You've seen them everywhere – Hello Kitty, Cinnamoroll, Kuromi and other Sanrio characters, Sumiko Gurashi, Sonny Angel, Fugglers, Labubu, Hirono, Space Molly ... the list goes on. There's an explosion of cute things in our post-pandemic years, I have some, you have some. Cute things make us happy, we look at them and we say “Awww, so cuuuute!”
But therein lies our weakness. What if one day, the very thing that's going to destroy all of humanity is a cute thing? I'm pretty sure we will all be dead meat.
This year I'm going all in to learning about AI, not just as a user, but to really build domain knowledge about how to implement AI in business. This could be a multi-year learning journey, but here's what I'm doing now:
Get a certificate from a credible university in Singapore
Enroll into as many online courses there are about AI, machine learning, and data science
Follow podcasts and YouTube channels to listen to experts in the field
Work side by side with a coding agent to build up my portfolio
Build 2 AI-related products from scratch
The models I'm working with right now to assist me in research are:– Claude, Perplexity, ChatGPT, Grok, Gemini and Copilot.
I will be blogging my progress here so feel free to subscribe and follow along. My goal is to get hired as an AI engineer some time in the future.
Today I started my course in Data Science and AI at NTU, hoping to have a better understanding on how AI works behind the scenes so that I can move forward into this brave new world with open eyes.
The lecturer mentioned something interesting. He said that the technical elements of the course is easy, as we can always use AI to assist us in getting those answers. The real challenge is not “what we learn”, but “how we learn”.
I told my daughter the other day “you learn from your mistakes”.
And she asked “Do you always need to make a mistake before you learn something?”
That got me thinking ...
Recall the times when you don't make mistakes, what happens? You were either following instructions, processes, culture, societal norms. You don't learn during those times, you were FOLLOWING. Then one day you did something wrong. You made a mistake. Suddenly you realised that whatever you were doing was flawed. What do you do next? You changed your actions and fixed the mistake. You LEARNED.
So yes, you only learn when you make a mistake, because “learning” comes from within, “following”, on the other hand, originates from the outside. Which means that in order to learn more, you have to make more mistakes.
I have a 2020 Intel MacBook Air. It is super slow, and super loud, with the fans blowing at max speed the minute I turn it on. I've not been using it much the past few years since I have an M1 Mac mini for working at home and an iPad for media consumption.
Then I went to apply for a 6-month Certificate in Data Science and AI, and lo and behold, their recommended RAM for a laptop is 16GB. I only have 8GB. So I went to check out the prices of the current line of MacBook Airs as well as some Windows Laptops. Seems like I'll have to drop above S$1,800 for any decently spec-ed device.
I got tempted when the prices of M4 MacBook Airs dropped the past few days. I almost bought it. It was only $1,757 for 24GB RAM and 512GB storage. Not bad. But I currently do not have this amount to spend.
So, I'm going to wait a few months later and maybe get a new laptop in March.
If you've read to this point, thank you for listening. :)
But I think it is essential for what I'm trying to promote. You see, as someone who's working on multiple projects simultaneously, I find it really challenging to edit videos after I film them. My upload rate is atrocious (as seen from my Food Delivery YouTube Channel).
My bottleneck is, you guessed it, video editing. So I've been trying to figure out how I can still post great informative content to my audience without constantly making empty promises to upload but failed.
Live streaming! That's what I've come up with, my solution to this upload problem is live streaming. So, which platform? It will be between TikTok and YouTube. I want to start by focusing on one channel, then maybe add another one later. After looking at different pros and cons I've decided to start with TikTok. Even though I'm earning money on YouTube I would like to test out a new platform and learn about its features as I go along.
In the words of Ryan Holiday “The Obstacle is the Way”. I've not done live before so I'm scared of it. But I'll give it a shot. Wish me luck!
It was either a meal a day, or every other day. The $5 deals were hard to miss, coupled with the ease of ordering and getting table service here in Singapore.
