January roundup

Where has January gone? The month went past, unremarkably. That is, walang ganap. I might keep this short and with fewer media, because I’m feeling lazy, and it’s in keeping with my mood the last few weeks.

May be an image of one or more people and text that says ''2021 is going to be my year' me everyday:'

Our visa is moving

Throughout the month we received a slew of requests for more information for my Australian partner visa application. We’ve rounded them up in good order.

Activity in our application is a good thing. It will have been roughly a year since we lodged it.

As of writing, the processing time is 19 to 23 months. Ben and I and our migration lawyer are all waiting patiently and hope it all goes well. Last year, I didn’t give it much thought, but this year it’s starting to influence my day-to-day decisions. For example, I’m no longer inclined to buy new linen, furniture, or other bulky stuff for the house. If the grant notice happens sooner than later, and if we find that we are able to travel to Australia, then it may change things particularly for me. I have an entire life’s worth of stuff to go through, and not to mention that I would need to switch jobs, one way or another.

I absolutely love my workplace, and I’ve broached the prospect of being officially moved to Australia, with an Australian salary, as early as last year. They have done this in the past with another Filipino who migrated to Australia as well. At the end of the day, it has to be a justifiable business decision, and I can only work to negotiate it, and hope for the best.


I took up Kingdom Rush again

So, Kingdom Rush is a tower-defense type game that I had picked up on mobile way back in 2015. For what I consider to be an obscure mobile game, it was arguably triple-A in quality. The gameplay is nice and fun, the visuals are easy on the eyes, and I like the quality of the voice lines. It also has some modest lore that loosely reminds me of the ’90s-era Warcraft. (There is an archer heroine named Alleria, which immediately took me back twenty years to Tides of Darkness, which my father used to play.)

The thing is, I decided to download it on my new iPad, and the experience was… different.

The game was much more immersive on a bigger screen, and I got really, really hooked. I played the main campaign, and for once I did the mini-campaigns as well as the challenges.

Then I wanted more.

I took to reddit to check out any fandom, if it existed, and boy was I in for a surprise.

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I love Sarah’s scribbles (heh heh). Follow her on Instagram: @sarahandersencomics

Kingdom Rush is a decade old. It had Flash and Steam versions. What’s more, it had a sequel (Frontiers), prequel (Origins), and a spin-off (Vengeance).

I downloaded Kingdom Rush: Origins and by that time Ben realised I was in pretty deep—I played so hard, and for hours at at time, that:

  • My head hurt.
  • My back hurt for days.
  • One Saturday morning, I played from morning until mid-afternoon, having had only coffee, and stopped only when I was shaking from hunger.

I leaned into it as I don’t normally give myself a break, and allowed my normal routine to be interrupted. In my spare time, I only set the iPad down for workout sessions (with a paid personal trainer so I couldn’t drop them!), meal prep and cooking, and minimal chores. My weekends became a blur of quick chores, quick errands, and no progress on my 2021 goals.

But I’m happy to report that I’ve exhausted all my excitement for KR. And reddit was right. Frontiers is the best. I took a break from Origins as I found it frustratingly difficult, and I’m only about a third or a quarter through Vengeance, and it’s just… so different, it hurts.


I’ve started working from the office again

I make it a point once a week, to give myself and Ben a change of pace—a different work environment for me, and a day for him with fewer distractions and disruptions from me.

I’m enjoying it so far, and would like to blog separately about my experiences returning to Makati after ten months. So many things have changed. For the meantime, here’s a few photos of the plants I brought to the office to liven my desk up:


My OG Pixel is on its last legs

I’ve had my Google Pixel XL since 2017, when Ben got it for me. I’m a huge Google fangirl, and found the stock Android UI visually pleasing compared to Samsung’s horrendously ugly TouchWiz (as a point of comparison at the time). Not to mention Google Camera for Pixel phones is remarkably stunning. I still get comments from Ben time and again that photos from my phone are amazing compared to the photos he takes from his iPhone (this may change when he updates to the latest iPhone.)

