Word of the week: dehk - child
In my life: For some context on why I found this week's feature image of the stuffed emu on the gate funny read this.
Two months of the year have gone by and we're now officially in the Autumn season. The weather doesn't seem to know that though and it's been a hot and humid week.
It's been a mentally exhausting week at work trying to get the new feature we discussed last week working correctly. But it's finally done and going into testing from tomorrow. Hopefully they won't find too many bugs in it, and I can stop dreaming about recursion when I sleep.
On the exercise front, it's been slightly better than the week before. I managed to deadlift 40kg - which is more than half my body weight. I'm also not as wobbly as before while doing the dumbbell bench press and I think I finally figured out how to do ring rows correctly. This week marks the end of the 2nd 6-week plan with my trainer, and she's mentioned doing things differently and focusing on my weaknesses for the next 6-week plan. Consider me suitably terrified.
On Friday we had a concert at the ICC in Darling Harbour. We took the metro down to the city and stopped at Dodee King for Thai dinner before the show. I have shellfish allergies (though luckily not bad enough to need an epi pen) and moving to Australia has meant trying to find food I can safely eat has been quite challenging. Asian food is quite popular here and it often has shrimp paste in it. I've found though that it's usually not that bad at Thai and Japanese restaurants (Malaysian restaurants are the worst culprits). Romanian restaurants usually had menus describing portion sizes & allergens for each item so I could be sure that I wouldn't accidently eat something I couldn't. I really wish it would be adopted here too instead of having to ask the wait staff every time.
This week's concert was by the Stone Temple Pilots supported by Wolfmother. Sathya mentioned (and I read in the email, ticket and calendar invite) that it was the STP, but for some reason my brain decided that it was King Stingray instead. Now normally this would be fine, except for the fact that I have this habit of listening to the artists songs before the concert so that I'm suitably in the mood for their music in the evening.
When I realized I got the artist wrong (at dinner), I think something in my (possibly neurospicy) brain broke. Wolfmother was great but when STP got onto the stage, it took me quite a while to actually want to listen to them. They were playing all the songs from the album Purple - quite a few of which were slow numbers plus I was cold and had woken up fairly early for PT, so I felt very sleepy. It got better as they played some of their popular numbers at the end though.
On Saturday, we had our guitar class again and we learnt some different Pima movements. I think I picked it up slightly easier than Sathya as I had looked into plucking patterns when I first picked up the guitar. We also practiced the Blues song and some of the older numbers from previous terms. We went to the Produce market after the lesson where we picked up some flowers, fruits and meat for the week.
We then dropped all the stuff at home and went to a cafe for breakfast. I've been trying out different types of drinks, to find what I actually like drinking, and I decided to experiment a bit and ordered an Iced Matcha Strawberry latte. I don't usually like either taste, but it somehow worked here.
The employees here sometimes speak in Thai to each other and its good listening practice for me. I can't understand most of it of course but I'm now able to piece together the meaning of some of the shorter sentences they use, instructions on where something is kept for example. Good to know that slow but steady progress is being made on the language learning front.
In the evening, I went to the Sydney Mardi Gras parade. I couldn't go last time and was considering skipping it this time (was supposed to be 30 degrees and humid) but realized it started late and decided to head in later than I initially planned. I walked to Taylor Square, but it was absolutely jam packed so decided to head down to Moore Park instead - ended up being a good way to get some steps in. I finally found a place with some decent visibility and stood there for some time to cheer the parade. So many groups of people from all walks of life march in the parade and it's great to see the city turn up and support them. Out, loud and proud Sydney!
Today, I wanted to buy some running shoes and was planning to head up to Chatswood to check out a running store there, but Sathya wanted to get some brunch when he woke up. I saw that there was a Pace Athletic store at Crow's Nest so suggested we go up there together and get some brunch before hitting the shop.
We went to Double Cross Dining Room, had some coffee (a flat white for me) and some other brunch food. Both were just okay, we've had better at other places in the area. We then stopped at Crescent Pâtisserie to get some croissants for tomorrow morning's breakfast.
