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3 Nearly-Effortless Activities to Make Use of Your ‘Free’ Time during WFH

Get bored of consecutive battery-saving mode (rebahan) / Netflix binge-ing / social media strolling? These three actions might make you feel productive even though you don’t move much from your cozy bed.

1. Unsubscribe to Irrelevant Newsletters

If viruses mutate, people change.

 When you first graduated, maybe you subscribe to some companies’ newsletters or promotional emails, or updates from musicians you love. As time changes, you may now work for a better company or start your own business, hence no need of updates from those companies you followed years back. Or maybe, you no longer shop at certain online shops or experiencing shifts in favorite music genre (as you get older wiser, it usually happens).

 Some information we needed back then may just be a nice-to-have thing for us now, if not completely irrelevant. So, rather than keep skipping those emails (which are eventually piling up in your inbox), you can simply unsubscribe to them.

 Unsubscribe option is usually available on the bottom of the email, small fonts. Yes, you may need to zoom in to find it. Other option if you still feel that you need to be updated with the news (but not as often as the ones you get now), you may be able to switch from daily to weekly updates or choose which topics are still relevant to you (assuming the sites provides those options).

 2.       Clean Up Personal E-Mail Inbox

Almost all of us have personal email, some may be more than one. In those emails, I believe you might have subscribed to newsletters, promotional emails, job alerts, mailing list (does this still exist?), you name it. Sometimes we could read everything that comes in, sometimes we just have no time for them, leave them unread and pile up in our inbox.

 Like it or not, these daily / weekly / monthly emails take a bit of our free quota we get from mail provider which will eventually run out. In some integrated services (like GMail or Microsoft’s mail service), the quota is integrated with other cloud services such as GDrive or OneDrive. So keeping old, useless mails are not only bulking up our email inbox usage but also cutting down other cloud services quota. Not cool, right? So, to free up some spaces, we get to get rid of those old emails.

 “But I got several email accounts and years-worth of emails! Too much to handle!”, you may think. No worries. Start with your main personal email and delete promotional email you feel you get too often. You can filter them by typing in the keywords on email search bar, then once those emails are filtered, you can check them all and delete. If you have hundreds or thousands of emails, it may take pages of email list to be deleted. It’s okay, you can also opt to just clean up one keyword a week to make it more doable.

3. Set Automatic Cloud Back-Up in Your Main Chat App

We do many things through chatting application now.

Sharing pictures & documents, discussing serious stuffs, communicating with loved ones, and the list goes on. It is so important that chatting app has covered multiple functions and become an integrated part in most people’s life.

Few days ago, a colleague of mine text me through WhatsApp to include her back to a group we are in. She was unexpectedly logged out which caused her to lose all of her chats and other things in the app. There was no data she could retrieve because she didn’t set cloud back-up to her WhatsApp.

“Why cloud back-up?“, you ask. If your phone got stolen / R.I.P, you can retrieve the data you lose to your new device. This set up only takes less than 5 minutes of your day (assuming you already have cloud storage service).

If you aren’t sure whether you have cloud storage service or not, check if you have personal email account. The chance is that email service also provides you with cloud storage. Do check on that.

Do you have other simple productivity ideas? Feel free to leave comments on below section! Happy tryin’ :)

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Losing 14 Kgs in 6 Months without Going to Gym & Doing Particular Diet – 2020 in Review (1st Semester)

Like most people, I was looking forward to 2020 with full of hope (since I had a choppy 2019). I vowed to dedicate this year to really focus on myself, thus, I have mapped few things that I should and could improve, the #1 in my priority list is my health.

Why I put health as priority? (instead of financial or getting married, for instance)

The way I see it, taking care of my health shows the love I have for myself, my body. By making sure that I'm in a healthy condition, I'm also reducing great percentage of catching up diseases that may impair not only my body condition, but also my financial condition (and maybe getting ready for my wedding attire hahaha).

