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The Week #249
by James- ๐ด I took a, in retrospect, a much needed day off. I spent the day hanging out with Leo as he was on spring break. We went to Soratos on my bike and played on the roof where they've decked it out with all sorts of things to climb and slide on. I don't know how many more times we'll be able to play up there before it's far too hot. Either way, a successful day off.
- ๐ธ Leo started the 2nd grade. It's odd to me that 2 weeks ago he was in the first grade and now he's not. Growing up with a long summer vacation between grades, it felt like the transition between grades were more pronounced...2 weeks isn't that.
Teachers can change each year in Japan and for 1st grade, his teacher was a bit strict, so we were (keyword) hoping for a new one. And as you can probably guess, to our disappointment, his teacher stayed the same. At least some of his good friends are still in his class.... - ๐๏ธโโ๏ธ I lifted weights 3 times this past week. I'm really liking Alpha Progress, not only does it decide the program for me, but also has a button I can press for it to give me a bit more of a challenge. I think I'll sign up for it at the end of my trial.
- ๐ฒ With the fantastic spring weather, I took advantage and rode my Brompton down to Enoshima, which is my first outing with it in a long time. Along the way I passed a strawberry farm and I could smell them from the cycle path, it was great.
Brompton with blooms ๐ธ - ๐ธ My commentary about the stock market dropping massively won't add to the conversation, but it feels important enough that I should mention it happening this week. My retirement accounts are taking a beating like everyone else's. And despite seeing the probability of this happening, I'll admit I didn't spend enough time thinking about it to actually sell some of my VOO/VTI and buy BND on/before April 1st and speed up my re-balancing. Thankfully I'm still many years away from retirement so it should be "fine".
Aside, this guy is so good at business the market volatility index has surpassed the movement from the pandemic ๐. But also you know he's going to buy a lot of stock just before he decides to reverse tariffs ๐.
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The Week #248
by James- ๐ Leo read his first new English word by himself, or at least that I've witnessed. He was looking at his iPad and the was some text (no icon) that said "Zoom", and he said Zoom. I looked at him and asked him how he knew that and he explained, well Zoo is z-o-o and there's an "m" at the end, so it's "zoom", that's how I knew. Color me impressed. English class is working.
- ๐ฅถ The week of spring was a false alarm and it's back to winter for a week. Booo!
- ๐ฃ I went fishing...sorta! For a work social we went to Zauo, a sushi restaurant where you can fish in the restaurant! If you catch one they'll prepare the fish however you'd like (sushi, sashimi, cooked in a variety of ways)! I did not catch anything, but my mates did. When you catch a fish they celebrate with a Taiko drum, so it's quite lively around dinner time.Definitely need to visit with the fam at some point.
- ๐๏ธโโ๏ธ I started lifting weights again. Deciding on a plan, writing down/remembering what weights I used felt like an insurmountable problem, preventing me from even starting. I know it's not, but that's a lot of decisions to make. A co-worker suggested I useย an app called Alpha progression. You put in your basic info, the equipment you have, and it will generate a plan for you, automatically setup timers and such like. 2 sessions in and I quite like it.ย
The yearly price is a bit much, but ifย I compare it with working out with a trainer at a gym or just the gym, if it's able to keep me going and getting stronger, it's an absolute bargain. Bonus points for prominently including RSS icons with their social icons. - ๐ต These past few weeks with all of the ๐ฉ going on in the old country, I've been doom scrolling on Bluesky/Mastsodon. To be fair to Mastodon, the doom portion of the scrolling was mostly on Bluesky, but scrolling nonetheless, I turned my iPhone into a (mostly) dumb phone.ย Mostly it was done by: removing all icons from my home screen, turning on grayscale mode, and setting up a text-only app launcher widget with 4 apps (messages, line, apple maps, and phone) (as per the instructions in dumb phone app). I didn't go all in and delete all-the-apps (yet).
I think I like it? It's only been a day but the pull of my phone feels like it's less. I want to see if I can use this as a bridge to start taking photos using a camera when I'm out and listening to music on my iPod (besides when I'm on a plane).ย
Thinking about the camera aspect specifically, the reason we tend to use our phones, besides having it with us, is because it's quicker. But if something is really so important that we want to capture an image of it โ what's the harm in spending an extra 10 seconds framing? I imagine all of the processing that phones do these days will be hard to replicate, but alas.
