I’ve been absent from this blog for a long time. The main reason for this is the continued suspension of travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020. Another reason is that my lifestyle has changed. Nevertheless, I am enjoying a full life both professionally and privately. In this article, I would like to summarize what I have been doing during this period, first explaining the whole picture, and then writing about each detail in next articles.
What I did and what I started to do under the COVID-19 pandemic
- New blog design and URL
- No more ads in the blog
- Added English and French support to the blog.
- Changed jobs
- Purchased an EV
- Tried to arrange music
- Started harmony and counterpoint lessons
- Started running again
New blog design and URL
I certainly did not post any articles, but I did make some major changes to the blog itself. First is the design. The overall image hasn’t changed much, but I’ve lightened it up a bit.
New blog site
Old blog site
No more ads in the blog
In this new blog, I have eliminated all advertisements that make little or no money. Of course, I’m not a celebrity and this is just a personal hobby blog, so I didn’t start out expecting to make a living from it, but rather to learn how web advertising works.
Added English and French support to the blog.
Another big change regarding the blog is that we have added “English” and “French” as well as Japanese. You can now select your language from the tab menu at the top of the site.
As for the multilingual support, I’m still working on the past articles. The number of articles exceeds 1,000 at the moment.
This translation is almost impossible to do manually. So I decided to automate it to some extent using the DeepL API. For the time being, we have already finished the translation of the English version if the API is used for automatic translation. However, the translation is not sufficient, so it is necessary to revise the articles one by one.
Changed jobs
I changed jobs in the spring of 2020, right after the Covid-19 pandemic started.
I can’t write about my work in detail these days because it is forbidden by the company’s compliance policy to write about my work in such a public place, but in any case, my work is my hobby, and I have to take care of it.
One thing I can say is that I’m getting older and it’s getting harder and harder to change jobs using general portal sites (including executive research sites). This job change was also introduced to me directly by an acquaintance. Thus, I realize that I need to maintain good relationships with my bosses and coworkers at my previous and current jobs more than ever these days.
Purchased an EV
During this pandemic, I also bought a new car. I bought an electric car (EV), a Tesla Model 3. In Japan, the spread of EVs is still in its infancy, but from what I’ve seen and heard in recent news reports, it seems that the spread of EVs is steadily progressing.
Tried to arrange music
Besides traveling, my other main hobby is music. I belong to several amateur violin orchestras, and in some of them, we play our own arrangements of game music instead of classical music. I used to rely on other members to arrange the music for the concert, but now that I can’t travel anymore, I have time to try new things, so I decided to spend this time arranging.
Started harmony and counterpoint lessons
What I realized after trying my hand at arranging music was my lack of knowledge in music theory. In order to strengthen my knowledge, I decided to take harmony and counterpoint lessons from a professional instructor. Due to the recent Covid-19 pandemic, I was able to start taking lessons online, which was much smoother than I had initially expected. In addition, I was able to take the lessons through Finale, the music notation software that I use to arrange the aforementioned music, which made it easier for me to take the lessons.
Started running again
I used to do a little bit of it even before the pandemic, but the number of times I did it had decreased significantly, especially in the past few years. Due to the pandemic, I have been able to work from home and save the time I used to allocate for my morning commute, so I decided to use this time to restart my running. Although not every day, I set a goal to run 100km a month, and I was able to achieve it for 17 consecutive months until last December. However, in 2022, I have started hybrid work, i.e., working from home and working from the office at the same time, which means that I cannot take as much time in the morning as before, so I have revised my goal downward to 80km per month.
