Maximizing each day, getting a new macbook and watching Djokovic win his 20th Slam | Report

12 Jul 2021 . category: report . Comments
#radicali #startup #singapore #fitness #social

Welcome to #237, another biweekly on the blog!

Last couple weeks, it feels like i’m juicing out the max from each day and it gives me a high amount of satisfaction looking back. Even though the days might not be easy, it’s important for me to control the controllable. As the mug on my desk says, it could be worse.

At work, it’s been business as usual - trying to figure out different strategies for the business to move forward. We did a production deploy this weekend of one of the bigger features we’ve launched, and it feels good to finally put it out. These sprints remind me why working in a startup is so important to me, and why i couldn’t function in a slow setup or a research organization where my work doesn’t get pushed through to the end user. We are taking the rest of July to monitor the pickup of the product.

Last weekend, i got myself a Macbook Pro M1 and i’m so happy to not have the old mac buzzing trying to keep up with the onslaught on its RAM. The M1 chip seems to be faring well so far, except for a few issues i’ve noticed with the sensitivity of the speakers. i also got locked out of my old mac as i was trying to upgrade it to Big Sur, and ran out of memory - but after a few hours of recovery attempts, i managed to boot into bash and clean up some space, eventually upgraded safely. No data lost, but lesson learnt that i need to start using Apple’s time machine functionality!

i headed out to the National Library this weekend and replaced five old books with five new ones. From the last batch, i was able to get through about 50% of the story on Genghis Khan’s spirituality - learnt quite a bit about that era and Khan’s dominance on how civilization has shaped in Europe & Asia since. It was interesting to me how important of a function religion used to play, and makes me wonder if science & technology is following a similar dogmatic path in today’s mainstream. The other book that impressed me was about the harmonization of the Chinese by the CCP, it opened my eyes to the parallel cultures lived by a large population of the world right now. Lately, i have observed that i am attracted towards historical or political studies/biographies, and i’ve grown out of the self-help/management styled books i used to read more often. i was listening to Lex Fridman’s podcast where he had a North Korean defector(Yeonmi Park) on, and it has sparked in me a new interest in learning more about North Korea.

On the fitness front, i’ve been going strong on BJJ and i’ve been maintaining my notes dilligently over the last couple weeks. Last week, i got in a couple runs, one chest workout and 3 BJJ sessions including one rest day on Saturday. The 50K goal for July has forced me to put in some mileage but i need to turn it up in the weeks to come. This Sunday evening, i went out for a 4K while it was drizzling - although my mind was preoccupied with problems and fights, the run made me appreciate everything much more and put me in a beautiful mood for the rest of the day.

It helped that i watched the Wimbledon finals at my home with a bunch of friends who had come over for dinner, and we saw Djokovic cruise to his 20th Slam. i’m a Federer fan purely because i’ve grown up watching him, but it’s becoming undeniable that Djokovic will have the better numbers in the long run. What an athlete, forever inspiring - i feel fortunate to be even watching this era of tennis unfold before us.

On the NoFap front, i’ve maintained a healthy streak this time round and i’m currently on Day 16 as i type this blog out. Feels better overall, looking to extend this as much as is sensible.

i haven’t been able to carve out enough time to volunteer for Meraki, and i’m not really happy about it either. i’ll be taking a decision this week whether it makes sense for me to continue my commitment. i think i’ve realized that the incentives of volunteering aren’t aligned for me, and i might be better off not jumping in.

Recently, i’m trying to audit how and why i feel a certain way about the long-distance relationship. This is a difficult topic to navigate inside my head because it involves external forces, and i’ll probably write things out on paper to get clarity.

Last weekend, i spent a good six hours at my uncle’s place, played pakda pakdi with 10 yo kids, and also helped my cousin code out a game on Unity. Feels good to detach and spend time with family. This weekend was super-packed as well, as we did a traditional Mafia Friday night and then i had to work my ass off to get the deploy through. On Saturday night, we did Early Twenties’ first Twitter Spaces session with a BITSian senior and the livestream taught us a few new things about the dynamics of social interaction when it comes to podcasting. Followed up the Twitter livestram with a chat with the boys - these boys fall into the Tier1 guys on my life mountain(as Tim Urban explains) - and it’s important for me to spend time with them. Need to meet them soon, it’s been 3 years now.

Keep hammerin’

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