Update

.gitignore

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 private/
 .replit
 replit.nix
-.env
+.env
+content/

README.md

@@ -20,6 +20,12 @@ Run on server:
 make publish
 ```
 
+## How this works
+
+- From local obsidian, sync to remote obsidian
+- In local I read from local vault and copy to content all that have tag publish=True
+- In remote I read from remove vault and copy to content all that have tag publish=True
+
 ## Improvements
 - scripts/publish.sh:
   - [ ] Skip copying files that already exist

content/2023 Reading List.md

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-/Users/galuh.sahid/Documents/obsidian/gal/Gal/Hobbies/Reading/Books/2023 Reading List.md

content/Field Notes/Camino Portuguese, Day 0 - Porto to Valença.md

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content/Field Notes/Camino Portuguese, Day 0 - Porto to Valença.md

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+---
+title: Camino Portuguese, Day 0 - Porto to Valença
+draft: false
+publish: true
+tags:
+  - hiking
+  - portugal
+  - spain
+  - camino portuguese
+date: 2023-06-26
+---
+
+Today I left for Valença from Porto by bus, but it was not without a bit of a drama thanks to the extra luggage I accumulated during my short stay in Porto. I had to buy a new pair of shoes because it was raining cats and dogs for the first two days, and the only pair of shoes that I brought with me—my Camino shoes—were soaked wet on the first day when I went to Primavera Sound. I also bought six new books from Llivraria Lello, of which I have no excuse for this one except that I just love books.
+
+Anyhow, there was no way that I'm taking them all the way to Santiago so I went to look for a left luggage facility around the airport. Well, it turned out the airport's left luggage facility is closed temporarily and I didn't know this, so I had to resort to a facility outside the airport and pay way more than I'd like to. My heart still breaks when I think about how much I paid for it but that's what happens when you make impulsive purchases.
+
+On my last few trips, I barely planned anything and it panned out great which is why now I'm trying to wing it (by my standards, which still involves quite a lot of planning). This is the first time in a while I felt that my research wasn't as thorough and it came back to bite me.
+
+![[bulwark.jpg]]
+
+The bus to Valença only took 1 hour, most of which I spent dozing off. From the bus station, I had to do a little hike to reach the albergue I had booked for the night, situated on the Valença fort. The small hike caught me by surprise, but I took it as a warm-up for the adventures to come.
+
+![[Field Notes/Images/Camino Portuguese - Day 0/street.jpg]]
+
+I checked into Hostel Bulwark which I had booked since weeks ago (I can't help it; I'm a hardcore planner), simply because it has a pretty maroon red exterior. When I checked in, almost every bed in the shared room had been occupied. Most people were sleeping, but I also spotted someone who was journaling, and another person who was working on her laptop.
+
+I knew that I wanted to explore the fort, so after a quick shower I set out my camera and sketchbook. I was hungry, having skipped lunch for the day, but I totally forgot that Spain (and to some extent, maybe Portugal bordering Spain) doesn't really start dinner until 8 and the restaurant I wanted to go to was only open on 8.30. To kill some time, I climbed up the fort and found a nice little spot with a view overlooking the town; a great spot for my first sketch of the camino.
+
+![[Field Notes/Images/Camino Portuguese - Day 0/sketch.jpg]]
+
+As dinner time approached, I made my way to the restaurant. Along the Camino, most restaurants offer what is known as the "pilgrim's dinner." Typically, this consists of a two-course meal with dessert and a drink of your choice. Here at the border of Portugal and Spain, something amusing happened during dinner: my brain became entangled in a linguistic web as I expressed gratitude in three different ways—obrigado, gracias, and thank you.
+
+When I returned to my hostel, I found the lounge bustling with people busy cooking their own meals. It seemed like everyone had already formed connections with one another. Strangely, I wasn't in a sociable mood. I had envisioned this camino as my personal retreat; one of the reasons for embarking on the Camino was to embrace solitude and slow down. But when I looked at people making dinner together and chatting with each other, I wondered: should I make an effort to socialize? Should I introduce myself and engage in conversations? It almost felt like reliving high school, and for a quick moment I struggled with the yearning to belong—something that haven't bugged me in a long time.
+
+But I remember one oft-repeated advice that I've read when I was looking for info on walking the camino: this is _your_ camino; there is no right or wrong way of doing it.
+
+I couldn't deny that I simply had no energy left. I headed straight to my bunk bed without even saying a word. As I rested my head on the pillow, I became aware of the weight of tomorrow's camino on my mind. I just realized I didn't even know how to figure out which way to take that will eventually bring me to Santiago. Even if I eventually manage to figure it out, I wasn't sure that I will have the energy to talk to new people. The past year had been difficult for me, and before I left, I decided that by doing the camino, I'm making space for myself to process what had happened in the past year. If it means I'll have to become the hermit peregrina, walking my own camino within my own little world, then so be it.

content/Field Notes/Camino Portuguese, Day 1 - Valença to O Porriño (21 km).md

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-/Users/galuh.sahid/Documents/obsidian/gal/Gal/Field Notes/Camino Portuguese, Day 1 - Valença to O Porriño (21 km).md

content/Field Notes/Camino Portuguese, Day 1 - Valença to O Porriño (21 km).md

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+---
+title: Camino Portuguese, Day 1 - Valença to O Porriño (21 km)
+draft: false
+publish: true
+tags:
+  - hiking
+  - spain
+  - camino portuguese
+date: 2023-06-27
+---
+
+First surprise of the camino: I had overslept. Despite my intentions to set an alarm, apparently I had forgotten to do so. It was already around 7:45 when I finally stirred awake, but then again I didn't have my camino morning routine yet. I didn't even know what time is a good time to start the camino, so was I really late to anything anyway?
+
+This departure from my usual routine unsettled me though, as someone who usually thrives on structure and predictability. Nevertheless, I did my best to adapt: I swiftly brushed my teeth, refreshed my face, and packed my belongings. Breakfast was included in the albergue, so I quickly prepared some toast for myself.
+
+Before venturing out, I made sure to stamp my Camino credential. I had picked up my Camino credential in Porto a few days before. This credential is necessary if you want to get your _compostella_ once you reach Santiago. They require you to get two stamps per day, and each stamp has to be dated which is how they verify that you have indeed walked the minimum 100 kilometers on the camino.
+
+Outside, thick grey clouds started to roll in, hinting at the possibility of rain. I tried to see what everyone else was doing: are most people staying in, or do they still go ahead? In reality, most people were actually still having breakfast. I wasn't that late after all. I caught a group of men who stepped out of the albergue, so I decided to follow suit. Not _that_ closely though, because I wanted to start the camino by walking on my own.
+
+![[bag.jpg]]
+
+The initial kilometers proved relatively effortless. It didn't rain, but the weather was cool, which to me made a perfect camino start. Valença was still asleep, and it felt like I had the entire town just to myself.
+
+![[tree.jpg]]
+
+Remember how worried I was yesterday about how to figure out the camino path? Before I went to sleep, I downloaded the Buen Camino app, which has a map that shows the route for all the Camino routes. I could use it the way I use Google Maps to make sure I stay on the Camino path. But honestly, one could do without the app. One of the ways is to follow the arrows that you can spot on the floor, on the walls, everywhere.
+
+![[sign.jpg]]
+
+Exiting the fort itself felt like a mini-adventure, involving a tunnel passage that looked a bit sketchy. Only one other pilgrim followed closely behind, and she seemed as confused as I was. I braved myself to go through the tunnel which led me to the road that would lead me to Tui.
+
+![[tunnel.jpg]]
+
+About three kilometers from the fort is the Spain-Portugal border, the very reason I chose Valença over Tui—to cross the border on foot rather than by bus. Yet, the crossing was not as grandiose as anticipated. I didn't realize I had crossed the border until I looked back and saw a big "Portugal" sign behind me.
+
+I don't remember where I got this advice from, or what is the context exactly, but it says something about when you're walking down the path of somewhere new, don't forget to look back because looking forward and looking backward will give you a different view. And indeed, this advice holds true.
+
+![[portugal.jpg]]
+
+![[river.jpg]]
+
+I continued my stride towards Tui with a newfound confidence: I made it out of the fortress and now I'm in Spain! Mapping and spatial awareness are not my strengths; people who know me and have traveled with me can certainly attest to my ineptitude. So when I successfully reached Tui without a hitch, I thought to myself: well, _I can do this._ However, this was short-lived, as I soon found myself struggling to navigate my way out of the cathedral square. A kind lady who was sweeping the terrace of the police station called out to me. "Camino?" she inquired. "This way!"
+
+So that's another way to figure out the camino path: get lost, and let a kind soul help you.
+
+![[horse.jpg]]
+
+After Tui, it was a long stretch of road until I finally entered my first forest trail. The cool shades of the trees were very much welcomed. A few kilometers into the forest, a humble bridge called Ponte das Febres appeared in front of my eyes. The bridge holds historical significance, as it marks the spot where the Dominican friar Pedro González fell ill with a fever. He abandoned his journey to Santiago and instead made his way back to Tui, where he ultimately passed away. Honoring this event in 1246, the bridge stands as a testament along the pilgrim trail to Compostela.
+
+I was not alone at the bridge; apparently there was some construction going on. There was a group of people working on the bridge, doing some measuring and polishing. Normally I would have walked past, but it was a perfect spot for a break (this is when I realized that two slices of toasted bread is not enough as a camino breakfast, and yes, on the camino breakfast is important!) and for a sketch.
+
+It took me about one hour to paint the bridge, which is a normal pace for me, but painting when you're in the middle of walking the camino is different. First, the sun and the heat. When the heat started to penetrate the shaded area where I found my refuge in, I realized that I needed to hurry unless I wanted to spend most of my walking under the scathing sun. Second reason, which is more of a mind game more than anything honestly, is that I would see your fellow pilgrims pass me by and I couldn't help but think that I should keep walking.
+
+![[Field Notes/Images/Camino Portuguese - Day 1/sketch.jpg]]
+
+As I was packing up my belongings, one of the people from the group approached me curiously. She asked me if she can see what I was painting, to which I said yes, of course. After looking at and taking picture of my painting, she introduced herself: her name is Marta, and the group of people who were working on the bridge was actually a team from the government who had spent five years working on restoring this historic bridge. "It's complete now," she said, beaming proudly. I wish my Spanish was good enough for more than basic exchanges—I would have loved to learn more about the restoration process and all the challenges that entailed when you are restoring an old, historic bridge.
+
+Nevertheless, I was grateful for this chance interaction. It was the first real interaction that I had of the day, other than the occasional "buen camino!" greetings that I exchanged with other fellow pilgrims on the way. I have been sketching for as long as I can remember, and I had always thought about it as a solitary activity until I realized that it has helped me plenty of times to connect with people that I wouldn't have connected with otherwise. This case is the perfect example.
+
+![[grave.jpg]]
+
+If I've got to be honest, I wasn't a big fan of the rest of the trail. Once I exited the forest trail, it was road and highway almost all the way to O Porriño. About 2 km before the town, there was an alternative path that would take me to O Porriño through the river instead of the industrial road. I was eager to get out of the highways so I was more than happy to take the path with more nature, despite it being about 2 km longer than the original path.
+
+![[this-hurts.jpg]]
+
+I made it to O Porriño at about 4 pm. The albergue that I had booked was right on the Camino path, right after I exited the river trail. Apparently most people had arrived in the albergue a few hours before. The nice lady who was in charge of reception, Lucy, noticed my shoes. "I have the exact same ones! Altra." she exclaimed. "Blue, too." And so we spent the next 10 minutes fangirling over our Altra Lone Peaks.
+
+Overall it wasn't a perfect day (will there ever be a perfect day? I don't think so). My phone recorded that I walked 30,999 steps - 21.3 km. Overall I felt that the day was OK-ish, but the but I knew that I needed to go easy on myself. It's Day 1 of my first _ever_ Camino, after all. It will get better. And most importantly: I made it to O Porriño!
+
+Despite it being a just OK day, I learned a lot on my first day:
+
+First, it's okay to take a break and rest. I rushed myself in the latter portion of the trail... for no reason. I barely took any break except when I was sketching and a few hours later to rehydrate when I found a vending machine. I only had one energy bar for lunch. Why was I rushing? I don't even know! Yes, I only made it at 4 pm, maybe I was slow, and yes most people were already in the albergue, but no one was keeping track, and I wasn't late to anything. I had to remind myself that I didn't have anything else to do for the day except dinner. The only thing that I would be doing on the camino is _walk_. And I will walk again tomorrow.
+
+Second, everyone does the camino in their own way. Some may want to walk fast, some may want to chill and take it slow, and that's totally okay. For me, I knew early on that I wanted to make at least one painting a day throughout the camino—otherwise I wouldn't have bothered to bring my sketchbook and painting kit with me. It's totally understandable that I would arrive much later than the other pilgrims. (And I repeat: even if I didn't paint, it's okay to walk on my own pace and arrive much later, heck, in the evening, even. It's not a competition!)
+
+I had this realization on my walk: the camino, in a way, helped me to confirm some of the things that I already know about myself and still need to work on. When I decided to dedicate a week with one simple goal_, to walk to Santiago,_ these issues manifested in the simplest things, which makes it easy to for me to spot and reflect on. I have always known that I have a rather competitive streak (sometimes for the pettiest things, like *cough* reaching the next town in the camino), which explains why I really wanted to get to the next town as quickly as possible even if it's for no reason. My drive to get things done means that I live my life at warp speed... so it's no surprise that I had so much trouble justifying why I needed to take a break.
+
+I still have a few days left, and if anything, the next few days are the perfect time for me to experiment and see if I can carry over some of the lessons learned to my life outside of the camino.
+
+![](https://galshd.files.wordpress.com/2023/08/84014-dscf2690.jpg?w=1024)

content/Field Notes/Camino Portuguese, Day 2 - O Porriño to Redondela (16 km).md

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content/Field Notes/Camino Portuguese, Day 2 - O Porriño to Redondela (16 km).md

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+---
+title: Camino Portuguese, Day 2 - O Porriño to Redondela (16 km)
+draft: false
+publish: true
+tags:
+  - hiking
+  - spain
+  - camino portuguese
+date: 2023-06-28
+---
+
+Today was a fairly easy hike for me despite the hills (and boy, there were a lot). Before going to bed, I took notes of my learnings from the first day—both practical lessons and "big life lessons". I will need to take my sweet time to apply the big life lessons, but for the practical lessons, I could experiment with them today and see how it works.
+
+For the practical camino lessons, I decided to try sleeping for 8 hours but waking up early, which means going to bed by 10 pm and waking up at 6 am. It worked wonders: I got to start my walk in the cool morning while still having ample time for breakfast. And yes I did have breakfast, some sandwich and orange juice that I got from the supermarket the day before. Also it helped that today's walk was quite short, only about 17 km in total. Although shorter, the terrain was more challenging than yesterday's trail. I was in a good mood for the most part though, maybe because I was more prepared and I now knew what to expect.
+
+![[mirror.jpg]]
+
+I made a stop at Chapel of Santiaguiño de Antas to refuel and sketch, but I wasn't happy with the sketch that I made. I was rushing not because I wanted to get to Redondela quick, but because I thought it was going to rain and I couldn't bear the thought of walking the next 10 km with wet socks and shoes. I ended up with all the wrong shades... I'm almost embarrassed to post it here, but why not? Not every day is a good sketching day. Good sketching day or good walking day: you can only choose one.
+
+I was also quite distracted when sketching. My mom asked me what I was doing and I casually told her I was walking from the border of Portugal and Spain to northern Spain. "But you're not alone, right?" she asked. I'm not sure why she was expecting any answer other than an "of course I'm alone", at this point she should have known me better than this, no?
+
+"Oh my god," she wrote back.
+
+![[duck.jpg]]
+
+![[flower.jpg]]
+
+![[woods.jpg]]
+
+![[Field Notes/Images/Camino Portuguese - Day 2/dog.jpg]]
+
+Despite the shorter trail, there was so much more green on today's trail though, and with all the hills you automatically get better views too, so I didn't mind the hike at all.
+
+I also walked past some small Spanish villages, and when I was walking through them I remember this one time many, many years ago on my first visit in Spain. I was with my late dad, on the regional train to Figueres from Barcelona to go visit the Dalí Theatre-Museum. The train made stops in many small Spanish villages in between. I could only see them from inside of the train, these villages that only seem to house hundreds of people, stretching maybe about three kilometers at maximum, ones that you can walk from one end to another in just half an hour. I told my dad, I wonder how it feels like to get off at one of them, wander around, get on the train only, and get off at the next stop. Repeat.
+
+We didn't get to do it because we needed to get to Figueres and we were short on time. But roughly 12 years later, I'm doing exactly that, walking from one village to another in rural Spain. Sans dad and the train, but alone, with a 7 kg backpack weighing on my back, walking my own two feet. I'm grateful for the experience just the same.
+
+![[cross.jpg]]
+
+I made it to Redondela by 12 pm. It helped that my albergue was right at the entrance of town, but I know I'll have to compensate by walking some extra hundred meters tomorrow. Nevertheless, my Day 1 self would have been ecstatic to know that I made it early, but all I could think about when I got there was: okay, now what?
+
+The sign hanging on the door of the albergue says that the albergue would only be open by 1 pm, because they were still cleaning the room. And so today I learned that this is the one issue that one will encounter if you arrive way too early: you will have to wait until your albergue is open. There was another woman who had arrived before me, and together we sat on the bench in front of the albergue in the heat. An old man probably in his 60s followed shortly after me, and then another woman who chose to wait it out right in front of the door.
+
+This albergue, unlike the ones I've stayed in previously, does not have any bunk beds. Instead it has regular beds spread out across the room. It is definitely a step up from last night's albergue; it feels very airy, clean, and is flooded with light.
+
+You would think that I would feel ecstatic to have ample time for myself. I did have plenty of time to have lunch, do laundry, go to the supermarket to fetch my supplies for dinner and tomorrow's walk, and take a nap. But by 4 pm I already did everything (including the nap!), and I was at a loss of what to do. One option was to venture out and explore the town, but it was so hot and because I already showered, I didn't feel like going out again.
+
+I spent most of my time in my not-bunk bed, reading R.F. Kuang's _Babel_ that I've been reading this past week. After that, I got distracted and my mind took its sweet time to wander off, not in a good way. I thought about my sketch which I wasn't happy with, and regretted going way too fast this time. I felt a pang of guilt for being too lazy to go out; shouldn't I be out there, exploring every nook and cranny of Redondela like the adventurous person that I aspire to be? Am I missing out by staying in my room? It was a good walking day duration-wise and weather-wise, but emotionally I was feeling really off.
