Goodbye, 2020!

2020 trained me to look away from screens after office hours, so I just realized a few days ago that the third month of 2021 almost passes me by without me doing the annual tradition, writing yearly review. Even though it is way too late, here goes the story of my 2020.

I loathe 2020 as much as the next person, it locked us down in our home and threw away all hopes of flexing walking muscle (bye UK trip that already planned a year prior!), it is especially a hard year in which to lose loved ones, not that any year is better than others in this regards, but the feeling when you realize that someone who you just know will be there for a very long time, is suddenly nowhere to be found, is surreally common in 2020. However, few things still exists that I could be grateful for. 

Will tell our kids someday that there was a time that we go trekking with masks on

Work from home

I initially disliked the idea of working from home full time, considering I'm an extroverted person that thrives with human interaction, supported by the pulling force of a comfy couch, fluffy bed, and the convenience of not having to change out of pajamas all day will win me over any kind of work. I am quite certain that working from home will decrease my productivity. But who thought that after one full year of training, now I could say that I LOVE IT, so much! 

I like the fact that now I have a lot more free time as I don't need to commute to the office (even though normally my commute time is not that long). I could exercise regularly (gained some weight and quickly lost some). I could cook my own food everyday. And most certainly I love that Junda is home around the clock, his overtime at the office is the source of a lot of wars :)) Now, I can not even imagine having to get back working in the office everyday.

The moment of writing this blog is coincidentally match with one year anniversary of WFH in March 2020, I am currently wishing soooo deeply that I could do this forever hahaha. The only downside that I have is the exhaustive zoom meetings and lack of idle talks with my colleagues. Not to mention that since my job requires me to gather data directly from respondents, full WFH means my usual data gathering ritual need to be overhauled to support full remote method. Even after a year, there are still a  lot of problem that simply won't appear in direct face-to-face correspondency such as unstable internet connection that cut our session right in the middle, inability to assist less savvy respondents, you name it.

Bake in business

I dedicate most of my free time during WFH to cook, especially ones that involved oven. Trying new recipe that needs to follow strict steps and ingredients is surprisingly calming for me. I liked experimenting with soft cookies, to find the perfect taste, texture, and appearance. Even though me and Junda liked the cookies, we could only stomach limited amount of them in one sitting, so we initially send most of our experiment results to close friends, receiving some nice feedbacks, and some even urged us to sell. After careful consideration, we thought why not?

The brown butter cookies & Scottish shortbread

Earl grey & Crunchy lotus shortbread

Stack of shortbreads & freshly baked cookies

Visit our instagram : @bake.in.business

Junda helped me operate the oven, and he is also the main quality controller seeing as he has sweet tooth by heart. He'd be the one in charge of ensuring that all cookies baked to perfection, and he is paid one cookie for each batch he baked, so its a win win. We started small, selling cookies among our close circle. Now we're still small, but we have an instagram account! We like to keep it this way, as it let us pour our whole heart to every pieces!

Work from everywhere

One of the perks of working from home full time is that it equals to work from anywhere! We went back home to Medan back in September and stayed for a whole month. We also worked from Bandung in November till December, and we flew back again to Medan at the end of December and stay for a month again. Even though we couldn't go to vacations just like it used to be, changing our working environment helped keep our morale high :)

Morning routine when we work from Bandung; greet the ITB cat

WFH situation in Medan, no complaints here! It's Babam and Mimin, two cats that accidentally came to my house. Sadly they got infected with a virus a few days after I left Medan and they passed away few weeks later :(

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I'm so excited to face what the 2021 would bring, although I learned from the previous year to keep my expectation to moderate. No big vacation is planned for 2021 as I only hope that we could all pass this healthy and alive. So, bring it on, 2021!