• The Week #242

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    • 🥳 Boyo turned 7 years old. It amazes me how quick he's growing up. It feels like just yesterday we were in the US celebrating his 5th birthday and here he is closing in on the end of his first year of primary school.

      Looking back on this past year for Leo and he's really starting to mature. He's getting better about eating various things, he's having fewer meltdowns, he's trying his best in all of his endeavors, his thinking is becoming sharper. It's exciting.

      He was adamant about not having a cake and instead had a scoop of his favorite flavor of ice-cream with whip and sprinkles. Yumi picked us up a slice of cake each. For dinner we had hamburg, fries, and steamed veg.
    • 🥘 For the first time (I think?) we went out for dinner with a neighbor/friend/Leo's friend. As the emoji suggests, we got Indian. I can't remember the last time I spent 2 hours in any restaurant, but it was a lot of fun. I hope we can do it again.

      Even better, we all rode bikes to the restaurant. I always enjoy a night ride and I should do them more.
    • 🐓 On Sunday we took advantage of the warm-ish weather and barbequed in the front of the house. After having the grill for a long time, this was the first time we've used it at our house (I've always been a bit cautious because I don't want to make my neighbors laundry smell like smoke). Food turned out good and I think I will start using it on a more regular basis. It is quite nice to just sit outside, cook, and eat. Or at least use it one more time before the weather turns 30 degrees from 6am hot.
    • 📒 8 months ago I started writing down all of my work in a notebook (Leuchtturm 1917, dot grid, blue) that I'd had for years and never got into the habit of writing in. I ordered a replacement a couple of months ago (same, but yellow), unsure if I'd start it in January and stop my blue notebook at 2024. I continued to use my blue notebook (continuity work for the week is easier), and while it's nearing full, my yellow notebook remained unused, until this week.

      After watching this video, I decided to give a go at building a daily tracker. I backfilled best I could from memory from the start of Feb. I'm still undecided if this will remain a purely personal notebook, in which I journal, or if it will be an everything notebook where I journal and also track my notes for work. I reckon it will remain separate until I finished my blue notebook, at which point my work notes will start becoming interspersed.

  • The Week #241

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    • 🇬🇧 Leo went to his first English class over the weekend...and he had a good time. The first lesson was centered around "What's wrong?" and being able to respond with "I have a fever/cold/tummyache" etc... Leo was able to also notice the teacher speaks with a different accent than I do e.g. no hard r sound when saying "fever" and instead pronouncing it more like "fevah".

      Making English class part of his routine will definitely get him speaking more – already it's made some small differences. Maybe it's seeing/being with other kids his age having fun with English? Thank you to everyone who suggested it.
    • 🥟 We picked up a bamboo steaming basket from Muji and it's changed my life. Ok, maybe not that drastic, but I'm loving it. Cooking using a steamer is quick and easy. Bop some pork buns, or some veg, or whatever in there, let it sit for a few minutes and it comes out perfect. No hassle, no oil no nothing.
    • 🎥 Not really a movie, but the vibes of this video from hokuou-gurashi, a Scandinavian goods shop are exactly the vibes I'm aiming for with my steamer. Instead of rushing through to prep a breakfast or meal where you're constantly in front of the stove...use your steamer to not only cook some veg, but also warm up side-dishes. So much more relaxed.

  • The Week #240

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    • 🪟 I moved my desk to the opposing wall where it has been for 5 years, in front of a sliding glass door that we never go through. The room feels larger, I can look outside while working, and it encourages me to keep the shelves organized (as they now appear in the background-ish). Why did I spend 5 years looking at a wall when I could have been looking outside?! Which is to say, it's been a good change.
    • 💩 TFG continues to do shady, illegal, and wildly unpopular things. I want to say that nobody deserve this, but also he's doing exactly what he said he would and they voted for him, so perhaps they do. Very glad we left just before his first term.
    • 🇬🇧 I think we found a good English school for Leo nearby. It's not with one of the big eikaiwa chains, but direct with a teacher. We're going to go for his first lesson on Saturday and he's excited. I'm excited too.
    • 📧 I've sent more email in the past 2 weeks than I have in the past 2 years connecting with readers of my blog. It's been kinda nice. I like how personal an email feels compared to, say, a DM on <social media>. I wanted to share a sentence I wrote in one of my replies that I think is worth keeping in mind as we're tempted to doom scroll our days away.

      > When I quit smoking in college the hardest part wasn’t the nicotine,  it was figuring out what to do with my hands when I had 7 minutes between class. Smartphones (and by extension streaming music and AirPods) are the same. We use them not because we want to listen to a song, we just need something to do between class…and it expands to fill the gap.

      Don't let the news cycle and the noise expand to fill every gap. Read a book. Bake some bread. Go for a walk. Create that space and protect your mental health.

