What an idiot.. I haven’t touched my blog in 6 years WTF.
Looking back, I do have the tendency of writing a lot of materials (blog post, song & music, etc) in a period of time (usually when I am broken hearted, lonely, and perhaps depressed), then nothing for years, then productivity comes back, then nothing again.
Well, I blame life. Life just happens. Some things were seen to be more important than others. And there’s nothing wrong with it. We grew up and we moved on.
So what’s been happening…
Career Break
My wife and I took a career break in 2018 for a year-ish. We went back to Indonesia to spend some time with the family, after being away for 11 years.
This is really weird, we don’t really know what gave us the idea in the first place to go home, but we just came back. Turns out it was a blessing in disguise. My wife’s dad was diagnosed with lung cancer whilst we were there (after like 3 or 4 months). So by being there, she can spend the last moments of his life together, before he passed away.
I went back to Australia again in 2019, the wife followed several months after.
Pandemic
Honestly though – on the contrary to most people, I had a great memory of the pandemic period.
Since my wife was still in Indonesia, and I was here in Sydney, we were living apart for around 5 months. Then she flew back here in March 2020, just before Australia closed its borders for 2 years. So we were reunited together again in the lock-down period, with no guests at all, local nor from overseas.
Also we both are very introverted, so we have been anti-social anyway since as long as I can remember. So nothing’s changed there.
Wife’s Got a Job
Seriously, I’m very proud of her. She secured a role with the NSW state government, building the Sydney Metro network (it’s the Sydney MRT-like transport, but all automated / driverless).
If I can choose between doubling my salary VS having my partner to get a job, I’d definitely choose the latter. Tax-wise is also better (as you know Australia tax bracket goes up to 45%), so 2 people-job are better.
Investing
We’ve been saving up since forever, and now that she has a job, it’s probably time for us to get a property.
However Sydney prices are just ridiculous though. There is no way I’m willing to get into these crazy AU$1 million commitment.
During our long weekend trip to Canberra, we fell in love with the city. Nature is beautiful, roads and facilities are huge like in Texas, everywhere is safe and clean like Washington DC. And mostly, the property prices are much cheaper than Sydney, but with a much better rental yield. So we purchased there instead to be rented out.
Work Skills
In the past several years, I’ve been working at a couple startups, looking after various digital areas. In these roles, I got my hands really dirty learning and implementing cool things:
- I learned how to use and integrate Segment (a CDP / Customer Data Platform) into our web and app platforms, connecting it to Mixpanel and Google Analytics.
- I learned marketing automation and CRM using Intercom, Hubspot, Autopilot & Ortto, and Salesforce.
- Used various CMS like Webflow, WordPress, Contentful, and Storyblok.
- And recently, I’ve learned JavaScript to be able to manipulate web pages, form elements, analytics tagging and browser cookies. I think deep down inside I have this regret of not becoming a developer / engineer.
Health
3 months ago, I joined this challenge at work to run 30 km in 30 days. It is up to us whether to run 30 km in one go or to spread them like for example 1 km per day.
Because this was happening throughout 30 days, I guess this became a habit.
When I started, I couldn’t even run further than 1.5 km. Now, I can run 5 km non-stop. And I run quite regularly (something feels missing if I don’t run).
I actually injured my knee because of running, probably a bit too often. So after a couple of weeks break, I am now alternating between running, cycling, swimming, and walking for my exercises.
3 months ago, I weighted around 83 kg. Now I’m 75 kg – have lost 8 kg and almost reaching my ideal weight of under 74 kg (according to online calculators based on my height).
Seriously, so happy that I can now re-wear my old shirts and suits.
Music
I recently came across a quote, saying:
Don’t die with your gifts still inside you.
And this really struck me.
In the past 2 decades, I must have written around 30-40 songs. I’ve produced only around 10 of them into recordings. And even then, I haven’t really pushed these songs out into the world as best as I could.
So now I am committed to do this. Watch this space, I’ll publish my songs properly very very soon to streaming platforms near you.
Over and out.