2010's decade in review

I think the 2010s for me was all about all the fruits of the previous decade paying off, as well as experimentation and consolidation.

A lot of learning along the way too (conferences).

Summary - TLDR; edition

One startup exit
Became an App developer and later full stack developer (independent and as a consultant)
Became a part time blogger
buy and keep buying bitcoin (#stacksats)
Learnt some lessons having failed twice at startups
Learnt a valuable lesson that is Bitcoin not blockchain no matter how fancy the whitepaper looks.
Improved and will continue to improve on minimalism, decentralization and mobility/freedom

My 2010 kicked off with life in the USA (New York / Boston / Los Angeles). I got to attend South By Southwest for the first time, and experience my first tech conference. Lots of learning / networking, and much parties (all on someone’s corporate budget). And also got to do some serious roadtripping between US cities (highways are nice).
Also saw myself with a nice exit payout from a venture which meant at that time the perfect opportunity to do a short gap year through Europe and Asia.
Also started developing paid apps on the iPhone/iPad app store.

2011 / 2012 saw the start of many good things later on (including this site)

As the Mayans did predict, there would be a big change in the world.

Introduced to bitcoin. Got some free bitcoins from a website. The rest is history, and probably influenced a lot of the late decade.
Visited Hong Kong for the first time. Loved the cross section of eastern and western culture. That also influenced my later decisions.
Attended Apple’s WWDC conference with Steve Jobs at the helm. Remember learning all about the iCloud APIs.
Attended Rubykaigi 2011 in Japan. First tech conference where the language wasn’t english.
Started doing apps for other people who wanted them which timing could not be impeccable, as sales started to dry out and also with ROI.
New beginnings of my food and travel blog as well as this blog on github
In 2011/2012, decided to go back into the startup world again adding yet another SoLoMo type app in there (but with prettier UI!). Built a bit of it, however visions misaligned and left the team as a result.
Started learning how to read Chinese (wasn’t hard having Japanese knowledge)
First ecommerce experience with bitcoins (uncensorable) on the Silk Road

Moved to Hong Kong (part of the reason was also to escape some drama 😀 but found more with the umbrella movement ☂ the following year)
Visited Taiwan for the first time
Earnt my first bitcoins from a sublet (and also lost my first bitcoins.. oops)

Started work on building up a startup in Taipei
Attended RubyConf Taiwan for the first time. Met some amazingly smart people who also become conference buddies in future visits (some were from previous years)
Attended what would be the LAST Ruby Kaigi, but they ended up hosting them.
Attended my first bitcoin conference

Stopped work on my Taiwan startup as it wasn’t going to be viable after many setbacks.
Formed another startup from a win at startup weekend
Started being more transient as an experiment, Spent time (1+ months) in Taiwan / South Korea / Phillipines / United States / Thailand / Cambodia / Vietnam).
Started selling / giving away stuff in hopes to be even more transient.
Last year attending Ruby Kaigi (could not fit it in)
Ended off the year in Siem Reap and start the next with a sunrise at Angor Wat.
Attended web summit for the first time

Chiang Mai Chiang Rai

Started off the transient journey. Sold a lot of things including my HK company. Got an Estonian e-Residency and company instead.
Started a new life in Thailand (March 15th 2017). Didn’t plan on doing it but it just happened, and I ended up refunding my return flight. Discovered a community of remote workers. There was (and still is) a lot of temptation because its full of “gap year backpackers” and “full moon parties” which initially made it very easy to be distracted, but it seems ripe with many opportunities to build stuff and also having a nice serviced apartment sub $300 was a very good drawcard.
Continued to more transient lifestyle in 2017 as discovered that visas don’t last for too long, including a trip throughout china, and an epic land road trip from Northern Europe to Southern Europe over the course of 2 months. The key take was some good business building connections out of Europe and also figured the Asia and Europe time zones are very similar.

Estonia Paris

Recover from the shitcoin and ICO hangover. Dumping everything for bitcoin becoming a bitcoin only person. Still hold DOGE for fun and small quantities of ETC because it was what I signed up for when I bought ETH (nostalgia).
Unlocked Bali. Great for short visits but didn’t seem very impressed.
Started hacking with the LNCM people as the project aligned with my passions and I wanted to have a payment platform which I can easily plug into any business and get validation with little bureacracy.
Kept buying the dip (but got a little sidetracked with shitcoins like NEO/EOS initially).

Same same but less travelling (down to bare minimum). Just some Thailand domestic travels though. Had a ton of fun locally so didn’t feel inclined to leave
Contributed a good deal of code to LNCM projects because it aligns to what I believe in passionately.
Donated money to the TOR project, because privacy is a human right.
In light of all the political unrest going on, particularly in Hong Kong and recognizing there is a need for more privacy, and deplatforming risk and to promote more TOR use. I set to authored a collection of github actions to address some of these issues and developed a way to deploy static pages to TOR. Evidence of TOR sites: (1) (2) (3)
Planning to be more decentralized. Not just a single hub but several.
Kept stacking sats (Thank you GetBittr )

General gist of things is decentralization based on past experiences.

More mobile / flexible / minimalism (consume less; travel with 1 hand carry bag) / sustainable lifestyle. Actually researching more options on working off a tablet and raspberry pi combo.
Try and build a business and lifestyle around the above. And find more people who want to do the same so we can BUIDL together.
Keep on 💸 stacking sats ❤️ to make number go up 📈🐂

31 Dec 2019

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