Category: Life & Notes

It has been a while since I last wrote anything here. Life has been busy as usual, but quite a few things have changed since my last update. One of them is fairly major: I started a new job in November.

I am now working for a non-profit organisation, which is a completely different sector from my previous job. I like the work, but there has been a lot to get used to. It definitely feels like stepping out of my comfort zone.

I do love my job, although I also find it quite draining. I still have not worked out the right balance. My hours are only 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., but compared with my previous job, it somehow seems to take much more out of me.

I am paid more now, which is certainly nice. 😁 But during the working day I tend to go straight through in an almost zombie-like state, with very little rest in between. By the time I finish, I am usually exhausted and mostly want to go home and switch my brain off.

So the challenge now is not the job itself. It is learning how to have a life around it.

We have also made quite a bit of progress on the house. So far we have had a new roof, new windows and new electrical wiring installed. This week, the gas was connected as well, together with a new meter.

There is still plenty left to do, and plenty more money to save before everything is finished, but at least it finally feels like we are moving forward.

Spring has just started. Today was especially sunny and pleasant, and even a simple walk to the post office felt rather wonderful. 🙂

I am hoping to write here more often again. Part of finding some balance has to mean making room for creative things as well, rather than letting work use up all of my energy.

Blogging is one of those things for me. So perhaps this is my attempt to find my way back to it.

As soon as my home office and holiday were approved, guess what came knocking on the door? Covid. Again.

This was the second time I got sick with it. Friday was my last day of work, and on Saturday morning we left Budapest for Mosonmagyaróvár. By Saturday evening, I was already feeling pretty awful.

On Sunday morning, I took a self-test and there it was: positive. So much for spending the week going for walks and enjoying my holiday. Instead, I spent most of it in bed and in quarantine.

Before long, the whole family was infected too. We were all dealing with some combination of coughing, body aches and headaches.

What surprised me most was how long it dragged on. I am used to getting a cold or flu, feeling miserable for a few days and then gradually bouncing back. This time, almost a week later, I was still aching, still coughing and still getting a sore throat in the evenings.

Thankfully, none of us seemed to be seriously ill. The symptoms were manageable, but the illness itself was stubborn. That was the part I found most frustrating — waking up each day expecting to feel noticeably better and realising I was still not quite there yet.

So yes, my second round with Covid was less dramatic than it could have been, but definitely longer and more exhausting than I expected.

And there went my holiday. 😑

It’s amazing how things work sometimes. While I was missing in action here, things were happening in real life. 😀 We were just looking around to see what are the prices are these days for flats and the next thing we know, we were signing papers for a new house in a place we never heard of until last month. In a little village with less than 400 registered residents, located right at the border of Hungary and Austria. It is one hour to Vienna and about 45 mins to Bratislava, about an hour to Győr and 2 hours to Budapest. To think we were actually looking at flat prices in Sopron and not actually looking hard to buy something immediately. Looking at how quickly it all happened, a few days really, we actually asked ourselves if we did the right thing. 😆 Anyway, no regrets. Just a little shocked. 😃

How we ended up buying it? It was at a good price and we just love it the moment we saw the pictures. And even more after we saw it in person. The thing is, it is actually a house with two parts. The story was that it was owned by two business partners. And once they split, they decided to split the house to become 2 flats. One part owning about 700sqm of the garden while the other part owns 1300sqm of the garden. We actually saw just one half of the house but decided we should get the other half as well. It would be a no deal if we couldn’t get the entire place. I just could not imagine to share a garden, if we are lucky we get a reasonable neighbor if not then we will have to suffer the entire time. And we were lucky enough that the other flat’s owners inherited the place recently and they wanted to sell so all three of them would get their inheritance money.

So I bought one half of the house and my other half bought the other half of the house.😆 His half comes with tenants – though the previous owners asked them to find else where to live within a month, we decided to let them continue the lease until next year when we are ready to start renovations. We not so enthusiastic about it really, but since they said it is hard to find a place around the area with that rental price within such a short period, we decided to just let them stay on and give them more time to look. Even if they leave earlier, that would still be fine for us. My half of the house is not livable yet although it is the best looking one of the two. 😆

And here is another reason, at least for me, as to why I like the place. I love the wind turbines that are near by. 🙂 I guess because we don’t have any in Budapest? Or simply they are majestic looking and mesmerizing as the blades go round and round? I don’t know. But I do like them indeed.

We will only start to get it renovated in Spring next year as we are too busy this year and we need time to find the right people to do it for us. It’s all so exciting really, and I am feeling blessed.

Till next time… Thanks for reading. 🙂

2020 was a difficult year for many people. Many lost loved ones or income because of the pandemic. Our family had its own share of loss: three family members passed away during the year, although not because of the virus. Earlier that same week, a former colleague I had worked with for about five years also died suddenly. He was far too young, and I was still very sad about it when I wrote this.

Despite all the bad news, here we were on the final day of the year. In Hungary, we had only a few hours left before 2021, and I wanted to take a little time to look back.

Even though we lost people we loved, there were also things we gained. Because of the pandemic, I was fortunate enough to be able to work from home. That gave me back several hours each day that would otherwise have been spent commuting, and I could use that time for things that mattered to me.

As a family, we also spent much more time together. We live in a relatively small space, so being around one another constantly took some adjustment, but eventually we learned to enjoy it.

