Week 24 of 2021 (45%)

I have continue stopping drinking coffee during the week days to help me sleep better. In general, I am starting to feel tired around 10pm, which is good, as I don’t have any other motivation to do any brain intensive activities. I can probably watch the TV, but I decided not to watch too much Television as I find it not that good for my brain.

Recently I was listening to a podcast and they were discussing about side hustle, and the debate was, is it necessary to make money out of your hobbies or passion? And I think I used to think that it will be nice to make some money out of your hobbies. But over the years, I didn’t managed to make any. And worse still, I started doing things with the mindset that maybe I can make some money. Usually most of the time, I will stop half way as I am not really having fun. And only do things because, well, it is some kind of side hustle. I think I want to try a different approach now. Not to think about money and only do things that I truly like or find interest in. I might find some ways to make money out of it if there is potential. But I will not start doing it with the mindset that I am going to be rich or make money out of it. The first question should be, do I really want to do this? It’s okay if I don’t want to do it. And is okay to try many things and then decide if I like it or not.

Another thing that I have learned is that whenever I am learning something new, or even things that seems to be what I already knew, it is better to start from the fundamentals. And master the fundamental before going to the more advance topics. One example, will be to learn a new programming language. I am quite experience with C++, but I always find it difficult to learn a new language. And now I think I know the reason, I am trying to skip the fundamental and go straight to the advance topics. Well, the basic seems boring and I thought that I knew everything but the truth is the opposite. I don’t have a mental image of the basic of the new language so this causes me to have difficulty retaining the more advance features. Like kung fu, start with the most basic action, do it a thousand times then move on to the more advance action.

Anyhow, its two more weeks to the second half of 2021. How fast time past. I will continue to be better and hopefully see a break through in my life by the end this year.

Week 23 of 2021 (43%)

This is the first day in the entire week that I had coffee. I used to drink alot of coffee. Maybe 2-3 cups a day. I guess one of the reason is that I had lesser sleep, so I need the extra caffine to stay alert. But with the pandemic going on, I am having more rest, due to the time saved from traveling. And I realized that I am sleeping is alittle harder if I have coffee even only in the morning. I cut down on my coffee for the whole of this week and it is getting easier to fall asleep at night. The worse feeling is that you want to sleep but just can’t fall asleep.

Today is a Saturday, so I am giving myself the permission to have some coffee, as it is okay to sleep alittle later today. I just hope that not to the extend of 2-3am. I have also reduced the amount of coffee, so I hope this will help in my sleeping earlier than the usual 2-3am on saturday.

Singapore has started vaccination for the age group 12-39, which I fall into. I have registered for it and my first dose will be tomorrow. It will be moderna. There are alot of slots for moderna and I have a vaccination center that is near my house. The other option will be pflizer, which is much more popular. If I want to take pflizer, I will need to wait at least 1-2 weeks later. And since there are no Pflizer option near my house, I just choose moderna, which I am totally fine with it. The only issue is that I heard that Moderna is much stronger than Pflizer, so I might feel more sick. I am prepared for the worse but I hope that I will be fine. Usually the second does is the one that makes you feel more sick. So let’s see.

Phase 2 heighten alert

It is almost the end of week 3 of phase 2 heighten alert in Singapore. If everything goes well, we should be out by next week. There are no information as of now, what is going to happen at the end of this “mini lockdown”. For sure things will not go back to before where we can have up to 8 person dinning out at a time. Things will only gradually be rollback. So I am expecting that we will go back to 5 person dinning and visiting and after some time then 8. I am not sure when will things actually go back to pre covid.

I am used to it now. Working from home and generally staying at home. I used to be so bored at night, with so much extra free time. I tried to learn something new but I realized that my brain is not able to focus after 8pm. Reading technical documents or problem solving is quite hard. I have to will myself to do it and it is just not as productive as in the morning, after a good 8 hours of rest.

