Damn, we’re already past the halfway point, you say? Damn… I know I say this every year, but January feels so distant by this point. Well, let’s talk about it. It’s the end of the month, so of course, that means yet another monthly recap. This one’s gonna be a bit short since there isn’t a whole lot to say.

Well, honestly I didn’t do much of note besides my usual activities. In the last monthly recap I said I didn’t have a ton to look forward to, and I meant it. I went out a lot on my own, mostly to explore flea markets and to have that Chinese tea that my friend got me addicted to. Here are some of the ones I’ve bought, I’ve gone for the fruity flavors myself. Somehow I haven’t gotten a lot of hot tea despite how cold it is, hmm.

At work I’ve been mostly studying, since my boss wants me to use… gasp, AI. Now, if you know me, you’ll be aware that I’m very much against the use of AI for really, anything that requires creativity. This time, my boss basically wants me to create a file that would allow us to quickly create mockups based on the designs that we have in our platform. And he wants me to use a standard that’s still in alpha, so it’s pretty limited at the moment, and I’m still struggling to see how I can implement things. I watched a course on design systems, and last week I began research and testing how this AI nonsense works. I’m not super enthusiastic on the idea, if I’m being honest. Which is why I feel like this is taking me longer than I would like.

AI slop aside, work has been going okay overall. I’ve had to change things around here and there in our websites, as well as setting up things like sales and other random stuff, nothing super intensive. To keep myself busy, I’ve just watched videos or sometimes even TV, surprisingly enough. I haven’t taken too many walks, partly due to how cold it’s been here, as well as winter time having the sun set sooner. The bigger reason is simply because I can’t get myself to do much of anything, I’m going through that period in the year where my motivation is at its lowest. I’m not sure what I can do about it, but it’s really starting to affect me. I feel incompetent, I’m not good enough. Gah.

I also posted that 2016 retrospective that I promised ages ago, I’m so glad I finally got it out. It’s so weird to open up about things I never really talk about, as well as my perspective of things I saw back then, being that I didn’t speak English very well and I wasn’t as familiar with things from overseas. And at the end of the month, I went to a birthday party (just to eat lol) and yesterday I went to my grandma’s house to eat, since I got the day off.

Overall, even though June wasn’t the worst month, I’m not really doing the best. In addition to my lack of motivation, I’ve been thinking a lot about topics that shouldn’t really matter to me by this point. My brain does that sometimes, it makes me remember people and events that in theory are no longer affecting me, almost as if something needs to be resolved still. Regardless, I hate how that feels.

Here is the most interesting event of the month. On the 6th, me and a group of friends finally decided to hangout again after almost 2 years. I blame it on the fact that we’re all busy and with barely any free time, even on weekends. Anyway, that day I was ready by 10:30am, and I then left about 15 minutes later. I made it there around 11:30, and I was the first one to make it there. The rest needed some more time to arrive, public transport was pretty slow that day for some reason.

One of our friends arrived around 20 minutes later, and we just sat there and talked. And by talked, we just began to talk shit about our friend who’s always late and somehow always has an excuse for it, I was happy to know I wasn’t the only one that was annoyed by that lol. We just kept waiting, and the rest arrived about 10 minutes later, they kept texting us with updates. We then took the subway downtown, as we all continued to talk about random topics. We went to a Korean restaurant that I had been to before, although since there were now five of us, we had to go for something larger this time.

We had this like, hot pot that had all sorts of things. Noodles of course, but also lots of veggies and even cheese. Alongside it, we went for this Korean fried chicken and fries. We liked it so much, we wished we had gotten more of it. But that’s not to say the food wasn’t delicious, because it absolutely was. Although it spills a lot, and I got my clothes a bit dirty in the end. But that’s okay, because I enjoyed the food a lot.

Then, we decided to go to the nearby museum, just to have a quick look around. I didn’t take a lot of photos, but it was fun to explore the place and see what they were showing. Here are the pictures I did take though.

And finally, we decided some refreshments were in order. I decided to go for this Chinese fruit tea, since my friend always begged me to try it, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. Even though the weather was rather cold that day and my hands didn’t enjoy the cold… it was pretty good. It was blackberry flavored, and it had this cream cheese thing. Can you tell I’m addicted to these things? And can you blame me when they’re so fucking good?

After this, we all had to split ways since some of us had things to do. But overall, we all had a lot of fun together. It was super nice seeing each other again, and I hope we can go out again sometime. I do need to socialize, especially in person. Last year I pushed myself way too far to do it, and this year I’ve been taking it easy in that front.

Unlike last month, I bought so much garbage this time, it’s a miracle I still had some money left over. Let’s start off with the plushies I bought this month.

The toy cars…

I also got this shelf for my cars, I still need to mount it to the wall.

This is a building block set clearly inspired by an 80s Macintosh computer.

These two Japanese trinkets, a grape hedgehog and a miniature 70s telephone.