Towards the end of the year, we had settled into a routine of waking up around 6:00 to 6:30 every morning and having breakfast and lunch together. Breakfast was usually the main meal of the day, lunch was lighter, and we often skipped dinner unless someone was hungry.

We started a family savings fund sometime in May and were surprised by how much we managed to save once we became more deliberate about it.

My daughter and I also became more disciplined with music. She played the piano, while I played guitar — although not together, at least not yet. She became quite consistent with her practice, and I started learning fingerstyle guitar as well as some music theory.

I also got my driving licence in 2020. I had not started driving yet, so one of the things I was thinking about for 2021 was finally getting a car and putting the licence to use.

I exceeded my reading goal for the year. I had planned to read 48 books and finished 57, across different lengths and genres. It was probably the first time since my school years that I had read that many books in a single year. For 2021, I set the goal at 52 books.

My Hungarian studies also went well. I could understand more and speak more than before. I bought the books in the MagyarOK series, completed one level and was nearly halfway through A2.

I had deliberately gone back to the basics and started building up again more slowly. I also tried to use what I learned by writing to native speakers on sites such as Lang-8 and HiNative, rather than relying only on textbooks.

There were many smaller goals I managed to achieve that year, but these were some of the main ones. 2020 was undeniably difficult, but when I looked back at the year, I could still see areas of progress in everyday life.

My next task was to finish writing my goals for 2021.

Here’s hoping for a better 2021 for everyone.

A couple of days after I jotted down my last entry here, someone dear to us drew her last breath. I was privileged to have the chance to be with her and watch over her on her final journey. She was my mother-in-law.

I wouldn’t say that our relationship was always smooth sailing. But the last few years had been rather good, especially after she found someone special to share her life with. She seemed happier.

She was diagnosed with a rare blood disease, possibly a form of leukemia, in October the previous year. Since then, she had been hospitalised a couple of times. Once, it was because of a fever that wouldn’t subside for about a month. The second hospitalisation would be her last, again because of a prolonged fever.

During that stay, the medical team found abnormalities in her intestines and decided to operate. She underwent surgery twice. When a third operation was proposed, she refused. She had had enough.

Interestingly, she actually seemed to get a little better for a while, so none of us expected things to take a turn for the worse so quickly.

My husband and daughter went to visit her without expecting that they would find her on her deathbed. When they arrived, I was still at work and completely unaware of what was happening. After work, I received a call and took a taxi to the hospital.

She died about an hour after I arrived.

I am grateful that I was able to be there and say goodbye.

She had been such a big part of our lives that it was very difficult to come to terms with her loss. We are moving forward, as I believe she would have wanted us to, but I am still sorry that she could not have stayed with us a little longer.

She loved my daughter very much and helped take care of her while she was growing up. I wish she could have been here to celebrate more of my daughter’s birthdays, her graduations, her wedding, perhaps even her first child.

Wherever you are, Krisztina, thank you for everything you did for us.

Despite the difficult moments we had along the way, I do believe I was lucky to have you as my mother-in-law.

“We are never ready to say goodbye forever, even though we know it is part of life. Our hearts are heavy when we lose someone so special, but as we mourn their death, we also celebrate their life.”

I started using Coursera in 2014. The first course I took was The Clinical Psychology of Children and Young People from the University of Edinburgh. It was free at the time, and I remember receiving a certificate without having to pay for it. Coursera and MOOCs were still relatively new to me then, and I was mainly interested in the opportunity to learn something outside a traditional classroom.

After finishing that course, I did not immediately become a regular Coursera student. Several years passed before I started looking seriously at online learning again.

When I returned to Coursera, one of the courses that caught my attention was Learning How to Learn. A course about learning itself sounded unusual to me, so I signed up.

At the time, I could enrol in the course for free and choose whether I wanted to pay for a certificate. I was not taking it for a job application or qualification; I simply wanted the knowledge. Because of that, I decided not to pay for the certificate.

That course led me to others. By May 2020, I had completed six more courses on Coursera. Some I took for free, while for others I paid for the certificate or assessment access.

One reason I liked Coursera was the structure. The courses I took were divided into weekly modules, with assessments at the end of each section. Depending on the course, these could include objective questions, essays or PowerPoint presentations that were assessed by other learners.

Of course, there is an enormous amount of information available online for free. But access to information is not always the same thing as actually completing a course. I know that I learn better when there is a clear structure, a sequence to follow and something that keeps me accountable from one week to the next. The weekly assessments helped with that.

The most recent course I had completed when I originally wrote this post was Excel Skills for Business: Intermediate II, which I finished on 28 May 2020.

It was part of a four-course series, and I had completed three of the four courses. I wanted to continue with the advanced course, but I decided to postpone it because I needed to concentrate on getting my driving licence first.

This was also the first Coursera course I paid for. I use Excel daily for work, and I wanted to improve my understanding of a tool I was already using rather than simply collect another certificate. For this particular course, access to the assessed work required payment, and I felt the cost was worth it because the structure encouraged me to keep progressing.

At the time I wrote this, the answer was yes. What appealed to me most was not the certificate itself but having a structured way to keep learning subjects that interested me or were useful in everyday work.

For someone who enjoys learning but benefits from having a course laid out step by step, Coursera was worth exploring. I could easily see myself continuing to use it for years to come.