Review of The Secret History of Food - Audiobook

I listened to this book over five or so hours across yesterday and today, quick review.

What I really liked about the book was its courage in dealing with widely unrelated topics, the breadth and depth of research the author had gone into, his chill attitude, and his 'holistic' approach to the history of several of the important items in our pantries.

What I didn't like was his...I don't know how to describe it...cynicism...that came through even in the voice of the professional voice artist, regarding several issues he was talking about. He wants to be an academic, but can't keep his dripping sneering cynicism about the world and dare I say 'capitalism' to himself, despite him being unable to make the connection to the core content clearly. And the things he has issues with are strange...he complains about 'forced labor of bees'... but never once of forced 'death' of all feed animals, or even the negative health effects of sugar, despite talking about potential downsides of Vitamin B supplements somehow. How he didn't think to mention the downsides of overeating, sugar and all of that, while moaning about some very specific things I don't know.

A decent book, that feels slightly incomplete, and a bit strangely framed. If the author had let in his academic side more strongly through than his activist side, the book would have been so much better.

Review of Harlots Whores and Hackabouts - The Audiobook

I listened to the Harlots, Whores and Hackabouts book over the course of four or five hours yesterday and the day before. Quick review.

Let me begin by saying I loved the book, the length was nearly not enough and I could have easily listened to a book twice as long. It was interesting, exciting and hella wild, all the things that have happened, the history of sex work throughout history in one big gulp basically.

The book was read by its author who is clearly quite passionate about the matter and who's an activist. It wouldn't have been a big deal if not for the fact that her passion and anger came through so strongly in the book that I'd much rather have preferred to have read it instead because I can't handle the strong emotions in my audiobook, I'm listening to be tantalized and entertained and maybe for a bit of a laugh, not to be provoked and angered. In the end it was fine, the book would have been much better if it had been read by a professional voice artist, but regardless, wonderful book. Recommend!

Travel plans confirmed and permissioned

Quick update on travel plans. I'd been assuming I'd have to lie and undermine my situation at work to go on the trip to the East, but turns out the monthlong trip I'd been planning and had bought tickets for had already been sanctioned at worked. So no need to sneak around and lie and pretend I was in a whole different time zone than I actually was at, which is good. But the fun of rebellion is reduced a bit, suppose I could live with that.

I'm most definitely not looking forward to the coldest month of the year in one of the colder parts of the country, it'll be so fucking miserable and dreary and brown and white outside, with little to do and nowhere to go to, my walks will be reduced significantly if any of it will remain at all. The hope is the audiobooks remain and I keep reading and listening and writing, at least on my kindle if not here, necessarily.

I'm on an audiobook-listening rampage, and dear gods I hope this goes on forever!

Since listening the "A Brief History of Vice" book...two days ago...I've completed two more audiobooks..and that doesn't even include the James Acaster show that was also an audiobook that I finished...Soo I've gotten used to listening to podcasts over the past five/seven years, and have gotten used to listening to 'tv shows' (no quotes needed) in the same time period as well. Which means audio books should be the next step.

The reason I had not been listening to audiobooks all this time is: I was too intimidated. I thought books were serious things that needed lots of attention to be put, that one would need to remember what was consumed and not just sample things, that 'cheating' by jumping around was no fair. But turns out if I don't do that I don't get any reading or listening at all so I have had to lower the expectations of how much information I'm okay extracting and retaining from books. And audiobooks are the perfect medium. They're no different from long podcasts...No, they're exactly long podcasts if I listen one chapter at a time, and the distinction between long podcasts like hardcore history, and more casual history audiobooks is so little, it's not worth caring. So yeah I don't need to be intimidated by audio books anymore.

Anyway, so if I can consistently listen to audiobooks, like I have been doing until now, I'm up 4 books finished and halfway to fifth in five days this week...I'll easily reach and exceed my 'reading' expectation I had set, of like reading 30 minutes a day. I'm like listening to podcast and other stuff for several hours a day, and if I can get used to listening to books at 2x the speed like I do with audiobooks, a book-a-day is not just achievable, it can be done easily, even during workdays. What if...and tell me if this sounds like a crazypants idea...I listen to TWO books a day...that's sixty books a month! Man, just the book reviews would be a third of the posts on this blog, which would make it a book-review blog. I wouldn't mind that because it does need a direction of sorts besides my journaling and that'd be a cool direction to take. Right, the point is that listening to audiobooks on 2x speed is achievable, and it helps me concentrate on other things and I should do it more aggressively!

