Updated February 2025, from my home in Thailand
A new month, new challenges, and new progress! Here’s what I’ve been up to lately:
Rewriting my book… for the third time
In January, I finished the second round of edits on my book, and I suddenly felt sorry for the two people who read my original manuscript. I’m not stopping here—after being inspired by some of the books I’ve recently read (see my book list), I’m diving into a third rewrite.
As editors like to say:
“Your book is fine. It’s just a couple of rewrites away.”
CapoeiraWiki is coming together
I’m still excited about launching a collaborative capoeira encyclopedia. The technical hurdles are finally behind me, and I’ve been working on the initial content before opening CapoeiraWiki to the world. So far, I’ve put together over 100+ articles, and there’s much more to come!
Relaunching Magazeta
Magazeta is a web-magazine about China and the Chinese language that I founded 20 years ago. It was my first successful internet project and became a cult classic among China enthusiasts.
For the past three years, Magazeta has been on hiatus, but I’ve had a few ideas on how to change the format (once again) and bring it back into the game.
Still learning Thai
Last month, I made solid progress in reading Thai thanks to the Learn Thai from a White Guy course (check it out). I also trained myself to touch type in Thai using a typing practice tool (Thai Notes).
I even bought a pocket Thai-English dictionary to look up words I see around me. Yes, I know using an iPhone camera and Google Translate is faster, but I believe that manually searching for words helps me remember them better.
This month, I’ll keep expanding my vocabulary with Anki and force myself into daily conversations with Thais—one per day. Funny enough, it’s actually working.
That’s what my life looks like right now!