Goddamn you

Goddamn you

And your

Profile,

Of a

Roman goddess,

Is it a surprise

I dare

Think

Break

The real rules?

Latenight sleepover, funtired, the most excited for breakfast, amazing meal, museum, park walk, whiskey tasting, bowling, amazing tacos, back home, red phone, short night, Nepali bro, succession, bunking [Sun 31]

SB and N slept in the bed I was on the floor, they were watching soccer match as they slept, I opened up my browser and watched what we do...and slept to it. Funtimes, sleepovers, man. But I was so goddamn tired, I couldn't think straight. The next morning I was a bit low on energy.

But not everybody. Haven't seen anybody who's as excited about breakfast as R was, her face just shone through at the idea of a wonderful breakfast place she'd looked up. Amazing pep in her walk to, she was jumping around smelling the sweet morning air, flying through the air to the smells of the breakfast place from our destination. Also Sb's original couple friends left in the morning.

Amazing breakfast at the place, I got the veggie options, all of them there, V & I shared, and they were pretty darn good, no complaints. The meateaters absolutely loved it!

From the breakfast, we walked around, to the park, and then to the museum at the copy of a Greek temple. The Museum itself was alright, but we went upstairs and there was a massive massive statue of Athena the goddess. Worshipped her and enjoyed in her presence for a solid hour or so, made it worth the money.

Walked in the park next to a pond, watched people learn salsa out in the open, walked more and chilled, teased V&R. Took the uber to the whiskey distillery, got sample flights and tasted all the different types, N also bought a bottle and I tasted some of it. It was pretty gd good.

From the whiskey place we walked to a bowling place, we did zenga first, and then the pin bowling. It's shockingly easy and I came closer to the top than to the bottom. It takes very little skill and the skills from regular bowling don't translate at all, thankfully from me. After everybody else got drinks and we chilled a bunch, we walked over to the Broadway, to the food court, where V and I got bomb tacos. The rest of the gang got fried chicken, not big fans they were.

Went back to sonder, rested for a few hours, I took a few cups of 20% whiskey. We smoked a buunch too, interesting that they were selling weeds out in the open, it was good stuff. After showering and resting and recovering, we took uber to this Speakeasy that N discovered called Red Phone. We went to this phone booth, and called this secret number you had to ask around the town to find out. It was insane, one of the better decisions. N and I got two drinks, everybody else did one. What a good discovery with this place on N's part, I gotta go to speakeasies more often. Such chill vibe.

Everybody looked tired and dead, specially me, and S saw it and called it a night. I was overjoyed particularly. We got into an uber and drove home. The driver happened to be a young Nepali bro.

Back home we watched the latest episode of Succession, goddamn good series, I don't know if I'll watch it all on my own though.

Sleeping arrangements changed, I got the top bunk, N got the bottom, because S had to leave early the next morning he slept in the living room. The bed was so uncomfortable and noisy that I gave up on it and went to the living room to sleep.

Terrible flight situation and layover, hello cold Nashville, uber ride, Jackbrown's, Hop Doddy, Belcourt, meeting with the gang, Sonder, Chauhan, helloooo downtown Nashville, hasville, memories [Sat 30]

 Hated the flights. Couldn't get proper sleep, had the snacks and seltzer during the first flight and nothing during the second, laid over in Denver. The restaurants weren't open in the morning and McD had like a 2-mile line outside it because nothing else was open, plus they had a limited breakfast menu... Not-great experience overall though this was an opportunity for me to use my e-reader.

Landed in Nashville way ahead of time which sucked, it was cold and cloudy. The uber-ride from the airport to the Sonder we were gonna be at cost twenty bucks. And then after getting there I discovered our reservation started at 4, so I chilled around in the neighborhood, and then walked to the bar called Jack Brown's. There I overindulged on cheesy fries and grilled cheese sammiches, not because of my love o cheese but because they were the only two items in the menu. Spent a couple of hours there reading and chilling and snapchatting, and getting exceedingly strong beers. Sour Monkey is a great sour beer, and there's a tonne more 9+ percent abv beers, they were great but so booozy. Good times, good times.

The rest of the gang, namely SB and V&R arrived so I walked for 30 minutes to go to the place where they were at, Hop Doddy. Chilled as they ate and drank, caught up, it was fun times, great bar, great location, I would recommend.

After the place we went to another bar called Belcourt Tavern, cute place with a bartender who had studied Vedic Sanskrit in College. It was decently popular, but there were a tonne of home doggos walking around. We had great times there, SB bought us beers there.

After that we went back to the Sonder, unpacked and caught up with the rest of the gang, NG and the other couple who had been chillin' in the city since early morning. We chilled and got caught up, explored the apartment. Smoked up and drank a bunch.

In the evening we headed out to get dinner at Chauhan, which was an amazing Indian restaurant. The cheese bread was so good. We got a couple of mixed drinks too. And then it's...kinda' vague what happened for the rest of the night, I remember us walking around, going to bars, the Broadway, and hearing the poppin' town. It's wild, I've written about it in the past, there's really nothing else like there.

We danced, drank and listened to Country Songs. Got very tired, headed home, drank more, smoked a bunch more. I wish I remembered better what the bars and places where we were at, and what the vibe was like, but like at this point I was so tired and snackered so I was like a walking zombie. Didn't dance with great gusto tbqh. It felt like I wasn't giving my best.

Haircut, laundry, dinner with Bc, failed attempts, latenight busride and walk, to the airport, beginning of a journey [Fri 29]

 Got up decently, yadda yadda yada, don't remember what happened to all of it.

After work I got a haircut for some reason they won't cut my hair down to the length that I want them to, whatever. Took a nice long shower, and did two loads of laundry. Wrote a bunch, packed my bags etc, and headed to Bc's place for dinner.
Cooked dal but oversalted it, and it was  a minor failure, but she made something, yes japanese curry and t was pretty great, had a fantastic time. We spent time watching horror movies and what we do in the shadows, and playing with her dog. Also I saw girls who weren't wearing anything, for Halloween party whatever, while on my way there. Maaan, Seattle, I tell you, how often do you see nude girls walking out and about in regular cities anyway? Besides the naked boobs lady in Austin obviously.

Left Bc's place at 10.30 in the evening, sketchy area, dark, rainy, got a bus, didn't know where I was going, fortunately everything was well, caught the train at Beacon hill, got to the airport way ahead of time and chilled, discovered fortunately in advance that my gate had changed and went to the new gate, read a bunch, etcetera. And that was the end of the night.

PBC breakfast, fried rice kimchi eggs lunch, gym, rainwalk, noodle dinner, cha chas with sb, accident, early end to the night [Thu 28]

 Had peanut butter and cream cheese for breakfast. For lunch I reused my ole' dal, fried it with rice, added a bunch of kimchi, whipped up couple of fried eggs, and it was yum yum yum.

Walked around in the rain for a bit to get to my 10k steps, listening to the parenting hell podcast with jimmy. walked around sb's apartment for some serious time until joining him in the gym. Maaan, my stamina has improved considerably since I started, I can now do more than 30% more miles in the elliptical machine than I could when I started, without getting tired at all. In fact, my legs get tired way before my body starts grasping for air.

Came back home, whipped up quick noodles (or did I warm them, might have rewarmed them from the night before and ate). SB came over, talked to family, and then went to chacha's with him. We got a large bucket of beer, I discovered getting a bucket gets you five beers instead of three for about the same amount of money. The only downside is you gotta keep drinking the same beer.

Sb and I talked about a bunch of things, discovered we were there far too early, and it was pretty early even during regular hours. My theory was that it was due to Halloween parties, where people were going instead of coming to the bars.

We talked, I got very animated, accidentally bumped away the drink at Sb's thus wasting a solid drink. Much sadness, He left for home, we were gonna be heading home anyway but it was an annoying end to the day. Came back home, took my regular medications and slept like a baby.

You've got to have kindness and forgiveness in your heart

 You have to have kindness and forgiveness in your heart. Tell that to the edgy, the edgiest sixteen year olds who are running the policy of the leftist/progressive (fuck, hate using the word even) wing of the democratic party, causing them to lose all the election, but they won't listen. Because like the edgy kids that they are, they just want to win. Because that's what politics is about, showing to your opponents how shitty they are, beating them, defeating them. Like has been said in this blog before, aren't politics and relationships the same in that way, that they're about absolutely defeating the other party?

Finally got around to reading/listening to Dracula, the unabridged book

Because it was in the nook reader and I finished the other book and there was nothing else to read but Dracula, and I'd pushed it enough yet, besides because of my absolute addiction with What we do in the shadows, it was time to consume some vampirical content, the original inspiration for all of this. It's a pretty great book honestly, great atmosphere-building, and the structure it uses, through diary entries and newspaper articles and first-person accounts adds to the whole vibe. Read the first half of it and listened to the second half of the book as an audiobook on youtube. I mean, it's the same, right? Actually no, because I don't remember a tenth of what I listened too because I've trained myself to zone out on audio resources, since I often go back to them over and over again, but at least the resource was completed, etc.

Nothing like Nashville

More posts on Nashville incoming, but I've been gone for a week or so, this time not necessarily due to my laziness or rejection to doing anything productive or good for my future but because I was legitimately busy tired drunk high and generally having fun. Most of which I don't remember very clearly, but that's the topic of a different post, several others, actually. For this one I want to talk about the Broadway in Nashville and really how there's nothing else like it.

The first night we were out and about in Nashville it was probably the busiest night of the year. Two big sporting games happening in the same day, plus halloween, plus the weekend, and it was bound to be explosive. And yeah, it was quite.

But that's not even the most amazing part.

Even on a Monday morning of a very regular weekday when nothing else is happening, the streets are bustling, loud music is playing, country and rock music is being played in the bars loud. It's popping, so goddamn much. It's wild, I've not seen anything like that anywhere else, not even in NOLA, most definitely not in Vegas, which has a very different kind of vibe.

And now I can see why Nashville is the bachelor/ette party destination. It's not 'otherwise' busy like NOLA, it's not gaudy and headachingly busy yet so pathetic with its faux wealth like vegas There's something authentic and 'real' about Nashville, like it's not sold out yet, like there's a real soul that you can see through, the lines of people ready to make friends and talk and giggle around, the older folks just dancing around having fun, without being hypnotized by outrageous wealth and glam, just hoppin' to the music makes your heart full.

