August 4, 2024 - bloghan 5
My body hurts. Specifically, my right arm, my neck, and my left leg. Also, all my food has gone through about 3 hours of no refrigeration and freezing. And all in all? Those are all the results of great happenings!
Tier list of the week
This week's tier list: chess. The last time I played chess was in May. The last time I played chess before that was in junior high. The last time I won a game of chess was in the sixth grade.
Ordered tiers, but unordered within tiers. Fun fact: in junior high, one of the big things that gave you "smart status" at my school was being good at chess. I had that kind of "status" by my grades, but people kept asking me to play chess. I absolutely suck at chess because I'm not good at strategizing two moves ahead. I kept making excuses to get out of playing matches, because I was afraid of losing and being seen differently. So what did I do? The only logical course of action was to start up a chess tournament, pretend I was always super busy with figuring out the logistics of that, getting announcements done, asking the principal to get a yearly trophy commissioned for it, and maintain that tournament scheme for years so that people would stop asking to play chess with me! I think it was a genius plan.
Personal updates (achievements, reflections, and antics)
The start of this week was rather slow. I was mostly just slogging away at my two new tasks at work, slowly getting through them without much in the way of guidance. For these tasks, it was ok, they were pretty simple. I tried eating from restaurants a bit more. There was this place that sold really large fried chicken portions, and I also got some rice and grilled corn on the cob from them too. I got the chicken that was stuffed with hot cheese, and it was delicious. I will be ordering from them again, and hopefully it won't lose too much heat this time. After all, it's not the driver's fault that the traffic lights next to the restaurant happened to stop working that day, but the food did reach me cooler than intended. Next time, for sure.
Actually, on the topic of traffic lights, I got yelled at by a bus driver early on in the week. I didn't know that in this city you have to make eye contact with the bus driver to make them stop at your station, otherwise they will just leave, but I do think he was not justified in yelling at me. I had my noise-cancelling headphones on, so I didn't hear what words he was yelling, but he did that "point at eyes with two fingers thing," so I got the gist. It's such a strange policy to me, because I'm more used to the bus stopping if there even is someone at the stop, and I thought for sure that's how it was working this last month, but I guess not? Whatever, now I know.
Thursday, I went out with a bunch of coworkers to a local park, to celebrate the last day of one among them. I got to try Popeye's for the first time (it was kinda just fried chicken, but the price was good!) and I met some new coworkers I hadn't yet. It was a good time, even though not much happened. There were some very interesting conversations, a whole lot of giggling at just facial expressions: wasn't really sure what to expect from the event, but it was nice. I hope that on my last day, I get to do something similar.
The next day was a day off for everyone at my company. It's a good thing because it's a paid day off, but a bad thing because I needed my boss to complete some forms due on that day... and he didn't. But I didn't have much time to worry about that because that day, my coworkers dragged me out to the beach! Well, less "dragged out" and more "invited," but still, it's not really something I would do on my own. I was there from 10am to almost 7pm, and it was a lot more fun than I thought it would be (at first). We played a ton of beach volleyball, and since I'm not a very sporty person, my team was at a pretty clear disadvantage. My teammates were pretty good at hiding their frustration at all the free points I was giving up when we were first beginning, but when they started giving me tips after every single point, I could more easily tell. My arm was so red, and it hurt to even pick up the ball after a couple of hours, and in our last game I was really wishing the other team would hurry it up and win so that I could have an excuse to sit out. It's been three days, and I'm still feeling it. Despite that, beach volleyball was a little fun. It was my first time, and while it started to suck near the end, it was nice to begin with. We visited the shore for a couple of minutes, then headed out to eat, where one guy was really disappointed that we got him something with no carbs. Well, he should've shown up sooner. We played Spikeball, which is something I loved doing in May (and I thought I was doing pretty well in it too), but my coworkers (and that one random guy also visiting the beach who asked to join) play with slightly different rules and in a more gentle style, so I wasn't having much success with it like I was in May. I was still hurting a lot from volleyball, so I sat out halfway through the Spikeball rounds, and I was beginning to feel a bit frustrated with myself too. I don't expect to do well in sports and such, but it still stings when you can feel the disdain your teammates have for you when you end up on their team. The latter hours at the beach were spent on the shore and sitting by the volleyball net as everyone else played more rounds. Looking back, I wish that I didn't go. It was hot, it was painful, I was limping for the rest of the day, my arm was all red, and I was feeling bad about myself and my place in other people's lives. But, I think I needed to go. I came to a realization about myself and that so called place in this world when looking out over the water. That's actually something I've only just started to notice, that I almost always end up reflecting and thinking about my story and my future while looking over major bodies of water. Is that a commonly shared human experience? I managed to write this heavy-handed heap during my time standing in the water:
