My 2024 Year End Review

Cover image generated with OG Maker maded by Eddy Vinck

3 Things I Had Learnt?

• Take it Easy and Not at the Cost of Your Sanity - I was kind of burned out in my job search & my first module for my master, i believe it’s partly because of my dwindling saving since i started the job search journey in March. It doesn’t really help since I had tons of anxiety, doing my first master course that i failed incorporating it as part of my schedule, the experience is still worth it but my next attempt shall be smarter when i attempt it again in Summer next year. A friend of mine, she heard of what i had been through this year, she just gave me the suggestion to just take it easy due to the amount of balls i had been juggling from my end this year. Along with making decisions that i didn’t really prepare myself to make at my age again. Momento Mori
• Continue to Bet on Myself Despite Temporary Obstacles - My job search was hard like last year. This doesn’t make it easier since i still suck at doing leetcode type questions and i had been grinding hard on leetcode, preparing for my masters, upgrading my skills, knowleadge & experience in AI, I still fail in a lot of initial technical tests for my job interviews. This doesn’t help much in not being given a chance to prove myself without even going through the first round of a interview.
• Follow Your Curiosity - I had always had a interest in the AI especially swarm intelligence because of this ted talk, till this day the video blows my mind. But i choose to chuck this aside while doing my best to tap on the pulse of AI development. But the high barrier of entry to break into the field and my distaste in both math and academia kept me from pursuing. This only changed last year with my strong dream in my mind to immigrate to another country to do homestead. Therefore, I took multi steps this year towards that direction as well as taking on leadership positions for more impact. Initially it started off small like applying for masters, learning MLOps & Math course from DeepLearning.AI, followed by Project Management from Google. It ended me being burnout from my first module which is “Robotics: AI Techniques” for my master’s programme. This eventually lead me to taking on a my current job as a software team leader at Asus Singapore Design Center due to my curiosity.

Career

• Completed “Machine Learning Engineering for Production (MLOps)” by DeepLearning AI
• Completed “Google Project Management” by Google
• Being a one of the many judges at Hack & Roll 2024
• Became a mentor at Hack Singapore 2024, which 2 of the mentored teams won in a few categories
• Coffee sessions to talk about my career through my friends in the industry and my direct supervisor.
• Completed my 6 months contract at Airbus. - I learned about French corporate working culture, working in digital team that is cross domain, worked with LLM & AI related work through their data lake called “Skywise”
• Started my new job as a Software Team Leader at Singapore Asus Design Center this month.
• Continue to use and play around with anthropic’s claude because of the AI capabilities in software development and their mission which resonates with me.

Education

• Became Graduate Student in the Fall 2024 at Georgia Institute of Technology and attended my first networking session for the Singapore chapter
• Was promoted to 2nd Stripe White Belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ), reading books namely “Meditations on Violence” and “The Gift of Violence" to prepare for Shit Hits the Fan (SHTF) situations with bare mimum to talk my way out or descalate potential violent or stressful situations.
• Learnt about bushcrafting, cooking in the fields (trained to don’t start a fire during my military service, old habits just die hard. 🙂) and updating my skills on survival & land navigation that I had picked up from my military service. I applied these skills with my new gear for my solo camping trip for 3 days 2 nights in Mamam campsite at Pulau Ubin. I even crafted a wooden spear from scratch using my new morakniv knife. I practiced swinging the wooden stick/spear around. It was fun despite the camping experience was quite tiring with tons of rain while figuring my new gear in Pulau Ubin.
• Had a interest in learning Latin due to it’s benefit in learning other languages as well as allowing me to look at the original text in tough fields like Law, Medicine and Science. i just brought "Familia Romana (Lingua Latina Book 1)”. I had a headache in trying to read it since the whole book was pure latin.** I know, I’m just spartan in that aspect, but alot of people says it’s a good book to start as it’s progressive in nature.
• Brought and completed reading “The Hacking for Defense Manual” due to me following Steve Blank for his work for the startup ecosystem in american and Hack for Defense (H4D) over the years. His article his deep dive on “The Semiconductor Ecosystem” was pretty good.
• I recently learned o farm a Fish/Crab in a HDB since i wanted to learn to farm as my goal to live self sustaining life with high quality food in a homestead. I took the course from OnHand Agrarian and also paid for the scam plan that rears 4 crabs for 2 years.
• Gotten my Basic Open Water Diver license with my friend at Bali. Been a bucket list since my NS days, it’s only this year I decided to pull the triggered and found a friend to go and learn it together,

