internship

8 October 2015

It’s official. I’m 20.

Over the past one year, I realized that I changed a lot. Thanks to NTUBS.

Now I am more confident, easier to speak in public, don’t feel much awkwardness when leading, and can express myself truly.

I haven’t updated this blog for quite a time due to my busyness (just knew that this is a valid word, I’ve been using the wrong word the whole time since I thought the noun for busy is business :P ).

How busy?

Now I’m the Vice President of Dharma in NTU Buddhist Society 33rd Management Committee. It was a coordinator role, overseeing three portfolios and also being together with the other coordinators in leading the society. It was quite a big task for me since I was new to this field and it is really heavy as most of the decisions for society will be taken by us.

That aside, during my life when I’m 19, I’ve traveled to some places that I never been before:

• Bangkok, Thailand (ACM ICPC Regional Asia-Bangkok 2014)
• Samosir Island, North Sumatra, Indonesia (family holiday during December 2014)
• London, UK (only inside Heathrow airport, just for transit; but then I’ve enjoyed BBC Radio 1 live on FM :’) )
• Mexico City, Mexico (Wikimania 2015)

I also did my first internship, it was at Healint, a start-up company where I did quite number of stuffs.

The best part I guess is that I received Wikimania scholarship and was covered in travel & accommodation expenses to Wikimania 2015 global conference at Mexico City. There, for the first time, I met those people that share the same idea of freedom of knowledge, those people that speak the same Wikipedia terminologies, and those people that are willing to spend their precious time editing Wikipedia. This conference has rejuvenate my motivation in editing Wikipedia that has been diminishing since 2011.

Let’s look at what I planned to achieve from the previous birthday.

• Actively writing this blog.  –> partially, until the summer holiday; I felt that I always not writing on the weekends where I should have.
• Do more side projects and have more ideas. –> initially yes until school projects ruined it. By having school projects, it was hard to have any more free time in doing other side projects. Besides that, (during internship) after work was also not good as I still have some chores to do and was already exhausted from the day.
• Be more strict on schedule. –> I haven’t achieved this, though in the first half of this new semester, I have a more or less good sleeping/waking up time.

What I hope to achieve in the upcoming year?

• Maintain body and mind: do sports and meditation. Also be strict on daily schedule and have some time for daily meditation and weekly sports (which I plan to be swimming) Besides that, also try to reduce consumption of meat.
• Contributions to open source projects. MediaWiki? Mozilla? Who knows? Or at least do some more side projects that are useful.
• Do charity, at least by donation to causes that needed it.
• Frequently update blog on life events, thoughts, etc.

That’s it. Let’s hope for a greater year ahead :)