3 Things I had Learnt

• Fasting in Fix Schedules (14 or 16 hours) & Drastically Change My Diet - I started to fast since november to help in my fatty liver condition and lose weight. This became worst when i had visited my specialist doctor for my fatty liver. I had gained like 10 kgs leading to me hitting 96 kg in weight and till now my last weight is at 89.3 kg because i took alot of steps in terms of saying no to my sugar intake and having more fiber by eating milk soaked oats. To add on, I had a full ACL tear in august during a BJJ session. I was only recently cleared by both my physio and specalist that i can start to run. So i had relearn to walk and condition my body from hip, back and even my feet mobility.
• Knowledge Based AI was a Pretty Interesting Module - Whenever I hear about AI, I usually thought of AI that requires maths which does in a way. But i’m surpirsed that there’s 2 forms of AI, 1 that uses math like deep learning or machine learning and another that builds AI following human’s cognition to make decisions, learning and framing the world through the knowleadge gain from exposure, enviroment and even philosophy. SOAR system was a interesting perspective on how human works. Which if I were not exposed to it, I would had assumed that AI was very math or stats heavy subject for anyone to get into. In the end for the module i had to withdraw from it because I had 73%+ which consituted a C but it gave me confidence that I had the understanding and ability in my writing that i had cultivated across the years through blogging. So despite i didn’t continue It was still a great experience.
• Insurance is Important to Defray the Cost of Medical Care - When i first hear the pop sound during my sparring session in BJJ. My first thoughts was that I had dislocated my knee when i was being thrown down by my sparring partner. I didn’t realized it was much worst after my first MRI for the first time in my life through my orthopedic specalist recommandation, given i was still able to walk despite i had some pain and instablility to walk around afew weeks later. I was diagnoised with full ACL tear on my right knee. To be honest, before that I had already know my knee’s cartilage is gone due to my military service. So i started to search on youtube regarding on ACL injuries. I realised that I don’t really need to go for ACL surgey because I had founded out that in american there’s protocols/research on physio rehab to recover the stability of my right knee. So when i had a followup appointment with my doc, i told him that I would not go for surgey instead, I will just go for physio to condition my knee back to stability. Along the way my financial consultant saw my facebook post and told me that I was able to redeuce my medical bill because my accident insurance covers sport injuries as well. So i’m both thankful and grateful of my past self that I had the financial sense to buy insurance for myself.

Career

• Secured my first full-time corporate role as Software Design Team Lead at Asus, where I contributed frontend architecture and technical research to three AI innovation projects (adopted by business units) and served as sole technical architect for a startup-like consumer innovation project—all while collaborating with cross-functional and geographically distributed teams
• Spoke at API Days Singapore for the first time, presenting on "Navigating the Treacherous AI Chasm" - addressing the gap between AI proof-of-concepts and production implementation
• Joined Tech Leadership Circle to deepen my understanding of strategic thinking, system design, and cross-functional collaboration in technology leadership
• Engaged in regular knowledge-sharing sessions with tech peers to discuss technical architecture challenges, AI implementation patterns, solution design approaches and swap war stories.
• Applied OMSCS (Georgia Tech Online Master of Science in Computer Science) coursework in AI and machine learning to evaluate emerging technologies for innovation projects

Education

• Restarted my masters by going for Fall 2025 to learn about Knowleadge Based AI (KBAI) but later withdraw due to bad grades.
• I completed reading Story Telling with Data
• I completed reading AI Engineer
• I am reading the following
  • The 33 Strategies of War - To help in my strategy thinking due to my role
  • Thinking in Systems - Primer on system thinking talks about it in general form that is easy to digest
  • The Art of Learning - To learn on new things and apply it in different ways
  • Story: Style, Structure, Substance and Screenwriting - To learn the art of storytelling
  • Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World - To learn about continuing being a generlist and my career choices to continue to be one in the amount of skillsets that i had picked up over the years.
  • How Countries Go Broke: Principles for Navigating the Big Debt Cycle, Where We Are Headed, and What We Should Do - On investing and how to navigate myself through how he thinks about the world’s economy
  • Radical Candor - I learn about important and tough conversations with people has to conveyed to people
  • Designing Data-Intensive Applications, 2nd Edition Martin Kleppmann, Chris Riccomini - Currently reading the draft of the 2nd edition on Oreilly as well updating my fundamentals when talking shop with people.

