Things I Learned From Ultimate Duo Queue

A couple of weeks back, I had the opportunity to attend my cousin Sam’s wedding in California.

I grew up with Sam, but I don’t remember much about him growing up.  All the memories I do have of him centered around video games.  Before working for Riot Games, he played games whenever he could.  He competed in professional gaming tournaments.  Many of the adults in his life dissuaded him, saying that he was wasting his life on video games.

When he joined Riot Games, he proved to everyone that you could do video games for a living.

Sam started from the bottom of Riot Games.  He helped out with player support.  Then he moved up to network operations.  Then he transitioned to assistant release manager.  Everywhere he went in Riot Games, he made life-long friends.

One of these life-long friends is Jing.

Now I don’t know much about Jing.  Even before I attended their wedding, I had only met Jing a couple of times.  Everything about Jing was a mystery to me.  I didn’t know how they met, nor did I know why they loved each other so much.

With the arrival of “Ultimate Duo Queue” all these questions would be answered.

On facebook, they had titled their wedding “Ultimate Duo Queue:  Sam & Jing are gettin’ married!”  For those of you who don’t play the game League of Legends, the term “ultimate duo queue” may seem strange as a title for a wedding.

I assure you, it is a fitting description.

In the game League of Legends, players who wish to play the game, get entered into a queue to wait for 9 other players to play with.  You’re going to get placed on a team of four random strangers and then asked to compete against another team consisting of five other strangers.

You don’t always have to play alone though.  If you have a friend to play with, you can duo queue.

This means that you both get entered into the queue together and this time the game will find 3 other players for you.  Duo queue ensures you guys don’t get separated into different queues.  You get to experience everything in the game together.  You either win together or lose together.

Duo queue is a partnership between two friends.  In this way, marriage can be described as ultimate duo queue.

Now, I will share with you all the things I learned from “Ultimate Duo Queue”.

#1.  Be Open To Change

During the wedding, Cory made a speech to congratulate Sam & Jing.  Cory is Sam’s best-friend since childhood.  In her speech, she describes how growing up, she used to call Sam “Ototo” and Sam would call Cory “Oneisan”.  Ototo means little brother in Japanese and Onesian means older sister.  These nicknames stuck because within their friendship, Cory was the sensible and caring one while Sam was the care-free and spontaneous one.

As they both grew older, the dynamics within their friendship changed.

Sam started to accumulate new life experiences by venturing out into the great unknown, while Cory stuck to what was safe and comforting.  Cory started to ask questions about life, while Sam shared his new found understanding of the world in order to help shed some light.  Cory no longer had to look after Sam.  Sam looked after himself and he also started to look after Cory too.

They both transitioned into new roles without missing a beat.

In general, people resist change.  Change is scary, especially when you’ve already settled down.  Change in power is even more unsettling.  Not many people can go from I’m in charge to I’ll let you be in charge.  People who take care of others, rarely accept other’s care in return.  They feel like they should be above it.  That by accepting help, they would no longer be qualified to help others anymore.

Change can be a scary thing.  That’s why it’s so nice to see people who are brave enough to accept it.

No Regrets

Me and my brother Nghia was driving down to Houston over the weekend and he asked me the following question:  “If you could change one thing about your past, what would it be?”

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Now that’s a really tough question to answer on the spot.

First of all, it’s based on the assumption that we made plenty of stupid decisions.  Decisions we wish we could take back.  Decisions that steered us away from what we wanted at that time.

For example, for my nephew’s birthday, I thought it would be a wise decision to cut watermelon while I was drunk and trying to carry a conversation with my cousin Audrey.  Half-way through our discussion, I missed the watermelon and instantly cut into something else that colored the knife red.  (Now I know why you shouldn’t operate heavy machinery while you’re intoxicated.)

Of course, I am guilty of mistakes during all parts of my life.  Who isn’t?

The second assumption is that once we change something significant about our past, something significant about our present should also change.

This kind of thinking puts you in passenger seat of your life, instead of being in the driver’s seat.  You are pretty much admitting that you have no power or influence in your life.  If your life is so horrible right now, why don’t you change something about it?

Another fallacy in this way of thinking is you may judge that one mistake to be monumental, but in the grand scheme of things it was really insignificant.  Therefore by changing something insignificant about your past, you end up with the same present that you’re discontent with.

Here’s a hypothetical scenario.  You regret losing one of your past loves.  You were jealous and accused them of cheating on you.  It destroyed your relationship.  And ever day since, you wondered what could have been, if you had done otherwise.  So you make that wish.  Wishing that jealously would no longer be an issue.  And once you open your eyes expecting to be next to your lover again, you aren’t.  For some reason, that wasn’t enough.  Perhaps jealousy was just the tip of the iceberg.  Perhaps the relationship was destined to end regardless of how you acted.

Another way a wish could go wrong is if we wished something away that was actually an important aspect of your life.