A quarter is over

Last day of March today, one quarter of 2024 is over in a blink of an eye.

On reflection, I honestly cannot say it had been a productive quarter.

In regard to work, I was busy as usual, but to me, the value wasn't there. Many tasks were low value stuff, noise more than signal.

Honestly believe that I could have spent the time on more valuable tasks, like working on invention stuff, or working on skill acquisition, instead of wasting time on thermal assessment of a moving target project that will likely be irrelevant when they finally decided on the target, or spending time preparing various materials for a manager visit, or sharing of non-technical knowledge.

On personal affairs, I am doing better in the daily exercise front compared to last quarter. Well, the consistency has improved after Chinese New Year.

This year, elder son is facing his important nationwide high school final year examination, one that comes with official certificate, and of which the results will determine qualification for his further education. His response to this is to increase the time he glues to his mobile phone, for after one quarter into 2024, his average daily phone usage time has increased from the previous 4 hours to 5 hours...

To put this into perspective, excluding lunch and diner time, he has about 7 hours of after school awake time during school days, and on average, he spends 5 hours of that 7 on the phone. This is still not counting the time he spends watching television. You gotta wonder when does his study and do his revision?

It is no surprise that he is within a stone's throw from the absolute last position of his entire grade. He seems contented with his situation though, for he continues to ignore our advices and continues to violate screen time and usage time limits.

Lack of self-discipline and time management skill, coupled that with his addiction to the mobile phone, his rebellious and egotistical personality, is a horrible and destructive combination.

We hope he will eventually grow up and do the right thing, and hope it will not be too late. One quarter is over in 2024, time is ticking, his behaviour thus far is not encouraging.

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