A meditation journey - day 10&11

Missed one day of posting, but who is counting right? When I stopped with the podcast I believe there were above 200 people subscribed to the podcast. Now I guess this blog is read by 0 person. I couldn’t even find this blog through Google search. It is how this abandoned address has become.

I believe the hardest thing of being isolated is to deal with the sense of time. When your life is loosing rhythm it is quite draining. Because it is difficult to trace if you really spent 8 hours on your work? When I am watching Netflix to relax, it is also not really relaxing because the constant calculation happening in the brain questioning myself if I have spent my time wisely. This is kind of stressful and shows the importance of having the discipline to be discipline.

The lunch and dinner were pretty good though today. Not just repeating the menu from last week after all.

A meditation journey - Day 9

Normally I am not the kind of person who bothers others a lot. After the fight with hotel, I contacted my best friend in Taipei and asked him to buy a few things for me and drop them off at the hotel. Great to have friends. I do not have many friends, but a few truly good ones to consider myself lucky. On the quarantine side, the meals are repeating and honestly getting quite boring. If I stick to them I would probably loose weight, but then I would order food from outside and get too full in the end. People are 矛盾的動物。

A meditation journey - day 8

Today the meals start to repeat, which indicates that the new week has begun. I have been in quarantine for 7 days now. Tried to connect with my old friend in Taipei and he agreed to bring some stuffs to me. It is a relief to know that I am not totally dependent on the mercy of this hotel. Need to start to work again on Monday. Hope that it will be a good week.

A meditation journey - day 7

Just past midnight and that means the official entering of my second week of quarantine. Had a small fight with the hotel today. Few days ago I asked hotel if they are able to buy beer for me from the convenient store next door. In Taipei, the density of convenient store is world famous. There is basically convenient store at every corner of the city. Especially the hotel I am staying in is in a quite busy area. The hotel took my request and asked for 20% service fee for doing this for me. I finished the beer today and asked the hotel to buy beer for me again. This time they delivered the beer and gave me a price list of the drinks in hotel. A bottle of beer that cost around 30 NTD is now costing around 100 NTD. The hotel also told me that if I want to buy any drinks from now on, I can only buy it from the hotel using the hotel rate. Saying that they are not allowed to buy things from convenient store for the guests for health reason. What kind of bull shit is this? I chose a relatively expensive hotel to be my temporary home during the quarantine and expected that I would be able to get better environment and services. For more than 200 Euro a day they do not need to clean the room or change the towels and blankets. The food they are serving is also the same for all the guests so the cost is not so high. And now they are making up excuses to avoid work and rip off their guests. This is really disappointing. I see this as a huge lack of service mentality on the hotel part. All the guests staying in this hotel are people in quarantine. A hotel that is service oriented should think about how they can provide the guests a comfortable stay. A few days ago it was possible and now it is not possible and because of “health” related reason? What a disgrace.

P.s. I found out how to use the shower today. I just don’t know if I am too stupid or too smart to not able to understand how it works.

A meditation journey - day 6

Final working day of the week and it went just like another working day. Clearly noticed that my eyes are getting quite sore and there comes the realization that no matter if I am working or resting, my eyes are fixed to one of the screens. It is the screen of my laptop, the screen of my iPad, or the screen of my phones. Need to find a way to cut down the accumulative screen time. The other thing is the pressure on my back because of all the sitting. Again, I am mostly in a sitting position no matter if I am working or resting. And the hotel is not able to provide a more ergonomic chair than the chair made fully out of hard wood. Well, ain’t that lovely?

A meditation journey - day 5

It is actually not easy to write journal everyday. Didn’t develop this habit, not having much to say, or simply too busy with other stuffs. Who knows what will happen if I can really keep it up for 14 days. Maybe there is no need to give oneself too much pressure, but what is a content creator without discipline? There is much more to do as a YouTuber than a podcaster. In both content creation and post production. Maybe it is good to have the slow start with this blog (I have forgotten most of the tricks of podcasting anyway).

Today I watched two movies: Charlie’s Angels and Zombie land II. Let’s just say that I like the second one and let’s just skip the first one. I think one difficult part of “working from home” is the guild you have on wondering if I have really worked the full 8 hours already and is “allowed” to do other things. That’s a thought that can keep you uncomfortable in doing everything. It just takes the courage to say “ah, screw it” to have the peace of mind. Go to bed now.

A meditation journey - day 4

Sitting at the small balcony to type this piece. This balcony is one of the important reasons why I chose this hotel as my temporary space for my meditation journey. To still have the possibility to get in touch with the world outside not being blocked by windows. During the day it is very hot, but in the night it is the comfortable temperature sitting outside after shower without blow dry my hair (shower is broken by the way). Fourth day and the first time I tried Uber eats to buy some 鹽酥雞. It offers a coupon that ends tomorrow at noon so I need to seize my chance. The result is a much too full stomach. Still feeling alright.

A meditation journey - day 3

Not so special day overall. Trying out some delivery apps, but surprisingly (or not really) that not so many of them deliver alcohol drinks. After some digging I found out that it is due to liability reason. Delivery services want to avoid delivering alcohol or tobacco to minors, which might posses the means to order these deliveries. Well, they obviously didn’t consider adults being quarantined in a hotel. Didn’t sleep so well last night, which is also usual for the second day of jetlag. Let’s see how it goes tonight!

A meditation journey - day 2

Set the alarm for 8:00 in the morning, but finally woken up by a phone call from the hotel at 11:30. I started to develop the habit to take melatonin on the first three days of travel involving time zone changes. It worked quite well for me to deal with jetlag. The first night has never been a problem anyway because it is normally the most tiring night after the bad sleep you get on the flight. The call from the hotel was about getting a phone with local number so the district will be able to contact me when needed.

The whole day was the general work mixed with private YouTube and Spotify sessions. Watched the small home concert of 孫燕姿 and in the afternoon I started with the 7 minutes work out routine to compensate with the non activity day. So far so good while not so far yet.

A meditation journey - Day 1

Back to Taiwan due to circumstances and starting my 14 days of isolation today. Just some short notes to register this experience. I am starting out full of confidence and think such an introvert like myself should be able to go through this effortlessly. Well, only time can tell. The biggest challenge is obviously the lack of space for exercising. I mean, I do not sport normally, but make on average 5K steps from walking around the office or doing shopping per day. How to find a routine and keep the mind and body healthy is then quite crucial. As said, a short note everyday and photo’s will probably be added much later.