To make it clear, weight-loss isn't my ultimate goal. My intention is to live a healthy life and it is a journey that only ends once my time in this world is up. The weight will fall off as side effect of the lifestyle changes -- and it's an easy-to-measure approach.

I have tried multiple diets, registered to gym, used paid exercise apps but they never last. Then I thought maybe all these times I only focused on the numbers, instead of the life I wanted to live. There I had an A-HA moment that this time, I have to start with the right mindset, accepting that it will be a long-slow journey, thus, I HAVE TO BE PATIENT WITH THE PROCESS & MYSELF. It is the one thing that kept failing in my previous attempts, so I pledge to be more compassionate and patient towards myself this time.

HOW DID I START?

I knew I still need some guidance to help me improving, then I chose to use a healthy-lifestyle-guide app called Noom – this is not a sponsored content. They branded themselves as an app to help people losing weight (I guess because it markets the app better) but from my experience, they helped me much more than losing weight. I paid around 100 USD for 1-year access (means less than 10 USD/month) which is WAY LESS than what I used to pay for gym membership. Noom touches on basic requirements on living a healthy life – balanced diet, active body, and sufficient rest.

  I started 2020 with overweight status. For a person with 1.5 meter high, my weight was boasted to 65-66 kgs. By BMI standard (this is not a holistic benchmark but a good starting point to a weight-loss journey), I should at least reduce my weight to 57 kgs to be in 'normal BMI' category. I never imagined I would be able to reduce 8-9 kgs off my body because I had never done this before. But I guess, don’t let our mind restrict us from our real capabilities, agree? 

FOOD I EAT – Calorie Deficit Theory

From Noom, I learned that a healthy lifestyle is very much to do with WHAT WE EAT. At the same time, Noom also mentioned that no food is bad food. We can eat whatever we want, in moderation. That’s the key. The higher calorie with less fibre a food is, the smaller the amount of it we should take while the less calorie with high fibre content a food is, the more amount of it we should take. In other words, we need more veggies and fruits intake than those instant noodles or cakes.

 Why? Because we can eat large portions of veggies and fruits until we feel full but in reality, we only consume little amount of calories compared to eating a package of instant noodle which has high calorie but may still leave us hungry and wanting to eat more.

 I started off changing my diet by replacing my breakfast with smoothies (consisting of fruits I love, milk, and chia seed), controlling my food portion (I eat using small bowl), and eat more veggies. How about carbs, you ask? TOTALLY FINE – as long as it’s in moderation! Our bodies need it anyway. Bottom line is, we need to aim that the calorie we consume is less than calorie we use in a day. That my friends, the calorie deficit theory. This isn’t a perfect theory and there are arguments about it but it works on me (and other Noom users).

  GET MY BODY MOVIN’ – Make Exercise A Routine

Noom doesn’t stop there, it also touches on other basic topics on Exercise and Rest in quite details so that we can have a holistic approach towards living a healthy lifestyle. However, on these 2 topics I would bring you out of Noom discussion.

  Apart from working on restructuring my eating habit, I also got advices to start exercising from my best friend. She’s a mother of a very active 5 y.o. boy yet still has time to take care of herself and her figure. Exercising isn’t only helping me with burning calories but also building up muscles so that they can help me to tone up and burn EVEN MORE calories on their own.

  She suggested me to take a look at free exercises on YouTube (which I had never explored before) and specifically mentioned Chloe Ting’s workout as she provides full-schedule workout challenge for her audiences – again, not sponsored. I initially thought that High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is more effective in shedding some weights (and more cool too) compared to Low-Intensity Interval Training (LIIT) one. After doing over 3 of Chloe’s challenges, I found out that most progress I had seen in doing a month-long challenge came from LIIT workout. There was 1 month I lost over 7 cm around my waistline (I was totally shooked), while I never achieved that kind of result with my HIIT exercise, YET.

 Based on my experience, if you want to restart your exercise regime after long-time of taking time off, start with Low Intensity workouts first to get your body used to moving and keep you motivated to do it few times a week (I personally working out almost every day now). After 1 month or you feel stronger, start to incorporate High-Intensity yet short training to your routine to increase your strength.

