I’m on a week-long vacation, during which I’ve a fair bit of downtime and limited wifi access. Figured it might be a good time to catch on some books I’ve been wanting to read. To account for my reading moods, I made sure to include a mix of books from various genres. Still, they each require a little more concentration on my part.

Happy St. Nicholas’ Day and a joyful second Sunday of Advent! Christmas is coming and at home we have unearthed our decorations. Sadly, we don’t have a suitable space for our big Christmas tree anymore, so very few of the ornaments will be hung on branches this year. I did get a small one for my bedroom though and my mum set up another small one in the living room. It’s kinda cozy this way.

Say hey! I’m into the hundredth week of Retrospect! I didn’t actually write a hundred Retrospect posts since I bundled quite a number of them into double, triple and even quadruple(!) editions. But point is, a hundred weeks have at least sort of been accounted for. For someone who’s never been good at regularly updating a diary, I call this an achievement.

Earlier this week I sent my phone for servicing. The top left corner of the screen was discoloured. Now I’m waiting for Apple to decide if they can fix it or will replace it. Apparently that should take 5–7 days, including repairs. The worst part about being phoneless I realized isn’t that I’m semi-uncontactable. It’s that I don’t have a handy camera with me wherever I go. I also didn’t realize how much I rely on my travel apps, especially one that indicates the waiting times for the next buses.

Has it ever happened to you that you carefully packed something away and then couldn’t find it anymore? I did precisely that with the quick release plate for my camera. Before I left for Europe I removed it from my DSLR since I didn’t take along my tripod. Then when I returned home I wanted to take a few book photos but the plate was nowhere to be found.