Return to Chicago via Tokyo

Week August 18-25, 2023

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Look Back on 5 Months in Asia

3. Last Days in Saigon

4. Flight to Chicago via Tokyo

5. A Wedding in the Family

6. Building Ai App At Buildspace

7. Returning to My Homebase

Introduction

Welcome, this is a weekly blog series that features reflections on daily life, travel, web development, philosophy, technology, art and many other topics in the themes of living an examined life and creating with technology.

Look Back on 5 Months in Asia

This Tuesday night I took off on an over night flight to Tokyo, then in the following afternoon to Chicago. This was a closing (for now) of my time in Asia. What started as a month long trip with a group of Friends to Ho Chi Minh City in April, evolved to this lengthy adventure that has been one of the most transformative experiences of my life.

In what ways was it transformative?

I think for the first time in my life I realized that living in the US is correlated in my personal instance, with depression and feeling like I am not in the right place. At the same time I am fiercely pro American and proud to be a part of this great democratic system, wishing to be so good as to contribute to this culture and system of government. It is a place that for some may be difficult to adjust to and to find themselves fulfilled and feeling alive. I had my formative experiences in a European country and the move to the US was a big change, one that, for not fully known reasons, was not conducive to my feeling well and alive.

Now, I had travelled a lot before, but this trip to Asia was different because it was the first time I was abroad for longer than 4 months and I was in Asia. The year before I lived in Europe for four months, but did not have a similarly transformative experience. Another major aspect was the fact of living in Asia, as a place that is new to me, to live in for a longer period. It was transformative because I was much more active in things like physical sport (Muay Thai), I met many new developers, travelers and locals. It was another step in this never ending journey of self transformation that is opened up to you when you are in a fast evolving field of work like technology and you are a traveller. In fact my entire journey to learning to code has been transformative, all six years of it so far.

Last Days in Saigon

On the last weekend I visited the Fine Art Museum in Saigon. I go to museums seeking inspiration - it is the house of the muses after all - and I am always amazed and find what I seek. I approached and chatted with some young local people about things, their lives there, art, technology and it was good to interact with people at the museum, versus just consuming content, actually speaking with people there is enriching.

On my last Muay Thai training, I snapped this photo with my trainers. I loved this experience. I was usually the only white foreigner in this group classes. Every time I was pushed to my physical limits, sweating buckets, and feeling I am rapidly improving and tapping into that state of being like a pure physical being, a warrior spirit manifesting itself in this body, feeling all the extra unnecessary illusions, physical and material, melt away, disappearing like the ashes from a fire. What remained is this spirit, that is me, that is mortal, and that has all his hopes and dreams still within himself, breathing, moving and fighting for their survival and actualization.

I snapped another shot of the narrow streets of Japantown. This is the street near my apartment, where I walked every morning to get an americano coffee at the bakery and cafe on the left. The ramen, sushi and other Japanese restaurants around this area are phenomenal. I will miss them.

Flight to Chicago Via Tokyo

On the flight I read about how to ‘tame’ LLMs (large language models) and use them in applications. This was a fantastic Medium article that ignited my imagination with thoughts on what is possible and what opportunities exist out there for founders and creators.

At the layover in Tokyo, I browsed through the gift shops and bought some souvenirs of stickers and fridge magnets. I was so happy to be in Japan even just for a moment. Everything is really cool there. I enjoyed a sushi lunch and miso soup, sitting next to a young Japanese dude, who was watching some anime on his phone, with a dark hoodie and ear piercings. I waved to him and said ‘hi’ quickly as I sat down. I was happy, even though I was only on about 2 hours of sleep. I looked out the window in front of me, faintly aware of the people walking and eating around the eating area, looking at the cars and planes outside, feeling really content and philosophical in this airport setting. Airports have this feeling about them, that inspire you to think about identity and your life direction. Everyone around you has their own life and trajectory. You all pass each other in this one short moment, perhaps exchanging a glance, wondering about the meaning of our lives.

On the flight to Chicago I got a free upgrade to Business class. This was the first time for me for a long 11 hour flight. I was inspired to contemplate how some jobs are ‘solved’ like a job of a pilot, everything is clear and explained, they just are required to take the plane from point A to point B. But other fields like computer programming, there is a large range of things that are not predictable and not able to schedule.

I am thinking of Steve Jobs as an example of a person that was able to break through the current restrictions and thinking patterns, and create a new breakthrough product and company, that revolutionized the world. While some people and companies are very static and well defined; predictable.

