obynio

The website recommends to contact the permanent representation of my country, and more importantly by phone which is apparently more effective. Not that I'm worried about it but I wonder if anyone here already did this, is it an accepted practice to reach out with such a method ?

Happened to me as well, I got a visa and an offer to work in Japan. I resigned from my current company, send the leave notice for my apartment, started packing and was supposed to fly there a month later. Omicron appeared a few weeks later, Japan sealed their borders, canceled all pending visa. No exception. But Japanese nationals were still allowed to travel freely anywhere and get working visa for Europe (of course).

Luckily my previous job accepted to cancel the resignation and I managed to keep my apartment since I had a very good relation with my landlord. But I still hold a nasty grunge to the Japanese government for that dick move.

When I finally made it 18 months later, I got randomly interviewed at the airport and talked about this covid management shit show, the lack of reciprocity between JP and EU, their government's inability to take any sensible action in a whole year... Even the interviewer was embarrassed. Needless to say, the interview was never broadcasted.

Don't get me wrong, the Japanese are wonderful people and there is a lot to love about them, their culture and their language. But they're governed by (very) old and incompetent politicians that rules the country like we're in 1980 and never cease to amaze me by their inaction and lack of innovation.

Tokyo Dying Alone is a visualization of data surrounding the lonely death problem in Tokyo, Japan.

That was a beautiful story that hit me harder than expected. I wished my dad had left behind a journal. He died as well when I was in my early twenties, but I still feel like I didn't knew him as I should have.

I knew my dad had cancer but he was trying hard not to show it. Maybe he wanted to keep face in front of my brothers and I, to preserve the best image we had from him, a strong and strict paternal figure from outside but a loving father from inside. And still, I kept denying it, refusing to accept the evil that was eating away at him. I was that dumb introverted kid that had nothing but work to escape the reality.

I still remember his last look at me while I was heading back to college after visiting him. A look of pride and sorrow, as he knew what would happen in the next days. And for the first time in my life, I saw my dad shedding a tear as he was asking me to take care of my brother's future. It was discrete, but I noticed it, and I still wish I could slap the past me and stay with him in his final moments. This will be forever among the biggest regrets I have.

Spend time with your loved ones and make sure that time is well spent. Sometime you never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.

That brings back some good memories, I learned socket programming thanks to your guide back in high school.

Ended up working in infrastructure so eh, you kinda paved the way for me :)

As a junior SRE that got hired in this role as a new grad, I find these resources quite handy for anyone that would like to step into SRE. I would like to add three other ideas

- Reading the SRE book from Google to get a glimpse of the SRE philosophy. A lot of companies rebrand their Sysadmin or DevOps roles as SRE because it's trendy. Many businesses do not need SRE and need to make sure they understand the idea behind it before doing so.

- Learning Golang for such a role is becoming increasingly vital. So many SRE tools including Kubernetes, Prometheus, and Terraform are written, and extended, in Go that it's almost a requirement next to learning Bash.

- A lot may disagree on this one, but get yourself some certifications. SRE is kind of a broad role and companies do not know how to assess the skills of candidates, and unfortunately they often rely on certifications to do so. You don't have to enroll in the most challenging ones as a junior, but just one or two basic certifications to get a rough idea of a provider or service capabilities. Choose wisely.

It can be difficult to show off any personal project in such a field, but you could try to create your own infrastructure as a side project, self-host some services and provision them with Ansible for example.

But most importantly as a new SRE, find yourself a good team and good mentors within that team. Getting into SRE without any previous experience is a hell of a ride, but a very rewarding one. Like previously said, SRE roles are jack of all trades and the field is so broad you never stop learning :)

> Also, I used to hold the illusion that I'd always have my family and parents to talk to. But that's not true either.

This. I used to think that way, then I lost my dad from cancer on my 20's. That's when you reflect on all the things you'll never be able to experience together.

Although I'm only 24 and still young, my piece of advice would be to enjoy your family to the fullest, because no one knows what tomorrow will bring.

> You will accept the things you tried and failed. But you will regret not trying.

This. It's not the first time I hear this advice, and even though I'm only 24 years old, I try to live by that.