It’s me Laurent, I am a nerd in short.
There are other traits in my personality, but even I tend to forget I am more than just a robo * cough cough * geek. As a kid I was introvert and I became extroverted later. I made the transition to being more outgoing during my teen years. I challenged myself to get more out out of my comfort zone back then. Today, I still love meeting new people, but I like my alone time coding/building very much as well.
I have been living in the Amsterdam for three years now. I feel both new and old in this city, because most of my time here was during the Covid-19 pandemic (That terrible disease our kids will have to learn about in their history class). Unfortunately, this is not an excuse I can use for much longer. The truth is I am very bad at exploring.
Profesionally I am a C++ low-latency developer working in the trading industry. This is something I truly enjoy at the moment. But, I also want to start exploring the more mathematical side of quantitative trading.
I speak French, Wenzhou (Chinese dialect), English, some Chinese mandarin (I understand most of easy conversations), a few programming languages. I haven’t spent a single minute trying to learn Dutch, who needs Dutch in a city where everyone speaks perfect English.
The origins
I am pure product from France or not. I am what we call an FBC, same as an ABC (American Born Chinese) but French and more romantic (or not (I do over-misuse parenthesises (how do you spell the plural of this word ? parenthesisS parenthesis ?))). Sometimes I was not sure if I was French, Chinese, both or neither. I think more western, but I look Asian. Today I think I am both and I am very proud of my origins:
- I love France
- The country that gave me a free education and healthcare
- The country where I have all my friends and my family
- The country of my mother tongue
- I am proud of my Chinese background and more specifically
- My parents who came from China without any saving and without knowing the language. They worked so hard for my sisters and I to experience a life with less hardship
- My 2 older sisters who had to leave their home while being kids
- Their hardwork paid for my education. I got off easy. I was, indeed, still very young during the financially tougher years of my family. Also I did not have to move to another continent and learn a new language in the middle of elementary like my sisters.
My journey in Programming starts at the age of 9 (approximately). My parents thought video games were bad for me. They would cut my internet connection everyday before going to work. To beat the boredom, I decided to build my own games and I googled at my friend’s house “Comment faire des jeux video ??” (the French for “how to make video games ??”). The first link was a tutorial about C programming on le SiteDuZero (today renamed to OpenClassrooms). From here I printed the entire tutorial and studied it on paper. The rest is history: competitive programming, Epita, trading industry.