This Week:
- Pushed my MVP up to a real website with a real user interface this week!
- A look into my routine lately.
- Being treated like a celebrity at the medical clinic.
February 2024
| Su | M | T | W | Th | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 2/1 | 2 | 3 |
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 3/1 | 2 |
Where In The World Was I?
Metrics From The Week
Business Progress Update
The first part of the week I kept trying a bunch of things to filter down the comments even more to get just the top comments. However, I couldn’t quite get it the way I envisioned.
I tried implementing clustering, topic modeling, all these algorithms, I tried looking at how many likes the comments got. They all just didn’t quite produce what I wanted and still the ML model wasn’t perfect, it was giving false positives.
The voice in my head started to get louder, “MVP! Remember this is an MVP! This should’ve been done and launched in 3 hours!”
I worked through this in this video this week:
Basically I ended up deciding to scrap all this trying to perfect the algorithm and start moving on with the rest of the work required to launch this MVP – setting up an API to call, setting up a web server, getting a server to host it on, building a UI, etc. etc.
I’ll gloss over all the little wins, but I made a ton of progress this week. It just felt really good every day seeing meaningful and tangible leaps ahead closer and closer to having something public that users can interact with.
By the end of the week, I have a basic user interface hosted on a real server, with a real domain, with real SSL certs, where if you input handles in the box and hit the button, it runs my real code, and when you hit the status button, it displays the real comments that it filtered from my algorithm.
IT’S SO COOL.
I’ll share the domain when everything’s cleaned up and running 24/7.
This upcoming week I’m working on fixing up the UI so that it’s clean and fully operable. Once that’s all set and done, I’ll probably give it a load test before going back and reading Chapter 3 on how to launch your MVP 😄 (from Pieter Levels Indie Maker Handbook)
This idea will probably flop (maybe not, who knows), but going through this whole process (and documenting all the setup) has been incredibly helpful because whatever thing I build next, I’ll be able to spin something up even quicker.
Huge shoutout to ChatGPT in all of this. I think I probably did about 2 weeks of work in 2 days with the help of ChatGPT. All the little details, setting up web servers, nginx config files, systemd services, linking everything together, was such a breeze. Coding/software development nowadays with ChatGPT is actually nuts.
Routine, Routine, Routine
This week has kind of been just about routine, showing up, and continuing to do the boring habits that get me steps closer to the long term goals.
Wake up, walk, record a YouTube video
Come back, meditate for 15 min
Work until noon. I went to Lost x Found cafe yesterday (Saturday) and after exchanging greetings, the barista guy said “the usual?” 😄❤️
Eat lunch at SALA in Berjaya Times Square (they also started recognizing me), watch/listen to some YouTube videos
Come back and work a bit more in the afternoon (~2pm-4pm) while snacking on my nuts (macadamia, walnut, cashews, almonds, peanuts) and sipping on a protein shake (I found this “supershake” powder drink mix at the grocery store that I’ve been adding to my protein shakes).
I usually do either mostly admin stuff (documenting ideas, going through emails, budgeting, organizing stuff, looking for hostels, etc. that kind of stuff) or a mix of some business work and some admin stuff.
Supershake Powder Details
https://www.matakanasuperfoods.com/products/supershake
Certified Organic Ingredients: Quinoa powder 20%, coconut fibre 14%, pure coconut sugar 14%, chia powder 10%, chia seeds 7%, lucuma powder 7%, banana powder 6% (banana powder, acidity regulator (citric acid)), freeze-dried NZ blackcurrant powder 4%, freeze-dried açai berry powder 4%, freeze-dried blueberry powder 4%, goji berry powder 2% (goji berry powder, rice maltodextrin, acidity regulator (citric acid), vitamin C), camu camu powder 2%, freeze-dried red raspberry powder 2%, pomegranate powder 2%, beetroot powder 2%.
Then do some exercise – run to the gym and work out, just do a run, or do a longer podcast walk.
