Past blasts [Saturday 7]

Yesterday was a productive day. I went to four different places for groceries: Haymarket, Chinatown, the dollar store, and Bombay Market, which is pretty well-stocked Nepali store. I ate my typical oatmeal lunch [I should write more about it, I'm actually pretty proud of it], and had a pretty great dinner with mustard greens cooked in bacon fat, rice, dal, and kidney beans that my roommate made. In between, I wrote a bit, chopped a bunch of vegetables and got them dehydrating, and stalked a couple of people I used to know on Google

I started uploading all the photos I have on my computer to Google photos. That's probably the most important thing I did yesterday. I used to have a nice D5100 Nikon camera that in retrospect I didn't appreciate as much as I should have. Since it was pretty hefty to lug around, I took a lot of photos everywhere I went. In 2016 it broke for a few months, and then I sent it to Nepal for my sister later. I had a large collection of those photos sitting around in my computer, and I figured it made sense to upload them somewhere because at least that way I could share with people. It was a good choice. I keep forgetting Google photos has this awesome feature that collects a bunch of photos and turns them into albums or movies or collages etc, and it's started doing that to all of those pictures. A lot of old memories came flooding back and I've been sharing those photos with folks from way back. Many of them I still talk and hang out with regularly, some, I haven't talked to or connected in any way for long time. It made me really happy everyone's doing great now!

A friend asked "aahh good old times, eh", and I said "old times, haha yeah". It's pointless to be sad at the past because it's gone forever, and the photos don't capture your mental state or wellbeing at that time, only how you looked at one particular point in time at a particular place. Photos can be great for reminding yourself who you or others used to be, and to reminisce, but they can also be misleading. A smiling photo does not a happy person make. It's more obvious these days with everyone 'gramming, and everyone's emotional health in the dumps thanks to the zuck, but it's not just about the 'gram'. It's about assigning photos exactly the meaning and importance they deserve, nothing more and nothing less. Photos are blocks of ice extracted upstream from the flowing river of our life.

Also proud of how much I biked yesterday. Took a wrong turn and had to climb up the winter hill for no real reason, but it made me feel like I had done something, and the heard muscle got some workout. I was supposed to meet people, but everyone kept postponing, and regardless of everything else, it worked out for the best!

There's this bunch of tiny bananas that are thrice as expensive as regular bananas that have started showing up in the stores. They're not much tastier than regular bananas, and felt rather dry to me, but I bought a bunch anyway because why not. The tomatoes are disappearing from haymarket because the summer's ending, but that suggests that Haymarket is a seasonal market which doesn't seem right. Jackfruit has made sudden appearance everywhere, from youtube to all the major grocery stores, and the white people are confused on what to do so the 'keepers in Haymarket were teaching the customers what it was and how they could cook with it. I wonder how this started, and if it's a long-lasting thing, or maybe a fad. I personally enjoy jackfruit, and am looking forward to eating it in everywhich way but curried because South Asians need to learn to figure out other ways of processing food ugh.

Oh, and I bought a LED lamp at the dollar store. For. A. Dollar. I'm not sure how the economics work out, because it looks great and works great. I do feel awful for the environment, and it was the first time in a while I felt really guilty for something I really liked. I'm going to use it to grow microgreens, but first I need to grow at least one round first. I've planned makkoli-making and mushroom-planting for today, and my room needs to be cleaned before that, not sure how much of that I'm going to succeed in doing today.