Health/Fitness

• Went hiking in a few mountains in malaysia ever since i MR from my military service without all the military equipment on my back. There’s even 1 that my hiking friends imagined, i won’t had made it before 6 pm to get their security deposit back. I was able to complete it before 6 pm 🙂. In that hike, i found out that i should brought some food as i was running empty the whole time. Without the help from the guide’s charity of 2 x small snikers plus some muscle relaxers, i won’t had made it before 6 pm.
• Went for my first “surgery” in my life because my doctor’s recommendations to go for it in a early health screening because i had previously blood in my pee. The surgery was a pretty shitty experience and thankfully i only had to do coloscopy again in a decade from now.
• I found out from the colonsocpy that i had gotten Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection. Therefore i’m gonna avoid water when i am travleing overseas. unless i know it’s been treated if not, I just go for bottled water or use aquatabs to process it myself before drinking it. Might consider pulling the trigger in buying Grayal or H2gO since it’s easier to use and without much hassle.
• I was diagnosed with Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). I had to drastically change my eating habits towards mediterranean diet. Along with pure focus on loosing weight to reach 70 kg, sleep schedule and exercise.
  • I*’m avoiding*
    • Sugar
    • Alcohol
    • Processed food as much as possible
  • Eating
    • vegetables mostly dark leafy greens and high fiber
    • health supplements and healthy food to control my medical condition plus my sweet tooth.
      • Berberine
      • Milk Thistle
      • Ceylon cinnamon
      • Allulose
      • Extra Virgin Olive Oil
      • Matcha Powder
      • Pea protein powder
      • Millet
      • Lentils
  • Cooking more home cooked meals but it’s still a challenge due to adjusting my lifestyle for my new job.

Wealth

• Increased my insurance coverage with other insurance provider due to talking to friends and consulting my financial consultant.
• I achieved 6 months emergency fund due to my 6 months job in Airbus.
• I had finally gotten a credit card to collect miles due to observing my spending habits through my debit card was quite consistent across the years.
• Started using crowd sourcing startup investment platform Wefunder to look at investing in Startups without being a accredited investor, In the end, i just opted out in investing in the startup because of the usual startup issues, i had gotten notice from the influencer working for them tp suddenly left following after the CEO.
• Will be looking at recovering my emergency funds but will strech it longer and investing it in other investment vehicles along the way.
• Started to donate in multiple causes and charity. i am really happy to help because their mission and difficulty in getting funds due to the platform they are using or access to people who’s interested to help.

Volunteering & Causes

• Continued in organizing meetups, workshop and mentoring programme at JuniorDevSG
• I spent my time to become a mentor for the mentoring programme/hackathon, judge for a hackathon and even being a panel speaker for 1 of SIT alumni network event that i’m honoured to be part of.

Family

• Went to China for 8 days with my Dad to destress and i had the opporuntiy due of not having found a job at that time.
• Brought my 3 nieces to
  • Universal Studio Singapore
  • World of Studio Ghibli in Art Science Museum
  • Multiple movies session with their friends as well
  • Instagram worthy resturants

What I Will Do the Next Year?

Next year i believe i won’t be looking doing alot of adventures instead focus on other things that help health, career and my continuing my master’s.

• Career
  • Honing my craft in
    • Technical Leadership
    • Strategy
    • Storytelling
    • AI
    • MLOps
  • Look at becoming a Solution Architect with specialization in AI
• Education
  • Taking up Advance Open Water Diver
  • Return to do my master in Summer
  • Reading om survival and bush crafting
  • learning to read and speak in Latin
• Health/Fitness
  • Improving my sleep schedule & quality of sleep
  • Mediterranean diet
    • Making home cooked meals
    • Bringing home cooked meals to work
    • Eating Mediterranean diet or Vegetarian India/Thai/Vietnam cuisines
  • Exercise schedule
    • Aiming to do daily exercise in:
      • Kettlebell - Improve my overall strength also injury prevention
      • Calisthenic - Overall mobility as well as injury prevention
      • Yoga - Reduce on my injuries due to doing Muay Thai or BJJ
      • 10 k steps - Lose weight without binge eating after the session.
    • Going twice a week and continue my martial arts gyms subscription but focus on
      • Muay Thai for 6 months
      • Getting my 3rd/4th BJJ white belt stripe
• Wealth
  • Rebuilding my emergency funds to stretch it to 1 year that allows me with more opportunity
  • Look at Investing in a few startups through WeFunder
  • Continue to donate to causes/charities i believe in
  • Invest in other investment vehhicles that i know with funds from my job.
• Volunteering/Causes
  • Taking a back burner in volunteering in very limited capacity
    • just organizing meetups/workshops
    • becoming a judge/mentor in a hackathon
    • Speaking in either meetups/conferences
• Family
  • Continue to spend time with my nieces, family and friends