1. I moved to Singapore, and left.
 |
| Open door concert, which I have missed dearly |
2015 indeed started big. I was relocated to Singapore and tasked to lead an effort to produce a gaming smartphone. A freaking actual smartphone. An odd request. But why not?
The original idea was nothing short of moon shooting: an Android-based phone with hardware customized for gaming and bulky design as eye candy. The learning curve was steep, gave me butterflies in the stomach for months. I digested books from hardware design to manufacturing techniques, became proficient at navigating through the dissatisfying interface of Alibaba, and went from trying to pronounce CyanogenMod correctly to a walking wikipedia of Android forks.
As a city, Singapore is extremely modern, convenient, and safe. Hate to admit but Singapore's tech community was way more active than Vietnam's with events basically every day. There was much to think about those events. On one hand, they were trendy with all the latest hypes, people were talking about trips to Silicon Valley as if they were weekend getaway (sorry, I grew up on a mountain), and all the big shots have offices there. On the other hand, a few were just sales pitches in disguise, some were fuelled by consultant bullshit (especially anything "IoT"), and the rest managed to remain quite abstract and high level. Actual coding could still be found at hackathons though, which were plenty. But the most important thing was that everything was there and very well-established. So much that I didn't feel like there was a need for anything new.
It took 5 months (or 6?) to present two working prototypes with a detailed production plan. Just to be rejected by management. For the same reasons raised since the very beginning: huge upfront investment, nonexistent margin, and unless one is an Ivy League member, consumer would not bother. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Without going any further to the misalignment between me and management, that was the background of the decision that, after half a year living in Singapore, it was time for me to go home for more adventures, and bigger social impact.
2. I (still) organized BarCamp Saigon.
 |
| Meet the team |
First thing I committed to upon returning to Saigon was to pull together BarCamp Saigon 2015. After the nightmare of 2014, I thought I had learned a thing or two. Well, guess who managed to surprise himself :D
All jokes aside, the preparation of BarCamp Saigon 2015 was a lot smoother, the team had one event under their bell, which boosted confidence, and I received superb support from professor Edouard, to whom BarCamp Saigon 2015 also happened to be his first public event as the manager of RMIT's IT program.
And thank to that joint effort of everyone, I was given some room to think about the future of BarCamp. BarCamp Saigon has been around since 2008, and during that, a community has grown around it. From a tech event, every year we are observing a more diverse crowd attracted to the openness and democracy of BarCamp. The challenge the BarCamp team needs to face is to maintain the same factors that have kept BarCamp an one of a kind event in Vietnam, and at the same time, evolve to meet the quality requirement of niche segments, an important factor if we want to set the standard for a community event.
In the foreseeable future, BarCamp will remain to be an umbrella event for all sort of topics as long as someone want to share, and someone willing to listen. We are looking for more focused events, like TechCamp for hard-core tech, and, say, BulbCamp for creative people. But an event like BarCamp is an intensive effort. we need 3 months of preparation for each. The majority of time goes into looking for sponsors, and coordinating sponsors and vendors both before and on event day. And most importantly, we don't have enough people to sustain more than an event per year, and we are subject to terrible terrible voluntarism. What works in the tech circle might not work elsewhere, and we might end up solving problems that don't exist, or generating irrelevant values. It works way better if someone with their industry inside decide if their industry can use an unconference like BarCamp to spread a fresh air, and we contribute our expertise from many events in the past, and build something new from that combination. So folks, if you think BarCamp makes sense for your industry, please spread the word, we will take 2016 together!
3. I started training to be a long-distance runner.
 |
| Who could have known this pearl in the heart of a mega city? |
Singapore's national sport is windows shopping. But it was there that I was blessed to meet Deny. Deny started off as the CTO of my then company for a very short period of time, but remained to be my mentor ever since.
By introducing me to MacRitchie reservoir, Deny unfolded a hidden part of the mega city. MacRitchie is an ever-green tropical forest growing around a lake which was meant to serve as a stable fresh water supply for colonial Singapore, a hundred years back. There are traits through the woods and around the lake shore. Some of these traits link with other upper North reservoirs, requiring no less than 8 hours to explore. I am weak, I am always content with 4.8km and 11km traits :P
Deny is a long-time runner and had completed a full marathon a few years ago. I believe it was none of his intention to squeeze the living breath out of the poor me, but he often held conversations as we jogged under forest shades, those that always started with work (and I felt compulsory to respond) but soon expanded over various topics of life. Needless to say, the first few trips were brutal. It called for mammoth effort to both keep up with his pace and follow the on going convo. I have to say, desperately grasping some air to feed my brain with oxygen and restraining not to split any stupid nonsense is an experience very close to drowning. I am pretty sure there were occasions all I could do was mumbling senselessly. Sorry Deny!
 |
| HCMC 21K! |
But those early days were crucial for my foundation, and bred a new hobby that, by now, would very likely to stick with me for a few years. The whole running and exercising thing has taken me to a number of interesting events, including Bali 10K, Fansipan trek, and HCMC 21K just a few weeks ago. But the most significant one is to be able to run around Xuan Huong lake, the heart of my home city, 6 days in a row. A task I couldn't do back in high school (we boys typically needed to short break in the middle). The thought that 26-yo me is doing something a bit better than 18-yo me is really cheerful.
