• Stationary bike 40 min/16km
• Cable Fly machine 3x6x40kg
• Prone leg curl machine 3x6x30kg
• Ab crunch machine 3x8x45kg
• Arm extension machine 3x6x40kg
• Swim 25 min

• Walk 8000 steps/4km

  Whew, that was an intense day.

Bit of walking meditation on the way to the pool, maybe ~15 mins.

Completed Dig Site and both Elemental Workshop​s last night. Next up is Woodcutting for Lost City. I was gonna be smart and have my GIM buddy help me skip the WC requirement on Fremennik Isles for the 10k XP but he’s busy, so I guess soon will be my first bit of actual training in quite a while.

Gonna add this to the rotation and mark it “done” for today though I mostly thought about it on a meta level. Tomorrow I’ll try and write up a bit of it and set up a bit of a study plan.

• Stationary bike 18km
• The uhh abdominal back and forth thing (my baka-ass didn’t note what it’s called), 4x10x35kg
• Chess press machine (6+5)x35kg – my right shoulder is acting fucky again, so I had to end this one early
• Leg extension machine (2x8+10)x40kg – can probably up the weight on this next time
• Vertical traction (lat thing) 3x8x45kg

Mainly daily life practice/morality stuff, but good stuff at that so I’ll count it – plus the exercise bike has been rather meditative.

Completed Lost City. Forestry is good new content, I love it! My bf is making fun of what qualifies as “content” to runescape players, ww.

FOrgor

Another heavy exercise day! I feel good, the mind is sharp, but the body definitely needs a lot of recovery on days like this and energy comes in starts and stops. Next two days are rest days, at least! Honestly mixed feelings on rest days, they’re necessary but I’ve actually been really enjoying pushing the body ww. I’m surprised how quickly the body is adapting to the exercise load, but that’s being a man in his 20s for ya.

It’s not much of a surprise, but I got word that I got rejected for all the MSc programmes I applied to. It’s a shame — there’s only a handful of English-taught compsci Master’s programmes around here, and unlike in my home country they have very limited availability and are highly selective (in my home country getting into an MSc is essentially a rubber stamp if you have a BSc, so academic record is pretty mediocre).

I guess it can’t be helped, but it still sucks, both because I don’t feel like the criterium used accurately represents me (I think my CV, motivation letter, academic references, grade of my BSc thesis are all really strong) and because I feel like I have zero options.

It seems there’s an appeal procedure that guarantees you’ll be offered some masters or another within your field, but it’s only accessible to people with a BSc from a French institution?? The explanation I was given is that it runs through the local board of education where you got your BSc, which is civics trivia and not a reason. Honestly this really ticks me off — as a European citizen I have a right to live, work and get an education in any European country, and I hold an accredited European BSc, yet there are clearly rights that are arbitrarily extended only to locals. Especially hypocritical coming from the notoriously europhillic French! I can’t really corroborate this, but I suspect there’s an interesting lawsuit in this for a motivated person with a good lawyer.

Regardless it’s not a huge issue for me — my career plans don’t have an MSc as a load-bearing element. Going for further education would’ve been very situationally convenient in this particular time window, but losing the option doesn’t particularly set me back. Getting some extra student loans for living expenses was a part of the plan though, so the primary objective for the time being is earning a couple hundred bucks a month as supplementary income. I’ll try to get back into software contracting for the time being.

I’ve started more seriously considering a career for the good cause, working for some manner of charity or non-profit — somewhere I could put my oratory skills to greater use would be good. I notice over time I’ve started considering careers outside of software a lot more, even if my passion for the computing cause has not diminished.

Not sure how many steps but I walked to the park and back (my phone was dead).

Breath meditation in the park, and walking meditation on the way back.

Completed Restless Ghost and Lost City.

Just kinda slipped through in all the commotion.

Meet Ultraman, the latest member of the family:

I found him by the sidewalk as I was walking home from the park. He has a wound on the left side of his head and a mean gash on his right side, but he’s been conscious and responsive all day and hasn’t bled. He can move all his limbs but he can’t stand. My friend, who keeps several pigeons he’s rescued, thinks he’s about 2 weeks old; at his advice I’ve been feeding Ultraman baby food, which thankfully he does eat, and treated his wound with spray-on bandage.

I really hope he recovers well.

I’ve sent an appeal email regarding my rejection from the Master’s programmes I applied to at IP Paris. I’ve reproduced the email on this blog because I think the information contained within is interesting and because I think it’s a good letter.