- A light pour of what’s on my mind this week

Busy traveling but also taking time to prepare for exams– thinking about my time spent in Tennessee.

More of a waffle guy, but Banana Bread Pancakes from The Farmstead made me fall in love with pancakes again.

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What’s Stirring in the Pot

- What I’m reading, listening to, or watching

Premier League: Liverpool versus Tottenham

Good to see an American-owned football club win the Premier League. Go Red White and Blue. Sad to not find Son Heung-min on the pitch, seems like his team needed him.

Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science

Recently picked up this read from a local bookstore by Atul Gawande. It’s off to a slow start, but I know it’s going to be a good read. I’ve read and do appreciate his other works.

Simmering Projects

- Updates from what I’m cooking up in work, research, or ideas

I’m onboarding with Cathartic Health, a nonprofit that redistributes essential health and hygiene products to under-resourced communities. I’ll be launching a Berkeley chapter to build connections between local suppliers and communities who need these goods most.

Balancing acid-base reactions one day, wrestling with thermodynamics the next. Getting reminded that electrons behave like waves until you look at them—then they decide to act like particles. Observation shifts reality.

Wrapping up current projects, planning for improvements by restructuring the club model. Retention might be the problem 99% of the time.

One Spicy Thing (or “One Flavorful Find”)

- A tool, quote, or random gem I had to share

“Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.”

— Proverbs 16:32

The default in business is speed and domination—move fast, grab market share, scale aggressively. In academia, it’s prestige: publish, get cited, win funding. That’s what gets celebrated. That’s what's seen on LinkedIn.

But this verse flips it. It says the harder, rarer battle isn’t out there, it’s from looking inward. Mastery of self > mastery of systems.

You can replicate a business model. You can scale a lab. But you can’t fake self-control. Most companies, teams, and institutions don’t fall apart because the ideas were bad—they fall apart because the people at the top never learned to govern themselves.

A leader whose steady when things go sideways, principled when tension hits, and doesn’t let ego set the tone. That is someone I would want to work with. That’s someone people want to build with. And that type of influence doesn’t come from title or authority. It comes from discipline. Restraint. Integrity.

Self-rule doesn’t go viral. But it lasts. When everyone’s chasing scale, the rare few are building foundations. And that’s what actually holds.

Final Splash

Starting to look into different types of hackathons and am interested in what they have to offer. If anything stirred the pot for you this week, I’d love to hear about it!

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- A light pour of what’s on my mind this week

Lately been reflecting on my experiences in public education, especially with all the talk about funding freezes hitting schools.

Also hit with my first-ever egg surcharge at brunch this week. La Note’s omelette fromage et jambon was still worth it.

What’s Stirring in the Pot

- What I’m reading, listening to, or watching

The Journal: A Quick Fix for Hair Loss is Making Some Men sick

Wild how telemedicine grew from a convenience to something that can harm more than help. Hoping I dodged the early balding gene.

Ledsen by John Nilsson

Smooth saxophone jazz- perfect background for studying.

Harvard Business Essentials: Decision Making: 5 Steps to Better Results

Just finished this. More useful for life and school than I expected—no need to be a CEO to apply the lessons.

Simmering Projects

- Updates from what I’m cooking up in work, research, or ideas

Pitching a luxury canned beverage brand that’s aiming to be more than just a drink—thinking about how to create a movement that sticks. Content strategy and more importantly brand identity is feeling like the secret ingredient here.

One Spicy Thing

- A tool, quote, or random gem I had to share

“In nonprofits, relationships drive more intrinsic value than the work itself.”

A thought that stuck with me after a conversation with a nonprofit CEO. A lesson learned before and a reminder that impact is rooted in people, not just projects.

Final Splash

If anything stirred the pot for you this week, I’d love to hear about it.

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How do I pronounce “MokSauce,” how do I say it?

It is spoken as Mok-Sauce, it’s my last name + sauce.

What even is “MokSauce?”

The origin is from a running joke between a couple of friends about wanting opinions or takes from me: “They just want a taste of the MokSauce.”

What is this for?

It’s to say what I want to say with no filter and no AI correction. Every single word on this page from here on out will be crafted and placed by ME.

Words with my personality, sentences with my grammar mistakes, and ideas with my fingerprints on them.

It’s different.

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Why start now?

Writing and original home-brewed ideas are dying.

With the development and prominence of AI, it’s harder to find thoughts and ideas from REAL people straight from the noggin.

Talking to AI and using other tools as a reference to further develop ideas can be great; however, the point is to have RAW output directly from the source.

Each person’s background and experience is what causes ideas and words to be UNIQUE, it is what makes it SPECIAL. Anyone can enter a prompt and copy what it spits out.

Well developed. One of one.

This is something that I find increasingly hard to come across in the media that’s out there on every SINGLE platform. From short-form fun videos on TikTok to professional posts on LinkedIn, AI work is literally plastered everywhere.

Zero creativity. Over done. Cooked.

How often are the posts?

Expect at least one weekly post on Tuesdays that is going to be updates of what’s going on– whether it would be what’s recently been on my mind, what I am reading, or what I am thinking about. (Yes that is a real usage of em dash– I used it a lot with oxford commas before it became rampant with the creation of AI)

There is also going to be one bi-weekly post on a Thursday that is going to be more professionally written, where I craft a piece that further develops an idea or framework on something that I find interesting.

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What kind of space is this?

It’s for people who are interested in my JOURNEY as I navigate the different systems and institutions that are currently in place.

Healthcare. Business. Research. Education. Markets. Fitness. Fashion. Life. Passions.

People who are invested and want to build with the NEXT GENERATION.

It’s for the people with not just visions and goals, but people who take INITIATIVE and go out to try them.

It's for the people with a growth mindset, and people with dreams to achieve.

The people who wear different hats and ultimately find SUCCESS will be part of this.

Now I am personally extending the invitation to YOU.

The MokSauce needs CHEFS from all different kitchens.

Let’s Cook.

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