2020 in numbers

2020 was a year of big changes, primarily due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which impacts the whole world, forcing people all across the globe to adjust their lifestyle.

I thought I had the busiest year in 2019 workwise. Well, I thought wrong, 2020 was way worse... In fact, I just ended my work day about 20 minutes ago, had my shower and now writing this last blog entry for the year.

Here are the 2020 numbers:

125 blog entries, this is the 13th year in a row. Whenever I need some self-assurance that I am disciplined, persistent and consistent, I just have to remember this.

57 days of commute to work recorded, which covered 2091.6 kilometres, giving an average of 36.7 kilometres per day.

7 petrol filling recorded. My two years old Civic is doing an average of 14.7 kilometre per litre of petrol.

123 days of worked till overtime-worthy late. I used to consider working more than an hour beyond normal work time as overtime. There was nothing less than two hours this year, with regular at least four hours in the weekends.

To put this into perspective, 52 weeks of 5 working days = 260 working days. Take away 17 public holidays and replacement holidays we have 243 working days. Out of the 243 days I worked overtime 123 days, that's 50.6%. This is just horrible, there is no work/life balance and absolutely not conducive to my wellbeing. >_<

7.5 days of leave taken. Again, I thought I had the lowest last year... This also means that I only had 235.5 working days and so I had worked overtime 52.2% of those days! >_<

0 days on business trip. For a recluse and introvert this is actually not a bad thing, thanks Covid-19!

28 novels read, a mixture of new books and rereads, average of 13 days for a book. Oh, also reread the Dragon Ball comic, 42 books. =)

2 patent filings, what a pleasant surprise. Good achievement in life.

43, 16, 13, 11, 2 for my own reference.

Happy New Year dear reader, wish you a safe and healthy 2021. Please do your part in curbing the pandemic.

Other |hyped up heads up| category entries.

Hoverboard

Thanks to brother-in-law doting on the kids, we have two hoverboards in the house.

Having always been showered with gifts and stuff from family and relatives, I sincerely hope that the kids learn appreciation and gratitude, and not take things for granted.

Riding a hoverboard felt a bit awkward initially but once you got used to it, it becomes intuitive. At least that's the case for me and my family.

A few days after use, one of the wheels of a hoverboard developed a problem, where the inner tube stem was sucked inwards, pushing onto the rim, making inflating the inner tube impossible.

We never found out what caused that issue, because in my overzealous attempt to fix it, I ended up bursting the inner tube and we had to replace it. Replacing the inner tube was a painful process, at the time of drafting this, the wounds on my hand are still fresh and smarting.

Oh well, at least I have the experience of changing the inner tube and wheel of a hoverboard now. Learned something. Prefer not to have to do it again though.

It's about three weeks now (this entry is drafted on 27th of December) since we have the hoverboards, while the younger son still plays with the hoverboard, the elder son has already lost interest after the first few days. And no, I am not surprised, such is his nature.

Anyway, a tool to replace walking is always good for lazy people like me, kekeke. Here's a video showing hoverboard in action.

Other |geeky gaming| category entries.

Bliss

Initially the plan is to write about either the received Logitech G502 gaming mouse, or the hoverboards.

But then when I was looking up the relevant image and/or video file, I saw this and decided to post this instead.

Snowball in its wood shaving hole, with its eyes closed, blissfully enjoying its carrot snack. ^_^

Cute little thing.

Other |enjoyable events| category entries.

冬至

今天冬至，愿大家冬至快乐！ ^_^

面子书被汤圆图洗版的今天，两个瓜和情人老婆仔在家里一起做了一锅的汤圆。

虽然最后只有我一个人吃真的汤圆（他们都是吃「麻芝」），至少午餐和晚餐都是一家人一起同时吃，算团团圆圆啦！

哦，也是家里一份子的「雪球」没有得吃汤圆，可怜… 是为了它好啦，因为不知道安全不安全，怕它哽到。

希望可以调整一下我的心境啦，不喜欢负能量爆棚的自己。

随兴随想 |系列|

Shame on me

I woke up around eight in the morning on a Sunday thinking about work. The unease persisted and it bothered me so much that I couldn't get back to sleep.

So I got up and worked. Both simulation cases had diverged, basically failed. Not surprised really, that has been the recent trend. And a big source of stress to me.

The lack of results lately, coupled with my sense of responsibility and the perfectionist within is absolutely not conducive to my wellbeing. Wonder if I have atelophobia?

Already engaged the technical support of the software provider, not making much progress on that front since the technical support is... well, let's just say I have reservation on the quality and competency of the support. None of the things the tech support suggested I try have been successful thus far.

So I am still trying to solve it myself mainly. For goodness sake I am the software user, not the software developer, I don't know the intricate details of how the software work! I can only do it trial and error and hope I hit gold.

Well, shame on me nevertheless! Waking up early on a weekend, thinking about work some more. Such disrespect!

I have dishonoured the slacker extraordinaire I claimed to be, I am devastatingly ashamed of myself.

Other |wretched workaholic| category entries.

怨气很重

工作和生活上有太多不顺心顺利的事在交接的时间点连续的发生。

无法保持好心情，我坠落沦陷。现在的我，负能量爆棚。

我想，如果有电影效果的话，我现在是被浓浓黑黑的气势围绕着的。

而且是有股寒冷的力量由我为中心点往外扩散，让人无法靠近、让周围的人不由自主地颤抖和难受的。

现在的我，怨气很重。

随兴随想 |系列|

Tipped

I have not been doing overtime since last Friday.

