April Life Updates

My last few posts have been pretty much focused on one aspect of my life, which I'm still trying to get over until now. However, there have been other things happening as well, and since I don't have anyone right now that I feel comfortable confiding them to, I guess I'll just write them down.

A Cat Named Miso

I never thought I would own a cat. Ever. I've always been a dog person, I always thought cats are kind of an asshole, and I just never bothered with them. That is, until about three weeks ago.

I've been feeding strays every time I can, no matter where I am. Now that I'm back in our apartment here in Cebu City, it has become a routine for me to feed the stray cats in my area every evening.

I've been doing that for a few weeks already, and there would usually be around 15 cats waiting and being very vocal about their impatience at being fed right away. Yeah, they can be very demanding and be a bitch about it. LOL. But you know, I feed them and that's about it - they ignore me once they get their food and they go on their way.

Except for this kitten that appeared out of the blue three weeks ago, went inside our apartment like it's no big deal, and started following me around literally everywhere.

I was totally caught by surprise because stray cats never do that, but this one jumped on my lap like it was normal. Heck, I didn't even know how to hold it at that point because I had never held a cat before. I felt like it would scratch my eyes, but it was actually pretty docile.

Well, they did say cats choose their humans, and that's apparently what happened with me.

So long story short, his name is now Miso, he sleeps on my stomach out of all places at night, he's a demanding little glutton, and he's very clingy.

Update: Turned out Miso is actually female lol

My family is totally okay with it, my dad likes Miso, and as for our other dogs, Miso was territorial when they were here over the weekend, but it was more with Orpheus. With Chumchum, Miso was pretty curious and was just looking at him like he was trying to figure out if he was a cloud or what. LOL.

Blindsided by My Workmate's Termination

I knew there was a problem, and he had mentioned before that they would probably fire him, but I was still completely blindsided when it actually happened.

It was quite sad, to be honest. I work remotely, so it's hard to get close to people. I wouldn't say we were close, but he was the one I was closest to in terms of working together, so it really sucks to see him go.

We got hired at the same time, we are on the same team, and he's been really helpful to me whenever I needed help. There are only three of us on the team, so without him, it's definitely hard.

I got the news last Monday, but I was totally clueless before that.

I even messaged him earlier in the day to tell him that I figured out how to make our Medium blog work without messing up the Google indexing part with our website blog.

He just laughed in his reply and said something like yeah, as long you don't forget about the canonical link, you're good.

We have a company meeting every Monday night, followed by a marketing team meeting. He never missed one before, so I was quite concerned when he did not join it even though he was online on Slack.

I messaged him and was like "Hey, hey, hey.. the meeting has already started. Are you not coming?" and then messaged him again a while later. He was online but didn't reply anymore.

During the marketing team meeting, that's when they broke the news to us. I'm not sure if the other person in the marketing team already knew about it, but it was totally unexpected on my end.

I admit I didn't know how to process how I felt at that time, and it was even more difficult because I think they were trying to gauge how I would react. When they asked during the meeting how I felt about the news, I just made a light remark about how I was messaging him before the meeting, reminding him to attend.

I'm pretty bummed about it because I've seen the same situation played out in my previous company. My workmate is pretty good at what he does, and I'm very impressed with his knowledge of the crypto/DeFi/STO industry in addition to being an awesome digital marketer and analyst.

But as with anyone else in the same role, they have to work with a budget set by the company, and they can only do so much. So yeah, I understand it was pretty hard on his part to get results that they wanted based on the budget, plus other factors, while I also understand the company's perspective.

I just felt like things would have gotten better eventually, so I wish they didn't let him go because I really believe he's good at what he does. :(

See You in the Metaverse

That's the thing with being a writer - you get to deal with different things while still doing what you want to do, which is writing.

In my case, I also write for a metaverse company, which is very nice because it gives me a more well-rounded view of the industry.

On one hand, there's STO and DeFi, which are more about financial services, institutional legacies, regulations, and stuff like that, while on the other hand, there's the metaverse, VR, and P2E, which have more creative elements to them. They're all under blockchain, they all work with crypto, and somewhat meet in the middle when it comes to NFTs and F-NFTs.

I totally love both spaces now, and I love learning more about them, although I'm not saying it's easy. Anyhoo, focusing on the metaverse, we will be launching our MVP (minimum viable product) this week, which means we'll be opening our metaverse to the public for the first time. It's still exclusive and limited, but yeah, things are really starting to shape up.

At this point, it's high time I get a VR headset because I really don't think it's sustainable to keep writing about the metaverse when I myself have never tried what it's like to be in it.

So yeah, just like with getting a cat, I never thought I would bother with getting an Oculus Quest 2. I've never been a gamer, I've never been interested in the latest game consoles or whatever, and while I did consider buying a Nintendo Switch recently, it was only because of Animal Crossing and Pokémon - something which I don't have time to do anymore.

I'm a little concerned about my migraine getting triggered and also getting vertigo, but I guess I just need to get past that sooner or later. I mean at this point, considering I'm in this industry, it's inevitable that I have to step into the metaverse eventually. Wish me luck on that.

