https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/Recent content on David ChenHugo -- gohugo.ioFri, 03 Oct 2025 13:03:00 +0200https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/snippets/cook-rice-failed/Fri, 03 Oct 2025 13:03:00 +0200https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/snippets/cook-rice-failed/If you follow the instruction of cooking rice with a pot and time it correctly, you get perfect rice. If you don’t pay attention, though, something’s gonna go wrong. One time, I put the rice on the stove and let it cook. I thought it’s already done and went out shopping for stuff. When I came back home, my room was filled with a strong smell of rice. Here. Let me show you by example, what happens after letting your rice cook for 3 hours:https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/snippets/how-to-cook-rice/Sat, 30 Aug 2025 00:34:00 +0200https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/snippets/how-to-cook-rice/For Taiwanese (or Asian in general?), one of the essential survival skills in Europe is learning how to cook white rice without a rice cooker. As a Taiwanese, when we own a Tatung rice cooker here, we are instantly that legendary figure at the very top of the Taiwanese social pyramid. Put it up for sale second hand and some Taiwanese will grab it in seconds. But the truth is, in Europe, a rice cooker is not something every household has.https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/snippets/2025-06-11-good-presentation/Wed, 11 Jun 2025 01:02:00 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/snippets/2025-06-11-good-presentation/How do you know you’re a good presenter? When you do a presentation in a class and it is not a presentation skill course, and you are still able to engage your audience all the way through the presentation. That’s when you know it.https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/snippets/daily-yak-shaving/Sun, 29 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/snippets/daily-yak-shaving/originally posted on 4th of November, 2022 Lying in bed, listening to my favorite podcast one night… “What time is it?” I realized I might have been in bed for too long. I picked up my phone and unlocked the screen. Checked Slack just in case I missed an important update from my boss. Nothing new. What about Hacker News? Browsing now… Oh wait… Figma is acquired by Adobe? RIP.https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/snippets/2024-02-21-learning-how-to-draw/Wed, 21 Feb 2024 16:35:13 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/snippets/2024-02-21-learning-how-to-draw/I destroyed that face sorry about thathttps://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/snippets/2024-02-09-why-do-branding/Fri, 09 Feb 2024 22:40:32 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/snippets/2024-02-09-why-do-branding/The purpose of branding is for the whole organization to have a mission and a plan to follow internally. Everything it benefits from outside of the organization is just the byproduct.https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/snippets/2024-02-06-perfect/Tue, 06 Feb 2024 20:46:37 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/snippets/2024-02-06-perfect/“You are perfect as you are, and you can always be better.”https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/snippets/2024-02-06-the-friend-we-all-need/Tue, 06 Feb 2024 20:39:06 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/snippets/2024-02-06-the-friend-we-all-need/The friend we all need 😎https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/tools/fastmail/Sat, 03 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/tools/fastmail/https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/tools/heptabase/Sat, 03 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/tools/heptabase/https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/tools/todoist/Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/tools/todoist/https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/snippets/2024-01-31-drawing/Wed, 31 Jan 2024 20:27:28 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/snippets/2024-01-31-drawing/Documenting my drawing practice… how the heck do you draw faces properly?? I’m struggling 🥴https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/snippets/2024-01-30-my-own-platform/Tue, 30 Jan 2024 21:25:43 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/snippets/2024-01-30-my-own-platform/this is my Threads, X, twitter, Instagram, Facebook, whatever it is, however you call it. It’s complete freedom, and we all need it.https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/snippets/2024-01-30-testing-cms/Tue, 30 Jan 2024 14:12:42 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/snippets/2024-01-30-testing-cms/This is David testing Decap CMShttps://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/snippets/celebrate/Mon, 29 Jan 2024 22:45:33 +0800https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/snippets/celebrate/First post of my life snippets. If anyone asks why I don’t use social media, tell them because I choose to stay here. Cheers!https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/wrapping-up-2023/Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/wrapping-up-2023/At the end or the start of the year, it’s a great time to look back and see how things have been going in the past year. If you were to