A Week in Saigon for a Web3 Freelancer
Saturday 6/24/2023 to Friday 6/30/2023
Kickboxing
Martial arts has become a big part of my life. This month I have been training Muay Thai kickboxing at a gym in Ho Chi Minh City. It is something that connects me to a sense of pursuing something and being pushed to the limits of my ability. I am usually the only foreigner in the class. Sometimes there is one other lady from Georgia or this Belgian gentleman. The trainers mostly speak in Vietnamese and I follow along and pick up the moves from what everyone else is doing.
It feels really good to push yourself to the limit of your physical abilities. To punch and kick a punching bag and perfect the motions. It is really healthy for both the body and the mind.
The group energy really motivates you to push yourself to your limits. I sense that my form and strength is improving greatly. I feel that I am part of this group and my dedication to this practice is seen and felt by others in the group and it inspires others to give it their best too. It is a good feeling when a big group of 15-18 people all doing one kind of kickboxing exercise in this small hot gym, in rhythmic motions, with some music playing in the background. It is a sight that is really inspiring and motivating.
In the same way that a bird can fly farther when it is part of a flock, because each one of them makes noises to motivate one another and to form a more aero dynamic shape in their flying formation. This enables them to fly farther than if they would fly alone. The same applies to students in a school. You just push yourself to learn more when you are surrounded by others that are doing the same thing. The same can be seen in martial arts organizations that have hundreds of years of history in Asia. The same applies to social organizations like professional unions and religious organizations. I believe that Web3 has a powerful use case here to enable us to coordinate us better and be the next step in the evolution of human organization.
Usually I get some really good ideas and perspectives on things I have been working on during the trainings. Sometimes I pull out my phone during the short breaks and type some notes about some thought I want to explore in writing later or some idea I want to pursue or to write a text to someone.
On Coding in Web3 as a Freelancer
This week I have been busy with my freelance project for Raid Guild. It involves migrating one app called Smart Escrow, inside another app Dungeon Master that is used for our internal project management. This is a complex task and takes a lot of time and brain power to make happen. I have spent dozens of hours on this task. In coding it is a sad reality that things take a lot of time.
It is something that has been part of the life of programmers since the beginning of programming in the halls of MIT and Silicon Valley startups, that programmers are required to dedicate a very large amount of time to complete writing programs. This is a sad reality as it requires us to sacrifice time for other things. This week I had to sacrifice meeting with a friend in order to dedicate time to this task. I am required of me to complete it as this is my responsibility and my job.
My working routine includes switching between going to cafes and working from my hotel room. I block off a large part of the day, put my phone on focus mode and put it in another part of the room, far from my reach. I usually put on some lofi music, with headphones or without. Then usually I can get into a flow state. This is a state of heightened concentration.
I am able to make a lot of progress in this state. I feel that this state is my happy place. I feel that I am putting my life and brain power to a good use. I feel that I am in a good place in life, if I can use my intellect and creativity to make a living. On the other hand when I have difficulty to get into this state because of distractions, then I feel anxiety. Then I feel I need some change.
It is a great privilege to be able to make a living from my creative and intellectual powers. When you realize that most people on this planet are forced to work in meaningless jobs with repetitive tasks, then you become aware of how precious this kind of creative and autonomous work is.
I feel that working with people you like and respect and want to be like is very important. I feel that working alone as a coder is not sustainable and in fact not really conducive to making good work. I believe that like in all things in life, we make progress in groups. I am lucky to have around me a group of developers and start up operators that are competent and that I hold in high esteem and respect. They work with me in th DAO called Raid Guild and in my professional network of friends and collaborators. These are people I am in touch with over Discord and Telegram and that I discuss technical problems with and can share updates with. I can turn to them to help me solve problems when I need help.
Another part of being a coder is meeting other coders in real life. This week I had several opportunities to do this.
On Sunday morning I attended the ‘Dev Morning’ meetup that was hosted in a cafe in Bitexco Tower. It is an meeting of developers without much of an agenda. I had conversations with several developers and spent some time on my laptop. I got to know one Front-end developer that was traveling, originally from Slovakia. He showed me the ChatGPT based game he was working on as a side project. I asked a lot of questions about how the API works and learned a lot in a short amount of time from him. I had conversations with a Japanese developer and a local Vietnamese QA engineer. It was great to get a sense of what others are working on and where they are in their careers. I met an American developer that was in an early stage of their career.
These encounters made me reflect on how really difficult it is to be a programmer, how it is a valuable skill, and how glad I am to be a programmer. I am glad to be a programmer because it allows you to live in the future, to travel by working remotely, to exercise your creativity, your intelligence, to always learn new things, and to meet really smart people all over the world.
