As you all know, 2020 is full of surprises. I had read in December 2019; there were several cases of an unknown deadly virus in Wu Han, China. I remember treating it lightly, probably just some fake news or wrong translation from a Chinese news site. We started seeing similar symptoms in other provinces in China, and that’s when I knew that this was not a joke. This virus is serious problems, and in just a blink of an eye, our lives change upside down.

Fast forward to November 2020, and I am writing this from my home office desk. I’ve been working from home since March 2020. There was a surge in infection cases in Jakarta, and our province decided to go lockdown. We have two lockdowns and three controlled transitions. It is hard for us, but we need to stay at home because vaccines are not yet approved.

So for the last eight months, we are trying to find a way to kick our boredom. We try to enjoy ourselves at home, but it is getting harder every week. I tried to keep my family at home because we are in a high-risk category. We are trying to minimize the occasion to go outside. Even I haven’t seen my parents face to face during this WFH time.

We tried several methods to stay active and happy at home. We used to do some stretching and jogging in the morning, but we stopped because we got Dengue Fever. To stay healthy, I purchased the Nintendo Ring Fit game so that we can play while exercising. I must say it is quite enjoyable. However, I am distracted by the new expansion of Pokemon Sword/Shield.

We have this tradition to have weekly dinner and watch movies at Cinema, but our favorite place was flooded at New Year’s, and they have been closed ever since. I felt sad for them because it was close to our house. To replace that tradition, we routinely order food using Go-Food. It is quite lovely; actually, we can experiment, trying new food.

I followed several food bloggers on Instagram, and we ordered several dishes they recommend. This online food service saves us in this quarantine time. To keep it safe, we heated every food in the microwave before eating them.

For enjoying new movies, it is more expensive than enjoying new kinds of food. Movies have complicated distribution related to copyright, so if you want to enjoy movies legally, you will need to have several subscriptions. We already have Netflix and Amazon Prime Video long before the pandemic. But since this pandemic, a lot of companies are trying to get some portion for this business. Since cinemas are closing, they need to find new ways to distribute the movies, and streaming is the most plausible idea. So by that premise, Disney is also joining the bandwagon. So we now add Disney+ to the list of subscriptions because the newest movies are in Disney’s possessions.

Another content we enjoy is music. We have an Apple Music subscription and Spotify subscription, but I found it is easier to find new music on YouTube. My wife also loves to watch M/V on YouTube, so we are both avid users. After having some discussion, I decided to purchase a YouTube premium.

So to the summary, in this pandemic, we have:

1. Apple Music
2. Spotify Family
3. YouTube Premium
4. Amazon Prime Video
5. Netflix
6. Disney+ Hotstar
   

Amazon Prime Video probably is not a very popular choice. I got this subscription as part of my Amazon Prime membership. But they have interesting original series, i.e., Grand Tour, The Man in the High Castle and The Boys.

Disney+ is not available in our country, but they have collaboration with Hotstar. We are getting the same movies and series.

We sure have many subscriptions, but we are doing anything to keep happy at this time.

So this blog has not been updated for a couple of months. It is really not according to my plan, which is regularly updating this blog. But it is tough to be disciplined.

So a work-related update, I now have a new job. After spending 5 years in a startup, I am moving again to the corporate world. I joined Red Hat Indonesia as a Specialist Solution Architect. I was assigned to focus on Application Development-related products in Red Hat.

Red Hat is a very unique company. It is very well known for its Red Hat Enterprise Linux, a variant of GNU/Linux tailored for the enterprise environment. Red Hat is very devoted to Open Source; they apply the open-source model to everything. All products are based on upstream versions of open source, where Red Hat performs improvements and tests to produce enterprise-grade software solutions.

I am on my third month here, and I am thrilled with Red Hat. Red Hat adopts open culture, where every crucial business decisions are discussed openly, so everybody can contribute. It is a fascinating culture for an organization with a large number of associates.

I am still learning so much about its products. I need to work harder because I don’t have any sales-related background. But right now, I have a great manager and teammates helping me. I really hope to learn many things here and pave my way to contribute to open-source software.