Exciting times are ahead, and I really really mean it, man

Turns out I am serviced by most well-resourced Libraries in online books and audiobooks

It'll be a quick one because in no other circumstance have I resisted writing as much as I've been doing for the last several days and yet write I must, something must go down on the paper...the metaphorical one that lies in front of me, for the month is set to end in 30 minutes and I'm lagging behind.

I searched up libraries with the greatest overdrive resources in terms of ebooks and audiobooks to borrow and turns out King County Library and Sno-Isle libraries are two library systems who are on the list of the top-5 most well-resourced organizations. Which wasn't a big surprise, considering I got kcls membership after finding that out, but still it felt good to know that I was being served by the best of the best and if something wasn't available to me, it likely wasn't available to a whole lot of other people either!

So yeah, good times. Guess that explains the 22 books borrowed in my libby app, 11 of them audio books. Whoppe, so much reading will be done!

Review of James Acaster's Findings The audiobook

I listened to this super short audiobook the first among all of the audiobooks by borrowing it in the Libby app. Quick review.

It's James's material from his earlier standup career, and it's alright. I didn't like the 'skit' nature of some the routine, and his supporting cast were the least favourite part of the audiobook for me. Besides that, most of the material i'd heard elsewhere in his Netflix specials, but still enjoyed them. Would definitely not have paid to buy this audiobook, but as a quick pick-me-up, it was funny, if you find it on youtube or can borrow it from the local library, would be worth to check it out if you're interested in checking james out.

List of books currently on my library shelf, borrowed

1.  Big Magic - Elizabeth Gilbert
   
   
2. Flow  - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
   
   
3. Move - Caroline Williams
   
   
4. Sacred Herbal & Heeling Beers - Stephen Buhner
   
   
5. Tinker Dabble Doodle Try - Srini Pillay
   
   
6. The Self Delusion - Gregory Berns
   
   
7. Blank - Giles Paley-Phillips
   
   
8. Real Artists Have Day Jobs - Sara Benincasa
   
   
9. Hallucinations - Oliver Sachs
   
   
10. A brief history of Vice - Robert Evans
    
    
11. Strong Female Character - Fern Brady
    
    
12. The Checklist Manifesto - Atul Gawande
    
    
13. The History of the World in 6 Glasses - Tom Standage
    
    
14. How to Feed a Dictator - Witold Szablowski
    
    
15. A Curious History of Sex - Katie Lister
    
    
16. Thinking About it Only Makes it Worse - David Mitchell
    
    
17. The Restaurant - A History of Eating Out - William Sitwell
    
    
18. The Book of Spice - John O' Connell
    
    
19. Harlots, Whores & Hackabouts - Kate Lister
    
    
20. A Secret History of Food - Matt Siegel
    
    
21. Dining Out - A Global History of Restaurants - Katie Rawson, Elliott Shore
    

Egg and potatoes for lunch, wasting time in the cold, afternoon nap, earbuds arrive, new rental agreement is received, walk to volunteer park, audiobooking, sandwich dinner, much reading and writing, late to bed [Thu 30]

I'm writing this on Sunday evening, as usual writing on the weekend has taken a bit of a backseat due to being specially busy. No worries, the writing shall continue.

Had eggs and potatoes for lunch, skipping the pancakes entirely this time around because there was so much fucking potatoes, I needed to finish them, it was already a week of eating leftovers!

Hella cold outside in the apartment, I just shivered, took a nap and chilled. Went downstairs and discovered the new earbuds and my new rental agreement explaining the rent increase had arrived. Have couple of months to make decision there.

Went to volunteer park while listening to audiobooks, walked for the standard 3 rounds. Made sandwich with tofu for dinner at home, read a bunch in my kindle, wrote like a bunch of posts, and went to bed really really late because it was friday the next morning and I was feeling quite unmotivated to write.

