Timothy Lim

November 2024

Hello friends,

it’s been a month of learning and a month of change. It is surreal to be writing to you from the opposite side of the earth, or at least the ‘you’ who are there. The cold came to Oslo just as I had left it and I have been sent photos of small crystals forming in the fjord. I’m not going to lie, the tropical weather suits me. It’s been quite mild, pleasant even.

When the bill of reality comes due

As the month has gone by I have kept notes in the draft of this post and I’ve found that to be incredibly helpful considering there’s a lot of incentive for my ego to bury things. One of the biggest things that has happened was an administrative task that I had put off for far too long finally came due and it bit me in the ass quite painfully. It was a culminiation of a lot of oversights and it compounded into a fairly expensive lesson. Reality will keep slapping you in the face until you wake up.

The most painful thing about what happened is that I let other people down who counted on me as well. I’m grateful that they saw past it and still have faith in me but trust is a precious thing - it is not easily reforged. I’m not writing this to self-flaggelate but rather to just keep a track on things and a record I can look back upon. I’ve also tried to synthesise it into a lesson in my notes.

Beaver Moon 2024

On November 15th, the little writing group I started published our first newsletter entitled Beaver Moon. I highly recommend having a look at it, there are some gems there. I’m feeling quite suprised and proud that my internet friends have come together to share their writing. I smile when I open that link. If you would like to join a writing session, feel free to read more here.

Thinking about Dubai

I’ve been reading Derek Sivers for many years and I was surprised that he chose to write about Dubai, a city with quite a negative reputation right now. In his article he compares it to the jazz bar scene from Star Wars in terms of how it is actually cosmopolitan on a fundamental level, 90% of the residents are immigrants. I’ve also heard from black friends that they have felt an acceptance there that they haven’t even in their home countries.

I’m also beginning to see that Dubai is a post-state. It doesn’t play by the same rules as a classic nation state. It doesn’t need to collect tax and for the most part it doesn’t. It is able to quickly build serious infrastructure and Dubai International Airport will soon overtake Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta as the busiest airport in the world. It is the nature of capital and culture to concentrate. Dubai appears to be the place where this will happen.

Things I’ve read, watched and listened to

Books:

  • More Money than God - a book about Hedge Funds. I never knew the backstory behind the Asian Financial Crisis and I’m actually starting to believe that the efficient market hypothesis isn’t really a thing simply because the ones who pull the levers are just human. I’m keeping notes here.
  • The Hero with a Thousand Faces - lent to me by a dear friend, I pick up chapters once in a while.

Movies:

  • Titanic - especially when I realised that it was a parallel of Orpheus. I’m keeping loose notes here
  • Dirty Dancing - I have a lot of thoughts still brewing about that one.

Youtube:

Articles:

Podcasts:

  • Dwarkesh and Gwern - Gwern is one of my heroes, to say the very least. His site is an institution that I pay pilgrimige to once a month and the depth of his essays have been an inspiration for me to continue writing online

I hope that you are well wherever you are, that the cold doesn’t reach too deep or that the sun doesn’t beat too hard. That the night is a friend and the morning doesn’t wait too long.

I’ll see you next month and take care.

Tim