Today: #ProjectKorra, swimming, and feeling lost at work

It’s the third day of the week and as usual, nothing productive going on at work. I was gonna fix the transition item I’m gonna turn over to Jay this week, but I got really lazy like I have zero motivation to work. My skills are gonna rust big time this way and if they decide to let me go and push me out in the wilderness, I’m gonna be doomed. I don’t think I’m ever gonna find a job that pays this well and lets me be lazy at times huhu.

Anyway.

↪ Back to playing badminton!

I’m back to playing badminton after an entire year. I didn’t realize it was the anniversary of my injury when I decided to go back to the court. I told everyone I’m just gonna play easy, and I loved every single second of it.

Nothing makes me sweat the way badminton does and it’s elating to be able to sweat this hard again. It’s been a fucking year of being a potato and it sucks.

↪ Regular swims

I’m trying to do regular swims lately, specifically when my husband is at the gym. I figured I didn’t want to sleep the entire noon that he’s gone so I decided to do something productive.

I’m also learning to use my watch better to track my swims. I realized that my heart rate shouldn’t matter as much as my SWOLF score under water so I’m willing to let go of that piece of data I thought was critical to my weight loss journey.

If I pause my watch whenever I take breaks I get more accurate results. I think it was designed that way. The workout report indicates the length of pause anyway so I think it counts for something.

↪ Our litol boy turned one!

Oh how time flies! I can’t believe he’s an adult now. He’s always gonna be our baby!

Cooked something special for him – tenderloin steak! Also added bokchoy and canned Carnilove Lamb and Wild boar. And as usual, boiled squash for firm poops.

This is him on his gotcha days… he was 3 months old!

And now this bugoy is one! 🤗

Stay healthy little boy!

↪ Reliving #ProjectKorra

Korra is my ultimate #fitnessgoal. I don’t care that she’s fictional but she’s how I aspire my body to be! I didn’t lose weight on our first week of dieting, in fact I gained weight! It baffles me real bad because I’ve been cutting down on food intake and limiting my salt and sugar consumption but the scale just won’t budge!

Maybe I should add more workout and water. Oh well! We’re on week two of eating exceptionally bland meals and we’re doing fine!

Aja!

Reorg

 Company went into another reorg which basically cut my load in half but also put me in a weird place in terms of reporting structure because I’m gonna be more alone now.

It used to be Jay and I in automation. We were both hired under Software Support Team. But we don’t do support work per se. We do RPA automations FOR the support team. So we’re developers in the Support Team.

There’s an existing automation team within the Software Development Team that we kindof joined somehow. At least informally. They used to develop stuff for the support team before they decided to get their own developers, which got us hired. They invite us to their meetings and we also coordinate with them a lot because they own the infra in which our automations would be deployed. So it only makes sense to have us on board. Again, informally.

This was a weird setup because we’re all developers working on the same products but we’re kindof scattered in different teams, different leaderships in the org chart. But they were nice enough to involve us and welcome us because they knew we were in a weird place and they wanted to help as much as they can. ♥

Now to the reorg. So there are developers in the Dev Team, and also developers in the Support team. And now they split the teams by LOB, which is essentially two teams. So there are now two dev teams in Dev Team, and two dev teams in Support team.

Jay and I are broken up and placed into separate LOBs and it sucks because we’re like floating within that new pool not knowing who to join. Much worse who to swim to. Some teams were big enough they still have company, but Jay and I are alone again!

By the way I’m writing this mostly to make it make sense for me, so if you’re reading this I apologize for the rambling hehe.

I really just don’t want to be alone as a developer.

What I really want to happen though, is to join the other developers within the same LOB. Be part of their scrum team. Leverage having a BA and probably a PM. Move to Software Development while still developing for support. Just so I could do away with the burden of gathering requirements, setting timelines, and pushing back on the scope. I would love to be part of Kristen’s team cos I feel like I could benefit from it both technically… and emotionally lol.

Kristen is the one who fostered us, the lost devs of support team 藍, and I wanna join them.

Worse case is I get to work alone and work on requirements alone which sucks and quite frankly scares the shit out of me huhu. Worse case? I get redundated because they finally realize they have enough developers in the first place? Oh gosh!!! I can’t lose this job cos I just emptied my savings buying appliance and furniture !!!

Also because of this reorg, I have fewer things to do. I have to transition most of my stuff to Jay. Which will definitely affect my performance. I don’t even know what to do now. Gosh.

