Last year in 2023 in Review, I picked that the yearly theme would be “Year of Experience”. Indeed, this year I experienced a lot of things. Experience came in different forms, from travelling, events, meet ups, and many more. In this post, I’ll share several memorable experiences.
Coldplay Singapore
The first major event of the year was Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres World Tour performing in Singapore’s National Stadium for 6 nights. I attended the third show since it happened on a Saturday. Since this is my 2nd show of this tour, it was natural to compare it to the other show that I attended previously in November 2023 in KL. It was pretty good, although I felt the crowd’s energy in KL was much better. Also, it was a bit disappoining that the “fireworks” during “A Sky Full of Stars” were just screen projections on the roof, it was understandable that the stadium’s roof was fully closed. However, compared to KL, the crowd management when the attendees were gathering and dispersing were superb. The setlist was pretty similar to the one in KL, except that they didn’t play “Humankind”. One surprise in this show was that they played “Politik”, a song that they rarely palyed live these days!
Ludovico Einaudi
Few days after the Coldplay concert, I also attended Ludovico Einaudi’s concert at Esplanade Theatre. I got to know Ludovico Einaudi from way back in 2011 when the radio DJ played his song on BBC Radio 1.
Initially he played solo on piano and the pieces were so relaxing that I almost fell asleep. However, as the night goes on, he was joined by his band mates and the songs played become more and more intense. The lightings were pretty good in enhancing the mood. Overall, it was a really good performance.
Chinese New Year: Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, and Medan
This year’s CNY trip was a long one and memorable one. Travelling through three different places and with lots of people: my parents, my sister, and my brother and his wife. We initially met at Bangkok airport and then headed straight to Pattaya for several days. Then we met up with my brother’s in-laws and spent the CNY eve and first few days in Bangkok. After that, we flew to Kuala Lumpur, visitting the malls, Genting Highlands, and also my brother’s in-laws’ home. The final leg of the trip was in Medan, spending times with loved ones.
Taylor Swift Singapore
In March, Taylor Swift performed The Eras Tour in Singapore. I attended the concert with Lenny. The concert was really long! However the set was amazing. I think my favorite part was the 10-minute version of “All Too Well”. I got very emotional from that song.
Japan
Toward the end of March, I embarked on my first Japan trip after a long time having such idea and preparing for it. The 16-day trip spanned on 4 different places: Osaka, Nara, Kyoto, Tokyo; and 3 different theme parks: Universal Studios Japan, Tokyo DisneySea, and Tokyo Disneyland. I experienced many sorts of ups and downs during the trip itself and managed to steer it smoothly. I wrote it all about it here: Japan 2024.
Funeral
Around a week after I completed my Japan trip, my grandmother passed away after years of declining health. I returned back to my hometown for a few days to attend her funeral. The funeral felt like CNY, where families, relatives, and friends of families come to gather and chit-chat. The actual procession itself was quite somber. I’ll miss her dearly.
Penang & Kuala Lumpur
I had two short trips with Lenny. The first one is to Penang around July, and the second one is to Kuala Lumpur around October.
In Penang, the highlight was definitely the food. While we also visited several attractions like The Top Penang, Kek Lok See Temple, and Pinang Peranakan Mansion, and some other attractions, they were pale compared to the food. It was in this trip that I and Lenny got together. We also unexpectedly met a group of friends from BFY who were travelling in Penang around the same days as ours too.
In Kuala Lumpur, we visited some major attractions like the KL Pavilion mall, 1 Utama mall, TRX mall, KLCC, Batu Caves, and also Genting Highlands. I was surprised that 1 Utama mall was so huge that it took like 20 minutes to walk from one edge to the other edge of the mall. Overall, it was a nice short trip to spend time together.
