Hey! I’m Jalyn. I ask why and why not, a lot.
I’ve been a person-of-the-internet since the late 90s, and at the end of 2019, I decided to finally start penning down and publishing my thoughts online.
For fifteen years, I optimized one thing really well: my career. Everything else was I’ll get to that… later?
By 2024, I had financial independence. I also had a calendar that looked like Outlook Tetris, a body breaking down, and this growing sense that success in this one dimension doesn’t equal a complete life.
So, on the first day of 2025, I left my job, and you’re looking at the crossroads of my experiments and trying new things in public.
My writing focuses
…on what I call a full stack life, for experimenting with a flourishing life (eudaimonia — an Aristotle reference + my tech background).
It’s five layers of:
- Strength: Building and maintaining the foundations of my physical, mental, and financial health
- Thinking: Working with my brain, not against it; through deeper understanding of mental models and game theory
- Alignment: Living true to my values and purpose, even when no one’s looking
- Connection: Finding my people and thriving in relationships
- Knowledge: My ongoing commitment to learning, building habits, and managing my resources
(Yes, they spell out stack.
Yes, I spent a while trying to make it work.
And no, I will not apologize for loving acronyms in frameworks 🫡)
Other things that fascinate me
- Travel, just like every other person out there that I know
- Equality and intersectionality are themes close to my heart
- I enjoy playing music, and learned to play the ukulele during the pandemic. So far I’ve only posted one video of me playing a cover, but hopefully I’ll work up the courage to post more videos!
- Coffee and matcha are new interests since 2023 – Caffeine doesn’t quite hit my brain the way it’s supposed to, but it has been fun experimenting with doses
- Stage productions — I’ve centered whole trips to cultural epicenters around shows I can watch
- If time travel is a thing that will get invented, I hope my future self tells me about it
About the site
I use Hugo to generate the site structure, with GitHub hosting the repo and GitHub Pages pointing to my domain for publishing. PaperModX is my theme of choice for now, for my learning journey into Go, Hugo and Git.
I’ve moved around, from Wordpress and shared domain hosting, to Squarespace and Framer, and I’ve been very happy so far on this self-hosted setup!
Typography wise, it’s simple with Inter for both headings and body copy. I use Utopia’s fluid type scale, which is really helpful in figuring out percentages based on your browser size.
Get in touch
If you’re in 🇸🇬 Singapore — hey! I love meeting new people and exchanging ideas and discussions, so if you’d like that over a coffee or another beverage of choice, let’s work something out!
Email: Say hello via email, if you prefer something where character limits are not a thing
Instagram: Slide in @jalyn.cai!
Book a time: Set up something on my calendar