After taking last week off, I resumed work today. Because I still had 26 days of leave remaining for the year and had to use all of them before it ends, I booked a week of holidays without any planning. The break from work, especially after the recent hectic weeks, was a welcome change. And although I wasted the first few days on Discord and reddit, I eventually relaxed in the more pleasurable activities of reading books and watching films.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I saw Passengers <\/em>yet again. I am not equipped to review films objectively, and so at the risk of being ridiculed I admit to loving <\/strong>Passengers<\/em>. I’m fascinated by how the film depicts the despair of people who are condemned to a prison of time and solitude. Also, the characters of Chris Pratt\u2014who “used to be chubby”, P reminds me\u2014and Jennifer Lawrence\u2014”she’s not all that”, P also says\u2014had me completely engrossed. I disagree with the reddit opinion that the plot should have been darker\u2014but I also admit my bias for romance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Amazon Prime then started suggesting to me the Hunger Games <\/em>films. I had watched the first one a long time ago and had not been impressed. After seeing Jennifer Lawrence in Passengers<\/em>, however, I gave Hunger Games<\/em> a chance. They were entertaining, yet not deserving of all the hype. Still Lawrence retains my new found appreciation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the last couple of months, I had been reading three books: Line by Line<\/em>, a book on English grammar; Writing Solid Code<\/em>, a book on programming; and Crossing to Safety<\/em>, a novel by Wallace Stagner. I wanted to finish Line by Line<\/em> quickly because it is the type of book that easily falls to the wayside if it loses the reader’s attention; I’m glad I completed this goal. I also finished Writing Solid Code<\/em>, which was always going to be a slower read, the ideas in it requiring careful reflection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Crossing to Safety<\/em> gets special treatment. I’m deliberately taking my time to read it\u2014I might actually have been at it for longer than two months. Although it is a short book, it tells a great story, has interesting characters, and is very well written. I continue to savour it a few pages at a time every night in bed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This week, I also made some small lifestyle adjustments. I removed the company’s Outlook and Teams apps from my phone. Without those, I have to start the work laptop if I need to see my work calendar. But I think setting boundaries in this way is good, especially now that home is also the office. I uninstalled the reddit and Discord apps, realising how much of my time they had taken. I then subscribed to several long-read blogs, which goes the theory, should fill my freed time with more reading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Altogether it was a decent holiday. I disregarded work, ate out, ordered take-aways, read books, watched films, and made life adjustments. I’m now filled with new vitality to tackle the last few weeks of this long year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After taking last week off, I resumed work today. Because I still had 26 days of leave remaining for the year and had to use all of them before it ends, I booked a week of holidays without any planning. The break from work, especially after the recent hectic weeks, was a welcome change. And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1j9q5-L5","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4180,"url":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/19\/shirley-wellard-universal-film-cassette\/","url_meta":{"origin":2919,"position":0},"title":"Shirley Wellard Universal film cassette","author":"Eddy Young","date":"19 July 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"The Shirley Wellard Universal film cassette was too much attractive vintage photography equipment to pass on. I bought two of them on eBay and successfully used one today with my Nikon FM2. The Shirley Wellard's beautiful design and solid build are not my only reasons for buying them. In fact,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Reloadable film cassette with its box and instructions guide","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_20240719_223547-150x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_20240719_223547-150x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_20240719_223547-150x150.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_20240719_223547-150x150.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_20240719_223547-150x150.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_20240719_223547-150x150.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2919"}],"version-history":[{"count":70,"href":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5095,"href":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2919\/revisions\/5095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/priscimon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}