Exciting 2019 Recap, And What's Next for 2020?

2019 in summary:

Year of 2019 is really exciting, challenging and yet quite fulfilling for me. There's lot of things happened: change new job un-intentionally, travel on many places, up-skill myself with study & obtain some professional certifications, maintain healthy life balance, and keep myself happy & motivated.

Career

Change job from BAE Systems to Datacom, no I didn't resign, it's due to re-structure situation in UK that impacting our project in KL, and I was made redundant. So I decided to took the really good 'exit package' and wanted to take break for couple months for self-study and travel. It's bit sad, because I worked there for less than 1 year, and to be honest I kinda like the company. But well, it's happened.

I guess, I wasn't allowed to be jobless for so long. When I was traveling in Laos, there's headhunter contacted me informing about company that looking for scrum master role, I told her that I only have 1 day in KL after my Laos journey, and before I will fly to Indonesia for another travel. Landed in KL on Tuesday night, had interview on Wednesday morning, and next day on Thursday when I was in airport waiting for my next flight, I got the email invitation to join new company, which is Datacom. It's the fastest recruitment ever for me, need to end my 'jobless' status earlier than my plan.

Good thing is they put me in the project about cloud data warehouse, data analytic, further later has data science, and to add more interesting thing, they're using SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework). This is really good opportunity and challenge for me. I'm so excited, until today.

Self Improvement

I took quite number of online study to up-skill myself, and I managed to obtain some professional certification from it:

PMI-ACP (Project Management Institute - Agile Certified Professional). I almost forgotten that my cert was almost expired, so I tried really hard to collect PDU (Professional Development Units) from my previous activities, articles, books, and other things to make sure I have enough point as the requirement to renew it. After I managed to submit and claim enough PDU, then finally my cert is active again now, until 2021.
IBM Data Science Professional Certificate. I'm always interested to work with data, and my first job when I worked in Jakarta was related with data migration, which is I need to deal with databases, PL/SQL, data clean-up, data migration from old source to new target, and data analytic. And to be honest, when I was 'jobless' couple months ago, I was thinking to continue study to take master degree for data science in Germany, but now I'm already busy with new job. Oh well, I will just keep it for my personal growth and self-interest study for now. Let's see how it flows next.
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C01). My latest work projects are using cloud technology. They use GCP (Google Cloud Platform) in Celcom project, and BAE Systems projects are using Microsoft Azure. I never had chance to have project with Amazon Web Services. So I decided to take online study to take some knowledge about AWS and took their fundamental level of certification to gain knowledge on it.
Certified SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) 4 Agilist. Lucky for me when I join my current project, client gave me chance to enroll in training of Leading SAFe. I love the concept and alignment process in SAFe between scrum team, and how it's scaled up into program, large solution, until portfolio level. It's good to have exposure and practicing this framework.

Fun Activities

This year is really awesome year for me to do travel, I go for quick and short travel every month:

January: It's opened with celebrating new year in Yangoon, Myanmar. And still in same month, I went to Aceh, Indonesia to explore this province and hunting their nice local foods.
February: I went back to my hometown, and had fun event with parents and relatives by visiting Taman Safari, went for hiking, and went to Lumajang to experience nice view of Bromo from B29 peak in Lumajang. It's really awesome experience. Still in the same month, I went to Pulau Ketam in Malaysia to relax and enjoy eating crab and seafood there.
March: I went to Port Dickson for hiking Bukit Batu Putih and Ipoh for hiking Bukit Kledang.
April: went to Phu Quoc, Vietnam. They have longest cable car in the world, and has nice fresh seafood. Still at the same month, I was amazed by witness Final Fantasy Distant Worlds orchestra concert. I'm still amazed with this performance, even though I watch it for 3 times already in different year. And the next day, I experience the most awesome stage performance from my favorite artist, Ed Sheeran in his Divine World Tour concert. Still not finished, I end the month of April with travel to Kuantan, Malaysia for food hunting and short hiking in Bukit Keluang.
May: start the month by spent weekends in Genting, it's chill month because it's fasting month. So I didn't go travel that much.
June: went to Nusa Penida, Bali for quick trip before fly to my hometown for Raya celebration. I can't recall on how many times I visit Bali, and yet still not bored with this islands because there's so much to explore here, I do really love Bali. After went back to Malaysia, I went to Melaka for culinary hunting and watch Encore Melaka performance. I ended the month, by visiting Hat Yai, Thailand. It's near the border of Malaysia, I went there by took the train over weekends, and had fun run there.
July: I went to Kuching, it's on east part of Malaysia. I enjoy their food, went to annual Rainforest World Music Festival, and explore their Bako National Park. And the weekends after, I went for running event at Putrajaya and trekking at FRIM (Forest Research Institute Malaysia).
August: I went to Vientiane, Laos. This my last ASEAN country that I visit, I love their local foods, mostly with Mekong river fish as the ingredient. Then I went to Indonesia to explore some cities by train. I started my journey from Surabaya, then go to Banyuwangi for blue fire hunting and hiking at Ijen Crater, detail can be found here. Then, I took train to go to Malang, and did tandem paragliding at Batu, it's really awesome experience. I continue the journey, by taking another train to go to Solo in Central Java, and ended my journey in Semarang. I wish I can explore more places in my country, especially on eastern part. Will absolutely plan for it.
September: Nothing much, just spent locally for weekend getaway. Spent at Putrajaya, hiking, then had another 21km of Standard Chartered Kuala Lumpur Marathon.
October: Visit Taiwan for food hunting and explore Taipei.
November: Mostly local destination, for hiking and fun run. Then went again to Melaka for their nice peranakan foods, and Upin Ipin Fun Run.
December: Closed this year by visiting Padang, Indonesia. To enjoy their nature & culture, coffee hunting in multiple coffee shop, and all nice but spicy foods. Finally, I can eat Nasi Padang in Padang :)