Me in 10 seconds: I’m a mechanical engineer by trade. But I’m also a student of history, economics, and philosophy. I’m running an online business. I’m an avid reader. I’ve been a contributor in a few open source projects. I like to use free and open source software.
Me in 1 minute: When I was a kid, I thought adults knew what they were doing. I figured life was just school, and that’s it. I was wrong. The first thing I dug into was world history—empires climbing, cracking, collapsing; wars piling up bodies beyond numbers; revolutions shredding even the giants. So I noticed a pattern: nothing stays put.
Born in the early 21st century, I missed the days my ancestors scratched out survival, hunting mammoths, painting in caves, running from a saber tooth tiger. But it’s too soon to break out, to hit distant stars. I’m pinned here on Earth—a small planet tied to a plain star on the edge of a galaxy that’s nothing special. Worse, I started in a developing country, Indonesia. This is not me being ungrateful—among its kind, it’s strong—but the gap’s real. Less tech, less wealth, less shot at the top. Anyone claiming that’s not a hurdle is blind and lying to themselves.
Sure, they say be grateful. Indonesia’s got its wins. But I wanted bigger. I thought I’d earned it. Then I saw it: nobody’s owed a damn thing. Not even my own body listens—aches, tires, breaks when it wants. So I worked. I learned foreign languages—English, Korean, Mandarin, Spanish, bits of others. Got decent at writing and coding too, whatever stuck. I read books every day, history mostly, some economics with a bit of scifi here and there. I traced why my country got colonized, how other countries built their riches. I’ve seen all the arguments, the pros and the cons. The takeaway: no promises, no lifelines. Every single dollar must be earned through sustained effort.
I’ve hunted for people who get it—same wavelength, same questions; people who shares my values. Nothing here yet. It’s probably my own fault, missing the signals or pushing too hard. Or perhaps I can’t appreciate the people around me. Everything’s on me, really.
This century’s the breaker. We’ll either push through—tech merging with us, maybe—or choke on it: floods, rogue code, nuclear bombs. There are millions who still wake up to dirt floors, no lights, no doctors, not even a quiet night. I want a world where that’s gone—not some dreamland, just the next logical step, beating nature down like we’ve done since caves. Reality doesn’t budge, though. Took me years to swallow it. If this is locked in, it’s a dark joke. We’re all dead-enders anyway—no one walks out alive.
I can’t fix much. Don’t expect to. But I can keep my own life from rotting. Pessimists are stuck; optimists are fools. I want to move to other countries—hit foreign soil, watch how they live, pick apart their systems. That’s my aim.