A few months ago, I had the honour to spend some time with Dr Lau from LEAD. We met years ago when he was still with MaGIC during his visit to Kota Kinabalu. We talked about all sort of stuff, from architecture, managing stakeholders to finding your startup co-founder.
For a more detailed recap on the chat, read this article or you can watch the video below.
Recently, I had the chance to speak at KL Elixir Meetup and I shared our journey switching from Ruby/Rails to Elixir/Phoenix in the past 2 years. It recounts the lessons and mistakes we encountered along the way and how it has changed the way I look at problems.
Thanks to the organizer, Syamil for opportunity to engage and get to know the Elixir community in KL. Below are the slides of my talk and I hope you learned something. If you haven’t given Elixir a try, today it’s the day to start.
All of us aspire for a better life. And since you only get one shot at it so why not make it count. Given the opportunity, most of us would want our lives to be more purposeful and meaningful.
But in our capitalist and materialistic society, a lot of us fall into the trap of upscaling our lives instead of upgrading it. Rather than living better, we are living larger and that isn’t always better.
What does the shipping container and the internet have in common?
The shipping container made it possible to move goods around the world ushering the start of globalisation. Then the internet came along and enabled the free flow of information for the masses.
Together, they brought on the greatest threat to our wallets in human history. e-Commerce.
In Ancient China, medicine and doctors played a very different role. Instead of paying for the cure, the Chinese paid the doctor to keep them healthy. They adopted a more preventive approach compared to modern medicine.
Doctors are paid only if their patients remain healthy. It’s like a monthly retainer that’s paused when their patients fell sick and resumed once they are healthy again.
Even though everyone agrees that prevention is better than the cure, not many have the discipline and conviction to follow through. It’s just much easier to passively ignore the problem and fix it later, rather than actively trying to prevent it.
Back in high school, I managed to convince my dad to buy me a modem. The main reason I wanted it was to be able to play Command & Conquer together with my friends.
Gaming has been a big part of my life since my first computer. When I’m not learning how to code, I’m usually playing computer games.
Most people including my parents view computer gaming as a form of entertainment. It’s similar to watching a movie or attending a concert. It’s what people do to have a good time. They are also great at dealing with stress.
The most common gripe about the education system is how bad it is at equipping our next generation with the necessary skills to survive in the workplace.
It is common to see graduates, having spent more than a decade in school and college, lacking the know-how to manage their own finances. This is worrying as student debt continue to rise and youths are filling for bankruptcy on a daily basis.
But what’s even more important than being financial savvy, is the skill to manage your time wisely and effectively. Unlike personal wealth which may vary for each individual, all of us have the same amount of time to manage every single day.
In a few days, we will be saying goodbye to 2017 and whether we are ready for it or not, 2018 is here. This means it’s that time of the year where we set goals and resolutions hoping that this time, we will keep them, only to have things revert back to come February.
Most of us have a long list of things we hope to achieve but the list just keeps growing longer and longer every year. It’s so bad that a lot of us gave up making new resolutions because it just doesn’t seem to pan out.
No matter how motivated and driven we were about our resolutions when we set them, we just don’t have the same enthusiasm to follow through with them. It just seems futile to even bother with new year resolutions.
Is the glass half full or half empty? This is a common analogy to describe an optimist and a pessimist.
I think it doesn’t go far enough. An optimist is someone who don’t just think the glass is half full but also hopeful that maybe one day it will be filled to the brim.
Where as a pessimist would worry not just because it’s only half full but maybe the glass may some day break, losing everything.
Earlier this year I made a decision that I thought was rational and logical. After carefully considering my options, I made the call to sell my current car and buy a bigger one.
But after a few months, that same decision appeared to be somewhat reckless and uncharacteristic. How did a decision that seemed rational and logical before become one that don’t make much sense later?