I remembered an anecdote where a young 18 year old Steve Jobs talked his way onto a plane to Mexico and back. It’s like he was able to bend reality then too. This kind of self assurance is a noble quality. It is him recognizing that his life is very limited, he will die one day, not too far off, and that the most important thing is for him to be himself, not to bend himself to the conceptions, expectations, patterns and roles that exist in the minds of people around him. Rather, much like Buckminster Fuller, he starts from his inner observations and conceptions, and from there builds castles in the air of his thoughts, and then implements them on the world. Using the words of Henry David Thoreau.

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

In my mind, Steve Jobs is the intellectual descendent of the thought of American Naturalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. He excellently embodies their concepts of radical self reliance.

A Wedding in the Family

On Friday I attended my sisters wedding. The ceremony was in a Catholic Church in Ukrainian Village, Chicago. I greeted the bride and we snapped a selfie also with my Mom. It was a memorable moment. I made my way to the Church and had an opportunity to say hello to the groom and then sat down near the front, near some of my other family members. The ceremony was very moving, it brought to mind thoughts about what identity is, what your journey is and who you really are.

I recalled how we both came to this country some 23 years ago, and we were very overwhelmed. It is not talked about enough, about the immigrant experience, all of the stories are fascinating indeed. The truth is that America is a fantastic, complex and not easy country to successfully become a part of and immigrate to.

The contrast that is observed by immigrants, in the difference of life, is interesting, it always has some insights and lessons to teach. This has been the case since the beginning of America. It reminds one of Jane Addams’ book 20 Years at Hull House and about how she observed the different ethnic communities working together and their stories in Chicago.

After the party I drove my Grandma and Aunt home. It was past eleven PM. We rode through the streets of Chicago, on the Kennedy Expressway and then down Montrose Ave through the North West side. We were mostly silent, taking in the experience of the beautiful wedding. Some topics of conversation came up gently and then faded away naturally. I had once worked in my Grandma’s restaurant as a cook. They had operated a lively restaurant and bar in a typical working class Polish American neighborhood for nearly twenty years.

As we stopped at a red light, she pointed and commented on how the sidewalk was overgrowing with weeds. “It must mean something, what is that?” I commented in a casual and relaxed manner. We got into a relaxed discussion about how the manufacturing industry had gone away from Chicago and how it was uncertain how things would go on in the future, where the industry and economy would go from here.

Building Ai App at Buildspace

This week was another iteration of the Ai chat app. I have been watching a lot of Steve Jobs interviews and feel inspired by his clarity and insightfulness. Here is an excerpt that had made a major impact on me:

Cringeley: But how do you know what’s the right direction?

Jobs: Ultimately, it comes down to taste. It comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done, and then try to bring those things into what you are doing. Picasso had a saying. He said, “Good artists copy. Great artists steal.” And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas. And I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn’t been for computer science, these people would have all been doing amazing things in life in other fields. And they brought with them, we all bought to this effort, a very liberal arts air, a very liberal arts attitude that we wanted to pull in the best that we saw in these other fields into this field. And I don’t think you get that if you’re very narrow.

This is my guiding philosophy for creating applications. It is to do it with taste. This means to iterate on the design, on the implementation, and to really put your best craftsmanship into it.

I remember taking a drafting class in college. When I made an architectural diagram and it got a less than perfect score, the teacher encouraged me to do another version, to improve it. To me this was an exercise in observing how trying something again, putting your best into it, made you feel like you were doing something good and right. It made you feel like you were contributing something to the world, like you were doing something good with your time. It is a state that you can cultivate and focus on, and expand. That is to create something beautiful. You can use both sides of your brain, the analytical technical side - using the code and frameworks and the artistic side - using good design judgement. This and getting feedback from others, and then implementing it again. This is the cycle that is emphasized in buildspace.

create → launch → measure → learn

This is the process of making great art, something that you care about. This is then sensed and felt in the viewer or the user of the app. It is appreciated. It is like a journey, where you and the user are going on together.

I was inspired by this interview to compose the above quote. It feels like this is the right path to go for a developer and founder.

Returning to My Homebase

I got this property in March 2023. After furnishing it and living there for six months I set off on a digital nomad journey. Since then I have been returning to it to do repairs and enjoy living there for a short time. During my absence I remotely manage a short term rental there. It feels like a natural side hustle for me, as a programmer, dealing with physical things is similar to dealing with lines of code. Also because my grandparents owned similar homes, and my parents also had a rental property, so as a kid I had taken care of a lot of home improvement and maintenance tasks. It is a physical aspect of my digital creations. I have dreams of running a co-working, co-living programmer community here one day, perhaps with a coding and robotics school for kids. I dream of hosting monastery type functions here, something like a Chinese Kung Fu monastery. To my mind, that is one of the ultimate ‘healing’ centers of our modern world.