2022 In Review

It's 2023, and I've done this now 3 times in a row with no fail. If I don't, it means I probably died. Or forgot.

I'm happy to report that I have done everything I wanted to accomplish in 2022.

• Unbothered
• Happy
• In my lane
• Focused
• Flourishing

I'm essentially the happy hippo meme.

Aite, lets dive into it.

2022 was a more person year than the last few years. This year, I didn't have a degree to finish and I didn't do anything that exciting for the most of the year.

And then I got COVID.

It's super funny cause I got COVID the day I went to get my 3rd vaccine shot. I was all good the whole day. Got my booster shot and went home. That's when everything went downhill.

I was in bed just playing on my laptop and started to get super weak. Everything just got super cold. I thought this was just my body reacting to the vaccine. Things got worse super fast.

Thankfully my parents were visiting for a few weeks when this happened. So mother took care of me. I swear if mother was not around, I don't think I would have recovered as fast.

After a few days when I was feeling slightly better, I went and got a COVID test done. And that confirmed that I did have COVID. I then started recovering and getting my strength back, but I live in a small one room apartment, and mother was taking care of me while I had COVID, it meant that she got it as well. And so did father.

Thanks Male'.

But I did welcome someone new into my life.

Meet Frederick

As you can see, he is a goldfish. With the start of the year I decided it was time I got something to decorate my room. So I decided to spend money on a fish tank and get it all decorated and have some really nice fish and plants in them.

Some backstory on the fish tank

As you can see, I have a bunch of plants in the fish tank. I even introduced some tetras and some other smaller fish. But little did I know that the slightly larger fish would kill and eat the other fish. In a desperate attempt to have more fish in the tank, I got 4 goldfish.

Let me tell you something now.

Never. Get. Goldfish.

Those things poop all the time and ruin your entire tank. I paid 200/- Ruffiyaa for plants to put inside my tank. 20 minutes into introducing the goldfish into the tank, they started eating the plants. Oh and the other smaller fish too.

So yeah, I had to spend a couple of minutes every day for a week, as my fish ate my plants for absolutely no reason.

After the whole plant eating fiasco, I thought that was the end of it. But no. They started dying every other day. From the 4 goldfish I had, I now have just the one.

Frederick.

Getting a fish tank has been the best decision I made in 2022. No doubt about it. There's just something hypnotizing about just looking at the fish (just the one in my case) and watching them do their thing. Tiny minds at work.

Just being fish.

I had a lot of time on my hands now.

Here's a breakdown on how it compared from the last year.

2021

• Go to work
• Come back home
• Take one breath
• Online college classes
• Repeat

2022

• Go to work
• Come back home
• Repeat

Since I no longer have college classes taking up my evenings, I found myself working even more after coming home from my job. This made me frustrated, because I wondered why I was doing this to myself.

There are times when I need to work at home at night to finish a project and meet a deadline, and that's fine. But I noticed that I was doing it even when there wasn't a specific reason to. It's important to take breaks and give yourself time to rest and recharge, rather than constantly working and not giving yourself a chance to relax.

So started playing games.

Valorant

Ah yes, Valorant. A first-person shooter video game that I've been really into recently. It's completely free to play, and I've gotten pretty good at it, climbing up the ranks. I've even gotten some of my coworkers to play with me.

I am simply limited by the technology I posses, so I went and invested in a new gaming mouse, which has been a lot of fun to use.

I've been playing Valorant for months, mostly because it was the only game I could play on my old laptop. My friends kept encouraging me to buy a gaming laptop like theirs so that I could have a better experience when playing Valorant and other games with them.

I had some savings from a work bonus I received the previous year, so I started considering my options. I did a price comparison and found that a custom-built computer would be more powerful than a laptop, and I wanted something that would last for many years, possibly even 6-10 years.

While I was tempted to build my own computer, I was worried about making mistakes, so I decided to contact local custom computer builders and get quotes. I found one that I liked and made a down payment, and the parts are now on their way from the US.

A WHOLE MONTH...

and still no computer. I was told that the parts were lost in shipping. I was devastated. I had spent a lot of money on this computer, and the thought of the parts being lost in shipping was unacceptable. I'll be honest, I cried a little bit that night.

After discussing the situation with the seller, they agreed to refund my down payment in full, which was a relief.

This didn't stop me from getting a computer.

As soon as I received my down payment back, I called another seller and was told that they had all the components in stock and could offer me a better price. I was thrilled and immediately made another down payment.

The seller has started building the computer, and I've included some pictures of the process.

And within one week's time, I finally got it.

For the first few weeks of getting this beast, I had it on this step stool cause my table too small to keep everything on it.

Time for a computer setup.

I have everything now. I just need a table. With the money I saved from buying the computer from the new seller, I was able to get a new table. 5 feet wide actually. Table so big it dwarfs my deskpad.

Here it is, Computer Setup 2022.

There's a whole lot of things happening in this picture, and I feel it deserves it's own blog post. Keep an eye out for it in the next few weeks.

I moved to Hulhumale'

This year, I made a major milestone by moving out of my small, poorly-ventilated apartment with no sunlight and into a new place in Hulhumale'.

In hindsight, I realize that I wasn't really living in my old apartment; I was just surviving. My new place is almost twice the size of my old one, and the rent is extremely reasonable considering how much space I have.

I won't post pictures of the place, but I have more than enough room for my sofa and TV, a large area for my computer setup, and all the space I need to cook. The kitchen is also a huge upgrade from my previous one, and I've been able to cook much more frequently in the last few months thanks to it.

