Today to the tune of The Sunday Currently

I used to write a series called The Sunday Currently almost a decade ago and realized why don’t I do it every Monday or whenever I’m in the office doing nothing? Yeah so that’s what I’m hoping to do from now on… cos you know, I’ve been looking for a proper format for my regular brain dumps, and the items from The Sunday Currently are great for weekly blogging prompts.

Today is a Friday but I’m in the office so let’s do this.

Reading

Still A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. I’m not sure if I’ll ever get to finish this book. It’s so slow and dragging, and while I’ve cried a lot in my 56% of progress, I still couldn’t find time to finish it. Definitely not a page turner. I tried starting other books but I get stuck because I couldn’t bear not finishing a current read before starting a new one. Argh. A Little Life killed my reading mojo.

Watching

Just finished watching Avatar: The Last Airbender by Netflix. Yeah, the live action one. So now my husband and I are back to bingeing Impractical Jokers. I think we’re on Season 5.

Thoughts on Avatar?

Effects and cinematography is good. Music is great as well. Casting is 50/50. Acting is 50/50. Too many newbies playing their biggest roles for the first time. Overall I’d give it a 7/10 just because I keep getting distracted by the casting. Especially Mai, Ty Lee, and Azula. What is up with their faces? Seriously. Couldn’t get a better looking artist?

And Yue? It’s difficult to take the moon seriously when it looks like Gaga. But Mai? My was she hard to look at. Such strong (negative) impact for what little exposure they had.

I mean I know they’re beautiful naturally but they’re a cosplay mismatch. Sorry not sorry.

And finally, what’s the point in making Oma and Shu gay? It doesn’t add anything to the story. Netflix likes to pander I know but this is just lazy. If they wanted representation, Kyoshi is gay, if it’s worth mentioning in the series.

Listening

My current focus music is ’10s Metal on Youtube Music

Normally I listen to Rainy Jazz or Cafe Music but when I’m really busy I find myself focusing better to metal music.

Thinking

About how to really be disciplined in losing weight. I can never control myself when it comes to food. I always always overeat, then regret later. It’s always inspiring seeing people heavier that I am lose weight in only a few months just by following LCIF (Low Carb, Intermittend Fasting) and OMAD (One Meal a Day). Things I’ve already done before, not simultaenously though. But for the life of me I cannot seem to conquer them right now. It’s too mental for me. And my mind is weak.

I used to be able to fast 16:8. It’s easy as long as you get a lot of sleep.

I’ve tried OMAD before and it’s easy if you’re always busy because then you don’t have time to eat. OMAD right now is a mental challenge for me. I have to constantly remind myself that I won’t die if I don’t eat in a day.

You know what, I want to occupy myself too much that eating becomes a chore. But I enjoy food so much so I don’t know how to deal haha.

Smelling

Nothing striking in this part of the office.

Wishing

We’d get to the compensation discussion soon. It’s the only thing that excites me right now lol.

Wearing

My RTO “uniform” which is a blue floral blouse that’s getting tighter already, denim leggings, sneakers, and my husband’s jacket because I don’t fit in my jackets anymore huhu.

Loving

Mary Grace’s salmon dish. I forgot what it’s called. It has a dill cream cheese sauce, couscous and side salad. Love it.

Wanting

Needing

To get my knees fixed sooner. I am progressing. I know I am. My range of motion has improved. I can walk down the stairs better now. And I can play badminton for 2 hours straight when weeks ago I need to rest in between.

But its still not enough. I still couldn’t Indian sit. I still couldn’t Asian squat. I still couldn’t frog kick. I still couldn’t hug my legs. I’m still very limited and it sucks.

Part of my wants to go through another surgery to remove the scar tissues if that’s the only thing holding me back right now.

Feeling

Excited about this weekend!

Meetings

I have four meetings tonight…

1. One to get automation use cases.
2. Another where I just listen in for the most part.
3. A one-on-one with our solutions architect which happens monthly.
4. And finally a meeting to discuss how we are to align our automation efforts in light of the recent reorg.

