I’m finally flying back home after 1 month (30 days) in US. I went to 4 different states this time round.

I started my journey in Chicago, followed by New York City, San Francisco, Berkeley, Scottsdale, Tempe and Sedona. That’s like 7 cities in 4 states (Illinois, New York, California and Arizona). I am in east coast, west coast, midwest and southwest of US and experienced 2 different temperature ranges of winters. Definitely quite an experience and I think I brought enough clothing too. In fact, there are some jackets I ended up not wearing at all. There’s also 1 jeans that I didn’t wear at all because it was already quite big. I basically reduce size in my waist within the first week. Lol… I needed to buy 1 more belt soon if this continues. Sigh. 

I came back with 46kg of luggage. I already finished the full bottle of First Care serum and also threw it away too. I ate all the snacks and took out everything that I don’t need to brung back to Singapore and I am still exceeding the weight limit for both luggages. Luckily I am flying back so they seem ok to let me hit around 46kg. Otherwise I think it is 45 or 45.5kg for combined weight limit… well, I came with 39.6kg so I definitely shopped a bit. Haha. I even had to wear my boots to make space and reduce weight for one of my luggage and I still can burst the weight limit. It’s pretty uncomfortable to travel long hours with boots but it is what it is…

I don’t think I want to do this again – flying to 2 places with such a wide range of temperatures. I basically have to cater from -15 degree celsius (Chicago) all the way to 25 degree celsius (Scottsdale). It’s crazy but I have a feeling that when I get the opportunity again, I will do it once again. LOL. But at least now I have 2 new Canada Goose jackets that can handle such wide range without too much layering (aka no need to bring so many clothes anymore). Shrugs. 

Now I hope my house is ok because the internet connectivity went down when I am in San Francisco, which is like the midway of my entire trip. So I cannot see the CCTV for the last 2 weeks which sucks big time. I also cannot start my robot vacuum to clean my house just before I reach home. Lol. 

Well, I am blogging while I am flying again. As I grow older, I realised these timings are like the most reflective moments – especially when I am flying alone. There are WiFi available on flights usually but somehow I don’t use it. I only post it on my blog much later. Haha.

I’m realising the benefits of being an adult and having adult money. I’m on a flight from JFK airport to SFO airport. It is a 6.5 hrs flight and I booked Delta Airlines main cabin initially. Somehow I decided to just pay for the upgrade to Delta Premium Select less than 12 hrs before my flight departure time. There’s no seats available at Delta One (first class equivalent) so I went for the next available tier which is Delta Premium Select. There’s upgrade got me 2 free checkin luggage which anyway, I also needed to pay US$80 for it with main cabin. I was worried that I need to checkin my hand carry luggage which was what happened in my last year’s trip (JFK – SFO). Well, I was one of the last few passengers and nearly missed the flight. The main cabin seats are pretty decent for US domestic airlines but the Premium Select seats are much wider and comes with an inflight meal which was served in ceramic plates and glass cups. I spent US$478.38 for the upgrade which is a bit pricey. 

I am wearing my new Canada Goose expedition parka which I got it in New York City for the flight since it is heavier than my existing The North Face jacket. The coat has better backpack straps which makes it really comfortable to carry around. I can carry it like a backpack instead of lugging around on my arms. I really like its portability for sure. 

Couldn’t have done all these if I don’t have adult money for sure. I’m feeling fortunate that I have money to do and buy all these stuff and experiences. This is my first solo trip to NYC. NYC is really quite expensive so I am glad that I can afford to do 5 nights here.

Yesterday was one of those days when I am like so productive. Started my day shifting my luggage to my parents’ place then went for my personal training class before heading back to my parents’ place for lunch. Then I went to see TCM because I am still having back flow of mucus and my knees are hurting again. Then I went back home to do laundry before heading to Vivocity to check out the Monday Made x Miki Rai collection as well as getting a replacement pan from Happy Call.

Then I went to Steph’s place to collect the lemon essential oil that I asked her to help me get from Young Living before going back home to cook my dinner and rest for the day/night. My legs were so tired from all the rushing but also because of the leg/butt exercises that I did during my personal training session too.

It has been a hectic month with so much admin and physical manual labour for my house. Along with my day job and the major projects that I am running this year, it is basically close to “all hell break loose” moment these days. Well, at least the major defects are fixed now and my house didn’t have water seepage issues during the rainy season in the past few days. In fact, it is not super cold in my unit which I guess is a fortunate thing?

I still manage to meet my friends for dinner every week so my social self care is still there. Unfortunately, I am not getting much exercise other than my weekly personal training session. Time to really refocus my efforts back on my self care and make time to keep myself healthy.

I managed to get a new hand carry luggage from Lojel at 30% discount yesterday. 🙂 They have 10% discount for regular colours and 30% for white, yellow and red colours. Well, the red colour actually looks nice to me so I just decided to get that. 10 year warranty for Lojel and the ease of access for laptops for the hand carry luggage is a plus for sure. When my Echolac luggage warranty is over this October and when the zip spoilt again, I will probably buy another Echolac or Lojel luggage. I’m sticking to luggage with warranty for their parts going forward.

After 8 years of using my MacBook Pro 2015 version, I finally changed to the latest MacBook Pro Nov 2024 version. It’s December 2024 and this laptop is basically the latest one one can purchase now. It’s literally just released last month and announced 2 months ago. Haha.

Well, my old MacBook Pro is out of support period for new OS updates. That means it is no longer going to support the latest OS and security updates. As a cybersecurity professional, I cannot imagine myself using a device that is no longer receiving security updates so I decided to just buy the new MacBook Pro. Given that I have used the old MacBook Pro for 8 years, I decided to just go back to MacBook Pro and get the best specs that I can use for my purpose and best value for money. In the end, I went for MacBook pro with M4 Pro chip (with 14-Core CPU, 20-Core GPU, 48GB Unified Memory) and upgraded the storage with 1 TB. I had the 256 GB of storage and regretted shortly after my purchase. This time all the default MacBook Pro with M4 Pro chip come with 512 GB and I decided it will definitely not be enough so I just pay extra and got the 1 TB version. I had to wait for a week before it arrived to me as it has to be configured at the warehouse in Chengdu City before it ships to me.

May Apple continue to support this laptop for as long as possible. At least 9 years maybe? Haha. I got their 2015 version back in 2016 and they supported all the way to 2024. You don’t even get this level of long support for Windows laptop lololol. I think my next laptop change will be in 2033. 😀

On a side note, I noticed I have blog more than 90 public posts for 2024. That’s like a huge jump from before and it seems like I am going back to my old self (pre-dating phase). Definitely loving it! Maybe I will continue to keep blogging and hit 100 public posts in 2024? Haha.