There is no other place like Nashville, for reals.

I finished a book, a real book, for a change, and it feels fucking fantastic

The book was called My Boyfriend Wrote a Book about me, whatever, I started reading a year ago since it came with the Nook I'd bought during the first round of lockdowns and never gotten around to finishing it because it was too horny etc, but I was far too bored and not very into using my cellphone because I'm so sick and tired of the same old boring sites so I decided to stick to the old reader this time around. It's a decent book, but more importantly I felt so goddamn proud about finishing a novel for realsies for the first time in who knows how long, months, maybe years. Gotta read more of 'em.

I really gotta fix my sleep

That's it, nothing more to add. I talked to my GP way back and that's what they said. Talked to my therapist, that's what they suggested. Looked it up online, that's what was suggested. I'm not getting my requisite eight hours of sound sleep, sometimes I'm barely getting half of that properly. I go to bed late for no good reason, wasting my time on stressful news websites and nonsensical tech mumbo-jumbo bs, get up early because of the work situation, always stuck between a rock and a hard place. There's no other way but to get my shit straightened out. I can go easy on the other things, I should feel okay ordering in, eating ramen yadda yadda yadda, drinking even, drinking a lot, whatever, but sleep I've been very very careless with in the recent years.

The other day I was thinking, what has changed in the last ten/fifteen years, back when I was super motivated and up my game and driven, and now, or the times when I was low, and I discovered that the only variable within me that's changed that I can easily track and that's been known to cause a massive difference in mental and emotional regulation and performance, has been sleep. I was forced to go to sleep on time then, and did it, now I don't do it anymore because I'm a mad wild horse, so out of control. It's crazy.

And so that's the conclusion I've come down to. I'm okay with partying all day all nigtht long on the weekends, fridays and saturdays, but I need my eight/nine hours of sleep in the weekdays because that was what made me the hardworking person that got me here.

Hmmm

That form
Of a roman
Patrician goddess,
That hair
Of
A river nymph,
Those eyes
Like
The most luscious
Roasted almonds
Enchanting
Alluring
Hypnotizing,
No wonder
Nooo wonderrr
That the fruit
Is
For
Bid
Den.

Real shit grocery list

1. Red hot nachos
2. Garlic
3. Ginger
4. Realll spicy chilli pepper
5. Beans, lots of beans
6. Milk, the regular kind
7. Cheese, soo much cheese
8. Extra-carbonated fizzy water
9. Peanut-based dishes
10. Beer
11. MiraLax
12. Extra large cup of double-espresso
13. Very oily food
14. Lots of sweets
15. Pushy in-laws
16. A weak stomach
17. Raw veggies, washed improperly
18. Undercooked chicken
19. Mushy brussels sprouts
20. Black salt
    

A recipe for romance?

 Ingredients

* Two inexperienced people
* A healthy amount of booze
* Awkward circumstances
* Some pushy friends
* A Cold night
* A Foreign city
* Some confusing directions
* A run-in with the local police
* Good dress-up
* 2 open hearts (figurative)

Instructions

1. Get a cold night in a foreign city.
2. Mix all the other ingredients into it.
3. Wait until sparks begin to fly.
4. Enjoy!

An message to our great Lord

Dear Lord of these lands,

Your bounty knows no bounds. You have kindly given us peasants gifts greater than the gods have ever given, showered us with favors that others can only dream of. What you have done for us is so far beyond what anybody has done, prometheus, the thief of light who brought it down to us humans doesn't have a standing among your contributions. Words fail to fully describe your generosity and kindness, we are beholden to you for all eternity.

Lord, your gift has made humanity one. The god beat us mortals back when we tried constructing the tower of Babel, but you've shown us that we can build the tower and make large comfortable rooms for all of us. Where us peasants live in the lowermost floors and you great lord live in every floor above us.

Lord, you are everywhere. You are inside a bug, you are in the walls, you are in the sky, you are in the forest. There is no running away from you. You see all, you know all. And yet you never make a big deal out of it, every time you act like a mere mortal, choosing to not display your omniscience. Your humility knows no bounds.

Lord, you are omnipotent. The greatest armies of the world, the most powerful nations of the glove dare not even touch you, for they know what the consequences are. You can do anything, to anybody, at any time, and there is not a single person who will be able to do anything against you. You are truly all-powerful, in a way gods of the past have never been to.

Dear lord, we are beholden to you, these peasants thank us for your bounty, your kindness, your humility, and your gift to the world. May you live forever and ever, till the end of eternity, Lord Fuckerburg.

- The lowly peasants at your service

Frequently asked questions about our service

Q: Is the service actually free?
A: Yes, the service is totally and completely free, we will never ask you to ever put in any amount of money whatsoever, no matter how often you use our service. The more you use it the better! Feel free to put in all your images and videos and texts, all your feelings and emotions into the service, we won't say a peep! We'll even encourage you!

Q: Will you charge people I invite to the service?
A: Never, ever! It's free for everybody, forever, to use. For free of cost, always. Just go wild, have fun, and don't worry about the money, because you won't need it with our service.

Q: So what's the catch?
A; What catch? There's on catch! We're offering our service to you at free of charge, so you may talk to your friends family, acquaintance, enemies, frenemies, crushes, lovers, creeps, all for free of charge.

Q: How do you make money?
A: By selling you out. By treating you like a piece of shit, and decomposing you, breaking you down to pieces and selling each individual piece of you do scammers, foreign governments, crappy companies, shady people, and generally mostly criminal enterprises who don't even have anything to do with you. Because remember, this is FREE of cost to you, so don't worry, has anybody else given anything else free of cost to you? No right! But we are! So be thankful and stop asking stupid questions, alright?

Twelve hundo posts a year, bois and girls, twelve hundred goddamn posts I made this year

And it's not even November yet!

The journey to this point has been difficult, particularly this year, when I completed any sort of understanding that I was doing it for the novel or to improve my writing, and didn't write any experimental or fiction pieces at all. The days where I wrote fiction daily seem so far away and so quaint, when I was more motivated and put-together. This place has turned into one large diary by now.

But I'm not complaining.

I'm still writing, ain't I, and I haven't given up even though several times this year I stopped writing for a week or two (or three) at a time. But then I got by butt clenched and just went back to writing, running the fingers against the goddamn keyboard because what else is there, you know? Like what am I doing if I'm not writing, how else am I productively using my time anyway. The answer is obviously, pretty much almost always, "I'm not, it's all a giant waste of time". As I like to say, creating reallly smelly awful disgusting infested dump of shit is better than not creating anything. For the act of creation, doing something from nothing, making something that lasts and help us connect to the future, is what makes us 'godly' in a sense. For what is the universe if not one giant exercise in creativity?

What else is there to say anyway...party on, dudes? Slap myself on the back, buy something nice to reward myself... I don't know, this tells me that with enough gumption and grit I can totally completely just stick to something and go at it, no uhs and ums. With sheer willpower I can create the universe of my imagination.

If that's not fun, I don't know what is.

The three holy-trinity books that I'm gonna use as guides to set the sail of my life

Flow

Daily Rituals: How Artists Work

Overcoming Procrastination

Should I put more effort into the spiritual movement of interest?

 So we've been talking in recent days on how I want to align myself with Flow (the book) and the two other books I'll be talking in the next post, and also that there seem to be a lot of people who don't know and don't want to figure out the direction they want to take in life, who are desperately looking for a teacher or a guide to help them make their decision. And I have met several people very recently who will very much gain a lot by my assistance to improving their spiritual life, not saying I am the best or I know anything about anything at all, but as an assistant to somebody having trouble balancing the bicycle of their life, it would be a worthy contribution.

But things come up, I figure things out, and I want to run with my own personal goals and aspirations, forgetting about this desire to take charge, be the lighthouse of spirituality in other people's lives. And I wonder, even if I did want to, do I have in me what it takes to become a spiritual leader, a life guru, an able assistant? Or am I into this just for the power, and the thirst to lead and order people around?

Things to think about more seriously in the coming days...

Stability versus the opportunity to travel

 People keep inviting me to do cool shit on the weekends, or maybe just grab some grub, and often I can't make it to those events whatever because I'm either traveling or going somewhere.

And that's the question that I've been pondering over the last few years. On the one hand I do want to be going out and about exploring the country, visiting cities and people and seeing everything. And connecting with friends from all over. But on the other hand, that means I don't get to give enough time to friends in the city that I DO live in, which means I'm forming limited number of new relationships. People often don't want to hang out during the weekdays, and when they do, it's for limited time. The fact that I have to get up at six in the morning sucks as well because that means ten at night is pretty much the latest cutoff for me to do anything ever with people.

So it's a balance I have to maintain, and it's really sucky, I very much wish there was an easier way to fix this. But the various tradeoffs I have made have gotten me to this...strange and a little bit enviable to be quite honest, but still tricky and not exclusively wonderful situation and I'm figuring things out. Apologies if we've talked about this in the past, it keeps coming up over and over.

Friendsmaking in the new city

So friendsmaking in the new city, aka how am I doing friendships-wise in Seattle...That's the question everybody (read: literally nobody ever, maybe my parents once or twice, until I asked them to stop annoying me by talking to me like a child) keeps asking me. Here's the dealio.

Before A left, I was here to be out and about. He'll be back, and we'll be getting back to being out and about. In the intervening months, it's been tough, when parents were here I literally stopped going out of the house or seeing friends at all pretty much. And then where do you even go to make new friends, meet new people? Like online is like uuugh, though I have made a few friends that way. Bars and clubs were easy place to meet fun people but I don't want to go out myself, not yet, though there's no real reason not to. In the funhaving I need a partner, by myself I'd rather me a homebody. However,

I did join a bunch of meetup groups and joined clubs (and still am angling joining a few more) to expand my social circle and my universe of consciousness on the type of people that exist. People in Seattle are...different from the sort of people you see in Boston, but you have to make an effort to reach out otherwise you're insulated in your social circle. Which is why in this entire conversation I haven't mentioned my existing circle of people, because they haven't made an effort to reach out and it's kinda boring. Also they don't invite people individually, there's a facebook group that everybody replies to, and it's a bit to sad and pathetic for me.

So anyway. TW has been back to Seattle for 2 months and didn't reach out to me, I texted her the other day, but she has plans, but we'll eventually reconnect and get that ball rolling. WC keeps inviting me for dinner or whatever, but only on weekends that I'm not around. Gotta take care of that as well. And P.K is perennially busy for one reason or another, unrelated to me entirely, and we'll be working on that as well. My close friends and sb are of course my core group right now. I'm happy about that, see them a few times a week at least if not more.