+
+"The camino gives us what we need," Filipa told me through text when she found out I was doing the camino. I met her on my trip to the Banda Islands last year, when she was doing a round-the-world trip with her friend. "We just need to be aware of it."
+
+And today, the camino gave me the harsh realization that I have been demanding so much of myself, oftentimes to impossible standards. It was the single thread connecting all of the running thoughts that I had today, and it's something that many loved ones have told me about, but I never believed them until today.
+
+Let me explain. When I started the camino, my goal was simple: I just want to walk from point A to point B each day, and make it to Santiago as scheduled. I remember I couldn't finish my Inca Trail hike because I got injured on Day 2, so to me, finishing this one would call for a celebration. It seemed like a realistic, yet challenging enough goal for me at the time.
+
+But when I made it to O Porriño yesterday, I moved the goalpost for myself. It was no longer enough to walk from one town to the next as scheduled, but I told myself that I should make one (good!) sketch per day _on location_, and take good pictures too, which means I need to explore the town as much as possible. Plus, I need to get to the next town at around lunchtime (for what reason? Heck, I don't even know).
+
+In retrospect, it seems ridiculous, but it was hard to recognize it at the time. I didn't realize that the reason why I felt so weighed down emotionally despite it being a relatively easy day was because I wanted to accomplish so many things at once.
+
+![[dog-2.jpg]]
+
+Being aware of it is one thing, making a change is another thing. I take pride of my ability to get things done, so I'm not sure how I'll handle it once I get back from the camino. _Will I actually be able to slow down?_ Do I even want to?
+
+That will be my problem for when I return to the real world, but I can try to make a change tomorrow. This is also something that I realized today: the camino can be my safe space to experiment with the changes I want to make in my life. When you only have one single main goal in a predetermined timeframe, it removes the myriad distractions that you usually encounter in your life, and it (in theory, at least) should be easier for you to see how you react to the changes and what kind of adjustments you need to make, if any.
+
+We'll see if tomorrow will be any different.

content/Field Notes/Camino Portuguese, Day 3 - Redondela to Pontevedra (20 km).md

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content/Field Notes/Camino Portuguese, Day 3 - Redondela to Pontevedra (20 km).md

@@ -0,0 +1,112 @@
+---
+title: Camino Portuguese, Day 3 - Redondela to Pontevedra (20 km)
+draft: false
+publish: true
+tags:
+  - hiking
+  - spain
+  - camino portuguese
+date: 2023-06-29
+---
+
+The camino gives you what you need indeed. Today, I needed a change, and that's exactly what I got.
+
+Yesterday, I wasn't feeling my best emotionally, so it was a surprise that I woke up with a rather cheery mood. Maybe it's because I had tuned in early the night before, giving me ample rest. I also really anticipated my breakfast: orange juice and a tuna sandwich from what is said to be the best bakery in Redondela. I had managed to establish a morning routine that worked for me. I even figured out a clever system to organize my belongings on the bedside table. I divided the space into three sections: one for my electronics like my phone, camera, and charger, another for toiletries, and the last one reserved for my clothes for the following day. This simple organization brought about a remarkable shift in my mood. That made a world of difference to my mood.
+
+![[DSCF2773.jpg]]
+
+It was a good start of the day indeed, and like a chain reaction, I started looking forward to the walk. Not particularly to the next destination, but the walk itself. Isn't that the essence of the camino anyway?
+
+And so I left Redondela with a newfound sense of calmness.
+
+![[DSCF2776.jpg]]
+
+To get out of the city, I had to pass by some more industrial area and the dreaded highway. But instead of being annoyed like how what I felt on my first day on my way to O Porriño, I remained calm. I knew that soon, maybe in a few kilometers, I would find myself in a charming Spanish village or a forest trail that I would love.
+
+Before long, I settled into my own rhythm. Pilgrims passing me by no longer phased me; yesterday taught me that I could walk swiftly if I want to. But this time, I chose to be deliberate with my pace. I fully realize that I'm not competing with anyone here and no one is keeping track.
+
+I was at peace with whatever I had at the time, and that helped me to be truly present for the first time in the camino. I wasn't thinking about other people or the next town. I took the time to look around me and mentally take note of what I saw along the way:the first railway crossing I encountered on the Camino, the breathtaking coastal vistas, the intriguing stickers adorning lamp posts—an mysterious QR code leading to a Camino app and a sticker of a Camino podcast (of course there's a podcast for everything!). Writings and graffitis.
+
+![[view.jpg]]
+
+![[railway.jpg]]
+
+![[DSCF2790.jpg]]
+
+Somewhere along the way, the reality that _yes, I'm really doing the camino_, really sunk with me. I had always wanted to walk the camino since I first heard about it years ago, but in my head at the time, it seemed to be one of those things that I would only get to do once I retire. When I finalized my Primavera Sound Porto plan, I knew that I had to squeeze this camino into the trip somehow. Yesterday I talked about how my relentless drive to accomplish things can be draining, but one delightful byproduct of that trait is that I do make my dreams a reality.
+
+![[DSCF2792.jpg]]
+
+![[DSCF2795.jpg]]
+
+When I walked uphill and was rewarded with a view of the coast, I could tell that this was my favorite camino day so far. I was alone most of the time too. Though small groups of pilgrims occasionally formed around me, I managed my pace to create moments of solitude.
+
+As I descended from the hill, I noticed a large rock by the roadside—a perfect spot for a break and, perhaps, a brief sketching session. Initially, I walked past it, but then I realized that I love this part of the trail so much. Along the way, I captured numerous photographs, even a video, and, in an unprecedented move for me on the Camino, took a selfie. I wanted to remember this trail and _being_ in this trail. Yet, what better way to record this moment than through sketching?
+
+Of course, you can take pictures, which is what I had done up until that point. And I love it! Photography is another passion of mine, otherwise I wouldn't have carried my camera with me all the way to Santiago. But when you only take a photograph of a place, it's easy to just get it done and move on. Sketching, on the other hand, demands time which indeed is a luxury when you're traveling (or walking the camino, for that matter ;)). Yet, in exchange, it grants you the opportunity to fully absorb your surroundings—the weather, the atmosphere—and to just... be. My sketching endeavors have definitely given me the most vibrant and enduring memories.
+
+I retraced my steps and returned to the big rock. I took out my chocolate energy bar, my sketchbook, my painting kit, and started sketching away.
+
+More pilgrims started to roll in: a mix of solo walkers, couples, small groups, and even larger groups, seemingly students on an educational excursion. Unfortunately, the serenity of the moment was interrupted by one of them playing a song on an external speaker, slightly dampening the atmosphere. Nonetheless...
+
+There were lot of new faces on the trail that I haven't seen before, maybe because on my first day I was too late and on my second day I was too early. Redondela was also the town where the Central and Coastal route converged, so a lot of these new faces probably walked the Coastal route, which is why I didn't see them before. Some greeted me with a "buen camino" as they walked past. A few stopped by to see what I was sketching. A group of elderly gentlemen who stayed in the same albergue as I did in Valença also stopped by and they started making poses. At first I didn't get what they were trying to do, but when one of them said, "draw us! We'll be your models!" we all broke into laughter.
+
+I continued walking, thinking that I would not stop because I already had my break. But when I came across a beautiful bridge with a bench, I couldn't help it but put down my backpack... and start sketching again.
+
+I decided to stop when the sun came out. It was already 10 am and I knew that if I wanted to make it to Pontevedra without getting burned, I needed to continue walking and amp up my pace a little bit.
+
+![[DSCF2816.jpg]]
+
+The rest of the trail was a blur, honestly. It was mostly one village after another, and I remember I got confused at one point because the arrows weren't clear, my Buen Camino app was showing a different way than the arrow (this has happened a few times), and people were going in different ways.
+
+What started as a rather chill walk turned into a slog rather quickly, but I knew it was mainly because of the heat. I just wanted to get to Pontevedra as fast as possible, put down my backpack, shower, and sleep. Annoyingly, there were quite a few hills to conquer too, which I didn't expect. I thought we would be done with hills by Day 2, but Day 3 was not much different, and the heat wasn't helping. And unlike Day 2, this time I could really feel my backpack weighing down on me as I struggled to make my way up to hill.
+
+Despite the hills, I actually encountered many pleasant surprises along the way. In one of the forest trails, I came across a guy who set up a shop. He had a table of souvenirs, and some benches, and some pay-as-you-wish mineral water. I was running low on my water reserve, so I decided to restock and take a break. I was just so exhausted.
+
+I don't remember much about what we talked about—some pleasant small talks—but I remember he talked about his forest friend: the bird. "He would poop on everyone, but not me!" he said, laughing so loudly you can hear it echo in the forest, as he fed the bird with some food that he had with him. He also told me about the alternative route that I should take. Three kilometers before Pontevedra, the camino would branch into two different routes: one that is shorter, but goes through the industrial area, and another one that is longer but takes you through the river. He insisted that I should take the river one. "It's perfect!" he said, imitating a chef's kiss gesture.
+
+As I prepared to leave to continue my journey, he wished me a buen camino, and said with a big smile: "remember, this life is the moment!"
+
+I was taken aback because what he said brought me back to my walk this morning instantly. The slog had distracted me away from being present, because all I could think about now was getting to Pontevedra. And the camino gave me quite a _literal_ reminder to stay in the present.
+
+But boy oh boy let me tell you: it was hard. I knew that this life is the moment but hiking one hill after another in the heat with my backpack weighing down on me was not really a moment I wanted to enjoy and take in.
+
+![[DSCF2823.jpg]]
+
+"Buen camino," I heard someone say. I thought she was saying it to someone else, but then I saw she was walking to my left. I greeted back with all the voice and energy I could muster, which wasn't a lot. "Are you tired?" she asked.
+
+I said, "yeah, I am tired. It's the heat. It would have been much easier without the heat."
+
+At first I thought she would walk away from me, but we ended up sticking together. We walked a similar relaxed pace: I was tired and she had blisters from yesterday's walk so she couldn't walk fast.
+
+This is the first time I walked the camino with someone else, and while at first I thought I would have a hard time adjusting to it because I was used to walking alone, it turned out to be nice. It made me forget about how hot the weather is and how the hills seemed never-ending; it kept me in the present, because instead of thinking about how there were barely any shades in this part of the trail while the sun was right above me, I got to listen to her talk. She told me that is from Mallorca and she started the camino in Vigo.
+
+We walked past a food truck tucked away in this spot in the forest trail. It was the first food truck that I had seen in the camino. They also set up quite a lot seats. I wish I had taken a picture, because I swear it was the coziest rest area I had ever seen in the camino so far. "Do you want to take a break here?" she asked.
+
+I thought about it for a moment. I had taken two breaks, well, three breaks today including the brief stop in the forest. Do I need another break? My first instinct was to keep walking. But then again, the camino is a good opportunity to experiment and maybe do things you wouldn't otherwise do. Plus, chatting with my new friend while drinking fresh orange juice is not a bad alternative route at all.
+
+And so we spent about half an hour drinking fresh orange juice and talking about why I did the camino. For me, it was to learn how to slow down. For her, she wanted to learn how to be alone; she was always with someone, she said, and she had walked the Camino from Finisterre to Santiago with her boyfriend last year. This time, she wanted to do it alone.
+
+The rest of the trail wasn't that interesting. Lots of ups and downs but without the pretty views. We spent the entire time talking about our family, how we both didn't have TikTok, and the kinds of art we do—she takes analog pictures and makes ceramics. I wasn't surprised; I often found myself drawn to art-inclined people, so it's no surprise that I found it easy to connect with her.
+
+We were both just so over the walk, and to cheer her (and myself) up I told her about the river path that the guy earlier told me about. "Two more kilometers until the river," I would say. I knew that after the river, we still had three kilometers to go, but two kilometers is easier to accept than two plus three kilometers. It was helpful to have something to look forward to.
+
+![[DSCF2824.jpg]]
+
+We made it to the river, and the alternate route truly did not disappoint:
+
+![[DSCF2828.jpg]]
+
+Halfway through the river trail, she told me that she wanted to take a break because her feet were hurting. "It's okay if you want to go ahead," she said. We exchanged numbers, and this is when we both realized that we don't know each other's names; her name is Paula. We planned to meet up once we get to Pontevedra, but then I decided to stay. It was already 3 pm, but yesterday I had no idea what to do anyway. I started to think maybe it would be better to spend longer time on the trail, either by slowing down or walking longer days.
+
+We found ourselves a picnic table, put down our backpack, ate our snacks. Paula also spent some time to tend to her blisters.
+
+![[DSCF2833.jpg]]
+
+![[DSCF2836.jpg]]
+
+The walk into Pontevedra felt very, very long. Paula's albergue was in the entrance to town, while mine was further into town, so we split up and decided to meet up for dinner later at a pulperia in the old town area. Once I got to my albergue, it was already 16:30. The hospitalero welcomed me inside and as he showed me to my room, he asked me if I was tired.
+
+I shook my head. It has been a long day, yes, but it was my most fulfilling camino walk yet, and I was feeling anything _but_ tired. "I'm feeling fantastic," I told him. I really, really am.
+
+![[DSCF2839.jpg]]

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----
-title: 2021 reading retrospective - tech edition
-draft: false
-tags:
-  - reading
-  - retrospective
-date: 2021-12-31
----
-Last year I wrote a Twitter thread on data/AI books that I read on 2020. This year I want to do the same thing in the form of a blog post. Note that the scope is slightly broader since in this post I’m also including non-data/AI tech books too. I also did a general 2021 reading retrospective which you can find here: [[2021 reading retrospective]].
-
-The list is sorted by chronological order (date read from earliest to latest).
-
-Now, onto the list:
-
-**_Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing_ by Mar Hicks**
-
-A well-researched book on how Britain’s computing industry suffered by discarding women in the process. Two years ago I read Claire L. Evans’ _Broad Band_ and one of the topics discussed in the book is how women were forced out of computing. This book takes it further by zooming in to Britain in particular and goes into details about all the policies and structural issues in Britain that eventually forced women out of computing. It also discusses how this eventually affected Britain’s reign as a leader in computing, just as promised in the title. My only gripe is that it does not go very detailed on how exactly it happened. It’s still an important read nevertheless!
-
-**_Your Computer Is on Fire_ edited by Thomas S. Mullaney, Benjamin Peters, Mar Hicks, and Kavita Philip**
-
-One of my favorite reads in 2021. This book is a collection of essays that highlight a set of oft-overlooked issues in tech and what happens when we ignore them until it’s too late—which, sadly, seems to be always the case. I had been eyeing this book for quite a while and bought it immediately when it was released. At first I was worried that the writing was going to be very academic but I found it to be very readable and not a slog to get through at all. I also love that the book explores a wide range of issues. Some of my favorites are related to languages: “Siri Discipline” by Halcyon M. Lawrence explores voice recognition (raise your hand if you’ve been personally victimized by your voice recognition app not recognizing your accent! 🙋‍♀️); “Broken is word” by Andrea Stanton discusses language and typing. Did you know that Microsoft’s Traditional Arabic typeset only appeared as recent as 20 years ago because it was too difficult to deal with? Does that make you angry? Because it sure does make me angry.
-
-**_Neural Networks and Deep Learning_ by Michael Nielsen**
-
-I mostly learned about neural networks from a collection of random articles on the Internet and I felt there were some gaps in my knowledge because of my rather haphazard learning approach. I decided to read this book so I could re-learn neural networks and deep learning in a more orderly manner. It’s a good and concise book if you want to learn neural networks and deep learning from the very basic building blocks.
-
-**_Statistics Done Wrong: The Woefully Complete Guide_ by Alex Reinhart**
-
-They say you learn a lot from mistakes, and I wholeheartedly agree. A lot of stats concepts fly over my head if I’m just reading descriptions from a textbook. But when I learn about how _not_ to use them, it’s like these concepts are drilled into my brain, perhaps out of my own gigantic fear of making mistakes. There are a lot of real-life case studies which is perfect for my learning style, though most examples come from lab settings.
-
-**_Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America_ by Christopher Wylie**
-
-I’ve been following the Cambridge Analytica news since it broke out, but this is the first time I read in detail about the projects that they were working on. What surprised me is this: I’m sure that anyone who has worked with data long enough actually has the technical knowledge to accomplish the same thing, given the same data and resources. These projects does not involve obscure, cutting-edge technology that only a few people in the world can do—it’s basically big data aggregation with some machine learning sprinkled here and there, something that a lot of people have probably learned in college. What matters here is not about whether you’re technically knowledgeable enough or not—the bigger question is how your conscience will react when you’re presented with the same opportunity. I guess this is true for a lot of things: there’s often only a very thin, almost invisible line between where you are now and where you _shouldn’t_ be. I know that I don’t want to be the person who says “yes, I’ll do it” and cross that line. For me, one of the things I can do right now is to make that line more visible by thinking more critically about how I’m using my skills and how I’m contributing to the technologies that are shaping our lives.
-
-**_This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race_ by Nicole Pelroth**
-
-I first found out about this book from the _Darknet Diaries_ podcast. There are a few overlapping stories and episodes, but it’s still a good read, and this book is a good complement in the way that it provides a lot of historical contexts for the exploits and events that I've heard from the podcast. I do think the book could have been shorter though.
-
-**_Super Pumped: The Battle of Uber_ by Mike Isaac**
-
-The main reason I read this book is because I was thirsty for another tech “tea” book a la _Bad Blood_. There are some stories I’m already familiar with, mostly the more recent controversies such as the Waymo debacle. I wasn’t aware of Uber’s early history though so there are a couple of fun tidbits I learned for the first time, like how their first CEO got his initial position in Uber by tweeting at Travis Kalanick to how Kalanick dealed with VCs. There’s something about the writing that I’m somehow not really a fan of but it’s a page-turner nevertheless, which is not surprising given the dramatic source materials.

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----
-title: 2021 reading retrospective
-draft: false
-tags:
-  - reading
-  - retrospective
-date: 2021-12-31
----
-Hello friends. This year I read 52 books—1 book short from last year but still right on my personal target. In this post I will go through some books that left an impression (good or bad) on me and discuss my reading plan for next year.
