117 posts tagged with "in-English"

[9–15 May]

Warm days already; sometimes even hot. After work/nursery, we often went to nearby parks with the kids, or spent time in the evenings down here in our estate, where we met our neighbours and their little ones too. Breaker of Horses plays a lot with the sand now.

We also attended our friend C.'s second birthday party and had a great time with her, her parents, and some acquaintances.

It seems my wife and I now drag assorted, quasi-permanent mild physical discomforts of one sort or another. (Is this the new normal, now that we're parents of two? 😤) This week it was her back aching intermittently, and me experiencing slight bumps from my nauseating tiredness of the previous weekend.

[2–8 May]

Monday was a public holiday. My wife took the lift down to the storage room and up again a couple of times, carrying accessories and clothing back and forth. As a result, that very evening the kids bathed together for the first time (Breaker of Horses sitting in a special plastic chair inside the bathtub), and we all could squeeze in the kitchen for dinner (my son at a high chair with his own little tray).

On Tuesday my parents came along and helped with the kids. I took Miss Entropy to the paediatrician (it was nothing serious).

[25 Apr – 1 May]

On Monday I took our brand new car to a local official repair shop (which is very close, too) to tell them about an issue that we had the same day we got the car. Their answer was as expected as unsatisfactory.

On Tuesday my wife charged the car for the first time, in the parking lot of her company — just a bit, and very slowly: only the two slow charging points were available, and anyway we were still experimenting with the whole electric thing. In the afternoon I took the kids to a park, but it started pouring and I had to run with them to find shelter. Miss Entropy and I ended up standing helplessly in the street with our backs pushing against the side of an apartment building, while I tried to keep Breaker of Horses' stroller dry under a plastic bag that I had spread out. I called my wife, who was wrapping up at work anyway, and fortunately she appeared soon after riding her beautiful electric beast, and rescued us.

[18–24 Apr]

This was a busy week.

[11–17 Apr]

We spent most of Easter in Granada with my parents. It was sunny and warm, at times even hot, both in Granada and back in Madrid during the weekend. We also met my uncle & aunt twice (and even my cousin B. for a few minutes).

[4–10 Apr]

This week we learnt early that our new car wouldn't be ready during the week. In fact, on Friday they told us the car had arrived, and so the day after we went to the dealer to see it in the flesh chassis — but it would have to sit idle there for a week or two while we do the payment and get it insured, and they complete all the paperwork.

On Wednesday, during our lunch breaks, my wife & I rode the motorbike and went to an optician's shop in a big shopping centre nearby. We got our eyesight tested, and ordered new glasses (×2). They'll give us a few pairs of test contact lenses (×2) for free, too.

[28 Mar – 3 Apr]

On Wednesday I took Breaker of Horses to the paediatrician for a check-up. He has gained weight, and is closer to the 50^th percentile now.

I spent Thursday at the office, as usual — and enjoyed it as usual.

We paid a deposit for the new car, and my wife got a surprisingly good quote for the old one (with semiconductors being in short supply, and now the war in Ukraine, the market for second-hand vehicles is very hot).

[21–27 Mar]

I spent Thursday at the office and, once again, the change in setting felt quite pleasant and productive.

The day was rainy, and with all the extra traffic the bus took a bit longer to show up at my stop, and then a bit longer to get to my destination. But with an e-book reader, a phone, and earbuds… WHO CARES. I've always enjoyed short and occasional commutes^[1] so much that very often I'm kind of hoping there'll be a traffic jam, that the train will be delayed because of heavy snow, or something like that. If I have something to read, something to study or write, or something to listen to, I'm content. Over the years, on trains and buses I've listened to podcasts, studied languages or university courses, read technical books or manuals, and so on. Actually looking forward to 30′ or 45′ in public transit because I'll have the opportunity to make some progress with volume III of “In Search of Lost time”, to refresh my kanji, or to finish listening to a podcast about some episode in the life of Leonard Cohen is quite irrational: in theory I could simply carve out that same time for those same activities before the beginning and after the end of my work schedule when I'm working from home! I haven't resolved that absurdity yet.

I enjoyed meeting colleagues, the social aspect of being in the office, the pauses and the little pleasures of casual conversations around the coffee machines, sharing lunch in the kitchen, etc. I think I'm more productive, too — or at least I make up for the time lost in commuting and in the aforementioned social disctractions: the time I'm sitting at my desk I can focus better. This week I also learnt that I got a raise, effective retroactively last January, supposedly to adjust for inflation. I like it where I work.

Is that incident important, relevant or consequential in any way?

No.

Should we be talking about it?

Not at all.

Why this post, then?

Precisely because so many people seem to have paid so much attention. To diffuse the stupid “controversies” around it, and to encourage you to spot similar fake scandals in the future and stop caring about them.

[14–20 Mar]

First week of work after my (second) (delayed) parental leave! I had been off for more or less three months, and although I planned to be in touch with colleagues etc, the truth is that I managed to do very little of that during my absence. I kept an eye on important communications and so on, but did not do any actual work. And thus on Monday I had a little mountain of mail and notifications from Slack, GitLab and Atlassian applications waiting for me.

In the days before resuming work, I had decided that I would wake up “early” (~7:00am) from Monday to Friday, and start work straight away (after some fruit and water). That hour is still quiet at home, and I can catch up with things without distractions before the morning rush with the kids. Also, my wife and I agreed that the best way for us to be productive at work without the kids staying at daycare for a zillion hours a day was to shift our respective working days by an hour or two: she would wake the kids up, go with them to the nursery school and start working “late” in the morning — and I would finish work “soon” to go pick them up and take care of them until the evening. And that's what we have been doing. Except for the days when one of the little ones has a bad night and we sleep poorly (and I don't feel like working at 7:20am), this arrangement works well.