2024 Birthday Wishlist!

My birthday is coming up next month. Thought I’d list stuff I want to buy for myself (as usual) and put in some justification for the upcoming splurges lol.

Stanley tumbler

Or more specifically a wide mouth narrow bottom 30oz tumbler with a handle. Something easy to clean and carry around, cup holder friendly, and not too heavy. So far Stanley fits the bill cos aside from checking all of my requirements, its lid doesn’t have that rubber gasket that gets moldy over time. But the lid is also the reason it’s not leakproof, so that makes it a dealbreaker.

Which brings me to another tumbler option – their flip straw tumblers.

The handle looks practical for me. Comes in a flip straw. Has cute color options. It is pretty pricey though for 2,700 so I’m thinking of just getting a Tyeso like this…

Handle looks nice; wraps around the body when set down. Has two outlet options, a flip straw and a regular hole where you can chug. Also fits in cup holders according to reviews. Best of all, it’s like 5x cheaper. It doesn’t have the color I like though, which is cream. So we’ll see hehe. I only ever want to to drink water in this and I’m not too keen on the insulation so I didn’t look at those specs, although I know Stanley has better insulation. And if I ever get tired of cleaning the straw I can just revert to the regular opening. It does have the rubber thing that will need a more thorough cleaning.

Oh well, we’ll see what I’ll pick eventually. Leaning more on Stanley though!

To be fair, I only wanted a new tumbler because our company took away our lockers so I’ve been struggling to carry my 40oz Reduce tumbler with me everytime I go to work (which is really just once a week). It’s not that leakproof, doesn’t fit in my bag, and also won’t fit in the cup holders of our car so I always need to bring it empty so it can lay on the passenger seat without risk. Hassle!

So yeah, looks like that’s all I want this year lol.

Google index update!

The header test didn’t work. I’m out of ideas so I just created a new post with just a few details on it. Once it got indexed I moved the whole content to it. It’s interesting because it got indexed in a matter of hours. So I realized that if a post is still not indexed within the day, there must be a problem with the content. So far I’ve only identified two important posts that weren’t indexed so I can work with that. I’m just concerned that the paid ones won’t even make it to Google search; so much for paying me right? I have another hunch but I don’t know if I’ll still test it. It has to do with categories.

A friend told me I must be iron deficient because I get cold easily, so I switched my multivitamins to Stresstabs which has 27mg of iron. I was taking Women’s Once Daily from Healthy Options and realized that its Iron content is only 6mg. Daily required intake for adult women is 18mg. For a women’s multivitamins I find it weird they didn’t up the iron given our monthly periods. Anyway. Can’t say it’s working but I’ve been feeling great lately.

And I think it’s because I’ve been getting regular exercise and I’m also dieting most days of the week. The number isn’t budging on the scale but I’m just happy waking up to a lighter stomach these days. I used to wake up bloated every morning and it’s not a good feeling.

Unfortunately I couldn’t resist pasta and cake today. Made myself tuna pesto pasta, and walked to Starbucks to get a chocolate cake haha.

Oh well, happy friday!

[Review] Amazfit GTS 4 Mini Smart watch

I’m reposting this review because the older one won’t get indexed for some reason.

Youtube review can be found here!

Price and availability

First things first – the price and where I bought it. I’m based in the Philippines and I got this from Digital Walker for ₱5,190 and that’s from a physical store on regular price. It’s cheaper on Shopee or Lazada, but only by 1-200 pesos. The white variant has been out of stock for a while so I decided to personally look for it on physical stores.

My favorite features

I’m not gonna delve so much about the specs. You can do that yourself by going to the Amazfit website, it’s super complete over there.

✱ First of all I love how it looks. I originally wanted the Apple Watch SE which is exactly the same size (40mm). But after learning about its dismal battery like (daily charging wtf?!) I decided to give it up and look for alternatives.

✱ The battery on this thing lasts me 2 freaking weeks! My Fitbit Inspire 2 only lasts a week and it’s not even that smart. I’m really impressed.

✱ So many cute watch faces to choose from. It was enjoyable trying out the many options available on the Zepp app and figuring out what works for you. For a while I used this classic skin…

But I got annoyed at how the clock hands cover the step counter. And how the battery meter zeroes at the top. It’s cute but I’m OC about a bunch of things haha. So eventually I settled for this one because it’s simple and has all the info I need:

✱ It has a Sleep Tracking feature, which gives the same information as my Fitbit so I’m not surprised.

✱ It has a Camera Remote which is lovely. Turns my watch into a bluetooth remote to make great group photos on tripod.

✱ Perhaps my favorite feature is Find my phone because I use it a lot!

✱ It has 126 sports mode which is insane but I love how it will make your activity tracking more specific. I don’t know how in depth the data being collected is per sport, cos honestly what are you gonna measure when you choose chess? Cos there’s chess, board games, e-sports, zumba, etc. And maybe they’ll just get your heart rate but I don’t know how its gonna look on the report. Anyway, I haven’t really tried any of those.

But I did swim.

And I love the swim tracking!

✱ Water resistant – I did a swim test!

Swimming is one of my favorite sports and I’ve been able to use it a couple of times already. What I know is that…

• Heart rate monitoring is disabled under water
• You have to set the length of the pool to get an accurate distance measurement
• You also have to pause the workout when you rest to get a better swim time metric. Don’t worry because it records your paused time so its not lost.
• It gives a very detailed swim report including your SWOLF score which measures you swimming efficiency
• It also detects your main stroke, which in my case is mostly freestyle
• In case I mix it up it says medley
• I have yet to try it on just one stroke… maybe I will

Finally

So far I’m enjoying this watch. I didn’t expect to love it because I still think it’s too big for me. But it helped that’s it’s really slim so it doesn’t feel bulky on my wrist. In fact, I like how this feels better than my Fitbit, which is smaller.