The new set of bluetooth earbuds have arrived, the old fashioned ones, and life is back to being normal again

It's some good news for my listenin' habits: the new set of bluetooth earbuds with wire joining them has arrived, so I don't need to fear losing the individual 'pods' or putting them in some stupid box to charge anymore. More importantly, they've got those rubber covers that fit in my ear canals perfectly, so no need to fear accidentally losing those buds outside! Normalcy has been restored!

Meeting a friend's beau etc

 In the future, aka the first day of December I'll get dinner with friend AR(e) and her fiancee. I'll have had a really good time, connect with the guy really well and think of him as such an adult and grown up and feel a little bad about myself but also there will be a lot to connect over, about the place he's coming from, about the future plans and interactions with Nepali girls and class matters and all of that, and I'll tease A about finding a good partner when he's in the loo and she'll say things about it being not too hard and yeah people who've lived here have really hard time connecting with folks who have not and we'll agree and we'll talk about how it would not have worked out with some people who were here but some class matters would have come on the way etcetera and we'll have had such a good time no food will have been eaten until like half past twelve by which time everything will be so cold and dead A won't eat at all (also because it'll be hella spicy) and Ar will take multiple servings and good sense will be felt, and they'll stay until pretty much 2 in the morning and I'll feel like I was fortunate enough to show them a good time, and it'll just be the starting of a long and eventful weekend, but I don't technically know that because this is just the last week of November, all things considered.

Eggs, potatoes and millet pancake for lunch, early afternoon walk to volunteer-interlaken parks, so much audio-booking, WC hang and Bombay burger dinner, early to bed without writing because super tired [Wed 29]

For brunch I had eggs,potatoes and millet pancakes. I've gotten really good at making millet and buckwheat pancakes without adding a lot of extra crud, happy about that.

Headed out early in the afternoon to go to Voluneteer and Interlaken parts, heard a tonne of audiobooks, basically 1.5 audiobooks finished, both of them have been reviewed here previously, felt quite accomplished.

Read more audiobooks after coming back. Like this is a bumper crop of productivity for me right now. If only I can force myself to read and write more, and not make this such a a big deal and treat it all like podcasts instead of a phd degree, I'm going to be so productive and well-rested too!

In the evening went to hang out with WC at Bombay Burger, classic paneer tikka burger and fries, talks of fermentation and wc's shop and personal matters.

Came back, tried to force myself to write, but I really really couldn't I was so shockingly tired for some strange reason, probably the cold that I had to sleep. Ugh.

The Domino's pan pizza ooof

Originally titled on Oct 21, couple of days before I left for Nepal which feels like freaking ages ago, so much has effing happened since, ugh ugh ugh. They say you don't want to live in interesting times and  oh how much do I buy into that!

I got the Domino's pan pizza right, picked it up, the 2 topping one with mushroom and pineapple and myaaaan is it so freaking' good. It's filling, emotionally and physically and I wouldn't mind marrying it and having babies with it, really that's how comfortable and safe it makes me feel.

Need I say more? I have high standards too!

Medical checkup, Vietlicious lunch, walk to work and back, making new friends, audiobook in one big gulp, leftover dinner, late to bed [Tue 28]

Early in the morning-ish, went to the test lab to get my blood tested. I got good news and bad news, the good news is my weight is constant, the blood sugar is good, and I haven't gotten much fatter. The bad news is the carbohydrates situation is quite terrible and so is trigyceraides, which means I need to eat better and work out better, the two worse things that can happen to one.

Got lunch at Vietlicious on the way back, it was yummy, wrote a review of it here.

Went to office in the afternoon, met a bunch of new and old coworkers, made new friends, didn't get anything good to drink because it was all gone by the time I reached there, and then finally fixed the office ID card situation so I don't have to use both my cards, which was a stupid situation.

Listened to the audiobook on the history of vice, didn't write until late in the evening and then went to bed super duper late because of 'reasons'.

How do I

How do I
Become
Somebody else,
Who does things better
than the rest?
How do I win
the competitions
and how do I run
the great treadmill?
How to I find
all those wonderful things
that give 'em so much
shared joy,
and how do I
move away from
my ascetic peace?

How do I
actually
change things,
How do I
bring about peace,
how do I
help others
and how do I
give them bliss?
How do I
get involved
in the matters of the state,
and how do I help
elect the right politicians, mate?

