A day in the life - With life-hacks and tips included!

Disclaimer: Since I am not a freaking celebrity, I decided to make this post a little more interesting by adding some of my best everyday life hacks and tips that really work. Hope you guys find them helpful!

This post was prompted by the #undianormal (A normal day) challenge proposed by @mexico-trail. I reckon I am the only person writing in English, but bear with me! As some of you might know, I am Mexican but live in Berlin. Thank you guys for coming up with this challenge.

A day in the life

After drinking my usual cup of green tea first thing in the morning, my day started with an activity that I have become overly familiar with…   

Exciting, I know… however, contrary to what some individuals seem to believe, after a Jiu Jitsu class you absolutely cannot recycle your uniform to wear it a second time without washing it – just think about it: your uniform ends up soaked with a combination of not only your sweat, but the sweat of all the people you rolled with plus any nasty stuff you might have picked from the mat. Are you convinced now? JUST WASH IT! 

Irime’s tip: To get rid of the pungent smell of sweat that doesn’t go away with a simple wash, soak your clothes overnight in a big bucket filled with water containing one cup of white vinegar. Then, wash normally. It works! Even better: I also use a sanitizing rinsing solution that is added to the rinsing cycle, to make things extra-clean and avoid the perma-stink of bacteria-ridden gis. 

No need for the trip to the laundromat to be boring, optimize it by reading a good book! 

After dropping my stuff home for air drying, it was time for a quick trip doing some grocery shopping and fetching a package that was awaiting for me in a neighboring shop.  

Irime’s tip: Retinoids are some of the only substances that have actual evidence backing their efficacy against different signs of skin aging. They help making the skin clearer, smoother (fewer blemishes) and lessen the appearance of fine lines. The Ordinary offers a good, affordable product with different concentrations, and has a reputation for being made with quality ingredients. Even better: A side effect of the use of retinoids is that they make the skin more sensitive to photo damage, so avoid the sunlight and complement their use with a good sunscreen cream (which you should be wearing anyway!). 

I like walking and finding interesting details around the neighborhood… 

With over an hour before noon, it was time to get home and get some work done… but first, coffee! 

I might or might have not added some of that hazelnut scented vodka to my morning coffee. 

The first of many cups; I won’t even tell you how many cups of tea and coffee I drink a day... let’s just say I am pretty much powered by them! 

My coffee shelf... unfortunately I ran out of my precious Mexican coffee a while ago...

Quoting Agent Cooper: That's a damn good cup of coffee!

These days my lab work is almost over, so mostly I work from home writing, analyzing and arranging my research data. So, a lot of time is spent typing away at the computer. 

Technically not at home, but in the lab’s office, just in case you need help visualizing the situation, since I couldn’t be bothered taking selfies at home pretending to work at the computer today.  

Following my Mexican circadian clock, for me 2 pm is lunch time. I never got used to eating lunch at noon like most people in Germany seem to do. My typical lunch is not very heavy since I don’t like going to train with food still sitting in my stomach:

Keto-friendly lunch: fried eggs with roasted cherry tomatos and avocado—a generous amount of fat and protein, along with some minimal carbs and fiber.

Following lunch, it is time for another cup of tea plus taking my supplements. 

I think I might have a tea-hording problem.  

Irime’s tip: If you are like me, and are constantly abusing your joints on a daily basis, a great supplement to take is Glucosamine + Chondroitin (mine also has MSM). It helps maintaining healthy, flexible joints and preventing deterioration of connective tissue. A grappler’s must! Even better: make sure that the ingredients in your supplement are of pharmaceutical quality and are in the right bioavailable form! Otherwise you will not reap the full benefit from it. 

After lunch, I try to write for another while. A while ago I read a very interesting article, titled Darwin Was a Slacker and You Should Be Too, which highlighted a very interesting fact: 

“Many famous scientists have something in common—they didn’t work long hours.” 

Figures as different as Charles Dickens, Henri Poincaré, and Ingmar Bergman, working in disparate fields in different times, all shared a passion for their work, a terrific ambition to succeed, and an almost superhuman capacity to focus. Yet when you look closely at their daily lives, they only spent a few hours a day doing what we would recognize as their most important work. The rest of the time, they were hiking mountains, taking naps, going on walks with friends, or just sitting and thinking. Their creativity and productivity, in other words, were not the result of endless hours of toil. Their towering creative achievements result from modest “working” hours. 

Am I using this as an excuse to be lazy? You be the judge. Still, I find that I do better if I stay focused working on writing for about 2-3 hours instead of just scattering my writing hours all over a working day.  

After Science, it is time for Steemit!  

Ooooh, yeah!

I do a quick check of my stats and any pending rewards to be redeemed. Then I check if I have any new comments that I need to reply to; afterwards (along with another cup of tea) I check my feed to see what the people I follow have been up to, read some articles and do the respective upvoting and commenting on the stuff I find interesting. 

Since my throat had been feeling a bit funny since I woke up, I decided to drink my magical anti-cold potion; this always helps me to prevent getting sick, or alternatively helps making the symptoms of the sickness a lot milder. 

Irime’s tip: When you are feeling like you are catching a cold, prepare this magic anti-flu potion: cut a square inch of peeled fresh ginger into thin slices, pour a cup of boiling water over it and wait for 5-7 min for it to infuse. Then, add the juice of half a lime/lemon and a tablespoon of honey. Drink very hot! Even better: You can grate the ginger instead of chopping it, which really intensifies the taste of the ginger, in case you really want a concentrated spicy explosion from your drink. Because of my keto diet I drink it without honey, but it still works wonders and tastes great. 

I took my ginger potion with me to drink on my way to training – of course, my day wouldn’t be complete without some BJJ!   

Trying to decide what to wear under my gi: just a sports bra, cropped rashguard or a tank top? I decided to go for the tank top. 

I like Friday’s class since it is a bit more chilled, with a “do your own thing” warm up to start the class. 

I never chill, though… (by the way looking at this pic I slightly regret my choice of tank top after all). 

What do you do on a Friday evening? We drill sweeps and escapes from side control! 

After getting my butt properly kicked, some yoga stretching and a quick shower at the gym, I headed to one of my favorite hangouts in Berlin, the Klunkerkranich. 

It seems we were not the only ones with that idea!

@replichara (who is responsible for my getting into Steemit in the first place) and I were meeting a friend whom, after finishing his graduate studies in Berlin, was due to return to his home country soon. I like this friend because in a world of people with grey personalities and uninteresting backgrounds, he stands out. Despite being young, he is very ambitious, outspoken, confident and determined. He is one of those people who, once they know what they want, will work relentlessly after their goal until they reach it – it inspires me to work hard as well. 

At least the wait to get in was worth it, we were rewarded with a dreamy pastel-colored sunset.

We had a really nice and engaging conversation there, ranging from Start-ups (his current field of interest), fitness (we are all fitness nerds), literature, weird cultural stuff from our respective countries, cryptos… and of course, Steemit! 

I was so caught up in the conversation that I forgot to take pictures of ourselves during the evening! So our cucumber gin and tonics, sugar-free Fritz colas and ridiculous good looks went undocumented… still, we immortalized our meeting by making use of the old-style Photoautomat (a.k.a. German photo booth) found there to take some goofy photos which our friend took with him as a souvenir. 

Then it was time to go home, and as per usual, the BVG (the company responsible for public transportation in Berlin) had some surprise mess awaiting for me and I had to do a weird detour to get back home. But such is life in the German capital!  

I hope you have enjoyed this account of my every day, adventures... thanks for reading!

Cheers,

Irime