2020 Schedule Book

 

Welcome to my 3rd year of using a scheduler book! 2018 and 2019 scheduler book can be view here for reference, just click on the year to see how it all started and how it has evolved. And you will be forgiving if you think why does the above photo shows a book of 2013 instead of 2020. That's because for 2020, I've decided to upcycle my old half used diary to be my 2020 scheduler book!  HA! Talk about being cheap! Let me show you how I actually do this. 

So I happen to have this beautiful French themed book I once used half way. I guess I knew I wasn't serious about it cause of of the writing inside was in pencil, so I could erase it and reuse. But the problem was, it was based on 2013 calendar. Lucky for me, I got a 2020 Hello Kitty calendar I got from my last trip to Japan. So I used it to paste over the book to make it 2020. Sadly, I could only use half the Hello Kitty Scheduler pages as it was double sided print. So I printed out my own calendar for the other half to make a whole! I only paste over the monthly pages, not the daily ones as I didn't really minded if they were not align. It was just a minor inconvenience. 

The old scheduler book was really beautiful, and with this upgrade, it would look even more awesome. Although Hello Kitty is mainly themed in Britain, I guess you could call it Hello Kitty spend a year in France! Bonjour!

On the start of the book, there is the original page of the globe. I use it to mark all the countries that I have visited, and countries that I have transit in. I guess I should also mark countries I want to visit, but I don't have much ambitious plan this year. I would be instead recycling to countries that I have been before. As I age, I realise I am just happy to going to different part of Japan for the rest of my life :)

Today is actually the 5th day of the year as I blog this, and I have already started using the book daily. As it was kinda plan and booking diary, I am actually customise it to be in line with my previous scheduler book. To be honest, I actually bought a nice Moomin scheduler book last year to be used for this year. But I realise that it was a non-year specific book, so I thought I'll keep it for when I retired since it was such a detailed book. When I am retired, I can document everything with more information. But now since I was probably going to continue working, I decided to use up some of the books I have in my drawer. I actually have a whole drawer full of beautiful notebook that I just buy and hardly use. To see how I document my January input, you will need to wait till end of January as some of the info inside may be confidential at this point of time. 

So above is how I customised it. I recently borrowed a beautiful book on how other people around the world uses their own diary. And it has never occured to me to glue paper on my own notebook. This year was the start, and it was just the right time to upcycle an old book! Basically I wanted to use it to track my weight, my exercise, my finances, my food intake, and newly introduce this year is my monthly challenge! I've planned out 6 types of monthly challenge for each month! Perhaps I will share them in January's entry next time. 

Any extra part of the the Hello Kitty scheduler book are fully utilised. Look how cute Kitty look! I am not a big fan of hers, but I just think it's cute and sweet and just adorable. It makes me happy seeing her everyday anyway. 

As I wanted to track my progress daily, and didn't want to carry the whole book while I travel, I've decided a take out pages to bring along on my trips, and these are also Hello Kitty themed! And for the first time, I finally got the chance to use my stamp set! What I did was cut out all the kitty themed paper (which I happen to have a lot of) to suit the pages on my scheduler book. I stamped the dates and day on it so I know which day they belong to, and just bring those few pieces of paper when I travel and document in them. When I am back, I will paste them back into the book! I predict this year's scheduler book may be one of my favourite cause it is like 80% customised! And I plan to start using all the ridiculous amount of stamp set that I have that have never been used before!

Having a diary, a notebook, a scheduler book is actually a very personal thing. It's also very rewarding at the end of the year when you can see the progress of whatever your goal is that you were trying to tracked. It's like a beautiful piece of your life. And because I am trying to cut down on my clutter, I also document a soft version of them here in my blog so that in the event I have to throw them away one day, I would always have a digital copy of these beautiful book. It is a beautiful habit to have, to write, to document, to make things beautiful. I have plans to start drawing my beautiful food creation one day in a notebook too. But it's kinda hard to do when I am still working cause work takes so much of your time away.... Here's hoping for a near retirement soon so that I can let my creativity just flow!

December 2019

Finally we have come to the end of the Schedule Book series for 2019. I'm excited to start another year of Schedule book, and I've actually been preparing it for a month now. It's going to be a super unique book. I would probably most more about it tomorrow!

Coming back to December's highlight as I wrap up my year, in real-time, I am actually blogging this on New Year's Eve 31-Dec-2019. I've completed my scheduler book only today after closing off all the accounting part. The book is now sleeping nicely in my bookshelf for future reference only. 

Top highlight of the month? Quitting my job again, and this time being the shortest job duration ever at 14 months! I tendered on 13-Dec, and my last day will be 11-Jan. I didn't want it to exceed my birthday as part of me wanted to mark it as a retirement milestone, part of me have no desire to be working on my birthday, and I was tired of going to work on the other side of the country daily. When I joint the company, I thought I would have the chance to work overseas for a long period of time. But turns out, I was only overseas for 3.5 weeks out of the 14 months I work there. With the change in my family situation, I also thought it was time to put the travel bug to a rest and remain more grounded. So bye bye job. 2020 is going to be a super exciting year! (At least for the first 3 months anyway!)

