[Review] Amazfit GTS 4 Mini Smart watch

I’m reposting this review because the older one won’t get indexed for some reason.

Youtube review can be found here!

Price and availability

First things first – the price and where I bought it. I’m based in the Philippines and I got this from Digital Walker for ₱5,190 and that’s from a physical store on regular price. It’s cheaper on Shopee or Lazada, but only by 1-200 pesos. The white variant has been out of stock for a while so I decided to personally look for it on physical stores.

My favorite features

I’m not gonna delve so much about the specs. You can do that yourself by going to the Amazfit website, it’s super complete over there.

✱ First of all I love how it looks. I originally wanted the Apple Watch SE which is exactly the same size (40mm). But after learning about its dismal battery like (daily charging wtf?!) I decided to give it up and look for alternatives.

✱ The battery on this thing lasts me 2 freaking weeks! My Fitbit Inspire 2 only lasts a week and it’s not even that smart. I’m really impressed.

✱ So many cute watch faces to choose from. It was enjoyable trying out the many options available on the Zepp app and figuring out what works for you. For a while I used this classic skin…

But I got annoyed at how the clock hands cover the step counter. And how the battery meter zeroes at the top. It’s cute but I’m OC about a bunch of things haha. So eventually I settled for this one because it’s simple and has all the info I need:

✱ It has a Sleep Tracking feature, which gives the same information as my Fitbit so I’m not surprised.

✱ It has a Camera Remote which is lovely. Turns my watch into a bluetooth remote to make great group photos on tripod.

✱ Perhaps my favorite feature is Find my phone because I use it a lot!

✱ It has 126 sports mode which is insane but I love how it will make your activity tracking more specific. I don’t know how in depth the data being collected is per sport, cos honestly what are you gonna measure when you choose chess? Cos there’s chess, board games, e-sports, zumba, etc. And maybe they’ll just get your heart rate but I don’t know how its gonna look on the report. Anyway, I haven’t really tried any of those.

But I did swim.

And I love the swim tracking!

✱ Water resistant – I did a swim test!

Swimming is one of my favorite sports and I’ve been able to use it a couple of times already. What I know is that…

• Heart rate monitoring is disabled under water
• You have to set the length of the pool to get an accurate distance measurement
• You also have to pause the workout when you rest to get a better swim time metric. Don’t worry because it records your paused time so its not lost.
• It gives a very detailed swim report including your SWOLF score which measures you swimming efficiency
• It also detects your main stroke, which in my case is mostly freestyle
• In case I mix it up it says medley
• I have yet to try it on just one stroke… maybe I will

Finally

So far I’m enjoying this watch. I didn’t expect to love it because I still think it’s too big for me. But it helped that’s it’s really slim so it doesn’t feel bulky on my wrist. In fact, I like how this feels better than my Fitbit, which is smaller.

I love the silent alarms, notifications are reliable, love the swim tracking, GPS tracking I have yet to test, but yeah overall I’m impressed! Great features, great battery life, this might be the best fitness tracker out there if it stands the test of time. So we’ll see! But right now, I highly recommend this!

Heya

Life lately and whatnot!

Renewed hosting

I just renewed my hosting plan today. It’s around $45. Kinda steep for me now because as you know, I only used to pay for domain which is $13/year. With 2 active domains that’s less than $30 a year. With a hosting plan, I have to pay around $70 annually when my blogs don’t even make that much. I’m starting to think it’s a waste that I self-hosted. If only Blogspot would improve their post editor then I’d be more than game to migrate back.

Indexing woes

My biggest problem with WordPress right now is GOOGLE INDEXING. Not all of my posts are getting indexed. My Amazfit review, my recent contributed post. I don’t know what gives! Live URL test looks okay, got all the green checks, no issues with the page whatsoever. Only reason I’m thinking is CONTENT QUALITY which is very vague, like how the hell do I fix that? I’ve been resubmitting the pages for indexing every other day, but without any changes to the content I don’t think I’m getting indexed ever.

My hunch is the page formatting. So I changed the headers from H4 to H5 cos for some reason I have posts with H5 headers that are getting indexed successfully. It looks ugly because H5 is too small but I don’t even know at this point. I have personal posts that are full of gibberish and those are getting indexed, so why do my more informative content get skipped? Hmmm.

Let’s test this one shall we?

Alright I just put a bunch of H5 headers to see if this post is gonna make it to Google index. We’ll see in a couple of days

Knee update

I just finished my first round of PT sessions at St. Luke’s a few weeks back and requested to continue them at a different clinic, somewhere nearer because St. Luke’s Global is a 15min drive and parking is awful (always full haha) so I always have to request for my husband to drive me and wait an hour for me.

The good thing about my sessions there is that they’re shorter. Strictly 1 hour long. 15mins spent on modalities (10mins TENS, 10mins ultrasound, 10mins SIS), and the rest is for stretching and strengthening. And with better gym equipment I get to really target the parts I need to strengthen. But it usually depends on which physio gets assigned to me. Some use equipment, others use functional exercises. I prefer using equipment because it’s less effort and more targeted for me. But practically speaking I need to learn about functional exercises more hehe.

