Insanity feasting, latestnight hangs [Fri 12]

Got up grumpy and hungry. Avoided eating because of my intermittent fasting. Work was really really slow -- the project I was working on I handed that to my manager and did an interview instead. Had a meeting with a new intern for two hours which I shifted to Monday because of the house tours PN dragged me to.

Hungry and lazy, I took a quick shower and headed out with PN to see houses. We saw several, they were alright. We drove by this neighborhood that was build on the banks of a lake, which itself seemed constructed to sell real-estate. They had docks, and boats anchored, the houses I mean, they were the really expensive kind even if they weren't at a particularly good location amenities-wise. How reductive and boring and lame real-estate developers are, and how one's living situation has been optimized and calculated and commodified beyond insanity is a rant I'll keep for another day. It's just...they had crappy land lying around and they thought 'oh i'll fill it with shitwater, and build houses around the cesspit, and fools with more money than sense will pay me good money' and thus the 'lakes'. But also it's sad that you see some body of water and tell yourself it's so much better than anything else, and pay thrice of what everyone else is paying. The work culture is so regimented, any escape from it is worth a high premium, specially if it involves some 'recreational activity'. Here's a testable prediction I'll produce from these observations: if Americans were to get more time for vacation and recreations, they would spend less of a premium on houses with better recreational facilities. Another testable thesis: places where work culture is more chill and vacations are longer have a lower relative premium on houses near lame recreational areas such as small manmade lakes than places where work culture is more intense. Go crazy ya data nerds!

In any case, we saw a bunch of those houses and got angry at the wealth sloshing around. It could also be hanger since we hadn't eaten all day. I discovered a Chipotle nearby our last house, and got P to buy us lunch. The physical distancing measures implemented there were great, everyone was respectful, masked, etcetera. I optimized for price per calorie, and ordered 'half and half' of everything, which meant the food piled up so high they had to force shut the container.

We drove back the scenic route and I was worried I was going to be late for work. The houses though...so much land, so much wealth, such style. Houses and land worth millions, tens of millions, once after other after another, places, mansions, all of them, right next to one of the most expensive real estates in the country. So much wealth, so much disparity, it's unclear how long this can sustain, and if it sustains what level of force and authoritarian oppression can keep this running. The delusion that everyone is an embarrassed  millionaire just waiting to hit big will end sooner than later, and it's not going to be good. To release the pressure, the wealthy have to make mobility possible again, to be less ostentatious with their display, to at least pretend to reach for an egalitarian society. Barring that, this is...wild. Anyway.

It took us like forty minutes to get back. When I got back my manager wanted me to interview a candidate and check up on them as they worked through a problem.  I talked to him for a couple of minutes and got him going. Really hungry so I started eating my chipotle, which was probably twice the size of a regular bowl. So hungry. I kept on eating and eating. And eating. PN stopped at maybe half the bowl, but I kept on going. All that sour cream and cheese and guac and beans and rice all kinds of them didn't stop me, I went at it. And I finished that goddamn extra oversized bowl in fifteen minutes. Drank a glass or two of water to sink it all down.

For the next three hours, I lay sprawled on the ground on the carpet writhing in agony as stomach, used to little food, tried to accommodate thrice my portion size. P joked that I looked like an anaconda ajingari writhing as it digested a whole goat slowly. I was full for the rest of the day. So much food, I promised to not eat dinner.

In the evening after work we drove to S's place. S, A, and V were there too. We watched tv, played games, chilled. No one was sure about dinner because people had different plans and I didn't want to eat. We smoked up some, and played poker. Folks didn't want to eat rice for the second time in the day, so S ordered pizza from Domino's. I've promised to buy S all the pizza in the world, whenever I'm around.

As even casual readers of this blog will remember, Domino's is my only weakness.

I ate the pizzas. Maybe I ate half-a-pizza in total, maybe more. And I ate the cheesy bread. And I ate the chocolate lava cake. And I ate the cinnamon bread. I ate it all. It was a big meal for any day. I was super duper extra full, and a little high, and tired and oh so had it with everything. The poker got boring, and I tapped out and napped. I needed time to process the food. It must have been half-past-eleven, maybe twelve.

I got up at 3.30 in the morning, right after P & S had finished their last soccer game. We talked for a bit, and drove back home at 4 in the morning. This was one of the latest we'd hung out in recent times, and also the most I'd eaten in recent memory, possibly the most caloric-dense day in my entire life. It wouldn't come as a surprise to me if I had had 4000 calories over the course of those 12 hours.