At the Water
The water makes me want to sing
The water makes me want to write
The water makes me reflect
And in looking down, where the waves meet my feet
Washing away the things stuck between my toes
I look up, suddenly aware
That in the distance, the water reflects the sky
And so, from afar
It's blue
And immaculate
A beautiful sight, in every way
But upon approach
Getting close
Personal
It's clear that underneath the surface
It's all muck
Muck, filled with ruins and rubble
With sludge and waste
The lost, the eroded
Permeating, and settled
Muck
The water makes me want to sing
The water makes me want to write
The water makes me reflect
And at the water, on its trembling face
I reflect
After the beach, we went to this sub place. I bought a sub for takeout, planning it for leftovers (and they did end up pretty good as leftovers! I will go back to try one fresh). I got a drink too, and I got to use one of those Coke freestyle machines for the first time, which I found to be very exciting. Some may find it mundane by now, but I'd never had the chance to experience the novelty of it until then. I checked out the options, and opened the Fanta menu, and saw that there exists cherry flavoured Fanta. As I examine the other Fantas, I went to press the cherry Fanta button with my thumb, and fill my cup with it to about 80%. I reached the end of the list as the cup reached 80% fill, and cycled again through the Fanta flavours, to see if any of the flavours on the left side of the screen might combo well with the cherry flavour. But then I see that the grape one is highlighted, and I squint, shake my head, and eventually realize: as I was scrolling with my eyes, my fingers inadvertently tapped the flavour that I had last looked at: grape, meaning that my cup was 80% grape Fanat. I filled the remainder 20% with cherry, but it was too late: my drink tasted like it only had grape Fanta. It was unfortunate, but next time I see one of those freestyle machines, I will have my pure cherry Fanta. I am so glad no one asked me what I had chosen. At this sub place, I resolved that throughout my work term, I would record how fast it takes the coworker who sits next to me to "name 5 x" whenever I prompt him, to introduce more challenge to it. I kinda feel like I was manipulated into feeling like it was my idea, but I kinda like it anyway, so you know what? It is my idea now. Three of us played a ton of matches of "Categories" while waiting for a ride back to our places, and then, the day was over. Beach day felt bad and good to me at the same time. I felt like I had grown a lot closer to my new coworkers and friends, but in return I grew more disdainful of myself, in a way. Another downside is the sand I brought back with me: in my hair, in my bag, in my socks, and now in the washing machine, the shower, and probably my laundry hamper too. Also, I wish I had brought a notebook and a pencil specifically for the times we spent on the coastline. Oh well, maybe next time.
On Saturday and Sunday, I began work on my submission to the meme competition at work, hosted by this one lady in HR. I'm 90% sure that this HR lady (who interacts with me and my coworkers the most) is simply just bored and wants a more spicy inbox or something. Most of my coworkers showed me the image memes they made early on this week. Some roasted the software the team uses, or puts the meme reader into the shoes of HR. But, the prompt in the email was along the lines of "your experience with working here so far." Given that infor, I dont believe that HR is going to understand the more technical work I do and tools I use, and in addition, being put into HR's shoes is not representative of my time working for this company. To best fit the actual theme, I decided to go with a video meme, specifically a remix of the video 'Hanamaru breaks a laptop-zura' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyl3tpL__NE), one of the rare cases of the 'Love Live! Sunshine!!' fandom making a funny meme (seriously, that fanbase is very unfunny). It represented all my technical difficulties with getting set upon the company hardware and tech. I redid all the error messages and most of the desktops by hand because I didn't like how the original poster used swimsuit art of 'Love Live! Sunshine!!' characters right at the end, since it didn't fit in at all with what the original edit was going for. I also cut the last bits of dialogue, since the laptop shutting off gets the message across enough. I plan to also voice over the beginning to make it extra focused on the company, maybe making it an exchange between me and my boss on the first day. I used Kdenlive for the editing instead of my go-to, Pitivi, and I've got to say: why didn't I switch sooner? All the different effects (shoutout to Corner and Transform, specifically) are so convenient, and it also doesn't drop frames in the render process like Pitivi does. It feels a little more clunky than Ptivi, yes, but once I got into the rhythm of using tracks and clips, it made sense. It also has such a nice intuitiveness to the way it tracks time, and the advance by one frame button was actually so clutch in getting the timing right for the song in my company-specific version of the edit. While editing took me just over 8 hours on Sunday, it was actually quite a fun experience (minus the extreme right thumb pain I have right now). I wouldn't want to do it full-time, as a job, but it was so cool putting all these clips and pictures together, playing around with sizes, locations of frame corners, managing timing down to the frame, and performing the magic of keyframes, then getting one "polished" video out of it! Even if my effort doesn't pay off and I don't win, I'm glad I went ahead and learned this, even if it is at a pretty basic level. That being said, I'm sure that only two people will submit video memes, one of them being me. Maybe it will be an advantage? I really hope so.
