Japan 2024

• Journal

I finally went to Japan! It was really nice. I found myself enjoying through both the ups and downs. Many things happened in the planning and execution of the trip. In this post I reflect on what happened, what I enjoyed and not, what I learned, and what I hope to do next.

Ideation

The initial idea was sparked many years ago (maybe it was 2019?), thrown around occassinally when chatting with Leo or with the Unyu group. But that idea stuck at being just an idea as there was no more concrete planning that happened since then. Also the Covid travel restrictions happened so I couldn’t really act on it int the past few years. Then last year around August, after more deliberations and encouragements, I took the risk and booked the flight tickets.

Once I booked the non-refundable tickets, the journey started becomnig real. I even thought of a quote from the anime A Place Further Than The Universe:

If you can still turn back, it’s not really a journey. When you hit the point of no return, that’s the moment it becomes a journey.

Hinata Miyake
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Stolen Focus on Phone Apps

• Books

Recently I finished a book called Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention – and How to Think Deeply Again. With it, I realized that a lof of our time spent on screen are designed to be distracted away by something else and it’s really hard to focus on 1 stuff at a time. At any moment, if you don’t take effort, you will be swarmed by notifications, badges, cravings for rewards, fear of missing out, and many more tricks. The author postulates that this is what makes us, collectively, have lower focus than what we used to have in the past, i.e. focus being stolen away from us.

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2023 in Review

• Journal

Welp, it’s the time of the year again to review the year.

This year, I definitely didn’t post much. In fact, it was the lowest number of posts per year since I started the blog. It can’t be helped I guess, since I had filled up my free time on many other stuffs.

Last year during 2022 in Review, I picked year of authenticity. However I’m not sure if I achieved that. I felt that without deep trust, it was scary and can be dangerous to do so. At times, I did open up and I was thankful that I did.

There were a lot of things happened in 2023, and most of them are not planned very far ahead. In a way, that’s not a bad thing, as I got to experience things that I normally won’t.

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Five Months Into Learning Japanese

• Journal

Earlier this year, after having gone on a vacation (in February), I found that my habit of listening to podcasts and reading books had been broken. During my commute, I didn’t feel like listening to podcasts or reading books anymore. Most of the time, I spent on just listening to music. However, after a few months, I felt like I could put in something more productive. That’s why on a fine day in April, I decided to learn Japanese.

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Setting Up Git SSH Key on Windows

• Notes

I recently bought a new laptop and went through the hassle of setting up Git SSH key again. There are many guides somewhere on the Internet but it’s all over different places and they tell you to do different things with different outcomes. Also, the guide from GitHub is less than ideal as it requires using “Git Bash” which I do not like. So I’m writing things down for my future reference.

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Seasons of Anime

• Journal

I haven’t written any post for a while now. Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve been keeping a weekly journal of what I did over the week and this has been ongoing for several years now. In the past few months, outside of work, I’ve been quite occupied with watching anime.

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