The new clinic I started with last week was a happy discovery. My ortho referred me to Cardia Olympia which is walking distance from home. I was surprised to learn that there’s a clinic much nearer than Shang that’s Intellicare accredited! I was so happy! When I finally got my schedule they booked me with their physio who handles ACL injuries, who also happens to be coaching for a professional basketball team. I felt really hopeful. I had one session with him and learned a lot, he told me to play with my patella more often because it’s awfully stiff, and to restrict physical activities that are load bearing to the knee, at least until we manage the swelling. So that’s no boxing and badminton for me in the meantime.

Joined a boxing gym

But what have you. Right before my first session with my new PT, I had a boxing session at The Lab. We just terminated our Anytime Fitness membership and decided to join a boxing gym instead because the packages look good and we joined on a buy 1 take 1 membership promo. The free session was great. Gave us a feel of how their coaching sessions go. The hour long routine goes like this: warm up, 3 sets jumping rope, 3 sets mits, 3 sets speed ball, 3 sets bag, 2 sets mits, cool down, stretch. And it’s only 350 per session for members!

After my trial sessions I went directly to my PT sesh and did not expect for it to be an intense 2-hour workout. No modalities, just stretching and strengthening. I can compare their strengthening program to Healthway Shang BUT with more intensity. The bands are thicker, the weights are heavier, and the reps seem to be up to failure.

I worked out for 3 hours that day and I came home really really exhausted. Whew!

I guess that’s it! Hopefully I get to regain my range of motion and be back to normal in the near future. <3

Just read: A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

 SPOILER ALERT

This is by far my most frustrating read ever. It’s just too long and dragging. Took me over a year to finish this because I just kindof got tired of nothing much happening. There’s no pivotal moment, no character development, nothing drives the book, not the characters, not the plot, it’s just there to make you feel bad from all the misery that Jude has endured. That’s all there is.

Overly contrived and overwritten, it’s the misery porn that makes it a heavy read, but once you get tired of crying you realize that there’s no credibility to Jude’s story at all. It’s just a series of traumatic events that he doesn’t seem to want to get over with, despite being surrounded with people who are more than willing to help you recover. It becomes unbelievable to the point where you wonder what the point is in all this writing.

I rated it 3/5 because mostly because of the writing style, but plot-wise there’s nothing to it.

And I hated Jude. I do not get his appeal. He’s just mysterious and intelligent but that’s it. And even his alleged intelligence isn’t convincing. All he ever feels is sorry and there’s not much depth to his character besides his dark backstory. I find it surprising how everyone is so drawn to him. And for that I blame the author.

At one point I also questioned what kind of friendship they all have that after decades of being in each others lives they still haven’t managed to crack Jude. They’re all walking on eggshells around him, enabling his self-harm. That’s no real friendship for me.

Overall it feels unnecessarily stretched out.

7 years!

We recently celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary and it was nothing short of awesome! Well, it was maybe 90% awesome because we left Koomi at daycare for 2 nights so half the time we’re just missing him, wondering how he’s doing, if he can sleep at all (cos boy we can haha). We even visited him at daycare before our dinner date. That’s how much we missed our goodest boi. We thought it would be a sweet escape being away from him a couple of nights but we found ourselves actually worrying and resolving to never leave him overnight at daycare anymore. When we came to visit he was so clingy, wanting to jump out of the crate, he didn’t even finish his dinners. His tear stains are quite excessive that time and although we know it’s not from actual crying, it still pains to see him wanting to be held so much. We trust Hachi Kamp, it’s a really good place for Koomi but it’s our first time leaving him for the night so yeah. Is this something you get used to? I certainly hope not cos we don’t want to leave him out of vacations anymore.

Oh well, back to our anniv celebration. We booked 2 nights at EDSA Shang which is pretty much walking distance from home haha. We’ve been meaning to try it out for the longest time and finally we did! It was a pretty spontaneous decision. I booked the night before our stay. We only had dinner at Ruth’s Chris planned but thought it wouldn’t hurt to add something else to the agenda, since we have the whole weekend.

It was soooo freaking refreshing, a 5-star stay. We definitely missed it! It’s been more than a year since our last hotel stay (Nobu) and if you know us, that’s bleak haha. We kinda had it coming taking a dog in, so it was fun to finally get to experience it again.

My favorite part of the stay was THE SHOWER. Oh my god, I JUST HAD THE BEST SHOWER IN AGES. The water pressure is so strong, it heats up so fast, and it doesn’t flood no matter how long you stayed underneath the rainshower. We didn’t have a bathtub but this is so much better. There’s even a bench where you can just sit down and soak in all the steam. Pressure is strong enough for a hydromassage. And even with all the steam coming out, the bathroom did not fog. They have a really strong exhaust you can feel the hot steam being carried upwards so in a way I’m kindof like in a steam room. What a heavenly feeling!

They prepared a little something on the bed for us because I mentioned we’re celebrating our anniversary. Also gave us banana bread to snack on. Really nice touch.

I requested for bigger slippers but the biggest they gave is probably a size 9 haha still a couple inches short for my husband hehe.