browse through this website, you would see that I wrote an article “2022 in Review“ to do this sort of reflection session. In the article, I reflected a lot on the year, and I also set goals for this year, 2023.https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/exit-taiwan-update-week-3/Sun, 31 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/exit-taiwan-update-week-3/Goals of the week Like I shared in the last week’s update , this week we only had one goal for ExitTaiwan, which was to complete the writer onboarding workflow. I didn’t have a clear idea of the complete workflow when I set this goal. It was when I was in the process of working on this workflow, I started to work it out and break this big goal into smaller parts.https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/exit-taiwan-update-week-2/Sun, 24 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/exit-taiwan-update-week-2/Update of the week At the start of the week, I set 3 goals for myself, which included to finish the content production manual, the photography manual, and to publish both on the documentation website. I ended up finishing all the goals, and publishing one extra article this week. The process of creating manuals was not as complicated as I thought. Creating Content Production Manual I started by having a purpose in mind for each manual I’m creating.https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/do-your-work-at-cafe/Thu, 21 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/do-your-work-at-cafe/Do Your Work at Café If you need to do some kind of work but can’t find the motivation to do it, go to a local café is a good idea. I recently found out about this. It’s now one of the best treatments to cure my procrastination syndrome. After awhile, I figured out why it works. I thought it would be helpful for some of you who are struggling with getting things done by sharing it with you.https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/my-mixed-feelings-about-making-videos/Mon, 18 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/my-mixed-feelings-about-making-videos/The first video project I made my first video in 7th grade when I was in junior high school. It was a project our performance art class teacher gave us. She asked us to produce a music video. So we could choose any song we liked, and finish the visual part of that. Back in the days, video editing was not a thing at all. It was more than 10 years ago.https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/exit-taiwan-update-week-1/Sun, 17 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/exit-taiwan-update-week-1/Welcome to the first week of updates on my side project — ExitTaiwan. Since this is the first update you get from me on my ExitTaiwan project, I should recap you on what goals I set at the start of the week and see if I hit those goals at the end of this week. Update of the week On Monday, I set 4 goals for this week. I was going to:https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/in-pursuit-of-perfection/Thu, 14 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/in-pursuit-of-perfection/Usually, I’m not a zodiac sign person. But when it comes to perfectionism, the Virgo in me is totally there. I’ve been questioning my obsession with perfection since a long time ago. Mainly because everyone that knows I’m a perfectionist has told me to stop being a perfectionist, so I question about it a lot. Somewhere deep in my heart, I know perfectionism isn’t a good thing for me. But what I don’t know is what makes it a bad thing.https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/the-mindset-of-doing-what-matters/Tue, 05 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/the-mindset-of-doing-what-matters/The other day, just like any other day, I was staring at YouTube homepage on the phone. The algorithm knew, mysteriously, as we’ve all experienced before, that I was procrastinating. It decided to recommend me this video of a TedTalk given by Dino Ambrosi, titled “The Battle for Your Time: Exposing the Costs of Social Media“. The speaker, Mr. Dino, is the founder of Project Reboot. He helps people, mostly young adults, build better relationships with digital devices.https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/turning-a-side-project-into-a-business/Mon, 04 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/turning-a-side-project-into-a-business/It all starts with side projects, right? This business I’m trying to build started as a side project. Currently, I’m turning this side project into a brand. The name of that brand is called “ExitTaiwan.“ The mission of this brand is to help Taiwanese people explore the world. I had this idea initially because of my personal experiences abroad. In the past 3 or 4 years, I’ve been all over the places, despite the pandemic.https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/projects/docs/Sun, 30 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/projects/docs/https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/projects/photo-gallery/Tue, 14 Mar 2023 22:18:53 +0800https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/projects/photo-gallery/https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/projects/soho-cafe/Sun, 26 Feb 2023 22:18:53 +0800https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/projects/soho-cafe/https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/projects/giftpack-intro/Wed, 