New friends have been made, I've been cooking with BC on a weekly basis. S I'd like to hang out with more but the timings never work out and I don't want to go allll the way to the North, but if I want friends I gotta ride the train, so that's coming too. And it's gonna be effing fantastic.

Sometimes it feels like I have little to show for what I have achieved in Seattle but that's being unnecessarily gloomy, I've been doing cool shit and meeting cool people, and it's gonna suddenly turn around, I'm confident.

Checklists, getting shit togeter, latenight walk, grocery trip, friendcall, friedrice and dal lunch, hurried mushroom-noodle dinner [Wed 27]

 Yeah okay I'm writing this on the evening of the following day, and things have been getting better way way better in terms of my writing and for that I'm very thankful. I'm still having trouble gathering motivation to start writing and will do anything possible to get out of it, it's my body is absolutely rejecting the act of putting down words on...paper...epaper thing...whatever, but if I tell it there's no other way around, it'll do it, only after pushing it to the last possible moment. I need to set myself more clearer deadlines and time limits within the course of the day to get better at this.

 Moving on, back to the actual journal.

Yeah so yesterday I put in a bunch of things in the journal and did pretty much everything that I planned, except a few, but them it was unlikely they'd have gotten anyway. And the fact that even after lazing around and wasting time for hours and hours, I still got my shit together was impressive. Just need to teach myself it's okay to turn back, whenever, because now is better than never.

For lunch I had friedrice and dal, I believe I dumped in a good amount of kimchi too because why not. I've said this before, but the friedrice dal combo is surprisingly long lasting and filling. If I can involve other veggies in the game, healthy greens etcetera too, then I've got this super train of healthy food going on.

After work I wasted a bunch of time and slept some because didn't get enough sleep the day before. It was just sufficient. Body was too tired due to the lack of proper food at around 5-6, and also it was really very cold so I whipped up a quick shin ramyum for dinner. Sauteed the mushroom I'd grown myself from the mushroom block bought weeks and weeks ago that had been abandoned and decided to auto-grow, and you know what I needn't have worried, it was pretty darn good and didn't make me sick at all. Best of all, everything was done in less than 30 minutes, a new record for me.

Headed out to the walk in the dark and the rain, P.K. called and talked to them for some time. It was great catching up after a long time, we figured out the next occasion we'll be hanging out at. After it was over, listened to 20k hertz, and office ladies podcasts again. There was an amazing co-incidence synergy between the podcasts, the 20k pod was about monster sounds in movies and games, and the office ladies talked about how monster sounds were produced in the monsters dot come episode of the show.

Walked back home, since I hadn't gotten around to the required 20k steps, went around the block, down the street, and into QFC where I bought paper towels and bread, and walked home finally. Got my 20k steps, wrote a bunch, chilled, talked to friends and fam, and slept pretty decently on time. I should be trying to go to bed earlier than 10.30 though because by the time I'm actually asleep it's 11-11.30, and I have to get up by 6 every morning. Slept to the sleepcast of headspace.

Teas, friedrice and dal and eggs lunch, gym, checklists, quesadilla dinner [Tue 26]

 I'm writing the day after, it's 10.30 of the next day and I'm so close to getting this done, the only thing is I'm far too lazy to get my shit completely in order.

I drank a lot of kava and other kind of teas this day. For lunch I had fried rice and dal with eggs, it was yum. Wrote for several hours as I drank tea, completed like 30 posts through the course of the day, feel real good about that. Now tomorrow I can write like a normal person and almost be all caught up.

Also created a checklist after a really long time and checked most parts, so proud of it.

Had quesadilla for dinner, I should get more veggies fruits and proteins in my dinner, proteins that are not eggs. Have been eating too much cheese lately because it's too easy with that.

Lots of tea, tea and weed experiment, hanging with Sk, grilled cheese dinner, latenight busride home [Mon 25]

 Wrote a lot, lot lot. Started drinking tea, actual caffeinated tea to give me the energy, combined that with kava to hopefully avoid the headache aspect of the the drink, and I think it definitely helped. I felt I was able to concentrate and be energetic, while not getting too tired to early.

In the evening smoked a nice joint, walked to Sk's place, we made grilled cheese for dinner and I had two slices of bread extra, plus the naked mango juice, yum he makes fun of me for enjoying it, but it was really good, I love love love the goddamn juice. We watched two episodes of what we do in the shadows, I left at 10.30 because needed to get home on time and didn't want to walk all the way in the rain so took the bus from my street, saved a solid fifteen minutes of getting wet.

Rest day, lots of writing, eating of fried rice and dal, walk to volunteer park [Sun 24]

 Chilled throughout the day, started feeling really good about myself I guess because of the things that had happened the evening before, so felt this calmness and peace that I had rarely felt in recent times. Had fried rice with dal, surprisingly good I'm telling ya.

Wrote a lot of posts here in this blog, like a lot lot lot.

Went to the volunteer park, and walked around the streets near me to get to ten thousand steps because I gotta get my shit together now, and ooh yeah, 10k easily reached. Hashtag winning.

Maaan, with this weather, all the walking's gonna be in the evening

 The days are short and it gets dark before 5. They're rainy, because that's what this part of the country is known for. I can't make myself go out for walks during the day because I"m lazy and also because it's so cold and gloomy outside, so I often wait until the very last moment when it would be quite embarrassing to not have gone out on a walk through the entire day. It's dark, it's rainy, and there's very few people outside. And it's super slippery. But that's what living in this city is gonna be like, one's gotta get used to it, what to do. Live with the fact and call it a day, I don't mind really. Walking is walking, and as long as nobody robs me or kills me or anything, I got nothing to complain about. Maybe I should start carrying umbrella though, like tourists, because it's not pleasant getting wet all the time. Hahahah. That's what she said. Because you know the other person was so goddamn good, etc etc, lets not make fun of people's diseases and addictions people!

eDreams is a shit company and almost screwed me over

 I got tickets to Nashville for two days from now from this website directed to by Google called eDreams because it was cheaper and google wouldn't send me to shady af places would they? Except they kinda did and really fucked me over, because two days before the actual flight, when I'm tryina log into the thing to checkin they tell me my reservation was cancelled. And I look online all over to discover that yup, they did truly really fuck me over, and a lot of other people, they're running some sort of arbitrage situation, where they will hold and sell the ticket if the prices go down but cancel them if they go up and sell that to the higher bidder, thereby always making money on all the tickets, transferring the risk to their customers while being super duper opaque about it. And they have non-existent support. Thank gods I figured this out way in advance, the only problem I have now is that they have my personal information, I'd rather they didn't have my address number and cc info but ugh those are the tradeoffs one has to make.

Sausage overload, breakfast for dinner, walk around town, nice torta, conversations with friends, the right cocktail for the King in me to come out [Sat 23]

I write this on the evening of Tuesday, three days after the fact, and this is the thirtieth post I've written today. I've been doing a lot of  'catching up' and when I put out ten posts tomorrow I'll have been all caught up finally after a long time but I can't get too excited since I've said this in the past and not done anything about it, rather I've gotten overconfident and just fucked things up. So I'll say this cautiously, I'll really want to have gotten back on track by this time next week, even in the weekends, because the gods have given me this wonderful opportunity to play catch and I don't want to have fucked it up.

So this day, early in the morning, as in late Friday night I ate sausage quesadillas because I'd had some Kratom to make me feel nice and cool and want to go out, all it did was make me dizzy and want to puke, that's when I discovered maybe it wasn't for me. So in the morning I made more sausages and consumed them one way or the other. I should have gotten up earlier on Saturday but didn't, instead trying to sleep and wasting time generally because my head felt heavy and I still had the 'hangover'.

After a nice meal though I forced myself to walk around town since the weather was amazing and I hadn't had the chance to explore my neighborhood since getting back from Dallas. Walked to Broadway, found a nice mexican food truck and got a torta there, it was fucking fantastic so much better than the stupid Dallas torta, though it wasn't very filling and quite pricey for what it was. Walked to Volunteer park, and back Pike/Pine, to get my steps in, this was when I got back on the 10k steps a day wagon. Paused conversations with SA because lots of my emotional energy was draining.

In the evening got some weed, caffeine, and two shots of remainder of the vodka that had been left, and it made me feel like a total king, like i could do no wrong in the whole goddamn world, called a bunch of friends and dear ones folks I have been sorta interested in, and you know what all the things I tell myself when I"m feeling cocky were kinda' validated, so that felt real real good, a real boost to the morale, something to remind oneself when one is down in the dumps. Was up for far too long talking to many many people on the phone, and realized tomorrow would be wasted too if I didn't go to sleep, so went to sleep not to deep into the night.

Quesadella lunch, prep for fancy dinner, catching up with sick friends, TJ trip, rainy evening rush, taking the streetcar, messed dinner, funny show, return [Thu 21]

 In the morning spent considerable time talking to friends from faraway who are very very ill and have been suffering through the virus that ravages us all still, though they've significantly recovered in the recent days.

For lunch I had cheesy quesadilla in roti, it was yum yum, maan what a great invention my mother did, I gotta make more innovations on top of it so it can feel more healthy and has a bit more of a depth taste-wise.

After work I wrote a bunch, this was when I thought you know what I'm running behind posts on by blog so much, I should definitely get caught up or it'll be embarrassing af and now I'm almost caught up five days later. Went to TJ's to get a couple of supplies for dinner later, and then to QFC for vegetable stock which was shockingly not available at TJ's what a joke. Since I was running late to get to BC's place, I took the streetcar because the streetcar was so much easier and quicker, and also you didn't necessarily have to pay for it.

There we chilled for a bit and started working on the plan of the evening, grilled cheese and tomato soup. BC didn't have a blender and I may have put a bit too many carrots in the mixture but the soup was too gritty, and didn't taste like tomato soup at all. Like, at all, I should really very much rather have bought a canned tomato soup and done wild things to make it taste better. And also the grilled cheese was a massive failure, first because I burned several slices, and second because it wasn't as good as I thought it was gonna be.

