Early August in Saigon

Weekly Update August 5 - 11, 2023

Contents:

1. On Meditation

2. Week 3 in Saigon Update

3. On Oppenheimer

4. Drone Documentation

5. On Buildspace

6. Conclusion

On Meditation

A practice that has been an important part of my life since I was a teenager has been meditation. I started my interest in Buddhism as a teenager by reading books on the history and philosophy as well as practicing meditation on my own and in meditation centers in Chicago. Over the last ten plus years I have been practicing it on and off. Whenever I feel that I am in a state that is too chaotic or uncertain I always return to this practice. At times I keep a regular daily 10 minute meditation practice. It is a natural part of my life. When I was a boy in Poland, I had at times done an organic form of meditation by just sitting and observing internal and external states.

I didn’t know it was meditation at the time but it felt good and natural. I was naturally curious about contemplating what is the meaning of everything, what is this phenomenon of living, of existing, of memory, of identity, of life, of material and immaterial things. One of my favorite places to meditate was my kitchen floor. While my mom washed the dishes or did something at the kitchen table, I sometimes laid flat on my back on the wooden kitchen floor, with an empty mind, just listening and getting into a state of deep peace. Other times I sat on the side of my bed, or on a sofa and was in a state of deep stillness. As a teenager I returned to this practice feeling that the waves of emotions I experienced while going through High School in a midwestern American City. Since then I had periodically returned this practice. I was amazed that there was a whole culture and systematic philosophy of Buddhism that practiced this and I immediately felt drawn to it. It is amazing that we can identify this and consciously practice it. This practice is very logical, we turn away from distractions, and contemplate the fact of our mortality. We have this one life, and really want to make sure we are living it the way we want to, and not just going from day to day impulsively, reacting to stimuli without considering what we really wish to do with our limited time in this life. I posted a tweet, (which sadly I felt was too personal and deleted soon after) that summarized this idea, of meditation as formulating the answer to the question, who are you?

Meditation is a practice of getting to know yourself. It is about identifying and naming the emotions and mental states you experience. When you name them, they loose their power over you. You maybe feel anger for some past experience, if you name it, and feel it, it can only then start to become less powerful, and something that you can let go of. Feeling anger at someone is a natural body response, yet it is like preparing a poison for someone, and taking it yourself. This is a Buddhist quote. It is true. The wise become aware of their feelings and thoughts. Meditation is a practice that trains your self knowledge, self acceptance and self love.

I posted about a meditation insight that I felt was important to share and remember.

Here I am sitting after a long meditation session in the morning.

Week 3 in Saigon Update

This is the third week for me in Saigon this time. I moved to another hotel in Japantown. I have been staying in hotels for two weeks at a time to find a good balance between variety, value and routine. I have been going to the same coworking space just a short walk from my hotel. This week I consciously started making conversation with the people at the front desk of the coworking space. I used to be too shy and too task oriented to feel good about chatting with strangers. It always felt shallow and like a waste of time.

Maybe because of all of the traveling I have started to really enjoy chatting with strangers. I start conversations in elevators, convenience stores, in the checkout line at H&M and anywhere really. Just observing and sharing the moment of presence, and being curious about the other person, allows for an experience that feels interesting and worthwhile for all parties. The exchange of information is always beneficial at the very least. I have gotten good at summarizing what I’m about and what I’m doing in Vietnam. I am living here, yes, I am from Poland and USA, I am a programmer, I am digital nomad, and so on. Sometimes we exchange social media or whatsApp contacts. Sometimes they become really good friends, sometimes I never hear from them again. It is always interesting.

Typical working environment in the coworking space.

A view from the coworking space.

It has been three months of Muay Thai Kickboxing training in three different countries: Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand.

My typical lunch is a $1.40 Com Tam - broken rice with chicken or pork.

The entrance to Japantown, inside are narrow streets with bars, and bar girls usually loudly calling out to you to come inside for a beer. There is a seat charge of usually 5-7$ and each beer is about $7-10. The girls are really pretty. This is a really interesting world. For me, it is not something I have a lot of money to spend on, but it gives an interesting vibe, making you feel like you are in a cyber punk film, something like Blade Runner, or an anime. I will enjoy it while I am here.

Typical day at the coworking space.

For my work this week I have been developing a web3 application for Raid Guild using React and Typescript. It requires comprehensive testing on test nets with interactions of smart contracts. The second major task for the week was migrating my website, konradgnat.com to a fresh Digital Ocean droplet, after having issues with too little hard disk space on the existing one. I set up a fresh Ubuntu server and new deployment of Django application with nginx and gunicorn as the application and web servers.

On Oppenheimer

This weekend I went to see one of the biggest films of this year, Oppenheimer, directed by Christopher Nolan. It was a very powerful film about a very history defining subject that had previously gotten little attention. I was not familiar with the name and person Oppenheimer. I knew well the history of the Manhattan project, the development of the Atom bomb, and it’s use. I studied the subject in school and in my own time out of a fascination with it, being keenly aware of how it had changed our world. Indeed it is no surprise that one man stands behind the invention, as usually it is up to one or a few people that are key in pushing such a thing into reality out of theory.

My feelings about this film was that, the people that created this thing in Los Alamos, the jury is still out on if they did something good or something that is one of the most terrible things in the history of humankind. The film reaches out to the viewer, and implicates them, what we do in our lives will determine if we are able to survive as a species or perish by our own destruction.

Walking home late at 2:30 am after watching Oppenheimer, the streets still have the scenes of late night Bia and socializing on the streets of Saigon.

Drone Documentation

On this drone shot you can see the Viacom center, a mall with a movie theater, in the middle. To the right middle side, surrounded by the ring of green trees, is the historic Independence palace, and on the far left is the Bitexco tower with the helicopter pad. I invite you to watch the full drone film here.

On Buildspace

This week I started the online course called buildspace, where you launch a product. I am focusing on building and launching an Ai chat with your files website. The benefit of this course is to advertise your product, to connect with competitors and other builders, and have an organized set of content that is curated towards creating startups and other public endeavors.

I posted a reel summarizing my Ai startup for Buildspace. Talking publicly about your project clarifies it to yourself and the world, it is a skill that is very powerful to develop.

Conclusion

That’s it for this week. It has been an update on my 3rd week in Saigon, thoughts on Buildspace, Oppenheimer and meditation.

I leave you with a Spotify playlist I made for ETHMunich.