10 things to do in my 20s

I have recently finished university and I'm turning 22 by the end of the year.

For many people, university can be a very rewarding chapter in their lives where they learn new things, challenge themselves, and discover their self-identity.

For some, it could be a very eye-opening experience.

Maybe they learned more about their own strengths and weaknesses. Maybe they discovered new passion. Or maybe they realised they are not studying a field they completely enjoy, and potentially found other subjects of interest.

I certainly identify in all those groups.


When I finished my undergrad in Maths in 2015, I found that university maths is very different from high school maths, and it's not exactly something that I enjoyed the most. It reminded me of my IB-DP years where I considered studying Engineering and subsequently Computer Science. I've always wanted to learn how to program. I was 20 and I still had not been able to code. At the time technology was the "in" thing, and I really wanted to try the path I had not chosen before.

So I took a Master's conversion course where I learned basic computing concepts and programming techniques. I realised it was more aligned to my interests and certainly something I am passionate in.

However, my experience interning at a tech startup really hit me.


We were a very small team of around 6 people. At a startup, you have to do a little bit of everything. I was mainly developing the front-end and UX as well as scripting many of the functionalities. But I also volunteered to be involved in marketing and learned a bit of the project management side of things.

Little did I know how interesting that would be.

I've always been the kind of person to point out when things aren't running orderly or efficiently. I like making plans (with a degree of flexibility) and deciding how things should be better ran.

That made me realise I didn't just want to be a programmer. I want to be involved in planning what's being programmed and why. I enjoy thinking about the different ways to approach a challenge and figuring out which solution would be the most favourable given the objectives and constraints.

Eventually I find myself entering a career in the consulting world. I'm starting as an analyst in Technology Consulting, and I'm really excited to re-discover myself at this new chapter in my life.

However, the past few months haven't only been about that.


I regained my passion in reading and my interest in writing. I came across a mobile app for reading stories as an interactive game, called Episode. To cut the story short, I started writing my own story with two young authors.

It wasn't the easiest journey either. We've only got one episode down so far (which is about 20 mins read on average). The feedback we've received from friends who beta-read was stellar, but if I could be honest I personally am still not 100% happy with it. Though I reckon we'll be okay just kicking off with that and continuing the story.

I also had to lead the team and ensure each person can grow in this opportunity. My two teammates are both very young and I'd like them to be part of something challenging - an experience that doesn't only let them unleash their creativity but perhaps also lets them figure out new things about themselves and decide where to go with that.

But no, I'm not gonna say I'd want to pursue a career in writing at this point. (I don't! I played more of a director role in the team anyway rather than a script writer role. Which I absolutely love, btw! But I'm still learning and wouldn't call myself an expert.) However, I also realised that I have so many other interests that I had dropped over the past 21 years or so.


Singing, photography, playing ukulele, cooking, writing and drawing, to name a few. I've tried doing them but never found myself particularly good at any of it.

Playing games, building games, or developing my own mobile apps are also high on my wish-to-do list.

And I recently discovered that I enjoy travelling very much. Though maybe it was mostly due to the great company and delicious food.

However, how much of this can I seriously do at the same time? Learning one thing at a time is already challenging - not to mention learning a million different things at once. But then, how can I figure out which one(s) of these goals I should pursue right now?

The clock is ticking and I'm only getting older. I want to do these things while I'm still fit to quickly learn new things and adapt to changes.


Last year, I decided to pursue a lost dream by challenging myself to take a degree in CompSci. Luckily, it all turned out well and I found it was indeed something that I enjoyed and am good at (to a certain extent).

Who knows, maybe I too could be good at writing or drawing if I tried?

I was just talking about this with a new colleague yesterday and he believed that anyone can be good at something as long as they patiently try and practise. However, an ex-colleague once mentioned that it is sometimes better to improve on something that you're already somewhat good at rather than trying to become half good in something you're not skilled at.

So... What should I do?


This is such a volatile time in my life. There are so many opportunities and choices. I want to spend my spare time doing something that I'll cherish with no regrets.

Writing this post has tremendously helped me reflect back on it. I honestly don't have a definitive answer to that last question, but hopefully I'll find out sooner or later.

Thus far, I've had a fantastic time being 21 and certainly wouldn't want it to end. How much will I be able to accomplish before I turn 22?

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Can You Make a Living out of Music?

I was in Covent Garden for dinner at a burger chain. It was an open seating space. I could hear music from the open basement area. They play rather lovely music I would say. As I was finishing my meal, I decided to take a look at the beautiful faces of the people who play this beautiful music. I went to watch from upstairs.

