I've recently went for dinner with a few ex colleagues. The question that struck me was, what did you do this year? Anything new? Everyone seems to do things that they loved to do. 

I think the whole year 2021 gone in a flash. I think I didn't do much in 2021. I didn't answer this question. ~somehow I was blank, didn't know what to say.

When I think again, I didn't do as much drawing as I used to. I didn't read as much books as I wanted to. Also, I feel burned out from doing those things and instead found something that I didn't think I have as much interest as I was with drawing, but I picked up this skill. I learned a bit of python. It helped me to do some web scraping of information, it's also, somehow helped me a few times in my current job. I'm so glad I did it. At least, I did something that's helpful.

So, what to do this year? I just hope things get better, so we can go back to travel, at least so I can go back to my home country and see my family.

​Happy New Year 2022. Stay safe!

Today I randomly listen to a podcast called "Our daily bread podcast" on Spotify. It's as if reading daily bread that I received last time in school/church, only in podcast form. The speaker talked about how to find joy in our every day mundane habitual activities, he also referred to a blog by James Ward called "I like boring things".

I read a few of the blog posts. Totally random everyday things, the last post called Loop was written May 2019, talking about when the author taking a walk, which reminded me about the walk I did recently.

Since working from home, for nearly 2 years, that means my physical activities has greatly reduced, and I realized a lot of health problems
arises. For some people, the things I experienced might be a small thing, but I believe it's a reminder that there might be issues that can be bigger if it's not handled properly. I went for a health check and doctor also suggest to go for 30 mins exercise every day.

So to start, I went for a walk in the morning in botanic garden, halfway then return back to the starting point, 30 mins walk from the start to the end. I feel more refreshed as a result. Although it's hard at first, I'm getting use to this, after few more times, it becomes boring, as I took mostly the same route every time. Basically I want to incorporate this as a habit, so I will not think much about it, and just do it.  

Every time I'm doing something for the first time, there's a joy/excitement in doing new things at first, and a lot of things to discover.
The example that I experienced is, I want to be better at French. I listened to a lot of French language learnings podcast, more than 30 mins every day, but soon I would loose interest in it.

I feel if I can set up a habit of the things that I want to achieve, and be consistent with it, I would achieve what I want. Of course I'm aware that habit is not something that is built overnight, so, I'm trying, and I think the key is to find joy in the meaningless. Find what makes you happy in doing these things, and it won't be chores to do, but habits, good habits to have.

This is my second work that I did for HonestKitchen. They are basically a company that sells food for your pet. Go and check them out the website here.
Check the GIFs I created for them, or use them in your instastory in Instagram, and search "honestkitchen". 

After successfully created inktobers art every day for 2 years (with a lot of pressures, hehe), this year, I only managed to do 12 of them.

This year theme that I created is my favorite packaged foods. I also tried to draw this using a textured watercolor paper and watercolor brush in procreate, which I enjoy using, just it takes longer time to work on each piece.

I also doesn't set a goal to do this every day in October, and didn't set expectations, so a bit relax I supposed.
Here's all of them, not in order. Go to my Instagram to check them out. 

Source: Pinterest.

After 14 times of trying hard, I finally success in baking my own macarons. HAHAHA.
As silly as it seems, after the span of few years I tried to re-create recipes from Youtube, and failed. Finally successful when I went to baking class. It's not about the recipe, in fact they are pretty similar with the recipes I saw from Youtube, but I learnt some techniques from the class. The cookie should be dry enough before it's baked. This is the main problem that I had in my earlier attempts, also, different trials have different problems. So, glad, I finally found the secret of baking one. Mind you, it's really seriously finicky cookies, and you need to spent a lot of effort in making one, so I think 2 to 3 Dollars per piece is really because it's hard to make. The funny thing is, I don't really like this cookie because it's too sweet, it just looks cute (especially in pastel colors, or cartoony shapes).
 
Every time I failed in doing something, in the end I want to think that I will be able to do it, I just need to learn from the mistakes and try again. :)
 

Wow. It's end of the year. I literally just wrote 4 posts this year, talking about lazy.
Things that I'm grateful for:

1. It's been more than 8 months working from home, I'm grateful to have a new job just before covid hits. 
2. It's been more than 10 months of not travelling at all. I miss my family back home in Jakarta, also other holiday plans. Thank God for Whatsapp/Zoom, so we all can stay connected.
3. I dropped 3 kg, maybe because I can cook and prepare healthier food when at home, but now at a point of bored with home cooking and wanting to eat outside. (but regretted after, because it feels like food outside a lot of msg/salt/oil, and it makes my throat a bit itchy at times. Although, I also tried different dishes which are more complicated that what I normally do, such as, roast pork, seasoned pork ribs, rendang (which is the most time consuming ever), siomay Bandung with home cooked peanut sauce, bakmi ayam (chicken noodle), jajjangmyeon, mapo tofu, carrot cake, fried kwetiaw.  
4. Not drawing as much as I wanted to, feel that I have creative block. Sometimes I will draw Giphy stickers for holiday events and upload them. I have more than 510 million views and more, so grateful for this! 
5. I played a lot of games this year. Previous years, I would try not to play games so much, because sometimes it takes long time to play, and it makes me not focus on things that I should be working on. But this year, we stayed at home a lot, so, I bought a Nintendo Switch, animal crossing edition, plus the game. It's been one of my favorite game all time, and it's worth every penny. I've been playing this game since 20 March 2020, every single day. Ok, I missed one day or two at some point, but I'm still playing until now. Just 2 weeks ago, I bought a new game because it was on sale. Zelda, Link's awakening. It's RPG game, that I'm still playing leisurely, so no time target or anything, it's enjoyable to see cute graphics also to be able to solve puzzles. 
6. Spending more time with housemates.
7. Taking leave days on random time. Previously when taking time off, I would go back to Jkt, or going for holiday, these days, I would just go out and chill. Sometimes I'm also ok to be at home, I'm a homebody :).

So, looking forward for a better year, 2021. Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year. Hope everyone is safe, and happy. 

Went for a trial class in abc cooking school, this month they have special trial class, which is stumped by Santa. Basically a log cake. It's a 13 cm chiffon cake base with chocolate ganache and some fruits as decoration. It looks pretty also it tasted great, it's not too sweet and the cake itself is airy. Good recipe. I decided to register as a member and enrolled in 6 cake classes. More cakes to come!

I know it's already end of January already, I just have some time to update my blog. 

2020 has been harsh but:

1. I'm in Jakarta for Chinese New Year celebration, some chance of meeting with cousins and relatives.
2. Also, meeting my sister and baby niece.
3. I have some time off and I created set of GIFs for Chinese New Year. They are pretty popular! My friend one day asked if I created the GIFs because it looks like my drawing!  
4. Next plan: to work on recipe for contest, other recipes that I made recently, comics about work/management, recent stuff I found at botanic garden, a friend asked me to draw Lakhsmi (God of prosperity) - so, I thought I want to create famous Hindu Gods as well, and to work on GIFs for other special days. There are a lot of things I need to do to keep myself busy.

Until next post.