15 Feb 2023 22:18:53 +0800https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/projects/giftpack-intro/https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/2022-in-review/Fri, 13 Jan 2023 12:06:58 +0800https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/2022-in-review/Seth Godin once wrote, “If you don’t know you have it… then you don’t.”1 This tells us the importance of looking back and seeing what we possessed, achieved, and lost. For me, 2022 was a year of chaos and frustration, but filled with happiness and sense of achievement at the same time. Before the Chinese New Year, I would like to take some time to reflect and share my 2022. You might get some inspirations (or questions) as well.https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/projects/giftpack-animation/Sat, 31 Jul 2021 22:18:53 +0800https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/projects/giftpack-animation/https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/free-online-resources/Thu, 20 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/free-online-resources/Whenever we’re trying to learn something new, “Google” is the most intuitive action we take. Google is certainly useful a lot of times, but I bet everyone also has frustrated experiences after Googling and seeing all the advertisements and commercial-heavy content on the search engine result pages. I started my self-learning journey last year. I started my own YouTube channel, hosted and set up a personal blog, designed my own logo and arts, and learned a lot about computer science, especially front-end, all by researching and learning online.https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/digital-marketer-at-a-saas-startup/Mon, 03 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/digital-marketer-at-a-saas-startup/Nowadays, you see job description on recruiting platforms requiring different skill sets. You might wonder how it’s possible for a person to have that much knowledge in all those fields. Unfortunately, that is the reality, and most possibly the future trend. Startup companies are known for their fast-changing environment. Working in the software industry, especially software as a service (SaaS) companies, requires some basic understandings of computer science. Marketing needs to adapt quickly to make sure messages and products are delivered in the planned ways.https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/giftpack-internship-journey/Wed, 30 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/giftpack-internship-journey/6 months… Time flies! It’s almost the end of my journey as a Digital Marketing Intern. There has been impacts and changes in my life within this half year. I’m more than happy to share that I’ll keep staying with the company in 2021! I’ve got inspired a lot both in marketing fields and daily life aspects, including basic marketing knowledge, tools, different strategies, learning methods, etc. I tried my best to categorize these inspirations into 3 major points.https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/projects/cfll-and-me-2/Tue, 25 Aug 2020 22:18:53 +0800https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/projects/cfll-and-me-2/https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/giftpack-interview-journey/Mon, 03 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/articles/giftpack-interview-journey/A 1-month-long interview journey that I’ll remember for the rest of my life. Just briefly… who I am? I’m a junior (about to become a senior in fall) English major at Fu Jen Catholic University in Taiwan. I was planning to study in Bayreuth, Germany in my senior year for the completion of the dual-degree program before applying for the internship at Giftpack. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, I couldn’t tell if the plan would be cancelled or not (it’s not cancelled!https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/projects/cfll-and-me-1/Mon, 25 May 2020 22:18:53 +0800https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/projects/cfll-and-me-1/https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/archives/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/archives/archiveshttps://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/confirmation/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/confirmation/中文版 💥 Boom! You’re officially confirmed and on the list. Expect some great emails headed your way very soon. If you’ve been enjoying my content so far, don’t hesitate to spread out the words : )https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/404/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/404/Well… you’ve got me. There’s nothing here! I have no idea how you got here. Go back to home page.https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/tags/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/tags/tagshttps://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/thank-you/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://blog.xdavidchen.com/en/thank-you/中文版 Success! Thank you for signing up. To protect your data and respect your privacy, check your email inbox to confirm. ⚠️ Sometimes they fall into Spam folder. If this is the case, you might not be able to click the confirmation button. Follow the steps below: Move / Drag the email to your regular inbox. Click the confirmation button. If you can’t finish confirmation, shoot me