Books worth your time and the occasional essay on how to live — read closely, argued honestly.
Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning (1946). Read as an 'inspirational survival memoir' it gets softened into a greeting card. Frankl's actual argument is colder, harder, and far more useful: you cannot pursue meaning, and you certainly cannot pursue happiness.
Landing a junior job isn't an exam that proves your knowledge. It's about reducing the employer's risk. Portfolio, résumé, applications, coding tests, and interviews step by step — plus what AI changed, in an honest field guide.
Does it still make sense to become a developer when AI writes the code? Yes — but the path changed. An honest roadmap of what to learn and in what order, how to choose a first job, and what to avoid.
Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984). Reading it as 'a love story' or 'a book that praises lightness' misses the trap Kundera built into the title itself.
George Orwell's 1984 (1949). Reading it as 'a prophecy about a surveillance state' is the most common misreading. The novel is about something colder: the murder of objective reality.
Bali isn't one island — it's six different cities. The neighborhood you pick decides 80% of your month: cost, traffic, food, people, the shape of your day.
John Williams's Stoner (1965). Reading it as a 'quiet sad book about a failed life' is the most common misreading. The novel is about something harder.
Singles skill doesn't translate. Positions, roles, communication, and the mindset that keeps you from wasting your first 10 sets.
Five temples, nature 30 minutes away, the khao soi war, the Saturday walking street, Pai for a weekend, and the Yi Peng lantern festival you should see once.
How to get around without a metro, what a month costs, cafés and coworking, the northern food, and how to survive the burning season if you must.
The opposite of Bangkok — small, slow, temple-dense, with the jungle 30 minutes away. Visa, flight, accommodation, the haze-mask warning, and arrival day.
Neighborhoods with personalities, the massage primer, food expeditions, rooftop bars, weekend escapes, and how to leave.
How to run a day, what a month costs, cafés, coworking, food, transport, fitness, healthcare, safety, heat — the actual texture of working and living in Bangkok.
Visa, flight, accommodation, money, insurance, packing, the first day on the ground — what someone who actually lives in Bangkok would tell you to do, in order.
Never having run before isn't a reason not to start today. The most honest path to running 5K nonstop in eight weeks.
Code · Run · Travel. A first note on how three separate words connect inside one person, and what I plan to write here.