It’s been 4 weeks since I started work. At least, life has some semblance of consistency again.

Was in the kitchen about an hour ago just prepping tomorrow’s lunch box. Heh, eventhough I could afford eating at the cafe at the hospital, it’s the familiarity of home cooked food that makes me set aside time to cook it.

Progress on stuff has been lackluster. Managed 41 pushups about 5 minutes ago. My shoulder is still not 100%, and running around the kitchen has oiled my muscles a little, sort of like a warm up. Could have pushed 50 if I really tried. Still a far cry from the 100 I’m expected to do in a little over a month from now. Not really following a proper preparation procedure, but I’m still positive that I can reach 80 by the end of the month.

Onto the preparation for my exams. I keep telling people it’s not too difficult, it’s just that there’s so much to remember and most of the stuff I don’t use on a daily basis, so I can’t really reason it out on the spot when I’m doing the exam. On track with the timetable I’ve set out. Just ploughing through questions in hopes that it breeds familiarity with the types of questions on the exam.

I can see myself set into a fixed cycle at work on what needs to be done. I think back and feel that I should have tried to get more involved in my previous role to learn. I was comfortable with what I was doing and the isolation while in New York shut me down to new possibilities. I’m a little more receptive these days, going back to basics.

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Typing this on a Xubuntu 8.10 install on my spare laptop. The inner geekiness surfaces from time to time and I’ve been dabbling with an operating system that is not Windows. I’ve been trying to wean myself off Windows for a while now but it’s still the quickest operating system to operate when one needs to be productive. For most basic tasks, Ubuntu is easy to learn and customising it to meet your needs has become much simpler over the years. There’s plenty of documentation online from various users on about just any module you’d like to install. I like the idea that you can quickly install a needed program by just typing a line of text, as long as you know what it is you need to be typing in.

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Just feels great to be freely fascinated with everything around me at the moment and to be grateful for the opportunities to experience it all.

It’s almost the end of the year again. Heh, looking back at what I wrote last year for inspiration. At that time I was thinking about what I was doing the year before that. I think certain periods of the year affect how we look at life.

This post is a day late as I was out with Vyanne yesterday on a day trip. We made our way to the Braeside Cafe on Mt. Macedon up north west in Victoria. Had a nice breakfast where the eggs were fresh from the chickens they keep on the premises. It’s a little bed and breakfast cottage that was setup at the turn of the century and everything about the place feels cozy, from the logs burning in the fireplace to the china tea cups/tea pots used. Sat on old wooden furniture, looking out a window with a view of the garden and you know that spring is here.

Breakfast was the highlight of the day. Visited Hanging Rock and Daylesford after that. It was an eventful day.

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Work is intriguing. I’m not sure if I’d have been able to do any of this a few years ago. There are many stakeholders that I need to communicate with to get things done. I used to just only bother with emails, but these days, it’s faster to just pick up a phone to ask a question. All that accounting knowledge I regurgitated in exams during my uni days seems to be put to good use now. Heh, I read this blog post recently (which links to the main article it’s referencing, very much worth a read) that talks about character. I keep reminding myself when you put yourself out to do work, there is nothing beneath you that you can’t do. Sure things may be mundane at times and you wonder why you have to deal with it, but I like to accept things as they are and change what I can for the better. Sometimes it’s just a matter of perspective. I once mentioned to my ex colleague in New York that at times you are a rock, and the river is pushing against you and making life uneasy for you. Another way to look at it is to let the water flow around and past you, so you don’t feel like it’s all falling apart.

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Have a month to cram my exam details in, and it’s the hardest paper I’ve sat for yet. I have the tools to prepare for it, now it’s just needing the discipline to allocate 2 hours a day for the next 30 or so days to read, remember, and practise on sample questions. It’s a rinse and repeat technique until it gets drilled in. I’m still not quite optimistic about passing yet, but I will try.

Steeling myself for the month ahead.