I’m scared for meeting #1 because even though I asked for this meeting, I’m not sure how I can help and if I can handle their requests at all. I was just being proactive looking for more work lol.

On top of that I’m suddenly busy with my other project because techops has completed my SP request so I have to work on the script quickly in order to have it tested by tomorrow.

Meeting #4 also makes me anxious because I seriously just wanna be told what to do and I might not have any valuable input when it comes to the governance side of things. Part of me wants all the requests to go to the other team, then assign some to me. That way I won’t have to look at the requirements so much and just focus on dev.

Oh well.

Let’s do this.

Whew.

Today

It’s RTO day today. Currently in the office wasting time. I feel hungry but I don’t know what to eat. I hate that they removed the concessionare in our pantry. Didn’t really wanna go out to get snacks. But I’ve been craving Filipino food a lot lately. so I’ll probably eat rice again.

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Just got back from dinner. Had Pepper Lunch. I think it’s the first time I ate there? I got Beef Pepper Lunch which was so freaking hot it burned my tongue. I mean they were proud of their sizzling plates for being able to retain heat for up to 20mins, but I didn’t think it would be this good? Or bad for me.

I had dessert at Krispy Kreme. Got iced Americano and Apple Pie Crumble donut? The donut was okay, not too sweet, not too apple pie-y either.

I have my period today so my abdomen’s kinda acting up. I wanted to get a massage but didn’t want to be out too long.

I’ve been spending so much money lately in anticipation of my husband’s bonus lol. I thought I could hold off on shopping but I get blinded by my multiple small purchases. I thought I wasn’t spending so much. Will deal with the pile later this week lol. Hopefully.

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I’m really feeling very lazy today. I just want to finish watching Avatar, continue my KDrama, and maybe get 5 minutes of Kindle reading.

How to survive on just one income

I told my husband last night that if I get fired he’ll be shouldering all our household liabilities in the meantime so we tried to compute how that’s gonna work and realized we’re not gonna be able to live as comfortably on his salary alone.

This is a reminder for us to adjust our standard of living.

Here’s how it works in our home. All of my earnings go to the household. Rent, parking, utilities, grocery, gym membership, gas, insurance, subscriptions, mortgage, financial support, emergency fund, stocks, and a sinking fund used for car and home maintenance. His earnings on the other hand, we split to ourselves as our personal allowance.

And it’s been great. Our allowance affords us to buy whatever we want. Normally we spend it on food, shopping, and recently on Koomi (which we didn’t expect cost a lot to maintain haha). We’re very comfortable this way. And if his salary increases, our allowance increases too.

However, I just realized that if one of us loses our job, we need to be able to live off on whoever’s income remains. If my husband loses his job, we’ll surely be able to live off of my income because it already pays for everything. We won’t have a personal allowance though, but that’s not a necessity anyway. It will be tight but at least our lifestyles won’t be compromised too much.

If I lose my job though, we need to reasses out budget and cut down on other stuff because he earns less. It’s gonna be difficult. We probably need to quit the gym, stop the financial support we give to my parents, reduce our grocery budget, and stop saving for a while. That’s gonna be so hard considering I couldn’t imagine lowering our standard of living lol. It’s not even like we live glamorously. We’re just comfortable, but not rich.

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Oh well. I’m just getting anxious about possibly losing my job because I’m not doing much at work.

It’s frustrating because the whole reorg made everyone busy aligning their current teams, and I don’t belong in a team, so nobody really checks on me. Even the one who’s supposed to be my acting manager doesn’t seem to care. She’s probably too busy. I need to scour for work if I want to stay because nothing will get funneled to me without proper management. Everybody is doing their own thing and I have to keep myself busy. At least prior to the reorg, I had a manager and a team who can join me in calls and listen in to the request. But right now I have no one.

I hate that I have to be proactive because I usually never have to be because there’s always work waiting for me. But now, nadda! I’m scared.

Please pray for my job security.

I want to get a new car lol.

Black coffee

 Daily writing prompt

What is your favorite drink?

