Day 19 - Two in one

Sunday.

I wrote a post yesterday and was close to publishing it but ultimately didn't. Was distracted by a movie and eventually got too tired to close the post.

So, Saturday. Tentatively titled "Assembly online".

I was a speaker today in an online conference (Digital Youth Conference 2020), my first so far! About 200 people turned up for a 3-hour session on Zoom, organised by International Youth United and LPU UNESCO Club, and we discussed issues of international security, public health, and digital rights.

Here are the slides that I created for the event, made on Slides.com:

It was nice not having to travel to speak to a big number of people. In terms of energy use this was one full day of work, including half a day of preparing slides and half a day of participation. Normally speaking, if I would have had to travel to Manila or any other city, it would be at least three days of energy: one day of travel, one day of conference, and one more day of travel. Probably the slides I would have grumpily put together in transit.

Instead, 15 minutes before the event I was having a homemade affogato (coffee over ice-cream) assembled by Leo, and right after the event I sprawled on the bed and read until I fell into a deep early evening slumber.

And after dinner, I had a two-hour group call with some high school friends. There was no need to commute to a mid point, or consume anything at a cafe or restaurant. We just lounged on our respective sofas or beds and talked and laughed. It was great.

Back to Sunday.

I woke up today feeling the awesome feeling of having a whole day rolled out in front of me, with nothing in particular to do. Sometimes that feeling quickly turns into dread, when liberty transitions into responsibility, as in the responsibility of having to use time wisely when time is scarce. What do I do? Do I paint? Do I play the ukulele? Do I work on my website? Do I clean the house?? What do I do???

But today that didn't happen. I guess after the MCO started, mentally I'm in the "I have all the time in the world" mode, even though nothing really changed besides my mentality. I haven't had to travel, that's true, but there were also times when I didn't need to travel but felt the racing panic of running towards a closing window (of what, I do not know).

In the morning I was going to set up my balcony plein air arrangement to paint when Leo suggested we take a walk around the condo compound. So instead of painting I just thought - stared at my painting and the balcony view for a little bit and took down notes of things that I would like to work on and change.

Then we set off to circle the surprisingly big compound. It's lovely, really. I also spotted a few plants outside neighbours' units that I would love to get cuttings of, but didn't feel comfortable to take without permission. Maybe next time I'll knock on their doors... or leave a note. We'll see.

Came back satisifed from the walk, and played a bit with my toy electric circuit board (it's a cool little toy that lets you assemble different setups to generate and use renewable energy at a small scale) and Lego. For lunch we experimented baked a pie topped with puff pastry that is one year into its expiry - apparently it's still edible - and post-lunch we had affogato using the last bit of our precious ice-cream.

Napped. Chilled. Reviewed the week past. Watched a short environmental documentary that made me angry enough to post a long rant on a Whatsapp group - not gonna go into it here. Now I'm going to go make tuna mayo empanadas with the second batch of puff pastry that we defrosted. After dinner we will finish the movie that we started yesterday.

All things considered, a pretty chill and happy Sunday :)