Below are the things that I wished I have learned early, I have read them and liked them and I often look them up to remind myself. Although I titled it as what I wished I have learned early, it is also true that it is never too late to learn something. As the age of “self-improving”, “life-changing” books, articles and essays, I also would like to suggest taking them with a grain of salt, like everything else.

Reading

All of us agree that reading is a good thing and the impact is obvious. We gain knowledge and observations by reading different kinds of books on different topics. For example, reading history books can teach us how we end up being who we are from the stone ages until now, the mistakes and lessons people before our times have made and learned. How they invented new technologies. How they created new businesses. How they lead their people etc.

The truth is, eventually...

Warning: long post with loads of (big) pictures

From 6th of July until yesterday ( 9th of July 2017 ), me and two friends were trekking at Mt Rinjani in Lombok, Indonesia.

The initial plan was to go to Vietnam but couldn’t make it. So, we chose to go to Mt.Rinja instead.

From Wikipedia:

Mount Rinjani or Gunung Rinjani is an active volcano in Indonesia on the island of Lombok.

We booked the trekking tour with John’s Adventure. They are responsive and informative about all the questions we had. They have different plans and can adjust the plan according to your needs. We chose to do 4 days 3 nights ( Summit + Lake + Hot Spring + Rim 2 + Senaru Village ) . It was USD 250 per person. You can either pay in USD or Indonesian Rupiah ( you’ll need to check with them how much you are supposed to pay if you are paying in Rupiah because the currency rate might be slightly different from...

As the title says, this is the standard advice. I have read it long time ago. I am not living up to all the advises from this. I am trying, nonetheless. The original article is gone. I dug with the help of awesome WayBackMachine and I thought I would save it here for myself and for others.

Be positive.

Listen for 90% of a conversation and people will find you interesting.

Learn to ask engaging questions and let others do the answering. Don’t just ask people about facts, ask for their opinions too. Don’t be an interrogator. Be curious. Where were you before you were here?

Never criticize, condemn, or complain. Praise people a lot. Learn to spot good looks and compliment them.

Clean yourself up. Don’t skip showers. Care about how your hands and your hair look. Care about clothes. Care about as much as possible. Care about sports, care about elections, care about cars, care about how...

Recently, me and two other friends went and watched a Japanese anime called “A Silent Voice” ( Japanese: 聲の形 Hepburn: Koe no Katachi )

It’s a typical high-school romance story but it touches me in different ways. Unlike Your Name (Kimi No Na Wa.) (which is another great movie), this one reflects closer to the reality.

A deaf girl and a guy who bullied her. The movie shows how struggling a disable person can be at a place where most people are not accustomed to communicating with them. The environments are not very supportive too. Nonetheless, it is also audacious for the girl. On the other hand, the guy who bullied the girl felt so much guilt after the girl no longer stands the bullies. Everyone else turned against him and it eventually made him to attempt commit suicide. After unsuccessful attempt, he found the girl again and realize both of them are shadowed by the ugly past they...

A good day to myself, I hope.

This should not be a special day. Maybe, it could be a little bit more special I would like to reflect on whatever happened over the few months ago or even last few weeks. Here are the things that I feel I have to remind myself and I want to tell others.

Books

I have been lucky enough to own some books and read a few of them. I don’t really think having books in possession is something to brag about. From time to time, the realization which came to me is what you have read, what you learned from them and how you could utilize them count. Not the number of books you own or hey, not even the number of books you’ve read.

On the other hand, I still can’t help but to buy more books than I could ever read. But I feel my intentions are changing. If I have it, even if I could not make time to read it or whatever, I could share it to someone. That applies to...

My 2015 is a roller coaster year. Some ups and some downs.

Good

Some good stuffs that happened are

• Met a lot of awesome, fantastic, impressive and amazing people. Thanks y'all.
• Travelled a lot
• Maepaysoh
• MyanmarFlood.info
• Happened to buy a lot books and read a few of them. Especially, RPF and Murakami books totally changed my mind about how I look some particular things. I am glad that I read those. And Humans of New York is arguably the best I have ever read this year.
• Some surprising job offers and I obviously did get in.
• Keeping (barely) up DevDaily.
• A camera and loads of photos

Not so good

Some not so good stuffs that happened

• Had a surgery
• Didn’t get into school
• Didn’t write a lot code
• Didn’t learn anything much too.
• A lot less non-fiction books than fictions and zero technical books
• Didn’t run a lot
• Feeling not good enough almost all the time, consequently, depression.

Ar

What to say ?
I remember I have a lot of things to write down before I start to write down. Now, I have no clue where to start writing and what to write.

First of all, I was pretty sick. Okay, I am exaggerating. Not pretty bad. However, it’s worse than I expected. Even, unexpected.
Long story short, I had a surgery, minor one, on Piles. I’ve been suffering for years and only awhile ago, I went to the clinic and met the doctor.
I had no choice but to go for the surgery. All my years of ignorance and recklessness served me well.

The surgery was not bad and hospitalisation only took a few days.
I’ve learned what is “soft diet” as I was not allowed to eat any hard food for a few days because of the surgery.

What’s really bad came after I was discharged from the hospital. I could not make a bowel movement. I was instructed to take different kind of constipation medicines in different...

This is an excellent excerpt from the book I’m reading right now (as of this writing, 7th May) called Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track. Here’s what the book is about via GoodReads.

Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track covers a dazzling array of topics and themes, scientific developments and personal histories. With missives to and from scientific luminaries, as well as letters to and from fans, family, students, crackpots, as well as everyday people eager for Feynman’s wisdom and counsel, the result is a de facto guide to life, and eloquent testimony to the human quest for knowledge at all levels.

This is the letter conversation between a parent and Richard Feynman, American theoretical physicist, Nobel Prize winner in Physics. I also have included RPF reply letter.

Vincent Van Der Heyde to RPF, July 3, 1986

Dear Dr.Feynman:

OK, right from the...

I am running a daily mailing service called, “DevDaily”, which stands for Developer Daily (or whatever). And it’s totally free.

How it started

It’s been a while since I have sent out the first DevDaily ( yesterday 21.01.2015 is 80th issue but I sent it twice, sorry folks). I started doing this because I want my coworkers to be able to read some really nice articles. It’s quite troublesome to tell one by one so I thought it would be a good idea to send an email including the whole article. Later on, I asked a few friends around me whether they like to read it or not. They said yes. They are quite awesome, still keeping up a lot of perseverance. Y'all rock!

What I do is I send an article a day to your email. (Okay, hold your questions for a while.)

The whole article includes pictures and links. I try my best to format the articles nicely for good reading experience. I do that because I...