Word of the week: nak-riian- students

In my life: It’s been another quiet week here in Sydney. The weather has been pleasant though cold and we’ve completed three years of life here this week. How fast time flies.

At work I’m investigating the root cause of an incident we had earlier this month. We’d closed some records with an older date and that had caused one of our core syncs to fail. We reverted that change and got the system back up but didnt have time to delve into the details. As part of this I had to look at some older, complex SQL queries and every time I look at this project for work I wonder if there is a good way to get better at SQL. At the moment I use Copilot to help me understand the more complex queries, but that doesn’t exactly feel sustainable.

On the fitness front, I’ve started my three days a week gym sessions to make up for my previously missed sessions. We’re doing some heavier weights than last week and it feels good to see how much I’ve progressed by looking at Train. My legs and arms are incredibly sore though. The walks, both morning and evening, have continued as usual.

Guitar is getting tougher with shorter and shorter notes introduced in sheet music. While I understand the concept of it, actually playing it to a metronome has been very challenging. We were given sheet music and asked to play it and identify the song. One section of it was slower and it was a pretty iconic riff so I recognised the song as “My Girl“ but actually playing the whole thing even knowing that was so hard.

Afterwards we caught up with some of our guitar class friends over coffee discussing college life, work and life in Sydney in general and spent a pleasant few hours before coming home to relax and catch up on chores.

On Sunday we did a shorter walk to Kirribilli instead of our usual longer Sunday one as Sathya was supposed to meet his friend later. We tried a new to us bakery after, the coffee and coffee walnut scroll were great, but we were let down by the other baked goods.

Sathya’s friend messaged later asking him to meet at Parramatta so I decided to go along with him as it had been a while since I did a photo walk. I took my camera with its kit lens, trying to challenge myself to take photos at the 35mm focal length. It was pretty dark and the kit lens doesn’t work great in the darkness so the photos are just so so. But it was good to get out with camera after so long.

Towards the end of my walk, a fellow Kdrama friend & I started talking about Chinese dramas that we’ve watched. We commiserated over how bad/long/terrible some of them can be and then she gave me a few recommendations that I’ve added to my watch list.

After that Sathya and I met up and had dinner at an Indo-Chinese restaurant before heading back home and crashing.

On my screens: I’ve continued with Reset (angst, and then more romance) and Marry My Husband (great penultimate episode) from last week’s notes. I’ve also watched a few episodes of the newest K-pop survival show, Boys II Planet (what atrocious editing) and watched a few episodes of Can’t sell, Must sell (home reno shows are such a guilty pleasure) on Youtube.

On my bookshelf: Haven't read much except for the sporadic spy fanfic updates.

On my pages: Finally got unblocked on the last chapter and have about half of it written that I’m actually pleased with. Now to ensure I get the rest of the ending right.

On my playlist: LYKN released a new single called Drip. While I initially dismessed it as not to my taste, I found myself listening to it more often as time went by.

On my plate: As previously mentioned we tried a bakery in Kirribilli and an Indo Chinese restaurant in Parramatta. I also made this roast chicken recipe from RecipeTinEats and it turned out pretty great.

On my camera: This little image, though not very well taken, made me think of my sister and her little dog. I imagine they go on similar walks in their hometown.

Thanks for tagging along!