Week Four in Saigon and Travel to Chiang Mai
Plus meditations on writing, travel, America and being a creative scholar
Thoughts on Writing, Travel and Being American
To be writing is to be figuring things out.
Writing is a form of thinking.
We discover new concepts and ideas through writing.
We discover who we are through writing.
We discover what we believe through writing.
Travel writing is a special form. When we travel we are again faced with the realization that our world view is only constructed by our conditioning. Now we suspend judgement, open our mind to new interpretations and look out into the world with fresh eyes.
This week I landed in Chiang Mai on Thursday. One episode stands out as memorable, is when I approached a table of travelers at a co-living and co-working space. When asked where I am from, I responded ‘I’m from America.’ This sounded in a very curious way. It did bring to my mind thoughts and reflections on what it means to be from America and what it means to be a traveller.
My story and background is much more complicated. I was born in Poland and immigrated to America when I was ten. I believe that our personal life stories are truly profound, if only we are given the chance to express and articulate them. To articulate them requires a certain level of skill in writing, time and effort, something that not all are given the conditions to develop in themselves. This is something that I myself am seeking to do through my public writing on this blog and elsewhere. Being from an international background, this fluidity of identity has been something that has been on my mind all of my life. It is something that I have meditated on a lot.
What does it mean to be American?
The year is 2023, to many, America is seen as a place that is full of danger, crime, inequality, ignorance and political instability. These are all essentially not un-founded perceptions. At the same time, it is known, that America is a big country with a lot of diversity, and many different stories. I myself have immigrated here as a young boy, and have had the same concerns many do, about being in a place that does not have a strong public sense of community up-lifting. In my experience living in the USA, there has been a sense that it is a country that values pursuits of self betterment, self improvement, achievements, this emphasis is at the expense of helping others, and a sense of community. I have a very strong love for this country. When I would land in the O’Hare airport in Chicago from some trip, I would often cry, because I would be overwhelmed by this deeply heart felt love for this place. Because it is not based on national, ethnic or religious bonds, but it is based on bonds of respect for all humanity, for equality before the law, and for honoring the human right to think, speak and choose whatever kind of life you wish to have. To me these are profoundly cherished values. Therefore I feel a deep sense of concern and a deep desire to be of service to this country and system of government.
These are sensitive topics and require a lot of thought and carefulness to not give the wrong impression. I am writing from a place of real love and care for this democratic system of government. As a citizen of this country, I feel very proud to be part of it and I am exploring here in ideas and words, what I understand to be the essence of America and how it compares to other human ecosystems of life.
There is one episode in my recent travels, when I was in New York City, and I was sitting next to an African American young woman. It was after the conclusion of a hackathon. We were chatting about things, about our lives and whatever we felt was important. We got onto the topic of racism. It is a very loaded subject with many preconceptions that are brought into the discussion. I felt very inadequate in articulating my deep love and desire to improve the conditions of life in this country. Knowing that I was from Chicago, the conversation turned to the violence that has been making news headlines there for many years. I felt ill prepared to share some insight into how things could be better. I tried to express my experiences, of how I sensed there was a real lack of guidance and a system of mentorship to young people in Chicago and all over the USA. I went on to say how there are areas in this country where people grow up with the best education and the best emotional and cultural support and nourishment, and at the same time there is the majority of the USA where people grow up in very dysfunctional and dangerous environments. I didn’t know the solution, but I could share about my firsthand experiences of the problems, and how different it was to my experiences living abroad, in my home country of Poland. America is a country has been and is full of hero’s that return to their community after accomplishing some great feats and share their rewards.
This is the hero’s journey. This is the stuff the every simple and pure boy and girl dream about in their heart of hearts. It is an animal based instinct, that is not only human. To go out there to slay the dragon that threatens their beloved home land.
What comes to mind is Steve Job’s as one example of such a hero. He deeply loved the community in which he grew up in and he gave back to it by being an excellent hero, a person that went out into the world, learned what he needed to learn, and dedicated his life to serving a greater vision of what humankind can be and making it happen.