View all responses

I drink black coffee every single day so that must be it. And speaking of black coffee I prefer home brewed one. Either pour over or drip, as long as it’s not too strong. Store bought brewed coffee is usually too strong for my liking, unless they’re from convenience stores like 7Eleven or Family Mart, even Dunkin Donuts.

More to my favorite drink. I prefer the local ones. Kalinga or Barako. My go to coffee brand is Basilio’s Muni-Muni Blend (90% Robusta, 10% Arabica). But recently I noticed that the flavor has changed (it’s more earthy now) and the price has increased tremendously so I might need to switch. Once, I tried getting the whole beans cos it’s cheaper but it’s more tiresome having to grind it.

When ordering coffee outside, I usually go for iced latte or iced mocha. I tried the lattes from Starbucks, CBTL, and Tim Horton’s… I didn’t like any of them. You know what I liked? Dunkin Donuts. And this one kiosk outside the grocery that sells local coffee beans as well.

I also love iced mocha. For a while I was on a hunt for the best one and eventually found my favorites. Nitro 7, Highlands Coffee, and Blue Wonder. They’re all very good, Nitro 7’s being the most unique because they use half and half (oh and nitrogen infused cold brew) so it has a creamier taste, also less acidic.

Sometimes I get Vietnamese Coffee too. If not from Bahn Mi, then from So Mot. 🙂

Yeah that’s it as far as my fancy for coffee goes.

PS: if you plan to make affogato at home – the best vanilla ice cream to use is Magnolia Gold Label hands down.

Cannot post emojis on WordPress for some reason

I just want to put it out there. And the only major thing I did was update to WordPress 6.4.3 but I’m not totally sure it’s related.

This is how I used to type emojis. Win + . to toggle the emoji menu

Whenever there’s an emoji in the title or post, I’d get this error when saving:

Updating failed. Could not update post in the database.

Any clues on how to fix this? It’s the first time I encountered it.

The week that was

Nothing much happened the whole week. I came to my physio session and made good progress with my range of motion. We’ve come so far, but it’s still not enough. I also went to the gym once, and finished a whole workout video. My abs hurt the next day and it feels good. I also finished a 3-day set of cold pressed juices from Juice.Co – which by the way I didn’t fast for. I just wanted it to replace my snacks, I still ate solid food. And it felt great, I actually feel better. I lost like a pound lol.

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It’s another week of not doing anything substantial at work. I’m STILL trying to fix this prod issue with my automation, I think I mentioned it before, but all I can really do is raise tickets and follow up on them. If I had all the access needed to perform the fix I would’ve done it myself but… oh wait I have no clue how to do stored procedures. My bad lol. It’s just that there are so many people involved for what could’ve been resolved by just one person but unfortunately that person doesn’t have enough clearance to grant permissons so I have to work with someone from the morning shift. Good thing we have enough overlap. I don’t know. I’m just waiting to be fired.

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My husband asked me if I ever regretted working so hard at school. And now that I think about it, I realized that I didn’t really learn much in school. Because I didn’t love learning back then, everything I learned I forgot. I studied because I was supposed to. I got good grades because I liked getting good grades, not because I liked what I was studying.

I am proud that I graduated with honors. But it didn’t really do me much. The only leverage it gave me was getting hired for my first job which didn’t favor fresh grads from unknown schools unless you had a latin honor to boot. And that was it. And it’s not like I was really ahead of the game among my peers. It’s not even like I earned the most. A decade later and I’m no better.

I like where I am right now though. I get paid more than enough without doing much. Which reminds me, I need to start doing “much” to keep this job. Hay. I wish I had a leader you know? Someone to tell me what to do. I’m lost without a shepherd seriously. And that’s my problem with work. I cannot function without a leader and right now I’m a lone wolf. I’d rather take orders.

My husband is doing well, sometimes I wonder if I can just retire and be a full time housewife lol.

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Should I continue managing my Facebook page? To be honest I don’t really know what to do there. I don’t want to engage anywhere. I just want to upload my weekly vlogs to youtube, occassionaly throw in review videos, and also write in this blog. That’s all the public online presence I want to maintain. Oh well.