Vacation Time

This year, I went on vacation to Vaavu Thinadhoo and several other islands in the atoll. We did a variety of activities such as excursions, BBQs and visiting beaches, and overall it was a very enjoyable time.

However, this vacation was different from the previous ones in a significant way. It was a trip full of firsts for me. Before this trip, I had made up my mind not to get in the water at any of the diving or snorkeling spots. But something about this trip changed my mind, and I ended up having the best time of my life.

I was initially very hesitant to jump into the water because I can't swim and don't know how to stay afloat. However, the guys who were leading the excursion, especially Kokko, were very supportive and helped me feel more confident. With their help, I was able to hold onto a float and swim with the sharks, see their sleeping grounds, and even touch a few of them.

I was so focused on the sharks that I didn't even notice one swimming underneath me until it brushed past my belly, which made me scream through my snorkel.

Seeing and swimming with sharks was just amazing, it does not compare at all when I saw these magnificent beasts swim towards me.

We were about to get back in the boat after seeing the sharks when we came across the mantas by chance. Without hesitation, everyone jumped back in the water to see them.

My sister had told me about her diving adventures and the mantas she had seen, and I knew I would never see as many as she had in my lifetime. Seeing the mantas in person was an unforgettable experience, and it's hard to put into words how it felt to watch them swim by.

In that moment, I remember thinking that even if I drowned right then, it would have been worth it.

The next day we went to the Vaavu Shipwreck. It was kind of an overcast day so seas were a little bit rough and there were some strong currents I think.

On this particular day, we planned a little treasure hunt for one of the kids on the trip. We made a makeshift treasure box and placed it on the shipwreck, then the kid snorkeled on the surface of the water, trying to find it. When he finally did, he yelled "TREASURE!" and all the foreign tourists around us stared at him in surprise, as if to say, "There's treasure here?"

Javaabu

If you don't know what Javaabu is, it's the company I work for. In March, I started my fifth year there, which made me feel quite old. I started this job only a couple of months after I graduated from high school, and at this point, I don't have any plans to look for another job. Javaabu has been very good to me over the years, allowing me to live my life the way I want to.

It's been a slow year in terms of completing projects. I only remember working on two projects this year, and it took me a longer-than-normal time to finish each one. In fact, I'm still in the middle of finishing up my current project. It's been a very slow year in terms of projects completed. While I have done some other smaller tasks like bug fixes and feature upgrades, I don't really count those as full projects. Overall, it's been a relatively low-key year in terms of my work.

This year, I feel I spent more time assisting others with their projects rather than focusing on my own. Javaabu hired many new employees this year, and they needed on-the-job training to learn the coding we do at the company. Most of them were unfamiliar with this type of coding, so it was a challenge for them. I found myself helping them learn and adapt to the work at Javaabu.

At Javaabu, we have a set of practices and resources that we use for each project, but they're not always well-documented. Despite this, we manage to get things done. I've learned how things work at the company through a combination of trial and error and spending time figuring out solutions to problems. While it would be helpful to have better documentation, we've managed to make it work.

One advantage of having new hires is that they tend to pick up things quickly and are able to work independently once they understand how something works. They're able to handle most basic tasks, but they may encounter some challenges and need additional help when they need to do something new.

My current project is something that I never would have expected a ministry to need. It's essentially a custom-built version of Google Forms that allows the ministry to create dynamic forms on demand and collect responses from them. While the concept seems simple, the details of the project are much more complex and have presented some challenges.

The goal of the project is to simply turn an Excel sheet into a website. And yes, it is quite the task. There are several complex formulas that need to be used in conjuncture of the responses collected from the forms as described above. It took me months over the original deadline of the project to get the Excel part working to get accurate results.

Still ironing out some bugs and just doing the mundane tasks, but hopefully there is some light at the end of the tunnel.

Baivaru

Baivaru has not done much this year. Most of our members were in the last stretch of finishing thier degrees and graduating. We have all graduated and are all back in the Maldives now. We have never really hung out together before. Now that most of us are living in the same area, we have been going out more often. Almost once a week for the past 3 months.

Baivaru is about to launch it's first (hopefully) money making product. BaivaruTV+. Think of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, Disney+ and AppleTV+. Now think of all of these in one platform for only the price of one service. In fact, it's cheaper than the cheapest plan on Netflix.

It's going to be exactly MVR 149/- a month for ANYTHING you want to watch. If we don't have it, ask us, and it'll be there in about 15 minutes. And if you are wondering as to why anyone should subscribe to BaivaruTV+. Well, I used to download all my movies and tv shows at home, watch it, and then never delete them. I didn't really want to delete any of them because it took so long to download them and internet costs a lot of money.

Ever since BaivaruTV+ was created and was started to be used by our beta testers, I've gone and deleted my own library of movies and tv shows. Don't believe me? Here's a 5 part screenshot series that proves otherwise.

By the time you are reading this, BaivaruTV+ is available for purchase. DM our Instagram account or text me on Telegram to get a subscription.

Things are still going quite well

This year was full of happy moments. The only thing I can think of that ruined my days were when the cats around my old apartment would take a shit right on my front door step.

The new year is going to be about health, connections and going forward with velocity.

Here's to starting of the new year with a Valorant addiction, a bad sleep schedule, too many bills, no money towards the end of each month.

"Speed may determine how quickly you reach a barrier, but velocity is what determines the impact you make and how far you can take those obstacles with you on your journey." ~ Frederick - My Goldfish, 2022