About

Hi, my name is Adrianna. I am a tinkerer / product manager / former founder / professional worrier who has been building things on the web for the past 21 years. In 2003, I launched Popagandhi, a blog (blawggggg… still a weird word after all these years) and it, as well as I, have taken on many iterations through many different lives since.

From high school student coming out of the closet in turn-of-the-millennia Singapore, to a young queer person fumbling her way through the world, this site has been with me through all of it.

Over the past few years, my professional interests have turned towards the origins of the technology that I fell in love with then; and how far we are from those days. I no longer want to participate in (most of) the social web. I no longer want to a product for companies like Facebook, which I once admired, but now abhor.

I think there is still room for the open web. There are no trackers, no analytics, no pixel-tracking, no heatmapping, no ads, no comments, nothing. I don’t care how many people still read blogs. I enjoy remembering to come here some days, and sometimes clicking publish.

Lately, I have been preoccupied with thinking about the world in the Before Times. I feel like I saw a lot of it, and didn’t write enough about it. That’s what posts like my ten-year-late travelogues hope to do. After several years in the United States, my sense of self has also begun to evolve. Living in America through this generation’s yellow peril (beginning with COVID-19) disease is starting to hit close to home.

From time to time, I take photos. Like when it’s an especially odd day.

Even though I’m on Twitter most of the day, sometimes I’ll just be here, writing in plain text, like it’s 2003 all over again.