Introduction
This year is probably the craziest so far for me. There's just so much new experience going on!
Work From Anywhere
I’ve been trying to maximize the benefits of remote work this year by working from many different places. I try my best to travel every two to three months, mostly solo.
Taiwan - learning some mandarin
I’ve been learning Mandarin for around 1.5 years now, taking a class once a week. Going to Taiwan is pretty cool. Whenever I go to Singapore, people always try to talk to me in Mandarin because I look Chinese, but I didn’t speak it back then. It just feels really nice to be able to understand them and answer now.
Besides learning Mandarin, I’ve been continuing to interact with strangers so I don’t get lonely 🤣.
I’m definitely getting better with small talk and met a bunch of people that I'm still in touch with.
One highlight in Taiwan was staying in an Airbnb with a Taiwanese housewife as the host. I stayed in one of her rooms. It was in Tainan, the oldest city there. It was a quiet city with not much going on, but the food was really delicious. She prepared breakfast for me, and we chatted quite a bit. Another interesting thing is that she can’t speak English! So it was a perfect time for me to practice my Mandarin.
The whole trip took me around 2 weeks. I visited Taipei, Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung. It was a nice trip.
Vietnam - an impromptu trip
This was unexpected tbh, I picked a totally random country for this trip. I was very bored at home, so I booked a flight to HCMC that’s taking off in 2 days. It was a shorter trip for 10 days, and I want to experience a longer stay in one city. So I picked HCMC, booked an Airbnb 1 day prior for 10 days.
It was all right, met a lot of people there. I went on a motorbike food tour, which is quite fun. Also went to the tunnels, you know, where there’s all kinds of traps and stuff that you’ve probably seen online.
One takeaway that I got from staying longer in one city is that you can meet the same people more than once. Usually, since you move a lot, you don’t have the chance to meet again. But this time, I met with some people multiple times.
Second Encounter
Cool thing about this Vietnam trip is I got meet with 2 of the people I met there in Jakarta again.
On the left, he actually lives in Jakarta, so I invited him for lunch a few weeks after we met. As for the right, he’s from Portugal and traveled here to Jakarta as a tourist, so I got the chance to show him around Jakarta and had some good nasi padang together.
Bali - surprisingly a busy one
I’ve been to Bali before, but I’ve never stayed there for long periods of time. The goal of this trip was to find out whether I like Bali enough to live there. Turns out not really, traffic is not that great there hahaha.
But see these pictures, I met a bunch of people on this Bali trip.
Within this trip, I:
- went to Mount Batur
- met Canadian people and snuck to a restaurant to get free drinks (they’re free for hostel residents, and I’m not staying in the hostel)
- met with a few old friends
- did a talk in Apple Developer Academy Bali
- did a freediving course
- signed up for a traditional Balinese cooking class
Australia - two times, actually
I went to Adelaide in September to take my skydiving course! It’s definitely a nice and small city, but I picked Adelaide because I have friends that I met in Taiwan! All that solo-traveling and interacting with strangers actually came in handy and made new and unique experiences for me
I’m gonna talk more about skydiving in a special section later, that’s the biggest event of my trip in Australia, probably even the biggest this year. The rest of the trip was very nice tho! I stayed with my friends, and we went to McLaren Vale and tried some wines. I went to a local farmers’ market too, which was really cool. Steaks here are incredible.
I went to two cities in the first trip, Adelaide and Sydney. It is actually my first time trying out a hostel in Sydney. Kinda weird sleeping with 3 other strangers in the room, but we had good chats, and I had my first trivia night. Overall, Sydney was pretty nice. I went to multiple libraries to work; they were comfortable, and the wifi was always good.
Aaand, I'm actually back in Adelaide right now to spend the New Year's and do some more jumping, but that’s a story for the 2026 retrospective. I'm going to be here for a month.
Talks
When I was in Bali, I gave a talk at Apple Developer Academy Bali about building an online presence and portfolio. The cool thing is that one talk turned into three more. I was invited by my university lecturer to give a talk in Surabaya, and while I was there, I also visited Apple Developer Academy Surabaya and shared about my final project. Finishing the loop, I was also invited to Apple Developer Academy Tangerang to share there as well.
Also, it feels good to meet my lecturers again. We did lots of catching up.