 Exercising isn’t solely about how we look but also the feeling of strength that is built within our body, one rep at a time.

 REST – I gotta be honest with you, I have yet to find way to rest quickly and well

But I know, my body needs (at least) 7 hours of sleep to function normally during the day. So I still aim for that, while keep figuring out on how to sleep earlier.

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This afternoon, as I was eating dates (10 to be exact #important), it brought me back to memories from years ago when date was the fruit I ate ONLY during holy Ramadhan month. Not that I hated it, to be frank, the taste was rather ‘unusual’ to me.

Fast forward to today, when I chose to eat 10 dates in non-Ramadhan month, I realized how far I’ve changed. This WFH era allows me to do more reflection and as I thought, it was not the only significant change happened in the past 10 years to me.

As usual, my brain was suddenly filled up with this “creativity burst” that needed an outlet before the excitement and willingness to create something were gone. 

Then, BAM! This comparison scheme popped out in my mind. 

I quickly opened my Canva account and just poured my thoughts to it. An hour in: TADA~~ First infographic about my life was finished!

What about you? Any significant changes happened within the last decade?

Feel free to share yours :)

PS: Probably most fun time I spent during WFH period!

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exhilarated to know this tumblr of mine is accessible once more~ let's roll 2020!

myself

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25 Songs I Recommend for Your Wedding a little gift for the upcoming weddings of my best friends this year. enjoy! #1GoodThingToday

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Full Moon: The Monthly Celebration in Sri Lanka          

  After the Hindu’s religious day, Thaipongal, this 15 January 2014 was another holiday in Sri Lanka. For the Buddhist. It is called Poya Day or Full Moon Day. As its name, Full Moon Day is celebrated in every full moon occurence. So, Sri Lanka has monthly holiday!

During day and night, the Buddhists came to temple. It is not mandatory but it is suggested to use white clothes when you visit the temple. In the afternoon, I was visiting a temple near my host family house with my host mom and her son. They showed me how to do the praying rituals on this monthly event. Flowers, aromatic smoke, and Buddhism flag decorated the temple’s front yard.

In the night, I went again to temple with my local friends. This time, to the most famous temple in the area. 5 of us went to the temple and bought magenta lotus before going in (this was the first time I saw magenta lotus!). Other than white clothes, one thing needs to be done prior entering the temple is taking off your shoes or slippers. So many people were into their prayers all over the temple.

One thing needs to take into account when you visit this island, most stores, bank and activities in Sri Lanka are off during this day. So, if you need to go to bank or extend your visa, better do it before or after Poya Day.

I can say, this was my first exposure of Sri Lanka's signature activity and yes, it was my #1GoodThingToday J

  21st February 2014

-marinn

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My First Curry

  I fell in love this day. With Sri Lankan chicken curry. Hahahaha..

14th January was a holiday in Sri Lanka due to Hindu Tamil’s big day so Mrs. Kumari was home. The day before, I told her that I wanted to learn some Sri Lankan cooking. So this morning, she allowed me to learn about some of it.

So, this morning, I learned how to make vegetable rice and chicken curry. Those dishes were easy to make and from this lesson, I got to know that not all curry used coconut milk. Not long after that, Mrs. Kumari asked me to have breakfast with the newly cooked food: vegetable rice, chicken curry and dhal. I could say, best food I had ever tasted during my stay here is the chicken curry! I could have it over and over again.

Done with the food, I did some things while waiting for my local friend to pick me up for Mount Lavinia Beach. This beach is the nearest from my place. It took one bus to go there, the 255. I did not manage to get the sunset picture but the view was nice.