-
-## The delightful surprises
-
-Every once in a while I read what I consider as a "light" book—fiction books that are set in everyday life, mostly young adult or comedy. I mainly read these books to keep my reading momentum. Most of the time, these books are just OK for me. Sometimes though I get surprised with books that unexpectedly left a deeper mark on me. Last year, it was **Rebecca Serle's _In Five Years_**; this year, it was **Elle Cosimano's _Finlay Donovan is Killing It_**. I'm not going to spoil you since it will take away all the fun, but this book is just so funny and witty and it still managed to keep me up on my toes at the same time. I honestly like it much more than the other books that I've read recently that are marketed as "serious" crime fiction books. I totally recommend it if you're looking for a light, fun read and I'm so excited for the sequel because whew, that ending!
-
-Another book that to me belongs to the "delightful surprise" category is **Merlin Sherdrake's _Entangled Life_**. I was asking myself: "what is something that I know _nothing_ about at all?". Obviously the list of answers to this question is endless but the first thing that popped up in my mind was somehow fungi. I thought a book that entirely talks about fungi would bore me to death, but I was gladly proven wrong. I have so many highlights and notes in my notebook that I'll probably share one day if I can be bothered, but if you're looking for something interesting to read I can't highly recommend it enough. Most importantly, this book inspired me to seek out for more books on topics that I'm not familiar of at all.
-
-## The books from my new favorite author
-
-The question of "who is your favorite author" is a difficult one for me. My answer ten years ago used to be Haruki Murakami who I used to follow religiously (as in, I never missed a release) but I've grown out of his work since then. Even if I have read multiple books of the same author, sometimes I'm not confident enough that I'll love all of their work to say that they're my favorite author. But this year I came across Elizabeth Kolbert's books on the topic of the environment and read two of them: _**The Sixth Extinction**_ and **_Under a White Sky_.** Admittedly I haven’t read _Fields Notes from a Catastrophe_, but I can confidently say that she's one of my favorite authors right now, if not the only (for now).
-
-Besides the important subject matter that is a common thread of her last three books, I also love her writing style. I always have a soft spot for writings that read like a journal. Her writings mostly report on the trips that she did as she investigated topics on the environment and climate change, but what I like about her writings is they still have a personal touch to it so that they don't sound too much like a trip report or a survey paper. Her latest book, _Under a White Sky_, was released this year so it might be a while until a new book comes out, but I already can't wait for her next book and writings.
-
-## The books that made my blood boil
-
-Have you ever read a book that elicits such a strong mix of anger and desperation in you? I'm not sure if I should be glad or sad to say that I read **three** such books this year.
-
-The first book is Ronan Farrow's **_Catch and Kill_**. I followed the Weinstein news when it first broke back in 2011, so I thought I had already known most of story. That's not the case. It turned out that I had absolutely zero idea how extensive the attempt to cover the whole scandal was. Many people tried to kill this story over the years (hence the title Catch and Kill) until Farrow and two other journalists took a stab at it (pun intended) and they didn't stop despite the threats. These threats involved double agents, spies, spies vs spies, pushbacks from bosses who turned out to side with the enemies and much more. There are so many spy thriller tropes in this book except that real life justice is at stake, the victims are real, the trauma is real. Recalling some parts of the book still makes me angry as hell.
-
-The second book is the **_Panama Papers_** book. A few months ago, the Pandora Papers were leaked and it reminded me of the Panama Papers (both are related) book that had been sitting on my to-read shelf for years, so I picked it up and read it in two days. I found that the book focused on two large parts: first, how the investigation came to be and the newsroom logistics that revolved around the investigation; second, in-depth details on the entities and companies found in the papers. What angers me is obviously how the rich will go through great lengths to hide whatever shady things they’re doing. Once you see the pattern across the papers, you can’t help but feel like the evidence is right there in front of your eyes, but proving what’s actually going on is another matter altogether—and it’s not easy when the rich holds such an unjust amount of power and wants you to fail. On a lighter note, though, what's also fascinating to me as someone who works in tech is this: to go through such a large trove of documents, a regular computer will certainly not do it. It should have been obvious to me but alas. The software engineer in the team had to create this system that allows you to search through the documents and make connections between entities in the documents to figure out all the connections between various shell companies and people. They didn't get into the technical nitty-gritty which is understandable because it's not the focus of the book, but it's still fun to learn about in passing.
-
-The last book on this list is **_Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty_.** I knew next to nothing about the Sackler family so I was in for a rough ride. The first part of the book started off slow as we started to get to know how the Sackler family came to be, but once it got into the Oxycontin scandal and the opioid crisis, that's when all hell really broke loose for me. It was like reading the book version of Succession on steroids to the point that the Roy family of Succession now seems like a Happy Meal version of the Sacklers. I read this book during my South America trip and I spent all my flights—from and to home and between cities—reading this book cover to cover because I couldn't really put it away, even if I was reading it seething in anger throughout.
-
-## The "not for me" books
-
-I read a couple of books that I had high expectations of because of people's positive reviews. Unfortunately, they turn out to be not my cup of tea. I found Tana French's **_The Searcher_** to excel in building up its atmospheric setting but lacks the punch that I was hoping to get in the story. I already mentally prepared myself when I decided to read _**My Year of Rest and Relaxation**_ because people said it's going to be a quirky but good read, but honestly I just didn't really get anything out of it.
-
-## The books that are 100% worth the hype
-
-Liu Cixin's **_The Three-Body Problem_** series is a critically acclaimed science fiction series but I only got a chance to read the first two books this year. I knew that the series would be so, so good when I loudly _gasped_ in shock once I got through the 1/4 point of the first book. I'm not going to say much about it because I don't want to spoil anything for you, but here's the thing: writing a technically intricate book is a tough matter on its own. Writing an engaging book is also not an easy feat. Writing a book that is both technically intricate and engaging at the same time is an out-of-this-world accomplishment.
-
-There are few side notes before I move on to the next book. I read the first two books in the series back to back because curiosity got the best of me, but I got kind of burned out by the end of the second book because everything was just so intense. Also, there are two different translators in the English translation of the series—one of them is Ken Liu whose book _The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories_ was one of my favorite reads last year—and the stylistic difference of the translation is kind of jarring and difficult to ignore.
-
-Another book that belongs to this category is Madeline Miller's _**The Song of Achilles**._ It made me cry, and any book that could melt my dead emo heart is definitely 100% worth the hype. In all seriousness, without spoiling anything, this book is a heart-wrenching and beautiful piece of art. If I could only have 0.0005% of Madeline Miller's writing prowess, I think I'd die happy.
-
-A friend recommended me **_Anxious People_** by Fredrick Backman. I read it in one sitting which is always a good sign. I don't know how to summarize the book without spoiling the plot so I'm not going to try, but it is one of those warm, feel-good books that I desperately needed especially during these terrible times.
-
-## The most anticipated books—and the verdicts
-
-These books are books released in 2021 that I had been eyeing since before 2021, mainly because I've read the author's previous work before and loved them.
-
-_The Remains of the Day_ and _Never Let Me Go_ were some of the first books I read when I started reading years ago, so I was looking forward to reading **_Klara and the Sun_**. I really enjoyed the quiet character study moments in the beginning and ending parts of the book, but finding myself looking to rush to the ending in the middle of the book. The writing style is unmistakably Ishiguro which I enjoyed (and had been missing). I honestly still like _Never Let Me Go_ better, but I admit it's possible that nostalgia is clouding my judgment.
-
-I've loved the Taylor-Reid Jenkins books I've read (_Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo_ and _Daisy Jones and the Six_) so I couldn't wait to read **_Malibu Rising_**. If I had to rank it, I'd still put it below _Daisy Jones and the Six_ and _Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo_. I need to mention though that I was experiencing what is perhaps a TRJ fatigue to the point that most of her main characters now look kind of the same to me. I’d still read her next book, but hoping that her next main character would be different from the previous ones.
-
-I loved Sally Rooney's _Normal People_ though I was pretty lukewarm towards _Conversations with Friends_. Still, Rooney is one of those authors that I can’t help but be curious of what else she’s going to put out next so I was looking forward to her newest release: **_Beautiful World, Where Are You_**. I'd put it somewhere in the middle between _Normal People_ and _Conversations with Friends_. Maybe closer to _Normal People_ which I find to be much easier to relate compared to _Conversations with Friends_.
-
-## The first times
-
-**_The Dangers of Smoking in Bed_** is my first Mariana Enríquez book. I had always steered clear of horror for some unknown reason—maybe simply because I was scared—until recently. I guess when you’ve been confronted with enough (non-supernatural) horrors in your real life, nothing really scares you anymore. The book made me realize how the horror genre can be used as a vehicle to convey strong messages effectively, as shown by Enríquez’s short stories. A few of them are very short but it doesn’t undermine their message. It also inspired me to pick up more horror for next year and I’m looking forward to discovering some more horror gems.
-
-I came across Elisa Gabbert’s **_The Unreality of Memory_** randomly, not knowing anything about the author nor having heard of the book before, but it’s definitely one of my favorite reads of the year. It’s described as a “provocative, searching essays on disaster culture, climate anxiety, and our mounting collective sense of doom” and that one line is all that is needed for me to order the book. There are three parts, but I especially resonate with the first and third part of the book which focuses on the spectacle of disasters and our relationship with the media respectively. The essays on climate change are nice companions to Elizabeth Kolbert’s books as well. One of my favorite essays in the book is titled _True Crime_; there is an entire page in the book that I highlighted because it speaks to me and is actually a dilemma that I’ve been mulling over for the past few months. It probably deserves its own post, but please don’t take this as my promise to actually write it.
-
-Having been consumed with grief for most part of the year, I was putting off reading Michelle Zauner (aka Japanese Breakfast)’s **_Crying in H Mart_**—Zauner’s first book and thus my first book of hers, too—because of one of the major themes in the book is grief and I didn’t think I was ready for that. But I decided to read it anyway because: 1) I love Japanese Breakfast, 2) if there’s something that I learned recently, is that some books can _really_ change you. There was a short story in Ken Liu’s _The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories_ that I read last year but wish I had read earlier in my life, because I feel it would have changed my perspective on a certain thing and maybe, maybe make things better before it’s too late, but I was too late and there’s always a pang of sadness that I feel every time I remember that. So I decided to soldier on and ended up tearing through _Crying in H Mart_ in one sitting (of course while crying). I have no regrets at all, and I’m glad I have read it before it’s too late.
-
-## Next year
-
-I hope to be consistent with reading at least 52 books a year. Some might not see the point of setting such a goal, but having a goal motivates me to stay consistent. One thing I’m aware I need to be careful of is to avoid the [Goodhart’s Law](https://sketchplanations.com/goodharts-law) trap; I noticed that at some point, I gravitated towards quick, easy reads without assessing how interested I actually am in the book itself. This results in a few reads that I finished reading, but I ended up not caring too much about.
-
-While I feel like I branched out of my usual topics a bit, I'm not doing too well when it comes to diversity in general. I have yet to compile my statistics, but it’s easy for me to see that my books are mostly authored by white men and women, so there is still a lot of room for improvement here.
-
-I already have some ideas about topics I want to continue reading. This year I learned that investigative journalism books are a good way for me to explore a diverse (and oftentimes timely) set of issues, so I’m going to read more of those.
-
-On the tech front, I’m going to continue seeking for books that help me think critically about the ties between the technology that we build, the powers that determine it, & the people that are affected by it.
-
-This year has given me a lot of space to think. One of the realizations that struck me is that there are so many things I don’t know about the world, and I want to fill in those gaps— mostly to satisfy my curiosity because it brings me joy, but also to help me make better, informed choices in my life. To me this translates to making even more space for books that talk about things I have zero idea about (to satisfy my curiosity), while also going a bit more in-depth in some topics (to help me make better choices). It's a delicate classic exploration-exploitation dilemma, is definitely very vague, and I haven't really figured out how I'm going to work it out exactly. But writing this down helps me to remember my intention for reading next year.
-
-I also want to read more essays and autobiographies. I want to be better at using writing as a means to reflect, which means I need to practice digging deep into what I think and feel. Some people might be a natural at it, but I still find it difficult even as someone who has been journaling on-and-off for the past 11 years. Although it takes a lot of effort for me, it does keep me sane, so I’ll keep going at it.
-
-It goes without saying that I’m going to continue reading fiction. I’ll probably write a separate post on why fiction has always mattered a lot to me, but it’s the really the one thing that I’m not going to sacrifice. I don't have any "rules" in mind but I know I want to explore genres that I’m not very familiar of such as sci-fi and horror.
-
-On the more organizational side of things: I'm hoping to figure out a way to take proper notes and organize them for every book I read moving forward. When writing this post, I found it hard to accurately recall my impression of a book that I've read many months ago. At the same time, I don't want to spend too much time on it to the point that it breaks my reading flow. I’ve already tried writing notes as I read, but I found myself to be too focused on the note-taking aspect that it got me distracted from the reading.
-
-It has been a good reading year for me. I feel that writing all of this down also helps me shape a more intentional reading habit which has never been my focus in the previous years. You can view the complete list of the books I read this year here, and a tech edition of the reading retro here: [[2021 reading retrospective - tech edition]].

content/Posts/2022-in-music.md

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----
-title: 2022 in music
-draft: false
-tags:
-  - music
-  - retrospective
-date: 2023-01-08
----
-
-## On repeats
-**Hot Chip - Freakout/Release**
-
-When Eleanor was released, two of my friends and I posted the same link in our group chat at the same time because we were so excited. Turns out we were all subscribed to the Hot Chip newsletter. Lesson learned: when you and your friends are subscribed to the same artist newsletter, that's how you know you're in good company.
-
-Standout tracks: Eleanor, Broken, Hard to Be Funky
-
-**Destroyer - LABYRINTHITIS**
-
-Destroyer's _Kaputt_ was such a staple of my early 2010 playlist, and then I just forgot that they exist. So I was pleasantly surprised to find out that a) they have a new album in 2022, b) they actually have been releasing an album almost every year.
-
-I didn't know what to expect and I wasn't expecting much—a lot of the artists I grew up with did release a new album this year, and I haven't liked them as much as they want to. But LABYRINTHITIS blew me away with its production and a lot of musical moments that hooked me on first listen, some of which to me feel still distinctly Destroyer, but a step up from Kaputt: the fast drums in Suffer, the piano interlude in All My Pretty Dresses, the danceable Eat the Wine, Drink the Bread.
-
-Standout tracks: Suffer, All My Pretty Dresses, Eat the Wine, Drink the Bread, The States
-
-**Little Simz - No Thank You**
-
-Thank goodness I didn't start writing this post before Little Simz dropped _No Thank You,_ because there is absolutely no way that I'm writing this post without mentioning _No Thank You_. As it was a surprise release that was released just almost a year after SIMBI, I wrongfully thought that this would be a less cohesive version of it. In some ways, it's true—_No Thank You_ is more raw, but it doesn't make it any less powerful, and the production is also a standout. The bars truly don't miss and she wasted no breath; there were no fillers at all. I fell in love with Broken on a first listen, and Gorilla has no business to go as hard as it goes, but I very much welcome it.
-
-Standout tracks: Broken, Gorilla, Silhouette
-
-Favorite lyrics: Generational trauma you've had to deal with alone / No father, how do you become a man on your own?
-
-**Charli XCX - Crash**
-
-Charli XCX's Crash is one of those albums where the deep cuts are way stronger than the singles. I found the features to be especially weak; a Charli XCX x Rina Sawayama collab is a dream in concept, but I still can't get it out of my head that the majority of _Beg For You_ is a sample. I found _New Shapes_ to be kind of eh and it's still a skip for me even until this day. I like _Good Ones_ and _Baby_ better, but for me personally the standout tracks are _Constant Repeat_ and _Yuck_. Also, _Crash_ the track is probably my favorite opening track this year.
-
-Standout tracks: Constant Repeat, Yuck, Crash, Baby
-
-**Alvvays - Blue Rev**
-
-I was only vaguely familiar with Alvvays, only knowing a couple of singles such as Dreams Tonite which is never part of my rotation anyway. I wasn't intrigued enough until when my friends couldn't shut up about Alvvays' _Blue Rev_ right on the day it was released. I trust their music taste, so I went to check out the album thinking I'd dip by the third track, but boy was I wrong.
-
-The production is meticulous, the guitars are fun. _Tile by Tile_ is hands down my favorite sad banger of the year; the heartbreaking lyrics, the heartwrenching strings...
-
-I'm also a sucker for good transitions, and Blue Rev does have some (Magdalena Bay's _Mercurial World_ remains unbeatable in this aspect).
-
-Favorite tracks: After the Earthquake, Tile by Tile, Easy On Your Own?, Pomeranian Spinster
-
-Favorite lyrics:
-
-_At night I take the calls from telemarketers / In hopes of hearing your drawl / I let them blather on / Without a thought I surrender my credit card_
-
-**Carly Rae Jepsen - The Loneliest Time**
-
-On the release date of _The Loneliest Time,_ I was supposed to be on a ship in the middle of nowhere, and I was bummed with the thought that I have to wait yet another day to listen to the album. But they rescheduled the ship last minute, and so I was able to get to the city (and get decent cell signal) right when _The Loneliest Time_ was released. God knows how much I love Carly Rae Jepsen, I guess.
-
-_Surrender My Heart_ has been a certified bop even since its leak, which I didn't listen to, but they were not wrong. It's an anthem for recovering dismissive avoidant people indeed and boy oh boy I feel so seen. As always the case with CRJ, I have no idea why the bonus tracks (or B-sides) are bonus tracks; I strongly believe _Anxious_ should have been a single. _The Loneliest Time_ featuring Rufus Wainwright has become one of my comfort songs.
-
-_Western Wind_ does not crack my top 5 in the album, but I still wish there were more Rostam-produced songs; I wonder how a Rostam-produced CRJ album will be like.
-
-**Favorite tracks:** Surrender My Heart, Anxious, Bends, The Loneliest Time
-
-**Favorite lyrics:**
-
-_I've got a lake house in Canada / And I'm probably gonna harvest your organs_. People hate this line and _Beach House_ in general, but come on, it's funny as hell.
-
-**Phoenix - Alpha Zulu**
-
-I've been a Phoenix fan for over 10 years at this point, and I always had this fear that one day there will be a Phoenix album that I dislike. That almost happened with _Ti Amo_ but I eventually warmed up to it, although it did take me almost a year (and some of my Phoenix all-time favorite tracks now actually come from Ti Amo! _Goodbye Soleil_, _Telefono_ among others).
-
-With Alpha Zulu, I'm glad to say that day has not come, and hopefully I will never live to see that day.
-
-I know people who find Alpha Zulu kind of eh, and I was one of those people on first listen - but by second listen, I accepted that we're getting goofy Phoenix this year, and I don't mind.