So many things to learn,
so few hints,
so few people
to take with.

Don't worry, just be!

You cannot win,
You silly thing,
In your hobbies.

You don't do things,
to be better than the rest,
you do them because
of the peace it gives you
and the sense that
you are doing your best.

Don't compete
with the machine
for it is the beast
that excels in winning
the competition,
and so when
you do win, somehow maybe,
the taste of victory
will be short
and unsatisfying,
and instead you will
have drunk the poison
of dissatisfaction
and agony.

Live, love, live
and enjoy the little things
that will bring
you joy...
But don't rush to jump
into joy,
because remember
it is not a competition,
and the machines
will have you beat
there too...
in your quest
to find joy
the quickest.

What you must do,
is live, and love
and just be
and create the best
memory.

Machine away your life

Get your ChatGPT
to compete with me,
and bask in the glory
of all those words
you have written,
in proxy
by the machine.

Get your copter,
And your rover,
Out in the open
To go on walks
On your behalf
So you may feel
The glorious rush
Of the adrenaline.

To take care of your plants
Write your code and create
Robotic transplants
So they may water and take care
Of the little green babies
And bask in the joy
Of plant parenthood.

And automate away
all the fun in life
and the hard work
that is to be done,
so you may relax...
and succeed in...
what exactly?

For brother,
What is life,
If full of care,
you have no time
to stand and stare?

I have organized my spices and flours and cereals like a king, this will make cooking so much easier

This happened last week, got around to writing it just now, but what has happened over the last two weeks is I unpacked all the spices and cereals and flours I brought from Nepal and decided to put them in the kitchen. But my kitchen organization was not perfect, so I had to consolidate a bunch of jars, throw old ones out, and bring larger jars from 'storage area' to the forefront because I had like 5lb flour packets to keep. Millet and buckwheat and sattu stuff mostly. And then replace the spices or add new ones.

And that went so smoothly, I'm actually excited to use my kitchen now. Like everything is perfectly arranged and labelled, I know exactly where to look for something, and if I'm not sure I can always check for the labels. Yeah the old spices aren't as well-labelled as the new jars, but eventually everything will be properly labelled and put, and it'll be the height of organized cooking, it's still pretty good though.

Feels so good to organize things, know what lies where, and use your tools and ingredients like you know them like that back of your hand man, the level of comfort with my kitchen and a sense of ownership was all I needed, it turns out, to start cooking more, in a regular pattern!

Organizing and re-designing my bedroom remains the last step before I become the master of my Seattle domain

I've written about this before, but I'm comfortable with the state of my living room, my plants look healthy, my carpet and sitting arrangement is decent, and there's not too many things I want to change. Even the wall decoration is perfect at this point, there is not a single wall that I feel is underdecorated save for maybe one corner but ohh something or other will come I'm sure.

My kitchen is well-equipped, it's already got enough devices I don't care for, the massive microwave that AKS brought in while I was away may need to go. So I'm happy with how my kitchen looks.

The only part of the apartment I don't feel at home fully is my bedroom. It's floor sleeping, which is fine whatever, it's a japanese mattress but besides a shiva poster that my parents sent, there's not much hanging on the walls, or really anything functional or non-functional that makes me want to show my bedroom to anybody. TO put it differently, it feels too much like an abode of a single bachelor man and that's not the vibe I want to give. I need to get this settled.

So I'm gonna be taking photos, videos, and measurements of the room and sending it to NG and PS so they can use their interior design skills and recommend additions and modifications for furnishing and decoration. I have a budget of maybe six to eight hundred buckaroos to feel more at home, to get my bedroom sorted, and once that is done maybe I'll want to uhhh I don't know, date seriously or be stable or maybe stay in Seattle for longer periods of time than 2-month periods maximum but actually an average of 3 weeks like I'm doing right now.

The bluetooth earbuds were so bad I had to immediately reorder the old-style one because one of the pairs disappeared

The airpod-style earbuds were no good, as I wrote before I lost one of them and the other I'm worried about, it won't hold onto my ears without a winter cap on. It's too risky of a venture to keep it around as my primary listening device, and the other bluetooth thing has stopped working on the left side. So yeah, despite only having ordered this thing three weeks ago, I ordered another pair of bluetooth headsets, one of the 'older' ones that goes across ones neck so it's harder to lose it and easier to charge. It's all bs, I don't understand how the entire effing world is so obsessed with these tiny, easy-to-lose things. I'm not sold, it's annoying ugh.

