I grew up in a city located near China. My earliest memories are of long summer days spent exploring the nature since I live in a remote region of the city. It is also where I learned to appreciate the beauty of simplicity and the power of imagination. I would spend hours wandering the woods, creating elaborate stories in my mind.

My parents were both educators, and our home was filled with books. I would lose myself for hours in stories of far-off places and extraordinary people. Perhaps it was inevitable that I would develop a fascination with storytelling and communication. While other kids dreamed of becoming astronauts or firefighters, I harbored secret ambitions of becoming a writer, capturing moments and emotions in words that could transport others just as I had been transported.

School came easily to me, but social connections were more challenging. I was the quiet kid who preferred the library to the playground, who found more comfort in ideas than in the chaotic energy of my peers. This sense of being slightly out of step with others would follow me into adolescence, both a source of insecurity and a catalyst for developing a rich inner life.

It was during these formative years that I discovered computers — not just as tools for games or homework, but as portals to new worlds of creativity and connection. The first time I wrote a simple program and watched it execute exactly as I had instructed, I felt a thrill of creation that was almost magical. Here was a medium where precision and imagination could coexist, where logical thinking and creative expression weren't at odds but were two sides of the same coin.

I started my University life in Mandalay which is the second biggest city in my country. I got the freedom that I always wanted. The first week was a little lonely but I made a lot of interesting friends after a week. Guess what? I ended up being gamer, smoker and alcoholics because of them. But they were still good people.

It was the happiest moment of my life til this day. I was drunk almost every night and I didn't even study a bit. I went to short trips that I never thought I would go. I made that decision in just 1 minute thanks to the friends that I had. I had my first breakup at that time which is also a story itself but long story short, I was dumb and she's smart so I just ended up crying like a bitch.

The calm is over, the exam was postponed because of COVID and we didn't know what's waiting for us. I came home and believing that we'll all meet again when the COVID is over. (Spoiler Alert: it didn't) I had to stop my bad habits at home because I will get killed if my parents know how I live in Mandalay. I still had connections with my friends from Uni via game around that time.

I spent my darkest hours in a dark small room, hunched over my 8 years old laptop and grind. Failure after failure, I found another failure that lead me to change my life. I failed at a job interview, and I posted on reddit that I was willing to work on a project for free just to get experience. And thankfully, a guy from Australia messaged me. (While looking back, I always feel like everything happened as if it is god's plan.)

His name is Nick and we're at the same age. He wants to build an AI that can redraw floor plans. As someone who learnt for his entire life drawing floor plans, it was an offer that I couldn't deny even though I had nothing and paid nothing. We worked like crazy, we talked and discuss for hours and hours believing we can build the next Apple. It was 'Archaic' and we're now 21 years old first time startup founders. Another life changing event happened after a month.

From broke and now became a refugee. The civil war is now close to our city. I was hearing explosions, airstrikes almost every night while I was coding that damn website. That was the proudest thing that I did. Later, the battles became so close that I was seeing a helicopter shooting rebals and the rebals shooting back that damn helicopter in broad daylight without telescope. That lead us to move into the city center immediately.

It was a cold night, we didn't bring any blankets. I also had exam from UoPeople that night, and I was also making landing page for my website. Do you know how a refugee camp looks like in my country. It was so crowded, the kids are crying, since it's a hall, it's so noisy and the only time everyone stop making noise is when kaboom. I should be scared and depressed but I wasn't. I've changed and I've grown.

Luckily, since my parents were teachers, one of their student invited us to live in their house with us. Since they're rich, they got plenty of spaces to share. And now I can sleep in peace except from the explosions. We shipped our website when I was still in that house and guess what, we had zero users. The problem was simple, we were late. Our core feature was to generate property descriptions and openai released their GPT stores so why would they pay us to generate the same thing. (We had more interesting features like google map integration but no one really cared.)

It was another failure but unlike my previous ones, I was proud. After a few months living in that house, we made a plan to leave the city because we knew it will get closer again. We took debt and we plan to move to a peaceful city. While planning, another storms hits. Junta made a law that everyone at my age will have to serve the military. But since it won't affect immediately, we took the risk and moved. I started a new life there for some reason, I was listening 'viva la vida' from coldpay on the car and I can never forget that.

I still worked on my startup for a few months and later we both took a break peacefully accepting that we were inexperienced. I got nothing to do except from working on my own projects. I was still making mistakes but these are not stupid mistakes anymore. Tbh I was lost around that time. I didn't know what's waiting for me and I didn't know what to do. I posted stuffs on reddit asking help for my country's situation and met a guy named hamburger_spaceship. That dude turns out to be a girl. And thanks to her, I got a job at 'carching' which is a Malaysian startup but this time, I got paid around 160 USD. Then another chapter begins.