The next step

Dated: 01.09.2023

On 31st August, 2019 I had left Hong Kong trying to explore the world so I could find myself.

On 31st August, 2023 I quit my job as a Software Engineer to try and understand what I should be doing with my life.

When I was a kid whenever someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always said: "happy”. I have never really been a cynic even though I wore the hat for a few years in the middle - being able to find light when all is dark and illuminating everything has always been what seems right to me.

The world is a bit broken and so, as I ask myself the age old question: what do I want to be when I grow up? The word that comes to me is: “awesome”. I want to be awesome.

The age that I acquire each moment is nudging me towards the understanding that each moment is distinct on the continuum and life is a integral really. However, as nothing really is ever distinct - no moment is observed as though stop for all the beautiful metaphors - we are all bound to the continuum. So, this continuum of life with connected moments makes it all worthwhile. It is so strange that consciousness exist and that our brains have found a way to create this story of life - where we love only some people and talk in about all abstract concepts. All we do is talk in abstract thought - it all breaks down very quickly if you try to observe it. The world is a great place - don’t get me wrong but it is so weird to be alive.

After that tangent, let’s go back to how to be awesome or rather, how I plan on becoming awesome. A lot has changed in the last few years as I have been slowly introduced to the problems of the world that I was not aware of. In order to be awesome, one must do something that is right. This feeling of fighting injustice has taken me by surprise but the world is definitely broken, we should try to pick up the pieces. At least, I need to do this going forward. It is very difficult to work anywhere and not be concerned with ethics. This is not about the ERG initiatives in the corporations or D&I workshops. It is more than that. Together, this world can be made better if only we can use our resources to do something good. To make other people’s lives better, to be able to create value that would not be benefiting the richest of the rich.

You know, you could say I do not like money but that is not truth. Money is a resource and given we do not have unlimited time - one should maybe also not have unlimited money. An economist would tell me that money is not unlimited in the world - that is true. Money is limited in the world. There are though many people who have a lot of wealth. There are also rich people trying to acquire more wealth than what they currently have. Now, don’t get me wrong - these rich people pay many people’s salaries and expand out companies and create opportunities. We need all that. We need the labour market as most people do not qualify as necessary labour. Remember when in the pandemic, all the jobs became remote. That should have made everyone realise what the important professions were. As it turned out, the work I was doing was creating good but it was not fulfilling me.

In order to be awesome in this continuum of time we call life, it is important to be awesome every day. To do that, I must first understand what awesomeness represents to me. In order to do that, there will need to be plans forged.

Update: 05.10.2023

However, after five weeks of unemployment there has not been much done in terms of learning what to do with my life. Though, I tried to start multiple courses online - it was hard to stick to anything for more than a couple of hours. The place where the most progress has been made honestly has not been the gym or running or being creative, it is about the kitchen. I’ve developed my love for creating food more in the last month. It is important to be grateful for that. For more often than not, I eat all home cooked meals now. Other than the trip to Macau and my birthday, most of the days (weekends included) I prefer to be eating at home. It is so exciting to find new recipes, to look at the ingredients in the fridge and most importantly - to try and cook the most amount of food possible before it goes to waste.

Given that I bought some feta cheese, I’ve learned that it can be an excellent topping on literally every salad, pasta, middle eastern wraps and even on eggs. It has been a revelation to know that hot sauce makes an excellent marinade as very as a burger sauce - as it adds heat. To top it off, learning about different types of cream is exciting too. There are endless possibilities with spices and flavours - it is almost like colours and painting when you cook. It is so invigorating to think about making your own bread instead of buying one from the store. The best thing though has been the overnight oats which is an excellent snack and/or breakfast.

So, learning about quantum mechanics is fun but it feels like a lot of work because Quantum mechanics is hard. Even though one might think it is not, but each brain is slightly different and even though my brain can understand a lot of the material it can’t remember. The formulae slip off my brain and the difference between Raleigh Scattering and Compton effect may be forgotten. It’s weird but now when I actually study it, it blows my mind. When I studied all of this in university it wasn’t really something I understood.

Is it possible that when you get older, you start understanding the world on an innate level? Do I now see atoms and understand the divisibility of matter up to the point that it is just a wave? Which by the way is bonkers. How can something act both like a particle and a wave? We do not - and hence, I wonder if the macro and quantum worlds aren’t supposed to be explained by the same theory. The more time you spend thinking about these things - the less sense the real world makes. However, I believe it is like neurones and thought - thoughts are abstractions created by the mind but the thing doing the work is a neuron. The work done by the individual component (i.e. neuron) creates the whole abstract layer (i.e. thought) and you can understand both separately but it doesn’t make sense to expect neuron and thought to be explained by the same laws. Thoughts don’t fire signals and neurones do not give us anxiety.