Came back to Singapore for over a month but I’ve spent most of my weekends sleeping. Met Janice last friday and find out that a lot of my friends are studying for CFA over the weekends. So I am actually really not doing productive work lol.

Must make use of my free time better. Was looking through my todoist and there is such a long list of tasks and random projects. My GTD system is not working well. 

I think I need to identify key projects I want to work on, and have regular reviews of my workflow. Be accountable of how I spend my time. 

Every Sunday I feel guilty of not reading the Pastor write up from the previous week, and not do my own bible study. There is not enough prayer time either. 

What do I want to spend my out of work hours on? What do I want to gain? 

1) spiritual growth

2) physical health

3) meaningful relationships

4) professional skills

5) general knowledge [financial freedom, history]

How can I allocate time for the five areas?

I am very stressed. I don’t speak it out loud all the time, but inside I know I am screaming. Sometimes I feel that I couldn’t breathe. Not sure whether it is true.

This feels like a bottomless hole that sucks up my energy and attention. I am not myself anymore. Stress management, emotion control, self-control. I need to learn to manage and master myself.

Shouldn’t take out my stress on others, especially on Daniel. Everybody has his problems to worry about. Mine is not more important than others’. I need to be able to hold emotions and stress. I need to keep a buffer and slowly increase the threshold.

Time to grow up.

For the first time in London, I went for a morning run.

The streets were very quiet at 6:41am. There were a lot of people running in the Hyde Park though. It was pretty refreshing. Arrived home at 7.34am. Hope I can keep it up.

I want to be stronger and healthier. No more pain and moaning, and being weak and low.

I was busy travelling and visiting friends for the past 3 weeks. Hardly spending any time at home, I did not prioritise my haircare routine. As a result, the naughty hair ends grapped the opportunity to stealthily wrestle and dance with each other, refusing to make peace when a comb ran through. What a pain to comb my hair each time!

Finally, I have gotten around to deal with the mess at the back of my head tonight. It was much easier than I thought! All I needed to do was these 3 easy steps.

1) Wash my hair with Pantene Repair & Protect Shampoo.

2) Apply Dove Nourishing Oil Care Conditioner and rinse.

3) Dry the hair until slightly damp. Warm one pump of Kerastase Elixir Ultime oil between palms and finger tips. Run the oil on finger tips through hair until all the oil has been absorbed. Continue to dry the hair using a hair-dryer.

After these steps, I then brushed my hair with a flat brush. There was no tangle at all!

I woke up with sore throat. My head was heavy and my whole body was aching. It was 7.42am. I washed up, got changed, and packed my bag to get ready for school. J and I had arranged to meet at 9am for idapi revision. However, just before I step out of the house, I decided to postpone the revision till afternoon, as I really felt unwell. I gave J a short call, just caught him in time before he left home. We agreed to meet at 2pm at first. Then he changed it to 3pm, as he had a revision lecture at 2pm.

It was all good. I returned to my laptop. My sublime text was open, showing the Python code I was working on last night. Django looks very easy to configure, yet it still took me quite a while to understand how the views, the URL settings, the models, and the templates wired up. It was pretty fun. I was reminded of the days at the Hut Group working with AngularJS.

After a few hours of battling with the code and the databases, I managed to put up a decent page showing the average travel time between adjacent London bus stops given the route, the day of the week, and the hour. The Django template syntax was quite similar to that of AngularJS. Having spent 3 months working purely with AngularJS last year, I felt like meeting a good old friend in code.

At around 2.30pm, J dropped me a message, “Are you around?” I felt a bit panic and guilty that I was still at home, as I would usually be late for school. I quickly texted back, “No, I will pack now and get going.” Laptop, pens, revision notes. I threw all the essential things in my bag. “Oh well, hope J is not upset with me,” I thought to myself as I took a second glance at my phone. He did not reply me.

With my thoughts half worrying about being late and half lingering on my half-baked code, I arrived at college just slightly after 3pm. Ha, I bumped into J taking a cigarette break outside Huxley. He waved at me with a big smile on his face.

“I just finished my revision lecture”, he said.

“Wait, what? I thought you finished half an hour ago and was looking for me?” I was surprised.

“No, I texted you during my lecture, just to make sure that you are coming and will be here on time!” He grinned.

I rolled my eyes, not sure to be upset or amused. This joker really knows me so well. He knew that surely I would be late no matter what, and that a text in advance would greatly reduce his waiting time. So smart.

We chatted until he finished the cigarette, and went back to labs to continue our third round of battle against idapi.

Then at 5pm, I went to meet Peter as usual. He played with the page I created, changed a few parameters to compare the travel_time values, and looked up to give me a huge smile, “you are roughly done with the core of your project and can pass your year!” WOW, I was really really surprised yet happy to hear that! My Year 4 counts for half of my degree, while my final year project counts for half of my Year 4 marks. Additionally, I need to achieve at least 40% of my project in order to graduate with a degree. As my supervisor is in fact my 1st marker of the project, his comment meant that I have achieved the baseline of my final year project 3 months ahead of the deadline, and I have the rest of the time to improve it! I was really thrilled to know this and was thankful that I was able to stay home in the morning to produce the game-changing bit of my project.

By now, I had achieved 73% for my first 3 years, and I should be able to safely secure at least 60% on average for my Year 4 exams and coursework. Counting 40% for my project, I should have roughly 730.5 + 600.25 + 40*0.25 = 61.5 percent as an overall grade. This is a 2nd upper class degree!!!

I can sleep in peace now. Thank God for looking after me all the while and being there for me when I cried for help. I remember the time when nothing but only God’s Word could calm me down, and assure me that there is still hope. I am grateful that I did not give up.