-
-**Favorite tracks:** After Midnight, Winter Solstice, Artefact, Alpha Zulu
-
-## Live shows
-
-I saw 38 different acts this year, the majority I saw during Primavera Sound. Outside of Primavera Sound I saw Billie Eilish, Sigur Ros, Epik High, Black Eyed Peas, and Green Day.
-
-All of my top 5 sets of the year were in Primavera though, in no particular order:
-
-- **The National**
-- **Pavement**
-- **Lorde**
-- **Phoenix**
-- **The Smile**
-
-Honorable mentions: Mavis Staples was so fun. I was on the barricade for Jamie xx. Run the Jewels was fun as hell but I was already beat by the time they went on stage. 40% of The Strokes' set was Julian Casablancas talking and slurring. Karen O is a fucking icon. I fainted during Bauhaus and I'm pretty sure I was the only person who showed up with a non-black outfit in the crowd. Dancing to Danny L Harle's hyperpop mix for 2 hours straight until 6 in the morning will forever be a part of my core memory.

content/Posts/2022-reading-retrospective.md

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-title: 2022 reading retrospective
-draft: false
-tags:
-  - reading
-  - retrospective
-date: 2022-12-30
----
-My 2022 reading list: [[2022 Reading List - Completed]]
-
-Hello again, friends.
-
-Last year, I wrote my first [[2021 reading retrospective]] and noted down quite a lot of things I wanted to achieve this year reading-wise. I figured those notes might be a good way to start off this post before I delve deeper into this year's stand-outs (both good and bad).
-
-"I hope to be consistent with reading at least 52 books a year." Oh well. This year I read a total of 48 books which is not too shabby. I was actually even far ahead at some point. I started listening to audiobooks which I usually do when I'm doing chores or taking a long walk at night. I also have a dedicated reading time every day at 9 pm which is honestly my favorite part of the day.
-
-However, missing my 52 books per year target did trigger me to rethink this objective, because honestly it doesn't bother me as much as I thought I would. What actually bothers me is how much information I actually retain from the books I've read over the past few years, as illustrated by this conversation from my visit to the bookstore with my friend a few weeks ago:
-
-Friend: *picks up a book from the bookshelf*
-
-Me: Oh yeah, I think I've read this book before.
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-Friend: What is it about?
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-Me: Oh honestly, I don't remember a single thing about it.
-
-Or this conversation with my coworker:
-
-Coworker: Yeah you should read _The Defining Decade_. There is this story about... [proceeds to tell story]
-
-Me: Oh yeah I'll add it to my list! *opens Notion* Oh wait. I actually already read this book in 2019.
-
-I've long accepted that I'm not going to retain 100% of the information I've read, and I'm not going to let that stop me from reading, but it has gotten to the point where it gets a tad embarrassing for me.
-
-Another thing I talked about on last year's post is how my 2021 books were mostly authored by white men and women. I think I immensely improved on this front this year and surprisingly rather effortlessly since I didn't have any specific list whatsoever. I feel like the more I started reading more diverse books, the more I naturally gravitated towards them because I realized that it's easier for me to relate to the stories, issues, and characters' perspectives.
-
-Genre wise, I don't think this year's list was dominated by a particular theme. I did read quite a few investigative journalism books but not as many as I'd like. I read fewer tech books in 2022, because who needs to read a sensational, juicy tech tell-all book when you're currently living in the middle of one? :) I also ended up not reading many horror or sci-fi books—I already solicited some horror recommendations from my horror-loving friends, and I remember attempting to read Stephen King's _The Stand_ sometime in the middle of the year, but I just couldn't get into it somehow. I still want to give it a shot, though.
-
-I haven't figured out a way to take notes of the book I was reading; what I did in 2022 was to highlight my favorite passages, take pictures of them, and let them sit around in my Google Photos unorganized.
-
-Something that I didn't talk about last year but want to touch on for a bit is that I got rid of my Goodreads account sometime in 2022. Sure, there were some downsides to not having Goodreads: I track my to-read books (and read books) on Notion which is getting clunkier each day and so adding a new entry is not as easy as clicking a button on Goodreads. Getting recommendations is also another tricky thing. Not being part of Goodreads, bookstagram, and booktok means I'm not getting fed book recommendations by algorithms. As a consequence, I have to go out of my way (sometimes quite literally) because I don't have a centralized place to get my recommendations from. This is how I find books to read nowadays in no particular order:
-
-- [r/books](https://reddit.com/r/books)
-- I'd go to the library or the bookstore, randomly pick books that catch my eye, and either borrow it or note it down so I can borrow it via Libby later. This has led me to some exciting discoveries, such as when I found the [annotated edition of _Wuthering Heights_](https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674724693) in the library.
-- Libby. The Libby app has a "popular" and "skip-the-line" section that I like to browse from time to time when I don't know what I want to read.
-- Recommendations from friends. Sometimes I ask for explicit recommendations, sometimes I'd just ask casually, "are you reading anything at the moment?". Surprisingly though most of the time I don't even have to ask! Usually when I'm talking to friends who also likes to read, this would come up naturally in the middle of our conversation. I got a recommendation for _The Artist's Way_ from my colleague who's also an artist when we were talking about art over lunch. Or when I was doing Secret Santa this year with some friends, one of us gifted some books by Mahmoud Darwish and that's how I found out about him. I find this very refreshing because it just feels more personal than just watching my friends' reading progress on Goodreads from afar. This way I also get to learn more about my friends, since I get to ask them questions such as why do they find it interesting or important? Why do they recommend this book to me in particular?
-    
-
-I still read reviews of the books I found at the library/bookstore just to make sure that it's not a complete dud. But I put less weight on online reviews now than I used to when I still had my Goodreads account.
-
-Yes, it is time-consuming and not as convenient as getting your recommendations from algorithms. But for me, at least at this phase of my life where I just want to spend less time staring at the screen, I do enjoy it. It forces me to go out and talk to people which was something I wanted to do more last year (and would like to continue doing).
-
-Before I move on, I would like to leave a side note that I'm not dismissing algorithms and the overall Goodreads/booktok/bookstagram/book influencers sphere at all. It is how I used to find a wide range of books outside of the genres I was used to, and just like everything else in this world, I really found them useful when used in moderation. I can't deny that social media has given a platform for the rest of us who are not NYT writers or part of the majority to talk about the books that they enjoy and they find important. I went to the bookstore yesterday and my heart bloomed when it dawned on me that there were so many books from different parts of the world talking about various issues displayed on the shelves; 10 years ago, these shelves used to be dominated by crime trilogies set in the North a la _The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo_ trilogy (which, make no mistake, I did like) and your only choices for translated Japanese authors were limited to Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto. There is no doubt for me that social media plays a huge part in pushing this much-needed shift, and I'm grateful for it.
-
-Now, some stand-outs from this year's reading:
-
-## **Fiction**
-
-One of the most common hallmarks of a good book is how much of a page-turner it is, but I feel like it's no longer valid for me. Over the years I've read some books that I couldn't put down only to forget about it a few days later. So now, for fiction, I know that I've read a really good one when even weeks or months later I can still vividly recall the scenes in my head (another green flag is that I would want to read other books by the author stat).
-
-**Gabrielle Zevin's _Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow_**
-
-I read this a few days after it was published because the synopsis kind of reminded me of a more modern and youthful _Halt and Catch Fire_. As a college student in the mid 2010s, I was also one of those kids who dreamed of having a start-up in the garage with her friends (and did try, but unlike the characters in the book, I failed without even taking it off the ground), so the premise did speak to me. Now, I didn't know how popular this book on the online sphere until yesterday when I was at a bookstore and I casually told my friend, "hey this book is really good, you know" and she was all like, "yeah everyone online is talking about it". :D If that's the case, then the hype is really well-deserved. Video games is a big part of the book, but being a non-gamer myself I don't find this to be an issue. I chose to see it more as a character study instead of a plot-driven book anyway. You can focus on the plot if you want to because a lot of things did happen, but I had much more fun reading how the characters' reacted to the events that happened in the book and how they processed them.
-
-**Xochitl Gonzales' [[Olga Dies Dreaming]]**
-
-There are a lot of things going on in this book and it could be overwhelming at times, but I still enjoyed it through and through. For a book that touches on many different issues—power, privilege, gentrification, activism, among many others—I found the plot to be compelling and it didn't feel like the plot was written just for the sake of discussing all of these issues. The social criticisms that the book brings up were woven into the story effortlessly and the characters are complex and layered. It's not an easy feat to make a point about various social issues without turning the characters into a caricature of the holier-than-thou trope instead of a three-dimensional person with all of their mistakes and flaws.
-
-**Sequoia Nagamatsu's [[How High We Go in the Dark]]**
-
-For a book that takes place in the middle of a plague (albeit years into the future), _How High We Go in the Dark_ is probably not a book that one would call comforting but somehow it is for me. Despite the bleak subject matter (worldwide plague! Deaths! Criticism on capitalism! Generational trauma!), it is profoundly compassionate and humane. The book has a common thread (the plague) connecting all the stories. What impresses me is that this thread does not limit the imagination that goes into the short stories. The first and the final short story in the book are vastly different in settings, but they still manage to come full circle, which I find beautiful.
-
-**Jennifer Egan's [[The Candy House]]**
-
-I remember the first time I read Jennifer Egan's _A Visit from the Goon's Squad_, I was in high school and I was so awed by the storytelling (all the PowerPoints!) and the characters to the point where I did many rereads. Roughly a decade later, _The Candy House—_which is actually the loose sequel of _A Visit from the Goon's Squad—_left the same mark on me.
-
-At the center of the story is Own Your Unconscious, a new technology where people can share and replay memories _and_ also access the memories of others who agree to be part of the technology. While at first this sounds like a kind of technology that is still far away from our present, if you think about it, some form of it already kinds of exist in the form of social media. Haven't we been uploading our pictures, thoughts, feelings, relationships to the Internet anyways? You can even say that Own Your Unconscious is pretty much social media on steroids.
-
-_The Candy House_ is not an easy read by any means for many reasons. Just like _A Visit from the Goon's Squad_, there are many characters to keep track of, the stories are written from various POVs with different writing styles and they do not seem to be interconnected at first, and the timeline spans decades and moves back and forth. But I personally feel the book is worth the read, simply for the many questions about memory, authenticity, and human connections that it raises. It's not going to feed you with a lot of answers if at all though, so if you're looking for definitive answers to your burning questions about our world that is undeniably shaped by technology at a rapid pace, it's probably not for you.
-
-## **Non-fiction**
-
-**Lulu Miller's _Why Fish Don't Exist_**
-
-There is no greater joy in the world more than reading a book without any expectation only to end up spending hours reading it in one sitting with the widest grin on your face because of how damn good the book you're reading is.
-
-I didn't know what to expect when going into Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don't Exist, and even after reading it, I still don't know which shelf I should put this book on. Is it a biography? Is it a scientific book? Or is it a mystery book? Heck, I don't know. And I don't care. I've got to be honest, though: the main reason why I was literally surprised by this book is mainly because I wasn't familiar with the subject matter of the book. Otherwise, I'd probably not be as surprised, but regardless of your familiarity of the subject matter, I'd still recommend giving this book a shot.
-
-**Ann Pratchett's [[These Precious Days]]**
-
-_The Dutch House_ was one of my favorite 2020 reads, so I was ecstatic to discover that she has a book of essays titled _These Precious Days_ that were written during the pandemic. Here's the thing: I have a complex relationship with personal essays. For most of the ones I've read, I can tell that they are well-written, but oftentimes I feel I should hardly care unless it's something personal to me. But when I finish reading the book, I feel like I want to read Ann Practhett's thoughts on everything, even if it's something I cannot really relate to at all.
-
-**Vincent Bevins' _The Jakarta Method_**
-
-At some point this year, my friends and I were talking about how Indonesia and Latin America countries are similar in a lot of ways. One of the things we shared was our dark history of anti-communist mass killings, which was kicked off by the Indonesian mass killings in the 60s (hence, "The Jakarta Method"). As an Indonesian myself, I'm no stranger to this part of our history—although it did take some time for me to get to this point, because even half a century later, I still grew up with all the propaganda and it's probably still the case for today's generation of students—but I have never realized its ripple throughout the world and how interconnected a lot of these events were until I picked up _The Jakarta Method_. The book does not only collect and recite historical facts, but it also contains many interviews with and personal accounts of the survivors affected by these series of deceits, propaganda, and mass killings. It's a depressing read because of the harrowing materials: some people really would go to such lengths to protect the status quo, even if it means ruining other countries to the brinks and hurting innocent lives who just wanted a more equal world. And as an Indonesian, it's an even more depressing read because the wealth inequality and the myriad other issues that Indonesians are still dealing with today can be pretty much traced back to these atrocities and war crimes. I remember reading this book at the airport and at one point I just slumped in my seat motionless as I processed what I've just read and reflected on all the human potentials lost. But this book is a very, very important one. If I could pick the most important book that I read this year, this would be it.
-
-**Daniel Immerwahr's _How to Hide an Empire_**
-
-Being a self-proclaimed geography nerd, well sure I can recite the US territories off the top of my head, but I never actually really knew what does a "US territory" mean and how they came to be. And oh did I learn a lot from this book. As recent as 1945, the US claimed jurisdiction over more people living outside the US than inside the US—how wild is that? Another important thing I learned is how modern technology helped redefine what an "empire" means: planes, radio communication, and various other technologies pretty much played a big role in enabling the US to build these pointillist empires made up of military bases and airfields, instead of the "traditional" definition of building an empire by way of territorial expansion. This book reminds me that technologies—whether they are existing or still in development—do play a part in shaping our political landscape in the future, which includes the kinds of imperialism that hides in the background and does not conform to its own traditional definition.
-
-**Elena Ferrante's _In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing_**
-
-It's a short but dense book that provides glimpses of Elena Ferrante's writing process, thoughts on reading, and answers to questions such as what writing means to her. I don't have much to say because otherwise I'd just butcher the message, but this is definitely a must read for aspiring writers and readers who enjoy Elena Ferrante's books.
-
-## Next year
-
-As I have written previously, my biggest issue with reading right now is facing the uncomfortable truth that I barely retain any information that I get from the books I'm reading. Therefore my sole focus for next year would be applying reflective reading.
-
-What reflective reading means for me is that I would take the time to slow down, process the words I have just read, note down questions (even without answers) and thoughts as inconsequential as they might be, and summarize them at the end of my reading journey. I don't think this is going to be easy because I fully recognize my tendency to quickly move from one book to the next. After all, there are so many great books in this world and so little time! But if I want to be better at retaining all the information and knowledge I learn, this is definitely something I'm willing to give a shot. We'll see how it goes!
-
-## Bonus: favorite quotes
-
-From **Ann Pratchett's _These Precious Days_**:
-
-"She had managed to peel off other people's expectations in order to see what a life that was entirely her own could look like. It looked like the natural world."
-
-"How I came not to care about other people's opinions is something of a mystery even to me. I was born with a compass. It was the luck of my draw. This compass has been incalculably beneficial for writing—for everything, really—and for that reason I take very good care of it. How do you take care of your internal compass? You don't listen to anyone who tells you to do something as consequential as having a child. Think about that one for a second."
-
-"People want you to want what they want. If you want the same things they want, then their want is validated. If you don't want the same things, your lack of wanting can, to certain people, come across as judgment."
-
-"I came to understand that grief can go underground and that feelings can hide other feelings."
-
-## Bonus: reading playlist
-
-I have a playlist for literally _everything_ and reading is no exception.
-
-- Romance II - Max Richter from the My Brilliant Friend Season 3 soundtrack
-- Sub Piano (MBF) version - Max Richter from the My Brilliant Friend Season 3 soundtrack
-- Spinning - Jon McLauhglin
-- The Long Ride II - Devonte Hynes from the We Are Who We Are soundtrack
-- Goodbye Lenin! - Yann Tiersen from the Goodbye Lenin! soundtrack
-- La ritournelle - Sébastien Tellier, a classic lemme tell ya
-- Fiction - Belle and Sebastian from the Storytelling soundtrack
-- Knight Moves (Solo Piano Version) - Chilly Gonzales
-- Waves Crashing on Distant Shores of Time - Clint Mansell from the Black Mirror: San Junipero soundtrack
-- Duet (Instrumental) from the Stoker soundtrack
-- Harmony of Difference - EP - Kamasi Washington
-- Lady Bird - Jon Brion from the Lady Bird soundtrack

content/Posts/a-belated-dispatch-from-the-birdhouse.md

@@ -1,48 +0,0 @@
----
-title: A belated dispatch from the birdhouse
-draft: false
-tags:
-  - personal
-date: 2023-02-12
----
-It’s a Saturday and you got woken up at 4 am—you’ve been waking up at random hours, your 8-hour sleep routine pretty much a thing of ancient times now. It sucks, but you’ve made peace with it. This is your new life.
-
-But at least, for a few days, you get to play pretend that whatever happened in the past three weeks did not happen—you’re now lying in bed inside an old shophouse converted into a B&B, surrounded by vintage mini musical instruments and oil paintings, far removed from all the noise and the chaos. Slack, Gmail, PagerDuty—all muted. 
-
-Things feel normal and safe, at this time.
-
-Your phone lights up. A WhatsApp notification.
-
-“You going to SF?” your friend asks.
-
-Huh? You wonder. What is she talking about? How did she know you’re traveling—you don’t usually tell a lot of people when you’re traveling, and you know you didn’t tell her. And why did she think it’s SF anyway?
-
-“No,” you reply, eyebrows arching. “I’m in Penang right now. Why the heck am I even going to SF?”
-
-Silence.
-
-“LOL,” you add. Laugh out loud, except that you don’t actually find this funny. Something is wrong, you just don’t know it yet.
-
-She posts a New York Times article without any comment.
-
-“In an email for remote engineers,” the article says, “he says he wants to speak to people on video… but “if possible, I would encourage you to fly to SF to present in person.”
-
-Aw, poor remote engineers, you think, reading through the tweets as though you’re tearing through the pages of yet another tech disaster book—your favorite genre—a la John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood or Mike Isaac’s Super Pumped.
-
-Until it registers in your brain that you, you are one of those remote engineers. 
-
-You received the email(s) too—yes, plural, there are multiple of them—and as you go through them, you find yourself going through the stages again. Ah yes, the good ‘ol stages of grief—probably the 100th cycle you’ve gone through over the past three weeks:
-
-Denial. This whole trip, in retrospect, is probably you way of denying.
-
-Anger. You scream into the pillow.
