Too many things

2021 Week 346 min read

A lot of things were happening at once this week and I don't know how to write them down. Here goes.


One of my closest friends had his bachelor thesis defense on Thursday. I visited him on Friday with another friend to congratulate and we gave him some gifts. We ordered a graduation stole (that sash thing) for him, but that ended up being quite a mess because:

  • I ordered it on Monday so that it could arrive on Tuesday.
  • I picked one that's a bit pricey because the material seemed good and so are the reviews.
  • I had written down specific instructions and text to be put on the stole.
  • It arrived on Tuesday, but there was a missing space between the name and the degree, making it look like it's for a Master's degree.
  • I was very upset, so I wrote a complaint.
  • Tuesday was the national independence day so the shop didn't respond until Wednesday.
  • The shop couldn't fix it but offered to make another one and I'd only have to pay for delivery.
  • I agreed. I initially wanted to visit my friend on Thursday, so I paid for same-day delivery. To thank them and compensate for the hassle, I paid more than just the delivery cost.
  • The shop sent me a photo of the result. It was missing a period at the end. I told them to fix it.
  • They said, "Sorry, we've already sent it for delivery because otherwise it wouldn't make the same-day deadline."

Ughh.

The thesis defense was at the end of Thursday. I'm afraid it would already be too dark for a visit, so I decided to visit my friend on Friday. Had I considered this earlier, I wouldn't mind paying for next-day delivery and having the thing fixed before I received it.

What a mess. One star review.

Later that night, we had fun playing Resident Evil 6. I've played it years ago before, but I didn't finish it because I couldn't find a co-op partner. I convinced my friend to buy the game a few months ago, but we decided not to play until he finished his bachelor thesis.

It's been months since the last time I went outside, so it was very refreshing for me. Having fun with my friends also really helped.

My friend was busy this weekend, so we didn't continue playing.


Around three weeks ago, a junior from a student organization at my university asked me to make a workshop on one of the pre-selected topics. I feel like I've done enough stuff about Django recently, so I picked the one about making a portfolio website with Next.js. (I do have one idea for a Django talk, maybe for a DjangoCon next year.)

The workshop was on Saturday. I had other stuff to do, so I hadn't prepared the slides until this week. I felt like I hadn't really got the idea on how to present the topic. The whole week became kinda stressful because I kept thinking about it. Not to mention the stuff I had to do at work and that I had to prepare the gifts for my friend.

However, I'm glad I decided to play with my friend on Friday night instead of preparing the slides. I was too stressed, I couldn't be productive anyway. Playing and having a chat with my friend actually helped and I was able to finish the prep the next morning.

Well, sort of. There were things I wished I had included in the slides, but I managed to verbally address them, so that's fine. Plus, I didn't even prepare the hands-on material, it was done on the spot. Considering all that, I'd say the workshop still went pretty well.

I made the slides using slidev. It's my first time using it. It seems more powerful than reveal.js (which I've used several times), but it's still lacking transitions. Had a problem with the deployment but luckily I was able to sort it out before the workshop started.


At work, I became the person in charge of the current project. Even though it's not a big deal, it also added a bit more stress. Luckily, the project is going pretty well, despite some hiccups early on.

We also had an event on Monday to commemorate the national independence day. We did the "paint by numbers" thing. I got the package a few days prior. It was pretty fun. I didn't win any prizes, though I guess that was to be expected. (Still, I lowkey wanted to win.)

I probably spent too much time on the painting.

I used the leftover paint to make a congratulations card for my friend.


Adam fixed a DeprecationWarning in my django-jsonfield-backport package. I guess it finally gave me the push to fix some other issues as well. Then, a new release was issued. That was nice.

I updated my PR to Django once more. I don't think there's anything left to change in the approach, so hopefully it'll be merged soon.

GitHub Discussions went out of beta this week. It's got some updates in it, so I adapted them to giscus. Still waiting for some updates to the API so I can add new features.


For some reason, being alone again on the weekend after having a lot of fun with my friends the previous day made me feel kinda sad even more. I feel like I recharge my energy when I socialize with a person or two whom I'm very comfortable with. Being alone or having too many people at once make me exhausted.

I tried finding new friends on Reddit, but I haven't had much luck. I managed to talk to some people, but then it's either we didn't click or they ghosted me. If possible, I'd love to make new friends my age from outside Asia. I'm thinking of relocating for a few years to work and live somewhere nice.

There was a quarrel at home, but I'd rather not talk about it.

I cleaned my room just before writing this. I guess that also cleared my mind a bit.