Mako got accepted to the University of British Columbia in Engineering. Following in the footsteps of his older brother? Whatever his motive, it didn't take long for him to realize he didn't like it. I don't know what exactly he didn't like about it. According to Mom (I wasn't living at home then) he did absolutely no homework. This had Mom worried greatly. She asked me to talk to Mako and try and help him. Every time we did talk though, he would just laugh at how he just aced his last mid-term without studying at all, and that he couldn't understand why everyone else were having problems with such easy topics. Not quite having Mako's natural intelligence, I cringed at how half-heartedly he went about school and pulled off the grades that he did. When all the smoke cleared, he passed first year Engineering with flying colours and got accepted into Electrical Engineering.

Before his second year at UBC, he spent the summer in Japan working at a resort. This is where he began to do things impulsively. He suddenly quit without notice and returned home to Vancouver.

His impulsive acts continued at school the next year. He quit school impulsively. He simply decided to not go to his exams, even though he was averaging near 80% at the time. So he went to work and live in Whistler, wanting to become a ski expert.

His impulsive actions (as well as his girlfriend Erika's) gave their lives some excitement. While they both lived in Whistler, they impulsively decided to go to Mexico together, among other places.

Back to Mako and Whistler. He was fascinated with mogul skiing. But then he realized how boring skiing can get when you have a season's pass and not many people that would tag along. And I don't think he was enjoying work too much either. Retail is probably not in his blood. One of his co-workers told him that if his work is worth complaining about, then he should quit. He took her advice and walked out the door. Again, an impulsive move.

He was one that liked to spend a lot of money. The only thing that held him back at times was his lack of it. But he really liked to spend on others. I can't tell you how many times he bought me things for no apparent reason. And when he bought stuff, it was the best of its kind. He didn't bother with second best. And there's a lot to be said about that. His belongings always seemed to last longer than mine (both in wear and style).

Back at home, we started to see many traces of his no-fear attitude. If a car cut him off on the street, he would catch up to it by the next red light and pound the *^*^& out of it. What if it was a semi? Not scary enough for Mako. He grabbed on to one while it was moving and attempted to get inside the driver's cabin. The best time for him to do such stunts was when he was on his bike and not driving. He got away with a lot more when on his bike, as his identity could not be traced by anything.

He rode a bike to school a lot of the time. He developed a hobby of breaking cars side view mirrors if they came too close. (I don't think this is bad. I have wanted to do this many times. And I think we(cyclists) need someone like Mako to get the message across.) After a while, he was able to accumulate a list of cars that had strong side view mirrors and ones that didn't. Take note everyone, BMW mirrors are super wimpy and Mako can break one off with a single whack. On the other hand, Acuras always took him a few whacks.

The best Mako story on his bike is when a Honda Civic cut him off. He caught up to him at the next red light and started to jump on his hood. When the driver got out to try and get a hold of Mako, Mako ran around the car into the driver seat and started driving off with it. No fear. No fear.

Well, shortly after his Whistler days ended, he decided to go back to school. This time in Computer Science, back at UBC. After a couple of years, he started to find it a little easy and boring. But he dedicated himself to complete his degree. He went about his normal ways of not studying too much and getting top notch grades.

I think he felt that a Computer Science degree was a little limiting for him. So he stated several times that he wanted to go into Electrical Engineering after completing Computers. The last time he said this was days before his death.

Mako and I started investing a little together. We both started learning a bit about the stock market, while playing with a small sum of money. The last time I heard from him was when I was in Europe. He sent me an email and told me that he really wanted to buy Redhat, and that they were about to go public. I gave him the green light to do whatever he wanted with our money. He didn't live long enough to invest in Redhat. He didn't even live long enough to see Redhat skyrocket 500% on its first day of trading, and up 1500% 5 months later.

Mako won't even get to witness the Y2K bug saga fold out. With his knowledge in computers and his interest in technology in general, I'm sure he was excited about the whole thing.

On July 19th, 1999, Mako killed himself. To this day, no one is certain why. I believe it was an impulsive move. The night before his death, out of anger, he said that he would kill himself. Mako was always one to do whatever he said. This was no exception.

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