaemsenu. The effort of slowing down and looking closely turns an ordinary museum visit into a meditation on presence.
↗Remembering the choice not to display college banners at home, Kefei considers the relationship between educational prestige and a life’s longer arc. He values continuing growth, integrity, trust, and the ability to change direction after formal milestones have passed.
↗Kefei arrives in Egypt with familiar images and an implicit checklist, then finds those expectations complicated by his guide’s layered stories. The idea of a palimpsest gives him a way to understand a place whose earlier traces remain within later chapters.
↗An alumni gathering leads Kefei to think about community beyond shared origins. He introduces five writers whose work, in his reading, explores career pivots, later-life possibilities, creative change, loss, and renewal.
↗A crowded Egypt itinerary leaves Kefei moving through extraordinary places without always feeling that he has arrived. At Karnak and in the Valley of the Kings, pausing changes his relationship with the journey.
↗Egypt gives Kefei a way to deepen the encore chapter that began after retirement and continued through his move to New York. He describes the journey as an invitation to renew curiosity and reconsider what matters in later life.
↗This NotebookLM discussion transcript revisits the ten themes of Kefei’s Egypt reflections in a conversational format. It moves through renewal, presence, curiosity, legacy, resilience, relationships, self-reflection, individuality, physical well-being, and play.
↗Two years after his last scrum meeting at OpenText, Kefei reflects on replacing the structure of engineering leadership with writing, mentorship, and a more deliberate relationship with himself. The unfamiliar stillness after work becomes part of that transition.
↗After an exhausting journey through Cairo, Aswan, and Luxor, Kefei considers why a trip can matter even when it offers little rest. Early departures, ancient monuments, and shared moments along the Nile become ten reflections on curiosity, legacy, connection, and renewal.
↗An Easter lecture aboard a Nile cruise draws Kefei's recent reflections on mortality, monuments, and the Suez Canal into one conversation. Egyptian myths of loss and reassembly become a lens for thinking about how people give suffering and continuity meaning.
↗After visiting the Grand Egyptian Museum, a dinner with friends turns from their parents' aging to their own uncertain futures. Kefei recounts a candid conversation about memory, dignity, personal wishes, and the difference between a long life and a life experienced fully.
↗Returning to SOM's New York office as a visitor, Kefei encounters a living reminder of his earlier work on San Francisco's airport terminal. The visit revives the question of what his career might have become had he remained in structural engineering.
↗An old Tongji University video circulates among friends, who recognize a young Kefei before he recognizes himself. Clothes, a watch, and a teaching scene open a conversation about the person they remember and the identity he barely noticed forming.
↗Breaking a pause in publication, Kefei explains how travel and reflection redirected his attention toward the human questions beneath a technology career. A visit to West Point helps crystallize thoughts about purpose, character, and the legacy of daily choices.
↗Written around the 2025 Lunar New Year, this essay responds to market turbulence surrounding DeepSeek through the symbolism of renewal. Kefei compares contrasting business approaches and draws a personal analogy between dependable foundations and the ability to change direction.
↗Kefei draws on his seismic engineering background to think about resilience in everyday life. Remembering research on structures under stress, he uses flexibility and energy absorption as metaphors for responding to career pressure, burnout, and unexpected change.
↗This letter announces Kefei's 2025 focus on millennial readers navigating ambition and well-being. Prompted by the tragic story of AI researcher Felix Hill, it asks how professional achievement can become entangled with a person's sense of worth.
↗A chance meeting in Shanghai reunites Kefei with the colleague who shared his first day in Silicon Valley decades earlier. The encounter recalls the uncertainty of changing professions and the companionship that made a new beginning less solitary.
↗A bowl of hot soup gives Kefei a playful way to think about proximity. Retirement, grandparenting, and city life each require judging when to come closer, when to step back, and how to preserve warmth without overwhelming anyone.
↗The final chapter of Kefei's fictional odyssey brings his imagined companions, Leonardo da Vinci and Jean-Paul Sartre, to the last chamber of a mysterious tower. A glowing artifact offers each traveler a separate doorway after their shared trials.
↗Chapters eight through fourteen continue Kefei's fictional journey with imagined versions of Leonardo da Vinci and Jean-Paul Sartre. Following an artifact through hidden chambers and surreal landscapes, the trio confronts younger selves, distorted reflections, and tests of cooperation.
↗In the opening seven chapters of this fictional adventure, a mysterious object found in Central Park brings imagined versions of Leonardo da Vinci and Jean-Paul Sartre into Kefei's apartment. Their explorations of New York turn coffee, architecture, and city noise into arguments about action and reflection.
↗This announcement introduces Kefei's first fiction project, The Trio's Odyssey: NY and Beyond. An earlier imagined café discussion develops into a serialized adventure featuring Leonardo da Vinci, Jean-Paul Sartre, a mysterious artifact, and a narrator trying to reconcile their competing impulses.
↗Rereading a picture book at his daughter's suggestion returns Kefei to the storeroom of his aunt's bookstore. Childhood illustrations, copied words, and his mother's encouragement help explain a fascination with storytelling that continued beneath an engineering career.
