Reaching Out

Thursday swimming was one of those annoying days when I had to share my lane, and of course as I finished, the pool was emptying.

More fascinating was, there was a dude in the lane over who was like, super hardcore and all? When he got out, the guy I shared my lane with moved over, and then a woman came in and share my lane. And the hardcore swimmer dude just kinda hung off to the side. I wasn't paying too much attention, and I noticed a striking smell of soap, and was like ??? And at first I thought it was the woman next to me, since the smell started only when she came in.

But later I looked off to the side, and saw the first dude had wrapped his towel around himself, and I was like "... why is he still here??" and realized he was actually changing! Which means the soap smell was him having an actual SHOWER in the poolside shower?? With his swim trunks on. And I watched in horrified fascination as I kept coming up for air as he put on his clothes and shoes, and finally left with all his crap (there was a LOT so given the tiny locker sizes I guess I understand?) and I'm still pretty O_O about the whole thing.

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I worked from home Thursday! This mostly meant a lot of reading. I printed off 100 pages of a manuscript, and there was a printout of a whole novel. This means I got to nap in the afternoon, and even attempted some reading and writing in the evening, and it was so much easier to do that when I'm not tired from my commute?? Who knew?

I AM worried about the necessity of naps in the afternoons. It's not that it makes me sleep less in the nights; in fact, I go to bed earlier when I nap in the afternoons, like my body remembers it should go to sleep at a reasonable time if I've had sleep during the day.

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Yesterday I needed to go to the post office (and of course the one closest to me is closed), and decided to try one of the Lime Scooters.

I found it quite difficult to adjust the speed I really wanted.
It was not clear to me where I needed to be?
I walked it here and there anyway in front of cars.
There were crosswalks where I slowed down, and was worried that if I went too fast, I wouldn't be able to see a car coming and slow down appropriately.
My arms hurt >:{

Also it cost me $7 for 3.3km / 45 minutes!!! I paused every so often, so maybe that was the problem? STILL, I could have just used that money for a freaking Lyft. Or just walked. Definitely walking would have been better, considering that being on the scooter did't even count towards Pokemon Go.

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Today Fran and I hit up the Embarcadero for Pokemon Go's Feebas research. We did maybe 25 - 30 research quests? She got a Shiny early, but I got a 100% IV one.

We left downtown around 1pm to miss the Women's March mess, and headed up to the gym near my workplace where I got an Ex Raid invite. Did that, and with 15 minutes to spare we walked around trying to make the most of the Feebas research. I got my Shiny with those 15 minutes left to spare! Then I got a second 100% IV Feebas! So, I'm pretty satisfied with today.

We went to Udupi Palace. Claire forgot about the Women's March and her Lyft got her in late. Maurisa also forgot about the Women's March and was at the BCAF Youth Day, and she and Eric were trapped in traffic for almost one and a half hours past our original meeting time.

I have thus come to the conclusion that most of my friends are just going to need earlier meetup times if I want them on time, haha.

But we had a great time anyway; I haven't seen Eric since before I moved out, and while we didn't get to catch up as much as I hoped, we did still get to chat, and we'll hang out again tomorrow. We went to have dessert at Dandelion Chocolate before heading home. I am sure I have totally ruined any weight loss progress I have made in the last week.

I'm very tired now and tried to wind down but now I realize I should have packed my swimming gear earlier and slept earlier to get to the gym by 8am. Hopefully I can still do that!

I've been playing a lot more Pokemon Go now that my diss is done and I'm job-hunting. The game's definitely doing quite a bit to boost my social life, in a very undergrad-y sort of way where people make friends through familiarity in a recurring activity. The nice thing is that I'm also meeting people slightly older than me, or around my age who aren't grad student.

There are still a lot of grad students in this friend group so that's something else we can talk about, but mostly we avoid grad school talk and stick to the game. And there're the jokers who take up the space talking so the quiet ones don't have to.

Overall, it's been nice. I've been getting rides to raids and having meals with them. After Community Day, I got about 6 of them to go to the Getaway with me and we sat and hung out eating food together talking about whatever. All guys, but a mix of ages. I was the eldest person there, but it felt nice to know it didn't matter. And for an all-guy group, everything said at the table was entirely unproblematic™ (and maybe I'm biased but I think largely because these are just good kids generally). I've also been gravitating towards hanging with Tara, who's a staff member in Life Sciences (and who has sort of adopted a couple of the youngest members). It's heartwarming to see us kind of coalescing together as a friend group. We're having a birthday party for one of our friends today who has severe self-esteem issues and depression.

IDK. I'm happy in a non-critical way around them, and I hope I can keep meeting more folks like this IRL moving forward.

