1 person – Travelling alone can be both exciting and scary.
2 weeks – For both work and personal vacation.
3 climates – 3 different parts of US means 3 different climates to adapt to.
4 timezones – 3 parts of US and Japan.
5 bags – Basically my checkin and hand carry bags.
6 devices – All the gadgets I needed for the trip.
7 layovers – Oh, please don’t remind me of this.
8 flights – Setting a new personal record, yet again.

Fun, fun, fun!

Looking forward to the start of my journey and feeling blessed for the opportunities and ability to travel.

I’m counting my blessings at the work related opportunities that I receive.

Not everyone has a job and not worry about impending layoffs.

Not everyone gets to travel on business trips to other countries.

Not everyone gets budget to study/upskill themselves.

However, as much as I can get these opportunities, there will always be people who are jealous at what I get. I mean… If you don’t ask, you won’t get it, right? If you don’t deliver results, you won’t get it, right? This is a reminder to myself that there will always be jealous, negative and toxic people around.

“Yeah. We are our own person. If people are negative best to limit the interaction.

Cuz we are influenced by the top 5 people we hang out with.”

This is something that one of my mentors, Marie, told me. Not exactly linked to the jealousy I received from my colleagues but something where I asked for advice on.

Obviously people love to see and gossip about the good stuff that others receive, including myself. What others did not realise is the difficult times people have to go through. They also did not realise and did not want to see the amount of hard work people put in to receive these “good opportunities”.

As I grow older, I realised it is even harder to have people around you who truly appreciate what you have and are happy for your accomplishments.

I realised that as I become more self aware and mature, I am gaining more empathy and awareness on the effect of my words and actions. The world of the empathetic is tough.

Last August I was battling with a wave of emotions from my breakup and also anxiety for going for my first surgery. Yeah, my ex-boyfriend left me after knowing my health is on a decline. I knew about my surgery right after my breakup. This August, I am like shopping happily and hustling hard for my career. What a difference 1 year can make!

My manager also told me that he is proud of me that I have make so much progress and positive changes in my mindset and maturity in the past few months. Lots of self work and hard work has been put into improving my self awareness and myself.

“It’s you who made yourself matured. Not other stuff. They helped you force look into yourself.”

Exactly what Gulabi has said which I can fully understand. It is what I decided to do and my thought process that makes me got better.

I was invited to give a talk on innovation and patents at my company’s innovation forum today and I delivered my virtual presentation to around 150 people. It was my first time presenting to so many people actually. The last virtual presentation I had was actually for less than 100 people. I was panicking internally and I think I have more filler words than I planned for. Nevertheless, it was quite an experience for me though.

After the presentation, I ordered a large cup of earl grey black tea latte with mini bubbles from Koi Signature. Such sinful and expensive drink haha. 🙂 So glad that I managed to complete the talk. 😀 I even make sure I put on full makeup for the virtual presentation.

In fact, my eyeliner ran out after I finished drawing 1 of the eye. Had to struggled to squeeze out as much as I can from the remaining eyeliner for my other eye. Glowing up has been expensive because first I finished my eyebrow pencil last year, now I finished my eyeliner. I have never used up these eye makeup products before. 😮

Hopefully my work continues the upwards trend and may I get promoted for the next promotion cycle.

I passed my CISSP exam today. I remembered how I struggled during the exam. It’s Computerized Adaptive Testing so that means that as you answer questions correctly, you will get tougher questions. Then when you answer them wrongly, you will get easier questions. That also means that you cannot go back to the previous question to change your answer. So it’s like a psychological gameplay. As you struggled more in the questions, it means you are on the right track to passing. But the moment you get a straightforward question, it means you answered the previous question wrongly. 🙁 So yes, it’s extremely stressful and I’m close to breaking down from the stress during the exam.

You are given 3 hrs to complete a minimum of 100 questions. After the 100th question, all the subsequent questions will be used for grading you. Before you hit 100 questions, you might get some “testing/sampling” questions which doesn’t affect your grade but is there to test the standard of the paper. So you can imagine every time I hit “Next” button and I see a new question. That means I am not near to passing and have to keep doing the questions until the maximum of 150 questions before I know if I pass or fail the exam. So guess what. I got the full set of 150 questions. That’s like 50 times of anxiety every time I clicked “Next” button. I took toilet and water break at the 110th question mark just to reset my emotions a bit.

I have to admit that this exam is much more stressful than my GCFA exam. This exam is supposed to be the last exam that I will take for this year but plans may be changed. I will see what my team is planning and may join them in another exam prep journey. Well, life of a cybersecurity professional is all about continuous learning and certification.

Now I have passed the exam and submitted the endorsement application. I’m just waiting for the certification to arrive and I heard it will take about 2 months. Oh my, what a long wait. I guess I will wait before I post on LinkedIn. I might change my mind on that though.

I wanted to reward myself after the exam and I went window shopping at Orchard. Well, my exam was at Orchard area anyway. I got myself a huge cup of wildflower honey oolong tea latte with osmanthus jelly but didn’t get any gifts for myself. Well, I’m controlling well and spending wisely for sure haha. Actually, it’s more like I overspend last month and didn’t dare to spend too much this month, especially with more future spending that is expecting from September onwards. 😐 I definitely need to hustle more at work to get my promotion in the next cycle.