Book Review: A Brief History of vice by Robert Evans, the audiobook version

Something got into me earlier today and I downloaded the audiobook for A Brief History of Vice (as in bad habit, not the media), by Robert Evans and started listening to it in the afternoon. Went to twork listening to it, and then listened to it some more, and then some more, and oops by dinner time I had listened through all eight hours of the book content, mostly at 1.5x+ speed, but i got the gist of it and the details of it too.

The book is good, I would recommend it be consumed as an audio book than an ebook because it does have the 'chapter' feels that gives it more of a podcast vibe than a book. The content is well-researched, well-presented, and the fact that the author decided to treat so much of the content personally made me respect him so much more. He has recipes for bhang, chicha, fruit wine and so much more, all of those he tried during the course of research for the book.

The message of the book is on point: all the 'vices' we consider in the modern society have had thousands of years of social contexts and rituals behind them, but in the modern world we're trying to decontextualize them and separate the 'flavor' from the meat, so to speak and that's breaking things down. That's not how it should be.

That's something I've said many times before and I'm getting a sense I'm in the right direction now.

As he says at the end of the book: "Enjoy your vices but respect them too."!

Nine out of ten stars, highly recommend, I'd definitely read it again or listen to it again.

This is the book that got me into audio books if I may say so after listening to one, and on the evening of the same day.

Vietlicious Vietnamese Cuisine: A review

I got my annual lab checkup earlier today and got lunch at the Vietlicious Vietnamese restaurant after. The trip was short, but still, impressions.

I fking loved loved loved the tofu banh mih I got there. It cost me 12 dollardoos including taps and tips, which is a bit more than what I have traditionally paid for the viet sandwiches, but it's unclear to me why they should be cheaper than anything else, say a Subway sandwich? So the sandwich was creamy, sour, spicy (after I put a slatering of sriracha sauce) and oh so yummy. Ordering was easy, they had one of those automated ordering and payment kiosks, the server brought it right to my table, and there was cups and water stand for drink. So I liked the service, I liked how low-rent everything was, and the vibe was pretty good. I will definitely go to this place again, and would recommend anybody to go there also.

Nine out of freaking ten, no joke.

Massive vitamin shopping and the realization that maybe all lavender extracts are the same?

Here's the thing, the lavender extract that I'm taking daily is hella expensive, anything that can be done to reduce the cost of a buck a day for the tablets would be a welcome change, specially since insurance doesn't cover it.

Also I ordered a 30 pack for $11 dollars, a 4 pack for 44, which is a big 40% discount on what I had previously paid, and immediately cancelled because I ordered the much cheaper deal from the other site. Because if that works...Silexan is toast...

I spent 65 bucks just on the vitamin shopping, and 12 of it was on the lavender pills, which if they work will be kickass and I could take two or three a day for not a big financial hit. It's mostly the...that effect..it seems, but if it works, it works, you know?

Finally, the vitamin shop store that I spent sixty plus bucks on won't let me reset my password and won't let me login, it is a bit weird, but I'm hoping that's because they're going through pains caused by high traffic of black friday sales and it'll be all fine in six months because that's when I've ordered the refills for, I won't necessarily want them so soon, soo...

But if it all works out, sixty bucks for like several pounds of vitamins is a hella good deal.

The role of my scribe in assisting with journal posts

Here's the problem: I keep pushing the journal posts away and away until they bundle up into one big mess and then have to try to remember the events of a given day and write them down, always 'catching up' by a week or so. What if, and stay with me here, I wrote the journal posts on my kindle scribe instead, and if not the entirety of the posts then just the notes and major happenings of the day so when it came around to writing them whole, I could just refer to my notes and recreate the day. That way my photos and maps wouldn't be the only source, I'd have the memories from the horse's mouth as well, so to speak. This process would make my writing more efficient plus make Scribe writing more integrated to the blogging experience.

The only issue with the thing is, it's winter and I get hella sleepy early in the evening, so if I don't have the energy to write, I definitely don't have the energy to well...handwrite...so I'll be dozing off and trying to sleep anyway. Ah well, but still. I guess this proposal can be tested starting next week when I'm in VA...

