Colin Charles Agenda

Another year comes to a close. I’m in Kuala Lumpur (3rd year running) for New Year’s, and for the first time in a long time, I’m actually happy to be here. KL is growing on me.

Travel stats: 30 trips, 219 days on the road, 388,834 km travelled, 45 cities, 16 countries. This is 1 trip more than 2018, 30 days less on the road (!), 2,285km less, 4 countries less and 12 cities less. Nothing particularly stood out, though I did visit Richmond, VA, Chiang Mai, Thailand (will return) and Koh Samui, Thailand (will definitely return; besides my hotel and another villa, I saw nothing) for the first time. In what is also rare, I did not make it to Seoul all year (compared to every month during the heyday, keeping it under 60 days per year). I did go to Bali twice, which I enjoyed immensely.

Overall, I consider that I spent quite a bit of my time drifting, coasting, et al. but found my rhythm in the second half of the year. I have started paying attention to being fit and healthy, and maybe that is the best change I’ve made to my life. I’ve also generally quit drinking alcohol, so if I have a glass to toast with you, you’ve got to be extremely special (or it is an extremely special occasion).

I welcome 2020 with arms wide open.

Too busy to sum up the year but generally speaking: father much more gravely ill, lost another grandmother exactly 14 months to the date of the previous one, lots of general busyness.

As I write this, I’m in Kuala Lumpur, not elsewhere (second year running), shuttling between home and the hospital. First trip of 2019 has also just been cancelled.

Travel stats: 29 trips, 249 days on the road, 391,119 km travelled, 57 cities, 20 countries. Comparing to 2017, it is 1 trip less, 2 days more, 59,903 km less (!), with 4 cities more and 3 countries less. Nothing particularly memorable stood out (even based on my Swarm statistics).

I’d say I want to blog more, but I know its tough. I am however enjoying long form writing thanks to my Field Notes subscription.

Here’s to 2019. Life can only get better. Right?

Lying in bed with iPad in tow, and not feeling like reading, I fired up Netflix thinking I could watch the new season of House of Cards. Unfortunately, in Germany, November 2 2018 means something completely different (i.e. Season 5 is the latest).

Kevin Spacey, irregardless of what you think of him, was a pretty good actor. I read on Wikipedia that he was in another movie called Billionaire Boys Club and how it grossed terribly. I hopped on over to Amazon and realised I could rent it (it wasn’t on Netflix). Then I remembered I had some Google Play credit, so I tried to rent it there.

I even then downloaded the app from the App Store. In Chrome, it kept on trying to get me to download a SetSID file. Urgh. The purchase basically would not complete.

All in, I spent a good 15–20 minutes before I gave up trying to watch Billionaire Boys Club. And I was willing to pay $3.99-$4.99 (with tax, the SD version is $4.39, $0.40 for taxes), in the hopes of watching it in my German hotel room. I failed.

I bet the (illegal) download from a torrent site would have been quicker.

I like Twitter. It is the social media that I use the most. Maybe followed by Instagram, since I’ve always liked photography. I don’t spend time on Facebook/LinkedIn like one would expect. So my energy seems to be Twitter-centric if I’m going to use social media. On my iPhone, Twitter is on the main screen, which tells you I consider it useful :)

Before the social media apocalypse on the stock market recently, I thought I’d try to pay $99 for Promote Mode. I had been invited for many months but summer seemed like an ideal time to try it. Long story short? Save your $99/month.

I started with 4,660 followers. Today I have 4,547 followers. Less, how? Why? There was a recent purge of bots and fake followers, and I lost 2.64% of followers.

In the end, Twitter said I gained 19 new followers, with 185 promoted tweets, and I had 35% more reach (+107,274). 19 new followers for $99 seems like daylight robbery. I was targeting USA based folk.

When I asked their support if I could switch to the UK, they said it was not possible. The only other option was Japan, and I didn’t realise I had to choose so wisely at the start. And now you can only reactivate the subscription when promote mode gets out of beta (but with such poor performance I am unlikely to do that).

I wasn’t the only one how has had such a poor experience. Ahsan Anis writes, Is Twitter’s promote mode worth the $99 monthly subscription? (disappointed), Buffer writes How Effective is Twitter Promote Mode? We Tested It for 30 Days. (did not renew due to performance, limitations and ease).

Guess they’ll have to find a better way to make me pay to use the service so that the stock price can go up! (I am not an investor in Twitter stock, but really do like the product and want to see them survive in the long term).

While I’m not about to purchase The Archive as another app (I’m all in on Evernote and Ulysses, with a little help from Drafts 5), it seems like reading the principles behind zettelkasten seemed rather interesting.

Some highlights for me, which I totally agree with include the fact that reading is easy, writing notes is also easy, but the processing does take time. In the Collector’s Fallacy Confession, you’ll note that “For every hour of reading, it can take up to double the time to take proper notes.” I tend to agree. I don’t process notes like the author, but I myself do write down stuff with a pen and on paper. Sometimes I scribble in the physical book itself. I find that when I read on Kindle, I highlight, but don’t make notes (at which point, I’ll have to export the highlights and make notes around it).

Then I move on to reading The Collector’s Fallacy. Collecting itself isn’t progress, “Collections make us drown in liabilities.”. “kept isn’t read”.

I myself am a big consumer of RSS. There are thoughts on note taking from RSS. For me, I tend to tweet links that I think others might find interesting. But if I want to archive it, I quite happily send it along to Evernote.

When it comes to reading, you need to read analytically, practice so you know the topic, and then gain insight. I’m all in on Learn Faster by Writing Zettel Notes.

The writer refers to the short knowledge cycle, which more or less can be summed up as research (find the materials), read, take excellent notes, then compose notes. So you read, process, reflect, then adapt/change the routine as you see fit.

I’m reminded about roaming data as we’re now in 2018.

For me, in the last few years, it has already become common to turn on roaming data at the RM36/day rate for unlimited Internet access. I of course plan/optimise this (since it follows a midnight-midnight regime). I tend not to have roaming data turned on when it is RM56/day (so in the USA, UK, I actually have local SIM cards; I have them in a few other places too, but the reality is they’re for other things like local banks, etc.).

Lately, it’s becoming more common to get for RM25, a 3-day pass, with roaming data. It’s not unlimited, but maybe capped at 2–4GB. 2GB in 3 days is pretty generous. Sure I don’t download podcasts over the 4G connection. But it suffices for all my mobile and tethering needs generally.

This to me has recently become somewhat of a new window, because in a country like China where you almost definitely need to turn on your VPN, you’re still getting a Malaysian IP while roaming and still enjoying access to all websites as per normal (so its great for Google products; still no Medium access though).

I have still not bothered to try a service like Flexiroam.