JLPT and Learning Japanese
This year I completed the Duolingo’s Japanese course. I’d say that it’s a good way to get started, but it’s terrible to learn further. That’s why I challenged myself and registered for the JLPT exam, which happened on early December. Since it was my first time, I registered for the N4 exam. The results isn’t out yet, but I feel like I can pass. I took some of the mock exams of that level and I consistently can pass, although the scores might swing drastically depending on the luck. My weakest point was usually the grammar and listening.
This year after being convinced with the immersion learning method, I started to force myself immersed when interacting with certain media. When I followed the series “Shikanoko Nokonoko Koshitantan”, I made myself watch the whole season without subtitles. It was uncomfortable not to understand 100%, but turned out I can still understand the overall plot pretty well. After that, I started to watch more shows without subtitles, or some at least with Japanese subtitles only.
I even finished two books in Japanese: the first novel of “Sound! Euphonium: Welcome to the Kitauji High School Concert Band” (響け! ユーフォニアム 北宇治高校吹奏楽部へようこそ); and “Before the Coffee Gets Cold” (コーヒーが冷めないうちに). It was quite tough initially, especially with the Sound! Euphonium novel, since the many of the characters speak in Kansai dialect and with Japanese musical terms too. It took me like 4 months to finish the book, and then I decided to rewatch the anime without subtitles. I feel that the anime was much better in dramatizing the conflicts, and it has musical performance to show instead of being described in texts.
Ikuyo and Geekcamp
Around August, I started a new side project called “Ikuyo“, meant to be a itinerary planning web application. The name itself is named after “Kita Ikuyo“, a character from the series Bocchi the Rock!, where her given name has same reading as “行くよ” (meaning “let’s go”).
The project was built around a timetable view which I built using CSS Grid. I discovered some nice features and not-so-nice problems of such use case, so I decided to submit this as a talk to Geekcamp 2024 and it got accepted. Geekcamp 2024 happened just a week after JLPT and I had to rush my slides. Thankfully it was completed in time and that the talk went well.
The project itself is still a work in progress, but I have been using it to plan trips. The KL trip was mostly planned using this. There is also list of feature requests that I’ll get around to implement it one day when my motivation to this project grows back up.
Roselyn’s Wedding
Near the end of the year, I went back to Medan again for the third time this year. This time was for Roselyn’s wedding. It was announced in a short one-month notice and I was quite impressed with the short preparation. The wedding reception was quite grand and I enjoyed it well.
Games
On other times where I wasn’t doing productive things, I decided to play the game from my backlog: Kingdom Hearts III. It was a really impressive game. I really like exploring the world, especially “The Carribean”, where it was really vast and the characters can go island-hopping, exploring the different environments of mountains, beaches, and even diving under water. I also liked the “San Fronsokyo” world, an urban area with lots of hidden corners and tall buildings to explore. In the end, with help of some walkthrough, I managed to explore all the treasure chests and photo spots from all the worlds. The gameplay of the main game was pretty easy after the first world, and the story was really confusing but you just got to follow through to the end. I had the Re:Mind DLC too, but didn’t manage to complete all of them since it wasn’t as interesting and the difficulty become quite extreme.
Nearer to the end of the year, I started playing Infinity Nikki. It is a dress-up world exploration gacha game. So far I’ve almost completed the main quest, but I think the best part of the game was exploring the world and taking photos with all the different poses, outfits, and world environments. While the game mechanics itself have numerous minor bugs, like in some cases some objects are floating from the ground, some other aspects like the outfits are impressively detailed. So far I’ve been enjoying this game and would look forward to its continuous improvements and updates.
Conclusion
2024 has been quite a year. I was glad that I got to experience them all, whether it was happiness, sadness, frustration, nervousness, excitement, optimisim, love, and everything in between. I was also glad that I can live and work in an environment that’s peaceful and conducive for growth.
For 2025, I am thinking of setting just a simple direction to be better than this year. Making it simple and open makes it easier to remember and to achieve. So I’ll go and do various life improvements here and there, no matter if it’s big or small.
Happy new year 2025!