I love the silent alarms, notifications are reliable, love the swim tracking, GPS tracking I have yet to test, but yeah overall I’m impressed! Great features, great battery life, this might be the best fitness tracker out there if it stands the test of time. So we’ll see! But right now, I highly recommend this!

Heya

Life lately and whatnot!

Renewed hosting

I just renewed my hosting plan today. It’s around $45. Kinda steep for me now because as you know, I only used to pay for domain which is $13/year. With 2 active domains that’s less than $30 a year. With a hosting plan, I have to pay around $70 annually when my blogs don’t even make that much. I’m starting to think it’s a waste that I self-hosted. If only Blogspot would improve their post editor then I’d be more than game to migrate back.

Indexing woes

My biggest problem with WordPress right now is GOOGLE INDEXING. Not all of my posts are getting indexed. My Amazfit review, my recent contributed post. I don’t know what gives! Live URL test looks okay, got all the green checks, no issues with the page whatsoever. Only reason I’m thinking is CONTENT QUALITY which is very vague, like how the hell do I fix that? I’ve been resubmitting the pages for indexing every other day, but without any changes to the content I don’t think I’m getting indexed ever.

My hunch is the page formatting. So I changed the headers from H4 to H5 cos for some reason I have posts with H5 headers that are getting indexed successfully. It looks ugly because H5 is too small but I don’t even know at this point. I have personal posts that are full of gibberish and those are getting indexed, so why do my more informative content get skipped? Hmmm.

Let’s test this one shall we?

Alright I just put a bunch of H5 headers to see if this post is gonna make it to Google index. We’ll see in a couple of days

Knee update

I just finished my first round of PT sessions at St. Luke’s a few weeks back and requested to continue them at a different clinic, somewhere nearer because St. Luke’s Global is a 15min drive and parking is awful (always full haha) so I always have to request for my husband to drive me and wait an hour for me.

The good thing about my sessions there is that they’re shorter. Strictly 1 hour long. 15mins spent on modalities (10mins TENS, 10mins ultrasound, 10mins SIS), and the rest is for stretching and strengthening. And with better gym equipment I get to really target the parts I need to strengthen. But it usually depends on which physio gets assigned to me. Some use equipment, others use functional exercises. I prefer using equipment because it’s less effort and more targeted for me. But practically speaking I need to learn about functional exercises more hehe.

The new clinic I started with last week was a happy discovery. My ortho referred me to Cardia Olympia which is walking distance from home. I was surprised to learn that there’s a clinic much nearer than Shang that’s Intellicare accredited! I was so happy! When I finally got my schedule they booked me with their physio who handles ACL injuries, who also happens to be coaching for a professional basketball team. I felt really hopeful. I had one session with him and learned a lot, he told me to play with my patella more often because it’s awfully stiff, and to restrict physical activities that are load bearing to the knee, at least until we manage the swelling. So that’s no boxing and badminton for me in the meantime.

Joined a boxing gym

But what have you. Right before my first session with my new PT, I had a boxing session at The Lab. We just terminated our Anytime Fitness membership and decided to join a boxing gym instead because the packages look good and we joined on a buy 1 take 1 membership promo. The free session was great. Gave us a feel of how their coaching sessions go. The hour long routine goes like this: warm up, 3 sets jumping rope, 3 sets mits, 3 sets speed ball, 3 sets bag, 2 sets mits, cool down, stretch. And it’s only 350 per session for members!

After my trial sessions I went directly to my PT sesh and did not expect for it to be an intense 2-hour workout. No modalities, just stretching and strengthening. I can compare their strengthening program to Healthway Shang BUT with more intensity. The bands are thicker, the weights are heavier, and the reps seem to be up to failure.

I worked out for 3 hours that day and I came home really really exhausted. Whew!

I guess that’s it! Hopefully I get to regain my range of motion and be back to normal in the near future. <3

Just read: A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

 SPOILER ALERT

This is by far my most frustrating read ever. It’s just too long and dragging. Took me over a year to finish this because I just kindof got tired of nothing much happening. There’s no pivotal moment, no character development, nothing drives the book, not the characters, not the plot, it’s just there to make you feel bad from all the misery that Jude has endured. That’s all there is.

Overly contrived and overwritten, it’s the misery porn that makes it a heavy read, but once you get tired of crying you realize that there’s no credibility to Jude’s story at all. It’s just a series of traumatic events that he doesn’t seem to want to get over with, despite being surrounded with people who are more than willing to help you recover. It becomes unbelievable to the point where you wonder what the point is in all this writing.

I rated it 3/5 because mostly because of the writing style, but plot-wise there’s nothing to it.

And I hated Jude. I do not get his appeal. He’s just mysterious and intelligent but that’s it. And even his alleged intelligence isn’t convincing. All he ever feels is sorry and there’s not much depth to his character besides his dark backstory. I find it surprising how everyone is so drawn to him. And for that I blame the author.

At one point I also questioned what kind of friendship they all have that after decades of being in each others lives they still haven’t managed to crack Jude. They’re all walking on eggshells around him, enabling his self-harm. That’s no real friendship for me.

Overall it feels unnecessarily stretched out.