Help me Lord! 

Diet Day 3

Yesterday was hard for me because I got so tired from rehab and wasn’t able to eat for a while because I had to wait for Jeckie to fetch me and had to get Koomi on the way home from daycare. But as soon as we’re home I snacked up. We made sure to stock op on healthy options so we could easily reach for roasted peanuts, apples, and granola whenever we feel like it. I also had cheese, I munch on small amounts of keso de bola whenever I needed a salty boost.

For dinner we had boiled chicken breast and airfried brocolli and mushrooms. It was delicious! Magnolia chicken is delicious, it’s big and juicy and it went well with our veggies. I kept the stock for Koomi.

Basically everything we eat we can feed to Koomi which is why he’s been begging a lot these days…

Here he is under the dining table, looking at both of us at the same time 😂

Today I weighed in and was surprised to hit 160lbs. Yey for losing 1lb but also it could be water weight so I’m not too excited!

Day 3 dinner is boiled chicken and airfried carrots, baguio beans, and tomatoes.

We also had guzzler shake (frozen bananas, peanut butter, lettuce, and soymilk). I still munch on cheese and granola, but so far it’s been good.

😊

2023 food round-up

 

I don’t really know how to make a food round-up so I guess I’ll just wing it!

Binabalik-balikan (foods I craved a lot for in 2023)

• Behrouz’ Chicken Biryani
• Jollibee Chicken Sandwich
• Manam’s Sisig

New favorites

• Yalo’s Classic Halo-Halo Drink (by Razon’s)
• Ciento Cookies’ Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Tapa King’s Tapa Flakes Pandesal

Walang kupas

• James & Daughters
• Bom Gosto
• Alba Restaurante Español

Pag may budget

• Giwon Korean Steakhouse’s Woo-makase

Pag may budget at okasyon

• Ruth’s Chris Steak House

Special Mention

• Best kebab: Kabab and Curry’s Afghan Kebab
• Surprisingly good: Frankie’s Burger Steak
• Best caesar salad: A Mano’s Caesar Salad

Best House Blend Ice Tea

• Mamou Prime’s House Blend
• Alba’s Special Iced Tea
• Tiong Bahru
• High Grounds HG Iced Tea
• Army Navy’s Libertea
• Hai Chix
• Bad Bird (yellow label + honey citron)
• James & Daughters

Diet day 1

I’m 5’2″, weighing my heaviest ever at 161lbs (73kgs) and I badly want to regain my fitness. Today is day 1 of my supposed Biggest Loser challenge with my husband. I started the day with an ACV capsule, then for breakfast I had coffee, granola and milk.

I’m at the office right now and for dinner I had quite a feast at Go!Salads after learning there’s a branch that’s walking distance from here. I got my favorite combo – Sweet Caroline salad and Guzzler, and also added Chicken Kebab Panini cos I was hungry.

I’m trying to practice eating before I get hungry, so I don’t overeat. But I don’t know when exactly I get hungry so today’s quite a dry run.

Apparently I’m already too hungry at 5pm after having breakfast at 2:30pm. Okay let’s work on that haha.

I really hate how I look right now. Despite my husband always saying I’m beautiful and not that fat, I can’t feel secure right when I can’t fit into XL clothes anymore. I fit a bunch of clothes at Uniqlo the other day and I look big in all of them. Well, I am pretty big right now no denying that haha.

The goal with this challenge is to lose weight (at least for me), and our strategy is to eliminate added salt and sugar in our daily meals. Our menu for the week is just boiled chicken and airfried veggies every day, no additional seasoning. Cereals and milk for breakfast, peanuts or apples for snacks. Also lots of water, lemon, and chia seeds haha.

Hope it works! I really want to get in shape this year! It’s been difficult just getting up from the bed huhu.

2023 recap: highlights and stuff

The good, the bad, and the ugly in no particular order:

✱ I got injured playing badminton

✱ I saved a total of Php4,500 worth of 50s! Pamasko rin yan!

✱ I got an award at work for passing the software support new hire onboarding exams, which apparently only 2 people passed. I always thought it was weird to get an award for it but it came at a point I was struggling with imposter syndrome so it sure validated me!

