2020 is just a few hours away. What have you been doing throughout 2019? Have the resolutions written at the beginning of the year been achieved? Or will it stay like that until 2020 ends?
Writing and rethinking the things we have achieved in 2019 can make us (especially me) realize that there are so many things we can be grateful for, no matter how small. Writing these achievements can also be used as a reference to be better in the following years.
Everyone is fighting their own battles that you probably do not know about.
Everyone has their own problem, has their own solution, so they have their own achievements. So, it is not wise if we measure ourselves by the achievements of others.
Learn unit testing
Finally this year I have the opportunity to learn more about unit testing. I’ve read about it before, it’s just that I haven’t had the chance to implement it directly in a real project.
Since I’m a Vue framework developer, I specifically learned about Jest as a testing framework, and vue-test-utils as a testing utility library.
The learning process is also very practical. I learn mostly from sample projects or repositories that already implement unit tests. I “copy-paste” and adapted to the needs of the components that I made. The rest I just found out myself from the documentation for exploration.
Learn cloud migration
One of the priorities at the end of 2019 in my company is migrating services to the GCP (Google Cloud Platform). I am also more or less involved in this project.
The purpose of this migration is to improve the performance and robustness of the services we create. So that it can improve the user or customer experience in transacting on the Bukalapak platform. In addition, it can also improve the performance of the product engineer team in working and developing products.
Mentoring younger students on campus
I also had the opportunity to be a mentor for younger students on campus. I was appointed as the representative of alumni who are already working in the industry.
I share about UI/UX as well as frontend technology which is suitable for the project they are developing. Later, the project will be exhibited in the Software Expo event which is regularly held by the campus.
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| Sharing about the UI/UX in the industry |
Get married
One phase in my life has been achieved, finding a life partner. Marriage does not necessarily solve all problems. But at least I can be relieved that I have completed one phase of life.
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| Photo in front of the door of Surabaya’s Al Akbar Mosque |
One of the things that makes the spirit after marriage is always enthusiastic every time there is a holiday lined up. By default, he wants to go for a walk. If you weren’t married before, you had to be confused about what to do if you had a day off.
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| Photo with college friends |
Traveling to Bandung
I have my own story with this city. The city where I first moved for work. I lived there for about a year. Because I’m married, I want to take my wife around the Bandung. I want him to feel the joy of walking in Braga, the joy of praying at the Great Mosque of Bandung, and even enjoying the view of the highlands in the Punclut area.
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| Not only places to eat, Punclut also has interesting photo points |
One of the places we visited was The Lodge Maribaya. In this place, we enjoyed the beautiful atmosphere of the pine forest and took pictures in some really cool spots.
Traveling to Jakarta Aquarium
For people from Jakarta, or maybe Jabodetabek, going to the Jakarta Aquarium is a common thing. But for me, place like this don’t exist in my city and are worth the weekend.
Located at Neo Soho Mall, I arrived at the location very early even before the counter opened. The place is very spacious and there are many areas to explore. The marine animals are also quite complete and the aquarium is large, so there are rays, sharks, and piranhas.
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| Guess how to get into the aquarium? |
The most exciting thing is the mermaid show which is very interesting, especially the show in the aquarium water.
Traveling to Malang
We also took time to travel to Malang, since it is close to our hometown in Surabaya. There were several places we visited, such as trying culinary delights at the Bakso Bakar Pahlawan, taking pictures at the Batu Flower Garden, to traveling around the world in style at Jatim Park 3.
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| Photo at one of the BFG points |
Eid as a family in Blitar
For the first time I spent Eid with my wife in Blitar. Coincidentally, both of our families are also from Blitar, so it was not difficult for us to divide the time of our visit.
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| First Eid with wife |
Besides that, this Lebaran there was a reunion of my Blitar extended family, so it feels like this Eid I can gather and take a walk at many tourist points in Blitar.
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| Team building with the Blitar family |
Company outing to Jogja
An annual routine event organized by the office, and our division agreed to choose Jogja as the destination city. We headed to several places, such as the pine forest, the Kampung Wisata Taman Sari, Ratu Boko Temple, and to Borobudur.
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| Photo with team members |
We also do rafting. We can clearly see the expression on our enthusiastic faces when the river current carries our boat. The splash of a fairly large river occasionally hit us against the rocks.
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| Rafting |
That night we also held a gala dinner. Not only having dinner together, but also some games. At the end of the session, each person may write down their impressions and messages for the person they want on a piece of paper, then put the paper in the envelope provided.
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| Photo with squad friends |
Traveling to Banyuwangi
This year I finally had the opportunity to visit this city. I’ve been wanting to go back to Baluran Tourism Park for a long time after the last time when I was in high school at 2011.
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| Seeing the expanse of land in Baluran |
Not only to Baluran, my wife and I also snorkeled at the beach near Menjangan Island.
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| Snorkeling in the sea on Menjangan Island |
In the evening, we hiked to Mount Ijen. But unfortunately we didn’t get to see the famous Blue Fire because it was too relaxing to hike.
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| Photo on the top of Mount Ijen |
Staycation in Lembang
The end of this year also closed with my staycation with my office friends. We rented a villa in Maribaya area, Bandung.
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| Staycation with the team |
Two years in Bukalapak
One thing to be grateful for. At the previous company, I only lasted a year. Very excited to welcome the next years with Bukalapak.
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| Photo with some division friends |
Even though it’s only been two years, the increase in the knowledge that I have learned has greatly increased. In fact, I dare say that in the first six months at Bukalapak, I learned more than my year at the previous company.
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| Photo with Bukalapak Surabaya Squad on Independence Day |
Not only learning technical, but also learning about agile scrum, then learning how a product or feature is planned, developed, and released into production. Maybe someday I will write about this.
Stock investment
One of the things I was lucky enough to learn was about investing. Actually, since 2018 I started investing in mutual funds using the BukaReksa platform. It’s just that at the end of 2019 I started to open an RDN.
There’s a podcast called 30 days of lunch that finally moved me. I recommend the episode with CEO Jouska. The episode was very enlightening and insightful.
Regularly save mutual funds
As previously mentioned, I have started saving in mutual funds since early 2018. Until now, I still routinely set aside some of my income to invest in mutual funds.
Investment in SBN
Not only did I regularly save in mutual funds and stocks, I also learned how to manage my finances better. In the past I used to save without direction, from now on I divide into several posts and differentiate into several investment instruments such as deposits, stocks, mutual funds, and even state securities (SBN). 2019 was the first time I bought SBN with type ORI016.
If it’s written like this, I feel that 2019 has done a lot of good and positive things. Next year hopefully can be even better.
Hopefully in 2020 I can write more.