  • The Week #239

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    • 🇬🇧 Thank you everyone who reached out last week about improving Leo's English. As you suggest he needs to play with kids his age in that language and if he has a teacher, it needs to be not me. I found an English/Japanese Minecraft pictorial guide that he's opening everyday and reading. It also has a practical use – when he wants to search for an item that he doesn't know how to spell, he can use the index in Japanese to find the page that has the corresponding English word.
    • 🍕 I went to Eatly for a quiet lunch with my wife. We split a pasta and a pizza. While eating the (delicious) pizza I noted, you can tell the quality of the product and simple ingredients because when you chew it, it doesn't just dissolve in your mouth like a slice of dominos. That in turn slows you down, which in turn gives your body time to signal that it's satiated before you've eaten an entire pie.
    •  🏋 I find myself enjoying lifting weights more than running this past week. Perhaps because it's warm and I don't really need to change if it's just for a quick 20 or 30 minutes. I should probably find a program to follow, but I'd rather do something than do nothing while geting stuck trying to find the "perfect" routine. 
    • 🗃️ After 5 years of feeling like we don't have enough "proper storage", despite having 2 nice tall (reaches to the ceiling) anchored into the wall steel racks from Muji, it finally clicked how to use them better so we have a "proper" amount of storage. When buying the racks, I also needed to buy storage cases (with drawers) that could be stacked in a uniform manner across the shelving. Starting to organize stuff into storage cases has made the house feel so much less cluttered... unfortunately I need to buy another zillion to fill the shelves.

  • The Week #238

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    • 🏃‍♂️ Close followers of the blog may have noticed, I did not run 2 times this week. I only ran once. I still closed my rings each day (often doubling), but it's hard to convince myself to go out in the cold.
    • 🦋 I realized I don't really enjoy posting on short form social media any longer. I think because the way Twitter went, the trolls, and AI ingesting all the things, I don't trust it like I used to, which bleeds over into not posting. Even replies, I'll find myself composing something and stop more often than not. 
    • 💪 We setup a home gym in Leo's room since he's not using it. I should have done this ages ago. Currently we have my kettle bells (existing), a bench (new) and two adjustable dumbbells (new). We put some some thick 2cm mats in the floor. Now with Leo's playing Minecraft, I can sneak upstairs of pump some iron.
    • 🇬🇧 I've grown a bit concerned about Leo's English levels. His listening is native, vocabulary is good, pronunciation of individual words is good, but producing sentences remains a challenge. When we read books, I've started to (try) to get him to shadow me, and that seemed to help, but he needs more. Often bi-lingual kids go back one parent's country for the summer and that's how they level up...but that's not really an option for us. International school, while expensive (💸), for the time being isn't an option because the daily commute length and base-levels not being enough to study.... maybe we just need to move for a couple of years? I'm not sure if Sophie (🐶) could do another long flight at her age...and we can't just leave her, she's a member of the family.... Open to ideas 🙏🏻

  • The Week #237

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    • 🚀 Visiting Tsukuba and the JAXA Space Center has been on our list of things to do since we moved back to Japan and as of this week we can tick that item off. We took Leo out of school on Friday, as it was the only time we could get a reservation for a tour of the JAXA campus, and drove to Tsukuba.
      Me in front of a rocket with Leo running around being silly

      Tsukuba is so different from Yokohama. It feels like I'm back in Clear Lake with wide, 3-lane, straight roads in most directions (at least in the center). There's distance between buildings and ample parking. You can even see the sky and look off into the distance without your view being blocked by buildings.

      Whenever I visit some place I always imagine what it would be like to live there. On one hand, I think I would love living in Tsukuba (at least in the immediate vicinity of the station). It's quieter, there's heaps of green around, surprisingly international (it's was designed in the 60's to be a town for research and development), and there's a direct line into Tokyo, which would get me into the office is roughly the same amount of time as now. On the other hand, I imagine needing a car to go a lot of places would probably wear on me over time.
    • 🔭 We went to a the planetarium and spent 4 hours(!) at the Tsukuba Expo Center and it was brilliant. The activity room that had a lot different displays on electricity, wind, gravity, light, and more really enables kids to learn about the world while having fun. My favorite was a Dance-Dance-Revolution style game that had you "dance" to the fuel mix on the grid over time, with each direction being an energy source (coal, nuclear, gas, wind, solar). It got really hard towards the end more generation sources came into the mix.
    • 🏃‍♂️ A wide tree line cycle and walking path stretches through downtown Tsukuba connecting various parks called Tsukuba Park Drive that's a story above ground. At large crossings you can walk right over traffic. It was fantastic. I went for a 5km run along it and it was great. So many other runners and people walking their dogs. Easy to imagine oneself doing it on the regular.
      A Map of Tsukuba Park Drive
    • 🤖 Tsukuba is a science city, designed from the start to be the ideal city for academics and research & development. The entire park drive is also designated as a "robot zone" and there are signs posted saying that you might occasionally see robots out and about on the park, so please watch out. I, unfortunately, did not happen across any robots 😢.
      Robot Zone
    • 🚗 This trip to Tsukuba was my first long trip with our Sakura in the 18 months since we got it. Even with the small 20kWh battery, we were able to make it all the way there without charging. I used a fast charger for the first time, but my first attempt wasn't a success.

