Well, the end has come. 2020 has been a chaotic, hectic, messy year. The dominating topic of discussion for this year was, and will continue to be, the novel Corona-Virus. With over 83 million worldwide recorded cases and almost 2 million deaths, this pandemic will regrettably be remembered as the defining marker to the entrance of the 2020s.

This year has tested all of our collective patience. With lock-downs lasting the majority of it and an entire political divide forming between those who want a prompt return to normalcy and those advocating caution and patience to avoid exacerbating the ongoing pandemic. I'd be remiss not to mention the complete absurdity of the American governments response to the pandemic (spearheaded by a disgraceful President Donald Trump). Most recently there've been reports about a mutant strain of the virus continuing to run rampant despite recent public vaccinations.

On some level I think we all underestimated the very immeadiate and long-lasting consequences of Covid. I remember late last year (perhaps November) one of my lecturers made a joke about how hot the room was and whether it was worth risking opening the windows, for fear the virus may leak in. This was back at the very beginning when the pandemic was still isolated to China and many of us took it as a far-off hypothetical. Not soon after that it became reality for myself and many others. Halfway into the 2020 spring semester in-person lectures were suspended, assignments were delayed and module-leads rushed to switch to online-teaching and setup digital assessments for the remainder of the semester. It wasn't perfect but I suppose we all endured. The expectation was that everything would be fine by the next semester but it wasn't and it still isn't. Everyone collectively just seems to be hoping everything will be back to normal soon, and that hope (I suppose) is dulling our effectiveness at solving the onslaught of new issues. I have little more to say about Corona-Virus. This post isn't to discuss the ramifications of it, although I'd be lying if I said 2020 as a whole wasn't defined by this pandemic.

In other news 2020 is the first year since I began writing this blog 😂. My intentions were just to have a place that I could jot down my thoughts and recollections. I keep actual study notes in an org-brain in Dropbox and at some point I may link it to this blog like the venorable Jethro Kuan. To date I've only written around 6 posts. Early into the year I started applying for new-grad roles and so my initial focus of writing about my thoughts and opinions switched to dogmatically studying data-structures, algorithms and solving extensive leet-code problems. I also directed what free time I could muster into working on more personal projects, the kinds that let me learn new technologies and frameworks. Luckily my devotion payed off and I managed to get into the Bloomberg Engineering Graduate scheme in London. By the time of my 2021 year in review I'll hopefully be 2 months into my stay at Bloomberg and have much more hopeful things to talk about.

2020 hasn't been the worst year ever. It's just the most memorable one I've had to date and hopefully it'll stay that way, lest something worse lie on the horizon. It's been a long ride and I hope 2021 will be a considerable improvement for everyone; I leave you with my inspirational quote of the year.

I'd rather regret the risks that didn't work out than the chances I didn't take at all.

Simone Biles, Athlete

#Stray Events

• I switched from Windows to Linux (Arch btw) as my main desktop OS. I had been using it on my laptop since early last year however now I'm using Linux exclusively and loving it ❤️.
• The Queen's Gambit starring (Anya Taylor Joy) took the world by storm.
• The Promised Neverland manga reached a rushed, albeit enjoyable conclusion.
• The Bokutachi wa Benkyou ga Dekinai manga took a somewhat refreshing approach to harem style series and reached a satisfying and enjoyable end.
• One Piece finally reached chapter 1000 😎, only 10 times as many left before it finishes 🎉.
• The long awaited sequel to the unexpectedly decent Wonder Woman movie, Wonder Woman 1984 flopped... HARD!.