I am also not sure why, I am feeling so tired recently. I am sleeping the same amount of hours, usually around 8 hours. Not that I feel that my brain is not functioning, just that it is not optimial. But usually that is after a good 7 hours of work. Which my brain energy should be depleted by then. I was just hoping that I can continue a good 10-12 hours of work. I am currently working on a problem that is way bigger than I would like it to be, so the extra hours will make sure that I am able to pick up the slack.

Also, I am trying to write my technical blog, and practicing my algorithm skills. Both need significant brain power. I will see what I can do to improve my brain ability.

One thing I learn is to reduce the amount of passive brain activities like watching television, checking social media and web surfing. Also, all these activities when done in an extreme will dilute the experience. Making it not as fun as it should be. Instead, so some active brain activities, activities that requires problem solving. If you cannot do it like me, the next best thing to do will be do exercise or to meditate or just do deep breathing. This is of course easier said than done. After a long day, what you want is just to go to the default and do what is the easiest.

Art vs Design

I was thinking about how to design a game engine and it makes me think, how should I approach this? Or rather how do people design something?

The amount of knowledge and things that you will need to know before you can make a design decision will have to be tremendous. So how does a person without any prior knowledge does this?

Also, there are way too many elements and factors, and most of the time, issues come because of things that we don’t know that we don’t know. The corner cases or cases that we didn’t consider and it comes back to haunt us.

There must be a process way to solve this issue right? Maybe before I start doing a design, I do a brain dump. Reading up case studies or other people’s design before I start. But that will be taking too much time and worse still it might not give you the ability to design something perfect.

Maybe the issue is that we shouldn’t go for perfect. We just need to do what is good enough for the problem that I am currently having. Of course, if there are any changes it might be hard to change them. Or if I need to scale it up, then the solution that works great in the beginning might not be good enough.
But anyhow, I think it will still be a good idea to have what you want as an end product and work backwards. Find the solution to problems that you currently have instead of overthinking and overreading. I think this is what people referred to as design.

The opposite of design will be art. You start with something that you vaguely have in mind, then you play around, experiment around till you are satisfied with your end product. There is no end to start with. It is the exploration and playing around.

I think maybe sometimes, good design comes as a byproduct of art. You don’t have an end goal. You just do what you feel is good. And by chance, you come out with something that works well.

There is no right or wrong to both approaches but I think being aware of these approaches will be helpful when you are working.

Nostagic

Singapore is changing way too fast. Whenever I looked around, something will always be changed. There are times that I think back and missed those wonder times that I had when I was younger. And even times that I want to relive it but they are all gone.

I am thinking, maybe I should document down all these places that are still here.

It is the first week of phase 2 heightened alert in Singapore, so far there is not much difference in my routine since I am already working from home for the past year. So I don’t really feel anything. But I thought maybe I should set some goals and do something different. So that time will past by more meaningful? That is why I am starting writing over here again. I am not sure what exactly I want to achieve but I just want to journal it down. I do come back to this blog every now and then, and I get so much enjoyment just reading through what I went through in my younger days.

I used to be ashame of what I wrote but I learn something, which is if you are not embrassed by your past then you are not growing. So by this definition this means I grew and become better.

Covid -19 days

Work is feeling more and more like a drag these days. People are quitting in doves. Initially I was planning to give myself maybe till end of 2021 to stay in this current job but as more people leaves the work will be getting harder. To be honest I don’t see myself staying long in this job. So why prolong the pain? I need to accelerate my plan to leave. I think starting with my algorithm skill, which is never good to be start with. But I will focus especially on the weekend.

I think I will target my weekend to look like this.

8am: Wakeup, make coffee, watch YouTube

9am: go for a walk/run

10am: start 2 hours cycle of Algorithm study

12noon: lunch

2pm: start32 hours of Algorithm study.

5pm: Service

7pm: Dinner and relax

10pm: Watch Algorithm videos

I am not going to stress myself, but making sure I have a plan and follow the plan.

life

I guess I have been living life aimlessly for the past couple of years.
No real goals, no passion.
I think this should change in 2020.
First I am not sure if my brain is in a foggy stage due to long term abuse of porn. I will be straight forward in this blog. There is a serious lack of motivation on my part. Nothing excites me anymore.

