2020 annual review

2020-12-27

Hello! Here’s what happened in 2020.

Writing

I revived this blog in late 2019. In 2020 I’ve written 11 blog posts. The one I’m proudest of is about Protobuf management at Carousell. I’ve had two (two!) people reach out saying they found it useful. In general I find myself more comfortable with technical writing compared to expository writing. I hope to publish a few more technical pieces in 2021 as well.

Climbing

I climbed outdoors for the first time! Climbing on real rock has always been my goal since I started climbing. In February I went on a climbing trip to Ipoh. You can find the trip report here. I led a 6a+ and top-roped a 6b+. Most importantly, I made a bunch of good friends from the trip.

I was planning more outdoor climbing trips, but had to cancel plans because of COVID-19. Hopefully I’ll be able to do so in 2021 instead.

I got my SNCS Level 1 and Level 2 certifications. It’s difficult for me to find a regular partner, so I haven’t been sport climbing much. Instead I’ve been mostly bouldering.

On the topic of bouldering, I’m climbing harder than ever before. Quite happy with my current progress.

I didn’t have any noteworthy injuries in 2020. A couple minor finger injuries, but nothing that took more than a couple weeks to recover. Staying free of major injuries was one of my 2020 goals, so on this front I’ve succeeded.

My finger strength has improved. I took advantage of the downtime offered by Singapore’s lockdown to focus on building finger strength. I find that I perform noticeably better on crimpy problems now, and they aren’t as intimidating as they once were.

Software engineering and work life

In Carousell, my team had a change of focus part way through the year. Previously we worked on platform initiatives. In Q2 we got renamed to Seller Experience and, as the name suggests, we now focus more on user-facing seller features. I find that I prefer our previous platform work over the work we do in Seller Experience.

A side initiative I took up was to introduce distributed tracing into services in Carousell. As a side-effect of setting up the tracing infrastructure, I’ve also gained some knowledge and experience with managing a Kubernetes cluster.

Working from home sucks. I save on commute time, but it’s very lonely. I’ve had almost no face-to-face interactions with my co-workers in months. I miss the small daily interactions.

Games

My favorite games this year were:

  1. Persona 4: Golden
  2. Spelunky 2 (review)
  3. Yakuza 0
  4. Greyhat - A Digital Detective Adventure (review)

Other

Various things that don’t fit into the broad themes above:

A retrospective

Overall it’s been a rather slow and uneventful year. On average my mood this year has been lower than previous years. I attribute this to the COVID-19 situation and working from home all the time. The lack of human interaction is taking its toll. Climbing has been largely responsible for keeping me sane; it’s the thing I look forward to every week.