Mood: Good 
Weather: 27°C, Clear
Vaping: Vozol 12000 Puffs Cool Mint
Location: Mont Fleuri, Mahe, Seychelles
I’m not supposed to be vaping but here we are still at it. My “cool mint” device is at 10%. A few days ago my throat/chest was still feeling “odd” whenever I’d vape so I had to buy Fisherman’s Friend lozenges. I got the aniseed and blackcurrant flavours. The aniseed one really helped with the symptoms. I feel almost as good as new. My sister is sick again, she went out with a friend the other day who did not tell her that she was sick. What does that mean for me? Well, I might catch it!
I’m 0.1 kg away from hitting 47.x kgs. It will still take a while for me to get out of 48 kgs entirely (esp. after meals). The last time I was this weight was probably around 9 years ago! In 2020 I went down to around 49 kgs if I remember correctly, but I did not succeed in losing anymore than that. I started overeating again and slowly went up to about 52-53 kgs in that year because the pandemic restricted us from leaving the house. My sister and I decided to master a new hobby, which was pizza-making, so we had pizza almost daily for a while. The following year I went up again, so by the end of 2021, I was at 56 kgs. At my current weight, I do feel healthier. I haven’t had the pain on my left side for quite some time now.
This week I want to start stretching again, while I continue to slowly drop weight for the next month. I really want to work on my flexibility, it would be great to be able to do the splits again!
Lately I’ve been trying to keep myself busy with the new project that my sister and I have been working on. As my sister is sick, we might have to take a week break from that project while she recuperates. There is plenty of work ahead of us but if we plan and execute well, there is potential for success in this new venture.
My room is finally tidy. I have to sort through my postcard collection and decide which ones I want to get rid of and which ones I still want to keep. Many of the items have been affected by the heat and humidity during storage (my room can really heat up because it’s located on the front side of the building where the sun shines all day). I bought small plastic bags that I’m using to seal the individual cards and FDCs, especially the vintage ones. The amount of work and hours I’ll have to put in to complete this is very overwhelming. I am trying to reduce the number of swaps but I don’t want to disappear from the industry altogether because that might have a negative impact on me and any related business that I might want to pursue in the near future. The first few things I want to get rid of are banknotes and coins that have been given to me by my family members. I don’t collect these, and it’s not in the niche that I want to get into. For now I am only interested in stamps and postcards. I also want to get into some level of scrapbooking but I need to learn more about it before I decide. Scrapbooking is still a growing hobby in 2024.
Yesterday I made the vegan version of “paneer butter masala” which is mushroom no-butter masala with nuts rice, lol. So that’s what I had for lunch and dinner, and that’s what I’ll have for lunch today. I will probably skip the rice though, I’ll have paratha instead.
The other day my sister asked her Mandarin teacher if I could sit for the HSK6 exam, and the teacher told her that she can put me in for the December exam. From what I hear, there is a new HSK 3.0 version of the exam. The last version I did was the 2.0, of HSK level 5. So I will need to figure out which exam I’ll be sitting for. In the meantime I’ll learn as many characters as I need to for both HSK 6 version 2.0 and 3.0.
Yesterday I had an idea of a product that could be useful and I can’t seem to find anything like it online. So I wonder if it’s something I could get a manufacturer to produce and also get a patent for. How do I build something that I have in mind, but I don’t have the know-how to build the physical product? I’ll have to think up of how the product will work, design it and then get an engineer (I think?) to assist. An international patent takes years and costs tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Alternatively I could choose the ‘defensive publication’ route, preventing anyone else from patenting the product.