BC cleaned all up, and we talked a bit, played with the doggo, and watched a couple of eps of what we do in the shadows. BC asked me if I'd gotten a stand for my television and threatened to buy me one if I hadn't gotten one. By the time it was time for me to return, the heavy rain from earlier in the evening had subsided considerably, I didn't want to get wet still, so I went back to the streetcar stop, waited a bit, and walked back from the stop. It was a nice little evening, even though the food plans didn't go as planned.

Sad lunch, lots of talking on the phone, low-key Friday, binge on What we do [Fri 22]

For lunch I fried the semi-burnt pieces of toast from the preceding day with eggs and ketchup, that was it. For dinner I think I had bread with honey and peanut butter, but that was because I had had too much bread already, I know it's sad and pathetic, but that's how life be lately.

Wrote a bunch, which is why I kept pushing off going to the barber's to get a haircut that I desperately need or else I'm going to look way balder than I actually am. And then in the evening it was tiring, there wasn't anybody to go with, so I went all-in on my binging on What We Do In the Shadows. And you know what, sometimes I feel bad about not doing too much in the weekends, but this was a very productive use of my time, I don't feel bad at all no matter what.

Unexpected groceries, lazy dinner, gym, disocvery of increased stamina [Wed 20]

 The eating situation has been tricky, as I find it tough to cook without much groceries at this point, and am too disoriented to go get groceries.

Luckily I got a delivery of imperfect foods on Tuesday that I was too lazy to go pick up, so I brought those groceries up on Wednesday and finally I had a decent supply of groceries. Lunch was whatever was around, which I think was chiura and dal or something as pathetic.

In the evening got super hungry, so went to Rancho Bravo tacos for a nice burrito. So big fat and filling oof, it cleared my head and showed me a clear direction of what I wanted to do in life. Went to the gym after since I'd been lazing around on Tuesday, so this was the perfect opportunity.

Did the regular elliptical and four workouts, discovered that my stamina at the elliptical had increased. I know because I used to have trouble getting to 0.5 miles with 2 difficulty in 15 minutes, but I was easily doing 0.55-0.58 within the same timeframe. Workout's showing some progress, yippe doo daah!

 And that was my day!

Roti and dal lunch, unpacking still, what we do in the shadows [Tue 19]

 Had roti and dal for lunch after making a whole lotta dal. Still unpacking everything.

In the evening when it was time to go to the gym, I bailed out because I was hooked on to what we do in the shadows and could simply not let it go. I was watching the later seasons first though, which is strange I know but that's how it started, don't blame me okay.

I have only one or two photos of this day, and they are quite strange, and I'm writing this exactly a week after, so I hope you understand if the journal's lacking in details. As you can see I've been doing a lot of catching up, and will be presenting live-hot events starting tomorrow.

To Sk's, hang with sk and sb, most disappointing pizza ever [Mon 18]

 Worked during the day, dunno if I had anything good for brunch. After work wrote a bunch, tried getting my shit in order, the process of cleaning up the house etcetera. In the evening went to SK's place, hung out with him a bunch, Sb came over too, we went to a nearby pizza place that Sk said was pretty good, IMHO it was the worst thirty bucks I've spent for pizza and whatever desserts we got. It was awful really hurt my tummy, was completely unremarkable, and didn't do anything to make me feel better about myself or life in general. What the hellll.

Egg-grilled-cheese breakfast, bhat-dal lunch, departures, driven to the airport, bye bye family and dallas, alone in the apartment [Sun 17]

 Pb made grilled cheese sandwich surrounded by eggs, sort of french-toast-grilled-cheese, it was pretty great, for breakfast. Had bhaat-dal for lunch.

Sb was leaving, he was going to driving up back home through his work, while SM's were taking the flight the next day. So bhauju and pb drove me to the airport. On the way we talked about motivation at work, adhd, how we had trouble focusing on anything beyond five minutes and man we should do something that we are really passionate about.

The airport there was quite small, only one terminal, not much happened, easily got into the plane and napped a bunch. Didn't even make it to the snacks or drinks, man I wish I'd gotten them though.

Landed, got on the train, to the nearest train station, it was raining classic Seattle, walked home, sad lonely and had whatever the heck was available for lunch, chiura I think it was, with whatever else, I think tiil ko achaar.

Grilled cheese croissant breakfast, visiting downtown dallas, cute little denton, mexican restaurant, the most disappointing vegetable tortas ever [Sat 16]

 I write this exactly 10 days after the day, as I write 4 weeks worth of journal posts.

Had grilled cheese croissant for breakfast, plus fruits. Hung out with folks, socialized, called home and gave them stats, and just chilled around for the earlier part of the day. Lunch was of fried rice that had been hanging around for a while.

Bhauju wanted us to show downtown dallas and the fun stuff that could be done there, so we took a convoy there. ON the way sb and I talked about business in America, how this country is really the best place people like us could be, and the potential for marriage supply businesses in here. And how canada is just a pale comparison of this place. A cold terrible place with better healthcare, hey gotta give them the credit.

Parked at this weird street that looked super sketch nobody looked energetic, we were 15 minutes away from parking being free so we just waited it out talking and not doing much. After that we walked downtown to AT&T plaza, saw the massive screen and the pumpkin patch, the protesters from PETA shouting at folks to go vegan and avoid animal products. That made me feel great because texas is such a weird conservative place that just knowing there was at least a few hundred peta supporters made me feel safer.

From there we went to this park where the lights on this public display corresponded to where in the tunnel you were and how fast you were walking. We also saw this massive eyeball right in downtown. Apparently not many people live on dallas downtown but how's that a surprise, if there were more grocery stores and bars and restaurants I wouldn't mind living but I imagine it's a chicken-and-egg problem.

Tired of downtown dallas, we drove to this point to see the bridge and a scenic view of the downtown skyline, from where we went to Denton, which is a very cute historic downtown that everybody seems to hang out at. Well we couldn't find any place to get food there that'd accommodate everybody's requirements, so we chilled around the square and appreciated what a bizarre historical setting we were at, in Dallas of all places, and drove to this cute little mexican restaurant with a fuckton of orders for the whole team. I wanted vegetable torta, and got that. Waited for like 30 minutes while the groom's brother and (new) wife tried to force him to hug and be more loving towards them.

Took the food home and ate, it was the most disappointing torta I've ever had, they basically made a meaty torta, but without the meat, maaan what a sad little piece of bread I ate for dinner. Pathetic, honestly.

The day of the wedding, setting up the wedding mandap, many things happening, bringing bhauju home [Fri 15]

This was a very long and busy day for everybody.

Woke up at 6am at bhauu's house because that's what they'd told us to do, since we'd be preparing for the wedding and all, but nothing started until 8.30 so what a total waste of everybody's time and sleep. Then we spent an hour getting the wedding mandap up, another hour decorating it, and another 30 minutes just getting other minor decorations done. It was all done in the last moment, but so fantastic, it was exciting for everybody involved.

We drove back home with Ad where a few hours were spent getting ready and doing the rituals required for the trip to bhauju's house. I was the photographer as always, with my dingy clothes and unshaven face and the 'avoiding being seen' attitude. We didn't put the flowers on the wedding car because they might get swept away by the wind so the idea was to put it on right near the bride's house.

Finally after what we thought was objectionably late we left the groom's house for the bride's stopping like fifty metres away, putting on flowers and all, and walking from there to bhauju's house, dancing and celebrating. Took the janti's picture, and the bride's party joint the dance too since we were a small team. Then the photo-taking began and I took hundreds of extremely good looking photos, the photographer taught me how to take better ones and trigger the large flashes from my camera.

After the photo-taking we went for the actual rituals for the wedding, the most boring part of the wedding. This time around I took some photos, hung out with the parents and their kids, and just chilled. Didn't really take a whole lot of photos or videos except during the interesting rituals such as 'walking around the fire' or 'pulling that cloth and winning or losing'. Great videos and pics that I shared with everybody, highly appreciated.

The lunch/dinner meal was very fatty, had trouble eating but pretty appreciated.

In the evening we all came back home, except sm hit the car in the fire-hydrant and caused a long dent on the sides, it was very nice of the next door neighbor to inform us.

The family chilled and talked until late at night, bhauju P and I were talking until wee hours of the morning until when I talked a bit too loud at ad came out and shouted at us to go to bed, and that was the wedding day!

Home depot and lowe's, black-eyed-peas and rice, day with bhauju driving around, dozen shops, hectic day, taco bell treasure, night at bhauju's place [Thu 14]

 In the morning somebody I think it was P who made us breakfast. We talked and chilled, socialized. For lunch we had chickpeas and rice.

I went with AD to Home Depot and Lowe's to get wood so he could build his marital bed, a day before the wedding. It was pretty incredible. He spend hours and hours trying to identify the best wood for the situation while I just stood there, distracting myself on time wasting websites alas, with little to contribute. Drove back home, chilled for a bit more, saw um and sb making the bed, ad working on cutting the planks etc, realized that was a lot of work for the day before.

After chilling and napping and relaxing, srb came over, said she needed somebody to hang out with her and support her travels because time was running out and she needed to complete many many chores for the wedding despite her being the bride. So i got into the car ready for an exciting drive, called a bunch of places and looked up directions while she drove like a crazy person. We ended up going to 2 makeup stores, 1 nepali clothing store, 2 india bazzars, 2 different gas stations for getting change, and a taco bell after driving in reverse for 10 minutes. It was so hectic, this was also when I grasped the concept of 'virgin human hair'

In the end we got the nice taco bell cheapest tacos with potatoes in them and brought them over to bhauju's where it was all of our dinner. I had two of those, yum, apparently most people there love taco bell too. In the end it was decided Pb and I would stay at bhauju's place because they needed helping hands on the day of the wedding at the wedding house, so I spent some considerable time playing with the doggos and watching 30 rock on their large tv, controlling the lights of their house using google commands, finally going to sleep quite late. Hate a fantastic night's worth of sleep.

To dallas, land and pickup, long drive, vegetarian burger king, sangeet at home, at bhauju's, so much carrots and bhujia, no dinner [Wed 13]

This was a very eventful day all things considered.

Forgot to eat anything substantial during the preparation to the flight, got on the train to the airport, at the airport had to walk all across the stupid terminal to get to the right security line. Security held me back 15 minutes because they had troubles with the jewelery in the bag. Anyway I run to the terminal and discover I have to take the train there, so I get on it, and expect it to be yet another stop, except it comes back. So I get on it again, get out of it, and get on yet another shuttle, running huffing and puffing to the gate. I was one of the last few people to get on the flight, and the flight left pretty soon after. This was a close call, I could have very much missed my flight here.

