• Checkin to Tully's Coffee

    by
    in Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan
    Lunch, coffee, and a read

  • Looking back on 2025 and ahead to 2026

    by
    Happy New Year! Welcome to my year in review post. See previous editions for 2024, 2023, 2022,  2021, and 2020.

    Side Projects

    I didn't do any work on Tanzawa or Sunbottle this year. I threatened to build commenting functionality, but haven't had the space to actively think and prioritize it. I have an inkling using one of the AI coding agents could help me actually get things built, but I don't have a vision for what I want it to look like or how I expect commenting to behave. Without a vision of an end state I will be unable to articulate what I want and I'd be setting myself / the tooling up for failure.

    Health

    My running fell off a cliff in 2025. From 101 times in a year to just 32 times. I cheekily said I'd aim for 100 runs in 2025 as well, but even when I wrote that, I don't think I had the actual resolve to make it happen. With running falling off a cliff,  I gained a couple of kilos. I joined a local gym for a weekly weights session, so I am active-active at a minimum of once a week, so some of that could be muscle, but I hold no illusions.

    I started skateboarding again and am really enjoying it.

    Family

    School continues to be a challenge. We've been speaking with the appropriate professionals and have a plan for Leo to get the support he needs. I am generally positive about what the next year could look like for Leo and school. I hope that the extra support and changes will give him more confidence and make him like school.

    Sophie is starting to show her age and is in the gray zone for having Cushings. She's getting (me) up at 3:30 every morning as she's super hungry/thirsty/wants to go outside. And once I go downstairs and do things, I'm usually up for the day, so I have to be strict about my bedtime.

    We made 3 trips this year as family: Tsukuba (Space Center), London, and Hannou (Moomin). Long flights as a family are getting easier as we've learned from the previous ones. Everyone is genki (though perhaps a bit sleep deprived)

    Media

    I read a handful of books cover to cover this year and at least as many midway through. Good Inside and 12 Principles for Raising a Child with ADHD have been the most impactful ones. I didn't watch but a couple hours of Netflix and spent way more time on YouTube. My main topics were personal finance (Ramit Sethi) and bikes (Probably Riding), despite not riding my bikes much for pleasure.

    Re-discovering Ramit helped me re-focus my spending and savings each month, which has been good. While I've been making consistent deposits into a taxable brokerage account (and treating it as retirement), finally being able to open a NISA in Japan has been a game changer.

    Work

    This has been a hard year for work. We're growing like crazy, becoming independent from Octopus Energy, and have been valued at 8.65 billion dollars (press release). There is so much going on and in the middle of it all we unexpectedly lost Heer Baxi, my counter part on the product side. To say that this was difficult would be the understatement of century. Still, we shipped a lot of really great work this year and have even more in the pipe.

    I went to Melbourne for the first time. It was my first time south of the equator. I hope I can go again in 2026.

    Looking Ahead to 2026

    Unlike last year where I wrote about my goals and promptly forgot about them after a couple of weeks, this year I am trying to be more methodical and am giving the GPS method a whirl. Being specific / thinking about why (Goal), planning 3 -5 major moves, envisioning why I might fail (Plan), and thinking of a way to track/reminder/hold myself accountable (System) has really helped me set them in my head.

    Lose Weight
    Rather than staying steady, the scales went the wrong direction this year. Not by much, but I don't like it. I'd like to get below 70kg. Many of the changes that will directly impact my success this goal are actually other goals, so they feed into each other (not by design, just happenstance).

    Run Consistently
    I missed running and it's great for my mental and physical health. I've defined consistently as at least 2x a week for 30 minutes. My anti-goals are to train for a marathon or do long runs and to care about speed. Full focus is on consistency.

    Read More, Scroll Sess
    I only finished 7 books last year and got midway through a similar number of books. I want to finish at least 1 book a month and I'd like to read 1 Japanese book. This may result in me actually using Bookwyrm and or Goodreads.

    Save More
    I'm 40. I've done an ok job at stashing cash for retirement, but I'm about at the halfway point. As I can finally use NISA in Japan, I want to take full advantage of the bits  I can. But not just saving, I want to spend on the things that I enjoy and cut everything else. One area I want to save on (while increasing quality) is food – eating out during the week at the same restaurants because we're tired or didn't shop appropriately does not bring me joy. One dinner out at Ootoya costs the same as 3 days of food for the family.

    Get Star Alliance Gold
    I traveled a fair amount for work last year. I want to be more strategic in this so I can get gold status. Then I want to maintain that status even if I don't travel heaps one year (Obtain the SuperFlyers card). Yes it will make my business trips more comfortable, but also it would make trips with the family so much easier when we can do things like access the lounge or checkin in the priority queue etc..

    Conclusion
    I expect this year will be as demanding if not more so than last year. Rather than feeling like I'm taking it on the chin, I want the goals and the systems put in place to achieve them enable me to face the demands in a healthier, happier, balanced, and positive way.

  • Checkin to Starbucks

    by
    in Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan
    Post hatsu-mode latte
  • by
    New Year’s 5k
    Happy New Year 🎊 Kicking it off with hopefully more consistency this year.

    5.0km

    34.2min

    19m climbed

    157.2avg bpm

  • The Week #287

    by
    • 🎅 Christmas came and went. Leo woke up at 6am with excited to find that Santa had brought him Super Smash Brothers for Switch. He immediately played it for an hour (video games before school are usually a non-starter) and really enjoyed himself. Mere minutes before it was time to school (booo 👎), he got a stomach ache and was unable to attend. Silver lining, at least he had Christmas day off as it's meant to be.
    • ♨️ We drove up to Saitama to visit Moomin Valley Park. The last time we went was during covid using GoTo Travel (a government program during covid that subsidised travel costs / gave vouchers for spending at localities (the opposite of what people were meant to do) –  I wish we had used that more).

      Compared with last time we were able to enjoy the park a lot more. Leo is older, so he could see and do more. He was too small to ride the the big slide at the jungle gym in the forest before and this time he could. The park had a winter wonderland attractions setup as well with (man-made) snow in a few different places, a small sledding incline, and ice skating.
    • 🛷 Watching Leo ride sled gave me some mixed emotions. On one hand, he had a blast sledding the 3-4 meters at a go.  On the other hand, when I compare it to my sledding experience in Colorado (with snow from the sky!), it doesn't compare at all. All that matters is that he has a good time (which we both objectively did!), but I should find a place where we can go sledding here in Japan and take him.
    • 🚗 The car made the trip without issues. We left the house at 100% and after a quick stop by the in-laws to drop off Sophie, we made it with about 33% remaining  – bang on what the navi was saying it would be.

      Based on our trip at the start of the year to Tsukuba, I got a charge card to make charging when out and about easier. I opted for a card from Eco Q-den, as there isn't a monthly fee (unless I am traveling, I always charge at home). But turns out it doesn't work with all chargers. It'll work at the ones along the highways and probably Eneos, but not with e-mobility power, the largest network. Which is a shame because emp is the largest network, but all of the cards require a monthly fee. However, it's far more cost effective for me to just pay the higher visitor charging fee. I wish public charging in Japan were like it is in Europe: open and based on actual usage, rather than being segregated into different networks and based on time (my little battery takes a fraction of the electricity but still I pay the same).
1 of 714 Next