I've also been participating in the Samurai Love Ballad: Party and Ikemen Sengoku hashtags on Instagram and been chatting with a couple of people, in comments or DMs, from there too. That has also been interesting! The last time I made friends through a specific fandom was through FFVII, and even then it's not like I was playing the thing... I just knew a friend who had encyclopedic knowledge of it and read more on my own, and then joined a webforum with a FFVII theme but we talked about everything (hi user name="sparklemagpie">!).

It's just all striking to me right now because it's been years since I've made friends outside the grad school and SF convention settings, offline. I'm actually pretty pleased about this. Sure I may not stay friends with them forever but it's soothing to be able to be around people who care and who I can care for with such immediacy in small meaningless gestures.

This morning, I did an Absol raid with a regular UCR raider, and we tried to do another Absol raid nearby but there was no way we could have done it on time. Another guy had joined us, but in the end we just went to another raid and did that one, followed by a Wailmer raid. (I purposefully picked some of my lower CP fighters for the Wailmer, but the third guy came in with a Raikou so we were done in like 2 seconds.)

After I got home from that, I got a big black plastic bag and went out to the Grace United Methodist Church and raked some leaves from the road gutters. I had established a box around one of my current compost heaps, and filled that up with dead leaves, and closed it up. I'll try to refrain from opening it up for the next month. I also grabbed the box around my basil bush and used that to establish another heap in the corner, where I had unsuccessfully trying to grow creeper plants. My poor stand! It lacks a purpose. Maybe this spring. I poured the rest of the dead leaves into that box, and left it open, so I can throw more things in there.

Now I'm considering getting more leaves to spread and mulch over the rest of the garden. I wish I had thought about this last winter! I would have had a better time with the garden over the last year. But I'm thinking, if I do mulch my garden right now, I think I could get some use out of it over spring before I have to move out. I'll think about this over the weekend. If anything, I can go out on Christmas morning and grab some more mulch. I read this WaPo article this morning about younger folks (Americans, of course) who turn to small-scale farming and it's intriguing. It's not something I foresee myself doing, not when I can barely stay in the country as it is, and it's definitely not a thing I'd see myself doing if I return to Malaysia, but I do have a friend who recently decided to just turn to farming (she's in Ireland doing some sort of farming internship).

I then began to prune my basil. A pail to gather stems, a bowl to gather leaves. I guess I could have just cut off the stems entirely and hung them to dry, especially since my roommate isn't around for the next while or so. I've done that before. But I do have limited places to hang sprigs. I've also decided that the reason why it's better to harvest the basil leaves regularly is that, well, at least in Riverside, a lot of the leaves were dusty, mostly from the air.

Javier had given me some tulle mesh which I've yet to find a use for (it's purple and not really my colour) so I used that to lay the basil on so they can start drying. Later in the day someone suggested I dry them in the oven, and I hadn't really thought about that, so I did do that. I'll go to Michaels at some point to get some tiny bags to store the dried basil in.

Around 2pm, I went to campus, got a Zagster bike and cycled around replenishing my Pokeball stash. At some point someone asked for help at University Village so I skedaddled over. Then I went back to campus and cycled around some more. All told, I think I spent two hours out and about doing just that, much of it on the bike. It was a warm-ish day (19'c), too. It was really nice cycling around! I really want to do more of it.

Tomorrow I'm cooking lunch and Eun-Joo and JJ are coming over! It'll be the closest thing I have to a Christmas meal. I'm just making bak kut teh. I'm thinking of fitting a visit to Michaels on there too, to get tiny resealable bags for the basil I harvested. I'm also thinking that I might try to get started on the oregano, too.

Somehow ended up going two back-to-back legendary raids, evolving in between as I walked from Point A to Point B. I read the book I'm supposed to review some more leaving my Gotcha going, and then when I got sick of that, I went cycling around campus spinning stops. Ran into Dr. Kim and walked with him for a bit. Told him I was playing Pokemon Go and he was like "is there a way we can make our department a pokestop" and I was like "WELL IF YOU MUST ASK LOL"

I decided then that I would attempt to use up all my Great Balls and Ultra balls, saving room for more regular Pokeballs, since the Gotcha, like the Plus, only uses the regular ones. Then once that was accomplished, I'd cycle around campus with incense and a lucky egg leaving the Gotcha on auto-catch and auto-spin, which should keep me going for the whole half hour.

I really want to buy some cute Pokemon Go stuff, and found team earrings and keyrings and charms! Trying to decide which one I prefer. It'd be fun to have something to wear out to raids. I think I'll go with the earrings, but sometimes, I just want like a hoodie? Gah.

One thing I really like are those long-sleeved shirts or sweaters with thumbholes! I bought a shirt from the campus bookstore like that last month, and I really like it a lot. I might try getting another one.

