Overview
In this article, I want to share some of my key milestone from 3 different aspects that happened this year, where I believe those highlights are the significant factor that support me to reach where I am today. Those aspects are: social, working life, hobby.
After 2 years of “new normal” where people mobility are limited, this year, we start to do our activity as before. Most of the people are vaccinated and COVID-19 is not longer a “considerable” threat. It may sounds relieving, unfortunately, this situation not a full win for humanity. There’s consequences of the world leaders action in the past 2 years that had been done in order to rectify COVID-19 pandemics negative impact. This year, we faced another economics crisis, global recession is right behind us, moreover, geopolitics situation also contribute to the overall crisis, the tension due to Rusia and Ukraine war.
As someone who works in tech company, this crisis also impacting us, a lot of tech company need to make a hard decision in order to survive the crisis. Different to the previous crisis during the pandemics where most of tech companies had significant growth due to people depend to the digital service, now, the crisis affect us too. Personally, it is my first life experience to face an economics crisis. We expect the crisis to be there for the next 2 years, hope that I can go through it 🙂
Social
From the social aspects, as usual, I met some new friends, while some are leaving, remember that eventually they will have their new priority in their life. Overall, it has a positive growth, where this year, I start to aware with the importance of connections, and I tried to build as many as it is comfortable. Now I know that any information may open a new relationship with new people, therefore, information is valuable. By knowing more, I can connect to more people, and I learned the importance of showing openness gesture to everybody. This year, I focus on improving my soft skills, from books, social media, Youtube, because I aware that it is very important to be able to speak in front of people with the right gestures, to give a spontaneous response that make other people comfortable. I define it as an art, as everyone may have their own approach to get the same goals, to comfort people.
Some of the new names that I meet this year so that I remember: Byan, Eni, Pak Acoy, Wisnu (Coffee of Things), Yohan (Bappenas, KAI), Catherine (Rumah Neika), Putri (Generasi Gigih)
Fun facts
Life is unexpected, and I grateful that this year, I make a good friendship with a girl who just finished her 5th semester. I met her in office, where she become an intern in Ninja Van. I acknowledge her as a smart person, despite my low expectations in the beginning, because frankly said, she was a 2nd year computer science student when she do the internship. But, she is a fast learner, indeed, and I like it. Naturally I am a person who like to share the knowledge (sometimes I’m too enthusiastic) and she welcome it, hence we know each other. I met her several times during my trip to Bandung, and hangout together. Despite our age different, I surprised that she can keep up with the topics that I bring, and even I still learn from her. Thanks for leaving stamps in my life, hope that you have fun too!
Family
This is one of the biggest improvement that happened this year, where, there’s a moment where finally I feel that my mom start to understand my feeling, and we can match the right expectations each other. I didn’t say that I build a better relationship with her, but now we able to talk comfortably, which indirectly improve our relationship.
Travel
2022 lift the travelling restrictions and I can once again travel around the world. This year, I visit Ijen and Korea. Trip to Ijen, Banyuwangi was unplanned, Ijean is a volcano that produces sulfur. At its crater, where the sulfur mine is located, there’s a blue fire phenomenon that attract tourists. To see it by our own, together with my families, went there by driving. It takes us 7 days for a round trip from Jakarta – Banyuwangi by stopping in some big cities and take a rest. For the full documentation about Ijen, visit the post about it here.
Second travelling was to visit Seoul, Korea. Has been postponed for 2 years, this year, I and my friends got chance to have trip together to Seoul, South Korea. We spent 10 days in Seoul, I feels that 10 days are very sufficient to visit the interesting place in Seoul. Beside the famous area such as some hanok villages, castle, Namsan tower, Nami island, we able to visit some places, such a Ossuloc, traditional market, shopping mall, artist building such as YG entertainment. Fantastic city landscape, culture, food, are the values I can take from it.
Working life
As COVID-19 is over, we started to work back from office where it tends to build a stronger bonds if not adding more conflicts :). Overall, I can feel the positive impact of “collaboration” especially in the knowledge transactions. To meet our peer, allows us to get more sense to be a social being, and improve both of our hard and soft skills. I feel that by seeing each other in person, allow me to know them more, create a better bond, share my knowledge.
Some of the events held in the this year
Career
This year is not less challenging from the previous year. Last year, I learned to fulfill my role as a manager for direct contributor in a right way, and now, I need to foresee further, as I need to become a manager of managers. This role also allows me to have more autonomy, which lead to bigger responsibility, because I need to make the decision that have a greater impact to the company. To support my role, I learnt that I need to be able to express my intention in a better way to my people, one of them is to express my expectations towards them, and let me see myself as the example.
For me, leadership is about parenting, where, I need to see myself as model, and set the direction of my people to where I stand today. I need to build confidence that I am fit to become that example. Only after I gain the confidence, then I can share my thought clearly to my team where I can build message that encourage them to do more for their future, not only for their present. 🔮
Hobby
Photography, reading, watching, are my hobbies from last year, and now I take aquascape as a new hobby! Earlier this year, I build a aquascape in a 30 cm x 25 cm x 20 cm water tank, I started with beta fish as starter. Unfortunately because I travel a lot at the end of the year, the fish tank invaded by algae and I need to reset it. Anyway, this hobby give me more understanding of the mechanics of fresh water ecosystems and it is very interesting! 🐠
Photography
Photography remains become my main hobbies. As the pandemic ends and I have more outdoor activities, I reduced the spending on the photography event 🙂 . For portrait, as usual I join the photography group and attend the event whenever I have chance. As I do more travelling this year, I start to take the human interest and street photography genre. Street photography is enjoyable because it allow me to take very unique picture where no body have it. I attach some of the photography at the end of this post :).
On top of it, I purchased DJI Mini pro 3 drone, which originally to be use during my New Zealand trip. Unfortunately, the trip got cancelled. Despite the trip was cancelled, I learned to control the drone and use it to capture landscape photos from different perspective.
Closing
2022 come to end end, as well as my writings. I would like to encourage everybody who read it to recall what happened in this year, I believe it help you to get the sense of how far you have walked, and to narrow down your life direction for the next year. Merry Christmas and happy new year! 🎉🎆
Gallery
Landscape
Portrait
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