What’s a job you would like to do for just one day?
I’d love to do the countdown for an important rocket launch or be busy in the control room.
I watched the Starship attempts live and watched some of the previous milestones for SpaceX live. I always have goosebumps before the launch and enjoy words like “Nominal” and “RUD”. I enjoyed the space Roadster, the simultaneous landing of two boosters and such, even when the vehicle experienced an RUD.
Of course, rocket engineering is very far from my actual area of interest so I’d only do this for one day.
Productivity is like a flower, it needs nurturing and dies if salted. For me, the fertilizer is knowing the meaning of work, how to do it, being on a good team, and feeling enthusiasm.
I feel most productive in the mornings, late afternoons, and early evenings, and least productive after lunch.
I’ve noticed that the two most common sources of regret for my last 20-30 years of experience are:
Missed opportunities
Coulda/Woulda/Shoulda thinking when a disaster strikes and I didn’t see it coming
The risks taken that paid off – what would I regret? For example, when taking my first mortgage, it felt like a great risk. The payment was a significant portion of my salary at the time, the period was long, and the apartment we bought was not great but we couldn’t afford anything better. The interest rate was high, and the seller had some non-disclosed debt and some people wanted their money back. It ended up fine, we renovated the property over the years and resolved the issues. Turned it into a home.
When I take a risk that doesn’t pay off, I also seem to not regret it if it was a deliberate informed choice taken without influence. I stopped insuring my previous car for theft and accidents. It got stolen. The saved premiums for 3 or 4 years didn’t cover the loss of value. Did I have regrets? I didn’t. I made a choice based on the amount of time I lost each year to deal with things like paint damage and vandalism. Covering the cost myself would’ve been cheaper and quicker than going through the insurer and the police on every occurrence. The same happened with previous vehicles, none of which were stolen. It didn’t pay off last time but I felt zero regret because it felt like it was an expected, although unlikely result of my math.
Most of the time when I felt regret, I didn’t see the negative outcome coming at all even if there were obvious signs in retrospect. For example, I played basketball. A second later I was on the ground with a dislocated knee. I didn’t see it coming. Lots of coulda/woulda/shoulda followed. However, the outcome was predictable, and the risk was taken when I agreed to play with unfamiliar clumsy kids. I blogged about bias, assumptions, and intuition, a couple of times this year.
Describe a decision you made in the past that helped you learn or grow.
In the early 2000s, I was a new and ambitious software engineer with very little theoretical knowledge. Worked as a webmaster, which included front-end, back-end, databases, and a bit of systems work, all with Microsoft products. My confidence didn’t match the realities of my actual knowledge. Something happened and 2-3 colleagues quit in the same year, leaving me as the most senior developer, despite my young age and limited knowledge. I had to hire replacements. So, I found some article that said that I should only hire people who are better developers than me. It said that “A people hire A people, B people hire C people” (attributed to Steve Jobs). I took that meme very seriously. The folks I hired were so good that I needed to step up my game significantly to remain relevant. In the process of learning, I decided to go back to the university and get a Master’s degree in Information Systems from Sofia University.
The ability to explain past work would be a top skill during a hiring interview, closely followed by soft skills
Every single person on the planet would be better than me at something and I’m just a few questions away from figuring out what that thing is
Despite that, I did hire some good folks, and they motivated me to learn and improve. Maybe not the most impactful choice I made in life but quite good.
Sofia has many restaurants where you can sit, spend hours, and eat well. The city center is transitioning from an office center to a tourist center, with airlines delivering thousands of tourists every day. Consequently, as offices relocate from the center, restaurants witness a shift in their clientele from regular locals to ever-changing tourists. When a guest asks for a recommendation, we tend to send them to the slow and expensive places for the best experience. The reality is that it’s not where we eat. It’s more likely that you’ll find a Bulgarian having lunch at KFC or Pizza Lab than any of those traditional recommendations.
So here is my list of places where I actually like eating. All are either fast food or close to that. They’re ordered by importance, high to low.
Beshamel – a chain of small restaurants with cooked food. It’s fast food but not junk food. The kitchen is central so the food is the same at all of the places. Most of the meals are not far from what my parents would cook
BDS – a chain of fast food kufte/kebapche places. You can have Shkembe and Shopska Salad or the menu with 2 kebapche and experience the true Bulgarian cuisine
Ikigai – an okay Bulgarian edition of Japanese-style food. If you want ramen though, Umamido is a better choice.
Fabrika Daga – I eat sandwiches there but they have ordinary food. The food is hipster, with a lot of taste in everything. I enjoy that and am a frequent customer
Satsanga – the only vegetarian food I enjoy eating. It would be my top contender for the most delicious food in Sofia
Ribs Brothers – what the title says
There’s nothing wrong with places like Shtastlivetza, Mediterraneo, Pod Lipite, Victoria, Happy and so on that get traditionally recommended to visitors. However, all the places where I go are quick, you pay, get your food, eat, and leave. The food is fine.
I’d normally not take photos of my lunch but found these two, featuring Ribs Brothers and Beshamel.
Veselin.blog 