↗A fishing trip on Great South Bay takes an unexpected turn when the boat loses its anchor. The resulting drift gives Kefei a metaphor for writing that remains lively yet lacks a clear connection to its readers.
↗Over coffee in Shanghai, Kefei helps a young professional named Ray reconsider a career spanning corporate work, finance, and a food plaza venture. Experiences that initially appear disconnected become material for a more coherent entrepreneurial story.
↗Watching Blossoms Shanghai with his mother prompts Kefei to revisit the life he left in 1990 and the identities he developed afterward. The drama's fictional protagonist becomes a mirror for questions about language, belonging, ambition, and emotional connection.
↗Episode 0 documents an experiment using Google NotebookLM to generate a two-voice conversation about Kefei's writing. The accompanying transcript revisits his move from California to New York as an occasion for reflection on family, adaptability, and the choices that shape a new chapter.
↗In this archive announcement, Kefei introduces an experiment using Google NotebookLM to revisit earlier Koffeemocha posts through generated audio discussions. He hopes a different format will reveal connections and overlooked ideas in his own writing.
↗Kefei stages an imaginary conversation with Leonardo da Vinci while walking through New York. The fictional exchange connects exercise, neighborhood observation, and writing to a question running through retirement: how do daily actions shape a sense of self?
↗A new school year for Kefei's grandchildren marks his family's first anniversary in New York. Their progress in swimming gives him a language for describing his own adjustment to city routines, physical challenges, and a changing identity after retirement.
↗During a return to Pleasanton, Kefei reflects on choosing an active retirement in New York. He introduces his idea of a life tax: the personal cost of giving up connection, spontaneity, or meaningful experiences to optimize financial savings.
↗Kefei recalls choosing a university program partly to remain in Shanghai and avoid beginning college with English. Studying offshore structural engineering and German at Tongji brought unexpected cultural influences, while poetry and friendships competed with academic priorities.
↗Writing from early retirement, Kefei asks new graduates to picture the life they hope to reach beyond their careers. He sketches a personal model organized by decades, linking talent, relationships, responsibility, adaptability, and preparation for later life.
↗Watching a replay of the Paris 2024 Olympic opening ceremony, Kefei is moved by the rain, the rooftop torchbearer, and Celine Dion's performance. He reads these images as reminders of perseverance, shared effort, and the emotional force of a public celebration.
↗After his cross-country journey, Kefei rereads his travel essays and introduces the Being Bold newsletter under the Koffeemocha identity. His discussion of perception becomes a way to explain why personal experiences can support different readings of the same world.
↗Reaching New York, Kefei gathers the lessons of his cross-country drive into a closing reflection. The recap moves through friendship, career changes, natural landscapes, education, sports, and family, showing how each stop contributed to his thinking about retirement.
↗After a long drive to Indianapolis, Kefei and his wife explore downtown landmarks and enjoy a familiar Chinese meal. The city's sporting associations bring back memories of Reggie Miller and the professional chapter Kefei was living during those basketball years.
↗Visiting his wife's longtime friend in Des Moines, Kefei hears a story of movement from scientific work into business and adventurous travel. The friend's current project is rebuilding a travel van with detailed improvements for future journeys.
↗Visiting the University of Colorado Boulder, Kefei remembers an unsuccessful doctoral application and briefly imagines the life an acceptance might have opened. An unexpected conversation with an older electrical engineering graduate student redirects that backward glance toward present possibilities.
↗At Mount Rushmore, Kefei focuses on sculptor Gutzon Borglum's relationship to his subjects and uses it to consider the influence of people he has admired. The visit recalls an encouraging exchange from his years working as a tour guide in Shanghai.
↗Returning to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone beneath an overcast sky, Kefei notices a quieter landscape than the dramatic scene he saw at sunset. Diffused light draws his attention toward rock colors, formations, and the stillness surrounding the viewpoints.
↗Entering Yellowstone from the south, Kefei and his wife move from a missed Old Faithful eruption to the colors of Grand Prismatic Spring and an evening at the canyon. The account follows the small decisions and changing scenes of a day spent exploring.
↗A deliberate detour from Salt Lake City toward Jackson and Yellowstone recalls Kefei's departure from structural engineering for a new career in Silicon Valley. He describes that earlier change as a difficult reset after years of specialized education and practice.
↗Driving east from Reno to Salt Lake City, Kefei revisits a route associated with his move west after completing his doctorate in 1994. The landscape brings back the anticipation and uncertainty surrounding his first engineering job in the United States.
↗The first day of Kefei's drive from Pleasanton to New York ends in Reno, a place tied to family ski trips. Reconnecting with old friends adds another layer of memory, while dinner and a neighborhood walk open a conversation about retirement choices.
↗Announcing his June–July 2024 drive from Pleasanton to New York, Kefei frames the trip as a reflection on purpose after early retirement. His engineering career supplies images of foundations, preparation, and choosing opportunities that help carry a life forward.
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