Health/Fitness

• Restarted my BJJ in Feb but stoped in Aug because of my ACL tear on my right knee
• I started the year in taking about 3 lessons worth of Muay Thai classes to challege myself which i realized that it was pretty tough especially in skipping for 15 mins in skipping rope as a warm up
• I brought a skipping rope and tried to use it a couple of times before my ACL tear.
• I gained 10 kg weight so i started to look at ways to totally change my diet
  • Cutting away sugar especially when i am under stress
  • Walking 10 k daily before i had my ACL injury
  • Intermittent fasting for since november on 14 hours or 16 hours
  • Shifting my eating habits to high protein diet, which was tought to get enough protein each day
  • Eating milked soaked rolled oats or other healthy options as my breakfast
• Doing physio exercies and visiting my Orthopaedic doctor as well as my physio therapist
• Searching for my knee sleeve to help in my knee to prepare myself for intensive sports like hiking, jogging and finally combat martials arts. I just started to run with it on chirstmas eve.

Wealth

• Recovered my emergency funds to support me for up to 6 mths. But after that was tough to pull it upwards due to my ACL injury and other things i brought along the way. Now it’s being redistributed to investments but i am still looking at streching it to 1 year into investments that i can liquidate when situations calls for it.
• Purchasing a whole life critical illness plan to help in my overall coverage.
• Insurance claim for my ACL treatments for my Orthopaedic doctor and physio therapist.
• Opened a moomoo stocks account to make a few stock purchase that is sort of based upon value investing philosophy while looking for bargain stocks. Part of it is because it’s very expensive for me to invest in silver currently.
• Accidentially over brought my stocks and i had topup more from my emergency funds.
• Started silver stacking again since i had liquiated my holding during the pandemic.
• Donating to invidiuals, charity and insitutions. This year i believe is the year that i had donated the most. FYI, i didn’t keep track since alot of these donations, i can not claim for taxes and I usually make it a point to be anonymous. Unless i am talking directly to the person handling my donations, they will know it’s me. I’m just very happy and grateful to see that my donations is being used for the right causes like saving lives, elevate the poor, the young and educate the next generation. Some of these insitutions/charities, I wanted to donate since I had graudated from uni. But i didn’t had the chance to donate due to my existing student loans debt and my meagre salary to purse my entrepreneurship/investing journey.

Volunteering & Causes

• I volunteer for NUS Hack & Roll as a judge again
• I continue to support the JuniorDevSG Mentoring program and monthly events as best i could
• I supported for the coding retreat for the first time.
• I recently started helping out to setup the mentoring program for georgia tech singapore’s chapter as a mentorship advisor
• I recently joined mentorjackets as a mentee to get mentored by a georgia tech mentor on the particular career/industry that i want to do
• I went for my Mentor’s Hub Gala dinner to catch up with old friends and to celebrate the 10th year Anniversary
• I went back for ICT home coming at the new SIT campus to meet old friends from uni.

What I Will Do the Next Year?

• Career
  • Honing my craft in
    • Technical Leadership
    • Strategy
    • Storytelling
    • AI
    • System Thinking
    • Critical Thinking
  • Education
    • To clear my huge backlog of books i had been reading but has not completed it
    • Attain my first grade A/B grade in Machine Learning for my OMSCS (Georgia Tech Online Master of Science in Computer Science) program by going full on to do it. Despite i know it will take about 20 hrs or more
    • Complete 3 foundation modules with at least B grade for next year 2026.
    • Reading on survival and bushcrafting
    • Learning to read and speak in Latin
    • Getting back to dating and mantaining a healthy relationship with my future gf
  • Health & Fitness
    • Clearing mount kinbalu with my friend as part of bucket list.
    • Lose weight gradually without the muscle lost and reduce my total fat % to a healthy range that i can continue my BJJ/Muay Thai so far i am bouncing between 89/90kg.
    • Overcome my fatty liver
    • Strengthening and conditioning my body espceally my knee
    • Going back to BJJ/Muay Thai
    • Eating a high protein diet
    • Mantain my intermittent fasting schedule of 14 or 16 hours for exercise/resting
  • Wealth
    • Rebuilding my emergency funds to stretch it to 1 year that allows me with more opportunity
    • Look at investing in a few startups through WeFunder
    • Continue to donate to causes/charities i believe in
    • Reducing my total expenses not at the cost of my quality of life.
    • Learning to continue my understanding on investing in
      • Economy
      • Financial History
      • Precious Metal
      • Stocks
      • SHTF (Shit Hits The Fan)
    • Continue in building & improving my high quality friends network be it professional or peer support.
  • Volunteering/Causes
    • Organizing meetups/workshops
    • Becoming a judge/mentor in a hackathon
    • Advising in mentorship programs
  • Family
    • Continue to spend time with my nieces, family and friends
    • Getting a gf and mantaining a healthy relationship with her.