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In early August, my friend Rizky, opens in a new tab and I signed up for a hackathon hosted by Nanyang Technological University together with SNZ Holding. The theme was blockchain and web3.

The idea was Rizky's. Indonesia, and Bali especially, sits on a lot of people's travel bucket lists, and he wanted to build payment infrastructure around that. The plan was to win something first and give the project a bit of runway. Then he asked for my help, and I didn't need long to think about it. It sounded awesome.

We started building Mayarin in August, with the submission deadline in the middle of the month. After a week of judging, the news came in: we were finalists, and the finals would take place at NTU itself.

It was just the two of us. Rizky took care of R&D and infrastructure, and I built the software.

Mayarin is an SDK that sits between crypto and local money. Picture a tourist in Bali who wants to pay with Ethereum. Mayarin converts it into a stablecoin on the fly, so the price doesn't swing while the payment goes through. From there, a payment gateway turns the stablecoin into rupiah for the merchant.

Getting all the way there isn't simple. In Indonesia, crypto is still a bit taboo, and outside of Gen Z and people who work in tech, most people don't know much about it. Converting crypto straight into rupiah is also tightly regulated, and we have to follow the law. So the version we brought to the judges stopped one step short: the customer pays in crypto like Ethereum, and the merchant receives a stablecoin.

The hackathon was about blockchain, so not every judge liked the idea. The people from SNZ Holding were clearly interested, though, and they asked a lot of questions. Each team only had seven minutes, which is never enough when the people in front of you actually want to hear more.

Getting to Singapore was an adventure of its own. We missed our first flight and spent the night in capsule pods at Soekarno-Hatta. We got lost between Changi and the NTU campus, and a 7-Eleven top-up rescued our transit card. Then came two days of building in Room B2 of the ARC before we pitched on Sunday.

We came home with the Builder Recognition Award, worth USD 500. The bigger win for me was the trip itself. It was the first time I'd ever flown out of Indonesia, and I got to spend three days at one of the top universities in the world.

On the last morning, we raced to see the Merlion before our flight, and I was home by August 24. I wrote the whole trip down, missed flight and all, in My First Trip Abroad Was a Hackathon at NTU.

A few weeks into the new job, I managed to set a pan on fire. It was around 3 p.m. I'd just fried some tempeh and left it to cool while I sat down, with the stove still on.

My little sister was the one who noticed. "What's that light?" No idea, I told her, I'd only fried some tempeh. Then it clicked. I got up, turned off the stove, and sat back down, but it was already too late. The pan had pushed the leftover oil past its burning point, and now it was on fire.

Panic took over. All I could think about was stopping this from turning into a real house fire. It was drizzling outside, so my plan was simple: carry the pan out and let the rain deal with it.

It wasn't a good plan. On the way out, a gust of wind pushed the flames right at my face. I flinched, and that one reflex tilted the pan. Hot oil poured onto my left foot and splashed my right. I tried to brush it off with my left hand, so that got burned too.

While I waited for the ambulance, I asked ChatGPT for first aid. The advice was to let cool water run gently over the burns, a slow and steady stream rather than a spray.

The ambulance showed up 30 minutes late, and the ride cost me Rp 900,000. The driver blamed the traffic, but honestly, that one was on me. My phone hadn't shared my location, so the booking went to an ambulance nowhere near me.

It took me to the ER of the nearest hospital. Fun fact: that was the first time I'd ever set foot in one.

Then came the bureaucracy. I didn't have BPJS, Indonesia's national health insurance, and Iwan Fals's “Ambulance Zig Zag”, opens in a new tab suddenly felt a little too real. They put me on a bed and left me there. Nobody checked on me until my friend had sorted out my ID and the payment.

Only then did a nurse come over. She put cream on the burns, told me to calm down and slow my breathing, and hooked me up to a saline (NaCl) drip, another first for me. They sent me home with pills too, which I quietly stopped taking after a month. I'm just not a pills person.

They offered to keep me overnight. I said no. One night there would have cost a fortune.

I called my mom first, and she gave me advice the way only moms can. Then I called my girlfriend, who was still at work, to tell her I was in the hospital. She said she was on her way. After about five hours there, I was back home around 10 p.m.

For the next two months, my girlfriend looked after me. Even the simplest things, like getting to the bathroom, were a struggle. Of course, she had her own things to handle, but after every shift she came over to cook and clean for me.

I never asked her to, and we never really talked about it. She just showed up. Maybe that's simply who she is: she's been working since she finished high school. Plenty of people would have found an excuse. She didn't, and I'm more grateful than I can put into words.

Work was the other worry. I'd only just joined Kolosal AI, and I was sure this would cost me the job. I sent them proof of what happened, and the CEO was nothing but kind. They told me to focus on recovering and said they were hoping I'd get well soon. It meant a lot to be at a company like that.

A month later, I could barely walk. By early February 2026, the bandages were off and I was fully back on my feet.

If there's one thing I took away from all this, it's how burns are graded. A first-degree burn only hurts the top layer of skin. It stings and turns red, like when you touch a hot pan for a split second or get splashed with hot water.

A second-degree burn goes deeper. It's redder and a lot more painful, and it's the one I got. According to the doctor, mine was closer to a two and a half. It had almost reached my nerves, and if the oil had stayed on my foot any longer, it would have been third degree.

Third degree is the one you really don't want. It burns through the skin completely, nerves included, and the skin can't grow back on its own, so you need a skin graft from another part of your body. I'm very thankful I got off lighter than that.