Well, more or less. Still did some work after I woke up in the weekend, but just for a relatively short duration and once I found out that the simulation cases had error I just quit instead of trying to resolve them. Left them till the weekday, the normal work hours.

And these few days I ended my work day at dinner time, more or less on time. Even if I turned on my laptop after dinner it's just something quick so comparatively that doesn't count as overtime.

At least that's what I am trying to convince myself.

I am done with working day and night and through weekend. I am done working overtime. Enough is enough.

Never ending changes and demands, the more I do the more I am asked to do.

It has reached the tipping point and was hovering there while I continued to burn myself out for the insane workload and due dates. Then it tipped over last Friday.

So ya, I am done. No more.

I will work on a more sensible pace and duration now, my wellbeing matters. At least the high level leaders seem to say so.

This is my current resolution. I am trying my best to stay true to it.

Other |wretched workaholic| category entries.

When the planets aligned

Or perhaps I should say, when the ten realms aligned...

... usually luckless person on Midgard would get a sliver of luck for a change.

A bit of background is in order. I think the background story will be the lengthy part of this entry, so just take it as the main content, hehe.

My room gets dusty frequently. The sea breeze brings with it dust from the multi-years land reclaimation project happening off the shoreline where I stay.

After I was done with comparatively short work hours (since my heart was not in it) this morning, I tidied and cleaned my work table. Basically wiped everything down with a moist cloth.

Even though I haven't had much time for gaming, I still called myself a gamer, and my preferred gaming platform is the computer, with keyboard and mouse as the favoured input device.

Any self-respecting computer gamer will have a gaming mouse, mine is a Logitech G5 bought many years ago. Before that I had the MX518.

Despite the once in a while cleaning, the inner circumference of the scroll wheel on my G5 has accumulated grime over the years.

When I tried to rub off the grime with moist cloth, the plastic or rubber scroll wheel turned soft, gluey and sticky, I didn't noticed it at first, it's when, to my horror, part of the wheel started to deform and broke off that I realised. Oh my goodness!

Why oh why a cleaning activity ended up ruining my mouse?!?!! I now have a wonky scroll wheel with chunk missing, if it's any consolation, at least it's not that sticky any more with grime stuck to it... >_<

Out of curiosity I looked up what's the successor for Logitech G5, and currently it seems to be the G502 Hero, which Logitech official site has it priced at RM399.

Okay, can't justify that kind of expense so I asked wifey if there is any offer since businessmen like to have these same day and month number sales and today happened to be the 12/12. Didn't expect it to be within budget even if it's on sales so I asked her to also check if there were any G5 still available.

It appears that the planets were aligned at that particular moment, because Logitech had a flash sales on that exact model, for RM209. It's still not cheap but it's just too good to pass.

Wifey has some other mojo that further reduced the price so she bought me the G502 Hero at less than half the official listed price.

To be honest I still can't believe the luck and timing. Imagine the profit margin the company must be making to offer such discount. But I am looking forward to recieving and using the mouse. Yes I am. ^_^

Other |temperamental thoughts| category entries.

徒劳无功

“人生本来就有很多事是徒劳无功的。”

才不管之前有谁讲过，总之我只记得电影「那些年」沈佳宜的版本，呵呵！

几天前一句 “this workload is not conducive to my wellbeing” 老板马上就一对一网上会议。

其实我就只是实话实说，根本没有什么其它目的。没日没夜没周末没私人时间的忙，事实就是不健康的，没有可能、如果、但是、什么的。

那一对一的会议，也是让他可以交差，名正言顺说有关注、有即时反应。

毕竟我没有要为难任何人，因为我早知道是我自己命贱，那要命的责任感和完美主义的执念。

现实就是做越多的人，就会被老板给更多的工作。说好听点是能者多劳，说俗气点就是水鱼。

是我命贱。我劳碌命。我认命。

今天一整天和顾客的会议，得到的是那卖命忙碌了这么长的时间所换来的是那徒劳无功的感觉。

又要从头开始做起，唉～

真的，工作、生活、人生里很多事情是徒劳无功的。

随兴随想 |系列|

有感而发：活着，就好了

二零二零年十二月六日。

因为疫情，有些人说，二零二零年就这样废了。有些人说，二零二零年白活了。

也许疫情和行动管制令对我这宅男的影响不大，生活和平时没有什么大差异，所以我由衷认为，二零二零年，活着，就好了。

一直想尽办法要让孩子们懂得感恩，而不是总是抱怨的我，在没日没夜的忙得精疲力竭的时候，也是这样告诉自己的。

要感恩我还有工作，还能养家糊口。很多人因为疫情失去了工作，生活成了问题。

要感恩我还活着，家人都还安康。世上很多很多的人因为这新冠肺炎失去了生命。

真的，健康活着，已经很好了。至少，我是这样让自己撑下去的。

疫情不能受控，完全是人的态度和自律的问题。

就是有那些侥幸心态的人，那些无视或违反控制疫情蔓延恶化而制定的规则的人，那些就只是根据自己的需要好恶来行事的自私自我的人。

唉，人类，很累人。

有感而发 |系列|

小小心愿

二零二零年最后一个月了。

可不可以，不要让我这么累？

心语细述 |系列|