Weeknotes: 2026-09
I meant to do this yesterday, but I only got time today. Noting stuff from last week in one post, as it was a whirlwind way to end February.
I learned about how much data is included in boarding pass bar codes, and wrote about it. Essentially: Don’t share any information shown on your boarding pass online, ever.
Yeah. Simple enough.
I caught up with the men’s and women’s single figure skating performances from the Winter Olympics 2026, which reignited my want to have my own pair of ice skates so I could skate freely whenever I want to (this despite living in a tropical country all my life).
It took me a while to catch up, honestly. Because I watched both the short programs and the free skates of every single athlete so I could appreciate more who won.
I did initially just start watching because I kept seeing reels of Ilya Malinin from USA’s video of him doing a backflip while on ice and also Kevin Aymoz of France skating to Judas by Lady Gaga with a floor slide (?!) and I wondered who was gonna win. After watching all the skating for the men’s single figure skating, I definitely think Mikhail Shaidorov from Kazakhstan deserved that gold, and Yuma Kagiyama and Shun Sato from Japan also deserved that silver and bronze, respectively. All their performances were captivating to watch, too. I think I’ll try to catch their next competitions in the future.
Same goes with the women’s single figure skating! Everyone was so cute and pretty and some of the performances were very emotional too. I found myself tearing up for some of the performances. While trying to catch up to all the performances of the women ice skaters—as I was doing this in between work this time around, which made it harder to binge—I saw social media blow up and everyone was fawning over Alysa Liu’s gold performance.
After learning more about her, I definitely did root for her in the recording I watched when it was her time in the ice. USA’s Alysa Liu definitely deserved that gold!! And also kudos to Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto and Ami Nakai for their silver and bronze. I super loved Ami’s reaction when she eventually realized while in the kiss & cry that she got onto the podium 😆 All the coverage about the women’s single figure skating was a joy to watch.
I’m still trying to catch up to the pair figure skating event, and I also don’t really know what the difference is of this one with the “team event - figure skating”—I just see and hear it mentioned but I haven’t really searched more about it yet—but eventually I hope I get to see the full performances of Japan’s Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara since I also see lots of reels featuring them, particularly the one where Ryuichi helps Riku off the podium by carrying her in her arms one-handed.
I attended a dear friend’s wedding and had lots of fun being there. I have an updated appreciation for infinity dresses that have long cloth for tying around for the top portion to have different styles with just one dress. I also now realize I need to restock my makeup kits so at least I can be ready for events like this in the future. I don’t really know how to do everything for face makeup—particularly putting on false eyelashes, the right stuff for “contouring” the face, knowing the right amount of brow makeup, to name a few—but I think my knowing how to apply on nice layered eye makeup and my eyeliner skills would be enough for times when I’m simply a guest to an event and want to look my best. 😁
This week was pretty busy, work-wise. We’re encouraged more to utilize AI in the things we do as designers, from doing research to making designs and prototypes faster.
While I do see the benefit it can bring to me as a UX designer, I am still very cautious about how I make use of AI, and I especially recognize that it makes me feel I’m getting more complacent based on the output (because of how much and how “fast” it can output stuff). I did briefly talk about this in last week’s weeknotes, and I have 2 things I have to add:
- I recognize that AI LLMs can help speed up the process of producing more output in a faster state than if done manually by a single person.
- While there is a lot of output, vetting it and double checking if it makes sense or if it fits the context feels like added tasks that I didn’t initially want to do myself, or feels like more work sometimes (especially if there’s a lot to go through).
I definitely still need to learn more how I could make better use of this new fancy shiny tool, in a way that helps me hone my skills more rather than make it more dull… but as of this moment, I’ll leave it here as I’d rather future Chi would worry about this than present me.
I haven’t really continued the work for adding stuff in my Anime list yet as the format I have set up so far is now feeling a bit more tedious than intended. I’m thinking maybe I’ll explore using a CMS (like TinaCMS?) for my personal website to maybe make this easier for me, but … I’ll need to do more research on that, and I don’t know when I’ll have time to do so.
Lastly, before I end this post, we recently announced at Friends of Figma, Philippines that we’re holding Figma Slides Party again next month! All the spectator tickets have already been taken (so far) and we still have some slots for presenters. I still have yet to collate the data properly so I can properly reach out to those who are presenting, which I may just continue on with later, or… maybe tomorrow after work hours as I’d rather just rest before the weekend ends 😅
Okay, that’s all. I might end up buying Final Fantasy XIV Online on the PS5 just so I can get the benefit of better graphics 😛 I did initially buy it for the PC, but… I’ll crunch the numbers a bit more before I make the purchase 😆
Maybe this time around I can update the note in my Contact page for my WoL from “on hiatus” to “active” 😁
