Musings..
2024-05-24T00:00:00.000Z
Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside of them was superior to circumstance.
First blog post, welcome! This has been something I’ve been thinking about doing for a while but just never got around to. I had a free weekend, so I smashed this out. It’s been fun to do, and I finally got around to refactoring my old website from uni. Inspired by content creators like Ali Abdaal and my bro, I’ve actually decided to blog stuff. What stuff? I guess we’ll see, but expect a lot of different changes and design updates as I fiddle around with things. Is it really a project created by me if I don’t use Tailwind? I’ve built this with Astro as the framework of choice, PNPM for my package manager, and deployments are done with Vercel. You could call it a hypebeast stack.
The YouTube algorithm remains undefeated and I have been loving layered songs. It is super brainrot-y but just a vibe
The London Diaries series by Daniel Simmons is one of my favourite YouTube series to follow. He’s got a dope aesthetic and a cool lifestyle mixed in with some great advice makes it an all timer. What got me was @15:11 where he talks about learning something new or starting over.
“You can either look at how bad you are and fixate on that and you will never feel good about yourself… or you can accept where you are… it’s the starting point and focus on the micro level improvement. Day after day week after week… You can’t compare yourself because your circumstances are so unique… it’s going to get better”
Really stuck out to me, I’m trying a bunch of new things (like this blog) and I could hyper focus on my workflow not being perfect, I am not the perfect writer or the design not being super aesthetic or I don’t have much content so it looks ‘weird,’ correct word would be unpolished. But rather I’m focusing on the metrics that are improving, I wrote a blog post and deployed the code. Just something to keep in mind with the whole comparison battle we have.
Also candles are dope and I am going to buy some more for my room.
Psycho Cybernetics - Great book will give this a dedicated book review for sure.
I’m currently watching Windbreaker. It’s an anime that has shades of Tokyo Revengers (which is another favorite of mine) and is about a high school gang called Bofurin, which protects the town of Furin. I’m on episode 5, where Bofurin is facing a rival gang in a 1v1 tournament. The animation is clean, and the characters and plot have been solid so far. The opening is a vibe, and my favorite character is Hayato Suo, who has immaculate drip and fighting style.
I think I’m a pretty regular guy, but I’ve always wanted to create content or have some sort of creative expression. Creating a blog was a natural first step after enjoying journaling. I don’t plan to have a super consistent format; it will mostly be whatever I’m doing and learning. Whether that’s tech topics (concurrency, Leetcode, database design, system design stuff) and writing it down and explaining it like I’m five to solidify the knowledge, or just posting about whatever, as I type this out on a Google Doc, I feel very chilled.
I journal, so none of my spicy stuff should appear here, haha. If you stumble upon this blog, I cannot recommend journaling highly enough. I wish I did it more often. You gain so much more context on why you made decisions in the moment, and if you write down your goals, it’s the coolest feeling in the world when you look back and see the stuff you achieve. For example, one of my goals way back in 2021 was to have the confidence to wear an NBA singlet to the gym. At the time, I was weighing in at 97 kg, and comparing that time to now and seeing that entry today was crazy. My favorite NBA jersey has to be the Vice City Miami Heat jersey.
Grateful: there’s a lot of stuff I could write about in the grateful section, like my trip with my brother to the USA (we went to San Francisco, Chicago, and New York) and smashing a few personal milestones. I think those could be separate blog posts.
Health is wealth. I’ve been feeling great physically and mentally the last few days, and it’s really starting to show in my runs and sessions. I definitely feel like I’m in the best shape of my life, and I’m excited to complete my first half marathon after getting hooked doing the 10k Round the Bays.
After spending over a week in NYC, I was inspired by all the fashionable people there, and I was, dare I say it, ‘influenced.’ My NPC fashion style is evolving, spurred on by everything I saw and influencers like Daniel Simmons, UniformsByDaryl, and Sangiev. I’ve started experimenting a lot, wearing boots, rings, and hats. It definitely hasn’t felt like me yet, but even though my fits are super basic and my bro says, “You dress like an old man,” haha, I feel so much more expressive, if that makes sense. Who knows, I might get my ears pierced or some tattoos, haha 👀
Being a US citizen living permanently in New Zealand sounds like a dream, and it is in many ways, but the pain of filing taxes and how that hampers your ability to invest is significant. Having to worry about Passive Foreign Investment Companies (PFICs) and how that relates to KiwiSaver, FIF tax (tbf, this is a New Zealand-based issue), and accurately reporting gains, among many other things, makes it a PITA. With New Zealand being small relative to the globe, it’s challenging to get the support I imagine expats in other countries receive.
I want to write a bunch of articles about all sorts of random stuff. It’s quite a nice start to the morning—waking up early, doing a bit of personal journaling, then writing a blog post, committing changes to GitHub, seeing the GHA workflow run, and finally hitting the gym. The whole posting content online thing has always been something I wanted to do, and I low-key envied other people who had the confidence to do it. So, this blog is like my little safe space. Who knows, I might start posting YouTube videos too.
I also want to get better at explaining topics that could be tech-related. I think Leetcode would be great for this as it solves two problems with one solution: improving my skills and providing content. I enjoy teaching myself and others, so it’s something I want to be amazing at.