      You see, chargers in Japan all have some special card that's used to authenticate (and bill) you for your charge. Most of these cost anywhere from ¥1,100 to ¥4,100 per month and offset parts of that cost with free minutes or charging (charging outside your home is done on minutes instead of actual kWh usage, which a) makes no sense and b) means small battery cars, which slow down charging as they fill up sooner cost more to charge than big battery cars...)

      As I never charge outside I didn't get a card as the terminals also have a QR code that let you use a smartphone to start charging. Except the first charger at a Lexus dealership I rolled up to did not have any QR code...so I had to drive to the next closest one, which thankfully did. After that charging went without a hitch. The only downside to the next charger was that it was in a parking lot with only a 15 minute grace period, so I also had to pay ¥220 for 30 minutes of parking as well.

      I've since ordered a charging card from EcoQ-den, the company that supplied the QR codes, as there's no monthly fee, just a small fee to get the card. Having dealt with the charging networks and driven across Tokyo (instead of just to the edge) going out on adventure by car seems less daunting now.
    • 📖 I finished reading "Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility" by Patty McCord, about how they built / ran / run the teams at Netflix. Really good book with a lot of smart ideas in it. I also started In The Weeds: Around the world and behind the scenes with Anthony Bourdain, as Maique was raving about it on socials and he is right. It just sucks you in.

  • The Week #236

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    • 🎉 Happy New Year! 2025 is off to one heck of a start. I'll be fastening my seat belt and try to keep my attention on things that I can actually do something about. And for everything else I'll wait for all this to blow over (🧟).
    • 🎥 On Leo's last day of winter break, I took him to see Sonic 3 in Minatomirai. On the way there I was walking and talking with Leo and we realized we haven't seen a movie, just the two of us, since the Mario movie came out a couple of years ago. The movie itself was quite enjoyable. Jim Carry is ace. After the movie was over, I learned that my co-worker's kid was in the same screening with their friends! Small world!
    • ☕️ On the way back to the station Leo was hungry so we dropped by Starbucks for (it turns out) his dinner and a cup of coffee. After a rough couple of days with Leo, to have him re-centered and properly communicating was such a breath of fresh air. It reminded me that being a Dad is pretty great.
      Rainy view from Starbucks
    • 💪 I closed all of my rings this week. Deciding to do some other form of exercise at home (yoga or kettle bell) on the days I don't run has been key as I'm done in 15 minutes and that's usually just enough to close the remaining rings if they aren't already closed.
    • 🎧 In my headphones this week is New Jeans, a Korean pop band. I haven't listened to K-Pop (BoA, S.E.S. etc...) since the early 2000's when I almost exclusively listened to Japanese and Korean music. Waking up in the middle of the night I have their song ETA (Apple music, YouTube) running through my head. I should learn to read Hangul.

  • The Week #235

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    • 💯 Becoming a consistent runner has long been a goal of mine. Not because I particularly enjoyed running, but because it's a behavior of the person I wanted to become. And for the better part of 15 years, off and on (mostly off), I'd take a stab at it. Scroll down my runs and you'll see. Year after year, a couple of good weeks then nothing. This year, I finally made it happen.  This year, I ran 100 times, or about twice a week for an entire year. 

      ( Writing this I was going to write a sentence like "physical activity isn't second nature to me, because growing up I spent all my time in front of my computer". But it didn't feel true. I mean, it is true of my teenage self. But as an adult, "physical activity" isn't something I've avoided. e.g. When going somewhere I prefer to walk, cycle, or take a train...only if I must will I drive. I also went to the gym consistently when we lived in the US. That certainly counts as physical activity. Maybe I've been telling myself a false narrative all these years? 🤯 (This is why you should blog folks. Blow your own mind.)... back to your regular scheduled programming...)