Point is, dumb phone? Hell yeah.
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Checkin to ๅ่ฎๅฑ ๆนๅๅฐๅบ
Restocking and enjoying a cuppa of Bolivia ๐ง๐ด. -
The Week #247
by James- โ๏ธ On Wednesday it snowed in Tokyo. From the office it was pure white outside and the snow flew past the window almost horizontally. It didn't last as it was nice and sunny in the afternoon.
- ๐ธ The very next day we had offย to celebrate Spring and, almost if on cue, the weather warmed right up with the highs being in the upper teens and low 20's. I am more than ready for spring, but already not looking forward for what's next.
We spent the day in Minatomirai, which feels like it's been a while since we've gone there as a family. At the red brick warehouse they had, what I can only describe as a dog festival, because every other person had their dog with them. To quote the late great P.D. Eastman, "Big dogs, little dogs, red dogs, blue dogs, yellow dogs, green dogs, black dogs, and white dogs are all at the dog party!". I wish we had brought Sophie (and had one of the doggie backpacks people use to bring their dogs on public transit).
Leo practiced jump rope while watching the dogs near the water. It's a pretty picturesque place to learn how to do double-jumps(?? where you jump once and the rope does 2 full rotations).ย - ๐ฅ After jumping rope for a while we went to see the new Doraemon movie at World Porter. The theater was quite nice when it was built ages go, but it's starting to show its age. The arms didn't move on the regular seats felt andย the rows felt quite close together, like I was in economy class on a long haul flight. It didn't prevent me from getting a bit of sleep during the film.
- ๐น Leo's been getting into his melodica/pianica and learned to play the theme song from Dragon Ball GT. Perhaps cooler than that was watching him think of a nursery rhyme, while figuring out how to play it, writing down the notes so he build up to the entire song.
- ๐ถ A new Japanese Breakfast album came out (Apple music). I've only listened to it once in full, but ๐ from me.
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by JamesLunch Run
Calves were tight and never loosened up. Cut it short.3.5km
23.1min
18.2m climbed
146.7avg bpm
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Checkin to KUA`AINA
Avocado burger time -
by JamesSpring Run
Lovely spring day after hail and snow yesterday morning.4.5km
31.9min
30.4m climbed
151.8avg bpm
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The Week #246
by James- ๐ฌ๐ง The week in the UK, as always, was over before I knew it. I'm glad to be home and with the fam, but London is growing on me. Maybe it's as I'm always quite central and it's possible to walk to work? Maybe it's all the Brommies around town makes me a bit jealous?
I could see the cold/wet get annoying, but also I reckon one adapts by buying appropriate clothing? I'm looking forward to going back again sometime, maybe this summer? - ๐ In 2016, wanting to be a part of the change I wanted to see in the world, I bought one share of TSLA. I would have bought more, but it was all I could afford. When I buy single stocks, I treat it as betting and if I sell it for anything over what I paid, it's a win. I got lucky on this one.ย
Through the years, I hadn't really considered selling my stock as they were still making good on their end of the electrification of cars and the grid. Sometimes I'd get annoyed, like when I found out that hyperloop existed solely to kill interest in public transit in favor of cars, but as a whole the good outweighed the bad. I could rationalize that away though, at least the end game was fewer fossil fuel cars on the road.
The past few months I started to question if that was still the case. Rather than feeling like I was voting in favor of the change I wanted to see, I found myself feeling embarrassed and a bit of shame. Even if I didn't mention it to anyone, I knew.
All of this to say, I sold it all. I considered keeping just 1 share, so that I was in the same position as when I started, but ultimately, buying it was purely emotional and selling was as well. Sure, I may lose out on some long term gains, but this stock was never about pure profit for me. Maybe at some point in the future I'll be able to buy a share again.
- ๐ฌ๐ง The week in the UK, as always, was over before I knew it. I'm glad to be home and with the fam, but London is growing on me. Maybe it's as I'm always quite central and it's possible to walk to work? Maybe it's all the Brommies around town makes me a bit jealous?
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Checkin to Tokyo International (Haneda) Airport (HND) (ๆฑไบฌๅฝ้็ฉบๆธฏ (็พฝ็ฐ็ฉบๆธฏ))
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