-
-Bargaining. You think: ah, if only I didn’t say Yes… if only I have left earlier. If only.  You open Apple Music and start playing Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. “I should have stayed on the farm,” Elton John sings. You wonder if you should have too.
-
-Depression. You start thinking about sleeping it away until your flight on Tuesday.
-
-Acceptance. You glance at the clock—it’s already 8. You remember that you have the best nasi kandar in the country (according to your friend, at least) waiting for you.
-
-And so you walk out of your bedroom, put the best smile you can muster, with your heart repeating, beating:
-
-“This… this is fine.”

content/Posts/la-loberia.md

@@ -1,24 +0,0 @@
----
-title: La Loberia
-draft: false
-tags:
-  - travel
-  - south america
-  - ecuador
-date: 2021-11-29
----
-After spending an hour and a half watching sea lions chasing each other in La Loberia, Paco—my naturalist guide—and I walked back to the tiny parking lot where his car was parked. La Loberia would be my last stop for the day. Realizing that I didn't have enough small money for tips, I told him that I wanted to get some snacks although I actually didn't want to, just so that I could get some smaller money as changes.
-
-"What's your favorite snack?" I asked.
-
-He pointed to a local Ecuadorian banana chips snack that sits on the top shelf of the counter. "It's very sweet," he said, which sounded like a warning to me because I had been avoiding sweets for months at that point.
-
-I got myself two packs of banana chips—one for me, one for him—and a bottle of Coca Cola. I was planning to bring them to my hotel—I would be leaving San Cristobal first thing in the morning tomorrow and I had written in my notebook that by 4pm, I would be at my hotel and by 5pm I would have to start packing. As I made my move towards the car in a haste, he motioned to a small table and a couple of chairs nearby, placing his chips on the table.
-
-He dragged two chairs closer to the table. "No rush."
-
-_No rush._ What a strange, foreign concept.
-
-We talked about life in the Galapagos Islands as we munched on our banana chips (which were _very sweet,_ by the way)—how life is very slow in the Galapagos Islands and how the locals _love_ their siestas. I told him I don't even remember the last time I spent a time like this. I always had something to do, somewhere to go, some box in my to-do list that I need to check off—and even during my holiday, I still have a to-do list.
-
-As I went on a rant about how I used to spend three hours commuting in Jakarta, I would interject a couple of times, like a broken cassette, about how wonderful the weather was. The sun was just beginning to set and the parking lot was showered in this warm, golden glow. It felt like something so novel, but was it really? I couldn't help but wonder how many sunsets with the same hue that I've seen before but I have no memory of, simply because I was never really present.

content/Posts/making-your-first-open-source-contribution,-part-1---finding-projects,-issues,-and-mentored-programs.md

@@ -1,123 +0,0 @@
----
-title: Making your first open source contribution, part 1 - finding projects, issues, and mentored programs
-draft: false
-tags:
-  - open source
-date: 2020-02-01
----
-
-I always wanted to contribute to open source, but at the same time I found it to be a bit intimidating & overwhelming. It wasn’t until a few years later that I made my first open source contribution. The paragraph below from [PyCon US](https://us.pycon.org/2019/hatchery/mentoredsprints/) perfectly summarized the struggles I faced when I tried to make my first contribution:
-
-> From a technical perspective, interacting with web-based hosting services (such as GitHub, GitLab, etc.), branching and opening pull requests can be overwhelming if these are not everyday actions of your workflow. The correctness of the code and potential bugs are other common obstacles and fears any newcomer might face. Not to mention the time and frustration accumulated over the task of finding a ‘beginner-friendly’ issue to work on.
-
-I learned a lot of things that I wished I had known about earlier, which I’m going to share through a series of blog posts in three parts:
-
- 1. [[Making your first open source contribution, part 1 - finding projects, issues, and mentored programs]]
- 2. [[Making your first open source contribution, part 2 - before you start contributing]]
- 3. [[Making your first open source contribution, part 3 - navigating new codebases]]
-    
-Everyone’s experience is different, though, so I’m mainly sharing about the things I’ve experienced. What works for me might not work for you & vice versa, & it’s totally OK!
-
-If you’re here, you probably already know why you want to contribute to open source. It’s outside of the scope of these posts, so if you want to read more about this, Open Source Guides [has a comprehensive section](https://opensource.guide/how-to-contribute/#why-contribute-to-open-source) on the topic.
-
----
-
-## Finding projects
-
-### Find projects that you use
-
-I started out by browsing through projects that I use daily such as pandas, matplotlib, & scikit-learn. I find that working on projects that I often use would provide a greater motivation for me to work on it. Using it every day means I’m already pretty familiar with the projects too, which helps.
-
-However, I soon learned that this not that straightforward. These libraries are very popular and the issues that are suitable for beginners seem to be gone within minutes after someone posts the issue. The ones left are the more complicated ones that I wasn’t confident enough I’d be able to tackle.
-
-Now, this depends on you—of course no one’s telling you to NOT work on them! In fact, you’ll probably learn the most from them. But when I started out, I didn’t have much free time since I was still juggling school at the same time. Working on complicated issues would definitely take me a while, so I decided to look for other options.
-
-### Browse websites that help you discover open source projects that need help
-
-I also browsed various websites that help me discover open source projects that need help. A few websites that I’ve tried:
-
-- [CodeTriage](http://codetriage.com/) - [https://www.codetriage.com/](https://www.codetriage.com/)
-    
-- Mozilla’s Bugs Ahoy - [https://codetribute.mozilla.org/](https://codetribute.mozilla.org/)
-    
-- Contributors Wanted - [https://dev.to/t/contributorswanted](https://dev.to/t/contributorswanted)
-    
-
-These websites exposed me to more open source projects that I had never known before, which is great! While this strategy might work for a lot of people, it didn’t really work for me—since I had never used these projects before, I had to learn everything from zero, & sometimes it was until much later that I realized I wasn’t really interested in working on the project. I guess time was a huge constraint for me, & if I had spent more time I’m sure I would come across something that fits me.
-
-### Follow open source project authors/maintainers on social media
-
-I think I discovered most of the projects I contributed to through Twitter. In fact, I finally made my first open source contribution to [Sarah Drasner’s Object Explorer](https://github.com/sdras/object-explorer/pull/26).
-
-I follow a lot of people who happen to be working on their own open source projects, & since I usually follow people who work on things that intersect my interests, their projects usually interest me too. Plus, they might tweet about their new projects that don’t have a lot of contributors yet, & new projects have a much smaller scope, so the barrier to entry is usually lower.
-
-For example, here is [Andreas Mueller](https://twitter.com/amuellerml) tweeting about his new project:
-
-> If you're interested in becoming involved in my new project dabl [https://t.co/Mvxdh68eZv](https://t.co/Mvxdh68eZv), I tagged some easy first issues. Given that it's pretty early in the development, the barrier to entry should hopefully be much lower than in sklearn for example: [https://t.co/rNors7QjkI](https://t.co/rNors7QjkI)— Andreas Mueller (@amuellerml) [January 28, 2020](https://twitter.com/amuellerml/status/1222202599539167238?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
-
-## Finding issues
-
-Now that you’ve got a project you’d like to work on, it’s time to find an issue that you can work on!
-
-### It’s not always about writing code
-
-One thing I want to emphasize here is that the issue that you pick does not always have something to do with writing code. Writing documentation, translating projects, designing… they all also count as contributing to open source too. Fixing typos is also contributing to open source! There’s room for everyone & every role.
-
-### Browse through beginner-friendly labels
-
-Each issue usually has labels or tags. You can browse through issues that are labeled with labels such as **good-first-issue** or **help-wanted**—these are issues that are approachable for first-time contributors. In fact, GitHub has just recently launched [a feature where it automatically labels beginner-friendly issues](https://github.blog/2020-01-22-how-we-built-good-first-issues/) using the power of machine learning. You can just go to the following link: `github.com/<owner>/<repository>/contribute` . For example, if you want to contribute to electron for the first time, you can go to this link: [https://github.com/electron/electron/contribute](https://github.com/electron/electron/contribute).
-
-If you find that:
-
-- **No one’s working on it**: Awesome! Usually, what you should do next is drop a comment & comment that you’re going to work on this issue. This is a way to let everyone know that someone (that’s you!) is currently working on this issue to avoid double work.
-    
-- **Someone says they’re working on it, but it’s been months:** If you find an issue where someone has said that they’re working on it but there seems to be no activity for the past few months, feel free to comment and ask if you can take over the issue!
-    
-
-One thing to remember is that you can make your own issue, & you can work on it too! Though it might be acceptable to directly make a pull request, keep in mind that some projects, like [rust-wasm](https://github.com/rustwasm/wasm-pack/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md), explicitly mention that you have to create your own issue before making a pull request because some discussion might be required. So before you make your own PR, open the issue first to make sure that you’re working on something that people agree should be worked on.
-
-However, before you create that issue…
-
-- **Check out the existing PRs and Issues**There is probably another similar issue open, & you don’t want to create a duplicate issue to save your time & the maintainers’ time.
-    
-- **Check out the README (more on this on the next post!)** Some open source projects have a guideline on how to create your own issue. This is to make sure that you’ve provided all the information necessary regarding the issue to minimize back-and-forths between you & the maintainers.
-    
-
-## Finding mentored programs
-
-Contributing to open source does not have to be a lonely business, especially whenever it’s your first time - it’s totally OK to have help! In fact, having mentors and peers that also learn and work together with you might just accelerate your learning.
-
-How do you find such mentors and peers? There are a few programs that aim to encourage new contributors in open source projects, and in these programs, participants will usually be paired with a mentor that will guide them throughout the program.
-
-### Remote mentorships/internships with mentors
-
-The three programs below are probably the most well-known, though I haven’t personally participated in them because when I learned about them, I was no longer eligible:
-
-- [Google Summer of Code](http://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/): students get the chance to work with an open source organization on a 3-month programming project during their break. Organizations that have participated include Blender Foundation, DBPedia, GNOME, & [others](https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/archive/).
-- [Google Season of Docs](https://developers.google.com/season-of-docs/): same as Google Summer of Code, but focusing on technical writing contributions.
-- [Outreachy Internship](https://www.outreachy.org/): internships to work in open source and free software. Open to applicants around the world. Internships can be done remotely. People facing under-representation, systemic bias, or discrimination in the technology industry of their country are encouraged to apply.
-    
-
-I’ve personally participated in these programs below, & can totally vouch for them!
-
-- [Increasing Rust’s Reach](https://reach.rust-lang.org/): run by the Rust Programming Language Team to grow Rust’s community of project collaborators and leaders. Participants are individuals who are underrepresented in Rust’s community and the tech industry. Each participant works on a Rust project for three months with a Rust team member. The program does not seem to exist anymore, but you can read about my experience of participating in the program and contributing to Rust [here](https://speakerdeck.com/galuhsahid/rust-reach-and-contributing-to-rust).
-- [pandas mentoring](https://github.com/python-sprints/pandas-mentoring): I came across Marc Garcia’s tweet one day:
-    
-
-> I think it's time to increase the diversity of the [@pandas_dev](https://twitter.com/pandas_dev?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) team.  
->   
-> If you need mentoring to become a regular pandas contributor, and you're non-male from outside US/Europe, please DM me.  
->   
-> Also DM me if your company wants to provide funds to give scholarships to the mentees.— Marc Garcia (@datapythonista) [July 24, 2019](https://twitter.com/datapythonista/status/1154177854999056384?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
-
-I DM’d him & I was super excited because I use pandas every day! Marc has done a tremendous job on running the mentorship. Since then, I’ve made several contributions to pandas from contributing to its documentation to fixing bugs.
-
-### Mentored sprints
-
-The mentorship programs I mentioned above are mostly done remotely. However, there are also mentored sprints that you can attend if there is one happening in your city.
-
-In a sprint, people gather together to squash bugs or write documentation in a short period a time, such as a day or a weekend. Mentored sprints specifically have mentors that can guide participants on making their contributions. Imagine that by the end of the day, you’ll most likely already make your first contribution while also making new friends in the process!
-
-[PyCon US has mentored sprints last year](https://us.pycon.org/2019/hatchery/mentoredsprints/), and there were a lot of interesting projects that participated from CPython to TensorFlow.
-
-[Python Sprints](https://python-sprints.github.io/) is an non for profit group that gathers coders who want to help improve open source using Python. They have held sprints all around the world, and one of their goals is to help people get started, so if there is one in your city you should definitely drop by! London has held a lot of sprints, so if you want to take a look at how these sprints usually are like [check it out here](https://www.meetup.com/Python-Sprints/).

content/Posts/making-your-first-open-source-contribution,-part-2---before-you-start-contributing.md

@@ -1,53 +0,0 @@
----
-title: Making your first open source contribution, part 2 - before you start contributing
-draft: false
-tags:
-  - open source
-date: 2020-02-02
----
-
-This post is part of a 3-part series titled "Making your first open source contribution":
- 1. [[Making your first open source contribution, part 1 - finding projects, issues, and mentored programs]]
- 2. [[Making your first open source contribution, part 2 - before you start contributing]]
- 3. [[Making your first open source contribution, part 3 - navigating new codebases]]
-
----
-
-Congratulations! You’ve found a project and issue that you will be working on. 🥳 Before you jump into making your first contribution and making a pull request, there are several things that you need to do first.
-
-## Read the README
-
-The README contains everything that you need to know about a project. Since the README is the first entrypoint for everyone—from users to potential contributors—it usually covers a wide range of things: what is this project? Where do things go? How do you use it? Where is the contributing guide? What files you should look at first? How to reach out to the maintainers or community should you have any questions?
-
-Some information that is specifically aimed at contributors might be hosted elsewhere. I’ll get into this later.
-
-## Read the code of conduct
-
-A code of conduct establishes expectations for behavior for a project’s participants [1](https://galuh.me/contributing-os-2/#fn-1). In a code of conduct you might find information such as:
-
-- what behaviors are encouraged
-- what behaviors are unacceptable
-- procedures on what to do when something inappropriate happens & who to contact
-
-Code of conducts help to ensure a safe & inclusive environment. Always make sure you check out the code of conduct first before participating in the community.
-
-## Read the contributing guide
-
-The contributing guide is usually located in a file called CONTRIBUTING.md. If you can’t find the file, don’t worry! Not every project hosts their contributing guide in GitHub. For example, pandas hosts its contributing guide in [its documentation website](https://dev.pandas.io/docs/development/contributing.html). The link to the guide is usually linked somewhere in the README.md for visibility. Smaller projects may have their contributing guide in the README.md.
-
-A contributing guide usually outlines steps that you need to do when you’re contributing. This may include things such as:
-
-- **How to open up a new issue:** maintainers typically encourage people to open up a new issue before they start contributing, if the issue does not yet exist. Some projects also have issue templates that you have to fill out properly. [This issue in the Go repository](https://github.com/golang/go/issues/36960) is an example of issue that uses a predefined issue template.
-- **How to set up the development environment:** every project requires a different setup. Some projects, like pandas, requires you to [build it from source](https://dev.pandas.io/docs/development/contributing.html#id9) so you can test out the code changes.
-- **Code standards or style:** before writing your code, you need to get familiar with the style guide, linters, and other tools that the project uses to keep their code consistent & easy to read. Some projects like Rust already has a script that makes sure your code is consistent with Rust’s guidelines, [which you can find in their CONTRIBUTING.md](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#pull-requests).
-- **Tests:** while most projects already have CIs set up to check your code, you might want to avoid comitting your changes without really knowing whether they will pass the test or not, so it’s best that you know how to test your code locally.
-- **Specific instructions on writing commit messages:** some projects, like [pandas](https://dev.pandas.io/docs/development/contributing.html#id44), have conventions on writing commit messages.
-- **Pull request workflow:** every project has a different workflow for pull requests. By familiriazing yourself with this, you will know what to expect when submitting your pull request. Some projects have a bot that help maintainers to assign reviewers, and these bots might request you to add some more information if needed. A few projects such as [Kubernetes](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes) require you to sign a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) if it’s your first time contributing to the repository. Another thing is that once you submit your pull request, you might encounter merge conflicts, and some projects like Rust have [a specific policy](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#pull-requests) regarding whether you should rebase or merge.
-
-## Browse around the repository
-
-Take a look around the repository & notice how people usually open issues & write pull requests. You might also want to take notes on how the maintainers respond to people who are contributing to their project. If it seems that the environment has a negative atmosphere, or if you notice that issues and pull requests are not being responded to, it’s probably best to redirect your time and effort elsewhere.
-
-Whew. It might seem like a lot, but I actually find comfort in reading these READMEs, Code of Conduct, & contributing guides—they are here in your best interest to ensure that you have a good experience contributing to their projects. Before contributing to a new project, I personally enjoy perusing through every guide I can get my hands on. It might take a while—for large projects, it might take me an entire day to really wrap my hand around it—but it does save a lot of time later when I’m at a point where I’m writing my code, making pull requests, & getting my pull requests reviewed.
-
-If you get confused, make a mistake, or feel like there are missing steps, don’t worry! These guides are not perfect, & it’s possible that they do miss some essential information. This is an opportunity for you to open a new issue and make a pull review to help the next person, because really, chances are other people will get confused over the same thing, too.

content/Posts/making-your-first-open-source-contribution,-part-3---navigating-new-codebases.md

@@ -1,103 +0,0 @@
----
-title: Making your first open source contribution, part 3 - navigating new codebases
-draft: false
-tags:
-  - open source
-date: 2020-02-05
----
-
-This post is part of a 3-part series titled "Making your first open source contribution":
- 1. [[Making your first open source contribution, part 1 - finding projects, issues, and mentored programs]]
- 2. [[Making your first open source contribution, part 2 - before you start contributing]]
- 3. [[Making your first open source contribution, part 3 - navigating new codebases]]
-
----
-
-You’ve got your development environment set up, and everything’s working wonderfully. Sweet! Time to dive into the codebase… except…
-
-You’re lost.
-
-This part is mostly about navigating a new codebase, especially when it’s a large one, so the advice below probably applies to any large codebase & not just open source projects. When you’re looking to contribute to open source projects though it might take a while to find a project that feels right for you, and as a consequence you’ll be meeting new codebases more often.
-
-Navigating new, large codebases can be especially challenging for someone who:
-
-a) is currently in school, with no access to large codebases (this was me!)
-
-b) mostly work in self-initiated or small-sized codebases (me, currently!)
-
-At a glance, this post might only be relevant to contributions that involve writing code, but I’ve personally used these tips when contributing to the documentation too. Sometimes documentations are coupled with code that it’s impossible for you to not touch the project’s codebase. Besides, when writing a documentation for a piece of code, you still need to understand what the code does & sometimes how it interacts with other functions in the project.
