December Break

The previous blog post was like 2 months ago? Well, here I am again. Not too bad considering my track record over the past year or 2. Just only managed to slow down a bit to catch my breadth and do some mini reflections and planning. The past 1 month had been pretty hectic for me, with mountains of school assignments piling up, then straight into the exam season. Haven't taken a real exam in like about 4 years. JLPT doesn't really count.

Perhaps I could have taken things a lot more chill, and cruise through all of them with a passing grade. But it all boils down to expectations and mindset. I originally had sort of a mini-goal to try to aim for valedictorian of my course, seeing as I had sort of a competitive advantage given my background. But a couple of assignments and exams later, I feel like it is simply not worth it. It doesn't really add any value or progress to any of my life goals. It just came about from my 'Kiasu' never wanna lose to anyone mentality. Not worth it, just let it go.

School stuff aside, I have also been actively attending the regular anime and cosplay events that pop up from time to time. Just me doing my usual casual photography thing. 3 years in, and I'm still pretty much unknown and under the radar. But a good recent development is me befriending this eccentric photog that has decent connections with some of the people in the scene. Leaching and channeling on his enthusiasm, I have so far managed to do 2 casual model shoots thus far. Good chance for me to brush up my photography skills and also perhaps slowly break out of my shy boy shell. Also really makes my want to upgrade to a real full-frame camera, but I'm tight on cash at the moment. :(

Speaking of cash, I have also been spending many hours a day over the past week delving and researching deeply into cryptocurrencies. Initially, I was a total skeptic and was 100% sure that it is just paper money that will eventually burst and kill off everyone. But digging deeper, and understanding the concepts, and nuances between the different cryptos, I can see potential in SOME of them, but I'd remain cautious of buying any random one without first understanding it. I have not put any money in yet, but I'm almost totally convinced by the concept behind Ethereum as a platform. More so that Bitcoin even.

That brings me to the main point of this post (4 intro paras deep as usual), that is to do some planning for my December holidays. Excluding this week, which I have wasted, I have about 4 weeks in total to make use of (I just now counted only). Given that I am not able to travel anywhere, I have quite a bit of time on my hands at the moment. Initially, I was thinking of just doing intensive exercise, diet, and maybe reinstalling the games which I had quit, but now that I am free from games I don't really have the urge to rejoin again. Also, there are no more events for the year. I'm heading to the HJFW tomorrow, but after that one, there really is nothing much left in SG.

So, that makes me want to look deeper into investing into the whole cryptocurrency thing. I could treat this like my grown up version of gaming, and pump in a little money to play around with. Just a little to have some fun, but not enough to get hurt if all is lost. After all, it seems like the most volatile and therefore best place to make big margins. Perhaps, I can even use this to fund my camera upgrade plan, who knows. Only problem is, it is very hard to enter right now. I mean that literally. Not only are the prices quite high, but also most of the exchanges are literally overloaded with users so much so that registering is so damn hard right now. Trust me, I tried. If anything, I'd suggest you register for an account now, whether or not you decide to go in now. Because if the time is ripe, you want to be able to trade right away, and not wait 3-4 working days for the bloody verifications.

Aside from that, I WAS supposed to have a freelance mobile app project to work on, but it seems like that plan got canned. Was in talks with the people to develop some mobile commerce app for their company, but the CTO suddenly send 1 message to say that there was a "direction change". Like sure bruh, don't want just say don't want. Don't put me on hold here. Either way, I am ok with that. For me it falls into the category of "have or don't have also ok", as with most things I'm quite chill one. Nowadays at least. But I won't lie, it would have been nice to do it and fund my new camera straight from there. Too bad though. The cosplayer profile app that I was working on also client MIA. Sigh... All like that one.

Japanese revisions are another area that I want to focus on. I mean holy shit I have become so bad. With the rush of assignments in the past month or 2, I had neglected my Japanese entirely, even skipping 2 weeks worth of lessons in a row. So much sacrifice. I went back to class a complete noob who can't even read properly anymore. I think it's safe to say that I have slowly slid into the "worst student in class" ranking. Damn, I used to be the best during the Elementary and Intermediate days. Sigh. Well, at least now I got some time to brush up and revise on it in the next 4 weeks. I have signed up for a new term of 18 weeks, and am fully committed to this as a life goal. As a result I shall even keep my school schedule free on Thursday nights. Time to go full tryhard mode.

The fitness side of things are a little weird. I went from 100% commitment, to compromising every other day because of my project and exam schedules. Need food for morale to do really hard work I guess. So, it feels a bit hard to get back on the bandwagon again. I am back on my fasting plan everyday, and have since restarted my gym on Monday, after 2 weeks of inactivity lol. Initially, intended to go gym again today, but I really needed the time to slow down and recollect my thoughts for this, as well as to finish processing some of the AFA photos. My chest muscles are actually still aching from Monday's hardcore session, so I thought I'd take a break. Hehe. But back to a serious note, the plan now is: Mon gym, Wed interval runs around my neighbourhood, Fri gym again. That plus some supplements and fasting should be enough to kick off my cutting season.

Oh yes, I should probably also update on my health condition. It hasn't even been on my mind lately, but the MRI and blood test reports are back. The young chap doctor at TTSH is practically useless and asked me to Google the condition for myself. But basically what he told me is that it is some Rheumatoid problem, that is also a autoimmune disease? Basically my body is creating some inflammation at the base of my spine/pelvis area, which is what caused my back pains. Sounds severe, but recently I don't feel the pain so much anymore leh. Is it really that bad? I just hope that there isn't any long term implications on my health. Either way, he did refer me to a different specialist for further study. More blood tests incoming. Urgh.

In the meantime, I still have a bunch of photographs to work on from EOY that happened the past weekend. And I will only have more backlog after the HJFW tomorrow. But I don't want this holiday to be all work and no fun too. If possible I will be arranging for meetups and gatherings with old friends to catchup and just talk. So do feel free to jio me out anytime. Additionally, if I get the chance again, I would like to do more photo shoots because I find them fun. So yeah, that's my quick reflection for now. Just some random things happening to me recently that I wanted to talk about and plan out. I SHOULD be doing another blog post before the new year to summarize my 2017 year as a whole. Keyword being should, but most likely I will have the time lah. So until new post, happy holidays, and see you around!