It was a boring flight, I had seltzer and tomato juice in addition to the snacks Alaska provides. Not sufficient for my hunger, but enough to keep me powered until landing I guess.

Pretty quick figuring things out after landing, P and sb had come to pick me up, discovered house was far away so we stopped at BK and I got a few snacks, including jalaeno poppers, their mozz sticks, and the impossible burger. All for a grand total of like nine bucks, which made me realize how cheap texas was!

At home I discover the wedding's happening triggering a lot of drama unknowingly, come receive party from the bride's side, we talk and chat socialize, after a while we drive over to the bride's side, there again lots of talking and chatting and photo-taking and eating. I ate a lot of bhujia with achaar and a lot of carrots and cucumbers. P made some world-class chaat. We stayed until quite late, until everybody was tired, then came home, still chill, talked to home secretly because of complications created and went to sleep. P wanted to sleep in a different room because apparently he'd have to talk to his girls and they wanted a lot of him, so that happened. SO much stuff.

Dogpark, work, chat bhat ghiu lunch, meeting friends and handing over, return home and journey preparation [Tue 12]

 Took the doggo for the dogpark walk, stayed there for a really long time, she got to play with so many of her friends.

Had chana and bhaat with so much ghiu for lunch. It was yum yum yum.

Worked worked during the day. In the evening, AS came over and I got him his mail and we talked a bunch until A and her sister A came over. Hung out with them for a bunch of time and they really wanted us to hang out to make the meals etcetera but I had to rush despite really wanting to tease them very much so I asked for excuse and left. Walked with AS to the same street as mine, and I walked all the way back, all by myself in the apartment for the first time.

I packed my backpacks and got ready for the journey ahead of me, to Dallas.

Dog park morning, mourning brothers daylong comedy, long walk to upper Seattle, mediocre meal at dough zone, latenight hang [Mon 11]

 Took the doggo to the dog park in the morning, having taken the day off. We stayed there for a solid hour or so, allowing her to play with her best buds.

Sb came over and we chilled all day long not doing anything, playing with the dog and watching 30 rock comedy, remembering our very much beloved grandfather who had just passed away.

In the afternoon we went on a pretty long walk to Fremont cut, and walked back. The doggo had had her exercise. Sb went home, I cleaned up and got in shape. We met up again a few hours later for dinner at dough zone. It was the most mediocre meal I've ever had.

At night Sb came over to the roof, we chilled for couple of hours taking advantage of their light and heat resources, talking, reminiscing, chilling, flying. Sad people coping.

Dog park and Denny park final move into S's place in the rain on the bus, rice and eggs dinner, high in the evening, some very bad news [Sun 10]

 Took the doggo to Denny park in the morning and then the dog park, she had a heck of a time. Spent the day watching tv, netflix on Sk's tv, such a chill life. It was rainy and gloomy so didn't really feel like a waste of time at all. Playing with the doggo was fun enough. Doggo to the park in the evening as well. Fried egg and rice for dinner. Made a few trips from home and back in the rain and it was a miserable journey so annoying, but ah there's no option around it. Finally settled and full, I got ready for bed with a whole lotta weed and was just about to sleep when I got a call from back home with the very very bad news from TD. Called Sb to inform him of it as well and tried to sleep but couldn't. Immediate texted my manager taking the following day off and tried figuring out plans for the rest of the day and gaining an understanding of what had happened because my mind was unable to process.

Move to S's place in cold rainy dark Seattle weather,hang with BC, hang with M, legendary grilled cheese [Sat 9]

 Spent the day recovering and cleaning the house, getting myself turnt up for my stay at Sk's place. Hung out with BC I think during the day because I remember I hung out with them one of these days and shared with them the leftovers of my parents, but I don't exactly figure what day it was, so we'll call it this day. They loved my house and everything in it, and were particularly impressed by the kava tea that I offered, which they joked increased their libido later in the evening hahah.

In the evening I went to Sk's place and hung out with M the dog as friend S left the charge of his place and doggo to me, made the legendary grilled cheese so involved and complicated that I've tried replicating since but never succeeded. Tried to go to bed with great trouble, so smoked up a bunch.

Karela-bhat lunch, kimchi-cheese roti, hang with SK, noise control and latelnight party [Fri 8]

 Had karela dal bhat for lunch. Kimchi-cheese and roti for dinner.

Went to SK's place in the evening and hung out, gathering the logistics to move to his place for a couple of days since he'd be going away. He was busy because he'd be leaving the next day and was preparing for it, so I was looking for opportunities to hang out. Reached out to AS who said he was going to Kremework for BD's gig, and that sounded like a cool opportunity to hang with the boys so i did that. Lots of people I knew, and without any sort of co-ordination we reached there almost exactly at the same time, it was wild.

Danced a lot, moved around a lot with the wildest of moves too. I should have danced with and asked number of other parties but didn't because too tired and needed to go home. Hung out with the performers and their friends post-show, BD's DJ partner is pretty cool. And their friend who'd visited Nepal during the pandemic to help with the medical situation was inspirational.

Walked home all by myself around 12.30 I think, maybe 1, because G threw up and it was enough for AS and I called it a night too because that was everyone I knew there.

Early grocery supplies, copies at bhais, uber to the airport, parents depart, taking time coming back, sad dinner, sadness all around [Thu 7]

 Went to SB's place to make some copies in the morning, went into the walgreens to get final moment medical supplies. Felt super sad and gloomy on my way back, because parents were leaving but also I was in a fight with friend SA.

Got parents' belongings together, said goodbyes, put everything in place, and ordered uber. Nice and easy ride to the airport, got one cart and checked everything in, there wasn't too much hassle all things considered. Didn't know what to do after they'd left so spent a long time at the airport just chilling and using the internet and trying to figure out where life lay ahead, don't mean to be too dramatic but.

Took the train back home, watched a lot of tv and used the internet on blue and orange sites, and had anda chiura gram dinner. I didn't know how to feel or what to feel.

Tiring day, many decisions, trip to South Center, wrong location, testing, cheesecake factory, target trip again, dollartree, bhat lunch and and chiura dinner [Wed 6]

 This was one of the more tiring and stressful days.

We spent two or three hours in the morning wondering what would happen if the covid tests reports didn't come on time, evaluating dozens of quicker options and their pricing, and unable to come to a conclusion. Finally decided to take one option and just run with it, so we were going to be spending like 150 bucks each to retake the test we had taken the day before for free.

After a nice bhat-dal-mushroom lunch, we went to Angle Lake for the second quicker covid testing, walking 10 minutes further from the furthest Link stop. Then realized that we were at the wrong location because the company kept on moving, so we took an uber from there to our actual location of test, which wasn't horrible, just ten bucks which meant we'd have to imagine we'd paid for the trains originally.

Waited for ten minutes for parents to get tested in the line, and another ten minutes for the actual testing and we were done, safe in the knowledge that they'd get their results before the flight. Got a cheesecake from the cheesecake factory nearby, and went to the target across the street to do the final round of shopping. Spend considerable time there and by the end we'd gotten everything that I'd mistakenly ordered to Boston online. Had the cheesecake right outside the target, and went into the dollartree in south center plaza where we bought like ten buck worth of stuff. Then walked to the bus stop where I thought the wait would be twenty minutes but we waited for three minutes for like the previous bus to come by. It took us to downtown where we waited for yet another few minutes to get on the bus to take us home finally. Phew.

Had eggs, chiura, and gram for dinner with sadheko sesame seeds.

Shots, tests, japanese garden, burgers, library, massive error in judgement, dinner with sb [Tue 5]

 In the morning I got my regular sandwich for breakfast. After a nice meal and getting everything figured out, we took the bus to the downtown target when my parents got covid shots as well as flu shots. Everyone was happy all-around. Also, dad bought like seven or eight jars of nuts to take back home. It was wild.

From Target we went to this place near Seattle Ballet for parents to get tested for Covid for their upcoming journey. We got lost for 10 minutes trying to figure out where the location was, but caught on to it eventually and the process was quick and painless. After that we walked for ten minutes (in the rain) to the bus stop, waited for the bus, and took a 40 minute busride that went past pretty close to my house, to the Arboretum. There we spend considerable time in the Japanese garden taking photos. The great thing about rainy weekdays is that nobody else is around in popular touristy spots so you can take your family photos to your heart's content.

Waited for like 20 minutes for the bus right outside the arboretum and took the bus home. I stopped a few blocks short, we walked to the ATM and deposited money into the machine, and walked home. On the way I told my parents to keep going as I bought burger and fries for them. The fries were pretty good, and apparently the burgers were decent but nothing to write home about. Had leftover pizza and fries for khaaja meal.

Went to the library, chilled a bit, wrote a bunch. On my way back smoked some. Then made an order on amazon, a large order, thought everything was fine and dandy. Didn't realize that I'd made the order to Boston to my old address and realized that only like two days later. Ooops. Maybe I should have bee sober.

Sb came to see us in the evening, we had amaaazing bhaaat and appetizers.

Cheese-mayo breakfast, day off, walgreens check, trip to Northgate, Target amazement, Domino' dinner [Mon 4]

 I took the day of because of the not-great situation in the family and the need to be with my parents and support them through everything. In the morning I had cheese-mayo breakfast that I'd been eating for the past many days.

A bit into the morning we went to Walgreens to check if they had covid shots which they didn't and I checked that there was one for CVS in Northgate so we went there. In the train. Which my mom was super duper excited about. We couldn't find it, and were very disappointed by the situation of the Northgate mall, but we did find a target and everybody got quite eager. There we found out everything my parents wanted and beyond, since there trip had been cut short by two months.

Then we discovered the CVS was there too, and I thought I scheduled the covid shots there, but discovered we couldn't make instant appointments off the bat, so that was a bit of a bummer. No worries, we thought, so we carried on with all the new goods into the train station. There the station person gave my parents a brand new orca card with so much money. 

I ordered a cheesy bread and our regular order of pizza from domino's, and we had pizza and cheesy bread for dinner. Everybody loved it, so goddamn satisfying oooof. Great times were had. And also fruits. We filled up on the fruits honestly, so there was a lot of leftover pizza.

