Welcome to my profile page! My name is Quy Ma (pronounced kwee maw, if you were curious).
I’m 32 years old and I’m a first-generation Vietnamese American, the oldest of three boys. My parents immigrated to the United States after the Vietnam War to start a new life, away from an oppressive regime in the 1980s.
I was born in Oakland, California, raised in Houston, Texas, and now live in the beautiful state of Utah with my wife and two Siberian Huskies.
We spend our entire lives introducing ourselves to people in every situation possible. Why should Medium be an exception?
One of the most important things a Medium writer should do is introduce themselves to the world with their first post. Veteran Medium writers have also figured out an “About Me” story gives their followers additional details about who they are.
I figured a place like a publication that can host all of the authors’ introductory stories and learn more about each other would make sense!
About Me Stories is a publication that is dedicated to hosting stories about the best…
A few days ago, 8 people were shot and killed by a white man in Atlanta, Georgia. 6 of those 8 individuals were Asian women. A few weeks ago, an elderly Asian man was pushed down in Oakland, California. Before that, an elderly Asian woman was set on fire. These are only a few of the many hate crimes that the Asian American community has been dealing with recently.
Stop AAPI Hate, an organization that tracks Asian hate crimes states that nearly 3,800 incidents have been reported since the start of the pandemic. Another report from the Center for the…
Alright, alright, alright! Last week, actor Matthew McConaughey told the Austin American-statesmen that he was seriously considering running for Governor of Texas.
Ecstatic, I shared the news on my social media feeds. I got a few messages and comments from a few friends and acquaintances that expressed a variety of different reactions from dismay to excitement and from skepticism to downright hostility.
Most of the skepticism or hostility is rooted in the fact that McConaughey is a celebrity. Hollywood celebrities, in some minds (especially MAGA folks), don’t belong in politics — oh, the irony…
Last month, I had my least productive month on Medium yet.
Due to a series of spontaneous inspiration and personal commitments, I went through a whirlwind of activities in other areas of my life, forcing me to neglect my writing and put Medium to the side for weeks.
Here’s what happened as far as my Medium work went (or didn’t happen, for that matter):
Ashley Thayne is the founder of a startup called Risk and Reward, an entrepreneurial business dedicated to enabling travelers with essential products they need for their adventures. The brand has a special emphasis on female travelers, especially solo female travelers, and helping empower them to take risks and reap the rewards.
I first met Ashley years ago for a company we both worked for. Ashley was in charge of product sourcing and worked extensively with different manufacturers across different product categories.
The job required her to move to Asia to work closely with the manufacturers and vendors which came with…
Hey Mitchell, thanks for introducing yourself! Can't wait to follow your writing. Cheers!
It was 2016 when my mom began showing signs of cognitive decline. At first, my dad didn’t think anything of it. My mom had been known to be erratic in terms of her memory and personality throughout her entire life. However, three incidents over the next few months forced him to begin taking things more seriously.
The first happened when Dad bought a digital photo frame, one that rotates through photos every few seconds. He set it up in the living room and uploaded photos from vacations that my parents had taken together.
One particular set of photos showed my…
As you may have heard, an army of Redditors has been at war against Wall Street over GameStop ($GME) for the past few weeks. GameStop’s stock has been extremely volatile, seeing the price go from $17 a share in early January to a high of $347 last Thursday.
Some of Wall Street’s biggest hedge funds had been betting on GameStop’s stock to drop for years. In a normal world, the bets make sense. GameStop, a departmental video game retailer, had been struggling financially for years. The rise of online digital games among gamers had rendered GameStop’s business model obsolete. …
By now, you’ve probably heard it’s been a crazy few weeks for the stock market. But in case you weren’t paying attention, here’s what happened:
An army of Redditors from the subreddit r/WallStreetBets took on big investors and hedge funds on Wall Street by collectively buying up massive shares of heavily shorted stocks like GameStop (GME) and AMC Theatres (AMC).
For years, many investors and hedge funds have participated in a practice called short selling, where traders “borrow shares of stock to sell and then buy back later so they can't return them, which lets them pocket the profit if…