Jan 31, 2021

6 min read

January 2021

Reflection time.

So, this month ends quickly. The first month of the new year. I am still struggling with my inner emotion. I am pretty close to the answer for myself. Now I am going to do the highlights of this month, let’s see!

Houze YEP 2020

My team’s skit won the 1st prize of Houze’s got talent 2020.

It took exactly 1 week to prepare everything from a single idea. The main purpose is I want everyone to participate in our show so we can enjoy ourselves as a team. The first idea is about the “Tam Cam story” and it failed because it was impossible to prepare such things. Then we changed to the new idea that combined singing, shadow dancing, and ending with a message to everyone.

This idea met a lot of technical challenges but the team figured it out to make it work. I am really proud of my team to earn this result.

A quote

“A great product manager has the brain of an engineer, the heart of a designer, and the speech of a diplomat.”

– Deep Nishar, Vice President of Product at LinkedIn

Table Tennis

With a commitment for 2021 is about health, I joined the table tennis club at church to practice with a team 3 days a week. After a while I didn’t play ping pong, it’s such a joyful time to be back to play it again. This time, I am the weakest one in the group :D Practice, practice, practice!

My manga collections

It’s time to say goodbye to my childhood friends. They are characters in the manga series. The first series I bought was Rurouni Kenshin in 2002 (19 years ago!). The price was increasing from 5000 vnd to 25000 vnd after 15 years. I stopped buying after I got married.

After much lost time, I have now 1000 books, 59 series.

A hit of Tech Biz

In January, we executed 5 programs to acquire new active users for the Houze super-app. The hit one was the program we partnered with Highlands coffee. It sold 105 cups of coffee in 3.5 hours, reached 3000 organics on a fan page, increased 8% new users, opened a new partnership offer from King Coffee.

FutureU — BBF team

I am a volunteer mentor for the FutureU program, in charge of a high school team named BBF, in short of Build Better Future. They went to Top 20 and presented in English to judges yesterday for the Top 10 round. They did pretty well with a demo made from paper. Their project is about the floating house for the middle provinces of Vietnam when the storm and flood comes. It’s a good time to zoom meeting with the youth, not only share what I have learned but also learn from them. They’re very smart and confident students.

Lunchtime

I think it’s worthy to build a relationship with the ones we care about. Relationships in the workplace, in family, or long time ones. I will spend at least 2 lunches with friends each month to have quality time and strengthen my friendship circle.

Chess

I haven’t played chess before. I just know the basic rules. Now I play it after I found a chess app on iPad and it’s very cool to play. You can see it in the picture below. Enjoying Sunday morning with my lovely daughter, a coffee cup, and playing chess is just wonderful. Chess is fun!

A message for me

I was reminded this morning by a verse in Proverbs 16:3. I depended on my strength, I didn’t need to listen to God to let Him guide me. I want to change it, to be back to the old me before when I have nothing but I have everything in God. Now I thought I have everything but actually, I have nothing.

I want to be light, to run through streets and cities, to carry heavy things on my back in hours. I want to sleep at ease and want to wake up early to enjoy the new day. I want to reconnect with God and fellowship with Christians. I want to be Your son in Your house. I want to live a life like Your good servant.

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”

Next month challenge

It’s a Tet month with 2 weeks off. Here is my book list, 7 books. I will replace Deep Learning with The Ride of Lifetime.

A thing I will stop doing

Trading stocks at the eToro platform. After 10 months of trading in stocks (my first deposit was on March 15th, 2020), I learned something new about the stock value and the stock market. Sometimes I enjoy and spend time on it, sometimes it makes me hard to sleep (one thing is the active working time is starting from 9:30 PM in Vietnam for the NYC stock exchange market). I think I don’t belong to it, I will cash out all tomorrow. I am the one who likes to accept risk but within my control, in eToro I don’t feel secure enough to put my investment on it. So it’s my decision and I hope to be back to US stocks someday after I found a better and more secured way to put the money on.

So, that’s it for January 2021. Next month will be a new month with a new commitment, a new challenge, and (still be secret) a new living place.

Goodnight,

The Park Residence, 31 January 2021.