Fun walk to the arboreturm, decisions decisions, trader joe's and back [Sun 3]

 Because of various things happening in our family lives we decided to escalate our travel plans and went to the arboretum just to chill, but also check out the japanese garden. The japanese garden was closed however, so I just took a photo outside with my mom. Actually it wasn't closed it was full, so we'd be coming back two days later because it was to be closed the next day. My dad had already walked this place in the morning, so he did the trip twice in a row on the same day. We walked through dense forest, saw a forest-based kindergarten for kids which was wild because I'd only heard of them and never seen. Also got to appreciate the vastness of the place, and the wondering what would have happened if I'd grown up in upper-middle class family and been more sportier. With the conclusion that being the person that I am, I'd have probably ended up where I am anyway. Realizations realizations, amirite. On our way back picked a few things at TJ's. Probably had some leftovers or fruits for dinner, don't remember.

Trip to the library, yummy lunch with dal-bhat-tarkari, journey to the airport, cheesy roti dinner [Sat 2]

 In the morning went to the Library and parents pretended I was abandoning them for good or something. Weather was really crappy, I think I smoked a joint on the way or something, and mostly napped and wasted time there even though I was supposed to be writing and making myself yummier. This may have been the day I almost bought the tickets to the Dominican Republic for parents and was just a single click away but dad told me not to do it because the future was unsure and maybe we should wait for a bit, and I did that, and the rest is history etc.

Back home, had a nice bhat-dal-tarkari meal with alu ko achar and what not. And then dad wanted to go to the airport because he wanted to be sure he knew what to do, so we took the train and went. It was a pretty terrible trip all around, on the train and back but dad got to see the airport and I got to see some very cute girls on the train, didn't do anything about it though because dad was around and I didn't want to get a talking to.

In the evening had the same cheesy roti for dinner that I had the day before.

Volunteer park and back, new friend, yummy roti grilled cheese [Fri 1]

 Writing this almost 4 weeks after, FYI.

Stopped going to the library to write starting about this day because I lost my mojo yadda yadda yadda, and parents encouraged not leaving the house anyway, so also had hard time leaving the house in general or writing anything.

Anyway, I made a new friend in the evening, SA, who needs a lot of attention, talked to them on the way to Volunteer Park at night, and on the way back. Had grilled cheese rotis in the evening, it was so yummy, my mom's wonderful new discovery. With some veggies and interesting spices in there, it could make for a bomb invention real quick, and spread around. The rotis are from TJ's, lachha paratha.

Yeah a big fuckload of daily journal posts are coming, sorry readers

 Yeah, like 25 or 26 days of journal posts incoming, it's possible it's the biggest single dump of journal posts on this blog ever, but that's...hard man, like I really screwed the pooch, nothing I could have done in the time. Various things happened in my life and playing catchup was the only way to do it, and now there's this mess I need to clear. Obviously the information is going to be thoroughly lacking and entirely based on the photos I took on during those days and my GPS entrails but that's what you're gonna get. I'm sorry people I'll try to do better from here on and get the real goodz. Buuut. On the other hand, if this goes as well as I hope it does then in a day or two I'll be completely caught up, full of motivation, and you'll be reading fresh, hot-off-the-press daily journals. Ain't that gonna be so sweet bubba?

Information as junk food and how to get rid of it

Here's the situation, the past several months, or anytime I see an increase in anxiety and loss of control for an extended period o time, I lose my self control and go all in on junk-information. What's junk information? It's an addiction to information that will not interest you otherwise, or be useful in your life, and does not further your life towards the direction you mean to be at, and one you find addictive. Much like red hot cheetos, it's just something that you want, and nothing you can do about it, and you will go to great lengths to achieve it, no questions asked.

Anyway I go to reddit and hackernews (hereby known and previously known in here as the green site and the orange site) and go to fun hobby subreddits, and they're fine whatever but I spend way wayyy too much time learning about the political situation in America or Turkey or what have you, or the state the US semiconductor industry is in and the relative positioning of the players, without really caring for any of it. On the contrary, actually, since I effing hate the tech industry so goddamn much and would rather not have very much to have to do with it.

When I'm feeling better I keep myself busy and distracted and like do fun interesting exciting actual useful things that don't make me feel anxious or hungry for more junk information. Lately I haven't been able to do that, but I can feel something inside me click. Things are a'changin'. I'm feelin' gooood.

Ten places I might settle down at, because why not

1.  Northern Virginia
   
   
2. Seattle / PNW
   
   
3. Boston / Greater Boston Area
   
   
4. SoCal (?)
   
   
5. New Zealand (unlikely)
   
   
6. New Hampshire
   
   
7. Maryland/NJ/PA suburbs
   
   
8. DC
   
   
9. Nepal
   
   
10. Canada?
    

Halloweeng time, not feeling it

I'm gonna be in Nashville for the weekend anyway, and it's not like I make a big deal out of the festival in general but this week I'm specially not feeling it. Unless you count watching What We Do... as a Halloween activity because get. me. in. that. Loving it, absolutely loving the series. Rewatched the first few episodes with SK and he loves it now too!

The whole Turkey situation

 I've not written much on matters of international politics for the past several years because things went by the byside, and I got distracted. But my interests still lie there, particularly the middle east which was the area of concentration in my undergrad studies.

So this whole situation with Turkey. Turkish Pres Erdogan henceforth called Erdo thinks he's a master chess player in 9D and can play his rivals against each other. Well, parties he considers his rivals and pretends to be allies. So he'll buy missiles from Russia, who is Turkey's number one existential threat and in no way I bet seen by Turkish nationalists as a deep and reliable friend, and then buy plans from America who the Turks hate because America and their anti-Western ideologies. And then egg the US on, pretending to support them in one meeting, and then doing the opposite on the other. More recently, his tilt seems to have favored Russia far too strongly.

That's caused a whole lot of recalculation from the EU and America, and the US has strengthened defense ties with Greece, who will be Turkey's primary victims in any act of military aggression. Besides the small barely organized groups in Syria that is. And he also pretended to have ejected 10 western ambassadors but undid that because of course I doubt if any of those countries would have back-filled the position. Only reason the US considers Turkey a strategic asset is because there are US Nuclear Missiles inside an American military base in Turkey.

Anyway, the Turkish Lira has depreciated by a comical amount in the last few years, comical for a 'normal' 'industrializing' country. The problem with Turkey and Erdo is that they think they've reached the status of a first-rate global power because they can bully around their neighbors and pretend they're on par with the big people club by sabre-rattling against Egypt, Israel, whatever. That's like reasonable if they had the military strength and projection abilities to back their confidence, but they don't.

In any case, the only good thing that might come out of the whole fucking situation is if the lira gets too cheap, but the inflation there remains decent so visiting there would be a super duper cheap trip. Otherwise, it's a bad deal for the Turks, and Turkey's neighbors. Get the madman out of the chair, people!

Complaint about facebook

 Face Book is. Da. Worst.

I said it in 2011 when I deleted my primary facebook account, I said the same in 2013 when the remaining account was killed, I kept saying it in 2018 when the facebook documentary came out, and I'm saying it now in 2021 when the facebook papers have been released. It is literally. Crap. Evil. An extension of Fuckerburg's dong, if you may. Hellhound. Gross. Disgusting. I don't want to pick up fights with friends or general acquaintances but I'd very much not at all hire people who've worked at the evil megacorp in the past. Not even get past through the resume phase because yuck. People who will shut the fuck up when they see bad things happening right in front of their eyes are not people you want to be friends with, or even know. They will not be there for you, or anybody you care for. If I worked for facebook right now, I'd ask for a solid 50% raise, or else....Because maaan it must be so hard to justify working for that shitty culture you know, no matter how much money they pay you. I guess though some people don't have souls and that must help. Aaahh what pleasurable situation to be a heartless monster.

But all principles have their prices, and so do I. If facebook offered me, for the exact same position and the level of work I'm putting in right now, ten times the salary I'm paid, I'd join the company. Though not after a hefty no-strings-attached starting bonus. And a whole fucktun more if they want me to put in more effort. Because babe, you want me to put my time energy and mindspace to your bullshit evil genocidal organization? Pay me a literal fuckton billions and billions because my conscience is not cheap. Etcetera.

Twitter is like, alright, whatever, if you know how to mute correctly

 I signed into twitter to check what was up after a very long time, and things were...just the same? Not much had changed since I was around. Except a lot of crypto bullshit to which I added several new muted words, and the whole chappelle thing is it's own thing, but besides that, because I'd muted all the annoying stressful words I only saw relatively chill posts. It was nice. Except the anger against facebook. Jeebus people how the hell have you waited for this long to come around, where were you literally ten years ago when I was quitting facebook and telling y'all these very same things? I guess it's relevant because they're both social media or something.

Oh and the number of my followers had gone up, and a friend of mine added back which felt good hahah ready to take any small victory I get right now. My follower to following ratio is, as they say, da bomb. Also need to complain about facebook in a separate post, just remembered that.

Ten random sentences

 Looky here I'm in a rush, need to go to Sk's for dinner, come back and sleep on time so I get enough sleep to be up tomorrow for work. And I also need to put out a decent number of posts so that it's not too much of a pressure on me to get the requisite number of posts out tomorrow. Which is why I'm dumping this, and possibly two more posts out in a matter of minutes and seconds, because I need to be OFF, and get something produced with minimal investment of time and creative energy. Here. We. Go!

1. Was it the sweater, he thought, that made her look cute, or was it her body, specifically on her chest part that he couldn't keep his eyes off of despite being an avowed feminist who had practiced on various internet sites to not be distracted by women's bodies.
   
   
2. Not everything needs a goddamn reason, alright man, just, just get out of here and gimme time to think, I'll come back to you in some time, Robby said to Jonnuy, who had asked him why the sky was blue, feeling rather disappointed in himself afterwords for losing his temper at the four-year-old child of his.
   
   
3. Yeah, but they're not pugs, I said bugs, not pugs.
   
   
4. Whatever the cause may have been, what was done was done, and now they needed to deal with three thousand pounds of dried venison meat that had been sent to them for free with no return address.
   
   
5. Noooo, he said, that button opens the trapdoor to the shark pit!
   
   
6. I wonder, she thought, if anybody's tried killing their own shadow.
   
   
7. I'm not paranoid and delusional, I just know all the secret armies of the world want to kill me and have bugged my house because they don't want me to release my revolutionary bidet that's going to put out every bidet company and the toilet paper industry out of business.
   
