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Bagamat means take it slow in Banjar. This is a solo travel story from my first visit to Sumatra at the end of 2023. It was one of the craziest things I’ve ever done. On this journey, I started by flying into Medan. From there, I rented a motorcycle to travel around North Sumatra and Aceh. Each day brought new experiences, new places, and new people. 1st Day - 19 November 2023 I woke up with a stomachache; I wasn’t sure if it was because of the meals from last night or if I had just gotten too excited to start this trip. Just lie on the bed for one hour to relieve the pain. Feeling a little more comfortable, I took a bath and checked if I had brought all the necessary things. It was already around 7:30 AM when I ordered a taxi to the airport. On the way there, my stomach started feeling unwell again, but I had no choice; I couldn’t turn back and had lost all the preparations. ...

In this post, I’ll share how my perspective on money and wealth has evolved. I grew up in a small village in the heart of Kalimantan, where I noticed that many people around me wanted to appear rich and prove they were better than others—a mindset we call gengsi. Looking back, I realize that this behavior often did more harm than good, especially to those trying to maintain the illusion of wealth. After moving to another city (a story I might share in a future post), I began to see money differently. I learned that most people who truly have wealth tend to be more humble, they don’t need to prove anything to others. ...

I believe that we all strive to become better than we were yesterday, even if we are not always aware of it. According to Aristotle’s concept of Eudaimonia, we are constantly pursuing ‘what is worthwhile in life’. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is by building habits. Will Durant summarized Aristotle’s thoughts on virtue and habit in his book The Story of Philosophy, stating: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”. ...

Background If you’re building an application, observability is essential for understanding how it performs. Popular tools like Grafana, Datadog, and New Relic each have their own way of integrating with applications. To make things simpler, OpenTelemetry was introduced as a standard for observability, and most of these tools now support it. With OpenTelemetry, switching to a different tool doesn’t mean rewriting your code. From my experience, moving to a new vendor usually takes a lot of time to refactor code, and OpenTelemetry makes the process much smoother. ...

It has been a while since I wrote any content. I have rarely posted updates on social media over the past seven years since I graduated from university and started working. So yeah, let’s begin this new journey here. There are two main reasons why I need to start writing: When looking on the internet, you may come across articles claiming that Indonesia’s reading interest ranks among the lowest in the world according to a UNESCO report. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any official report from UNESCO to support these claims. However, there are other reports that compare Indonesia’s literacy with that of other countries, such as: # PISA 2022 Results (Volume I and II) - Country Notes: Indonesia. In short, the younger generation’s performance, as reflected in PISA test scores, falls far below the standard and has been declining compared to previous results. This trend is deeply concerning, as the future of this nation rests in their hands. I was a bookworm during my school years. I remember that during holidays, I could finish one book in 2–3 days. However, since starting work and living in this fast-paced digital era, my interest in reading and writing has declined. In recent years, I started reading again, and oh boy, there are so many things you miss and fail to understand without it. Through this blog, I hope to share insights from the books I read with a wider audience, particularly the next generation of Indonesians. Additionally, by writing about what I read, I aim to practice and deepen my understanding of the material. Even so, I plan not only to share what I read but also to share my opinions, experiences, knowledge, and perspectives with all of you. My main interests include technology, finance, self-improvement, social issues, and photography. ...