  The photos were:

Taken by Nokia Lumia 800 (auto mode) & Canon 550D

No flash

Touch up by Fotor using these effects:

Scene: 1-Tap Enhance

Scene: Sunset

Scene: Sand / Snow

Scene: Sunset

6 February 2014

-marinn

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First Sunrise

  Bird’s chirp and morning breeze. Heavenly combination to wake you up in the morning. And that was what happened to me on my first morning in Piliyandala District, Sri Lanka. Sometime after that, the grandpa in the house brought me and my Chinese friend (she just arrived several hours after I arrived) milk tea. They mixed the tea, sugar and milk powder with hot water to become milk tea. It fitted the chilly air that morning. Oh God, I started the day with goodness.

In the afternoon, we met our manager and other EP who acts also my Chinese friend’s boyfriend. Then we bought some things and the couple also bought some fruits. As I mentioned in my previous post, there are numbers of mini-store called Food City in (at least) Colombo area. My manager showed us the nearest Food City, around 500 m from the accommodation place, so we can buy our daily need by ourselves. Across food city, there is a small temple with big tree in front of it. Looks peaceful.

In Sri Lanka, temples are everywhere since most of the people here are Buddhist. Finding temple here is as easy as finding masjid and mushalla in Indonesia. That time, there were only few old people in the temple.

Done with the shopping thing, we headed back to our accommodation and planned to visit Moratuwa University. Schools and colleges are considered as holy places here, thus, everyone who wants to go there has to use proper clothes. No shorts, no mini clothes. We went around the college, watched some guys playing football on one side and cricket on the other side. I did not see many girls there since most of the students were guys. Moratuwa University specializes itself in Engineering and Design. The tour was ended in the college’s canteen and trying our first Sri Lankan snack, hopper.

  The photos were:

Taken by Nokia Lumia 800 (auto mode) and Canon 550D

No Flash

Touch up by Fotor using these effects:

Scene: 1-Tap Enhance

Scene: 1-Tap Enhance

Scene: 1-Tap Enhance

Scene: Theatre

Scene: 1-Tap Enhance >> Effect: Mini Oven

  06 February 2014

-marinn

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SUPER CUTE~~

Watch this toddler freak out as she plays in the rain for the first time.

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Ayubowan!

Yes people, I am in Sri Lanka~~

Some of you might already knew but some might ask, what will I do in this Pearl of The Indian Ocean?

It was started on November 2013. I was opening my twitter account and saw someone’s tweet about one of AIESEC program, the Global Challenge Development. The tweet must have caught my attention because I remember that I immediately clicked the link in it.

What happened next was a string of selections and now, here I am, 4,5 hours flight away from Indonesia to do a water conservation project. I arrived at Bandaranaike, Colombo, around 1800 hrs local time. It was already dark. Not much can be seen but the road and shops which some of them already closed when the budget taxi that took me and my project manager to my accommodation, passed them by.

Along the road, there were numbers of mini market called ‘Food City’ which still opened. We stopped by to get some of things that I needed. I saw the board of the shop was colourful and (of course) I liked it, then I took the picture.

We managed to get to my accommodation place after 2-hour journey from the airport. No traffic jam. It was just, quiet far. The family welcomed us warmly and gave us various Sri Lankan snacks. There were two empty rooms in second floor, the one in the middle and the one with balcony on the edge. 

No need to think much to choose the one with balcony. I always love balcony.

More than #1GoodThingToday happen to me on this January 12, 2014.

Thank you for reading my post this far. I really appreciate that.

  So, why Sri Lanka?

Rather than choosing the country, I chose the project. It happened that the project that I wanted was available in this country, thus, I applied for it at the first time.

  And why water conservation project?

My background is environmental engineering. It has been more than couple of years since last time I did something completely related to my background and this fact got me thinking. Over last months of 2013, I recalled the reasons why I chose this major for the first time and planned to go ‘back on track’ in 2014. I thought, doing this project in early 2014 would wake the sense of my environmental engineering back. I do hope so.

I realize (and know many other people realize it also) that water is an integrated part of everyone's life yet not everyone has easy access to it. I want to be part of team or project or whatever to provide clean water access to these people. We all have the same right to access water and the same responsibility to take care of it, don't we? And engineering is tool that I want to use to solve this issue.