   
8. After the utter failure of his second business venture, The ShoeLala store, Michael put his final personal savings on the lottery ticket, to be rewarded with a hundred thousand dollar prize, which is how he became a gambling addict.
   
   
9. Stop talking, you're turning me on too much.
   
   
10. Can you pass me my wallet from over there, and owh that garbage bag too, actually why don't you take it out with you as you leave, in like, ten minutes?
    

My 120 bucks worth of junk supplement nootropics that I hope to all the gods work, have shipped

 As I possibly, potentially, definitely alluded to in the posts in the past, I've ordered from a bulk supply company a hundo and twenty bucks worth of supplements, that would have cost me around five hundo in retail. And ye gods I hope they work because I do need a fix for my anxiety and sleeplessness and the general laziness too, but with the new regimen I'm starting from tomorrow, I think that won't be needed. Hopefully. But still a good idea to have as a backup.

Here's the deal. I know, for sure, that just like junk weight loss or control medication that's all junk or lies or fraud, most of 'mental wellbeing' supplements are unproven science, snake oil, trying to take advantage of the most desperate ones. The sort of people who need to be the most questioning of such substances and instead work towards bettering themselves. Bettering how? By getting good sleep at regular hours, regular workouts and exercise, good food, some supplements, good therapist and some nice mindful meditation. But the thing is humans being want to cheat, and swallowing something after spending money on it is way, wayyy easier than working hard to improve yourself.

On the other hand, such medication can provide the 'push' to one's "ED" (executive function, not erectile dysfunction) so that one's in a good place. Plus, even if they are mostly flour and sugar, the fact that one is 'taking' something can help one with the motivation to improve and get better, start working out. Like my friend NG who started working out and biking hardcore after he got his super duper expensive apple watch. The apple watch by itself didn't change his physiology but it changed enough of the psychology to motivate him to become a sportier person.

I already got my sports watch and it's not an apple one, rather it cost less than a third of a real iwatch. And it's helped me keep track of my shit. And it's told me I need to improve my sleep, get more workout, get better at meditation. I'm hoping this is the final push until I can become a fully formed and cooked human being.

Five Bizarre fictional scenarios

1. Harry Potter shows up to the Folsom Street Festival with one of the wizards from the waverly place, or like a male friend of Sabrina the teenage. People recognize him and confusion ensues, the wizarding media goes bonkers.
   
   
2. The guy from 1984, Winston, it turns out was the perfectly suitable guy to work in the authoritarian government, not stupid enough to buy into all the propaganda, ballsy enough to actually try to foment an insurrection but not intelligent enough to actually mount a full-on rebellion against the Big Brother, and sensible enough that he knows that any sort of funny business will be immediately detected and he'll be sent to the camps, for good this time. He progresses through the upper echelons of the party machinery, marries that woman who he doesn't love anymore, they have a very boring marriage during which they both cheat on their partners, and the children are very cynical about the way the world works.
   
   
3. Michael from The Office takes up skiing discovers he's really really good at it just like with ice-skating, does it more often until he can participate in amateur competitions. Things progress and he start taking up mountaineering as a hobby, travels internationally to climb mountains, and makes a bit of money off of that. Unfortunately dies during a freak snowstorm on Mt. Kilimnajaro.
   
   
4. You know like, fight club? Well it turns out there WERE two guys, it was just the Helena Bonhem Carter's character who was deluded and confused, along with everybody else. The bad guy goes to prison for imprisoning and doing bad things with the good guy, and also causing all the death and destruction yadda yadda yada, the good guy comes out of therapy after a few years and goes back into the finance industry, much more cynical about the world. He is one of the causes of the 2008 recession.
   
   
5. Scooby Doo but in 2021, and they go solve unsolved crimes in the Rust belt towns, where conservatives will try to drive them away because of their new black group member.
   

What are the ways to rebrand a forward-looking ideology

1. New progerssives
   
   
2. The builders
   
   
3. Big America, Powerful America
   
   
4. Houses for Americans
   
   
5. Ride to the Future
   
   
6. Drain the brains, to America!
   
   
7. The doers party
   
   
8. The responsibility party
   
   
9. New Liberals
   
   
10. Middle-class and High-earning America party
    

Ten annoying text mannerisms I hate yet use

1. LOL
   
   
2. LMAO
   
   
3. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
   
   
4. (heart) (heart) (heart)
   
   
5. <insert something semi-flirty here> JKJKJKJK
   
   
6. SEND SELFIE SAVE STREAK
   
   
7.  (!!!!) <when sbody hasn't replied in a while>
   
   
8. "Ew" (when somebody apologizes)
   
   
9. Those goddamn snapchat animated emoji things whatever, also the annoying gross viber ones
   
   
10. The filters on snapchat that make you look like a frog, either you want the people in your snapchat to know who you are, or you don't, what are you even..with never showing your face frfr but only through the froggie filter?
    

Ten nonsensical questions we could all do away with, really people

1. For realz?
   
   
2. Wait are you kidding me?
   
   
3. Are you sure you want to quit?
   
   
4. Are you sure you want to delete your facebook account? Your friends will really really really miss you!
    
5. Who's your daddy? Daddy swami D
   
   
6.  What the hell?
   
   
7. What?
   
   
8. Who said?
   
   
9. What's updog?
   
   
10. Seriously?
    

My hairloss is getting fucking crazy and I hate it

 Have I mentioned this before because I don't care I can talk about it for a thousand times.

Since last year my hair has started thinning considerably, to the point that I'm pretty much in the category of 'bald guy' instead of 'thin hair person'. Really it's remarkable how quickly this happened, and unless I trim my hair real short, people can tell me I'm an old loser and not a youngun with an old soul.

I've talked to roommates about potential options, looked up online, and it appears that the site or company Hims is a good solution to fixing recent hairloss. But also it's expensive, not guaranteed, and unclear if it's gonna work at all. Additionally I don't know if I care enough about losing my hair in the crown area and in the front because like, what am I showing off anyway, right?

On the other hand I talked to ED the other day and she said she knew somebody who went to Turkey on a tourist visa and for sixteen hundos they got a nice hair graft with a full head of hair, plus a short little vacation. Visa fee and flights covered. It's understandable, I can see that, considering turkey until recently was a pretty advanced country with reasonable exchange rate, but now that the madman running the government is trying the best he can to dig it deep down, the exchange rate has taken the biggest hit ever, and it's way way more cheaper than it's ever been. Like unbelievably cheap. And their exchange rate has fallen much faster than their inflation, so things are crazy cheap right now, at least what's not imported.

Anyway, what a distraction. The point I'm making is, I guess there's an option with getting my hair fixed, but I'm still not very happy that I'm at that phase in life.

My work laptop is on its deathbed and I'm a little worried

 My work laptop is on its deathbed.

I say that not as a greedy employee who needs his machine updated every few years but as somebody who's been using the same piece of hardware for the past four years, and the model itself is almost seven years old also about the time when my company bought it. And the fact that the battery indicator for the machine says that the machine needs repair, and there's a slight chance the battery might explode or like leak. Also the battery literally pretty much doesn't last for longer than 20 minutes even though when I started, it went for hours and I was impressed at it. It's bad.

I should have done it last year honestly but I was afraid, with the uncertainties of covid and the job situation and potential firings, that they might decide that the cost of one extra laptop on me was not worth it, and they might take this as an opportunity to re-evaluate my contribution to the company and show me the door. Now that it seems I'm more safely and securely rooted into the company, it might be about time to make my move and ask for a new machine. Because I'm thinking if I wait until the machine completely gives up, it would be at least a few days of wasted time trying to setup the new operating system, my passwords and secure keys and everything and even then my workflow is going to be hindered as I get used to and adjust the new system to my liking. Better now than later, that's what I say.

Unclear what the company has to say on that though, and a small part of me doesn't want to know.

This is a great sponsored video/ad, congrats to Google for figuring it out!

 Regular readers of this blog are aware about how I'm obsessed with Taskmaster yadda yadda yadda. They've been posting a bunch of those short strange videos lately to their youtube channel and I was a bit confused at first because it didn't make sense even though I enjoyed them no less than regular videos, until it became clear they were actually ads for google translate. And really, what a great goddamn ad for a great freakin' product. Congratulations to the folks at taskmaster and at google ad related teams for figuring this out!

the plan

The plan
Is moving
To being
Closer
With
Friends
And family
The loved ones
With work
And play
And you
By side
Lets hurry up
No time to waste
What stops you
From haste
Don't
Let
The past
Get in the way
Of what makes you
Happ-pay,
Now is the time
To make the jump
And not like,
Stay home
Watching forest gump.
Let's
Do.
This.

I will live by checklists starting tomorrow, dear readers, and that's a promise

I know I've complained and cried about how nothing's right, how I've forgotten all the discipline yadda yadda yadda and now I'm like an unmolded clay, a bicycle without a handlebar, just running about in circles not sure what to do through the course of the day, sleeping far to late and waking not late enough feeling groggy the entire day and yet still not doing any productive and still sleeping late only to continue the vicious cycle and so forth. But no more. Thanks to the push I've gotten from this blog, my life in general, and the fact that I have far too much time on my hands now that I've got not much else to be distracted with, I'm now declaring here, DECLARING that tomorrow shall be the start of the rest of my life and not in the obvious and jokey way as I will be going back to my daily checklists and living by them for at least a week, no less. If things don't work out, I'll just note what did not work out, and going back to fixing what was the issue. The way to being successful is not to try at all, but to keep trying, noting what the causes of failure are, fixing them, and trying again, again and again until you succeed. And that's what I'll be doing. Starting tomorrow morning. You got my word, chubs.

I've rediscovered the precious lemon tea we had back in school, it's wonderful

I explained in one of the earlier posts how I'm super sensitive to caffeine which is why I won't drink tea or coffee, and it causes me anxiety etcetera. But without caffeine I'm told it's difficult if not impossible to be a completely functioning human being in the modern world, so I've turned to semi-steeping the tea for short period of time to get weaker tea and less caffeine into my veins. But then the tea tastes just terrible, a pathetic lightly muddied water that smells vaguely of something you smelled while shiting in the fields in a village many years ago. Not something you'd want to drink on a daily basis.