There is a need for each individual, and each individual has a calling, and when they hear it and they dedicate themselves to it, they are like monks that burn with a passion and obsession of achieving their goal that then pushes humanity forward. It allows humanity to survive. It is what inventors do, it is something that has been written about many times when describing scientists and inventors of 19th and 20th century like Nikola Tesla. Time flows forward, and there are new calls for hero’s to save humanity again, because we create new technology and tools that can destroy us, at the same time we are presented with new possibilities of life that are beyond our imagination. Therefore there is always a need for these hero’s to make the journey to slay the ‘dragon’ which is a metaphor for chaos and humanity’s ability to self destruct.
We as individuals exist within the broader context of our systems of government and economies, this in a large part forms the roots of our existence and meaning. It does not define us but it is the earth from which we spring. I remember reading about the internet forums that talked about libertarianism and bitcoin; the bitcoin talk forums of the early 2010’s. There was a lot of discussions here about political philosophy. I remember reading about how Vitalik Buterin was an active participant on this forum. He described it as receiving a world class education there. To me it seems like for him it was a perfect environment, having been brought up in gifted child schools, and being ‘shown nothing but kindness’ as a geek (a quote from a Lex Friedman podcast interview).
I believe that all kids have in them an innate genius, and that it is the failure or success of the environment they grow up in that determines if they are able to bring to fruition their inherent talents or if they are lost. It is something that is beyond the powers of individuals to design intentionally the environment. It is a result of too many variables, including; government, school, culture, religions, economy. It is a real soup of factors. Yet for a period of time I think that in Canada this environment could be found, and an individual like Vitalik could appear and actualize his inherent potential. In the end, bitcoin and Ethereum, I believe prove to be the digitization of this ‘soil’ that is the foundation of our existence and meaning. This allows us to interact and program it, it allows a more streamlined and effective transactions of vast sums of wealth, that before was not physically possible. It allows for new forms of governance that were not possible before. It essentially takes us onto a new civilizational level.
There are many other places, especially in America, where kids grow up and do not have the right environment to actualize their potential. I have seen this first hand in my experiences growing up in Chicago and surrounding suburbs. It feels like America does not have a good system for nourishing young men and women to be their best selves. This is a tragedy that can and should be prevented. As entrepreneurs in America part of giving back to the community means thinking and working to solve these problems.
What does it mean to be an humanist, gentleman and scholar?
What is the word I am looking for that captures this life of a learned person? It is a person that reads and writes. What is the equivalent of this kind of life in the 21st century? It is a person that is passionate about something. Often they are technical, they are coders or they are founders of start ups. They are like someone from the Apple ‘crazy ones’ commercial. I aspire to be and in fact I identify as one of these types. It is a struggle to find your path in this life style. It is difficult to do it on your own. You need to find your voice and your channel of artistic expression. You need to find your community or tribe where you can share your art and thought and get feedback on it. It requires you to keep learning and discovering new things. It requires you to seek out a new path as there is no ready made paths for this type. Here are some people that I think of when I think of this ‘creative and scholarly’ type.
The founder of Lexica.art, a website that is a collection of Ai generated art and prompts, and an Ai art generator.
On his websites he writes many essays about technology. One about how Steve Jobs is his mentor through time is very relatable to me.
His ability to launch products and write critically about the use of technology is inspiring.
The indie maker pioneer. He has started his journey by blogging about his travels. His choice to keep writing and engaging with critical thinking and technology has been inspirational to me. He wrote a book about his learnings from making indie startups, this process of going back and teaching about what he learns is admirable.
The founder of The Commons, a third space in San Francisco. She writes on her website and keeps a newsletter that is filled with meditations that closely resonate with me. For example this one piece about what is your true hearts desire.
The founder of Akiya DAO, who’s mission is to organize spaces in Japan for community building. What I admire about her is her ability to complete projects and write about them on her website. For example she completed a meditation app in Swift and wrote about it. This kind of curiosity in technology, mixed with ability to present it to the world, is inspiring. This is the kind of thing that resonates and excites me.