For craft projects, this week, since my roommate's gone, I'll make a bunch of coin purses from the fabrics I've got leftover. I've printed out some Pokeball stencils, and it'd be fun to make coin purses in the shape of Pokeballs! I might make it a full day's thing too. It almost makes me wish I wasn't leaving for LosCon this weekend and staying home to sew instead.

Since apparently starting a business is a legit way of staying in the country, I think I'll look into possibly selling some crafts and really thinking hard about using up all this fabric. I've been thinking about making more slingbags, pouches and skirts with pockets, maybe even pinafores with pockets. The idea is to keep the fabric I have moving, because I am... rather tired of carting around the same pieces of fabric for years. There are pieces I've been meaning to use for years now, such as the beautiful emerald taffeta, which I THINK I meant to use to make a gown (it's like 15 yards, bought in Value Village) or a jacket. But my skills are still nowhere near that capability. Which, well, whatever. It's Value Village fabric so I really need to learn how to take some risks rather than hoard stuff. If anything, it'd make a lovely pocketed skirt. Maybe two or them, that I could sell. We'll see how I feel about it! At the very least, all this scrap fabric I keep picking up in JoAnn's could become bags on their own.

So I'm using a Xiaomi Redmi Note 3, which uses Android v5.1.1. I'm still trying to get the hang of it and I have to look up how to organize folders and stuff. The phone is a bit too wide for my liking, alas, at 2.99inches. Still getting used to the touchscreen, which I'm not crazy about. I have a longer post coming about shopping for smartphones versus shopping for phones brewing in me, because I have many shopping-for-phone feels. Still, it should allow me to roam around in the States without having to switch my SIM card... I'm hoping this will still hold when I change my plan from a GoPhone account to something else which will allow me data usage.

I have totally progressed in Pokemon Go! Around Level 10 I did the Lucky Egg + Mass Evolution combo and went up to Level 13.

When I went to Singapore last weekend, I was expressly forbidden to play by my dad but I used mall wifi here and there. A friend also generously let me hop onto his hotspot (he has more data per month than he could ever use) at some point, and I felt bad when Pokemon starting spawning on my phone and not his. Good haul, though. I added a lot more to my Pokedex, and yesterday when I went to the Marina Bay Sands Shoppes, I finally caught a Pikachu. There was one more Pokemon which I wanted to add to the Pokedex but I was already late for lunch with my hostess so I skedaddled home instead.

It was a really marvelous weekend! My hostess is a friend and former worker of my dad's, and her daughter just got back from Australia doing an English degree, so we had lots to talk about. They're very churchy people tho so we didn't spend much time together. (Also their apartment was right between two Pokestops, so I spent a lot of time harvesting.)

On Saturday I went to have brunch with jolantru, and two others came to join us, Christopher Hwang and SEAsteampunk contributor Timothy Dimacali!! Chris had to leave us after lunch, but Timothy joined us at the fish spa :D

I went back to my hostess' place at Red Hill for a rest, and then went to have dinner with delfinuum (she is so smol!), and we played Pokemon Go in Raffles City for a while until I ran out of Wifi usage time. So we went to the Singapore Night Fest since it was nearby and ended up marveling at Nyonya embroidery and beadwork in the Peranakan Museum.

Yesterday I woke early and had breakfast with my hostess, and they were going to be at church until noon which left me two hours on my lonesome. I was feeling kinda tired so I only left at 11am and wandered to Marina Bay Sands to find out how to get to the Observation Deck. Took some pictures (oh, I have an Instagram now, because of the smartphone; I aim to be one of those insufferable selfie-takers) and went to the shopping mall side where I proceeded to catch Pokemon, just because I could.

The GPS is really wonky in Singapore, though. I wandered further than I actually was unless I was on the move. Kinda interesting, and I don't really want to complain too much because it means my 10km egg hatched earlier than expected (Electabuzz!).

I have to say that highway Pokestops are very interesting and fruitful places! I caught a Clefable on the way home :D Also it's fascinating what random things Ingress agents have decided should be portals... most of them don't actually take pictures of the stops themselves but random crap around it like... water towers. My bus was also caught in a traffic jam and I figured opening up Pokemon Go would make the jam go quicker.

This morning I decided to see how Map My Walk would interact with Pokemon Go! Because I wanted to hatch a buncha eggs all at once. (Three!) Turns out it doesn't work well... I think the GPS is suspended a little whenever catching a pokemon, and it doesn't register on the Walk app. So I had a few straight lines where there shouldn't have been because of the pause in GPS data. And if I'm not flicking between the two regularly the route doesn't quite register on the Walk app. I'm gonna try to experiment a bit more with this though, because I would really like to record my Pokemon hunts.

My dad's traveling until tomorrow night and I really want to go Poketrawling with him at least someplace further than the nearby lake or shops once before I leave for the States, so hopefully this will be a thing.