My solution has been to add honey, black salt (or pink salt, as the case may be because that's all I got), and lime. But because lime is called lemon in Nepal, I'll call it lemon tea. Since I don't have lime with me, actually I do but often too lazy to hack a nice round piece of it, I've been using the dehydrated slices from last year that I brought with me from Boston, and honestly, it's been pretty great. Yes, I do get a little bit of a headache and heartache and slight anxiety, but shit gets done.

This is the same recipe (similarish anyway) we used to go to shoppes outside our school for, and man it was so refreshing then. Just as refreshing now. Sometimes I miss the weather and the vibe, but that's not very often.

Is it the golden age of comedy, or does it just feeel that way

 I ask because I've heard Conan O' Brien, among other comedians, talk about how tough it must be a modern comedian. Not only do you have to compete with other amazing comedians, from all over the world in hundreds of proper conventional media and on youtube for viewers and entertainment, you are also going against once-in-a-trillion events that should and could never ever have happened and nobody would have believed you if you had seen one happen, but are captured all the time now because of the law of numbers and the fact that everybody's got a camera and a videocamera and a snarky comment to go along with it. So you have to compete with hundreds and thousands of videos of a cat jumping right on the same moment a bird is flying nearby, so it enters his mouth, but the cat tilts its head just so the bird escapes but not before it hits the tummy of a child who then starts crying and oh the cat falls into a pile of poop and then the child becomes a fucking megastars raking hundreds of millions of views, becoming a millionaire in a few short months.

Even with that though, there's fantastic 'alt' comedy being produced, in addition to the regular conventional network and cable comedies being produced in ridiculous numbers. There's panel shows, reality-type shows, straight-out comedies, two-camera, single-camera, quirky talk shows, you can't even keep track of a very small subset of a particular sub-genre of comedies being produced. SO much content, and all of it, in my humble opinion, quite fucking fantastic.

I wonder if we're truly living in the golden age of comedy or if every generation feels the same, even when they had like two network television channels to choose from and a handful of total comedy shows being broadcast at any given time. Hmmm.

Also, hydrogen is the future, but the edgelord general doesn't want you to know that

 Right, the great thing about hydrogen is it is easy to transport and store, has energy density that's very comparable to current fuel cell technology. The crappy thing is that hydrogen needs to come from somewhere and right now the quickest and the cheapest source of hydrogen is the cracking of natural fossil fuels. And that it can be dangerous as it's highly inflammable, but not as much as it's made out to be. The biggest advantage though is that we won't have to fundamentally re-imagine and recreate our infrastructure, and we will be able to move to the new world by modifying the current structures instead of changing our behavior and attitude towards vehicles fundamentally. Also, it is super duper friendly to public transport and large commercial vehicles, very much more so than the alternatives. And, and, and, it is also amenable to being generated in smaller power plants such as solar farms, wind farms etcetera, so it could utilize the EV infrastructure without much hassle.

The biggest problem with hydrogen is that it offers a viable alternative to whatever the edgelord general felonking is selling, and he will go to great lengths to undermine and besmirch anything that gets in the way of him and his trillionaire status. The pumper will say and do whatever to undermine literally everybody else who has the same goals he pretends to have in his mad quest for absurdly large amounts of money. But tell that to his cult members, and they will all but hack you to death.

Alas.

Hope Toyota et al. put more effort into this.

Okay this is fucking' fantastic, aka THIS should be the future of electric vehicles/trucks

 The problem with going all-in on EV's is that the charging situation doesn't work out for various reasons. First, the batteries we have currently don't hold enough charge, in not ideal efficiency, are far too expensive, difficult to dispose of or recycle, and more importantly the current infrastructure is thoroughly unsuitable for an electric vehicle world. If suddenly all vehicles on the road were electric tomorrow, the peaks in electric demand in the mornings and evenings would cause our power systems to crash and destroy the electric grid.

Here however is an alternative: overhead power cables for large trucks and buses which have spare batteries to go about, so their range is extended but also to charge them as they move so the usage peaks aren't extreme. This should be the future of large commercial electric trucks.

Oopsie realization: there CAN be such a thing as an 'over' fried rice

 I wrote yesterday on how I should learn to cook quicker because my meals take forever to make which is why I don't want to put an effort into them. I gave an example of the fried rice dish I was cooking that took me forever to make.

Well the results are out and uhh, not a surprise here, but I overfried the rice, it's too dry. It's not too crunchy fortunately but it's definitely not properly edible all by itself. It needs something to go with it. Which is fortunate for me in this particular instance as I also have a tonne of leftover dal from way back that I haven't gotten an opportunity to make use of. If that dal weren't around, I'd be in for some tough times.

Whatever happened to...Terrace House?

 I remember going all gaga over Terrace House, the japanese reality tv show with real people where most drama was low-stakes and we fell in and out of love with those real people. Who can forget our love for Minori and her fascination with the baseball playing goon who it later turns out had done some porn, or the nice older Japanese architect who was nice and sweet to everybody, including the girl whose name meant summer but whose attitude was quite cold? Or the Hawaiian dudebro Arman with his chill attitude and surfing equipment and what not...

We know of course that Nettflix cancelled the show after an unfortunate incident involving bullying of a contestant in the house, and her suicide later, which while not connected directly to the show, gave a bad name to the other contestants and the producers for creating an inhospitable environment. So now the show's gone, kaput, kapow, bam!

But those times, and those people, man, I miss the idea of waiting a few days to catch up on the people you knew and their low-stakes lives. It wasn't like anything exciting or dramatic was gonna happen, or anything particularly bad one would hope, it felt like you were catching up on old friends and what they were up to. It made you feel connected with your tribe.

Miss ya terrace house. The crappy people at Nepali Blind Date don't deserve to carry your torch at all.

I think I discovered my secret confidence juice

 It's a cup of strong japanese Sencha tea, on a half-empty stomach (or half-full, yeah yeah yeah), about two shots, possibly a bit more of vodka on the rocks, and several strong put not overpoweringly so puffs of good devil's lettuce. The tea gives me the energy and caffeine, the lettuce suppresses the anxiety that caffeine provides, and also the rather unpleasant effects of vodka, and vodka removes the inhibitions. A killer combo, if I may. Still figuring it out though. I'm wondering if my exact biological makeup at the time, including the food I'd eaten before, and the supplements I'd been taking come to play here as well. I had taken some very crappy kraton a day or two before that, but my understanding is it fades away after 24 hours, so it's probably not too important in the cocktail. I would very much hope not because what an unpleasant shit that crap is dear god.

Finished watching three seasons of What We Do in the Shadows, with exceptions

 Watched a few episodes after work today and finally done with the entirety of the broadcast series, except a couple of exceptions. There's a few episodes towards the end of season 2 which are not available in my...piracy site of choice, and season 3's final episode hasn't been released yet, I'm excited because we'll finally get the reveal on what's up with Colin Robinson!

I already did put down my quote-unquote review of the show earlier, and I don't want to do a proper formal thing because man I really like the show and want you to watch it, look at Matt Berry who's a fucking comedy genius, Natasia Demetriou who's amazing as we've talked before, Kayvan Novak who's a lovely teddy bear, Mark Proksch whom we all dearly love, and Gizmo. Who doesn't love Gizmo. This is classic Jermaine Clement and Taika Waikiki creation, abso-fuckin-fantastic.

I'll be discussing, I'm thinking, the specific plot points in the future. As always, this is a work in progress.

On Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, and choosing a teacher

Long live Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the author of  Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, has died. May his memory live until the last of humans live in this existence, and in that way, may he me immortal.

For the past several weeks and months, possibly years, I have been searching for a Philosophical and spiritual guide, somebody to help me throw the cobweb of confusion and choice. Now that I don't have to be anywhere, my days are unstructured confusing and all-over-the-place. Sad and pathetic, that's what it is. And with so many options to choose the direction of one's spiritual and philosophical principles towards, it was getting confusing. The paradox of choice: the more choices you have, the poorer you are at making them because you find them overwhelming.

I've talked about the book and the guy in the past, possibly, I don't remember, but this is it. That is going to be by holy book, the tome by whose words I shall live by life by for the foreseeable future. Because in life it doesn't matter -- unless you really really fuck things up, or have a really bad starting hand to play with -- what direction you take, everybody ends up in a similar place either way. It's just the fact that you have to choose, take the first step, and be confident in your way that matters. Somebody lost but way ahead is not particularly ahead compared to somebody just starting out but clear in the direction they want to go, even if the way is rather long and unconventional. And this way is clearly not it. Living by the book, that'll be my goal from here onwards.

I have chosen my teacher.

The Demetriou siblings are a comedy powerhouse from the UK

 Natisia Demetriou I've come to appreciate from what we do in the shadows, and her and her brother from Stath Lets Flats. What a bizarre interesting, rather unexplored niche they've discovered and successfully executed in British comedy, I'm quite envious. Their great works have entertained British comedy plans and fans from all over the world, and it's clear this is just the beginning of what is going to be long an illustrious careers, no doubt. We live in the golden age of smart comedy, if I may say so, ignore the haters and the annoying toads.

Matt Berry the national treasure, how did I not know of him

 Matt Berry, the son of the original CEO and the CEO of the organization form 'IT Crowd' I thought was an okay actor when I'd only watched the show. Now that I've seen what we do in the shadows, and several of his other shows, as well as read interviews by his co-cast members and directors and writers, I know the man is a goddamn national treasure, so funny and talented and creative, and what honor it is for anybody to be able to work with somebody with his talent. I've come around to accept the great man's genius, and what a pleasure it is. Rock on, Matt Berry!

Some people suffer covid for far too long

 Sbody I knew got the 'vid, and two weeks later she was all set to be out and about, be back to work, so she got tested all grumpy and sad she'd have to go to work, back on track. What she found will blow your mind, for the virus of covid, hadn't left behind. That is right, she was still positive, incapable of making the healthy exit. They said to her, no no no babe, you can't come back in, until you're all in the negative. So now she sleeps, bored out of her mind, trying to piece things together, gotta get back in the grind. Two or three days, she says, is when I will, get the test again, so I may feel swill. I will rule the world, smell the flowers, get done with this horror-hour.

Hey ey ey Seattle babe

Hey ey ey
Seattle babe
Why you gotta be
So cold and full of
Hate
You say you ain't cold
Just careful
But by chillin' bones
Think that's all bull'
What of those
That complain
All you do is freeze
Hide your heart
Hide your feels
And run away to the cave?
How will we ever
Get to know
Each other
If I'm here out
And you there
Freezing shut.