What all of these individuals have in common is a drive to keep exploring the world, of engaging with people around them, with participating in the cultural and technological movements of their time.
This is attractive to me because part of my story is about finding ways to keep going to try to find my voice and try to stay in touch with my hearts true desires. It is a battle for self love. It is a battle for finding and kindling within myself creative abilities, it is finding and kindling within myself the heart to keep going on to find creative fulfillment and self development. I believe it is true that it is not the teacher, or the school that will make you into a person of ability and a certain level of creativity. It is up to you to find your way to make it happen. This is the journey that I am on. It is in part about learning the hard technical skills, in my case of coding and writing, and it is in part the soft emotional skills of making the connections that you need to make, of engaging with the right people, of going to the right places where you will find what you are needing and lacking.
It is the story of an intellect evolving and learning. This process can be mapped well onto a neural net learning algorithm, because essentially that is what it is. This process requires some way of articulation and creation in order to move forward and advance. You will not make any progress if you don’t write about your experiences and share what you have built or created with the world. You will not progress in a vacuum.
Last Week in Saigon and Travel to Chiang Mai
This was my fourth and last week in this beautiful place. My cozy AirBnB on the ninth floor of this very old building in the heart of District 1 was a fairly good setting.
On Saturday I met for coffee with a new friend that is also traveling and into tech. He showed me the Ai chatbot he built for a Vietnamese storage company. I was really interested and impressed with this ChatGPT build, it also uses Pinecone vector databases. I shared some suggestions on how to build the front end using React.js and what my experiences with building things with ChatGPT have been like.
Later went to get dinner with a friend to celebrate her birthday. It was great. On Sunday I spent the day walking around District 1 and visited Japan town. I walked around the tight streets feeling like I was in a video game level. They were like a maze. I checked all the ramen shops and compared prices and offerings, then chose one and ate some good ramen.
Later on I walked to the D. Nguyễn Huệ, which is a main avenue and public square where there was some Sunday festivities happening. I sat down to text someone and drink a smoothie when two locals approached me. We talked for about thirty minutes, exchanged instagram handles and it was nice to get to know them.
During the week I reinstantiated my ordinary work routine.
I would work from the cafe during the day.
On Tuesday and Wednesday I went to Muay Thai Kickboxing training. This is a very rewarding experience. I am pushed to my physical limits and later feel really fit and healthy.
On Thursday I flew to Chiang Mai in the afternoon. The flight was about two hours. I landed and checked in to my hotel. I went out to get some dinner and met an American traveller who was a junior student at Stanford in Machine Learning. We talked about traveling, Ai, and ChatGPT.
From him I learned about a coworking space nearby that I was actually going to check out anyway. I went there the next day and met more friends. It is a good coworking space for 200 Thai Baht (about 5.78 USD), I went there the next day. I immediately realized how good it is to sit on the office chairs, and how much I missed this kind of environment, being surrounded by other highly focused professionals. I feel that it was a great decision to come here just because of this experience!
At 4:30PM I went to Muay Thai training at a new gym. It was a lot larger than the one I was attending in Ho Chi Minh. It was different and really good. I signed up for a five class pack which will last me for the 9 days I am here.
In the area of work this week. I completed a Smart Invoice feature. I made some progress on the Raid Guild contract. And I submitted two proposals for new contract work that is coming down the pipeline. I am excited about being a coder and writing publicly in this newsletter. I am excited about continuing work on my startups of dcom.market, InLight Meditation, Squad Goals and VayamAi as well as creating a new Ai startup. It’s a lot of work for sure. I plan to take it one step at a time. Another thing I am working on right now is a new portfolio website to host my blogs and updating my online portfolio.
Today I went into a Buddhist temple that is a few minutes walk from the co-working space and I meditated for about an hour. I felt really great and had a renewed sense of focus and motivation to attack my work and creative output from a fresh angle.
I leave you with this song. Until next week.
confider to check on each new city/county a local maker places, like hackerguarage or similar.