2020: Year In Review
2020 had been a bad but a year full of blessings for me. Here’s the review.
Positives
Graduation
I officially finished my studies on July 2020. With COVID happening, my final project can be done easier and with less distraction. Plus my thesis defense got finished on a high note without any complications.
Even though I’m eligible to graduate on July, I skipped the graduation in the hopes that by October COVID will be controlled and in-person offline graduation event will be possible. At the end of the day, in-person graduation is not possible and YouTube graduation video is all I got. When I think about it, this might be better than an offline graduation event. Since we know that ITB’s graduation mostly held on Saturdays.
Gojek
For this point, I felt that I am the luckiest person in the world. I got two job offers at the end of 2019 that confuses me on which path I should take. Given normal circumstances, my second option is a no brainer for an ITB graduate. Higher salary, relocation to better country, exposure with different culture, etc. But I chose Gojek to be my stepping stone of my career.
As 2020 going by, COVID began, overseas travel halts, hiring canceled, everything changed. The second option suddenly became not as attractive anymore. I never thought that this situation will ever happen. What a blessing!
Second point. On my early Gojek days, I had a one-on-one session with a superior. On that session I discover that the only time Gojek hired fresh graduates to a full time employee is only between 2018-2019 hiring season (pre 2018 Gojek don’t trust fresh grad enough, post 2019 COVID hits) and I am lucky enough to apply and got hired on that time frame. I don’t know whether this is coincidence or pure luck, but I believe this is all God’s blessing.
Investments
In 2020 I start to invest in a few aspects of my life, most notably in financial aspects and technical skills aspect.
Financial
2020 marks the date when I overcome my doubts on investing on stocks. Initially, I have a stigma that to make money in stocks, I have to monitor the stock market 24/7 to not miss any opportunities. After many discussion sessions with my peers, I found out that there are two general approach to make money on stock market: Trading or Long-term Investing. Trading depends on how much money you can make on the short term with high frequency, whereas with long-term investing you can buy a blue chip stock and let it sit and grow on its own.
Technical Skills
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Vim
In 2019 I read an article about Google’s duo Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat and a paragraph stuck in my mind.
After cappuccinos, they walked to their computers. Jeff rolled a chair from his own desk, which was messy, to Sanjay’s, which was spotless. He rested a foot on a filing cabinet, leaning back, while Sanjay surveyed the screen in front of them. There were four windows open: on the left, a Web browser and a terminal, for running analysis tools; on the right, two documents in the text editor Emacs, one a combination to-do list and notebook, the other filled with colorful code. One of Sanjay’s composition notebooks lay beside the computer.
From that point on, I shall have my one favorite editor that I understand inside out. And I choose Vim.
Initially, I watched videos where people show off their Vim setup and try to replicate what they did. Lots of time got lost to figure out how to do basic functionality on Vim like find and replace, project wide string search, navigating files, etc. Unfortunately, this initiative came to a pause when I start interning at STOQO. On the first day, my manager asked me to use PyCharm instead for productivity reasons. When I finished my internship, I continue to work on my thesis and forced myself to use Vim 100% when I can barely do things there. But with time, I felt more and more comfortable using it. Eventually I am able to configure my Vim on my own and integrate Vim into my daily workflow.
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Emacs
On my early Gojek days, a mentor was reviewing the activities on that day. He was presenting his notes with a strange bullet point program that can show and hide subtrees. Then I discovered that he is using Org-mode on Emacs. I instantly asked his setup. Before committing myself into a steep learning curve, I have a doubt on whether Emacs could fit in in my workflow or not. I discovered that I can have Vim keybindings in Emacs itself. I don’t have to learn from scratch anymore. Then I committed myself in using Emacs with org-mode just because it’s cool to do.
In my free time, I watched System Crafters YouTube channel as a guide to setup my Emacs from scratch.
Negatives
Gojek - part 2
Due to COVID situation, my early days in Gojek must be conducted from home. This is hard. The first thing I need to adapt with a new environment is social interaction. While WFH, communications are limited to slack messages and zoom calls to talk for work related stuff.
Social life
Summer 2020 was supposed to be great. Me and my friends planned to have a trip to Japan. We were thinking that we can travel around Japan, go to Mt. Fuji, eat some Wagyu or even Kobe beef. But all that was just a dream.
COVID hits my social life so hard. As a person who prefer real world interaction over online messaging, It’s hard to socialize remotely. I lost contact with friends I regularly meet pre-covid and have to adapt myself to face the reality that communication will be online.
Bad fitness
On 2019 I got into playing Badminton. I even got addicted with it. At the peak, I could play Badminton on 4 days in a week. Because of that, I was fit. I got my weight under control and I felt healthy. When COVID hits, I stayed at home with nobody to play Badminton with. All I did mostly happens inside my laptop and this causes me to gain high number of weight. I don’t feel healthy at all.
Investments - Reading
Other than the positive investments, I’ve always wanted to invest in myself to read tons of books. In 2020, I’ve bought a lot of books to read (about 10), but only one got finished.
What’s next
There are many aspects I have to improve on 2020. Here’s some notable aspects.
Spiritual
In 2019 I had a fairly good spiritual life. I had IMAB and regularly went to church meeting friends there. Now in the age of Church from home, I must have more self initiative morning meditation/devotion, and reading scriptures. My goal for 2020: read the whole Bible in 2021.
Reading Books
I have bought many books and my goal is to read at least 1 technical book and 1 non technical book by Q1 2021. I hope I can raise up the bar in Q2 2021.
Physical Fitness
Even if I hate gym, I have to go to the gym once COVID is over to get my body to fit again. My goal is by the end of 2021, I’ll be as fit as I am before COVID.
Social Life
No specific accountable goal on this aspect. I have to have new community in the new environment I’m in.
New Habits
I’m aspired to do quarterly review for my life in general. Just so I know what have I done in the previous 3 months and plan to improve my life for the next 3 months. By doing this, I hope that I can continuously track my life’s progression.
Widen My Perspective
In the past few years I’ve been thinking as a software engineer that codes to solve problem. Where in most cases, there is a single definitive point of failure. Today, surrounded by people that’s not in CS background reminds me to open my mind to not treat everything like it was in programming. My goal in 2020: To read more articles about what’s happening around me and read political or economical books.