Kickstarting New Learning Paths

Our company recently partnered with Udemy, so now we have access to tons of learning materials, which I really love. I'm really grateful the company values learning and personal development as much as I do.

So far, I've gone through the few NFT courses that they have, went through a copywriting course, now going through a social media marketing learning path, and doing some SEO courses after that.

I'm actually quite surprised how I love learning in this space, when I absolutely hated studying when I was in law school.

I mean it's not a walk in the park to learn about how ZK rollups or how AMMs work or what goes into an NFT contract, what token standards must be observed, what happens when an NFT gets fractionalized, etc. - but I love it.

I love the grind, I love the amazing minds of the people in this industry, and the drive that you see from those who actually change the world. It's remarkable, it's impressive, and I love being part of it (even if I'm just a spectator lol).

Secured My First Unstoppable Domain

Yes, I know I'm late to the NFT party despite sufficient notice, but regardless of that, I'm proud that the first NFT I bought was an NFT domain.

That's right - I actually bought probably the most obscure type of NFT out there. LOL. It was with Unstoppable Domain, and while I have no actual uses for it right now, it was insightful to go through the actual process of buying and minting it.

PHP 500 Lost in the Ether Because of Noob NFT Mistake

Speaking of minting, I have like PHP 500 floating in the Middle-earth between Ethereum and Polygon networks right now because of some very noob/rookie mistake I made.

It all started because I wanted to start buying NFTs on OpenSea. I have MATIC in my Metamask as well as another altcoin in the Polygon network, so I decided to swap some of the altcoin to get some wETH.

After that, my stupid ass tried to send my wETH to my ETH address because I thought ETH was the only crypto I could use to buy on OpenSea.

While the transaction was already underway (and after agreeing to the condition that it could not be cancelled once I proceeded), of course, I was asked to pay for gas fees.

Since it's on Ethereum, the gas fee was around PHP 2000 to transfer PHP 500 worth of wETH. Of course, I didn't do that, but yeah, that also means I have to abandon my PHP 500.

What makes it worse is that I found out later on that I actually don't need to unwrap my wETH because it's accepted on OpenSea. 😑😑

Buffing Up Account Security

I was doing groceries last week when I got an SMS verification with my OTP, which is a sign of someone trying to log in to my account. In this case, it was my crypto wallet, and obviously, I wasn't trying to log in at that time.

It was very unnerving and kept me on my toes for days. I was paranoid, and even though I've already beefed up my account security since then (enabled email verification, used an authenticator, and even whitelisted withdrawal wallets), it still makes me question how anyone would be targeting my account.

Since they did, it's very likely they know my name as well, so that's very concerning. I'm definitely looking into other ways of keeping things more secure, including credentials and stuff like that.

It's crazy coz it's not like I'm an active trader or have earned millions from crypto. Heck, aside from my NFT domain, I still don't even have any other NFTs right now. 😅

Travel Plans on Hold

My travel plans have already been postponed to after May 16 because my mom insisted that I vote during the elections. Fair enough.

That aside, there was also a problem with my vaccination certificate. When I checked online, I didn't have any record for my first dose, but my second dose was all good.

It's really frustrating because how hard could it be to just ensure that all the correct data had been uploaded? Like whoever is responsible for this has one job, and they still couldn't do it correctly.

Since I got vaccinated back home, and I'm still in the city right now, it was my mom who went to the Health Center to sort things out. Apparently, there was an issue uploading my first-dose record, and they said they would update everything right away.

That was like a month ago, and it was only now that I checked it again because I was pretty confident that it got fixed.

Well, WTF would be an understatement because when I checked earlier, my vaccine record was not in the database anymore. That's right - even my second dose details are gone. It's really fucked up.

My mom will be going back to the Health Center again tomorrow to sort this out, but it's just so frustrating. This is something that's totally avoidable if people just do their job right.

Dad's Birthday

My dad's birthday was pretty uneventful this year, which is good. We had dinner on his actual birthday, which was last Friday. Our plan was to go to Yakimix, a buffet restaurant, but it turned out to be closed.

We went to Vibo Place after that to check out some restaurants, but most were already closed as well. It was weird because it wasn't even 7:30 PM yet.

We ended up at Dove Street, and while their pastries are heavenly, their actual meals were the opposite. It wasn't the kind of birthday dinner that we had planned, but still grateful.

By Saturday, my mom and my brother came over, so we went to Co-Jordan, where we got to eat lots of seafood and do some fishing on the side.

As with my luck, I didn't get any fish, but my dad got four. It was his birthday, so that was great. We went to Landers after that to do some shopping, and overall, it was a really good day.

I'm glad my mom and dad were not fighting that day, which was often the case, and everyone had a great time.

That's everything for now. It's Monday again, I still have a lot of things I need to do, and I hope this week will be kind. Oh yeah, I just started a new IG that will be all about crypto content. I would really appreciate it if you guys show it some love and give it a follow. You can check it out here. 🤞🏻