Konnichiwa !

That's "hello" in Japanese (and a greeting used before on the newsletter). How are you travelling this weekend? After the last few weeks of playing tour guide and optimising for time away from work, this week, I'm working the whole weekend. More on that below...

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In this week's email...

• Week in the Life - read on the blog
• Creative Update - Instagram - Sux Apnoea
• Charity - Uyghur refugee appeal
• Read - Four Thousand Weeks
• Watch - SlowMo guys - 1 Million Frames per second
• Quote - “The real measure of any time management technique is whether or not it helps you neglect the right things...”

Week in the life

My extended family departed back just this morning and with that ends a period of non-work joys. Literally I'm typing this while on a break as we encounter a rare condition that prolongs muscle relaxants in anaesthesia (see Creative Update on the condition).

The last few weeks have been about taking the extended family out and the next few will focus on repaying the favours at work that let me take that time off. Hopefully, it's not too busy! I do have some trips etc planned coming up but more on that over on the blog...

Creative update

Instagram - Sux Apnoea

Well, not what I was expecting to make today, but here we are! Had an unexpected rare type of patient that gets a certain reaction to an anaesthetic drug and decided to make it into an education Reel while we wait.

Also, it's on my Raffy Halim Instagram account that will most likely have more medical-ish things rather than just photography.

Charity

Uyghur refugee appeal

No gadgets this week, but thought I'd remind people of the persecution being faced by the Uyghur population in China. After a pretty damning leak a few weeks ago showing the people were arrested for not having a mobile phone or using it enough (and there by preventing tracking) and the systematic attempt to destroy an entire culture by incarcerating the accused in prisons with shoot to kill orders, I thought it should be re-highlighted in a world where lots of atrocities are happening.

When looking for organisations that are helping, one of the first ones that comes up is actually a Jewish organisation and that's the one I've linked to think week. This organisation is trying to help those that left China find a home in Turkiye.

Read

Four Thousand Weeks

I just finished this book and I have to say it wasn't what I expected at all. At it's core, it gets to the heart of the issue with modern life: we ALL feel like we have a mountain of things to do and never have any time but think it's actually possible to do it all.

The author argues that in a finite human life, we should be learning how to de-prioritise the less important and only focus our limited time and energy on the core things that are important to us. The way that the book describes all this really made it click in my head. If you haven't yet, I'd suggest giving this one a read...

Watch

SlowMo guys - 1 Million Frames per second

It's crazy to think that there are cameras that you can buy that capture footage at these insane frame rates!

This is from one of the original channels doing Slow Motion footage and is of eggs being hit by a bullet at super slow motion speeds. I found it fascinating at the >100k frames a second where you can actually see the pont where the bullet breaks the sound barrier!

Quote I'm pondering

“The real measure of any time management technique is whether or not it helps you neglect the right things...”

– Oliver Burkeman

Can you tell the Four thousand weeks book has been influential this week?! It's pretty different from all the other "productivity" books I've read as of recent and that quote sums it up for me the most.

Essentially, the author's argument is in the modern world, there is no shortage of seemingly important things to take up your time. The trick is being able to prioritise the right ones and be comfortable ignoring the rest. I'd never EVER thought of productivity that way so it's given me a new angle to look at the problem.

That's all for this week in all things random! Hope you have an amazing week ahead!

- Raffy

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