June 25, 2024After a 2.5 year dive hiatus since earning my Rescue Diver certification (a skill I’ve probably lost by now, haha) I finally went diving again! This was my first experience diving in freshwater, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. I didn’t think anything could possibly be more enjoyable than reef diving with schools of fish, turtles and rays, or more thrilling than exploring the USS Spiegel Grove shipwreck off the coast of the Florida Keys. But boy oh boy was I pleasantly surprised. Diving in the cenotes of the Yucatán easily ended up being one of the most unique dive experiences I’ve ever had.
Read more · 17 min readMarch 24, 2024Two weeks in India and what an incredible journey it turned out to be! Alex and I traveled there for a wedding celebration which was nothing short of the big, colorful and crazy Indian wedding experience. After the wedding whirlwind, we met up with my parents and sister who flew all the way from Indonesia and Canada respectively. This blog post is my personal scrapbook; a curated collection of snapshots, each a memory from our wonderful time in India.
Read more · 5 min readDecember 04, 20222022 has been an unusual year for me. I resigned from my last job in the spring, and during the past eight months, I’ve been lucky to spend more time with family, spend time on things I always wanted to do (e.g. take Spanish classes!), explore parts of the world I’ve never been to before, and most importantly, relax and recharge. It’s been a whirlwind of a year, and I have so many stories to share, from my 23 weeks of travel, how I’ve become conversational in Spanish, to finding a software engineering job in the ClimateTech space.
Read more · 12 min readJuly 24, 2021If you're looking to reconnect with nature, look no further than Colorado's pristine backcountry. Growing up, my family didn't spend much time in the mountains, so if you were to ask me a few years ago whether I preferred the beaches or the mountains, I would have said the beaches in a heartbeat. But now, having spent a few weeks exploring the mountains of the Centennial State, I feel that I have a newfound appreciation for it.
Read more · 9 min readJanuary 11, 2018The last nine days of 2017 for me was spent in Vancouver, a vibrant seaport located on the Western coast of Canada. I've actually visited Vancouver before, but the last visit was quite a short one and because we spent most of our time hiking in Whistler, I didn't actually get to see much of Vancouver. I've heard a lot of great things about Vancouver though, so I wanted to make another trip to the city whilst my sister, Nadia, is still living in Vanouver (she's a student at the University of British Columbia). It's always nice to have a local show you around, and I couldn't have been happier to spend the holiday season with family.
Read more · 6 min readMay 29, 2016Known for its white sandy beaches and turquoise warm waters, the islands of St Thomas, St John and St Croix draw tourists from all over the world. Although these islands are a territory of the US, they were once part of the Danish Empire, and known as the Danish West Indies before being sold to the United States in the Treaty of the Danish West Indies in 1916. Aside from its beautiful islets and cays, the USVI also boasts a diverse history, having been sought by the Dutch, French, English, Spaniards, Maltese, and of course the Danes in the past.
Read more · 7 min readMarch 29, 2016After nearly eight months of diving inactivity, I decided to hop on a plane to Cozumel for a scuba diving trip. I’ve wanted to go on a scuba trip for a while now, but I’ve been held back by the fact that I don’t have any scuba diver friends. However, seeing that international travel in the near future seems a distant possibility (due to my on-going US work visa application), I decided to just go on a solo trip. Honestly, if I keep waiting for someone to go with me, I’ll never end up going. Besides, traveling solo allows you to do whatever you want, whenever you want. There’s a feeling of freedom that I really enjoy.
Read more · 4 min readAugust 03, 2015This post is a continuation to my previous post, The Last Paradise I. Make sure you read that before you read this!
Read more · 9 min readJuly 30, 2015For scuba divers, travelers and photographers alike, Raja Ampat is simply paradise on earth. A group of some 1,500 islands on the Western coast of Papua in eastern Indonesia, the name “Raja Ampat” literally translates to “Four Kings”, originating from a local myth. Located two hours by speedboat from Sorong, West Papua, with its pristine waters, lush jungles and teeming marine life, Raja Ampat will take your breath away. To put it bluntly, Raja Ampat is simply the most memorable travel experience I’ve had thus far.
