My previous post was dated on New Year’s Eve 2019. And then right after, I haven’t been blogging for months. But, here I am now, writing my first blog entry for the new decade of 2020. For the most part, I’m doing fine. My family is alright, still coping through family tragedies from last year, but for the most part, we’re doing fine. For the first time also since Dad’s passing, we have to go through a lot of things that we seriously have to work on that Dad used to do before, especially around this time of the year.

I’ve done my usual “homework” when it comes to health, such as getting my flu shots every year and staying home when I really need to rest from illness. Lucky for me, I had the flu at around January and recovered in two weeks. After that, I’ve been healthy and well.

2020 Income Tax Filing

To be more specific, Dad used to do all of our taxes.

Today, now that my middle sister is certified in the finance field, she finally gave us a mini-tutorial on how to file taxes using TurboTax. I really don’t like messing with money or anything financial-related, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought. My mom though is the one who will be having trouble because all of the paperwork that Dad used to sort for filing taxes. ¹ Therefore, my sis will be coming over this weekend and get my parents’ taxes (as well as my late granduncle’s taxes) completed before April 15.

I recently completed mine with my brother’s help last week. My federal one was e-filed, but I’m snail-mailing my state one because I have to pay some $25 transaction fee just to eFile it like whut?! I’ll mail it sometime this week.

Which brings me to my next topic of this post…

COVID-19 Pandemic

First of all, how’s everyone doing? I hope you’re all safe, wherever you may be.

There is imminent danger of disease and plague has come to us once more since the SARS/Bird flu/Swine Flu outbreak. That dreaded COVID-19 pandemic has hit home for the past few weeks now, and it’s gotten a whole lot worse. It became so bad that the county government had issued a shelter in place notice that we all have to stay home now with the exception of going out to do the essential things, such as grocery shopping, banking, doctor and dental appointments, and such. Those who are able to work at home will be working at home. Those who don’t use online and computers will have to file unemployment benefits. ²

I’ll be staying home and continue with my self-built bootcamp training. I’ll write more about my bootcamp-specific progress on my learning blog.

I feel like there’s been a lot of sensationalizing through the media everywhere that people began to panic. The necessities such as water, rice, certain types of food, and of all things, toilet paper. ³ Our local Costco also started limiting some items to one package per member, but people still got away of hoarding everything.

It’s annoying to see people over-hoarding all the necessities. It’s even worse when some people decided to be greedy and inconsiderate by selling these items on eBay or Amazon for twice the price. Just a few days ago, I saw some jerk reselling 16oz bottles of sanitizers for $60/bottle, which is ridiculous. How can people take advantage of this pandemic with their greed when we’re all in the same level of danger? How are these people going to save themselves from COVID-19 with money? It won’t.

Conservation Practices

Right now, because of the shelter-in-place ruling that we have here, we all have to do a some things that we need to get ourselves busy on so we don’t go insane by being locked up at home. Sometimes, I prefer being at home, as this has become my comfort safe zone to do whatever I wanted to do. And there are plenty:

• Take online (digital) art courses, namely on original character illustrations. I’m also interested in drawing better urban sketches and art as well.

• Take more courses outside Skillcrush to practice and expand with all the coding I’ve learned (namely Python and Javascript). I really love web development, but data science and machine learning (thanks to Python) got me interested into it too. If things don’t work well on the development side, I’d like to take a try with becoming a data scientist. ⁴

• Build more side projects related to my (J-Pop) fandoms and other fandoms I’ve recently gotten into.

• Rather than crying over not being able to stock up on necessities, namely rice and grains, I have to convince Mom to go to the alternatives, such as brown rice, quinoa, cauliflower rice, etc. ⁵

• Search and organize all the necessary paperwork to help Mom do hers and my (late) dad’s taxes. We even have to file a tax for my late granduncle too.

• Train Mom on how to shop online, because she’s pretty much almost anti-online shopping.

• Get Mom to do other fun activities, like adult coloring books, but then I realized that she’s still recovering from her cataract operations for both eyes that I’d have to reconsider and leave her to watch all her favorite Korean dramas on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

• Keep up/practice with Japanese via apps like LingoDeer, Duolingo, Busuu, Bunpo, Bunpro, and WaniKani. Why? Because it’s a must for me.

Conclusion

Not much to write for my first post of 2020 right? That’s okay. I’ll write better posts and stories at a later time, but today is not it. I hope I can share better stories that can be uplifting or inspiring while we’re in the middle of a pandemic such as today.

Please, stay safe, everyone. Be sure to heed to all your self-care tasks, such as washing your hands for 20 seconds with soap and water, sanitize your hands when you can, if you have to leave home to go to the groceries, doctor, dentist, bank, etc., be sure to say at least 6 feet from everyone else, you know the deal.

This isn’t the time to play and mess around. Be generous to everyone. Help others who are most in need. Let’s all pray that this pandemic would end soon and finally contain that nasty COVID-19 virus.

1. In short, my dad is pretty disorganized and Mom used to get so pissed at him for having disorganized paperwork…
2. not everyone though…
3. I still don’t understand how toilet paper would protect/prevent COVID-19… if it’s for the toilet, install a bidet instead…
4. I hate math, but I love the overall aspect of it. I would probably, eventually, have to take basic math and statistics courses to further understand the essence of data science, machine learning, etc.
5. Mom is a white rice person. Even if she’s diabetic like me, she won’t even look at alternative staple foods just to sustain us and our current health.