Going into this month, I kind of expected it to suck. Little did I know, it was about to be the worst one I’ve had this year… yet. Let’s get straight into it.

I’ve been rather busy this month. At home, I once again had to take care of my sister because everyone’s working or at school, meaning that I can’t really go out or do much of anything until my mom or brother arrive. And even if I could, the weather’s been so crummy here that it’s not worth going out anyway. It’s been super cold and rainy, it’s gotten to the point where it’s completely flooded in certain locations. Luckily our house has held up okay despite it all.

I also went to the bank last week, as I had a savings account I was no longer using. My mom had created it for me many years ago to help me through college, but since I actually had a scholarship and I got to study for free, I never had to use it. Not only that, but the process of taking money out of it was a pain in the ass, so I had no choice but to close it. I was surprised by how painless the process was, the wait was relatively short and the staff were kind and helpful. I asked to have the cash transferred over to my main account, and that was that.

Work has been kind of slow, I’ve continued to do design related things. I’ve been progressing somewhat slowly, but it’s not like I haven’t been doing anything. Last week, my boss asked me to join the daily development meetings the company has, to talk about recent changes and discussing UI/UX related things. Kind of a drag, but it is what it is, I suppose. And on Tuesday, I had my feedback meeting to talk about how I’ve been doing. I had to answer a few questions beforehand, and then we discussed them. Overall, I’m doing alright but I do need to start taking the initiative to do certain things. The most exciting announcement is that I will finally be given an actual contract, meaning that I’ll have quite a few benefits, so I’m waiting to get that signed. So far I’ve been working… somewhat informally.

In general, my mood has been more or less all over the place and I haven’t really gotten any real breaks, besides the weekends of course. My motivation has remained on the floor pretty much, and it being winter hasn’t helped things one bit. I have tried to distract myself playing games or even watching the World Cup… yeah, as someone who doesn’t really like soccer much and despite all the controversy, I did enjoy watching it for some reason.

And I mean, that would sound like a rather standard month. But there were two events that soured it completely, one made me anxious, the other one was just devastating. So, let’s talk about it.

Earlier this month, I was walking around and I accidentally bumped onto a guy who was going the other way. I looked back and he immediately started acting super aggressively and began to insult me. I responded back, and he came after me multiple times, as if he wanted to beat me up. He kept threatening me, but luckily he never managed to hurt me. It did make me super nervous though, and I just walked away, thinking I wouldn’t see this asshole again.

Well, the day after I ran into him again. I was once again walking around, just thinking about random things that had nothing to do with the incident. I thought things were resolved, but not for this braindead motherfucker it seems. As I was passing by a car, he puts his phone down and once again starts threatening me the same way he did yesterday. I kept insisting the matter wasn’t a big deal, but I guess there was no more reasoning with this dickhead because he still wanted to beat me up. Mind you, this was completely unprovoked, this time I was simply minding my own business.

Once again, I did thankfully escape, but man… for someone who acts so tough, you’d think something like this wouldn’t have been a big deal. I just bumped into you, you fucking idiot. You act like I hurt your family or killed your dog. I was already starting to move on, it surprises me how big of a grudge some people can hold. I bet he does drugs or has some kind of mental illness. This is not normal behavior, as far as I can tell.

As soon as I got away from him, I immediately looked for a seat and I just began crying. It really frustrates me that dangerous people like this are allowed to roam free. It makes me feel paranoid that he’ll see me and potentially do something to me, or even my family. Dude definitely has a few screws loose, and it makes me wonder if he’s always like this with other people. I’d be surprised if he even has friends with how he acts. At this point this “beef” is very much one-sided. If he’s still affected this much by an accidental bump, that’s most definitely on him. And it’s downright embarrassing coming from someone who seemed much older than me. While I am a bit scared, I’m not going to lose sleep over something that was very much insignificant. It was an accident. Nothing more.

I don’t know what he thinks he’ll gain from beating me up. I’m not a violent person nor do I really like conflict or confrontation. I go out of my way to stay out of trouble for a reason. I do believe I may not have had the best reaction, but I still never wanted to escalate things. For now, I’ll just be cautious and make sure no one’s following me and getting away as quickly as I can, as well as taking different routes if at all possible. Luckily I haven’t seen him again, and hopefully this isn’t something I’ll deal with for a long time.

Halfway through the month, one of our cats began to act rather strangely. At first I didn’t notice that anything was up, but eventually he started to feel weak and was starting to lose a lot of weight. It got to the point where he had to be taken to the vet, to see what the deal was. In the end he did return back home, although we were told he had to eat soft foods and he had to take a few meds.

Sadly, even with the treatment, his condition did not improve. He was constipated, and we took him to the vet again so he could get an enema, in order to help with his digestion. We were given a new prescription, but it seemed like his body just wasn’t responding to the treatment. So his condition worsened, he only got weaker, and on top of not being able to poop, he eventually stopped drinking water (he just stared at it the whole time), refused to eat and always sat in a loafing position, since he was also cold on top of all that.

Eventually, we had to accept that he wasn’t going to recover no matter what we did. And so, this morning he sadly passed away, I’m not sure what his age was. We’re not even sure what the problem was, we suspect it might’ve had to do with something he ate that left him this way. Or perhaps it was a bigger health issue that we weren’t aware of, I really don’t know. What really matters to me is that he’s resting easy now, no longer having to suffer.

This… broke me. It was really painful for me to see him get worse each passing day, it felt like all we did was in vain. It really pained me to force him to eat or take his medicine. Maybe we did the treatment wrong and that’s why it didn’t have an effect. I do feel some guilt, because I feel like I could’ve done more to save him. I guess I can’t really lament this anymore given that he’s dead. He was a really cute cat, very affectionate and sweet.