-
-### Use it
-
-You might come across a project that you’ve never used before, but you want to contribute to it, & that’s fine! In fact, although I use the pandas library daily, I don’t use all of the functions, so I did find myself working on something that I’ve never used before.
-
-My first tip is: use it. If it’s a new library, go through its tutorials or “getting started” guides, & play around until you’re comfortable enough with it.
-
-If it’s a new function, check out the documentation, run the examples or use it in a toy problem so you can get a better intuition on the problem you’re trying to solve.
-
-Even if it’s a function that you have used before, you might need to modify parts that you’re not familiar of, e.g. parameters that you’ve never had to use before so it’s probably still useful to do the things mentioned above.
-
-### Explore the tests
-
-Sometimes it’s not very clear from the documentation what a function is supposed to do. Sometimes there is no documentation at all. If that’s the case, usually what I’d do next is explore the tests, especially unit tests, if there are any. Unit tests are great to learn from because they can show you how to correctly invoke a function or show you the expected behavior of a piece of code.
-
-Tests can usually be found in their own folder, such as `/tests`.
-
-Here’s an example from [pandas](https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/blob/master/pandas/tests/indexes/categorical/test_category.py). Let’s say that you want to know how to use the function `rename_categories` for `CategoricalIndex` & what should happen when yo
-
-The test can give you some idea that, okay, if I have the following `CategoricalIndex`:
-
-```python
-CategoricalIndex(list("aabbca"), categories=list("cab"))
-```
-
-And then I apply the `rename_categories` function:
-
-```python
-result = ci.rename_categories(list("efg")))
-```
-
-I’m supposed to get back a:
-
-```python
-CategoricalIndex(list("ffggef"), categories=list("efg"))
-```
-
-### Find keywords in the issue & use them to find relevant parts in the codebase
-
-I usually extract important keywords in the issue, type that in the search bar of my code editor (I use VS Code) & see what other pieces of code pops up & where.
-
-For example, I worked on an [issue](https://github.com/python-sprints/pandas-mentoring/issues/156) where I had to update the index parameter in pandas’ `to_parquet`. The first thing I did was search `to_parquet` in my code editor to see where the function is.
-
-There are a lot of search results including other pieces of code that are calling the function `to_parquet`, instead of the `to_parquet` function itself. For this issue, I’m not interested in these other parts of the codebase, so I had to narrow down my search.
-
-I searched for `def to_parquet()` instead. In Python, the keyword `def` is the start of a function header, so I can be sure that I will get the locations of the `to_parquet` function itself. Of course, other programming languages will be different. The key here is sometimes you need to think of some tricks that can help you get better search results.
-
-### Search for similar issues & PRs
-
-Other people might have made PRs that solved problems that are similar to the one that you’re solving right now. You can use the keywords from the issue to search for other similar issues & PRs. A few things that you can learn from reading other issues & PRs:
-
-- **Possibly relevant code & files**: if the previous steps didn’t work for you, this can help. In GitHub, you can find these by checking out the “Files Changed” tab in the PR. [Here is an example](https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/pull/31047/files).
-- **Pointers on what to do**: although the PR that I’m looking at is not solving the same exact problem, sometimes they do give clues on what I can do to solve my problem, e.g. an existing helper function that I didn’t know about that can simplify my solution.
-- **Feedback from maintainers**: oftentimes, maintainers request for changes before they approve your PRs. These are well recorded in the thread within the pull request, & there’s always a thing or two that I can learn from them.
-- **Bugs**: a PR can introduce new bugs, which are often discovered after the PR is approved & merged. Learning about these bugs helps me become aware of the kinds of bugs that I may possibly introduce with my PR.
-
-### Join the project’s communication platform(s) & search for related discussions
-
-Most projects have platforms where they have discussions regarding the development of the project that are open to public, be it Slack, Gitter, mailing list, or other channels. These are usually listed either in the README or in their contributing guide. You can search for related discussions because it’s possible that others have asked similar questions, but of course you can ask your own question as well… which will bring me to my next point.
-
-### Ask for help
-
-You might have done all of the above & still get stuck. That’s fine! Don’t be afraid to ask for pointers - you can do this by raising a question in the relevant issue or asking questions in the dev channel (see above). You might find this scary at first, but if the project you’re working on has a Code of Conduct (they better do!), it can be a reminder for you that inappropriate behaviors are not tolerated.
-
-From browsing various repositories & joining communication channels, I also learned that people do ask questions all the time & it’s OK! I guess I had this assumption that everyone (but me) knows everything & this also contributed to how I initially perceived open source: intimidating & overwhelming. Seeing how people ask questions & how maintainers positively respond really helps shatter that unrealistic assumption.
-
-Diving into new codebases is not a trivial thing, so if you feel like you’re having difficulty making progress, it’s totally normal. Even the most experienced programmers still need time to understand a new codebase.
-
-### Final notes
-
-One last thing I want to emphasize: **you don’t have to get it perfect the first time**.
-
-Your first contribution—or the ones after, really—does not have to be a pull request that provides a major feature with changes of thousands of lines of code. Your first pull request does not have to be fault-free—sometimes you mess up your git to the point that the only solution you can think of is deleting your repository & redoing your work (we all have been there, haven’t we?). It’s okay if you forget to write your commit message with the correct prefix per the convention. In fact, you might find that these hiccups still happen in your second, third, fourth… hundredth contribution. You’ll find that it’s not the end of the world. You’ll learn. You’ll continue contributing anyway.
-
-The most important thing is to get started, & I hope this 3-part series helps you to do just that. :)

content/Posts/moderating-conference-sessions.md

@@ -1,34 +0,0 @@
----
-title: Moderating conference sessions
-draft: false
-tags:
-  - conference
-date: 2019-01-03
----
-
-Last October I had the chance to become one of the moderators for PyCon Indonesia. It was my first time moderating & I definitely learned a lot! Actually, it was kind of last minute too---I was originally only in charge of the PyLadies session on the second day, but one day before the first day I was asked to moderate one of the tracks for two full days. Fortunately I've been lucky enough to attend a few conferences both as an attendee & a speaker, so I could draw from my previous experiences while scrambling to prepare within less than 24 hours.
-
-I'm using the term moderator & MC interchangeably here, as my job actually kind of spanned both roles, I guess. The job description for each role might be different for each conference. Some might have both an MC & moderator, some might only have a moderator. It's always a good idea to make sure what your designated job is to the conference organizers. :)
-
-## Before the conference
-- **Preparing speakers' bio**: Usually you'd have some time to introduce the speaker & the talk topic before each talk. PyCon Indonesia used PaperCall to organize their CFP process, & through PaperCall you can see the bio of each speaker that they wrote themselves. I didn't copy-paste this as is, though; instead, I paraphrased it and if the original bio was too long, I'd pick the points that I think are most relevant to the talk & conference. However, if I had more than 24 hours, I would have e-mailed each speaker to ask for their most updated bio (if they would like to update it) because of a few reasons: a) There might be a long gap between proposal submission & the conference itself, so a few things might have changed within that interval, b) This is perhaps specific to PaperCall, but your speaker bio is linked to your profile so you can't customize it for each talk. I remember when I was applying to both ScotlandJS & PyCon APAC, my speaker bio was talking about Python because I applied to PyCon after ScotlandJS. Luckily Peter from ScotlandJS asked me again whether I would like to update my bio, to which I said yes, of course!
-- **Preparing talk description**: If you have more time, you can give one-two sentence about the talk too. One or two sentences are enough---you don't want to give away the entire talk in your description, that's not your job! This could be especially helpful whenever there are technical problems on stage & you need to hold the talk for a little bit. I did take this from PaperCall but same as speaker's bio, if I had more time I would have contacted each speaker to get the most updated talk description. Last-minute changes are inevitable! I remember having a talk description that slightly differed from the talk actually being presented---although it didn't seem like a big deal at the time, I would have much preferred it if my talk description was accurate to the talk being presented.
-
-## On location
-- **Get to know everyone in the room who would work with you**: from timekeeper, sound person, to videographer. Great teamwork is crucial especially in cases of technical difficulties to last-minute adjustments.
-- **Arrive early**: get to know the venue & make sure every equipment works. At least if things go wrong there's still enough time for everyone to adjust the setup.
-
-## Things to mention to the speakers
-Some conferences might have their own speaker buddies, & in such case the things I'm outlining below might be the speaker buddies' responsibilities. However, in the case where there are no speaker buddies, I guess the moderators can step in to help. :) I've been in situations where it was already my time to present but I had no clue who to reach out to. Having those "should I just go ahead to the front, plug my laptop in, & present?!" feelings on top of my already-existing nervousness didn't make things better. I know how anxious that situation could be, so I'd try my best not to let it happen to other people!
-
-Here are some things I clarified/asked/mentioned to the speakers:
-- Whether they're comfortable with having a Q&A session or not
-- Reminder for the alotted time
-- How timekeeping works (will there be a stopwatch? Paper signs? Where is the timekeeper?)
-
-## Etc.
-Sometimes you'll find yourselves in situations where you need to have some fillers, e.g. when waiting for everyone to shuffle inside, etc. Some things you can say:
-- What track is this (if it's a multi-track conference) & what to expect from this track. I also repeat this after breaks, because there might be an influx of new people coming in. 
-- Quick reminder/summary of the Code of Conduct. Give link to the CoC.
-- (Before a break) how long the break lasts & when to get back. Sometimes there are last-minute adjustments, & since we can't change printed schedules, moderators/MCs are responsible for announcing those changes. Some conferences have Slack with all the attendees in it, so I guess announcing it there should work too.
-- If a session is canceled, make sure to mention it so that people don't stay in the room waiting for a session that will never happen.

content/Posts/on-adventures.md

@@ -1,40 +0,0 @@
----
-title: On adventures
-draft: false
-tags:
-  - personal
-  - travel
-date: 2022-04-13
----
-
-Hello friends. It's been a long, long time.
-
-This week is a short week. We have a day of rest on Monday (which honestly didn't feel like a day of rest) and it's Good Friday this week. Many coworkers are out of office and jet-setting somewhere else; Thailand, Bali, Australia, you name it. March has been crazy for me so I didn't even realize we have a short week until last week and it was almost too late to arrange everything even if it's just a quick weekend getaway. Yes this is such a surprising statement coming from someone who came up with a bucket-list South America trip in 1.5 weeks, I'm very well aware of that _merci_.
-
-The trigger for this post, I guess, was a coworker who asked me yesterday: "you're not going anywhere? It's a short week."
-
-"I wish," I said, and oh I really wish I was on a flight somewhere. Or was I?
-
----
-
-I'm not sure when it started but I always, always have this nagging feeling that I have to make an adventure out of my life. In the past few years I've been slowly learning that it's really the driving force of everything that I do. And not only that, but I always feel like I'm pressed with time. Like I have to do it now and I have to do everything _now_ and _ohmygodmytimeisrunningoutwhatthefuck_.
-
-(I know it's dramatic, but in all fairness, when you've lost people in your life, I guess it's really hard not to be dramatic.)
-
-While waiting for my scripts to compile, I tried to list down some things I've done that I considered adventurous in my books: sleeping in airports. Eating silkworms in Siem Reap and eating snails in Marrakech. Solo traveled to one of the most remote archipelagos in the world. Biking alone at 4am in Myanmar looking for a sunrise spot. Okay, okay - a lot of these things are not *that* adventurous compared to people who have, say, biked or sailed all around the world. But they still feel pretty adventurous for me & I'm not sorry.
-
-Anyway. It's hard for me not to associate _adventures_ with _travels_, but on my way home from the office, I was wondering if there are adventures _outside of_ travels. The reason why I'm asking this question is right now for me it's not realistic to count on travels. Nowadays my travels are pretty much limited by how many days off I can take--something that I used to not have to worry about because my previous workplace pretty much didn't care how many days I took off, but I did trade this for a good career opportunity. And lately, I also realized that I don't want to _always_ travel anyway: sometimes I long for quiet days at home, reading books while drinking hot chocolate after grocery shopping. Heck, sometimes I long for an entire day that I can use to thoroughly clean my place and prep my salad and smoothies in peace. I'm also learning new musical instruments and I have fitness goals to keep up with, both of which are impossible to maintain if I'm always traveling. I have a two-week vacation coming up and I'm already low-key freaking out about missing my music lessons. But at the same time, I can't deny that I'm also constantly craving for adventures, whatever that is.
-
-Has it always been like this? I tried to backtrack and the answer is: I don't think so.
-
-I grew up as a really sheltered kid, and by sheltered I mean it literally. I've never ventured alone 500 meters away from my house up until when I was in the last year of middle school. My parents were rarely around and I spent most of the time with my grandma, which means I had to be home all the time because otherwise who is going to supervise me and pick me up from my friend's place? Going outside of the house was such a headache that I'd rather not try to deal with it. Honestly I'm surprised that I grew up without a vitamin D deficiency because I'm pretty sure the Cullens went outside of the house much more often than I was when I was a kid.
-
-The first time I got out of my bubble was when my grandma left the city and I lived alone and somehow I decided to walk to a mall 1 km away from my house. This on its own was already an accomplishment, but I also hung out with some _ojek payung_ and chatted with them. For some reason, it felt like a great adventure. Both - walking far by myself and talking to people I don't know - have something in common: they were something new to me, and they scared the shit out of me.
-
-On my now-defunct blog, I found this post from 2012:
-
-> A piece of advice, if you have nothing to do try to walk 1 km from where you are now and write down/take pictures of what you discover.
-
-I've always heard the phrase that life is too short for us to not go on adventures, but I never really realized that by waiting for big adventures in the traditional sense, you're practically wasting the hours in between your big adventures. These are the adventures that you can use to go on smaller, maybe less-traditional, less-literal adventures.
-
-But at the same time, I also believe that it doesn't mean that you should be always on. Rest days, just like when you're training for a 10K or a marathon, are just as important - when done well, rest days make you a better runner. And in a similar manner, rest days make you a better adventurer. Besides, if you go on adventures all the time, at some point all of these adventures will wear off their novelty and going back to a stable routine will become another adventure on its own. If there's one thing I learned lately, in a world where for some people adventures are more reachable, from low cost carriers to having any kind of information in your fingertips, is that stability is hugely underrated.

content/Posts/on-putting-in-the-work.md

@@ -1,21 +0,0 @@
----
-title: On putting in the work
-draft: false
-tags:
-  - personal
-  - learning
-date: 2021-11-29
----
-During my four-month unexpected sabbatical, I started putting on more effort towards endeavors that I haven't had a chance to dabble in a very long time. It's very slow going at times—well, most of the time—which can get very frustrating.
-
-Here's one example: I've studied French on and off for 8 years and I decided to use this opportunity to establish a sustainable self-learning routine for myself. At the start of the journey, I knew I'm not going to be able to read Sartre in French overnight. But at one point I felt very frustrated because it seems like I was going nowhere. I knew I'm at least at A1 because I've passed the test years ago, but I'm not sure if I had already gone anywhere past that. If I were to take the DELF A2 right now I'd probably be able to get a 60 at maximum.
-
-Of course, the next logical (mandatory /s here) step that I did was to compare my almost nonexistent French skills to other things that I think I'm decent at, like English (side note: I'm not saying that my English is perfect—the other day, a friend mentioned _flatulence_ and another friend used the word _felicitous_ in a sentence and I had to look up what those words mean. Let me tell you that I was pleasantly surprised to learn that _flatulence_ doesn't mean what I thought it meant. Needless to say, it's my new favorite word now. It's just that I can somehow string words better in English than French). The odd thing is I honestly don't remember _really_ learning English except for looking up for words in the dictionary when I was reading _Pride and Prejudice_ for the first time. Everything else just kind of happened.
-
-Recently I realized that I actually haven't put in the work to achieve what I want to achieve. Sounds simple, right? Right. But my mind always went back to how learning French seem exponentially harder than learning English. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not, who the heck knows.
-
-But did English really just happen to me? Honestly, I never really measured it quantitatively, so one way to find out is to do a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation: my English noticeably improved when I spent a lot of time on the internet around 2008-2011; I was probably online for 14 hours per day on the weekdays (this might seem like a high number, but I was online most of the time even as a kid. I literally slept in front of my laptop), and 20 hours per day on the weekends (what is sleep?), but let’s take the conservative calculation and go with 14 hours/day; my rough calculation puts me at 14 hours / day x (365 days x 3 years) = 15,330 hours! I "learned" English for 15,330 hours within that timespan alone. This excludes all the other times I learn English of course, which by itself is already a lot, because English is pretty much everywhere.
-
-So maybe there are other people out there where English (or any language) just happened to them, but I'm definitely not one of those people. A few takeaways: 1) surprise, I'm not the genius that I thought I was (/s I never thought of myself as a genius, but I do overestimate myself sometimes as evidenced by this phenomenon), 2) I've always said "I learned French for one year" but it's not really a year; looking back, I only spent 8 hours in a class each week, roughly a few hours per week after that. It’s _definitely_ not a year and it is definitely not enough to get me to fluency in the near future given my learning rate.
-
-On one hand, it's sad news that it turns out I haven't really put much work on French as much as I thought I was. On the other hand though, this realization gives me a better idea on what to do: I need to put in the work, which means my desire to be fluent in French is not a lost cause—well, as long as I'm willing to put in the work.

content/Posts/reflecting-on-a-year-without-social-media.md

@@ -1,41 +0,0 @@
----
-title: Reflecting on a year without social media
-draft: false
-tags:
-  - internet
-  - social media
-date: 2023-11-26
----
-I don't remember exactly when I decided to remove all of my social media accounts. My best guess is that it's been about a year plus a few months. But what I do remember so vividly is this: scrolling my life away, thinking about so and so's drama, questioning their opinions. Not feeling in control. Living in an ephemeral, liminal space that is neither the real world, nor the inner world. There, but not present, my mind not wandering away to some place but to some not very specific place.
-
-This nagging feeling didn't just appear out of nowhere; it has been brewing, fermenting, crystallizing gradually. When writing this post, I scoured through my journals and found a couple of hints. In my 2019 year-in-review post, I wrote about how "up until the 2010s, I was mostly operating in autopilot mode". Not surprising, I was barely in my mid-20s at the turn of the decade. But looking back, even as recent as a year ago, I used to lose hours on my phone aimlessly. I was unknowingly still on autopilot, too. "For the next decade, I'd like to be more intentional." When I got back from the Galapagos, I reminisced about all of the sunsets that I have forgotten ([[La Loberia]]). I realized I had no control over my life and no self-control when it came to the algorithm constantly showing me content. I was always distracted and not in the moment.