      My hope is that next year I can maintain the same level of consistency with regards to running and add some regular strength training to the mix. Each day is a vote towards the person we want to become.
    • 🌴 I finished work for the year and will be off the first 2 weeks of January. This year has been the most challenging and most rewarding year of work for me. Going from leading a small-ish team in APAC to leading 50 - 60 people globally, including areas that I wasn't intimately familiar with at the start, has had a steep learning curve. High growth unicorn startups are stressful, but holy shit is it fun and I look forward to even more next year.
    • 🚶 Using my ample time off, I've been going on lots of long walks with Sophie. We both enjoy the exercise and she gets to sniff some places she doesn't normally sniff. Sophie really enjoyed walking through all these leaves in a nearby park.
      Sophie walking through fallen leaves
    • 🎄 It would be remiss to forget mentioning Christmas! Leo scored (as per usual). He got Taiko-no-tatsujin for switch (a rhythm drumming game) and Santa brought a real ocarina with a tri-force (from Zelda) on it. For Christmas dinner I made lasagna and some oven roasted garlic potatoes. I think Christmas lasagna has become our family's tradition.
    • 📚 I've had another successful week of reading on my kindle instead of staring at my cellphone (as much) when I'm bored. I finished reading Ego is the Enemy and started/finished reading Radical Candor. Both really good books that give me a lot to think about while I'm running and walking. Defaulting to the kindle instead of social media has been really good for keeping endless scrolling in check.

  • The Week #234

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    • 🦁 We went to watch the new Lion King movie in Sakuragicho. The movie was really good and the animation looked so real. Hard to believe it was all CGI (except the whole animals speaking English bit). We saw it in Sakuragicho because the theater I praised so much for having subtitled movies with their original audio track when we saw Moana 2 only had dub versions of the Lion King. Either way, it was good to see that area at night. Makes me want to stay like we used to around this time of year during covid.
    • 🏃‍♂️ I ran twice this week, one time with Yumi! It was our first run together and it was a lot of fun. This is the first time I've run with someone where I'm the more experienced runner as well. We did a loop along the river with a mix of running and walking (mostly running). The wind was so strong and cold, but if you were in the sun it was warm enough.
      Just across the river
    • 🏋 In addition to running twice I also did a 3 15-minute supersets with the kettlebell. Lifting heavy this repeatedly is very much a different kind of hard – you can't just slow down and you really feel the burn. Zero plans to become Schwarzenegger, but a bit of functional strength can't hurt.
    • 💳 The Yokohama subway (and growing number of other lines) have started to accept tappable credit cards as payment, in addition to IC cards (suica/passmo). They're doing this because it's easier for tourists, but I also imagine because it's less proprietary. With credit cards you don't run into issues with a lack of semi-conductors making you ration your IC cards, there's no extra hardware required for managing balances etc..., and because they're not loadable, you don't need to manage cash balances, so feels less risky. I road the subway using my credit card and it just worked. Perhaps more importantly, I can earn points on my credit card when I do this, whereas charging my suica gives me zero points.

  • The Week #233

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    • ⏰ In an effort to return more balance intention to my daily life, I started leaving my phone downstairs (again). I've experimented with this a few times this year. Each time I've done it I sleep better and because when I got to bed I go to sleep and when I wake up I don't dive straight into social media and slack in bed. I have a calmer mind in the morning and throughout the day.
    • ⏲️ Without my phone next to my bed, I am unable to turn on the heater downstairs and warm it up before heading down. a) That was a manual thing I had to do with my cellphone b) After turning it on with my cellphone I'd have to lay around in bed for 15 minutes for it to actually warm up. This week I took advantage of the timer build in to my heat pump to turn it on automatically 20 minutes before I wake up. It's not a low tech way of solving the problem, but it's a better less tech way.
    • 🥐 I saw a post on Mastodon about kolaches (bread with sausage or other ingredients brought to Texas by Czech immigrants back in the day)  and breakfast tacos...and it made me miss Texas a bit. Wishing I could go to a donut shop at 5am and get freshly baked kolaches and donuts... but breakfast isn't a thing like that here. Alas. I did the next best thing and baked my own. They turned out pretty good. How lucky Leo is to have homemade koalches for breakfast. Definitely the only kid at his school doing so. Either way, it hit the spot.
      Sausage, Sausage and cheese, bacon, bacon and cheese kolaches
    • 🍡 Our neighborhood had its annual mochi making day at the association's building. On offer was 3 kinds of mochi: red bean, kinako, and plain, as well as large bowls of ton-jiru soup. All of it was super tasty. I imagine this event, with everything being cooked outside using propane tanks, is half-community event and half-disaster prep (ensure all the outdoor cooking equipment works and a group of people knows how to use it).
    • 🕹️ Leo's been getting into Minecraft. We keep it on creative mode but it's blowing my mind what he's making each day. Mostly building still. This week he made himself a nice house, then me and house next to it...and connected them (❤️) . The next day I comeback and he's built my wife a house and underground bunkers. Really tempting to get myself a switch so we can make things together.
    • 🎧 On my headphones this week has been No Obligation by The Linda Lindas. I really like the first 2 tracks, but the entire album rocks. The other, by way of a toot was Chappell Roan. I don't usually listen to pop music (or at least current pop), but she is great. Two polar opposite recommendations to end The Week at the start of the week.
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