But this year I'm going to eat differently. My BFF discovered Shake Salad, which are different types of salads packed in cylindrical containers where you can just add the dressing, close the lid and shake. Each of those cost $5.90, which is not much of an increase from the McD Super Saver meal. Let's see if Shake Salad is going to save my diet.
The greatest enemy of life is INACTION. Many times in my life, I've been crippled with energy-draining inaction and those have been my worst days. But we can’t completely eliminate such occurrences. As humans we suffer from burnout, feeling overwhelmed, anxiety and depression. But I believe we can tweak our environment and our mindsets for the better.
Don’t overthink - learn to catch yourself in the act of overthinking and immediately focus your mind on something else. Mel Robbins has a very effective method called the 5 second rule. She says that the minute you have an instinct to act on a goal you need to count 5-4-3-2-1 and physically move or your brain will stop you. I’ve tried it myself and it works.
Have less material things - We moved to a small apartment, I sold my car, and I cleared out almost 60% of my possessions. I will continue to live light. Having less stuff to take care of has freed up time for the more important things in life, like relationship building.
Build structure and routines - I’m an ENFP and I can be messy and disorganised. But I can also create structure for myself so I set myself up for success. Ever since I started documenting everything into my “Bernie Operating System”, I begin to reap the benefits of structure and as a result, all the small details get taken care of in the form of the routines I create. I don’t get stressed anymore and this creates the mind space for me to keep my mind focused on what’s important and hold myself accountable for that.
Forgive yourself - Deadlines are arbitrary. Remember, the goal is not to meet the deadline, but to stick to it till it’s done.
Every now and then, Google Photos would notify me of photos I took at various points in my life, like 10 years ago, and on special occasions, like birthdays. When I look at the years between 2010 and 2015, I felt a sense of nostalgia looking at what I shared, those were the years of tweeting, blogging and daily vlogging. I loved watching all the vlogs on YouTube and posting mine as well.
During those years, sharing stuff on social media was actually enjoyable. Now it's just stressful and weary. Why is that so? A few reasons come to mind:
No longer about sharing, but all about feeding the algorithms – So many times I see, to be trending on Instagram or TikTok, and even YouTube, you need to produce videos that the platforms want (vs what you want) to get the views. Once we learn what works we change our content, we post stuff that we think will get us views, and sometimes in the process, lose ourselves. The time we take to make a video that trends might be time that we could have spent sharing something original and authentic.
All about selling something – In the past it wasn't a norm to be an influencer. You had to earn it. Now that word has been reduced to “little minions to help market stuff”. Marketers are at fault with this. They pay content creators to sell their products, and if you multiply that by the thousands, every other post we see is either someone on live, selling something, or endorsing something, and on and on. The “influencers” get so little while our social media feeds get swarmed with commercials masquerading as original content.
Short-form videos and doom scrolling ruined it – As a collective human race we need to check our attention span. Social media platforms are reinforcing our weakness with short-form videos. I know, it's a chick and egg problem, and these companies are just out to make money, and if our attention is for sale, why not? Every day I get on Instagram, TikTok and even YouTube shorts, I'm training my brain to not care about anything over 3 seconds to chase the next 3 seconds. I don't cultivate the habit of sitting with something longer and think about it.
Actually, some platforms are going in the path of good – like podcasts, reddit, and the original long-form YouTube videos, they are still gems of content sharing where you actually learn something from people around you.
So in 2026, I'm going to stop my brain rot and go back to my social media roots circa the 2010s and start blogging, vlogging, all with durations longer than a 15cm ruler. Slow down. My brain needs it.
A month ago I wrote an opinion piece about why I think we will not be able to achieve 30 by 30 in Singapore (read more about 30 by 30 initiative). The bottom line is, home-grown food systems do not just require technology, it requires time, patience and a whole lot of skill, something we may not have as a young nation with land scarcity.