My journey to becoming a programmer has been a long and eventful one. I have been doing it for around five to six years. The sad reality that to really learn this skill it takes a decade or more. Many try but few make it happen. It is true that you can find a job within 3-12 months of learning to code, in the best case, you can become a tech lead in 5-6 years and manage a team, but it still is going to be difficult every day and you are going have moments when you feel you just are not making progress. Yet there will be moments when you look back and feel proud for some accomplishment. It will take a lot of different approaches and a lot of time to make it as a software engineer. Still it is a multi faceted journey. Not only is it about a journey of learning the technical skills of coding but also the interpersonal skills, of communicating, of having the courage to go out there to find out what you need to find out, and to find the resources you need to grow.
On Tuesday I attended a ‘Saigon Entrepreneurs Game Night’ meetup. It was located in District 2 at the Sip-n-Play cafe. One of the organizers is actually the owner of the cafe. It was great to meet some new friends that are in tech and entrepreneurship. Some are digital nomads. We played games and talked. Everyone had a really great time. I walked away having made some new local friends. This is why being a digital nomad is so amazing, it is because I get to meet people form all over the world regularly. I met a developer from Singapore of Indian origin, a quant engineer from New York City, an Australian online business entrepreneur and passive income builder, a Vietnamese social media manager from Hanoi, and a business coach from England.
On Friday morning I attended another meetup for developers. This was organized by a local Web3 developer and community organizer behind the community website defi.vn. I had attended this meetup twice earlier in April. This was an opportunity to meet again with colleagues I had met earlier. After about a two month break it was interesting to observe how times had changed. The bear market deepened and one founder and developer had left their previous startup behind to focus on finding a full time job and doing freelance development work in the meantime. Another founder of an NFT protocol continued his effort and it seems it is going alright. We shared about our projects, what we’re working on, and topics related to L1’s, NFT trends, standards and other topics in the Web3 ecosystem.
On being a Nomad
I have been listening to a lot of podcasts on Pieter Levels recently. I have been inspired by his journey. I think there is something special about being a nomad. The life is really interesting. I am discovering that I am finally beginning to appreciate how vast and amazing the world really is. There is much more I want to discover, like for example more in China, India, Africa and Australia. For some reason, before I was much more focused on learning to code and building up my career skill set.
This week I changed my hotel. My previous one was down a very narrow labyrinth like alley near Bui Vien Street. The current one for the next two weeks is near Bitexco tower, also in District 1. It is on the night floor of a residential building that has a very local feeling. People hang out in the hallways, my apartment is on the ninth floor. Some ladies do pedicures in the hallways on this floor with their own shop. On the first floor there is a big motorbike garage, some hair salons, antique shops, fruit and convenience shops. It is really interesting. The room is pretty good for the price, which is about 110 USD per week.
After this weeks meetups and conversations I had with people, and maybe having to do with the hotel move. I have this new appreciation for being a nomad, because I am more conscious of how this is unusual. For some reason it is something I did not think about much before.
Before I didn’t really use the term. I didn’t really think of what I was doing as being a nomad, I just wanted to travel and didn’t plan far in advance.
I think ‘digital nomad’ is still a not a great term. It emphasizes moving around a lot. I prefer slow-mad, or global citizen.
This past Sunday I went to the War Remnants Museum. I walked around the outside and observed the airplanes, helicopters, tanks and other weapons. Most were from captured from the US army. Then inside there are two floors of galleries. This was a really sad experience but it was important to visit this place. I was spending more time in this country and so I was called to get more familiar with this sad history.
I already felt very knowledgable about the Vietnam War. I studied the root causes of it, seen many films, and researched in depth about the atrocities like the My Lai massacre and other ones that were not as well documented. This was a really had thing to accept, how the a global power at the time, the US democracy was able to do such horrific things and how the system we all benefit from being a part of, is complicit in it. I pondered the system of concentration camps that spread around the country and was financed by the US army. There were torture chambers, and many horrific things. I learned about the huge scale of the use of Agent Orange and how it still causes deep suffering till this day. A local expat friend shared about how noticing the blind beggars on the street suffer as a result from a typical birth defect symptomatic of Agent Orange.
On Use Cases of Web3
Our world is changing really fast and the education system is not catching up. Web3 can fill in this need by creating an equivalent of a 4 year education using open source course work and social media. This can lead to a development of a new education system that solves the current problem that is often mentioned of the education system being too slow to adopt to new life realities. The same can be applied to governance.
Best podcasts with Pieter Levels:
Drone film I made Over Ho Chi Minh City