  The photos were:

- Taken using Nokia Lumia 800 & Canon 550D (details are on each photo)

- No flash

- Touch up by Fotor (details are on each photo)

24 January 2014

-marinn

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Saturday Morning and Jakarta

The warm sunshine, friendly traffic and morning breeze. Definitely #1GoodThingToday - 11 January 2014

The photo was:

-          Taken using Blackberry 9780 (Auto Mode)

-          Edited using Fotor >> Scene: 1-Tap Enhance >> Effect: Dawn Light– Mini Oven

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Farewell Gift

Each day is different. Yes, I believe this.

Moment that made 10 January 2014 special was the meeting with my ex-colleagues, Mbak Irene and Jessica. They insisted to meet me before my upcoming trip. At first, I was a bit confuse about this since I thought we could meet at any time after I get back to Jakarta. Only after we met, my curiosity was getting what it wanted, the reason.

They wanted to give me farewell gift and what made it special, they let me chose what I wanted (within the budget, of course). Hahaha.. More than #1GoodThingToday. For sure.

The photo was:

Taken using Canon 550D (f/3.5, 1/25 sec, ISO 3200)

No flash

Edited using Fotor >> Scene: 1-Tap Enhance

24 January 2014

-marinn

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Cikini Train Station

I was just taken my Sri Lanka Visa from the embassy and went to Cikini train station to catch the train back home. There were not so many people, a bit windy with bright sunshine. I took some time to take a look at the building’s design. Nice view. #1GoodThingToday - 9 January 2014.

This photo was taken using my Nokia Lumia 800 (auto mode)

23 January 2014

-marinn

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Important Thing Indonesian Adult Might Not Know About Vaccination

Related to my travel plan to Sri Lanka this month, I visited a hospital in central Jakarta to ask whether there were certain vaccination I needed prior to this trip. I could say I was lucky to do the visit. There were a lot of useful information about vaccination, not only for my purpose but also in general, shared by the doctor. The main thing of our discussion was, when we enter the adult age (at 19 y.o.), there are some vaccinations that we need to do.

Here, I share with you the most important information which picture I took on January 8, 2014. I believe this could be your #1GoodThingToday as well.

This photo was taken using Blackberry 9780 (Auto Mode)

22 January 2014

-marinn

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The Chubby Surabi

It was early evening when I and my best buddy, Rhendy, were talking about snack that we wanted to have that night. Usually, we would take chicken porridge with cheese stick and eggs as our late dinner or supper (I think we are addicted to this one. Somehow, we never get bored) but that evening was nothing like usual.

We chose to try a quiet new hang out place in town with Surabi (Indonesia traditional cuisine) as one of its top dishes. It had been quiet long time since last time I ate it and I didn’t think Rhendy had it during his stay in America (yes people, he worked there). Thus, I decided to make Surabi as #1GoodThingToday happen to me on 7th January.

So, there we were. Having Surabi and random chitchat.

This photo was taken using my Nokia Lumia 800 (again, I had no idea which effect I used)

22 January 2014

-marinn

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Beauty in Gradation

This colour reflects freshness and also soothing feeling to me. It is always a pleasure to take a yellowish orange sunset photo because it is not happening every day and the golden time when it happens is short. For its beautiful colour gradation, I decide this photo as my #1GoodThingToday for January 6, 2014.

This photo was taken from a mall parking lot in my hometown. I can’t recall the effect that I used but certainly, I used my Nokia Lumia 800 to capture it.

22 January 2014

-marinn

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The Changing Bing.

Recently, I downloaded a package of wallpaper from Bing, contained their 10 best pictures during 2013. As great photos always attract me, I had no hesitation to install it in my 4,5 year old laptop.

The pictures changes every day. They are great. 

And yes, I do not regret at all, to install this wallpaper package.

This cool wallpaper appeared on my laptop on January 5th, 2014 and immediately snap it before the photo was changed. Titled it as my #1GoodThingToday

It was:

- taken using Nokia Lumia 800 (auto mode)

- no flash

17 January 2014

-marinn