And finally, the gadgets. Since I got so many, I’ll split them into three categories. I’m gonna use this section to pad out this post, since it was pretty short. First, the smart devices…

• Barnes & Noble Nook HD+ (2012): This is an e-reader Android tablet with a pretty decent screen. It has an interesting design, though I have no idea what the purpose of the hole is. It’s in pretty good shape, with just a few dings in one of the corners. I did have to order a cable from AliExpress, as it uses a proprietary connector. At first it didn’t want to charge, but after a while, it seemed to fix itself… weird. There also exists a smaller 7 inch version (Nook HD) that I would’ve preferred, I like smaller tablets lol. I’d be curious to find the other B&N tablets someday.
• Sony Ericsson Xperia X8 (2010): I already had one of these, but this one is black and in overall better shape. It works fine, I was able to install a newer version of Android on it as well. Kind of a boring phone, but it does have that early Android jank I very much enjoy.
• Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini (2010): I got one of these back in February, but the screen had some pretty nasty scratches. I found this one in much better shape and with its original box, and it can even make calls. This was also the priciest device of the list, but I’m just glad I now have one that works better. It’s the smaller counterpart to the Xperia X10, I love the form factor of this thing and the lime green colored back.
• BlackBerry Bold 9000 (2008): Oh yeah, I found another BB for my collection, this is my first time seeing one these in person. It does feel like a premium device of time, it’s solidly built and has a faux leather back. This one is in okay shape, with some wear and a dark spot on the screen. But it appears to work fine, otherwise.
• Sony Ericsson P800 (2002): This has been on my want list for ages by this point, I had never seen one of these in person. So when I saw this one for relatively cheap, I immediately bought it. This is a full touchscreen smartphone from the early 2000s, you can reveal the whole screen by flipping down the keypad. This one has seen better days, it has some corrosion, a crack on the keypad and the expected wear. Surprisingly it still has the Memory Stick cover, which actually doubles as a stylus. Unfortunately, the battery is completely dead and it began to puff up when I tried to charge it, so I’ll have to find a replacement somehow. But it does turn on if I force a battery from another phone.

Next, the dumbphones…

• Nokia Asha 311 (2012): I bought one of these last year, but it had a broken USB port and it was blue. This one is in much better shape overall and pretty much everything works, though I would’ve preferred another color. It’s just a basic touchscreen phone from the time, nothing terribly fancy.
• Nokia 5220 XpressMusic (2008): A music focused phone with a very funky design. It’s also pretty small and light. This one is in pretty good shape and it works perfectly, although I did have to remove that awful rubberized coating on the back.
• Motorola ROKR Z6 (2007): I bought one in March, but it was in pretty bad shape. I was able to find another one that also needed fixing, but now it works just fine. This is a music phone from the mid 2000s, it runs an odd version of Linux made specifically for these Motorola phones.
• Siemens C72 (2005): A rather basic phone from the time. The only stand out features it has are a camera and infrared. Something I thought was really fun about it was the sheer amount of stuff it has, lots of downloaded ringtones, photos, texts and even a few games. It’s in okay shape, a bit worn down but otherwise fully functional.

…and finally, the PDAs.

• Palm Z22 (2005): A rather tiny PDA from the mid 2000s, I believe this would’ve been one of their last. I really like the simple design it has, though it’s pretty limited in terms of features. This one is in good shape, although the screen has some issues, namely an orange spot and some touch issues. So I’ll have to replace it eventually.
• Telefónica/Movistar TSM500 (2004?): Here’s an odd one. This is actually a rebadged device from HTC, known as the Himalaya. It’s a full touchscreen smartphone, I imagine it was quite pricey when it came out. This particular variant was sold by Telefónica/Movistar as part of their TSM line of devices. Unfortunately, I can’t test this one at the moment as I don’t have a charger, and the battery is dead. It’s also missing its back cover, but it’s not in the worst shape.
• Palm Tungsten T3 (2003): This model in particular has a pretty interesting gimmick, you can slide up the display to expand the viewing area. It’s also got a cool spring loaded stylus and it even came with a case (though it was broken). This one is in great shape, with only minor scuffs. Unfortunately, I don’t have the dock for it, so at the moment I can’t test it. Sigh, thanks for that, Palm…

And that was June. Kind of an uninteresting month, aside from the time I saw my friends again. My lack of motivation has made things so much worse for me, especially at work. I’m not sure why this is happening to me, and my attempts to cope with it aren’t really helping, sadly. I doubt July will be any better in that sense, in fact I can already tell it’ll be even worse if previous years are anything to go by. I’m sorry if this post was too short, I just don’t really know what else to say.

As an announcement, I will no longer be active on SpaceHey going forward. I may still pop in every once in a while, but I won’t post nor interact with anybody there. My reasoning is that it feels more and more dead as time goes on, not to mention all the nonsense drama filling up the blog posts there. I have since decided to make the move to FriendRewind, which is a lot more active and so far isn’t as prone to drama as far as I’ve noticed. You can find my profile here if you’re interested.

See you all in the next post.