The three days I did spend this week on work were very interesting, because at some point I gave up on feature/product work and focused on RICEing my setup. This felt good, and like selfcare, and will also compound into efficiency improvements. Primarily, I moved to Ghostty and Zed. I’ve been using Claude to help me set up Ghostty settings (because there doesn’t seem to be a way to discover them outside of the docs?) and it’s been much more satisfying (and faster) than standard RICEing.
I also finally moved beyond the the web app for the prescreen product we built - I looked into Garak, and working with letta memories some more, and post-merge testing.
Aah, the coast. Being away from Bangalore home is excellent when it works, but I haven’t yet figured out my schedules and forcing functions for when it doesn’t work. Ways it doesn’t work:
Goa makes it much easier to exercise. Since it’s hot, it feels better on my joints and I wake up feeling more refreshed. And since there’s always a beach nearby, I can run without causing my knee undue pain.
I took the train to Udupi which picked me up two hours late. Why is even the Rajdhani delayed? I am so mad that this government of the last ten years has somehow managed to make the system worse than it was in 2015 (when I was regularly taking trains).
So Wednesday and Thursday I was in Udupi for a friend’s wedding. I was tired for most of it because I was battling a sore throat, but I still danced, socialised, and even gave a toast to the home my friend had provided for me when I was 17 and desperately in need of one. I discovered that one of her (new) husband’s childhood friends lives 350m from my house (!) so on Friday morning when the sore throat had devolved into full blown laryngitis, we immediately booked flight tickets and flew straight home. I would like to run on Kaup beach and visit the lighthouse another day.
Then I was sick and on voice rest for three days. In 2024 I had acute laryngitis 4 times, and was on voice rest for a cumulative total of 6 weeks. Six weeks without talking! During that time I learnt some ISL, but the person I was living with made no effort to learn it so it was useless (and disheartening). Now I’ve lost most of the signs, but I taught a few to some people, and that was fun.
The weekend ended with a session of IndieWebClub, which was super fun. I felt like almost everyone contributed to the discussion, which is rare.
The last three days I’ve been back in Bangalore I’ve been sick yes but also feeling pretty antisocial. I love my friends and I feel an obligation to them (which is fine) but right now I feel like being selfish. I want to indulge only myself, and the idea of being beholden to anyone or anything else is simply too much.
Big win for the week was that I cut what clothes I want to pack for my travel in half and I actually ended up wearing an even smaller subset of it, so I have more data on packing light (especially if I have access to a washing machine and a warm climate).
I did two runs and a stretch this week! I didn’t track anything about my first run. My second run was 2.2km at a 6.9 pace - I could possibly have gone longer but a rando on the beach challenged me to a sprint at the end and I couldn’t say no! I’ve been putting off figuring out what my ideal bpm is, because I didn’t want to deal with the headache, but at the 6.9 pace which seems natural to me, turns out I’m at a 160bpm which also translates to 160 steps a minute (which means that my stride length is 90cm haha). Experimenting with some rock-heavy playlists, let’s see how that goes now that I’m back in Bangalore.
The Laryngitis was painful. I’ve added a section for it in my care document.
How can I record/share vocabulary lists? Are they even useful for language learning? I’m guessing no, except as a memory aid for repetition.
Started The Spear Cuts Through Water. There are two parts of the book and they’re both set in a war zone. We live in horrible times and there is strife and injustice everywhere that I work very hard to keep out of my life so I can actually live in it. Reading about it does the opposite, it tugs at my heartstrings too much. For me, reading is for pleasure so I need to be able to stop at any point and not feel a pit in my stomach. Essentially, the book brought up the same feelings I had around The Traitor Baru Cormorant, so I’ve DNFed this one too. That being said, the audiobook version of this is truly excellent.
Also started A Psalm for the Wild-Built. Calm and interesting premise perfect for goa, so when I go back I’ll probably stick to that.
I did restart, and finish Bloody, Slutty, and Pathetic (AO3). Man, I am so done with romances where things are easy, and the MCs get together just because. I want the MCs to fight! I want them to hate each other!! I need to see character growth in fiction to remind myself that it is possible to expect it from real people. A good enemies-to-lovers does that so well. Some choice quotes from the book:
Draco favored Higgs with his smuggest expression. “I’m not the kind of man who feels the need to order his witch around like a house elf,” he drawled. “Tell me, Higgs, is it want of resources or lack of stamina that has you begging off from satisfying your women’s whims? My mother wants me to wear green to her Yule ball, I wear green. My wife wants underprivileged workers to have rights—” He waved his hand dismissively. “I indulge her. It’s no effort for me to do these little things to make her happy.” A derisive chuckle. “After all, I’m merely talking to you.”
The context here is that Draco is continuing to pretend like he has pureblood (ie, bigoted) sympathies so that he can infiltrate (and eventually, betray) their circles; but in the process he checks this one’s misogyny so thoroughly. The charecter equivalent of “why don’t people please their wives? Like it’s hard?”
And another:
He made his selection and kicked his shoes off onto the rug, putting his feet on the coffee table as he sat back. “Malfoy,” she said, “that’s a muggle romance novel.” He looked over at her, an eyebrow raised. “And you think I am sufficiently romantic? I require no further instruction?” Hermione opened and closed her mouth. “Have at it,” she said finally.
I think a big green flag if you’re looking to date is reading romance novels. Just like engineers need to read speculative fiction to hone and develop their imagination, people who plan to love need to read romance literature to understand what it means to grow with another person.
Staying with Dee and Saket means that we have to watch something together. Alas, high school musical could not happen so we watched two episodes of Derry Girls instead.
I started watching Pose! I’ve watched half the pilot so far, and I really enjoyed it. Maybe this is the show I’ll watch over the course of this year, in ten-minute increments.
Listening to lots of Lolla favs primarily- yungblud, kehlani, Linkin park.