I am the kind of person who finds being alone enjoyable (which needs to be differentiated from being lonely, which sucks really hard). Running alone an hour or two, or programming 4-5 hours straight is neither boring or difficult, but pleasant and productive. The essence of running is to exert oneself to the fullest within one's individual limits and I hope this can serve as a metaphor in my life too. (Though recently Trang has managed to find her way into my lonesome solace, I am really glad about this disturbance. Perhaps more on this next year)
4. I wrote vividly.
I wrote a fucking blog post every month in 2015.
There, I said it, such an achievement. And I wouldn't have been able to accomplish that without shredding nonexistent constraints (and a delusion) I put on myself.
- That I shouldn't stray away from engineering topics. While it is true that I am strongest at engineering and in the past has met some instances where engineering principles made great sense in life. But the other way also works. One's senerity is reflected in his work and being only one-sided one runs the risk of building his own personal problems right into the product itself. Open up to all sort of topics gave me new sources of inspiration and seed diversity into my career.
- That my Vietnamese was lame. That is actually true too.
I was very unskillful at using Vietnamese. I was an absent-mind kid and has always regretted that I didn't develop an appreciation for literature when I was younger. As far as I can remember, the first time I looked into myself and tried to recreate my stream of thoughts in words, it was an TOEFL essay, obviously in English. And that continued to be my dominant form of communication for many years. But being suck at my mother tongue is not something I am proud of and I don't like the feeling of being less than proficient at something as important as communication. Though there is still a degrade in quality when I translate a post from one language to another, it is coming a tiny bit more naturally now.
- That one day I could turn writing as a hobby into a means of monetization. Writing as a hobby is great. And if I can live by writing, it is even greater. The core idea of making money from writing is that someone must find my writing enjoyable. And nothing is wrong with that. People enjoy a whole lot of thing, there must be someone enjoying my writing. But the trouble was that once I had that idea in mind, I found myself writing less as a way to express myself, and more as a way to please others, the almighty "audience" (who might not even exist). And that was bad. I kept circling around basic topics, known facts, and nothing controversial, because those were low-handing fruits. I was neither productive, nor proud of my individuality. And having an agent nagging about what I should and should not write (though more like must, if I wanted to be published), was annoying as fuck. So I just dropped.
I only want to write because I am a human being with thoughts and feelings, and because no one can stand me being emo and pouring my thoughts on them so randomly.
5. I found these people.
I still remember I found this group of people a hot, sweaty night of April, in Saigon, during one of the many trips between SGP and SGN I had. Though till now, the exact reason the group formed and clicked and jelled so well is still beyond my understanding, and therefore obviously beyond words. Though I am suspect it is Thanh's good and cheerful nature that makes everyone at ease!
We have already had a lounge as our hub of activity, gone for a few trips together, and given each other names that would embarrass the shit out of anyone in public. Out of sudden, I realize that "Damn, these weird crazy people are my greatest dose of anti depression now". Dũng, in case you fucker are reading this, you are important too, but you're not a new dot in 2015. You are a rat's ass dot since junior high!
If there is anything 2015 has taught me well, it is that planning is necessary and it gives you a long-term vision how your life plays out, but it is also important to listen to yourself and the omens of life. Often when we are too focused on the goal (and plans really help that), we underestimate our natural ability to navigate complex system and improvise, forget the original reason of all these plans, and lose track of the journey.
My plan to make a smartphone was dropped like a sack of potatoes, but I got to go through a learning period of hardware design and manufacturing that wasn't available elsewhere.
My plan to organize BarCamp Saigon 2015 didn't turn into a disaster, though lot of unexpected happened. We still haven't missed a single year of BarCamp.
My plan to take on HCMC 21K run scattered as I failed to follow a rhythm and both over stressed my muscles and gave them too much rest. I crawled back to the finish line with cramped legs, but finish the race I did.
I can go on like this for a while, but it is just rant, you get the idea.
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what happened or whether a plan went well, but that I don't give up on becoming a more okay person and, this is new, who I go through stuff with.
Hello 2016!!!
 |
| 2016 started off with great photos!!! |
No comments:
Post a Comment