Then find a place to eat dinner. The Thai Cuisine people at the Pavilion food court started recognizing me, asked if I wanted a Pad See Ew, which in fact, I did 😄. (Pad See Ew (or Pad Thai) with extra chicken extra noodles and a Thai iced tea 😍).
I also found this other nice “health food” restaurant close to my hostel. Portions are a bit smaller but really high quality food.
Then come back, eat my overnight oats with peanut butter, do some reading, sauna (some nights), meditate for 3-8min, then go to bed.
A Quick Update On Learning To Cultivate Sexual Energy
So I’ve been reading this book, Taoist Secrets of Love: Cultivating Male Sexual Energy by Mantak Chia. The first part was mostly conceptual but the second part goes into tangible and practical exercises to do, which I started implementing this week.
I don’t want to put the cart before the horse (or whatever the saying is), but I’ve actually been noticing a positive difference lately. I’m documenting all my thoughts and learnings along the way, which I hope to share after a couple weeks.
This content is not ready to be made public yet.
Sauna’ing… With Strangers
I was sauna’ing one evening and this couple walked in and joined me. We ended up having a good conversation, but it was quite awkward as I was naked and just basically covering my crotch with my swimsuit. It turned out to be a fun challenge and good story.
I shared the story in the first half of this video:
Crossing The Dopamine Chasm
Something I realized or thought of this week was that it feels like my dopamine baseline levels are at a really healthy level. It feels like I’ve crossed over this “dopamine chasm” of life.
I tried talking through this in the second half of this video (starting at ~13:30s):
Basically I feel like the past couple weeks my habits and mindset have changed. I haven’t watched a lot of entertainment-style YouTube in a while, my phone is on Do Not Disturb all the time by default now, it feels good to have a focus, direction, and make progress towards it, and I have been spending my evenings doing more reading than watching YouTube.
Life just feels good lately.
Those couple days towards the end of this week, setting up the web server, deploying my code, and seeing it actually run… Those work sessions and rewards just felt good. It made me want more.
And I feel a lot more sensitive to dopamine-charged things, like when I take my phone off DnD and see a bunch of email notifications, or open up Instagram every couple of days and take a scroll or two, it just feels like a lot.
I think an image is better than words here. Funny meme aside, this is pretty literally how I feel during these situations
It almost feels hard to explain because it feels so different from 2 years ago when I couldn’t pry myself off of the couch in my apartment, scrolling through Instagram shorts, watching YouTube videos while working, just bored out of my mind and absolutely dopamine-fried.
I’m grateful I actually documented my mindset during this time (and ended up making it public later: Man, What A Struggle…) because rereading that and knowing the progress I’ve made since then just feels so unbelievably meaningful.
In that post I wrote…
I know I’m going to reread this and think about how far I’ve come. It’ll be a year, maybe 2 years, maybe 10 years. I’ll look back on this moment, this struggle, and appreciate all that I’ve created, done, and become.
And literally, LITERALLY 2 years later (wrote it February 1st, 2022), that statement is true.
All this energy “high” however did slow down a bit towards the end of the week – sleep slipping away from me, squeezing work a little too hard, etc. But macro-wise, I still feel amazing.
Health Test Results
I just have to include this story.
I had a consultation with a doctor from the medical clinic where I got my health screening test(s) 2 weeks ago to go over the bajillion results they gave me.
She was going through my lab results, going over the important results and numbers and at least 3 times she saw one of the numbers and it literally surprised her as if she’d never seen that number before and she went “oh wow, that’s really [good|low|high]!” 😄
I told her how I’ve been really prioritizing my health lately and she said something along the lines of “I can tell.”
Overall very good results. I asked her if there was anything/any way to improve my numbers even better to know what to work on. She thought for a couple seconds… then shook her head and said pretty definitively “no.”
But Wait…
As a quick side-note/tangent while it’s relevant. I was thinking about this moment on my walk/ride back to the hostel.
The lab results gives you ranges for each value, to indicate what’s considered “normal” or “average” or “healthy” so that if you’re out of the range, you know something’s not right.