I've been doing my runs with a fairly old pair of Decathlon hiking shoes. While these have been a great fit, I've been putting too much pressure on my heel while running and they're worn through and just don't have the right support. I checked some running subreddits and they recommended getting properly fitted at a running store. Pace Athletic had a great selection online, so I went there, and I had a good experience. They asked me a few questions on what I was looking for and when I said I was a new runner and had no idea what to look for, they were great at giving suggestions. They had me try out a few pairs, checked my walking style, whether I was pronating or not and I ended up picking up the Mizuno Wave Inspire 21s. They're supportive both on the heel and the arch but not too cushioned and I can't wait for tomorrow mornings run with them on.
We walked home and I spent the afternoon and evening practicing the chords to one of my favorite songs. I'd looked up a tutorial for this when I first picked up the guitar, but it was too advanced & fast for me at the time. I showed Sathya the tutorial today to tell him where I had seen the Pima movements from Saturday's class before and something in my brain just clicked. I was able to play the song with the correct strumming pattern. I've to get better at it of course - the chord changes are still too slow, there are a few blocked notes and without the plucking pattern it only slightly reminds me of the original song. But it's so good to see that progress has been made with a year's guitar lessons. Nice motivation to keep going.
It's quite strange to see how much my life has changed in the past one year - picking up guitar lessons, learning a new (and not Latin based) language, getting into strength work outs, getting into running. I feel so different from the person I was last year in the best way possible. I felt so burnt out at the end of 2021, now I feel like I've recovered from those horrible months. I hope I get to keep continuing on the same road and find more little things to make me happy.
On my screens:
- ThamePo (Thai, Queer, YouTube, Ongoing) - I originally thought this show only had 12 episodes so I rewatched the non-sad bits of the show this week. I realized halfway through this week's episode that there are 13 instead. So, we get the finale next week - yay for me, one more week with these characters I have truly come to adore.
They've kept the ending from the book and the preview looks great. Po and Mars fight for Thame the way Thame has done for them all this time. There's no weird "time skip, popular but miserable in Korea till contract runs out" storyline for Thame for which I'm eternally grateful. If they nail next week's episode as well then, this show will definitely go into the rewatch pile.
This week's episode was quite thoughtful as well. There were some discussions on dreams and how they shape us, how important they are and how they might change through our lives, on the value people have just as themselves, without fame or fortune in our capitalistic society. And I (and apparently many folks on Tumblr) related to this episode a lot.
I wish I was more eloquent in how I put these thoughts down but here it goes. I always had ambitious dreams as a kid, and I was a bit sad that I didn't get to achieve them as fast as I'd liked. But a while ago a health scare meant that I reevaluated much of my life and what I wanted out of it.
I realized I wanted to spend my time with Sathya and my family and friends. I wanted a job that challenged me a bit but that didn't take up my whole life the way I thought jobs were meant to be - it didn't have to be something I was passionate about, but just something that I could do and do well. I wanted to read books, listen to good music, explore new food.
Those big dreams that I had as a kid were replaced by smaller ones, ones that made me feel peaceful and secure. Did that somehow mean that I was lessor though? No of course not. As long as we are able to be satisfied with our life today, what the world thinks of us doesn't matter. Just being happy is more than enough and the show through Uncle Joie's conversation with Po and Thame's letter portrays just that. It's really such a pleasure to watch and I'm so glad this show got made, with these actors, five years after it was first conceptualized. - The X Files (Science Fiction, Paramount Plus, Complete) - Sathya has mentioned this show to me a few times and the scene from episode 1 where Scully meets Mulder popped up on my YouTube feed.
Suitably intrigued, I decided to watch episode 1 and honestly it was pretty great. The occult believer vs the ardent scientist dynamic they have makes for great viewing, but these episodes are fairly scary to watch and I'm just not brave enough for that, so it's getting DNF'd.
On my playlist:
This week's song is one that showed up on ThamePo as well. And yes, I'm well aware of how in love I am with the music from this show. The song is from a show called Good Old Days an anthology series centred at an antique shop where the worth of an object is decided by the tale behind it. Sounds quite interesting actually and I might put it on the watchlist.
No matter how far I have to go, a hundred or thousand miles away
The horizon I aim for
Could be reached someday
Good time with you
On my camera:
Always feel free to be you!
Thanks for tagging along!
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