fodra

What did I do today?

• I woke up answering a call from pagerduty. Not ideal but it's necessary.

• I managed to squeeze in two rounds of kettlebell exercises while preparing to go to work.

• When I got in the office, I ran our daily scrum. Then I went off to a short training session -- I spent two hours there. I think it was not the best way to spend two hours in the office. I could have worked on my task instead and finish it.

• I managed to merge in one PR but I noticed it needs more work. I would love to finish it tomorrow -- merged and done! I don't want to come back to it again.

fodra

Today

• Had lunch out on a Monday which is odd -- usually lunch outs are towards the weekend. This is because one of my colleagues had his 27th birthday. The least I could do is join in to celebrate.

• Today is a cold autumn day. Tomorrow won't be -- I'm so glad the cold hasn't set in yet.

• My eldest called at around 3PM, she's not feeling well. Too afraid to be alone by herself even for five minutes. We had a conference call, me, dude, and Erin. We kept her company for a short time until her siblings arrived from school with the MiA.

• Thank God, I had a solution by the end of the day. I wasn't able to completely finish the fix though but it's there. I need to polish a little bit of stuff here and there but it'll be ready tomorrow morning.

fodra

🇵🇭

Today's Pinoy festival in Melbourne. I'm not really into it but the MIA is -- so there's the obligatory let's go there to entertain the MIA. I kindof expected it already to be underwhelming and a waste of time but I'm still glad we did it. Before going there we had a quick look at the model houses near our place.

They were nice and looks pretty unreachable -- atleast that's my knee jerk reaction. Thinking about getting a home is a bit frustrating for me. It doesn't give me joy. It just gives me pressure. I feel like I need to save for a home deposit for at least 5 years or so to come up with a 20% deposit. All the time leading up to it feels like a very big sacrifice that's full of despair and unhappiness because you keep supressing the stuff you want right now to the promise of getting a full home deposit later on. It's very tough to swallow, it feels like torture really all because of having no initial savings when we got here in Australia.

Enough with the somber stuff. Today I continued

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🐌 massacre

When I got home from my morning Uber drive, it was raining. I was surprised to see the snails coming out of the plants in the garden. They came out to welcome the rain. Great timing I was meant to pluck them out of the garden. Quickly, I put on my glove and pluck each one of them while they were out. I threw them onto the concrete. The kids saw me doing this -- they counted as I pluck each snail. They counted 40+ in total. All from two plants. It was really gross. I killed them all. Smashed them into bits.

It's becoming a habit of mine passing by Bunnings after I drop off dude. Today I bought pruning shears. I also wanted to buy white planters for our snake plant but I put it off for now. I checked out sunflower seeds, fire pit, and the Bunnings Warehouse baseball cap which I've been eyeing for quite some time now. I did not buy one because the line got long in the cashier.

Today I picked up my kettlebell once again and did a round of kettlebell exercises. Nothing that tiring but it was

fodra

This one is a little bit different. Today I want to write about stuff that I'm anticipating sometime in the future. So, here's the stuff I'm looking forward to:

1. Australian citizenship

We've filed our application December last year. Submitted all the requirements and paid the fees. Until now, I haven't heard a single word from them. First quarter of the year is almost over in less than two weeks -- I'm expecting at least in the second quarter of 2019 I've heard some positive news from them.

2. MIA's departure

Yes, my mother-in-law is a big help for us here. We don't pay for day care fees, we don't prepare breakfast, lunch and dinner anymore. We do less and less household chores. We've become very dependent on Mama. I know it will be tough without Mama but I'm actually looking forward to be alone again with the family -- just us. I miss it. When it's just us, everyone is involved and do their fair share in household chores. This way, it's more realistic.

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🍏🍏🍏

• Last night I was successful in doing two things: Jog and prepping for my apple pie.

• I jogged two rounds -- one round with the wife and kids, one round walking with the wife. It's awesome to be outside during fall. The weather is not too hot nor cold and there's still enough light to enjoy before dinner and do outdoor activities.

• I started preparing for my apple pie crust. Very basic recipe, flour, salt, sugar, butter, ice cold water and a little bit of apple cider vinegar. This recipe always delivers, I've learned my lesson. Keep the butter cold and chop it up to small cubes about 1/4", it makes it easier to mix in the dough. I made two batches for two apple pies. One apple pie never seems to be enough for us.

• Before bed, I put on Mannequin on Netflix. We did not finish the movie, it was so bad. Then, it was was nice to see Kim Cattrall pre-Sex and the City, Andrew McCarthy, plus the guy in Police Academy as himself.

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Lunch out

• Yesterday I had lunch with Ton, I haven't seen him since last year -- before the holiday season atleast. He looked bigger than I last saw him.

• I learned about AWS serverless stuff as well. Awesome to find out that it's just a standalone function that can be written in any language as long as it returns a response.

• I clocked out early but went home relatively late still because I was waiting for my wife. I reckon if I went straight home, I accomplished a few more things.

Today

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Backyard

1. Trim all the stuff

The next part will be a bigger piece of task. It's a huge ass backyard. A lot of stuff that's occupying the garden. There five overgrown living things in the backyard.

• 2 flowering bushes

• 2 green bushes

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Tend to your garden

• This was the culminating day for my gardening project phase 1. I finished de-weeding an important section of the garden. This area has been very problematic for me. Every now and then wehn I got the time, I pick out the weeds from this area. But a few weeks after -- the weeds come back as sure as day. I do not want a chemical based solution to get rid of the weeds. I have kids running around and I don't want to expose them to chemicals. So I researched this thing and found a better solution. The idea is you cover the ground with a barrier -- a natural one using newspapers or cardboard. Then cover the barrier with mulch to hold it down. God, doing this with the kids is so satisfying. I feel I accomplished a lot and did something worth my time during the weekend. I love it.

• There's a

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How the day went down

• The day started early for me, as usual I drove the wife to the office. Good thing, her office is right next to Bunnings. I did some man shopping today.

• At Bunnings, I bought garden stuff. This is the first time I went crazy on a shop and bought stuff that I actually need and has purpose in my life. I am very happy with all the stuff I bought today. I think these will keep me busy for the rest of autumn. Here's the stuff I bought:

  • Four sacks of black-dyed mulch -- the neighbours have this and it looks so good in their garden. That's what I bought even though it's not the cheapest thing out there.

  • A new pot plant for our living room: peace lily -- a cheap but beautiful one. It replaced a dying bird of paradise. It was infected with fungus. Time to retire the poor old thing. The peace lily is a very good buy @ $13 and it really sparks joy in the area.