As for his brother, I hope he doesn’t end up suffering from depression or something, since cats can also get depressed. So far he’s fine and has no real health complications, but we’ll still do our best to take care of him. Please do me a favor and hug your pets, tell them you really appreciate them.

I’m sorry, little guy. You didn’t deserve to go out like this. Rest in peace.

I feel like it’s a bit weird to talk about the things I bought after I touched on a pretty heavy topic. But I guess I am allowed to distract myself when things get rough. Anyway, first, the plushies…

Next, the toy cars. Nothing too fancy this time.

A pair of small kettles, as a test, I decided to polish the one without the lid.

This is a Memory Stick holder from Sony. You can store up to 8 of them in here.

And finally, the gadgets.

• Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 (2012): A rather unremarkable tablet, though I’ve always liked the design. I already had it in gray and white, and now I have it in red. I had no idea this color variant existed, so that’s cool. It’s in pretty good shape, with some wear here and there.
• Samsung Galaxy Player 4.2 (2012): This short lived line of devices was Samsung’s answer to the iPod touch, it’s basically an Android phone that can’t make calls. This one is very clearly used, although it does work just fine. I’d be curious to find the other models as well, there was a 3.6″ model and a 4″ one.
• Huawei Ideos X1/U8180 (2011): The first Huawei I’ve added to my collection. It’s kind of a piece of crap, it’s slow and it doesn’t even have a GPU unlike most Android phones of the time. I was able to put a newer version of Android and it does help a little, but it still sucks. It’s in okay shape, though the rubber coating has almost completely fallen apart.
• Samsung Galaxy S (2010): Yes, the first one. It could be argued that this was the first serious attempt from Samsung to compete with the iPhone. This particular version (GT-i9000B) has an antenna for watching digital TV, and it was only released in South America (specifically Brazil, Peru and Chile from what I’ve been able to gather). It’s in alright shape, but the previous owner tried to install a custom ROM and bricked it, at least that’s what the SD card files tell me. I had to order a little device that forces the phone into download mode so I could reflash it, and that thankfully was enough to get it running again. Yes, even the TV works.
• HTC Touch Pro (2008): A bit of an exotic find, this is a full touchscreen Windows Mobile device with a slide-out keyboard. It’s overall in okay shape, it has some scuffs and the keyboard mechanism is a bit wobbly, otherwise it works fine. Curiously, it comes from Norway, the keyboard has a Nordic layout, and the OS is completely in Norwegian. It’s also possible to install Android, although it doesn’t run very well, I’ll experiment with this further though.
• Sony Ericsson S500 (2007): Here’s a unique one. This is a pretty standard slider phone, it’s the non-Walkman equivalent to the W580 but with less features. What makes this particular unit special is, well… see how it says “SE123” on the front? Yup, that means it’s a prototype, they have that as a placeholder before the product is officially announced/released. I wonder how these things make it out to the public, considering these are for internal use only. Or how it differs from a retail S500. It’s overall in good shape, though the screen is yellowed. I do like the green. What a cool find, prototypes of any kind are always fun to see.
• Movistar TSM2 (2005?): This one’s rather obscure, I wasn’t able to find a lot of info about it. This was one of those in-house Telefónica/Movistar phones that were sold in Latin America and Spain, notorious for not being all that great. I also don’t know if it works, as I don’t have a charger. Maybe someday I’ll be able to test it.
• Motorola RAZR V3 (2004): I don’t think I need to tell you it was quite an iconic and successful phone in the mid 2000s. I’ve been looking for one of these for quite a while, but all the ones I’ve found were in awful shape. This one’s not perfect (it does have a bit of wear) but it’s way better, and it works perfectly too. Only problem is that the keypad makes a buzzing noise, apparently that’s because it uses an electroluminescent backlight instead of using something like LEDs, and from what I read, it gets louder with age.

This month I decided to try one of these “viral” fruit shaped ice cream thingies. It was a lot more expensive than I expected, but I was curious to see what the hype was all about. I mean, it does get a 10 for the presentation, it’s suprisingly elaborate for just a simple dessert. It also tastes really good, not overly artificial or too sweet. I just don’t think it’s worth 5 bucks…

To say July didn’t go to plan would be cutting it short. This month has truly been the worst, between this asshole shouting at me for something so ridiculous to losing one of our pets, it was truly a shitshow all around. And it’s probably the most I’ve cried in who knows how long. In the meeting with my higher ups, my boss suggested I could get a vacation week, but I’ll have to think about when that could be. I do hope it can be sometime in August, though.

On the bright side, I have a few things to look forward to in August.

• Birthdays: My friend on the 22nd, and my mom on the 24th. I’ll have to start looking for gifts, so far I still haven’t thought of what to get them, I might buy a new TV for my mom. Or maybe a fridge, if I’m able to afford that.
• Red Velvet’s new album: Velvet Summer, which comes out on the 3rd. I’ll admit, their summer albums have never been my favorite, but honestly I’m just glad to get something new from them. Cosmic came out two years ago, after all.
• The potential work meeting: Nothing is concrete at the moment, but they did say it might happen sometime in August, if not, then it’ll probably happen by early September.
• My package from Japan: It already shipped from Osaka and it’ll make its way to Chile most likely either next week, or the second week of August. I’ll be sure to show you what I got.

So, as unfortunate as things are at the moment, I’ll try my best to not let my emotions get the best of me. I’m not very hopeful about August because it has also sucked in the past… but I mean, you never know. We’ll see what happens.

See you all in the next post. Hopefully it won’t be as depressing.