I stayed at my sister’s place in Karawaci, near UPH (Universitas Pelita Harapan). As I passed by the university, I noticed they now have a campus dedicated to AI. AI is the big hype right now—but do people really understand how it can be applied meaningfully in daily life?

In many cases, I’ve met people in upper management who believe that everything can be done with AI, with minimal effort. But have they actually tried using AI to achieve their goals? And if so, what were the results? The real issue is that many don’t fully understand the technology, nor do they treat AI projects with the same rigorous testing and lifecycle management as they would with any new software.

Here’s an example: I thought about building predictive models using historical data (I took a course related to machine learning a few years ago, and I think this is not an easy subject to master). Here’s the question: instead of going deep into learning the methods, can we just let AI automatically generate predictions? If the answer were yes, then why would anyone bother learning at all? It would mean anyone could be anything with almost no effort. That’s exactly the misconception many people have about AI.

From my personal experience working with AI in the past few weeks, using it effectively requires a lot of trial and error. The answers often need validation, and sometimes AI outputs need to be trimmed or refined. Without enough knowledge or experience, you might not even recognize when the answer is wrong—and that’s when important details get missed. 

In the month of April this year, I went and bought a sketchbook from Art Friend. I'm not sure what is the brand name, it's made in China, it cost about 4.90SGD, so it's affordable. I think it's about 150 gsm, and has at least 60 pages? I haven't count how many pages exactly are there. It can hold enough water for my case as I don't use a lot of water when I am using watercolor, and it performed better than the more expensive brand. It's not specific for watercolor use (the ones specific for watercolor usually expensive), so it might buckle up a bit. I did try to color the sketch using posca markers, colored  pencils, watercolor colored pencils, watercolor crayons, normal watercolor, but I think for practical purposes, I still prefer to use watercolor color pencil. 

I started my sketch in April 2025 - the last page showing 31 Aug 2025. I randomly draw things I encountered every day, I struggled at first, but after some time, I decided to draw mostly the food I have for lunch, especially on the days that I come to office, and if we tried different restaurants. I still draw interesting places that I went to, nice things I see or exhibitions I went to. I also have problem in being consistent, but I think I found a way to be better at it. First, I took pics of things I find interesting, when I have time I draw it using pen directly, I will try not making any mistakes, but if I did, no judgement, it's suppose to help me to practice my drawings. If I have the sketch done, I can color it immediately after, or I will do it when I have more free time. So, the actual work is broken down into small steps, and I think this is more manageable for me.  So, I'm quite happy with finishing my first sketchbook. I hope to continue to finish more sketchbooks. At some point, I think I will scan a few pages of my favorites in that sketchbook. So, stay tuned.

Hey blog, 

It's been a while. Earlier this year, my dad was showing signs of early stages of dementia. My mum told me, he's been having a hard time to sleep at night, causing him to hallucinate, and he mentioned it feels like real. Basically he insists my mum did mistakes 40 years ago, which I know my mum is not that kind of person. Once he cannot sleep, and didn't take his medicine, he will repeat the same conversation and accusation all over again.

It's been hard for everyone, especially for my mum, since she's been taking care of him. While I was in sg, there's a point where he needed to go to the emergency, and my sis took him. He was also having an episode, he took out his IV and insisted he wanted to go back home before the actual day of going home. The doctor gave him some medication for Alzheimer.  I'm not sure if this medicine helps. 

After some time, we went to another doctor to get more opinions, he gave a few medications related to depression, and anxiety, and it should help. The problem is, after a while, things were worst at some point, because he cannot trust anyone, he doesn't trust the doctor, therefore, he doesn't want to eat his medicines. He also doesn't allow my mum to go out. 

We resorted in me going back home and go to doctor to get his medications, then putting his medicines in his daily vegetable juice. He's unaware of it, but since taking the medications, he's so much better. I just got back from jkt recently, I think now the situation is under control. Thank God. I'm just hoping things are better. 

I came to the company that I work with about 5 years ago. I was surprised that they have reward system, where anyone can give points to someone, because they thought that person has helped them in any way. That time, your boss or people in managerial level has points to be given, but I'm not sure since when, maybe since last year, we are all have points that's replenished every month to be given to someone. The points is nice and all, because at the end of the day, if you accumulated enough points, you can always exchange them into different vouchers. Today, my colleague mentioned he got more than 2K SGD to be converted into vouchers. (So amazing)

Sometime last year, I need to ask for help from someone. This person is part of support group. In the end, she didn't helped at all, and just made a lot of people confuse, I resorted to ask help from other people, and he's reliable and all. So, problem solved, as a courtesy, since I asked the help of the lady in the first place, I just told her that someone else has helped me, but thank you for the effort. Do you know what she said to me? She mentioned something like, "it's better to say it with points". The fact that she didn't do a good job, part of support group and asked for points? Made me feel icky.

