Thursday evening. Thirsty Green Tea Thursday, or TGTT for short.

Another inconsequential day, aside from a few minor work triumphs. That said, I’ve been making steady progress with my instapot. I don’t mean to sound like a cultist – I really don’t – but this thing is amazing and I’m never going back. It really does make quinoa in just one minute once it gets to the right pressure. And the four-minute salmon with some more quinoa was absolutely scrumptious and just about melted in my mouth. The best part? There are no pots and pans to wash: just wash the pot itself and voila!

I know I write a lot about every day being almost exactly the same, and yet… Between my exercising, slowly exploring different foods (quinoa is awesome, y’all!), learning French and Spanish, cooking healthier and faster meals, and getting rid of bad habits (and yeah, I view my earlier overreliance on ginkgo as a bad habit)… Between all that, I’m making pretty decent progress – bit by bit, day by day, but upward nonetheless. 2020 is objectively the worst year of the 21st century but, ironically, it may end up objectively being the best year of my life in terms of self-improvement. (Is that what Stockholm Syndrome sounds like? Heh.)

The stock market stopped its three-day crashing pattern and cautiously went up by a fraction of a percentage point today. Most (but not all) stocks recovered a bit, though not nearly enough to make up for three days of catastrophic losses. It’s the earnings season: one of my stocks went up 19% today, which actually made up for its three-day losing streak. Good times. On the off chance anyone reading this is looking for random investment advice, Wells Fargo hit a 52-week low earlier this week, and it’s trading at one helluva discount right about now.

In covid news, Taiwan has celebrated 200 days without locally transmitted covid cases. That is a huge and remarkable accomplishment. That right there is a country that did every single thing right. (I mean, it helps that their VP, Chen Chien-jen, is a former epidemiologist.) They instituted strict anti-travel measures early on, there was a pre-existing culture of wearing masks (the SARS outbreaks were still fresh in everyone’s memory), the government provided financial help and delivered food during the lockdown stage, masks were widely available, contact-tracing and notifications were spot on, there were lots of temperature screenings, etc… All in all, there have been only seven deaths in the entire country. A single-digit death toll among 24 million people. In the US, that would’ve scaled up to about 100 deaths, not the hundreds of thousands they ended up with. (I can’t recall at which point I started thinking of the US as “them” and not “us.” Interesting.)

Kudos to you, Taiwan. May you remain a healthy, civil, and high-tech example for us all.