A year of learning new stuff
The theme of this year is learning new stuff. I realized that my hobby is actually learning new stuff and growing. I'm embracing that realization this year by doing a lot more new stuff. You probably can see more details of what I’ve learned on my side quests page.
This year I learned to:
- drive a car
- swim
- freediving
- scuba diving
- skydiving + wind tunnels
Freediving
This started because I wanted to learn how to swim. I somehow didn’t really learn how to swim when I was little, so I decided to learn how to swim this year. Also, the biggest reason is that I saw someone freediving when I was snorkeling, and it looked cool as hell!
I got my freediving license in Nusa Penida. It’s probably one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done. It’s just so hard to hold your breath underwater, and since we naturally float, we need a special technique to be able to dive below. It’s called duck diving. That was a hard learn, but eventually I did it!
So far, I’ve been to the sea twice for freediving, and I’ve reached 22 meters depth 🤘
Scuba Diving
I actually did it after my skydiving license, for the sake of completing the 3 diving licenses. Scuba diving is the best way for me to enjoy the underwater landscape. It’s just very calm and relaxing. This year, I did both the beginner and advanced open water licenses. I can scuba dive up to 30 meters now.
One of my favorite dives so far is a night dive. Not only does it look cool, but there’s a lot more activity down there. I saw some turtles, crabs, cuttlefish, and a moray eel.
Skydiving
This is the highlight of 2025, I got my solo skydiving license in Adelaide, Australia! It is so much fun doing skydives. It gives a lot of adrenaline, and there’s just so much room to grow. If you’ve never done any skydiving before, you should try doing a tandem one at least once in your life. It’s just an amazing experience.
Here’s a video of me doing the exits.
Skydiving in Adelaide also comes with some unique experiences! I met a lot of cool skydivers who are very very nice and friendly. Everyone is so nice here, I even got to crash with one of my instructors because there weren’t any people staying in the drop zone. One cool thing about the dropzone is that I get to stay in a caravan. The dropzone is actually in the middle of nowhere, too.
Overall, it’s a very nice experience, and by the end of the year, I got 19 jumps!
Besides Adelaide, I actually got a chance to jump in Indonesia, it was in Bogor. We jumped at a military base with a superpuma helicopter. It was huge!
Bought a Car
This year’s biggest purchase is a car. I got a Hyundai Creta. At first, I was very reluctant to get a car, because I didn’t really need it since I work remotely. But turns out, after having them for awhile, it’s nice to have it. I still think that the car price still does not justify the purchase since I barely use them. However, it gives me a sense of freedom. I can go to most places comfortably by myself without worrying too much. It’s probably one of the things that helped me go to diving classes that I took in Jakarta.
I dented the bonnet a week after getting it, and scratched a few spots on the back left 🤣. Well, it is my first car, so I was still learning. I’ve gotten quite alright with driving now. The car also got some cool features and a sun roof that’s kinda useless since Jakarta is too hot.
Money for Experience
I would say that most of my spending went to ‘educational’ stuff. Spending money to get gears for my hobbies is quite nice too. I feel happy when wearing good gear.
I'm trying to trade my money for experience. Hopefully the kind of experience that will be remembered for years to come. My goal is to have so many awesome memories that I can spend my old age being nostalgic. And it’s getting there year by year.
Have you ever seen this picture where it’s explaining correlation of age with time, energy, and money?
Yeah, I just recently realized that I got three of them in my current situation. I got loads of time since I work remote and asynchronous. I can go anywhere in the world without having to think about leaves. I still get a good amount of energy, and the money from remote working is not bad at all. So I figured, why not spend that money and trade it for experience?
What’s next?
This year’s retro weirdly doesn’t have a lot of career things. I think I feel like I’m consciously thinking less about work, and focus more about all the fun things outside of work. I still love my job, and we actually just launched a few months ago. We’re looking to fund raise soon, so hopefully it works well.
Next year, I would definitely continue in this journey of unlocking side quests and experience. Hopefully I can skydive in novelty places like the pyramids, or swiss alps. Also some scuba diving trips. I’ll still do solo traveling, it’s heaps of fun. But now, I have more purpose and bucket lists to tick for my traveling.
Very grateful for 2025, I’ll see you next year. Thanks for reading this until the end ❤️
