Brand New Steps
If you’re coming out of (or making plans to come out of) self-quarantine, here’s some quick advice from two months in the future.
Going back to your old routines is GREAT, no doubt about it. But now is also the best time to create some new ones. For better or worse (mostly worse) you’ve been forced to step out of your normal daily life for a couple of months. When else will you be given this chance to reinvent yourself?*
I suffer occasionally from light depression, and it gets way worse when I’m not active. So quarantine wasn’t easy, and I’ve been in a bit of a funk ever since. But what’s really helped is setting a new goal of walking AT LEAST 10,000 steps per day. Going from three months of limited activity in February up to a daily average of 14,156 steps in June has been a lifesaver, and I hope I can build this into my daily routine going forward.
*And yes, the snarky answer to this question is: “during the second wave”. Beijing is going back into temporary lock-down as we speak. But as of now, we’re still hopeful that the same won’t happen here in Shanghai...
Coffeeshop Flags
In case you STILL didn’t think I was a nerd... I spent twenty minutes in Costa Coffee testing myself on the identity of these flags. And I got them all correct. 🤓🤓🤓 (Answers below.)
Answers from front to back:
Niger, Bahrain, Lesotho, Micronesia, United Nations, Cape Verde, Cuba, Turkmenistan, Marshall Islands, Bangladesh, Guyana, Panama, Macedonia, Maldives, Lithuania, Uzbekistan, Finland, North Korea, Guinea, Austria, Djibouti, Sao Tome e Principe, Cook Islands, Mongolia, Bhutan, Mali, Venezuela, Russia, Iran, Liechtenstein, Scotland, Somalia, Sweden, Bahamas, Andorra, Australia, United Kingdom, Afghanistan, France, Brunei, Morocco, China, Germany, Chile, Kenya, Sudan, Azerbaijan, Mexico, Ireland, Samoa, United Arab Emirates, Ghana, Chad, Fiji, Greece, South Korea, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Slovenia, Spain, Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, El Salvador, Singapore, Bulgaria, Canada, United States, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Liberia, South Africa, Argentina, Uruguay, Ivory Coast, Papua New Guinea, Dominican Republic, Burundi.
And here are the flags that I always find most difficult to differentiate:
🇸🇳🇲🇱🇬🇳 (Senegal vs. Mali vs. Guinea),
🇲🇩🇦🇩🇹🇩🇷🇴 (Moldova vs. Andorra vs. Chad vs. Romania, I don’t even know the difference between Chad and Romania),
🇵🇱🇮🇩🇲🇨 (Poland vs Indonesia vs. Monaco. Monaco is longer than Indonesia.)
🇮🇪🇨🇮 (Ireland vs. Ivory Coast)
🇻🇪🇪🇨🇨🇴(Venezuela vs. Ecuador vs. Colombia)
🇱🇺🇳🇱 (Luxembourg vs. Netherlands. NL blue is darker.)
🇸🇮🇸🇰 (Slovenia vs. Slovakia)
For the Instagram version, see here.
