We regret to inform you that…

One of my new year resolution was to apply to a Japanese company. I did managed to get to the interview stage on PayPay Card thanks to my friend’s referral. Come October, my morale was immediately crushed by a rejection letter after the system design stage. This stings because of a few things:

  • I spent a lot of time studying & doing mock interviews with my friend
  • I thought I did well during the system design stage, outside of a few hiccups:
    • Forgetting the fact that upon receiving requests from the same idempotency key, we should return the exact same response instead of returning a 4xx response
    • Not knowing what is optimistic locking (having an explicit version column, UPDATE using WHERE version = ?, check number of updated rows) because I only used pessimistic locking
    • Explicitly mentioning usage of foreign keys on my schema design, while on systems of scale you’re kind of expected to partition your DB (this breaks constraints, including foreign keys)

Personally I felt that the shortcomings are not that bad, considering I’m applying for a mid level role. But the fact that I’m rejected is something I have to accept, even if it stings. I might be coping, but rejection can also be due to external factors:

  • There might be a better candidate, and the number of accepted candidates are limited
  • Maybe they’re not looking for candidates anymore due to budget constraints, so all pending candidates are rejected
  • Or maybe it’s just a mismatch between interviewer and interviewee

At that time I was so heartbroken, and on top of that various misfortunes fell on me, leaving me very drained physically and mentally. But now I’m fine, I’ll make this a learning opportunity and try applying to other companies.

Be the extrovert

Most of my friends are the type of people that doesn’t start invitations/hangouts. But that doesn’t mean they don’t want to hang out. To circumvent this, I simply decided to start becoming the one who plans meetups/hangouts, and it’s been pretty successful so far. I ended up going to Jakarta a lot on the weekends just to meet up, but it’s worth it.

PAPI (Portable Audio Party Indonesia) 2026

Photo I would have been too shy to go to this event alone, and so would my friend. But together, at least we are brave enough to go. I only took a picture with Crinacle because I don’t want to take up too much of his time (my friend is the one who took the picture above). BTW I got the CrinEar Nightfall, and personally I like it more than the pricier Daybreak (which I also own). Not sure why though, I’m not in touch with my preferences enough to articulare the reason.

I didn’t try any expensive gear on that event because I’m not really in the hobby anymore & I haven’t researched any specific gear to try (my goal was to take a picture with Crin in the first place). My friend tried various gears & ended up buying a purple colored TANGZU Wan’Er 2 (because the other IEMs that he liked are out of his price range).

I don’t care if taking pictures is “cringe” or “not living in the moment”. Memories will fade with age, pictures are forever (as long as you have a backup)

Street Fighter movie review

I went to watch this movie with some friends that I met through a discord server. I watched with zero expectations because I’m not the type of person to play fighting games. I barely know Street Fighter characters (the ones I know are Ryu, Ken, Akuma, Chun-Li, Cammy, Guile, Zangief, Dhalsim, Blanka) and I don’t even know the story of the game. I didn’t expect a live action movie, but I really enjoyed it. Turns out most people didn’t though. Maybe they had higher expectations than me, or maybe I would have not enjoyed it if I didn’t watched it with a friend that jokes around (Joe not built for this 😂).

My final review:

  • It’s a movie best watched with friends & treated as a comedy with some serious parts, something like the Minecraft movie that came out last year
  • If you expect a faithful adaptation then it’s definitely not something you should watch
  • Be aware that there should be a sequel (the plot is not fully resolved)

Friend’s wedding

Photo Part of the reason why I wanted to delay this blog entry to November is because a high school friend of mine had a wedding on the 1st of November. The wedding was far (outside of Jabodetabek area) so it was my first time booking a long distance train by myself.

Once again I’m reminded by the fact that we are all getting older. Two of my high school / university friends are married, and judging from what the others are up to, maybe two more are going to get married soon. I know that time flies, but milestone events like these really hammer it deep.

What’s next?

  • Path of Exile 1 patch 3.30 is on the 13th. @hyggee @numzero if you’re reading this, here we go again…
  • I’m not going to participate in any official 10K race this year. My family got a treadmill, so hopefully that motivates me to practice again. If anyone reading this is interested in running a 10K next year, let me know so I can start training seriously again.
  • Since I’m rejected by PayPay, there is a cooldown period of one year. In the meantime I plan on applying to other companies (Rakuten, Mercari, etc.) soon. This time I’ll go with lower/no expectations so that I won’t be disappointed.