Reflection on 2025

I wish I could share all the love that’s in my heart, remove all the bars that keep us apart…

I wish you could know what it means to be me, then you’d see and agree…

That every man should be free!

Nina Simone, I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free (1963)

Attempts are what we live by. For the past few years, I have refrained from attempting to write many essays, out of self-doubt and out of fear of embarrassment.

This year, a change was made—big, perhaps. My name now bears two degrees, one in Physics and one in Law; I work as a Software Engineer, using neither of those degrees directly. Perhaps both degrees gave me some tools to help when dissecting a problem at hand, indirectly, of course.

I resigned from my previous position around Q1 2025 and started my role as a Software Engineer at GoTo Financial, becoming part of the 13th GoTo Engineering Bootcamp. During that period (Q2 2025), I attempted to learn a lot about Java, Golang, Dart, public speaking, and writing skills. In those nine weeks, I wrote many articles about engineering and one article on culture.

It was a tiring experience. The days were marked by routine and repetition: commuting back and forth from Kukusan to Fatmawati, then boarding the metro to Blok M and walking ten minutes to Pasaraya. Leaving the apartment at 08:45, arriving at Fatmawati around 09:25, boarding the metro at 09:38, arriving at Blok M station at 09:48, and reaching Pasaraya around 09:58. Learning things, lunch breaks, competing in TypeRacer, learning again, walking back to the station, returning to Fatmawati, commuting back to Depok, finishing daily homework, and doing it all over again the next day.

There was some fun during the bootcamp, though. I discovered that I was quite good at fast typing. This turned out to be useful, and it did not come from nowhere.

Toward the end of 2024, I had picked up a hobby of training multiple models with various parameters to estimate earthquake epicentral distances. While waiting for these models to finish training, I would pick up archaic Indonesian literature from the 1950s–60s and retype them into Markdown format, aiming for accuracy and speed. This habit suited me well, as I like to jump from one task to another to avoid boredom.

The end product of that period was my thesis titled Estimation of Earthquake Epicentral Distance Based on Find Epicentral Distance with Neural Network (FELINN) Modeling Using Strong-Motion Sensor at Single Station. The name FELINN came from a book I bought in Spui, Amsterdam, titled Feline Philosophy by John Gray. Another end product was Ilalang, a literature repository that now contains 307 works from eight distinct authors affiliated with Lekra (Lembaga Kebudajaan Rakjat—Institute for People’s Culture).

After the bootcamp, I now work on the eWallet team at GoPay. Adapting to engineering at this scale was difficult. I had to learn about ELK, observability, and spec provisioning, and I am grateful to the engineers who guided me through the process.

A few months later, my friends and I entered the internal GoTo Mini App Hackathon with a simple idea: what if we could make a pocket guide for daily Catholic readings and the nearest Catholic church? The five of us brainstormed and refined the idea into its final form—a mini app that helps people find mass schedules, instantly order a Gojek ride to a church, read daily Catholic passages, and view a heatmap for Bible-reading streaks.

Somehow, we passed. The app is now available on the GoPay App under the name Komune—a name I am glad to have, inspired by the poem “Makan Roti Komune” by Sitor Situmorang. Through this project, I also learned a great deal about marketing, particularly via the KOL model, and about the mechanisms behind in-game currency management. Very interesting things.

Alongside all of this, I picked up another hobby: rekindling old things. Some of this work can be read on my blog (such as Lupa Daratan and Di Na Laho Maridi), while other projects will be seen in the future. These are books I have retyped by hand, adjusted to my preferred typesetting for old texts.

Another hobby I was able to pick up was learning the ukulele. The chords are quite simple, and someone very special taught me many of them. From there, I was able to learn some guitar chords as an extension of it. Recently, I tried to musicalize a poem—Pembakaran by Ramadhan K.H.—using a simple chord progression of F–Dm–Gm–C. It is a fortune to relearn an instrument again, after the misfortune I experienced earlier in my life.

Other than that, I also picked up learning more about navigation while riding my motorbike, and I plan to learn how to drive a car in 2026. I also took a big liking to poker, blackjack, and mahjong; it really does feel like a second brain pops out when we are gambling.

This year was especially made special by someone I will name in the future. Her presence in my life made everything easier and livelier; to be with her is to read a Tagore poem.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.

At the heart of time, love of one for another.

We have played alongside millions of lovers, shared in the same

Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-

Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Rabindranath Tagore, Unending Love

My mornings are happier than ever. I hope they continue to get better. I thank the Lord for all the gifts He has given me and hope He forgives me for my mistakes. I hope to travel in the future—perhaps to East Asia, or back to Europe. I have also learned to cook over the past few weeks: pork, potatoes, Hainan rice, and many more dishes. It is a great joy to improve and learn from our shortcomings.

Today, too, had its gift. My first essay, titled Mencari Titik Tengah Moral Komunis, was published by a mass media outlet called Semut Api (Red Ant), a polemic on the morality of Communists in Indonesia. This was made possible by my Ilalang project. May the Lord grant me time to tinker again and again with the age He has given me.

I am also grateful that with some of the fortune He has lent me, I was able to help two people continue their studies and not drop out of college. If I can, God willing, I would like to do that again next year—perhaps on a bigger scale.