I’m excited to write about this. Finally, we’re moving to US, 4 years after I got my Australia passport, 10 years after I came to Australia. It’s been a long journey. It happened too late. I could have been to US earlier if I stay focused on this goal. But as the old saying goes: the best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago; the next best time is now....
The Alchemist is the first book I finished in 2024. It’s shorter than I thought. I find reading shorter books easier and motivating. For example, last year nearly all books I finished are short (Little Prince, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time). This is good news as I can start with short books to build my reading habit. I don’t remember how this book ends up in my kindle....
As hinted in my previous post, I want to publish my net worth and investment portfolio every month. I want to do this for a few reasons: Keeping records of my pursuit to financial freedom Hold myself accountable for the investment and spending decisions I make Many people are doing this and they seem cool 😎 I need something to write about so I can complete my writing goals 🤷🏻♂️ This is an experiment....
Battery is dying Earlier this week, my MacBook Pro’s battery became so bad that I need to either buy a new laptop or fix the battery. Here are the symptoms. If I disconnect the power cable for a few hours during sleeping and then use it even with power connected, the battery will drop to below 10%. And then a “kernel_task” will occupy 100% CPU, making my laptop extremely slow and unusable until it restarts....
Everybody has their own productivity system. Mine changed quite a lot in the past year, especially the last 6 months. It’s time to pause, reflect and introspect a little and see what works and not and adjust accordingly to be more productive in the future. Notion (the PARA method) It all started with reading the book Building a Second Brain. Before reading it, I was using Notion already but there was no system....
In my last blog, I talked about how to prepare for software engineer interviews. To summarize, you need to prepare for questions in 3 big categories: behavioral questions, coding and system design. Each category deserves a few articles to elaborate. In this article I’m going to deep dive in to how to prepare for system design questions. What is System Design Question A system design question looks like “Let’s build a service that allows user to post short messages and follow each other (build a twitter or X)”....
Understand the Format You need to understand the format of the interview: How many rounds of interview How long each round takes Is it onsite, over the phone and video What kind of questions asked in each round Knowing the format is key as it’ll decide your preparation strategy. For example, if you know your first around only test coding ability and you need to pass it to have another followings arounds, then you know you have to nail the coding tests first rather than also prepare system design....
It started when my son was born Ten months ago our son is born. Many things changes since then, including my job, my priorities and my life routines. I’d like to reflect a little and document the changes that I observed. This blog will focus on the job change part. Getting noticed Starting 2023, I didn’t plan to change my job. I was quite happy with my previous company. It doesn’t offer the best work life balance but it pays well....
It’s been 2 weeks since GopherConAU 2023’s closing that I finally remember to write this recap. This is my rating (1-5) Talks (weight: 0.5) - 3 Socializing (weight: 0.3) - 4 Facility (weight: 0.2) - 3 So the overall weighted score is 0.5 * 3 + 0.3 * 4 + 0.2 * 3 = 3.3. I’ll give details about each aspect below. The talks. I bought this year’s ticket the moment the schedule was released....
Mr. Firebug I learned Aussie Firebug in 2019 when I first heard of FIRE (financial independence, retire early) movement. There were a few popular names flying around back then such as Mr. Money Mustache, barefoot investor and JL Collins etc. But Mr. Firebug stands out because well, first he’s an Aussie so his stories are much more relevant to me. Secondly he talks about his expense, investments and net worth in such a openly manner which I seldomly hear about....