One of the things I want to know is okay yes I’m in the range, great, but is there a “better” part of the range? Can I make the number even better? What does the range look like for people who focus on and optimize their health?
I may be venturing into conspiracy land here, but I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to question the usefulness in comparing a person’s diet who optimizes their health with what the “average” person’s diet looks like (processed foods, burgers, sugar, inflammatory oils, etc.). Like sort of by definition, “normal” and “average” are based on “normal” and “average” people. What if I don’t want to be normal or average? Where are the ranges for people who focus on improving their health?
Another question just re-reading that sentence I just wrote… Why are “people who focus on improving their health” not considered normal anymore (rhetorical; at least by me)? 🤔
Like for example, let’s say I eat 2 processed food meals per week. I get my bloodwork done and my lab results come back and my LDL cholesterol is in the normal range. So “great, I’m good, my diet is fine” I think. But if we compared my results with the subset range for just healthy people I see that it’s actually on the bad/high side. Only from that subset can I deduce that the eating 2 processed food meals per week is actually having an effect on my health.
I dunno, it’s a problem/thought/need that surfaced from looking at my test results. It seems like I would have to go to some medical clinic that specializes in longevity to get this kind of information rather than a normal/public/general medical clinic. I bet you Bryan Johnson’s team could tell me this type of stuff 😄 (https://protocol.bryanjohnson.com/).
Treated Like Family
Anyways back to the consultation. We finished, I thanked her, and walked out of the room and into the lobby.
Immediately I was greeted by the staff “Mr. Peter please sit, please, how was everything? Have you eaten yet? Can I get you some of my homemade food?”
I obliged and got some snacks and the woman there said “can I get you something to drink? Kopi? Milo?” (Milo apparently is this Malaysian hot chocolate drink).
I was almost taken aback at how appreciative and kind they were. I felt like family!
I ate my food and when I finished they came over and asked if it would be okay to answer a couple questions about my experience for a video (what did I think of the experience, how was the consultation, would I recommend to a friend/family). I was like ehhhh sure, I had a good experience, why not haha.
It was kind of awkward, I felt put on the spot, I stumbled and hesitated in my words, I wasn’t really sure what to say, but it is what it is. Happy to help.
Then after, the woman came over and said “since it’s Valentine’s day I’d like to give you a gift” and gave me this rose and box of chocolates. I saw them give this to another patient while there, so it wasn’t about me specifically, but I still felt very appreciated.
And then this other Indonesian staff/woman, the one who helped me with the food/drink, came over and said she remembered me from the other day and asked if she could take a picture with me. I was like what is going on right now 😂 I don’t think it was for social media, I think it was just for her 😂
I said thank you and left a bit flustered 😄 (not in a bad way, just embarrassed and confused) at everything that happened in the like 5 minutes since I left the doctor’s room.
So anyways, great experience, great people, great quality, professional, would recommend 👍 (Unfortunately they didn’t give me an affiliate link to plug in my blog posts 😂)
Reality
A note to future Peter…
This is what I was talking about at this hostel. It’s honestly been pretty great, but it’s just not quite perfect. One of the weird things/downsides is that every toilet’s floor is just wet, all the time. Sure, it’s water from the wall (just tap water), but it’s just… gross 🫠
When you’re staying in your fancy pristine top floor Airbnb I want you to remember that this is where I’m staying right now and it’s great (except for the wet floors). It’s RM35 ($7.50) per night to stay here. Worth.
Snaps From The Week
Views from the hostel
The second-tallest building in the world (yep, Merdeka 118):
From some walks:
A scene/view from my run this week (yeah it’s a highway but there was traffic so the cars weren’t blazing past you)
Saw this in one of the (many) malls this week. It looked like a fairly typical fast-casual type of restaurant (maybe an indicator for minimum wage around here).
The currency conversion translates to:
- Full Time RM1700-RM2500 -> US$356-$523
- Part Time RM8/hr -> US$1.67/hr
For more context, a plate of pad thai at the food court is RM14.90 ($3.12), a burrito at the plant-based place I’ve been going to is RM24.90 ($5.20).