Lately my Pixel is showing signs of memory lag (the graphics lag is noticeable), and some weeks ago the power button ceased to work reliably, meaning I couldn’t lock or unlock my phone with it. It would still lock on its own after a time, and I could wake the screen by calling Google Assistant. Still, it was annoying, and one morning I stupidly let my Pixel run out of charge completely. Then realised I couldn’t turn my phone back on.

This led me and Ben to search more a replacement. I’m incredibly picky and for a while there I just couldn’t find a suitable candidate. We compared phone specs and I just couldn’t find a premium Android phone that has:

  • a pure white / silver exterior
  • a metallic body
  • an AMOLED screen
  • a good camera (you can tell a lot by the f-ratio)

The morning my Pixel went dead I realised I couldn’t be picky, and Ben and I decided to check out Samsung’s mid-range phones. The latest Note or S phone was out of the question—the price point is insane. (That aside, what is it with the latest pearlescent plastic sheen of Android phones in the market lately? They all look cheap.)

Ben and I were discussing the merits of either the Samsung Galaxy S20 or the A71, when at some point he managed to magically turn my Pixel on, and its power button resumed working normally again.

I was happy to leave the discussion and continue running my Pixel to the ground, but Ben didn’t want me to risk having my phone lose power or something when I needed it. He sneakily bought me the A71 and it arrived on a day I was working from the office.

If I could embed the 3D view here, I would. But here’s a link to GSM Arena. I got Prism Crush Silver.

I was grateful, but it was realistically not a phone I was excited to switch to, considering that to me it had inferior specs all around. ‘You don’t have to like it,’ is what Ben told me. He said he was just happy for me to have a halfway phone until we could get me a better Pixel in the future. My husband is too generous with me.

So I powered the phone up, set it up, and personalised it. Samsung apparently finally rid itself of TouchWiz, and my A71 was running on One UI, which… was still pretty ugly, IMO.

I re-downloaded Nova Launcher Prime from the time I was still using a Note III, set up the widgets I preferred on my home screen, hid all of Samsung’s bloatware, and replaced all the default apps (phone, SMS, camera, keyboard, and clock) with my preferred Google apps. For the camera, I downloaded Open Camera.

Finally, I set a wallpaper to a photo of Sagada from Pexels, and then… I fell in love with my phone.

Short video of One UI with bloatware and icons, compared to Nova Launcher. The Nova Launcher settings are highly configurable, so this is just mine. In addition to the calendar widget showing my calendar, I also have an Outlook widget showing my work calendar. It just helps to know what your day looks like, from the get-go. By the way, wallpaper scrolling is disabled as of One UI 2.0, something a few users noticed. It’s so annoying. Nova Launcher developed a custom setting to force wallpaper scrolling in response to this, but it’s not working on my phone. It’s such a small UI feature, but I noticed it as far back as my sister’s Galaxy Y.

I seriously prefer using it now for apps. The only con is that its cameras could never compete with my Pixel’s. The sensor, lens, and aperture quality are all poor. On a side note, why Samsung insists on shipping its camera with a Beauty Filter, I don’t know why. I’d only use it as a joke, if I wanted to look like an airbrushed blow-up doll (pardon my vulgarity). Don’t get me wrong—I have bad skin. It’s one of my biggest insecurities to this day. But honestly, you’re not fooling anyone looking that airbrushed. If you’re not familiar, check out this article from Cosmo: 15 Women Tried Samsung’s Beauty Filters and This Is What Happened.

I could never understand Samsung’s adaptive brightness setting, either. On its lowest in our bedroom it still shines too bright.


Trying to be better

Overall, January was a pretty weak month, personally. The routines I relied on disintegrated, although I did need the break from the rigidity.

I hope to get back on track this month. I really should re-read Marie Kondo and Cal Newport.

That’s all for now. See you in a few weeks.