Here's what keeps me busy at the moment. What?

Turbulent times indeed 🌊

I want to start off with great news that not even the LinkedIn folks have heard: I FOUND A JOB!!! From all the other interviews and open position, I joined the company which I truly wanted to join. The team is building a product that will have a huge impact in the cancer research community and is already helping genome researchers. I completed my first week being happily exhausted. The team is about to finish their five-month discovery and they want to start developing soon. I tried to read all available documents and results from the discovery. I am still discovering what has been already done. What I am missing are user-centric documents like user journey maps, epics and user stories. My Friday ended with news from my CPO that things will change in the company. I will use the weekend to dive into product management books like “Flow Engineering” and websites that help me learn how to run an inception to be prepared for what is coming. I can't express how excited I am to try my hardest to help the team succeed.

On other important news: my girlfriend broke her ankle. To process the whole drama, I wrote a blog post, inspired by advice from 'The Body Keeps the Score,' a book about trauma treatment by a world renowned psychiatrist. What can I say, it helped to some degree. It became a chore, though, translating everything to German and correcting the grammar and meaning. I had hoped that "DeepL" could translate everything for me without me having to go through everything again. Well nope, and so I spend the little time I had to me for the blog post. We were lucky to be allowed to move into a room on the ground floor. The big window in that room lifts my spirit, as I don't feel so constricted as in the small room under the room with its tiny window. I am surprised how quickly I got used to living in this small room together with my girlfriend. It doesn't bother me that we are not having much space. It is another big step for our relationship.

Previously we were splitting the household work, but now that's no longer possible. I am cooking, cleaning, buying groceries and now also washing our clothes. The first time I stood in front of the washing machine, I suddenly realized that I had no idea how to operate that damn thing. I can imagine every woman visibly exhale and laugh on this note. I swear, I am used to washing clothes with European washing machines and I have no trouble operating them, but these are like a jigsaw puzzle. In the past I used to order clothes from the USA and their cleaning instruction symbols were understandable. Maybe Canadian clothes come with different instructions, who knows? ChatGPT to my rescue! I sat down with the LLM, and we analyzed what all the different lights mean. Three of five lights on the heating scale could either mean 30℃ or 50℃. There are no numbers for the indicating lights. There are spinning, rinsing and soiling. The heck do I know what is the best setting for the clothes. We were warned by a friendly Canadian Airbnb tenant that such washing machines are prone to make your clothes smaller. In the end, I managed to find the right settings and nothing got smaller. Lucky me!!

The highlight of this month for me was the annual big Santa Claus parade here in Toronto. Despite all the tumultuous, chaotic moments this month, the parade got me in the mood for the upcoming holiday season. The music played by the many marching bands was fantastic, and I was able to take a lot of videos and photos. The parade consisted mainly of people dressed up, marching bands and a few wagon, all sponsored by either a political party or a business. The “Pizza Pizza” wagon was stocked with several huge pizzas. As an exception to the Christmas decorated wagons, it stood out for me. Their vision of Christmas didn't go down too well, but at least they played some great music. This was one of two parades we saw this month. The other parade was in Scarborough, east of Toronto. It was smaller, but had many more participants from the community's sports and music clubs. I'm glad I was able to see both parades. Here's a picture of Santa

📚🎧 Reading

While we were waiting to see various doctors, I decided to kill some time by reading about the career of Patrick Stewart. I had no idea how challenging an actor's life could be. Making a living wasn’t easy for him, but life presented him with opportunities that he seized with gratitude. I haven’t even reached his time on the set of Star Trek yet, so there’s still a lot to discover.

I also started listening to audiobooks set in the Warhammer universe. It’s a great way to let my brain take a break and immerse myself in some exciting sci-fi. Currently, I’m exploring different books like Baneblade, Skavenblight, Oaths of Damnation, and Fire Caste. Each one has its own unique appeal: Baneblade for its epic tank battles, Skavenblight to see how the Skaven are introduced in Age of Sigmar, and the more political intrigue of Oaths of Damnation and Fire Caste. I’m curious to see which one will become my favorite.

These audiobooks are no small commitment, with most running over 10 hours. Still, I’m trying to balance this entertainment with more purposeful reading. When I feel ready to confront my emotions, I listen to The Body Keeps the Score. Today, I learned about EFT, or Emotional Freedom Technique, and how yoga can help people cope with trauma. Both ideas intrigue me, and I plan to explore them further to see if they can offer some relief or insight.

🎮 Video Games

I didn’t have much time to play games last month. Between preparing for interviews and caring for my girlfriend, gaming took a backseat. However, I did start playing a new Pokémon game on my mobile phone. The last time I played the Pokémon card game was back in primary school—and honestly, we never really understood the rules. Even so, collecting cards and playing a few rounds against the computer now has been a nostalgic joy. I even played a match against a friend. I lost, but it was still fun—and the best part? I didn’t have to spend any money.

This morning, I briefly tried out WARCANA before making breakfast. The combination of tower defense and attacking enemy strongholds is intriguing. I don’t fully understand what I need to optimize yet, but it’s lighthearted fun. I plan to play a few more rounds and then explore some other candidates from the autumn Steam sale. I also got myself Darkest Dungeon. It's a dark fantasy round based game. It was very successful so let's see if I am going to like it.