They have a pillow menu so I took the liberty to order everything in it. There’s only 3 anyway: buckwheat, cassia seeds, and contour pillow. I didn’t know the difference so I checked all three haha. The buckwheat is like a heavier down pillow. The one with cassia seeds is like those microwaveable hot compress pillows, really heavy, great for pillow fights. I love the contour pillow. It’s the one with the curves for neck support. Really helped me sleep well. Though I did wake up with back pain. I think there’s something wrong with my back. The bed was perfect, it had memory foam topping, super firm support, lots and lots of pillows, I think we had 7 all in all haha. But still, my back ached in the morning. Maybe I’m not good with memory foam toppers. I don’t know. It’s just so fun and cozy hiding under the warm duvet, while the room freezes at 18degC.

Then we had our annual Ruth’s Chris dinner date, which was perfect. And I think, in the 4 times we’ve dined with them I’ve established my favorites already. Porterhouse, crab cakes, amaretto sour, and tomato soup.

When we got back to the hotel we ordered desserts through room service. I was still so full from dinner but wouldn’t pass up on dessert. We got 3 cakes and a fruit platter lol. Jeckie got hazelnut praline and chocolate mousse, I got fruits and flourless chocolate cake. Each order was around 400 each and our bill amounted to 2k++. Just for desserts lol. I didn’t even get to finish half of my cake because I didn’t like the peanuty taste. I devoured the fruits though. I love eating fruits that are perfectly cut haha.

So 7 years huh? Yeah that’s 7 years married, and 13 years together. I can’t believe it!

Oh hell no

 Daily writing prompt

Do you see yourself as a leader?

View all responses

See title above.

At this point in my life I’ve already established that I’m a better follower than a leader. I hate being in a leadership position. It’s too much responsibility for me. I enjoy being a follower though, specially to a good leader haha.

Interestingly though, in college I held three leadership roles, two of which I was appointed to.

I was president of the student council, and president of the computer studies organization. Normally we’d have elections for those roles but I cannot remember if there was any. I think no one was interested in running so the admin just volunteered me for everyone’s sake. I don’t even know what that means but one of the profs said I was forced for good. For good? Ha! I have good grades, sure, so there’s some buffer in there in case I get too busy I forget to study. But seriously, the only reason I agreed to it is because it will look good on my resume. And as a graduating student from an unknown school, it’s not enough to get a latin honor, I need glowing extra-curriculars to actually compete.

I was not prepared to be a leader. Honestly I thought I sucked. I knew people respected me because I’m smart and I work hard but I didn’t do anything fun during my term. I just followed whatever we have been doing for the past years, following what the admins tell me. I organized seminars, quiz cons, and field trips, set-up the foundation week, helped oversee a pageant, they’re no easy feat but I had fun mostly because my officers are also my friends haha. And I loved designing promotional materials.

What I really enjoyed doing is leading the yearbook committee. I wanted to make it happen because it’s been years since we had a yearbook and everyone was excited about it. Plus, I loved doing the layout for it. Designing it was the thing that kept me going. I was layout editor and editor-in-chief, which are not exactly leadership roles but yeah, I loved it.

So yeah. I guess I’m the kind who will never seek a leadership role but will be okay with it if necessary. 😀

Hey Friday

Oh I have a lot of things to do at work and I’m running on a tight deadline, aka hoping my client doesn’t get mad at me. I can sense they’ve been trying to pressure me into finishing this project quick but they’re just too nice. I’m not one to take advantage of that okay so uhm, let me get back to work.

But first, a writing prompt.

Daily writing prompt

How do you relax?

View all responses

How apt! I don’t think I’ve ever relaxed properly. If you could consider procrastinating relaxing then yes, that’s how I relax. By delaying things I’m supposed to be working on. Usually doomscrolling on the bed overdosing on undeserved dopamine. I should really limit my screen time.

But my real definition of relaxation is simply a day off without work and chores, alone or with my husband, with no plans to meet anyone. A day I could fill with a nice dinner, a full body massage, and uninterrupted sleep. Notice how I did not include Koomi? Lol. Days like that we’d probably drop him at Hachi Kamp to play so we could go on gallivanting.

Anyway.

Back to work!

Happy Friday!

What does your ideal home look like?

 Daily writing prompt 

What does your ideal home look like?

View all responses

Oh I love this question! I enjoy watching house tours on Youtube, particularly 3D ones developed by architects where they share the floor plan at the end.

I’ve been building my preference when it comes to my dream home haha… so here’s how my checklist would look like:

• I want a small bungalow sitting in a big lot
• Big covered garage that can fit at least 2 cars
• Big yard with a low maintenance turf
• And an outdoor area where we can grill and dine and hang clothes to dry.
• Also an outdoor sink where we can wash our dog
• 2-3 bedrooms; a master, an office, a guest room, a corner for the washing machine.
• 1 bathroom is fine, I don’t want a lot of area to clean
• I’m actually okay with our current setup. We live in a 2BR with balcony which is just the right size for us two and a dog. If we can just pluck this out and plant it in a big lot haha then extend a garage space, that would be perfect.
• My husband is very particular with losing electricity so we also need space for a generator setup. I don’t now how much space it needs though.

Aaah what a dream! 😀