Kodo pancakes, potatoes and egg for breakfast, volunteer park walk, reading whole lotta books, back on the kefir train, yummy noodles for dinner but I'm out of control sleepy, no writing because sleepy [Mon 27]

In the morning I reheated potatoes and fried eggs again. Made kodo pancakes, the first one went very poorly, far too thick and hard to cook, the second and third ones were too wet and light and took long to dry out as well. With kodo you have to press the pancake really hard against the pan so it doesn't stick to the dish anymore.

Read a bunch during the day, went to Volunteer park for a chill walk, read more books after coming back. Got my kefir brews going again in the afternoon, two large jars, I'll have a lot to drink before leaving for the east coast.

Made yummy shin ramyun with tofu, mushroom, tomatoes and peanut butter, but I was so so crazy sleepy by this point, unreasonably sleepy that it's hard to understand what happened that it was hard to keep my eyes open. Fell asleep before 10, and no writing happened because my body wouldn't hold.

My personal workspace and standing desk arrangement is brilliant, and I can type so fast my hands will literally not let me get any faster or it hurts!

Some updates on the workspace arrangement in my apartment.

I've started putting the personal laptop in the standing desk, and the work laptop out in the living room or just from my bed because it's so freaking cold and I don't want to be standing while working. But somehow when I stand while blogging it motivates me to write more and not waste time because the pain of standing up is otherwise a bother? So this standing desk arrangement has been brilliant, I'm quite motivated and the ergonomics is great, eyes on the top of the monitor, hands on the perfect position for the keyboard.

It's so good in fact that my typing has never been easier and quicker...in fact on some posts I wrote earlier today, I was having problem writing faster than I was because my hands were hurting from typing too fast and I had to take a test to literally not hurt my hand muscles. It wasn't even the carpal tunnel thing, just the muscles were getting sore from the typing. So that's something interesting to consider...perhaps the limiting factor for my thoughts and writing is not my typing speed but the literal stamina of my hands, which can possibly improve if I work out more and make my hand muscles stronger?

Oh there's one more thing that is hindering my typing speed and that's corrections, if I need to go back more than a couple of steps, it's super duper slow to correct putting quite a big hindrance in the momentum of my work. But besides that, yeah I do touch typing and yeah my typing is still hella loud which means I'm pushing more than I should, but at least I'm not looking at the keyboard and my fingers know which spot to press. At maximum speed. Thanks to the writing arrangement.

It's such a strange thing to be able to say that the speed of your creativity (I should put creativity in quotes because there's not much creative content here to be honest, this is carpentery, technical work to improve typing and writing) is limited by the literal speed of the medium and the stamina of your hands, but here we are!

On target to be the most productive month blogwise

In a few short days, I'll have written more in one month (this month, that is) than I did in any year before my latest writing streak started in 2019. Pretty, pretty wild if you ask me.

The most productive year before 2019 in the number of posts per year was 2010 when 180 articles were posted on this blog. And I'm on track to post 180+ articles for the month of November, and also December because otherwise my goals won't be complete. So now I'm writing more in a month than I was writing in a year, if only the number of individual posts were to be considered. If you want to also consider the length of the posts, the quality of the content, and the inspiration etc, the diversity of the material and the readability, things will be different probably, but that's not the point, the point is that numerically I'll have reached a wild wild point from which I can only look down.

Once I reach my targeted number of posts for this year, and the 180+ posts for December, I'm wondering what the next year will look like, will I go back to the 120 posts per month like I was at until last year, 150 ish posts a month like I was at until last month, or the 180 posts I'm at for the last three months of the year. Interesting possibilities, I'm curious about the outcomes myself!

The new sattu recipe that's worked wonders for me

I bought couple of kilos of sattu for me and have been making the drink for breakfast or dinner every so often when I don't feel like eating much else.

My recipe has been to use two full spoonfulls of sattu, one spoonful of protein whey powder, half a teaspoon of black salt and some kombucha, plus lots and lots of cold water. That gives me this refreshing drink in the morning and the energy of cooked cereals to help me push through the day without having to cook or worry about doing the dishes. Plus high in fats and vitamins too due to the mixed nut flour in it.

