What Happened In The First Five Months of 2021?

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At the time of writing of this post, I have already gotten my first COVID vaccine. If all goes well, I will be getting my second dose in about seven weeks (early August). Last week, when I was waiting in line for my vaccine (Eric was not with me as he was waiting in the car), I suddenly got emotional. I felt like this era was finally nearing its end. I tried to be as productive as I possibly can for the past 15 months. I want to say I have been relatively successful with all things considered.

This post will be more for me than for anyone else. I am not sure if you can draw any knowledge from it but if you are interested, read on to find out what happened in the last 5 months.

What Happened?

January

My dream desk from CB2 finally arrived.

Call me crazy but it took me months and 2 desks before finding my dream white desk. To be exact, Eric found it. We were at CB2 randomly one day while it had a 15% off sale and Eric spotted this glossy white desk that was THE PERFECT SIZE.

I started bullet-journaling (still doing it).

I think I must have been browsing on YouTube one day and watched a couple of bullet-journal videos. I have always loved paper products but my drawing and writing are pretty ugly. My cursive is okay (if I can say so myself) if I give it my full attention but my regular hand-writing and free-style drawing are definitely below average. However, something struck and I decided to try bullet-journaling. The cost to start was small: a couple of Muji pens and a small notebook. Five months later, I am loving it!

We put this mirror up months after we bought it.

I picked this up at HomeSense for something like $60. It was meant for my office but I put up an IKEA pegboard instead. It also would have been redundant after I got the floor-length mirror that I took ALL of my mirror-selfies in front of.

February

I attended my first CPA conference, courtesy of CPA Alberta.

I wrote about what I learned from my first professional conference in a detailed post. From a personal level, I was really happy when CPA Alberta agreed to sponsor my attendance. As I was not a CPA yet, my work would most likely not cover the cost.

RELATED – What Did I Learn at the Innovation, Technology & Accounting Conference?

We bought a new home.

If you have known me for a while, you probably would not be surprised that I was moving again. I saw this development before it was built and fell in love. Unfortunately, the timing was bad as I was moving into our current place. I did not follow the project closely but I paid attention whenever we passed it. I knew it was completed and decided to go check it out one day. Well, the rest was history. I knew I wanted it the moment we stepped inside – the lobby and hallway were as grand as a luxury hotel (and I love hotels). The floorplan is basically the same as our current place but 300 sq. ft. bigger. I contacted a realtor to sell our current home that same weekend and got to work!

March

Our car’s mileage hit 60,000 KMs.

Since our car is a lease, we had a mileage limit (20,000 KMs/year) that was included in our “lease” price (overage would cost money upon the end of the lease). We were on track to exceed the limit until we switched to work from home. We went two weeks without leaving home several times when the pandemic first hit so our mileage fell behind. Nothing to celebrate but I thought it was a moment to remember as this will be our last year with this car.

We found out about Fred Gingell View Point in Tsawwassen.

We had been living in Tsawwassen for over a year and a half by then. I asked Eric to go for a drive up on English Bluff Road one evening and found the view point with pure luck. The view was mesmerizing.

April

I bought a bike and named it ‘PERT.’

My company offered an annual fitness reimbursement so I decided to use it towards a bike this year. Eric picked up the same model at the same time. I asked people to help me name my bike on Instagram and I was not disappointed. It is a CPA humour that I am not sure I will get sick of. PERT turned out to be one of the best purchases in my life as we already had so much fun together. I love you, PERT.

I discovered how delicious frozen durian was.

I know some people are going to find this gross or revolting because of the durian smell. However, it is delicious! I had not had durian for years until I decided to buy the frozen one. I have had it twice now. The nice thing about the frozen one is that it was super easy to eat: you just defrost it overnight in the fridge.

May

We discovered John 3:16, a Malaysian restaurant, in Richmond.

For someone who basically ate out in Richmond five times a week, I was not sure why I never found out about John 3:16 (the restaurant). Eric and I ordered from them several days in a row and definitely over-ordered for his birthday. We took a break since then but went back once or twice.

We got our teeth scanned for Invisalign.

Getting Invisalign (the plastic clear braces) has been on our to-do list for years. We have been postponing it for a number of reasons including the high cost (~$6k CAD/person). Even though Invisalign is supposed to be less painful than metal braces, it will still be uncomfortable. However, my work’s benefits will cover more than half of the costs so we decided to pull the plug. I scheduled the appointments so I most likely will not be in pain when I write the CFE but we will see.

I have been learning Japanese for five months.

Learning Japanese has also been one of those items on my to-do list for years. I would tell myself I should learn Japanese every time I went to Japan. Finally, I decided it was finally time to start. I managed to learn Hiragana, Katakana, some Kanjis (still on-going) and simple phrases in the last five months. This pace is definitely slower than many and than I hoped but my goal is to just stick to learning something every day.