-
-One month later, I followed up with about how at the same time I found joys being outdoors, I also re-discovered my inner world again. It seems that at the same time, I also felt this push to tend to my inner world. The trip to the Galapagos brought back a faint memory of who I used to be back then. This is incredibly hard to do when I was constantly being bombarded by information, and when I barely had time to reflect inside because I spent too much time getting distracted by things that may or may not matter to me outside.
-
-Simply put, I had to give up something in my life, to make space and time for something new, and so I chose to give up social media.
-
-"What do you do in your free time then?" a friend asked. The second point answered this question. I rediscovered old hobbies, made new ones—something I also recognize is a privilege—and now I have too many hobbies to keep me occupied that I genuinely feel that 24 hours per day are not enough.
-
-Like everything else in life, there are downsides. Another friend asked, "how do you know how your friends are doing?"
-
-This is a valid point, and my answer was: you're right. I don't always know. But it turns out it's not a problem. I wrote this on my 2022 year-in-review post, and this still rings true six months later:
-
-> I don’t have social media anymore (and I’ve had two people told me they think I’m dead) [... ] friendship wise this year was supposed to be a disaster, and yet I feel like my friends—old and new—have been such a big part of my life now more than ever. I’m utterly grateful to have met a lot of amazing new people this year be it at home or during my travels, and I also get to deepen my existing connections despite geographical and timezone barriers.
-> Sans social media, I can no longer maintain my friendships by depending on tweet replies or story reactions (or whatever interaction the social media I used has implemented to make me believe that they are 1:1 replacements of social interactions in order to keep me engaged on their website). There was no choice but to turn one-click reacts into face-to-face meetings (or calls for my faraway friends), and replace cryptic Instagram stories with a clear as day “hey, I’m having a mini meltdown in a 12-hour flight right now and I’m flying solo, can you be there for me until my slow as a snail free wi-fi runs out?”.
-> I had to put more effort, and a lot of it involves being vulnerable which has always been my character flaw. But it’s all for the better, because by opening myself up more, I get to learn more about my friends in return.
-
-There is more effort involved, which I totally don't mind after all. Instead of waiting for my friends' posts, I do have to remember their important moments in my head—their trip to Chicago, their Spartan race, the start date of their new job—and follow up with them accordingly. But _personally_, to me it feels more ingenious than being prompted by their posts or stories. That alone makes me really happy.
-
-Another downside is when I'm meeting new people, sometimes the first thing they would ask is if I have an Instagram, and when I say that I don't, depending on the situation (if I'm not that eager to see them again, for example) we would cease to exchange contacts.
-
-But lately I have been a bit less forceful about making connections. I might write a separate post about this, but one thing I learned is that fleeting connections don't make them any less meaningful, and as I spend more time in my inner world, I have more desire to just keep to myself. All this combined makes me feel I'm not losing much here; everything works as designed, if anything.
-
-Will I ever come back? Never say never, Bieber sings, but at this point I can't imagine going back. The other day, my friends were talking about how bizarre their algorithm had gotten, and some friends also shared with me how their feeds currently look like now. As a formerly chronically online kid, it surprised me that it took me a long, long time to decipher what some of the memes actually mean. It was like taking a peek at an utterly strange, alternative world that speaks an entirely different language—one that I frankly have no desire to travel to. The only scenario I can imagine coming back is if for some reason I get rendered impossible to interact much with people in real life or do activities outside.
-
-Social media used to consume so much of my time, even when I wasn't actively posting content. Now that I've got my time back, I've used it to do plenty other things like going through various cookbooks, exercising, making art, catching up with friends IRL or online for long-distance friends, or doing a little picnic by the riverside when the sun is out. It doesn't make sense for me to go back to social media when I don't even have enough time to do everything that I love and maintain the connections I'd like to; the math just doesn't compute.
-
-But most importantly, I like myself better when I'm not on social media. I don't find myself thinking about drama of people that I don't know about. I'm becoming more intentional about consuming information and I'm getting better at deciding which ones matter to me and which ones don't. I'm thinking and creating more, even if it's a half-finished crochet swatch that I may never touch again. I'm getting involved in my local communities and I'm more intentional in developing and maintaining friendships and connections. I have a stronger sense of self, which has helped me get through life when it throws me a curveball or two (or more!). I'm discovering things that truly make my heart sing, and in the absence of sounds and noises, I can really hear my heart sing too. I like that.
-
-Despite that, this is not a call for everyone to delete their social media. I have benefited a lot from it; it has shaped me into who I am today, it would be extremely hypocritical of me to completely denounce it. It's just that it no longer fits into _my_ life _right now_, and that's okay. When a clothing no longer fits you, you get rid of it, right?
-
-Social media is a tool, after all. Though unlike the food processor that I only think about and use when I want to make some chili dips or mayo, it is a tool that has become so deeply embedded in our lives. Getting to the point where I can finally objectively assess how it affects me and how it fits into my life takes a lot of time and is easier said than done. It turns out that after all, much of it is actually an exercise of getting to know myself and being courageous to make drastic changes in my life.

content/Posts/some-podcasts-i've-enjoyed-recently.md

@@ -1,51 +0,0 @@
----
-title: Some podcasts I've enjoyed recently
-draft: false
-tags:
-  - podcast
-  - retrospective
-date: 2022-01-01
----
-I have a confession to make: despite co-hosting a podcast myself, I didn't listen to podcasts that much until recently (*99% Invisible* is an exception). I've always thought of myself as a visual person—I need to _see_ something to actually process it. At some point this year though I realized that I tend to zone out during meetings _a lot,_ and I thought listening to more podcasts would be a good way for me to practice listening.
-
-It was difficult at first, but here are the three things that helped me: 1) getting a pair of wireless earphones, 2) listening to the episodes at 1.2x speed, 3) finding podcasts with topics that I truly enjoy. Point 3) is probably the most important—if it doesn't interest me, there's no hope that they're going to hold my attention for 30 minutes at minimum.
-
-You and me are different people so what might be interesting to me won't necessarily interest you. But I thought I'd share and hope that there are some gems here that you'd enjoy too.
-
-## Tech Won't Save Us
-
-Tech Won’t Save Us is hands down one of my favorite, if not my favorite, podcasts ever. As I distanced myself from work, unplugged myself for a few weeks (I didn’t touch my laptop for anything tech related for an entire month), and watched from afar how the current state of technology is propelled into all kinds of (mostly questionable) directions, it hit me that I was (and am) still disillusioned about the field I’m in.
-
-Unfolding this realization is a slow going process that is still happening as I’m typing this, and at this point I probably have more questions than answers myself. One thing I realize quite early is that there seems to be a disconnect between the values I believe in, the technologies that are currently happening, and the technologies that I support. In my 2021 retrospective reading post, I spoke about how I want to make better informed choices; one of the reasons why is because I want to minimize, if not eliminate completely, this disconnect. _Tech Won’t Save Us_ is one of the learning resources that I use to educate myself. I want to invest time to not only learn the technical nitty-gritty behind the technology I participate in building, but also to think critically about where it fits in the bigger picture of things. After all, technology does not exist in a vacuum.
-
-I haven’t gone through all episodes but I’m slowly going through its back catalog. A couple of my favorite episodes are [Web3 is a scam and not a revolution,](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2DOfbLxBUeAt7TvDvWxs3F?si=066519823c384bad) [Don’t give surveillance for Christmas](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2DhLc1jxBLF3DR33swlE8N?si=84da60bc5a914d28), [Demystifying the billionaire space race](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3h6C9qxb7jpx3cPxt3y30T?si=7ee12e0b90a94fb5), and [Project cybersyn shows all tech is political](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0gkbM8DRTj2cSOuQ138mrq?si=4a07bf9e423b4daa).
-
-## Darknet Diaries
-
-According to my Spotify wrapped, Darknet Diaries is my most listened podcast this year. I’m not surprised; there’s nothing more fun than running a 5k while listening to the story about the curious case of the missing [Puerto Rico Lottery](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Lu23UyQc3zxGP2u9AtgB8?si=5b0922080cc44d62) money.
-
-As the podcast name implies, Darknet Diaries “explores true stories of the dark side of the Internet”. I’m no hacker myself, but I spend most of my time here on the Internet, and they say knowledge is power after all. No matter what your role in tech is or whether or not you’re in tech at all, I believe anyone has something to get out of the podcast. I learned, for example, about how a lot of hacks either succeeded or failed mainly because of human errors: did you know that officials were alerted of the Bangladesh Bank Heist quickly because of a typo despite its very well thought-out overall plan? It kind of amazes me that the same people who made an immaculate plan for a heist were brought to their downfall because of a _typo_.
-
-The podcast also not only discusses major internet crimes and data breaches, but also things like credit card skimming and social engineering which I believe everyone has to be aware to some extent.
-
-As for favorite episodes, I don’t think you can go wrong with any episode but here are some of my favorites: [53: Shadow Brokers](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0j3O5C7NIq2rtCvaI29Kdn?si=8ce41c625ca249ff), [54: NotPetya](https://open.spotify.com/episode/698R7TeLzaP0TXhnRo05nc?si=eb447d5a9aed45cc), [71: Information Monopoly](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0DsGyzP9fYQ9LM6YiT5NS7?si=c63fac05b11841bb), [72: Bangladesh Bank Heist](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2VpFryql25IAghEuf4lO3Q?si=1db78204a93b473a), [92: The Pirate Bay](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5VQv4PNTljCXUtx4U1yzUZ?si=f51ca4f060754980), [100: NSO](https://open.spotify.com/episode/38RuwrVwAHNXgHLDOANtmj?si=a8ce94a6ba5e46b3), [101: Loteria](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Lu23UyQc3zxGP2u9AtgB8?si=9792fb0038ef4187).
-
-## _Kejar Paket Pintar_ (Indonesian)
-
-I first started listening to _Kejar Paket Pintar_ two years ago. I decided to pick it up again in the middle of this year. I don’t see this podcast mentioned a lot when I ask people recommendations on Indonesian podcasts, but honestly it should be up there on top of everyone’s list, like _really_ up there. The podcast is well-produced and the topics are very timely. Nowadays, if you’re an active social media user in Indonesia, it can be very difficult to separate the signal from the noise when everything—from Instagram celebrities controversies to debates such as whether you have to split the bill on the first date or not—seems like news and is competing for your attention. I also use this podcast as sort of a filter to figure out which issues really matter and which ones I can do without.
-
-My favorites: [Dijegal Pasal Ngasal (1)](https://open.spotify.com/episode/7oYB7yWvPUqSMJrKgbFwkQ?si=57625036c7dc4fb1) and [(2)](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2cMMgZ1MkMPTH1fw1Ojbwk?si=91d31fceb5ad421a), [Menuju Diri Sendiri](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4IuRDlM3u056xJukVZGQQl?si=08c80a76ce9b4d16), [Mama-mama Tambora (1)](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1Mh7hF5be7pcUHozrROxVS?si=505be3fb4a7a43dc) and [(2)](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2r1Gun7To7FlixkVl9btbn?si=7facf7c30d354fd5).
-
-A few honorable mentions:
-
-## Bad Blood: The Final Chapter
-
-If you follow the whole Theranos saga, you might be aware that the trial for Theranos is undergoing right now. There are many ways to keep up with the development of the trial, and one of them is to listen this podcast that is hosted by John Carreyrou himself. I see it as more of a continuation (hence, “final chapter”) of [Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37976541-bad-blood) that was published in 2018.
-
-## Films to be Buried With
-
-I love Ted Lasso, I love Roy Kent, so I can't say no to this podcast which is hosted by Brett Goldstein (who plays Roy Kent) himself. Anyways, onto a more serious answer: I enjoy listening to people talking about things I have no idea about. When it comes to movies, my understanding of what constitutes a good movie is shallow as best. I know this is subjective but if I make a comparison to books, I can write an entire essay about why I like or dislike a certain book, yet I can’t do the same with movies. So I'd love to learn more about things like why do people like certain movies? Why do people hate certain movies? What movies have changed people’s lives? I've only listened to the episodes that hosted the Ted Lasso cast (which means yes, I've listened to all the Brendan Hunt episodes, because _Coach Beard_) but I'm slowly going through its back catalog.
-
-I also have some other podcasts I just started listening to, but haven’t formed any strong opinion on them. I recently started listening to Maintenance Phase which is a podcast that “debunk the junk science behind health and wellness fads”—things like Goop, snake oils (literally), to figures like Dr. Oz. Another recent discovery is The Privacy, Security, and OSINT Show—the constant stream of data leakage and breach that has been happening lately has successfully turned me into a paranoid (maybe for the better). Sometimes I also listen to This American Life when the topic is interesting to me.
-
-So there you go. Happy listening!

content/Posts/the-long,-meandering-road-to-pd.read_csv().md

@@ -1,85 +0,0 @@
----
-title: The long, meandering road to pd.read_csv()
-draft: false
-tags:
-  - tech
-  - data
-date: 2020-10-02
----
-A few days ago I saw a tweet that referred to this question in Reddit: [“what’s part of the real job that’s not part of the Kaggle workflow?”](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/j1ati3/d_whats_part_of_the_real_job_thats_not_part_of/).
-
-There are many answers to this question but one that I’ve had in mind for a long while is this: putting together a dataset. The following tweet also echoes the same sentiment:
-
-> One of the biggest failures I see in junior ML/CV engineers is a complete lack of interest in building data sets. While it is boring grunt work I think there is so much to be learned in putting together a dataset. It is like half the problem.— Katherine Scott (@kscottz) [February 1, 2019](https://twitter.com/kscottz/status/1091423467772162049?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
-
-Now let’s go back to the Reddit post.
-
-The reality is, in real-world situations, Step (1) is rarely just that. In fact I can’t recall the time someone hands me a .csv dataset while saying “you know you just need to load _this_ & get started.” Nope. Never.
-
-Step (6)… yeah, sure, that’s usually part of the workflow. But models are not the only things you can iterate on. You can also iterate on your data, which means sometimes you have to go back to Step (1) again. Speaking from personal experience, some of the most impactful performance increase can be gained from iterating on the data.
-
-These two things bring me to my point: we need to talk more about putting together a dataset, because of two reasons: 1) outside of Kaggle, oftentimes you must always build your own dataset first; 2) sometimes you don’t only do it once for the same project, but maybe twice, or thrice, at various parts of the project.
-
-## Data and where to find them
-
-Here’s the cold hard truth: most of the time, the dataset of your dreams—that mythical one piece of ready-to-use .csv file—might not exist.
-
-You will often face a situation where you have a very limited dataset or worse, your dataset does not exist yet. Below are some common challenges I can think of, though keep in mind that a) encountering > 1 of these challenges for the same project are very possible, b) whether you’ll come across them or not may depend on your company’s data maturity.
-
-**Your company doesn’t know they’d need it in the future, so they don’t collect them.** This is probably less probable in large companies with resources to have a data lake, but there’s still possibility that this happens. There’s probably not much that you can do other than making the case that you need to collect this data & justify the budget & time needed to do it. At this stage your persuasion skillz are probably more important than your SQL skillz.
-
-**The data that you need do exist in a data lake, but they need to be transformed before you start using it.** Transforming it might become someone’s backlog that might not be picked up until the next few sprints. Either way, you won’t have that dataset that you want immediately.
-
-**You have your data, but they are not labeled.** This might be a problem if you are trying to do a supervised learning task. A quick solution might be to hire annotators from [Mechanical Turk](https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome), but this might not be possible if you have a domain-specific data or sensitive data where masking makes the annotation task impossible. I’ve also seen companies having “Data Labeler” as one of their job openings, but you might have to think whether it makes sense/possible for your company to hire someone part/full-time to label your data.
-
-Once you have annotators, you might also want to strategize the kind of labels that you need so that they can be useful for future cases to save cost and time, so you don’t need to label the same data twice. For example, if you need to label a large set of tweets with “Positive” vs “Negative”, you probably need to anticipate future needs by making more granular labels instead (e.g. “Happy”, “Sad”, etc.).
-
-You can always try other approaches, e.g. semi-supervised learning or unsupervised learning. But it’s not always possible, & considering various constraints, sometimes you need to really calculate which one is more worth it, e.g. pursuing a semi-supervised learning approach that you still need to explore vs a supervised learning approach you know better with the help of annotators. This may depend on various factors: time, budget, etc.
-
-**You have your data, but they are weakly labeled.** These labels do not necessarily correspond to the target of your model, but you can use them as some sort of a proxy for it. For example, you may not have the data whether a user likes an item or not, but perhaps you can infer that information from the number of times the user views the items. Of course, you need to think whether it makes sense in your case to have this information as a proxy.
-
-**You have your data, but the target labels are still fuzzy**. Some problems are not as straightforward as “this image contains Cheetos” & “this image does not contain Cheetos”. Sometimes stakeholders come up to you and say that they want more granular predictions that they can tweak later on. At this point you may need to work very closely with your business stakeholders to figure out the target labels, & how you can make the data that you have work with such requests.
-
-**You think you have your data, but you don’t know where they are**. Say you work in a bank. You know you must have transactions data, & there is no way you don’t have users data. However, you may not know where they are, what they look like, the filters you need to use to filter the data, the keys you can use to join the two tables together (hint: it’s not always that simple). Documentations may exist but the details could still be fuzzy to you. You need to ask someone. But who? You need to find out. You ask them questions. They may or may not respond to your queries quickly because they also have job to do. The data might or might not contain the fields that you expect, & it turns out to get the dataset that you want there is something more than a simple join between two tables.
-
-## Don’t trust your data right away
-
-Okay, great, you have your data. Can we load them for training now? Not so fast. You may need to spend sometime to make sure that your dataset is reliable—that it _actually_ contains the things that you expect them to contain. This is a tricky one I’d say because the definition of “reliable” differs from each case, so you really have to define it yourself. Much of this comes down to how well you understand your problem, how well you understand your data, & how careful you are.
-
-_Hold up, this is part of the data cleaning (Step 2), isn’t it? We can just drop missing data etc. etc. no?_ If you refer to most data cleaning tutorials, they make it seem that it’s straightforward: you can just drop the rows with missing values/impute them with the mean of the column or something, _and then you can go to Step 3_. But in reality: a) you often get some very funky cases that these tutorials may not cover, b) these funky cases may be symptoms to a larger issue in the engineering pipeline that you may start questioning the reliability of your entire dataset, not just that one particular column. [_Oh, take me back to the start_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB-RcX5DS5A), sings Coldplay, & off to the start (aka Step 1) you go.