2nd highlight was me making Tangyuan for Dongzhi. How traditional is that! It even comes with peanut fillings and sesame fillings! I am still amazed how a short wagashi workshop can spin off so many other cooking projects! I also attempt to make ondeh-ondeh this week, but it was a failed project never to be attempted again! But tangyuan was do-able. It's cheap, filling, and healthy for me! 

Towards the end of the year, I've also decided to slowly change my diet. When I came back from my Thailand trip in November, I weight 63kg. Today, I weight 59.9kg, and that was mainly due to the damaged done dining at 5Guys and Shake Shack recently. My lowest achieved in December was 59.5kg. And this has given me much motivation to try to achieve my ideal BMI of 57kg. After all, it's just another 3kg, right? I have big plans for 2020! To start off, I switched to chicken breast the other day and survived! It actually didn't taste that bad or dry. Nothing a little Nandos sauce can't fix! So I'm thinking of continuing on this trend and see how the weight goes. 

I've also decided to eat more salad after buying a bottle of Japanese Sesame Sauce that taste amazing on the salad! And to round it all up, I've decided to cut down on carbs and eat more fruits and vegetables instead. I've also started using my Instagram as a food diary. You can check it out if you are interested of all the amazing food creation I've come up with so far. 

2020 is looking to be good so far. From February onwards when I am back in Singapore, I plan to start fully utilising my gym membership as it will be more accessible to me then. If I keep this up, I plan to lose my tummy and start on some abs and perhaps better looking clothes! Wish me luck! Happy New Year 2020!

November 2019

November was a stressful month. My 2nd project based in Turkey was supposed to go live, but at the same time I had promised to go on a road-trip with my girl friends to Khao Yai Thailand. Since I already knew I wasn't going to continue on working in the company for long, I informed my boss that I would not be able to travel to Turkey for the go-live support. For some reason after that, nobody end up being sent to Turkey even though travel arrangement had been made. I went on my own trip as planned, and life continue as per normal.

I only have 2 photos to share for the highlights of November as I usually don't really post photos of work colleagues unless it's in a casual setting. However number 2 above was with my ex Head Of Department and my ex Managers and senior colleagues, so I decided to skip the photo for this one. It was a casual dinner at a Chinese restaurant and I went more for the experience of meet up up with people that I don't usually socialise with. Turns out it was a fun evening, and I was the most junior in the group (in terms of joining the company last). 

So number 1 highlight was of course the trip to Khao Yai, Thailand. We were initially supposed to spend two nights there, but due to some friends dropping out and some having work commitments, it was reduced to just one night. Above was my favourite moment there, bare feet, sitting by the pool in the morning before we left the resort. Sky was blue, water blue, and green trees and lovely weather, what is there not to like? Sadly I was dragged away after that to continue on our journey. If I'd been alone, I would have just sat there the whole day doing just NOTHING! My kind of holiday!

And for some reason, my number 3 highlight is related to a normal night at the gym, dancing away to great music with my favourite instructor. I think it was also his birthday session. I just recall I had a great time dancing away and was really into the flow of the music and dancing my heart out. Sometimes, normal everyday thing made it into the highlights, showing me to be grateful for the simpler things in life. 

By the time you read this, it should be 2020, and I still got December 2019 post to complete! Ketchup Cordy! Ketchup!

Happy New Year 2020

Happy New Year 2020! As you can see from the photo above, it started out quite a cloudy day. We woke up at 530am today and went to East Coast Park hoping to catch a beautiful sunrise like what we did just few days back. But even though we stayed till 730am, all we got was a gloomy grey sky....

Went back home and cooked a heavy brunch of toast bread, bake beans, fried egg and some salad. Super delicious. I can afford to eat this much cause I was skipping lunch today as we have a 2 hour zumba class today. What a great way to start of the year, healthy meal and exercise! Whoever think that retirement is boring is really lack of creativity and imagination. 

After the gym session, I went and bought a nice unagi for dinner. I already planned to have unagi for dinner tonight, but the fact that this meal was partly sponsored by Citibank passive money was just awesome. I love free money. So for dinner we had unagi cooked two ways: baked to bring out the smoky intense flavour, and steam with egg to get the creamy milky flavour. I also steamed some okra to go with the meal. The meal ended off with some nice cranberry fermented honey drizzled on some vanilla Haagen Dazs. Heavenly!

Wawasan 2020 is finally here! The first day as been awesome so far. Although I've already quit my job, I still have to go back to work tomorrow and until end of next week. After that I'm taking a break from work and just relax for 3 weeks or so. I am quite hesitant about going back to work. There is this lost of freedom that I felt so strongly whenever I am at work. I can't just go out and eat whenever I want to, or go travel whenever I want to. It's just so restricted. And although technically I can survive without working these days, I still like to travel more, and travel cost money! So if I want more quality travel, I may have to go back to work for a little while longer. But all in all 2019 was an interesting year. I travelled so much, and experienced so many new things. Work was new but boring, but it did gave me a chance to travel to the other side of the world. And for that, I am truly grateful. 2020 will be a slower pace year with probably less travelling. The focus will be mainly on health and fitness. I am training to ground myself so that I can slowly cure myself of my travel bug :P

Happy New Year readers! Thanks for dropping by!