✱ I opened a GoTrade account and started putting small amounts at a time

✱ My sister got a total thyroidectomy and I was her watcher for a few days

✱ Celebrated Jeckie’s birthday in Angeles where we blew a tire on the way to haha #adventure

✱ I got an annual incentive, additional bonus, and an unexpected salary increase of 6.5k/mo just for meeting expectations

✱ I bought a Hurom juicer ♥

✱ And a pretty office chair from IKEA ♥

✱ Stayed at Nobu Hotel, Martingaled the roulette, and squandered our earnings on food, our accommodation, and more food.

✱ Welcomed Koomi in our lives 🐾

… which spiraled out on control for a while

✱ Back to my badminton injury, I got reinjured at the gym, and had to undergo ACL reconstruction and meniscus repair surgery. To date, I’m still trying to recover full flexion and extension. It’s been largely depressing how slow my progress is, but I’m hopeful.

✱ Started going to rehab

✱ Moved to a bigger unit and spent over 300k furnishing the place

✱ Gifted myself with a lot of stuff this year… starting with new rubber shoes

✱ New fitness watch

✱ New piano

✱ A double induction cooker…

✱ And finally a new vacuum. My dream vacuum! ♥

✱ 2 of my cards got auto-CLIed. One got 100% more and the other was given 50% more. Right when I’m not using them much recently. I wish I knew how to use my credit properly cos right now I’m just spending it on purchases. Hope to maybe learn to do business with it?

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Anyway that’s it! I don’t know how much I spent this year but I know it’s a lot more than we used to (because of the move). It’s a pretty abundant year for us and I’m thankful! ♥

2023 recap: films, series, and books

It’s that time of the year! In total I watched 13 films, 17 series, and read just 4 books. I’m particularly disappointed with my book count. I was heavily distracted with taking care of Koomi that I lost time to read. Yeah, I blame Koomi haha.

My favorite movie of 2023 would be Oppenheimer, hands down. It’s too epic and too masterfully made. A genius portrayal of intense calm and deafening silence. Just recalling the film gives me goosebumps!

John Wick was wildly entertaining, as usual.

Howl’s Moving Castle is beautiful, surreal; I don’t know with Ghibli but I find myself more immersed in the animation than the story itself. It’s so magical. Never fails to delight.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 is Marvel’s best movie installment of 2023. There’s not much competition though. Good Lord, Marvel Studios has been spiraling downwards big time ever since it put politics ahead of entertainment. There’s QuantuMEHnia, The lackluster Marvels, and an unimpressive Secret Invasion. Loki Season 2 was dragging up until the last episodes when everything finally gets held together (quite literally) and Loki gets an epic character arc. I loved that. Should’ve turned that into a movie instead.

My love for Mythic Quest and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia remains the same. Great writing as always.

Emily in Paris ended on an intriguing note.

Selling Sunset released 2 seasons in a year, and as usual, I live more for the drama than the houses. Chrishell kicked ass this season, not rolling over for anyone and defending herself eloquently. When I say that I mean she explains herself well. She listens and makes sure she’s listened to as well. Whereas Nicole stutters, Amanza panders, Mary walks out, Brie couldn’t care less, Chelsea backstabs. At least Emma is frank.

Mary-lou, on the other hand, I feel bad for. I don’t know what the real deal is with her but it seems like she’s struggling to make a scene with Chrishell because production says so, and she needs to bring drama to the table if she wants screen time. Just a hunch. And Chrishell saw through that and quickly calls off her BS. There’s no stopping Chrishell. She’s super focused this year no one can break her peace. Love her!

I forgot to add this in the collage but we started watching Impractical Jokers and got hooked! It’s so hillarious!

As for books…

I don’t even want to talk about it cos I didn’t read much. The Lottery (dark) and The Communist Manifesto (idealistic) are very short and I’ll be honest, I read them because I wanted to get a quick book count. They’ve been on my list anyway, but yeah. The Hating Game is a re-read which I re-enjoyed, and Book Lovers… I can’t even remember what it’s about. Urgh.

Still stuck reading A Little Life. I don’t want to give up on it because of my pride. I’m more than 50% in! Just 10 more hours to go lol. People have so much regard for this book that’s why I wanted to read it. And for the first few chapters I liked it. But the pace is so slow, author is really taking the time fleshing out the characters, introducing them properly, which is good. I love how it’s written. It’s just that there’s not much of a conflict apart from the mystery that is Jude’s childhood. I feel so bad for him I cried so hard at one point in the book. But it’s just that… it’s too slow and I don’t see an end to it haha. But I’ll power through. For the sake of my abovementioned pride lol.

♥