Looking Back At 2024
I always wanted to try out the new scrollytelling feature in Quarto. However, I lack the inspiration and motivation to find something to write about. It is the holiday season and I wanted a take a break from working with data, especially after presenting one during the R User Group Singapore (RUGS) November Meetup.
After reading their 2024 life’s journey and lessons of some of the people that I have followed (Crystal Lewis and Ken Vũ) on social media, I have decided to try something different this year and write my own 2024 reflections using this new Quarto feature.
Here goes nothing…
Table of Content
- R4DS Book Club Cohort 9
- Interprofessional Practice & Education (IPE) Day 2024: Building Bridges, Breaking Barriers
- Sing On 3
- International Krakow Choir Festival Cracovia Cantans 2024
- useR! 2024
- European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress 2024
- R User Group Singapore (RUGS) November Meetup
- Giving Back In December
- Dance Fitness Progress
- Precious Moments Angel Collection
- Reflections
- Meta Information
R4DS Book Club Cohort 9
Despite an unpredictable working schedule in the hospital, I tried to attend the R for Data Science (R4DS) book club cohort 9, hosted by Lydia and Ken since August 2023 at a weekly basis in the Data Science Learning Community (DSLC) slack group.
It is hard for me to believe that I could stay on with this cohort till the end when the cohort had the last meeting around February 2024. I ended up making some new friends online as well.
See playlist at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3x6DOfs2NGjVMs1NtbWu4s_ZgGhGKnrN
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Interprofessional Practice & Education (IPE) Day 2024: Building Bridges, Breaking Barriers
I had attended IPE day for the first time on 29 Feb 2024. It was an opportunity for healthcare professional to meet up, share and learn how to improve collaboration and the quality of care for patients.
I initially thought that I would be lonely as I was a research officer who had just started his job in less than a year. However, I was wrong. The people that I had met were friendly and just wanted to know me as a person, rather than my limited background in the medical field.
One of the highlights of the event is NNIPENDO. It is based on a collaborative game inspired by a popular multiplayer game, Overcooked. The objective was to earn the most gold coins by making dishes within the limitations of each team member’s assigned role.
I was assigned as the cook and had to cut and paste ingredients on the paper to create a dish but I could not leave the table to get the ingredients. The role turned out to be great for a quiet observer (and data cleaner) like me as I am able to create the dishes quickly in spite of the many ingredients scattered across the table. The team that I was in managed to get second place.
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Sing On 3
Not many people may know this but I am actually in a university alumni choir. For someone with limited background and interest in music, it seems like a miracle that I have been in this singing group for close to 10 years.
For now, I belong to the Tenor section in the alumni choir.
On April, the alumni choir managed to have their own concert called Sing On 3: Contemplation.
Here is the link to the program booklet.
Learning and memorizing new scores was a challenge for me but I still managed to pull through a decent performance and catch up with my university classmates along the way.
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International Krakow Choir Festival Cracovia Cantans 2024
I was then taken for a wild ride when the alumni choir was preparing for a choir competition in Krakow, Poland on June 2024. Practice during the period of May was intense and was afraid that my body could not keep up with the long hours of singing.
Nevertheless, the alumni choir managed to obtain a silver diploma in the mixed choir adults category and a gold diploma in the popular & folk music, gospel, spirituals category.
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useR! 2024
On July, I was given the chance to attend the useR! 2024 conference at Salzburg, Austria. I am grateful to the organizers for accepting my abstract and National Heart Centre Singapore for letting me spend some quality time with the R community.
During the conference, I had presented some data extraction and validation tips on how to deal with formatted tabular data from Excel.
Slides
Source Code
Despite my introvert nature, I managed to make new connections like
- Thomas Vroylandt
- Wenjie Sun
- Reiko Okamoto
- Juan Claramunt
- Shannon Pileggi
- Kelly Bodwin
- Evan Masango
- Binod Jung Bogati
and many others who are interested in what I do.
By pure serendipity, I also won a book while playing a small game at the cynkra booth and had it signed by David Granjon, the author.
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European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress 2024
As a research officer from National Heart Centre Singapore, I am heavily involved in the Global Pretest Probability Study of Coronary Artery Disease (GPS-CAD) study.
My task involves collecting, cleaning and harmonising clinical data from at least fourteen different hospitals and clinical trials. The harmonised data are then sent to other data analysts and statisticians for further analysis.
August 2024 was a significant milestone for the study as it was presented during a late breaking science session in the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress at London.
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R User Group Singapore (RUGS) November Meetup
It started when an R enthusiast, Nien Xian contacted me via Linkedin around March 2024 and expressed interest in meeting other R users in Singapore. This led to a series of events that caused the revivial of the R User Group Singapore (RUGS) Meetup on November 2024 after its hiatus for a few years, in spite of limited experience and resources.
During the event, I had presented how to create a simple Quarto dashboard of Singapore’s Fertility rate using the fertility and live birth datasets that was available at https://data.gov.sg/
Slides
Source Code
Here is how the fertility dashboard looks like.
Dashboard
Source Code
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Giving Back In December
When people asked me what I would be doing during the festive season of November and December, I usually reply that I will be assisting the university choir in caroling as an alumni to spread the joy of the Christmas season.
