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Now

·466 words·3 mins

What I’m doing now. Updated July 2025.
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Learning Etegami with My Wife
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Amy and I have declared 2025 to be our Year of Art. One form of art that has enthralled us is Etegami (絵手紙). Its charm lies in its dark sumi ink outlines that spread joyfully as you work the brush, and its use of gansai watercolors bring a playful nature to each art piece. A work of Etegami isn’t “complete” until it is sent to someone else (it is a postcard, after all). So if you’re in my circle of friends and family, be on the lookout for these “picture letters” in the mail. Follow our journey on Instagram etegami.love.

Amy and Andy are showing off their first Etegami artworks. They are holding up three painted postcards. Andy is holding up a painting of an acorn on a branch with a leaf. Amy is holding up two postcards. The first one is a painting of a golden ginkgo leaf. The second one is a painting of a red fall leaf. On the table in front of them is a gansai paint palette with 35 different colors, paint brushes, and various plants and flowers that they used as inspiration for their paintings. They appear in a classroom setting with various tables and chairs in the background.
Our first etegami artworks: An acorn, a golden ginkgo leaf, and a red fall leaf.

Personal Health
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Since November 2021, Amy and I have been using a personal trainer to get us to exercise. At first, I begrudgingly went and merely “allowed the exercise to happen to me”. It took a while, but now I look forward to meeting with our trainers Jeff and Mario. I can finally say that “I am the one choosing to do the exercise!”

Enjoying the Switch 2
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I love Nintendo so much. Their games, characters, and worlds are my favorites to jump into. My wife and I are happily playing Mario Kart World on my Switch 2. (Mario Kart meets Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater? Sign me up!)

While I agree that the Switch 2 Welcome Tour game should have been bundled with the system, I really like the idea of the Switch 2 creators making an entire game just to showcase the console’s meticulous detail and craftsmanship, down to its very screws. As a software engineer myself, I’ve dreamed of the opportunity to explain in great detail how a particularly complex piece of UI was made, or how elegant the data flow is from one part of an app to another. For now, I live vicariously through the Switch 2 team which was able to do just that with their Welcome Tour game.

Building this Blog
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Oh yeah! I’m also building this blog! I chose to use the Hugo static site generation tool and host it via GitHub Pages. This way, I have control over how I can express myself and how my content appears. The best part: I’m not beholden to any popular blogging platforms or newsletter services. I look forward to conveying my thoughts and beliefs on this blog, sort of like a public journal, and also providing advice and life tips to those who want to follow a similar path to me as a Software Engineer in Silicon Valley.

What is this page? This is a /now “Slash Page” inspired by Derek Sivers.
Discover more of my Slash Pages here.

Andy Reyes
Author
Andy Reyes
iOS Software Engineer, Storyteller, and Friend