Can you believe that it’s already the last week of July?! This week was pretty boring in that there weren’t anything special that happened. T was in Kaohsiung for the first few days of the week so I was alone at home after I had gotten home from work. I prepared my dinner and ate it while watching my Snapchat feed and YouTube videos.
I must have been hormonal during the first few days of the week too, because I was feeling down for no reason at all. I was sad /felt disconnected and useless about life, work, and everything!
Work-wise, it was a pretty boring week. I had the standard emails and inquiries and whatnot. What was “out of the ordinary” was this Nigerian agent emailing me about the loss of their original BL for a shipment we handled last year, and the agent asking if we could assist to inform the co-loader to release their consignment. He even showed me their affidavit of loss and police report. In the end, since the MBL was under telex release, we sent them the pre-alert documents again and they were able to claim their cargo. I also worked on the invitation letter to an Iran agent for him to apply for a visa to come to Taiwan, and so I googled the requirements and steps he needed to do. Aside from other standard emails and work stuff, I also read some industry news and news articles not related to the industry.
My resident card is expiring this August and I’m going to extend its validity in the first week of August. I decided to prepare the needed documents in advance so that I wouldn’t have to worry about it when the time comes for me to actually process it. Good thing I did because I found out that my work permit is also going to expire next month!! What! It’s supposed to expire next year because I have a 3-year contract with my company and it’s only been almost 2 years. For some reason, the previous HR must have overlooked that and I only got 2 years. I immediately contacted our current HR and so she has to work on my work permit first before I can extend my ARC. Tsk, tsk!!
I also had to go get my photo taken for the work permit and the ARC. It’s so expensive!! The one nearest our office costs TWD380 for 6 photos. Oh well. Since I passed by Haritts, I decided to check if they had the cream cheese donut that I’d been wanting to try but was always sold out when I’d go there. I was able to finally buy it and it’s goooood!
My body (mostly my thighs/lower body) was still super sore from trying spin class with my cousin that Hatha Vinyasa class on Tuesday was a struggle. I didn’t put that much effort on the poses because my body was really sore and it was hard to hold the poses for long, especially those that require the use of the lower body. Ugh. Thursday’s hot yoga class was better because I had pretty much recovered by then so I was back to exerting a lot of effort into my practice.
On Thursday, my manager gave me one of her calorie control lunches again because she had an extra one and I chose the fish. It tasted really good, but I must admit that the portion is indeed small so you’d get hungry in the afternoon. I had a lychee milk tea in the afternoon and a tuna sandwich for my pre-workout meal. The next day, J asked us again if we wanted “afternoon tea” and I ended up getting Taylor tea latte.
Our president (Duterte) delivered his first State of the Nation (SONA) address and I read the highlights since I wasn’t able to watch it. My friend says the transcript is really funny because of his statements when he went off-script so I’m going to read the transcript to see if it’s really funny. I really do hope he can inspire the Filipino people enough to make them change and want to improve our country. I also hope that he can make the Philippines better. During his SONA he said a lot of things that we applaud – such as in regards to flooding, traffic, permits and licenses, freedom of information, passport, Internet, health, agriculture, ancestral domain, etc.
There’s this Peruvian restaurant in Taipei that’s on my list of restaurants I want to try, and when I saw that they had a promo this week to celebrate Peruvian Independence, I asked T if he wanted to go with me. On Saturday, we went there for lunch after going to the market in the morning. I was able to speak about 5 Spanish words with the owner when we left. They didn’t have much on their menu – basically just 1/4 Peruvian chicken, green rice, fries, salad, and soft drinks. There were different ways these items were combined that you could choose from. We chose the one with the green rice, and the other one with the salad. Their food is really delicious and flavorful! I enjoyed it. The promo was they gave out free albeit really small portions of 2 kinds of desserts (arroz con leche and mazamorra morada) and a drink (chicha morada).
After eating, we went back home to hang up the load of laundry that I had done before we left for the market, and then we went to Starbucks where we each did our own stuff. I read a book (The Art of Thinking Clearly) and wrote blog posts (like this one!) while T watched Game of Thrones on his laptop. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we also watched Bad Neighbors 2 last night and it’s a really sucky movie. Such a waste of time.
C'est moi 