From Bluepixel

(Originally posted at Rest in Peace Barry Chai)

My mother told me once, anyone who tastes birth must taste death. We might not like it, but it will catch up to us and there is no running away from it.

I met Barry Chai in my 3rd year right after my last internship at Research in Motion. He had taken over the post as the McNaughton Chair and we were making plans in the first month on upgrading our office and designing the Matlab workshops. I saw right away that Barry was the most nicest and optimistic person I had ever met. To boot on top of it, you could tell he was incredibly intelligent and had a bright future ahead of him.

I remember chatting with him about my final term project on American Sign Language Scholar and how using the OpenCV library helped us finish the project on time and budget. I told him about some of the basic tools it offered and he spent that summer working with a Professor in computer vision at UBC. This lead him to Princeton where he did some research work with Prof. Fei-Fei Li and now a student at Stanford.

Bright, happy, optimistic, humble and always willing to lend a helping hand and never questioning or judging anyone. That’s the Barry Chai people knew and those that met him were very fortunate.

24 years old. So young and so full of potential. It is sad to hear a friend go so soon in life and it makes you realize that life is that much more precious and we should take in the moments, cherish them, because you never know that they might be your last with them.

You will be missed Barry Chai! I still cannot believe you are no longer there for our late night Gmail/Skype chats discussing about your classes, our interviews with Apple, Google and Microsoft and etc. My prayers are with you and your family.