-
-Some common pitfalls off the top of my head:
-
-- **Erroneous labels.** This is especially when these are human-annotated labels. Going through the data by hand can be helpful for you to get a sense of this—even if you don’t manage to go through all of them (which is understandable—scrolling through some data for 5 hours might not be the wisest use of your time anyway), you can have at least a sense of the percentage of human level error (if you don’t have one yet). Knowing the human level error can help you calculate what [Andrew Ng refers to as the avoidable bias](https://media.nips.cc/Conferences/2016/Slides/6203-Slides.pdf), & knowing the avoidable bias can be helpful for you to determine your next step.
-    
-- **Missing data.** Missing data does not only mean fields with empty values that you can find with `df[df["col_1]".isnull()]`. Say that you have a column that says “Province”. Out of all your data, there is no value that says “West Java”. Does that make sense? Can you trust your data? Sometimes it’s not always about what’s there, but also about what’s _not_ there.
-    
-- **Duplicated data.** Sounds trivial—we can just do `pd.drop_duplicates`, no? It depends. If you have images for example, you might also want to think about what kind of duplication you want to remove (do you only want to remove exact duplicates or near-duplicates too?). _Fun fact:_ 3.3% and 10% of the images from the test sets of the oft-used CIFAR-10 and CIFAR-100 have duplicates in the training set[1](https://galuh.me/dataset/#fn-1), & this was discovered only pretty recently in 2019.
-    
-- **Values that just don’t make sense.** Again, this _really_ depends on the context of your data. Example: you have rows where the `registration_date` is somehow more recent than the `last_transaction_date`. Does it make sense? _Can we detect these strange values using outlier detection?_ you might ask. Well, what if _most_ of your values are strange values? You never really know until you take a look at the data yourself.
-    
-- **Assumptions.** It’s easy (& dangerous!) to make assumptions with data: sometimes we just assume that a field is generated in a certain way, we just assume that these values mean what we think they mean, & the list goes on. Maybe we have dealt similar tables before, or we have just dealt with similarly named colum names in a different table, so we carry these assumptions to our next data or project. It’s worth it to spare some extra time to check the documentation or ask people who may know better before you go too far.
-    
-
-There is no recipe here except to really get to know your data & be critical of the data that you have, which means you probably need to spend some time to really look at it, & slice & dice your data in many different ways.
-
-I usually spare some time to manually scan through my data just to have a sense of what’s going on. From such a simple exercise I can get a sense, for example, that humans typically misclassify certain classes, so the labels related to these classes are probably not reliable, & it’s probably understandable if my model makes a few mistakes in these classes. Andrej Karpathy also did this exercise on the ImageNet data & wrote about what he learned in his [blog](http://karpathy.github.io/2014/09/02/what-i-learned-from-competing-against-a-convnet-on-imagenet/).
-
-## You may have to revisit your dataset multiple times
-
-When it turns out your models do not perform well, there are a few things you can do here. It’s important to remember that it’s not limited to tuning your hyperparameters.
-
-One of them is revisiting your dataset. When you do, you may decide to acquire a bigger dataset. You may try various data augmentation strategies, & when you do you still need to be critical of your data & the methods you apply (does it make sense to apply rotation for images of numbers?). You may decide that you need add more (better) features, but they don’t exist in the tables yet, so you need to talk to your peers who handle this & see if you can get them in time. It’s Step (1) all over again, & it’s fine. It happens. But at least knowing all these, you’re more prepared now.
-
-## How can I practice?
-
-If you cannot learn all of these from Kaggle, then how can you learn it by yourself if you don’t have stakeholders & access to company data that comes with all shapes & sizes with their own mishaps to practice on?
-
-I think building your own side projects outside of Kaggle problems can be a great way for you to familiarize yourself with these challenges. **The most important thing is you do not start with the data that you are given, but you start with defining your own problem statement & search for datasets that are relevant to your problem instead of the other way around**. If the perfect dataset for your problem doesn’t exist (most likely it doesn’t), then it’s a good time to practice: fetch the data yourself (for example, using the Twitter API), join them with other data sources that you can, say, find in [Google Dataset Search](https://datasetsearch.research.google.com/) or [Kaggle Datasets](https://www.kaggle.com/datasets), find ways to use the weakly labeled datasets, & get creative with the imperfect data that you have.
-
-## Further readings
-
-Some work related to this topic that you might find interesting:
-- [Real Scientists Make Their Own Data](https://seanjtaylor.com/2013/01/26/real-scientists-make-their-own-data.html) by Sean J. Taylor - argues that “your best chance to make a serious contribution as a business or academic researcher is to find, make and combine novel data”
-- [Data Cleaning IS Analysis, Not Grunt Work](https://counting.substack.com/p/data-cleaning-is-analysis-not-grunt) by Randy Au - proposes that data cleaning is not just menial work; “data cleaning is just reusable transforming”
-- [Critical Questions for Big Data: Provocations for a Cultural, Technological, and Scholarly Phenomenon](https://www.danah.org/papers/2012/BigData-ICS-Draft.pdf) by danah boyd and Kate Crawford touches on a lot of issues related to increased automation of data collection & data analysis.

content/Posts/what-ink-sketching-has-taught-me.md

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----
-title: What ink sketching has taught me
-draft: false
-tags:
-  - sketching
-  - art
-  - learning
-date: 2020-01-20
----
-
-I'm thinking of getting back to sketching again. Sketching is one of those things that I always tell myself I want to do more, but I never end up doing unless when I'm traveling. I told my friend—an amazing sketcher and one of the people who inspired me to dabble in sketching 11 years ago, besides my mom—that I want to sketch again, but I haven't got the time to go outside because I'm occupied by house chores. "You can start small, maybe start sketching your cooking or that grocery shopping plan," she said. She's right—honestly there's no reason for me _not_ to start. I'm just making excuses.
-
-I don't know why it takes me a while to get back to it again. Honestly, sketching is always a hard habit for me to be consistent with, unlike reading (which has its own ebbs and flows but I always can get back to it once I find a good book) or meditation (I've only missed 3 consecutive days at max since end of last year and that was when I was moving).
-
-And I never realize why until recently: I'm so, _so_ terribly afraid of making mistakes.
-
-When you're reading, it's difficult to be "wrong" when you're not really producing anything (except thoughts, perhaps). If you're reading a book that doesn't resonate with you, you can always drop and forget about it. With meditation, you may skip a few days but you'll hardly get reminded of that unless you deliberately check the calendar in your favorite meditation app and this is something that I hardly do anyway. But when you're sketching, especially with something permanent like ink, those mistakes are going to be the part of the artwork you're producing. Sometimes there are remedies where you can hide those imperfections. Most of the time though there are no ways to hide those those random blobs, unintentionally swirly lines, off colors, and miscalculated perspective.
-
-This is the first ink sketch that I made in 2010:
-
-![This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image-1.png](https://galshd.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/image-1.png?w=1024)
-
-I remember everything about making it: I was in my bedroom, sitting straight up on my bed, somewhere between 3am and 4am. I had a few drawing pens and a sheet of paper from a sketchbook that my sister gave me as a birthday gift. I just got back from a trip to Paris and I was browsing the pictures of the trip that I had on my laptop because I had trouble sleeping. I decided to start drawing one of the pictures that I took with one of my drawing pens, diving head first without doing a pencil outline because I was too impatient for that (and am still too impatient for pencil outline, 11 years later). I didn't expect much—I just had this curiosity to see what I could make with a paper and a pen and my own hands.
-
-It's not an amazing sketch by any means—there are too many lines that are not supposed to be there, for instance, but the most glaring mistake was this: I miscalculated the space needed for the supposedly three tiles on each side of the top of the building. My first thought when I realized I had made a mistake was: _oh shit_. I put down my pen and set it aside for a good ten minutes, extremely demotivated. Whatever it is that I'm making with a paper and a pen and my own hands, the answer is, it's not something good.
-
-I'm not sure what happened exactly, but I guess curiosity got the best of me. _What if I just push through?_ I thought. What will happen? At the end of the day, I still got a sketch that (thank goodness) still resembles a building. I still remember the feeling that washed over me when I looked at my work and thought: _hey, maybe I can do this shit._ I went on to make [~70 more sketches over the course of 11 years](https://galuh.myportfolio.com/sketches), each time trying my best to calculate the space needed for the elements I was drawing the best I could. The sketches are not van Gogh level of art of course, but that's not what I'm aiming for anyway. At least I didn't swear sketching off forever like I was about to the moment I made that mistake on my first ink sketch. I still want to create and that's good enough for me.
-
-I guess I'm writing this as a reminder for myself to not be afraid of making mistakes, either in sketching, when dabbling in a new hobby, or in life in general. Shit happens but you can still end up with something beautiful. Not perfect, but good enough which is better than nothing at all. Also, when you make mistakes when sketching, there are several courses of actions that you can take: you either try to make do with what you have as much as you can, you start over on an entirely new sheet of paper, or you just let it be. And in real life, for most things, the same advice applies. Not all hope is lost.
-
-14-year-old me was, I swear to God, the most annoying, exasperating teenager on Earth. But I admire her for trying out something new and not leaving her pen and paper on the bed for too long at the first sight of imperfection. Maybe I can learn a thing or two from her.

content/Reading/2022 Reading List - Completed.md

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-/Users/galuh.sahid/Documents/obsidian/gal/Gal/reading/2022 Reading List - Completed.md

content/Reading/2022 Reading List - Completed.md

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+---
+publish: true
+---
+%% update via "Update Publish Files" template %% 
+
+| File                                                                                                    | Author                   | Cover                                                                                                                     | Category                  |
+| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------- |
+| [[Reading/White Ivy.md\|White Ivy]]                                                                     | Susie Yang               | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=lMU1EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Fiction                   |
+| [[Reading/When We Cease to Understand the World.md\|When We Cease to Understand the World]]             | Benjamín Labatut         | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=ApvzDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Fiction                   |
+| [[Reading/What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.md\|What I Talk About When I Talk About Running]] | Haruki Murakami          | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=pMu390crF0EC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Biography & Autobiography |
+| [[Reading/We Are the Brennans.md\|We Are the Brennans]]                                                 | Tracey Lange             | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=Sob7DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Fiction                   |
+| [[Reading/We Are Bellingcat.md\|We Are Bellingcat]]                                                     | Eliot Higgins            | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=Gg0IEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Political Science         |
+| [[Reading/Version Control.md\|Version Control]]                                                         | Dexter Palmer            | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=1I6mCQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Fiction                   |
+| [[Reading/These Precious Days.md\|These Precious Days]]                                                 | Ann Patchett             | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=7eslEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Biography & Autobiography |
+| [[Reading/The Swimmers.md\|The Swimmers]]                                                               | Julie Otsuka             | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=XagvEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Fiction                   |
+| [[Reading/The Sentence.md\|The Sentence]]                                                               | Louise Erdrich           | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=9185EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Fiction                   |
+| [[Reading/The Portrait of a Mirror.md\|The Portrait of a Mirror]]                                       | A. Natasha Joukovsky     | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=mGMAEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Fiction                   |
+| [[Reading/The Love Hypothesis.md\|The Love Hypothesis]]                                                 | Ali Hazelwood            | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=J4QUEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Fiction                   |
+| [[Reading/The Candy House.md\|The Candy House]]                                                         | Jennifer Egan            | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=WB9oEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Fiction                   |
+| [[Reading/Sea of Tranquility.md\|Sea of Tranquility]]                                                   | Emily St. John Mandel    | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=fj84EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Fiction                   |
+| [[Reading/Olga Dies Dreaming.md\|Olga Dies Dreaming]]                                                   | Xochitl Gonzalez         | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=JysvEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Fiction                   |
+| [[Reading/Oh William!.md\|Oh William!]]                                                                 | Elizabeth Strout         | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=aIQNEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Fiction                   |
+| [[Reading/Notes on an Execution.md\|Notes on an Execution]]                                             | Danya Kukafka            | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=-HgyEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Fiction                   |
+| [[Reading/It Ends with Us.md\|It Ends with Us]]                                                         | Colleen Hoover           | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=wmnuDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Fiction                   |
+| [[Reading/Intimacies.md\|Intimacies]]                                                                   | Katie Kitamura           | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=Y8cIEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Fiction                   |
+| [[Reading/In the Margins.md\|In the Margins]]                                                           | Elena Ferrante           | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=Qe03zwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api)           | Biography & Autobiography |
+| [[Reading/If I Had Your Face.md\|If I Had Your Face]]                                                   | Frances Cha              | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=Xv-lDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Fiction                   |
+| [[Reading/How High We Go in the Dark.md\|How High We Go in the Dark]]                                   | Sequoia Nagamatsu        | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=d3g4EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Fiction                   |
+| [[Reading/Five Total Strangers.md\|Five Total Strangers]]                                               | Natalie D. Richards      | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=cTPXDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Young Adult Fiction       |
+| [[Reading/Days of Distraction.md\|Days of Distraction]]                                                 | Alexandra Chang          | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=VVygDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Fiction                   |
+| [[Reading/Cover Story.md\|Cover Story]]                                                                 | Susan Rigetti            | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=2CY3EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Fiction                   |
+| [[Reading/Everything I Know about Love.md\|Everything I Know about Love]]                               | Dolly Alderton           | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=fqWHzQEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api)           | Biography & Autobiography |
+| [[Reading/Convenience Store Woman.md\|Convenience Store Woman]]                                         | Sayaka Murata            | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=cDpDDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Fiction                   |
+| [[Reading/Billion Dollar Whale.md\|Billion Dollar Whale]]                                               | Tom Wright, Bradley Hope | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=1RdNDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Business & Economics      |
+| [[Reading/Chemistry.md\|Chemistry]]                                                                     | Weike Wang               | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=FcZFDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Fiction                   |
+| [[Reading/Cleopatra and Frankenstein.md\|Cleopatra and Frankenstein]]                                   | Coco Mellors             | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=cjV7zwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api)           | \-                        |
+| [[Reading/Arriving Today.md\|Arriving Today]]                                                           | Christopher Mims         | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=0AEXEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Business & Economics      |

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+| File                                                                                    | Author                        | Cover                                                                                                                     | Category                    |
+| --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------- |
+| [[Reading/Yellowface.md\|Yellowface]]                                                   | Rebecca F Kuang               | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=crZ1EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Fiction                     |
+| [[Reading/User Friendly.md\|User Friendly]]                                             | Cliff Kuang, Robert Fabricant | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=qM-QDAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Design                      |
+| [[Reading/Trust.md\|Trust]]                                                             | Hernán Diaz                   | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=9dCazgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api)           | Fiction                     |
+| [[Reading/Strangers to Ourselves.md\|Strangers to Ourselves]]                           | Rachel Aviv                   | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=Co5VEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Psychology                  |
+| [[Reading/Stolen Focus.md\|Stolen Focus]]                                               | Johann Hari                   | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=N6UxEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Family & Relationships      |
+| [[Reading/Our Women on the Ground.md\|Our Women on the Ground]]                         | Zahra Hankir                  | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=VS2ADwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Literary Collections        |
+| [[Reading/Remarkably Bright Creatures.md\|Remarkably Bright Creatures]]                 | Shelby Van Pelt               | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=jo9AEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Fiction                     |
+| [[Reading/Our Share of Night.md\|Our Share of Night]]                                   | Mariana Enriquez              | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=YJxuEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Fiction                     |
+| [[Reading/Four Thousand Weeks.md\|Four Thousand Weeks]]                                 | Oliver Burkeman               | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=5my-zQEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api)           | Self-Help                   |
+| [[Reading/Novelist as a Vocation.md\|Novelist as a Vocation]]                           | Haruki Murakami               | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=EIBdEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Language Arts & Disciplines |
+| [[Reading/My Fourth Time, We Drowned.md\|My Fourth Time, We Drowned]]                   | Sally Hayden                  | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=83E0EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Political Science           |
+| [[Reading/Merchants of Doubt.md\|Merchants of Doubt]]                                   | Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=CrtoNFTuPwwC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Technology & Engineering    |
+| [[Reading/Lessons in Chemistry.md\|Lessons in Chemistry]]                               | Bonnie Garmus                 | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=t3iQzgEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api)           | Fiction                     |
+| [[Reading/Greek Lessons.md\|Greek Lessons]]                                             | Han Kang                      | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=fd5HzwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api)           | Fiction                     |
+| [[Reading/Doppelganger.md\|Doppelganger]]                                               | Naomi Klein                   | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=IQS7EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Biography & Autobiography   |
+| [[Reading/Cultish.md\|Cultish]]                                                         | Amanda Montell                | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=L-n8DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Language Arts & Disciplines |
+| [[Reading/Babel.md\|Babel]]                                                             | R. F. Kuang                   | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=ZWRQEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api)           | Fiction                     |
+| [[Reading/The Myth of Artificial Intelligence.md\|The Myth of Artificial Intelligence]] | Erik J. Larson                | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=GzQXEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Computers                   |
+| [[Reading/The Emperor of All Maladies.md\|The Emperor of All Maladies]]                 | Siddhartha Mukherjee          | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=hgx0sJvphNkC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | History                     |

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+| File                                                        | Author          | Cover                                                                                                                     | Category  |
+| ----------------------------------------------------------- | --------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------- |
+| [[Reading/Crafting Interpreters.md\|Crafting Interpreters]] | Robert Nystrom  | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=q0c6EAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Computers |
+| [[Reading/Enter Ghost.md\|Enter Ghost]]                     | Isabella Hammad | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=QApwEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Fiction   |

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+| File                                                        | Author               | Cover                                                                                                                     | Category                  |
+| ----------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------- |
+| [[Reading/The Earth Transformed.md\|The Earth Transformed]] | Peter Frankopan      | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=LuGZEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | History                   |
+| [[Reading/The Song of the Cell.md\|The Song of the Cell]]   | Siddhartha Mukherjee | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=CRpdEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Medical                   |
+| [[Reading/Road to Nowhere.md\|Road to Nowhere]]             | Paris Marx           | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=puhOEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Social Science            |
+| [[Reading/Frantumaglia.md\|Frantumaglia]]                   | Elena Ferrante       | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=ioXmAQAACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api)           | Biography & Autobiography |
+| [[Reading/Bullshit Jobs.md\|Bullshit Jobs]]                 | David Graeber        | ![\|100](http://books.google.com/books/content?id=co2RDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api) | Business & Economics      |

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