Read more · 9 min readJune 19, 2015I guess being a citizen of Indonesia—a country well-known as a scuba diving heaven—it’s about time I learned how to scuba dive. I’ve snorkeled before, and sure, some people might say snorkeling is enough, but I beg to differ. To use a (really) terrible analogy, it’s like competing in a race and winning 2nd place, only to jealously watch as your good friend takes 1st place. Snorkeling merely shows you a glimpse of the beauty that lies beneath the surface, and to actually behold the underwater world in all its glory, you kinda have to dive deeper. And yes, I know, weird analogy.
Read more · 3 min readApril 26, 2015“Are you guys ready for Puerto Rico?” “Hell yeah! I’m so excited!”
“Be careful though, cause it’s really hot. It’s like 80 degrees over there.”
“Oh yeah don’t worry. In Indonesia it’s nearly 90 degrees every day.”
“...oh yeah alright.”
Read more · 9 min readJanuary 21, 2015So here goes the blog post where I tell you about my experience living on a coffee farm in San Luis, Costa Rica. When I say I’m living on a coffee farm, this is what I mean…
Read more · 8 min readDecember 31, 2014I am so proud to say that I just had a ten minute conversation in spanish with my host mom. Can you believe that?! Sure, broken Spanish and all, but I have never had any formal Spanish lessons in my live, ever. Literally most (if not, all) of the spanish I know is from Duolingo, and from my stay here. My broken Spanish is thankfully enough for me to tend to my basic needs, so thank God (and Duolingo!).
Read more · 7 min readMay 03, 2014This is super cliché, but it’s amazing how fast time passes by. I still remember being all excited for this semester, and now, as I write this blogpost, my semester ends in eleven days. I have to say, this semester turned out to be more time consuming than I had anticipated. CS32 is pretty much eating up all my time, and I keep having to walk up and down the hill to finish up my photography assignments during the weekends. However, I feel like my Java skills are now at superhuman Asian level (okay, maybe not really), I know why my brain decides to binge on junk food during stressful times (I blame the fact that I’m under cognitive load), I know what Q-Learning is (although I’m not sure when exactly I’ll have to use it), I can develop and enlarge my own photographs, and I can play the Javanese gamelan. But okay. In all seriousness though, I definitely learned a ton this semester.
Read more · 5 min readMarch 31, 2014Hej allihopa! It’s been one and a half months since my last post. I swear, I always tell myself I should blog more, but sometimes it just doesn’t work out. The last couple of weeks have been pretty hectic though (this is me trying to assure myself that there is nothing I could’ve done about it). There were about two weeks where literally, I always had something I had to do every waking second. For one, we had to make a sort of Google Maps thingamajig. Luckily, it was a partner project, and we could (and were supposed to) use materials from previous projects, but still, it was tough. The hardest part was probably thinking of a suitable design, and I think that’s probably the focus of this entire class—to teach you that design, above all else, is very, very important. My professor, JJ, always stresses that, if you have a really good design, then technically speaking, you can give your design to a crappy programmer, and he or she should be able to finish it. But if you have a rather shitty design, and you give it to a crappy programmer, then there is no way he or she would be able to finish it.
But anyways, last week was spring break, and I went down to Washington D.C. and Philadelphia with a bunch of friends. Everything was planned pretty last minute, because as I said before, the few weeks preceding spring break was super hectic. It was just crazy, and literally the only thing that kept me going was the thought of vacation-ing with friends. That is how crazy it was.
Read more · 7 min readJanuary 14, 2014¡Hola amigos! On the 4th of January 2014, I had the absolute pleasure of embarking on a one week trip to Honduras with an organization called Global Brigades.
Read more · 13 min readDecember 19, 2013I lay here on my bed, listening to Little Lion Man by Mumford and Sons while watching the snowflakes fall down, covering the Main Green in inches of snow. Alas, I should be studying for my final exams next week, but unfortunately, I’ve reached the point where no matter how hard I try, my brain can’t seem to digest anymore information. Henceforth, I’ve decided to write about my adventure in Peru this summer, in order to take things off my mind. I really should’ve done this a long, long time ago, but I’m a _Professional Procrastinator_, which is why I haven’t really had time to do so.
Read more · 9 min read