(Note: photo credits go to Capco and Lady Jerez respectively. I do not own them nor were they taken the day I visited. I hope they make it clear what the place looked like!)

It was a group of violinists. They're good! I thought I'd stay a couple more minutes for another song or two. Then I heard a group of ladies next to me say: "They're not here for the music, they're here for the money!"

Whoa. What are they talking about?

Just after that, I saw a guy approached me and asked if I would like to make a donation for the musicians. I politely declined. He was being pushy. "Not even 2p? Not a 20p?" I shook my head.

"It's only free if you don't have conscience!" he yelled and walked away.

What?! Is that how they treat their audience? I was happily enjoying their music and then this guy approached me and totally ruined my mood.

Now I get what those ladies were talking about, who have obviously left before I finally did too.

Okay, I'm not gonna defend myself for not making a donation here. That's gonna be another long post. The point is: these musicians were not there for the music, they were there for the money.

I think it's a shame they're doing this. Everyone could clearly see a donation box next to where the musicians were standing as well as a pile of albums and a sign that says "£10" basically inviting us to buy their album. That's perfectly fine for me, but I don't feel they needed to send a team member to approach all the audience and ask for a donation. Especially telling people off when they don't make one!

I often see musicians on the tube stations or on the road performing and promoting their albums, but I really appreciate the ones who also put a sign with a link to their website or YouTube channel. They're clearly there for the music. They want people to hear their music and see their passion. And I totally respect them for that.

On the other hand, surely nothing in the world is free. These people need to make money in order to survive. It is true that approaching individual audience will increase their earnings, but is it that important for them?

Do they want their audience to give them money because they enjoy the good music they make, or because they feel bad being asked directly to pay a donation (especially if you risk being told off when you don't donate!)?

I believe that people who are truly passionate about what they do will know how to prioritise the different things they want in life, whereas the ones who don't will only be chasing figures.

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How to Free Up Space in Linux

I had a long, tiring day today.

As some of you may know, I finally installed Ubuntu alongside Windows in January and also upgraded to Windows 10 recently. I really like Ubuntu and started hating Windows which takes so long to boot up and ages to install updates.

Today I tried installing LaTeX-related packages on my Ubuntu partition as it was required for a coursework, but ended up running out of space. Before this I would usually write LaTeX documents on my Windows partition, but since I've been using Ubuntu a lot more recently, I thought it would be convenient to be able to do everything in my Ubuntu machine.

I guess it was my fault. At the very beginning I only allocated 26.8 GB for my Ubuntu partition. God knows how much space I was supposed to allocate to it though! As a result my machine was unable to boot at all. I could only see a blank screen. I panicked and tried to find a way to give my Ubuntu partition more space, which isn't possible since I have 4 partitions already. Damn you Lenovo! I suppose I could back it up on a DVD or something and then reinstall, but I don't have a free DVD with me right now and I can't wait that long to fix this!

My biggest concern was that I was doing my other coursework in my Ubuntu machine, and I was stupid enough not to push it to GitLab or make any backup at all. I don't think I'll be able to redo it before the deadline as I have to run "experiments" and collect data, which took me two days to do and I still have a ton of work left. Now that I can't log in to my Ubuntu machine I have no access to it and I don't wanna redo the coursework!!

Fortunately though it turned out that I was able to access the files on my Ubuntu partition from my Windows machine, and I had to delete a ton of unnecessary files. After that I could boot up Ubuntu but it keeps complaining I'm running out of space and I have no idea what to do.

I ended up removing a lot of files off Dropbox, university work, and some packages that I installed for God knows what. I was still curious as to reallocate more space into Ubuntu and spent hours trying out so many different ways I found on the internet to no avail.

I gave up and logged in to Ubuntu in the hope of being able to uninstall more irrelevant stuff to free up space. I then found two useful packages that I installed (in order to get more stuff uninstalled, yeah, sounds about right). Let me share my findings with you.

1. Synaptic Package Manager

Synaptic Package Manager is able to give a comprehensive list of all possible Linux packages out there and tell you which ones you have installed, as well as help you completely remove them.

To install: sudo apt-get install synaptic

2. BleachBit

BleachBit can help you delete temp files, log files, cache, trash, and all that stuff.

To install: sudo apt-get install bleachbit

Those two guys completely saved my life. Oh, and this guide too: How to remove everything related to TeX Live.

In the end I am able to get 11.1 GB free space in my Ubuntu partition. I was unable to install anything LaTeX related though. This means I'll have to switch to Windows every now and then to type up my coursework and dissertation in LaTeX. Or maybe I'll back up my Ubuntu and resize my partition.

... Most likely the former.