I think to test whether it is really an issue. I will need to do some radical changes. Money is not really an issue anymore. Sure, I am not earning top notch money but gone are the days that I am thinking how am I going to get myself feed or even transportation fees for the next month. Instead of living month to month, I am comfortable to live at least 6 months to 6 months.

There are somethings that I will like to change.
First thing is to keep away my porn addiction. For good. Yes for good.
I will try not to have any substance abuse to my brain. Which is my greatest asset in this information age.

Next is to eat clean. Which means as little sugar as possible. This is hard. I will need to think about it. And also I want to keep my weight to about maybe 65kg. Now I am about 79kg.

Also I will like to excerise regularly. At least 2-3 times a week.

This will be be Holy grind of 2020.

Additional point will be to read and write more. Focus will be to think critically. And to express my idea in a manner that is clear to people.

Lastly I want to work on a project, a goal. Not just learning for the stake of learning but learning for a goal. To build a product that I truly care about.
Maybe branch it out to a business in future.

End of a decade

I can’t believe that I have this blog since 2006? That is close to 14 years ago. Many things have happened since. I broke up with my girlfriend then, got back together, broke up again, entered the army, left the army, work for a startup, finish bible school, finish university, officially started my career, got fat, then skinny and fat again, got married.

Looking back, I am grateful for how things went. Many times I thought I was at a dead-end, but I wasn’t. Many times, I was lost and didn’t really know what to do with my life, somehow I managed to find a way to do something that I find meaningful. I have grow so much in the last 14 years. Were there mistake that I have made that I regretted? Many. But I wouldn’t be so hard on myself, as there was no way that I could have known better back then.

In a month time, it will be the start of a new year, a new decade. This give me some time to reflect on how will I want to improve myself as a person. And what goals I want to pursue.

The world has become more uncertain. You will never know when you will be out of job. To prevent that from happening, I feel there is a need to prepare myself. Skill readiness in the situation I am out of a job and also financially. I am still currently in debt. My housing loan together with my student loan. While my savings has a comfortable cushion, I am hoping that I am able to have some form of passive income.

In terms of skills, I am stagnating. while I am better in some aspect, but overall I feel my skills in not as good as when I am out of university. This is due to a lack of programming the entire system, where I used to do it almost every other day when I was in school. I need to work on that. While this skills are good. I don’t see them as potential leverage for business. Web development is still a powerful piece of technology. I will want to also spend some time developing my web development skill.

Lastly, I have been doing more of a leadership role in my job, and I realized that to do well as a leader, you need to have a guiding set of principles. Not only that, you need to think through deeply and communicate clearly. Not only to people below you but above you. I think reading a wide variety of books is thus important and the ability to spell out your thoughts clearly is important. I have never been good with expressing myself. My grasp of the English language is below average. My writing and speaking skills need clear upgrading. Thus I will be focusing on reading and writing commentaries. I think to take a stand on something is important. Not everything needs to have a black or white view. But at least some things.

“If we don’t stand for something, we’ll fall for anything.”

So in conclusion, things I want to work on

Development skills (C++/ Graphics)
Web development
Writing

Links Clean up

I have just cleaned up my links. Many of the links were what I used to read every day and now most of them are either inactive or block. The world is changing so fast. I used to remember the times where blogging is part and parcel of many people’s life. Now things have changed. It is mostly Instagram. I still prefer to read and people’s thought and life than just pictures but well, just have to get on with life.

Dreams

I just remembered that I have this blog which I have been blogging since 2006? Wow, this is like a cool 13 years ago. I am not sure how many more years will this still be around. I don’t think that I will be writing here often, but I do come back regularly to read through what I wrote over the years. It feels good to have some flashback of what I went through during those times.

And one thing that I did regularly was to have a dream list. Most of the things that I write down, I actually got them, or it does not matter anymore to me. So I thought it will be interesting to list down the things that I want. I have actually grown a lot over the years, and material things do not actually matter to me as much as before. But still, it will be fun to have a wish list. Who knows, I will have them.