Category: just life

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just life weeknotes

weeknotes, 36/26

september! it’s back-to-school season and the supermarket shelves are filled with colorful notebooks, all ready to be filled with knowledge. speaking of which, i’ve finished the first ChinaX course on china’s political and intellectual foundations and jumped into #2, about first empires and the rise of buddhism. still going well, and i really like the teachers and the format!

i also had my first swim class of the new season, and it felt really good to move again and be in the water.

speaking of swim classes, little niece had her own first class with the 3 year olds… and a meltdown when she realized there was not going to be a grownup on the water to play with her, which then morphed into an epic tantrum when we got home (very mazeukeru). poor bunny is back on kindergarten and they’re now doing shorter naps, which doesn’t help. it’s hard being 3!

the carpenters came and started replacing the floorboards that were damaged by the leaking tap! we’re still missing a bit of skirting board and doorframe, but then the place will be as good as new. when the work was done, we stepped outside briefly to say goodbye and suddenly the wind closed the front door of the apartment… leaving us outside with no keys and no shoes.😱 a milestone of sorts: our first time getting locked out in the new place!

what else? on a random afternoon, we checked out a nearby beach in vagueira and also the local ceramics factory outlet, in search of a big dish where we could put all the fruit we bring back from the parents’ farm on the weekends. we did find one, and they had so many other nice things there too! 😍

we also checked out aveiro’s bookfair and i got a couple of books for the little one. i was most excited that the university had a stand there too, and got myself a very cheap university-branded tshirt! i am a student of university of aveiro, after all, if only through the confucius institute classes. :)

we watched a couple of movies this week: hero (about a group of assassins who want to kill the king of Qin) and margin call (about the 2008 financial crisis) — the latter was better than the first.

i finished the book of eels and learned more about eels than i ever thought possible. i hadn’t realized they were so mysterious, or that nobody really knows how (and where exactly) they reproduce! i also finished down to earth, and lots of kids books from the library (elmer, the orchestra and a snowy day).

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just life

everyday carry

there was a topic on the forum some time ago where people posted their everyday carry bags (or EDC), and it was super interesting to see what kind of things people decided to bring along in their daily life.

so the last time i washed my own bag, i decided to lay all the items on the table to catalogue them too. here they are, next to my cheap ikea bag:

earbuds
keys
re-usable shopping bag
masks
hairpin
electronic insect bite healer
plastic film camera
sunglasses and reading glasses
sticky googly eyes
film canister with coins
wallet
drawing pad + notepad + pen
tissues
unicorn-themed plasters
ibuprufen and anti-sickness pills
sunscreen
chapstick
tampon
lactase pills
water bottle

it’s a very accurate dissection of my life: i’m lactose-intolerant, old enough to need reading glasses, am adored by mosquitos, have a tiny niece… :D

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in the usa just life one second everyday

may 2026 — one second everyday

aaaaaah! half of the year is behind us already and i haven’t even done may’s recap video… without further ado:

we closed the house in tavira and moved ourselves and a few of our things to aveiro, to a tiny apartment with big windows, where everything feels new. we spent about a week there catching up with family before packing our bags and flying to boston. and after that, every day was very busy at the stamp show, with events taking place everyday — including the launch of the Postcrossing stamp! 😱

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just life weeknotes

weeknotes, 26/26

week 26 of year 26 was a happily mundane week in the north.

spent time with little niece at the swimming pool and also at the “marchas populares” of her parish. all the bigger kids from the local kindergartens and schools “marched” and did little choreographies, and even the seniors joined in the celebrations. there was street food and some live music after the kids’ bedtime. it was cute — the kind of stuff summer is made of in more rural areas. they technically live in aveiro, but once you’re out of the center-center, everything feels very countryside-like here, the houses low and spaced out by corn fields.

otherwise, we just did the normal stuff of life: working, exercising, procrastinating on the ikea trip to get the million little things this house still needs… 😩

we went to torreira with friends on one of the days, and saw them offloading the fish from the boats. sooooo many seagulls! i’m amazed we didn’t get pooped on. the day after, they came to visit us in aveiro and we walked around town, doing the touristy thing and dodging the occasional rain showers. thankfully, the weather has been pretty mild here, compared to the extreme temperatures in the north of europe.

i finally finished leviathan wakes, which took me much longer than it should have and i’m not even sure why… i do like a good space opera, but this one somehow didn’t really click with me and i ended up dragging it around.

i started i deliver parcels in beijing, which tells the story of a courier in china and is a kind of behind-the-scenes glimpse into what happens when you order something online. i’m planning to build a kind of “china curriculum” for myself (made of books and online courses), before i decide if i want to enroll in the “china studies” masters at the local uni in the future.

then on sunday, we loaded the car with the small one and the boy’s mom and went to visit my parents (and his dad). the trip is a little long, and the kid almost always ends up falling asleep, after asking a million times for the bread song, her current favourite.

my mom uses these weekend trips to offload all her zucchini and other summer produce (strawberries, cucumber, green beans, plums…) on me, so our fridge is bursting right now. not complaining though! :D

we’re halfway done with this year, and the speed at which this first half passed is a bit dizzying… i’m hoping summer will slow things down!

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just life

the summer of boredom

some months ago, i randomly saw a video of a musician who is doing a year of “no smart screens”. it was a bit extreme and the person made her life really inconvenient in many ways (eg, going to the library for emails and meetings, etc). from what i gathered, she was very much addicted to social media and perhaps that was what was necessary for her to break that addiction. 

but by doing this, she eliminated the majority of distractions and things stealing her attention for hours every single day. on her reflections after a few months of this change (recorded on a camcorder and uploaded by a friend), she was realizing that one of the things that changed in her life is that she’s bored a lot — and because she has no easy escape from this boredom, she ends up using the time for reading or doing stuff she needs to do (or even wants to do!) but previously “didn’t have time for”.

it all sounds so logical and simple that it’s even a little silly to write about it… but i think i’m now realizing that in order to have time (and also to have the feeling of having time), you need to be bored and not be constantly chasing away that boredom with quick distractions. and it feels like we sort of killed that kind of boredom these days, in the era of smartphones, internet, social media, netflix, online gaming et al. hence, we’re never bored and we never feel like we have time for the things we really want to do. it’s even worse if those things are a little bit time-consuming or slightly difficult.

i guess i got a glimpse of that during the blackout last year, when i actually did other things for once — things like putting together a video that i’ve had on my to-do list for years, but “didn’t have time” to do. when the internet went away, i was stuck with what i had in my computer or around me, and worked within those constraints to fight the boredom and make something. 
it’s kind of wondrous, to have time to be creative and do things like that — or just time to reflect. i think this is the first long blog post i’ve written in years, and it’s part because of this realization that i need the boredom and the constraints more than the quick hit of a distraction. honestly, it’s been a little bit game-changing.

anyway, i’m rambling but i do want to turn this summer into the “summer of boredom”. i want my phone (and the internet) to become a tool instead of a toy that i use to distract myself. i want to be so bored that i read books and long articles, do crafts, clean the windows, research stuff, write letters, draw, take pictures with my dusty analogue cameras… the things that make me “me”. i want to be less distracted, and more looking for things to do.

so… let the summer of boredom begin!