Caption: Here's a photograph of some meal prep. Literally a pack of instant ramen quartered into four servings. It's a mode of the future - I think like diet sodas and unsweetened drinks, the sales of all sorts of low-calorie snacks which are strong on flavour are going to take off over the next one to two decades.
This is a Sunday reflection. I have to split this reflection now into three sections.
1. Housekeeping
It's been about a month since I moved to a new residence, with a partner whom I met about three weeks before that. One of our idioms is that we live on a farm, with a dog, a cat, a pig (me), and a chicken (she). There is poop everywhere, and I wear slippers whenever I am in the living room.
Only she (my partner) minds the non-human animals - that is her business. Sometimes I rub the dog's titties, and it seems to placate her (the dog). The cat (also female) has already puked on the chair of my work desk. Repeating some of my idioms for this period of life, while 'the only pets I keep are human', it is also the case that generally, 'the pokemon of my pokemon, are my pokemon (a.k.a. the rule of pokemon transitivity)'.
We rent in a gated community, with 'luxurious' facilities. The nearest commercial shops are, however, about three kilometers away. We are gradually figuring out how much to cook per meal, and how to organise our food storage. Protein per unit of bodyweight, given our need to add muscle, is a significant consideration. We also need to figure out how to get more work done, but that's largely going to be covered in the section below.
The property developer who built these houses hasn't applied a great deal of polish to the place, and so I have taken it upon myself to repair, and upgrade various construction issues. I look forward to the diminishment of these concerns, so that I can return to focus on my work.
We are on constant defense against invading ants.
We do each other's laundry.
2. Interactions with My Work
The whole point of this cohabitation is that I am aiming to save money on rent, because prior to this I was living out of a hotel room, and outsourcing both food preparation and laundry, for all of 3.75-or-so years. Now I pay a little less rent, and I have access to both kitchen and laundry appliances, so I can do these by myself and save some money. My landlady is being extremely generous.
On the down-side, the residence is seventeen clicks (kilometers) from my job, whereas previously I lived about seventeen (maybe thirty-five) metres from my office. In order to reduce the cost of commuting, I am now adjusting to increased remote control of my office. We run a twenty-four hour operation, and so it's not so bad when travelling to and fro in the wee hours of the morning - of course, if the jalopy I own breaks down, I'm pretty much fucked, so that gamble is part of the calculus for the manoeuvre at large.
After a month, I do not feel productive yet. Part of this is due to the fact that my mind is still recovering from recent volatility on the job. Recovery is possible for both good and bad reasons - on the good side, we have grown a disciplined team, and everyone's on Slack; on the bad side, we have a new joiner who isn't very sharp, and so the entire operation is huddling around to coach him up. While my colleagues focus on that, I have to explore growth for the company on my own, through technology R&D and other forms of business development.
I'm not too optimistic about our chances for success. Honestly, if you'd asked me on any day in the last week where my business is heading, I couldn't have really told you. I have to timeslice my headspace to the point where sometimes, I'm not in possession of a long-term view, and generally that's dangerous. Then when I get back to strategic planning mode, people think I'm nuts, so what the hell. (Observers don't usually seem very important.) I intend to grow stronger, faster, and smarter. My body is not currently so fit. I believe that my mental agility has suffered also as a result of this detritus, while it has been hammered with professional volatility since 2014.
Part of the routine I currently study includes daily exercise at the swimming pool. I am only just getting the hang of swimming with my face under water, and I do not run very often. I have also just cleaned out a utility room, so that it can be used as an
ad hoc space for lifting weights. At my peak fitness level in 2006 (thirteen years ago) I was running seven kilometers per day, effortlessly, or a half marathon twice a week. In 2005, if I recall correctly, I had been deadlifting about 60kg on my own mass of about 55kg, in preparation for travelling home from college. So those are some benchmarks I need to get back on, perhaps with the use of the local facilities. It would be good to exceed these eventually.
3. The Relationship
I have a fairly harmonious relationship, with a woman who has monogamous tendencies. I'm not especially keen on monogamy with her, though it is possible, and so far she seems willing to let me explore relationships with other partners. They say that good people are hard to find, in this conservative society of Malaysia, but I consider myself fortunate to be with her.
We enjoy each other's company, perhaps a little too much. For my part, I make an effort to constantly remind her that what we have works now, and we don't know if it will work in the future. We generally agree on present functionality.
I've found comfort in many bodies, some of which I moved in with after a few weeks, some who were intimate the day we met, some which came close only after years of mutual affection. I generally don't stop loving the people I love, regardless of how they view me. I've given up filtering for people who want to talk about the same things - but sometimes you meet them by accident. My best friend and I no longer date, but our entire conversational existence still revolves around baby-talk and global condescension. My current partner and I are working on building very large things from very small bases - so we talk about personal growth a lot. Lately this has focused on physiological developments, since we have the luxury of a pool and gym nearby. I'm finally learning how to dolphin kick. I never know where I'll be in a week, because business is volatile, so I wonder... if this gym thing is going to persist.
