Pieces that I'm listening to when I'm writing this post:
You know what there's actually a lot lol cause I was listening to a Spotify radio. I'll just put the link here:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1E8NcnLDO0aNn7?si=e943a70911524282 

I've never really set any new year's resolutions, simply because I already knew that I wouldn't be able to follow through with it... I'm not being pessimistic, I promise. I like to plan things out for myself, like planning the day ahead, preparing speeches, etc. But when it comes to life-changing-decisions-that-might-permanently-affect-my-entire-course-of-life, I guess I like to go with the flow. Did I plan to major in Japanese? Yes. Did I plan to study abroad for one year? Yes. Did I plan to graduate in May 2020? Yes, and I did. Wait, this isn't right... 
All right, now I got it! Did I plan to do what I'm doing right now for a living? Absolutely not! And it's about the most important thing in my life, at least right now. I mean, I like what I do, but this definitely isn't the life I imagined for myself a couple of years ago. Aaand of course I babble too much about the things I wasn't even going to talk about! Back to life-changing-decisions-that-might-permanently-affect-my-entire-course-of-life...

There are a few new life-changing habits that I started this year (that I actually stick to):
1. Walking/running every morning for about an hour
2. Doing the Chloe Ting workout (I know that it sounds like a quarantine thing, but if you really think about it, quarantine never really ends, does it? Even if you travel around, you still need to go through quarantine)
3. Limiting my sugar intake (Diabetes who? The people who have known me for long will definitely applaud this)
4. Actually trying to maintain a Duolingo streak (It has not been a very long streak but this is the longest ever I'm not kidding)

I'm going to go through them one by one, not that anyone cares. Anyway!

What's so life-changing about a morning walk/run? I actually did morning walks pretty often during quarantine (it was never really a quarantine in Indonesia but you get the point), but I stopped ever since I moved to a busier neighborhood in the city. I used to live in this suburb-like neighborhood (still in the city, but they just made it feel like some sort of an oasis), so suddenly seeing this whole bunch of cars passing right outside my neighborhood area wasn't a very pleasant experience. And I guess I got homesick and started projecting it to sleeping in so I didn't have to think of the morning walks I'd miss. Technically, it wasn't sleeping in since I always wake up really early in the morning to pray Subh, but I always went straight back to bed. And it sucked because the sky in the morning always looks amazing, and the air! Gosh, the air. It's about the freshest air you could get if you lived in the city. I also love going to the farmer's market really early in the morning with my mom, but if I wake up too late she always leaves without me.
About half a year later, something happened. I woke up feeling a weird surge of energy in the morning, enough to make me think, hey I should go for a run, and actually did it. Pretty sure it was some sort of a miracle, and throw in some serious cabin fever into that, boom! One very healthy hour of getaway from home. But what's exciting about it is that I've actually been doing it for a while now, and I wish I could say that I didn't feel great but I did. And I guess for me it's not just some other newly developed habit, it's also about waking up one morning at some of the darkest and most challenging times in my life and thinking, it'll get better than this and it'll start today. Wow, that suddenly got deep, but here are some of the pictures I took from my morning walks.

Right. The Chloe Ting workout. I did it during quarantine for... three days. It was nice but I didn't think I'd actually get abs so I stopped. And the fact that I started doing it again along with the morning walk in March this year, made me feel like I came full circle. But I did it almost every day after my morning walk and MAN am I seeing results. I wish I could get into more details but I wear the hijab now so it doesn't seem very appropriate, but I'm telling you, I really am seeing results and I couldn't be more excited about it!

I guess the walking and working out rub off on my eating habits. I'm aware that my friends were all worried that I might get diabetes someday with the amount of sugar I took every day, but worry no more, dearest friends. Few weeks into the healthy routine, the sugar in my tea suddenly tasted too sweet to the point I couldn't even finish it. And I went, holy crap am I gonna start eating healthy too now?! But I really I did. I switched from tea bags to tea leaves and it's an absolute game-changer. I significantly need less sugar in my tea and actually enjoy the natural sweetness in fruits, which I never really did before. I'd say that this is my proudest change yet by far.

As for Duolingo, I started German and Polish last year, and even though I enjoyed them, I struggled a lot with pronunciation. I know that it shouldn't be an excuse, considering my Belgian friend praised my Dutch pronunciation after a few failed attempts of "Mijn naam is Nadya", but yeah I guess I was looking for excuses to stop lol. Sometime last year I started watching Money Heist (naturally) and thought damn, I could actually try this. So I did and I'm proud to say that I can now say stuff like "Quiero reservar una mesa para dos personas" LOL how cool is that?!
Spanish pronunciation is significantly easier for me to learn, and I feel like the language has a somewhat similar structure to Indonesian grammar, like the use of adjectives after nouns (un vestido caro in Spanish and sebuah gaun mahal in Indonesian). But the "de" in tienda de ropa feels awfully similar to the Japanese particle の! I guess we'll just have to see how far I'll go with my Spanish!

All right that's pretty much what my early 2021 looks like and I'm excited for whatever's coming this year, especially Ramadan that'll start in... One day?!?! Wow, yeah, definitely need a separate post for that. I'll see you then!