The last huge thing to happen to me this week was getting a new fridge! My landlord (as far as I understand it) had friends that were moving and getting a new fridge, so they gave their old fridge to her. My landlord came down to ask me to keep the door open, since she would be giving that fridge to me. Soon after, two guys came with the fridge late Sunday (today!) night. One threw his cigarette on the ground outside, and then they just kinda walked in, spoke some of the fastest Chinese I've ever heard, and dragged the new fridge around my place. They dragged the old fridge out of my kitchen area and into the laundry area, and one of them found an old phone book and put it on my kitchen counter??? The landlord came down after that, and I swear they started talking even faster. At this point, I have yet to be acknowledged as anything more than the guy who opened the door wider so they could get in, until my landlord translates and tells me not to turn on the new fridge for 3 hours, since it was transported face down, messing with the refrigeration fluids. Fine enough, I suppose, my food will survive. Once the fridge guys leave (the one guy didn't pick up his cigarette), I open the new fridge, and I actually gasp. It's so much bigger, it's got shelves and baskets and an EGG HOLDER. The freezer has shelves, an ice cube maker/tray, and a small little drawer that's perfect for all my freezies that I keep getting. Honestly, of all the things here that have made me feel like an adult, my "new fridge experience" is in my all-time top 5. The new fridge is louder than the old one, but it also has more variance in when it makes noise? As I type this, it seems dead silent, but 10 minutes ago it was humming a lot. I will have to investigate it more, first by finding a manual online. I didn't get to do shopping today because I didn't want to buy new groceries until the new fridge was installed, so I hope that sometime this week I will have time to go and not get too tired from work. An hour after the fridge guys left, my landlord came down and gave me a lesson in organizing your fridge. Milk and proteins should be as far back as possible to keep them cool and preserved, and baking powder should be kept on the shelf to keep things fresh. She seemed very passionate about it, and I must say it was quite a nice lesson, as were many things this week.
Future plans
This week, I specifically referenced the list in order to try and get through them all. That being said, more got added to my plate, so I didn't finish it anyways. Here's the update on last week:
- 'Delicious in Dungeon': I read through the Winged Lion arc, Laios is so smart and so stupid at the same time, it's amazing. There's so much detail put into everything in this series, and I feel like I don't appreciate it enough.
- Door: Sidelined.
- Day 16, Advent of Code 2022: I got refreshed in Rust, and implemented the Floyd-Warshall algorithm for the sample input, but I can't figure out how to get the most optimal path through the caves.
- Honoka Kosaka's birthday: All I have to say is remember the phrase "Ah, it started with a subtle premonition (1)"
For this week, I think I can finish off 'Delicious in Dungeon.' I will probably put my thoughts on it in a future bloghan. I will continue my Sisyphean journey with Day 16 of Advent of Code 2022, and connect stuff up with the door. I think I might also reread some parts of 'One Piece' that I rushed through, and do a couple more runs in 'Yohane the Parhelion: NUMAZU in the MIRAGE,' to get closer to 100%-ing it. Also, of course, my submission for the meme competition at work is due on Monday, but all I have left is my voicework, rendering, and sending it off.
Song of the week
'MIROH' (https://youtu.be/QJXyBGYUI9o) by Stray Kids is the song of the week. I'm going to be honest with you here: I do not know anything about Stray Kids, this is the first I've heard of them, and the first time I heard this song was this week. My phone was in a watery environment for a couple seconds, and some entered the speaker holes, making my speakers sound very tinny and quiet. I read online somewhere that blasting this song would eventually clear it up, and I thought "oh, why not?" And it worked. It worked. It worked???? Huh???? Thanks I guess, Stray Kids. It does have a nice beat, I guess. They get song of the week for saving my phone speakers.
Call for suggestions
Bloghan 5, end. Please note that I did not receive any suggestions for how to conclude bloghans when this section disappears in September, and I could really use some. Also, suggestions on things I can use an air fryer for would be nice too, since I haven't really touched it since I got it. See you next week!
- bubbler