Recorded Wednesday, June 10, 2020.
This episode (the shortest so far!) is a bit of yik yak about what I’ve been up to for the last six months. I haven’t been working much at all here in China but I’ve kept myself busy. I’ve written updates on this site before but today I thought I’d make it into a podcast and give you a run down of some of the things I’ve accomplished to date and what I’d like to accomplish within the rest of the year.
Mid-year reviews aren’t normal for most people but this year I think it’s a good idea to take stock what we have accomplished so far, what has worked and what hasn’t, so that we can move forward and accomplish some of the things we would like to do in the remaining months of the year.
New Year’s resolutions are normal to make and break, but the intention is there: to give yourself a guiding light in your goals for that year. I personally don’t make New Year’s resolutions and, instead, opt for birthday reflections during which I look at how old I am and what I accomplished in the last year and what I’d like to accomplish moving forward.
I find birthdays to be a better suit to reflection because, dismally, there are average lifespans that we can gauge how far along we are in terms of out biology. This is helpful for the simple reason that if we look at how long we have to live and how long it would take us to learn something, then we can determine how much time we should be spending on learning or developing a new skill each day and how long we can reasonably expect before we should be able to do something with that new learned skill.
Be it a one year, five year, ten year, or life long ambition, dream, or goal, it helps to reflect on what worked and what didn’t and to figure out what prevented us from doing some of the things we wanted to get done.
How things are here in Beijing
Masks are off and they’re not wearing them all the time. Further, they no longer give you a side eye if they see you without one. Thank goodness because the weather is getting hot.
Garbage is being sorted, which means a massive oil streak right in front of the building. Rather unsightly.
People are now allowed to sell things on the street, this is because people weren’t making enough money to pay rent and because there are fewer jobs available than before, so the government has lifted the restriction on who and what can be sold. We have these in the West, street vendors, though I’m not sure if it’s only dry goods, like clothing or flowers, or if it extends to food items as well. It will be interesting to see what happens as a result and there is no certainty that this will be a permanent measure either.
Flights are slowly being allowed back in, the fear is in another outbreak but it seems that during the summer months the Norther Hemisphere should be okay, unless all of those protests continue on.
What happened to Coronavirus?
Black Lives Matter, no disagreement, but what happened to the whole Coronavirus scare? And why is it okay for people to blame Trump for everything and make fun of his skin tone? It’s disappointing to see and hear those things.
It’s June already – six months in, what have you been up to?
This is Episode 9 so I’ve been doing this for just over two months now.
I’m having fun, learning as I go. I didn’t realize that podcasting would take so long. I thought it would be a lot shorter than writing a blog post. A typical blog post takes me about 4 to 5 hours to complete, from start to finish and publication. Preparing, producing, and finalizing a podcast audio track seems to take about just as long.
I am looking to have some guests, something I was sort of against when I first started this podcast but now I see how they can fit in with my overarching idea of this podcast, which is to stimulate ideas based on a global travel experience.
Finished a couple of courses on Futurelearn. Didn’t get the certificates but enjoyed the learning process. Will look into taking a few more courses.
Python
Scaled back a bit in Chinese and Python so I can concentrate more on learning more about audio production. I can see how useful Python can be but my coding skills are still lagging my ideas. Some of the things I do want to get done include automating some photo editing or web scraping that I do on a usual basis. There are Python applications out there than already do this but I need to be able to tweak them to suit my needs. That’s where I’m stuck right now.
Chinese
As for Chinese, I’ve started studying with a couple of teachers with a focus on honing my grammar while also giving myself more time to practice speaking. I will be the first to admit that my Chinese pronunciation is absolutely horrid to the ears. It can be a lot better. Some of that has to do with the fact that Chinese people never seem to understand me anyway so I don’t bother, the other part is vocabulary, in that sometimes simply remembering the word I want to say is trouble enough without trying to remember the tone of it, too. But these are things I can and will work on throughout the rest of this year.
Videos
My next big challenge will be going through all of the videos I’ve captured over the years.
I’ve gone through a lot of them but I get paralyzed by the need, or the want, to be “epic”. To be perfect. Final Cut Pro X actually made me afraid to edit because I thought I’d be doing something wrong. And this is some 20 years after I started playing around with video.
Things have gotten easier, however, since the technology is cheaper and much more powerful than it was 20 years.
Blogging
As for writing, I’ve been pretty prolific with blogging as of late, which I’m quite proud of. I’m averaging 10 blog posts as month this year so far, helped in part by the podcast. A goal I have, though I’m not going to pressure myself into hitting it necessarily, is hitting 520 blog posts TOTAL on my website by the end of the year. Why 520? Because that would move me up from my current 372 posts, which is an average of about 37 posts per year. I want an average of 52 posts, or one a week, by the end of the year. It’s a goal but not a definite target.
The other thing that’s been keeping me busy is roasting coffee. I’ve started to experiment with roasting coffee at home. I bought some green coffee beans online and have been trying out different timings of roasts.
So far I’ve tried arabica coffee from Yunnan province, Columbia and Brazil, and now I’m also blending a robusta bean from Java, Indonesia. I’ve been meaning to make a video about the whole process as I think it’s absolutely fascinating. I’ve always wondered how coffee was made and this experience has certainly opened my eyes to it.
A few modifications I’ve made to the roasting process include adding butter either to the pan while I’m roasting or afterwards in the French press that I use. These reason is to smoothen out the flavour or bitterness of the coffee bean, notably the robusta beans. It is a smoother and silkier texture to the coffee and it does enhance the flavour of the beans.
The other thing I’ve added is cacao because, apparently, it helps stimulate your brain in some way.
A few takeaways
- And what are you up to these days?
- Careful how much social media you consume.
- What did you want to accomplish this year? What helped or hindered you accomplish those things?
- What would you like to see done in the next six months?
- When is your birthday, what can you accomplish by then?
- When in doubt, think of what value you can add? How can you make people’s lives easier?
- Don’t forget to take time for yourself. You need to be solid so that when the need arises, you can be strong for others.
- Start a journal. Write down your thoughts and ideas. If you see the same idea pop up again and again in your writings, you need to look at why it hasn’t been done or what you could do to get it done.