However, after the Covid-19 pandemic, I was not able to do this for a few years due to a reservist commitment and not being able to accumulate enough leave from work to help out as I only started by new job as a research officer in National Heart Centre Singapore in 2023.
This year, I feel blessed that I am able to return and help out once again. There is always something magical in caroling that is able to connect people together.
Here are some videos and photos that was taken by some of the univeristy’s choir members.
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Dance Fitness Progress
During childhood, I was not physically active as I was not good in sports and other fitness related activities.
I still remember that I was scolded during a kickboxing class for punching like a girl, move as if I was dancing, falling down most of the time and even punching the instructor by mistake because I was afraid and closed my eyes.
Most people warned be that I would suffer greatly when I entered military life.
There was a period after graduating from university that I wanted to find a physical activity that I can cope and enjoy in spite of my bad experiences in the past.
I tried different things from yoga to mixed martial art and then realized that dance fitness was for me (even though it is more popular activity for woman rather than man) not because I was good at dancing but like the R community, the people were friendly and willing to guide me on the dance steps.
I then started doing Kpop X Fitness around 7 years ago and later Zumba in 2020 from instructor Jaenny during the COVID period when I feel that I am able to handle a full one-hour class. Here are some videos and photos that was taken this year by Jaenny or her husband James.
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Precious Moments Angel Collection
I do share the same interest as my mother since young. We both collect Precious Moments Figurines, especially the angelic ones.
Here are some of my mum’s favourite which I brought for her during her birthday, Mother’s Day or Christmas.
- You Color My World With Your Love Figurine 740002
- A Family of Love, A Gift From Above 0000366
- I Love You Bunches 109034
I usually get these figurines as a second hand product from Carousell as Precious Moments figurine collectors tend to sell their retired Precious Moments set for a cheaper price in this platform.
- Sowing Seeds of Kindness 163856
- Some Plant Some Water But God Giveth The Increase 176958
- A Bouquet From God’s Garden of Love 184268
This year, I am happy that I have managed to complete the 2004 Heavenly Angels (representing Joy, Peace and Love) set.
- Simple Joys Put a Song in Your Heart 117794
- All Wrapped Up With Love 117795
- Bringing You The Gift Of Peace 117793
The last angel on the right is called
- My Peace I Give Unto Thee 610047
Reflections
During reservist training in 2021, a kind soul gave me a lift home from my reservist camp. While driving, he asked me what my hobbies were. “Not much.” was my reply. I said that because I am afraid of being embarrassed or laughed at after sharing about my own interests and hobbies.
Despite being told by an instructor during my national service that I write “interesting stories” about myself, I am someone who personally avoid looking back about my life or writing reflections.
Like Belle from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, I am always been seen as different from many people and find it hard to fit in.
Below is a table of examples
| People I Know | Myself |
|---|---|
| Works with Python. | Works with R. |
| Goes to the gym, do sports or combat classes like kickboxing. | Goes for dance fitness classes like Zumba. |
| Plays PC/Mobile/Xbox/Nintendo games from Pokémon to Genshin Impact and talks about soccer | Collects Precious Moments angel figurines. |
| Goes for vacations during November or December. | Stays in Singapore, do caroling and write Christmas cards. |
| Uses Tiktok and Instagram to find the latest trends of things. | Uses X and later Linkedin, Bluesky and Fosstodon instead. |
The list can go on…
Sometimes, I find it hard to keep a conservation going because usually the conversation ends abruptly after I have shared that I am not working on the same thing or I do not know what kind of questions to ask because I have no clue what the other party is talking about.
Yet looking back at what I have done in 2024, it appears that I have made a lot of decent achievements and self-fulfilling things in life.
It reminds me of the story about the professor showing a piece of white paper with a black dot to his students and asked them what do they see. Like the students, I was too blinded and preoccupied by my weaknesses and failings (represented by the black dot) that I failed to see the positive things I had done (represented by the white part of the paper) even though they were so many.
Perhaps, I should focus more on taking my eyes away from the black dots in my life and learn to be more mindful about the blessings and moments in my life that makes be happy and satisfied.
The events in 2024 remind me that there are people out there who are interested in the work that I do, will appreciate my talents and accept my shortcoming. I just need to have more self love, faith and courage to get up of my comfort zone to find, meet and hopefully have a fruitful relationship with them.
No matter how poor and unfair our lives can be, how much pain and suffering we are going through or how lonely and depressed we feel, our lives on earth are still a gift from God.
It is all right and normal to feel down, afraid or to be not at our best sometimes. It is just part of being human. We should not be living life in the shadows. As long as we are still alive, it is never too late to make the best use of it.
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Timid man covering face with hand and peeking through, embarrassing, feeling sorry, shying in Vecteezy
Eggs in tray on white surface by Daniel Reche in Pexels
Output from Gemini 1.5 Flash using prompt “Black pen making a dot on a white paper”
Life is a gift from God poster from Char Kantha Martin Facebook post
Meta Information
Soruce code can be found in this Github Page
Here are the R packages used.
Here is the R session used to generate this webpage.