So, it's a genuine question in my mind, up until this very day, does reward system works? Do people helped each other because they know, they will be given points, and why from the previous companies that I worked with, they don't have reward system but things are just working? Of course not all, but I failed to understand that we need to be told that there are reward points waiting if we do a good job, especially as a working adult. Isn't doing a good job itself is a responsibility? ​

Even if nobody is looking at this blog, still I cannot write secrets. LOL.
One day I remembered that I signed up with Notion. I thought when I logged in the first time, maybe couple of years ago, I'm not sure how to use it, as it's just blank space, and I saw some people have been creating crazy templates. My space still very simple one, without any sophisticated templates, but even so, I'm trying to take advantage of that space. I've been writing some daily journal, some task check list, and random things happening in my everyday life. It's only been 3 days though. Writing somehow helped me to remember a lot of things, and what happened in my every day life, and it's been great so far. We'll see if this habit can continues. 

This post is inspired by a podcast (The Lazy Genius Podcast - by Adachi) with the same title, #403 "How I get stuff done when I don't feel like it" and another podcast from Mel Robbins called "11 crazy facts about laundry, showering, and getting the "little stuff" Done that make you laugh"

Randomly listened to both podcasts this morning, and these are some key takeaways:

1. Create systems, not motivation. Focus on building habits and systems rather than relying on motivation. I would say my example of this is, when I want to build a habit of drinking enough water every day. I would prepare few bottles of water to make sure water is always in front of my sight. If I want to do exercise every day, I would want to prepare my sport attire the night before, and the first thing in the morning when I wake up is to wear the attire and go out for a walk. Although, I am admitting, the first start is the hardest. We just need to start first. 
   
2. Breaking tasks into smaller pieces and creating simple routines can help build momentum. I hate washing tons of dishes at the same time, so instead of having it piled up, every time I use a cup/plate, I will wash it immediately, so I won't have a ton of dishes at the same time.
   
3. Self-compassion and celebrating small wins are essential for maintaining motivation and productivity. I want to focus on how it make me feel when I'm done working on a task. It made me feel good and as if I have my life together, even if it's not LOL.

Even though I knew all the above, I still feel some days are not easy, and it's ok. Let's do this one step at a time.

Wishing you for good health and abundance in this Snake Year! 

Recently I heard above story from a friend. Consider A and B. A is the person asking for help. B is the person that helped. A openly mentioned that they are just a contractor and they are leaving soon, so they don't want to learn how to do actual work, and relying from B's help. B was helping because they wanted to help everyone that needs help, B also mentioned that, since A still doing the work in the meantime, they should know how to do the work. In my mind, I think is good to be able to help people, but sometimes, some people are taking advantage, and taking things for granted. Suddenly I thought about why A behaved that way other than they thought they are leaving, maybe they are having low morale?...

Also, is there still any misconception these days that a contractor doesn't need to do a good work? Although I can understand sometimes, people underestimated you because of you are being a contractor, in fact it happened to me in my previous jobs so many times. This person one day asked, "how many years are you here, are you still a contractor?" I proudly said I am a contractor, I told this person, "so, what's with that?" She couldn't say anything bad. My mind thought, because this person want to make other person feel lower than her, she's the person that is insecure about her status.

I argued with someone last time about being a contractor and a permanent employee. I let that person say whatever they want to say, I believe what I believe. Honestly maybe some of the contract terms might be different, and as a contract you read and understand the pros and cons and accepted it, so I don't understand why, this person persisted and made me feel as if there's job security being a permanent employee. Well, the biggest benefit being a permanent employee might be you get some severance pay if you got cut. There's no such thing as job security these days and we need to be able to adapt and being flexible with what's happening around us.  

It's been raining non stop since Friday until today (Sunday). Weather forecast said it's because of monsoon surge, and it's expected to be over by next Monday. Weather has been cooling more than normal, although some areas in Singapore might experienced flash floods because of this. 

Last year, I went to Spain for holiday. About 1 week before actual holiday, I re-installed Duolingo, the popular language learning app, and 
studied Spanish. At least, I would be able to say and understand simple words when I'm there, this was what I thought, and it's really helpful. 

Somehow Spanish is easier to learn. Previously I learned basic French, and there are some similarities between both languages. For example, there are genders attached to the objects, although some objects have different genders in Spanish and French. Some words are similar although it's pronounced differently. For pronunciations, it's easier for me to say words in Spanish as it has some similarities with Bahasa. 

Since then, I thought, I would re-learn French that I neglected for some time, continue with Spanish, and Mandarin (something that I struggled with for a long time). Mandarin doesn't come naturally, because our family don't speak at home, although both my parents can speak, because they went to mandarin school in the old days, and since I'm based in sg, I thought it would be beneficial. The progress has been a bit slower than the other two languages, but it's still a progress. I know learning languages from Duolingo only will not make you 
fluent in the languages that you are learning, you need to be immersed in the culture and all, but still it's better than nothing, and I'm trying to proof the question that I had for a very long time. Can I became fluent in different languages when I learned it as an adult?