I hope you find this guide helpful, if not a little entertaining. I had a miserable day. I hope this guide can solve your problem before your day gets too miserable. Or at least I'll let this cute dancing potato cheer you up a bit.

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I Like Being Competitive, It's Healthy Sometimes

I got an email this afternoon saying that I passed the first round of Search For A Star, a competition to find talented final year university students in game development.

I was pleasantly surprised! I honestly didn't expect to get shortlisted as I felt that my performance in the first round wasn't particularly amazing.

It was a one-hour C++ coding challenge with around 10 algorithmic questions. My department emailed us about this competition like three times and I thought it looked interesting, so I joined in for fun. I thought this would be a great opportunity to hone my coding skills too. The first questions are actually basic algorithms, which I'm lucky to have taken an algorithm course in my undergrad study, but the rest are a little more challenging.

In my personal opinion, some of the questions aren't very hard to solve but my limited coding experience made me spend more time thinking about how to code it correctly and efficiently. Some other questions do require more thinking though. At the end I was only able to finish half the number of questions.

 I was actually glad I took the test as it exposed me to different ways of manipulating strings which I have yet to master. I learned from experience not to overestimate my capabilities and be more realistic, which might in turn lower my confidence at times, and I thought I wouldn't pass that round but I was happy I had participated.

To my surprise I got an email saying I'm through to the next round! I couldn't believe it!

This feeling though...

It's been a long time since I felt this way. A sense of accomplishment, a sense of satisfaction, a sense of winning... Finally, I was able to do something that I thought I couldn't do. I was able to do something better than others could (although surely a lot of people did much much better than I had). For once, I was good enough and I could be proud of myself!

For some, this may just be a usual part of their life, but for me, it totally made my day.

I started getting serious about this competition and went to find out more about this event. I wondered how many people were selected to the second round. I later found on Twitter that 100 people were shortlisted! Yay! That makes me feel really special and I'm getting really really excited to go to the next round. Not to beat other contestants, but to gain yet another experience and learn new stuff.

If I get the information correctly, the second round will give me the opportunity to build my own game on Unity. That's one of the coolest things ever! Back at the start of term 1, I actually wanted to join the GameDev Society at my university, but the meeting times always clashed with other events so I missed it. I'm really excited that I have a motivation now for learning Unity. Just so you know, I've always wanted to build my own game! Hopefully this time I'll be able to tick that off my bucket list. :)

However, sometimes I wonder...

Is it wrong for me to feel this way?

Is it wrong for me to feel satisfied over "winning"?

It reminds me of my high school years. I was very academically competitive. I always wanted to be the best in class, be the most favourite student, and I would be unsatisfied if someone got a better grade than me. Yeah, I was arrogant af. In my defense though, people said I was very hardworking. So I guess I deserve some credit for the effort? :P

Anyway yes, I learned over the years that we can't always be the best, especially when you go to university. I went to a rather small high school. My graduating class had less than 20 students. There were some competition, but certainly not as much compared to other, bigger schools. It wasn't too hard to stand out. Our teachers knew every student. To make things worse, one of the subjects I took only had 4 students. Of course that's no reason for me to be highly competitive, but I guess I was raised in such a way that shaped me like so. I thought doing well at school was the only thing I needed to do. Or rather, I thought it was the only thing I could do to make my parents happy.

Coming to university, I was placed in a community where everyone is studying the subject they like or do well at. It's not like my literature class in school where half of us didn't even understand what's going on and had no choice but to take that class. At university, everyone was there because they're good at it, and everyone else is also good at it.

With my competitive nature, I was completely overthrown by how amazing other people on my course were. I thought I was good enough. I thought I was capable enough. But I was just a small fish in a big pond.

I didn't know what to do in that situation. I fell apart. I lost my confidence. I didn't even know who I was anymore. It was probably the hardest phase in my life.

Ever since then, I learned to set my expectations low. When you only expect a little but accomplish so much, you get to feel a great sense of satisfaction. I liked that feeling. When you expect so much but accomplish so little, it feels completely terrible. (Or at least for me it does!)

I guess my self esteem has only gone down much lower due to that. I tend to think, am I good enough to be able to do this? Am I capable of doing so much?

Am I enough?

I don't like this feeling. But I do like it very much when I find that I have accomplished something better than my expectations. That's why this Search For A Star competition means a lot to me, and I'm gonna try my best in the next round. Even if I don't pass, I'm sure it'll be a great learning experience, and I'm really happy already to know that I passed the first round. :) (Ah, there I go making low expectations again!)

Disclaimer: I tried as much as possible to write every sentence in this blog post without sounding very cocky, coz that's really not the intention here. But if I do, please forgive me! Thank you for your understanding!

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