Interesting Content From The Week
The Reality of Trying to Become a Successful/High Value Man (from 1M) – this was actually really informative for me. While I’m working towards a slightly different wealth goal, I believe there’s a life setup where you can be making $20k/mo, $50k/mo, $100k/mo, without the whole absolute craziness of having zero time left in your day that he talks about. The business path I’m creating/following has scalability baked into it from the start. That’s kind of the whole bootstrapping mindset that Pieter Levels talks about in his book the Indie Maker Handbook.
Semen Retention Reviewed as a Logical 30yr Old Man (from 1M) – with my current curiosity and learning about controlling sexual energy, this was fitting. I liked his perspective and deeply understood/agreed with some of his learnings.
The Male Meta (from 1M) – really interesting perspective hitting on the dynamics of relationships nowadays in the 21st century.
Modern Western Dating is Draining Me (from 1M) – absolutely fascinating perspective and video. Sure he has his style of dating, I don’t think I’d follow his footsteps, but it really made me quite sad that this is now the common dynamic and the state of society nowadays. Just logically, this cannot be sustainable as a society if we keep going in this direction…
Avoid Becoming Part of the Weakest Male Generation (Rant) (from 1M) – only watched the first ~20 min so far but man, another perspective that makes me question the state of things. Just on the topic of sexual expression and porn, I get the idea behind it in the U.S., freedom of expression, we should be able to do whatever we want, watch what we want, etc. but speaking just from my own experience, the effects are awful. Makes me question the consequences of sexualizing everything in society… Porn is literally illegal here in Malaysia, like straight up illegal. I can’t make any commentary on how this has changed the culture or society and I won’t say Malaysia is therefore better than the U.S., but I just want to point out that there are other places in the world that do things differently, that value things differently… Traveling has really broadened my perspectives on the world.
Both of these videos There’s a Tax Season Villain, and It’s Not the I.R.S. | NYT Opinion (from Johnny Harris) and The Dirty Business Behind Caffeine (from fern) just made me shake my head almost in frustration. The lobbying system in the U.S. is just f-ked. It’s sad that we’ve come to this point where money overpowers our own health and best interests of the individual. It really shifts the responsibility onto each of us as individuals to do all of the due diligence and question literally everything, which is almost impossible.
Lots of societal-level videos this week apparently. The U.S. has given me everything, I have to give credit where credit is due, but man it’s things like all ^ this week that make me question if I should pack up and move somewhere else… Oh wait… I did 😂 (jokes aside, I mean like long-term).
Food From The Week
These are literally the only meals that are not repeats from the pictures I showed in the “Routine” section 😄
Bingsu shaved ice dessert, a build-your-own-bowl at Salad Atelier, and a delicious warm (and THICC) chocolate chip cookie.
Priorities
Speaking of food and societal-level commentary…
I saw someone this week with a shirt on that said “Life is short. Eat dessert first.”
My literal first thought was, “Hah… Actually… That should probably say:” “Life is short BECAUSE (or WHEN) you eat dessert first.”
I dunno, maybe we shouldn’t assume life is short if we actually prioritize our health instead of succumbing to sugar and immediate pleasures. I could say so much more but given what I’ve talked about even just in this week’s post, you probably know what I would say 😄
So, I’ll just leave you with that. ✌️
Update Sunday 2/18/24: Okay I have to share this because it’s eating away at my mind haha. I just posted this blog post like 15 minutes ago and then ordered this at this cafe I’m at:
I looked at it and then thought “wait didn’t you just comment on this exact situation?”
All I have to say is that I don’t order stuff like this regularly, which you know, because I post pictures of everything I eat in these posts. It’s the mindset. It’s the mindset that says “a small smoke break isn’t gonna kill ya,” which is a direct quote I heard a couple weeks ago that I wrote down…
This is what I get for making broad claims, lol. Okay NOW see ya next week ✌️
What a week! Thank you for inspiring us!
Thank you for reading! <3