So it's done wonder for me, with that, yogurt and some fruits I bet I could create a nutritionally complete diet. A lazy loser's mealplan. Like the techbros did in the mid 2010's with soylent, remember that oh what a miserable time in popular consciousness that was!

I don't need a Project 240 actually, just a Project 120, with April's journal posts honestly done

I wrote a week or so ago how I might spend the thanksgiving break completing my Project 240 posts, well...that didn't happen and it'll be a good week if I get the regular everyday posts out by the end of the vacation.

No but the other discovery I made after running some numbers has been this. My daily writing output has increased considerably in the last few months, so it appears I won't need to do 240 extra posts to get to my 'regular year' count of 1300+ posts. In fact if I do a bit more than 120 posts I can be easily there.

And that's because my monthly output increased from 120 posts/month to 150 posts/month and now 180 posts/month, which I hope to keep going until December.

So that means if I get the April journal posts out, which honestly, should be this week Inshallah, then there's 120 posts left, out of which 40 have already been titled, 20 are going to be lazy lists and 20 are going to be poems. That leaves us with only 40 more posts and that seems like something I'd be able to pull out of a hat in the course of a couple of days, no? Only thing is those 'couple of days' will be in Virginia where the motivation and the circumstances to write are a lot less...structured than my life in Seattle, but even then, if I can just push through, with those 30 posts first, then the 120 remaining won't be terribly hard.

I've done more, in shorter time!

Review of all the crap I bought on TEMU six months later

I was going through the articles I'd posted in June July and saw all of those posts on orders from Temu and my thoughts on them. Here's what I think six months later.

All the crap I bought from Temu was shit, besides the linen nut bag, but that too I'm unclear if I got what I asked for. Basically it was a big waste of money, and fortunately I didn't spend a whole lot of money, but the amount I did spend was enough to make me understand that the site is full of crappy shit nobody should ever buy.

The reason I'd originally bought stuff from there was because I figured Amazon was the same and it'd just be cheaper. Well it wasn't that much cheaper, the delivery took forever, and the quality was real dooodoo third-rate. If it had been an american vendor I'd have complained enough times and got refunded, if not written scathing reviews on Amazon. Can't/won't do that on Temu.

My Temu journey has been complete, and the conclusion of the experiment is that temu is very much not worth it, buy anywhere else but there.

Buckwhweat pancake, potatoes and egg for lunch, sound sleep, volunteer park walk, so much reading, reasonable amount of writing, oats with kimchi for dinner [Sun 26]

Made buckwheat pancake, fried egg and sauteed leftover potatoes for brunch, so freaking good, unexpected! I will eat a lot more of buckwheat and millet pancakes!

I had long sound sleep and didn't feel anxious so I just stared around, had ideas for poems that I wrote down, and just stared and luxuriated in free time. Relaxing. Reset my body's tired clock. This was as good of a vacation day as it gets, a really memorable one.

Went to Volunteer park for a walk, and read a bunch throughout the day. Wrote like a dozen or so posts, and was finally caught up, felt relaxed because of that too!

Had kimchi and oats and butter and soysauce for dinner with til ko chhop and chilly crisps and man it was such a great idea. This was a very relaxing and peaceful time.

I will remember this day as a remarkably peaceful one, the ideal dream is to live every day like this one!

I lived a much richer, happening life in Nepal, I must learn to do that here

When I was in Nepal I was meeting friends and acquaintances on the regular, going out and about places, exploring new cuisines, eating at new restaurants, getting to know people, learning the terroire, and generally living an enriching life. Oh all the time I spent at the cafes listening to people and generally getting my ass hauled out of my parents' place too.

Not to add all the traveling and exploring I did specially this last trip, the short one.

In Seattle I do none of that, pretty much. I don't go to cafes, I don't meet people on the regular, I treat this place like an adversarial foreign territory that doesn't warranty learning about or exploring. Doesn't seem to pique my interests.

Which is bad, not just for my relationship with the community but for me personally, because my life in Nepal was richer, more socially rewarding and intellectually inspiring. In Seattle it's so much more 'meh', I don't learn new things, and don't get inspired.

I must learn to replicate the rich tapestry of experience of living in Kathmandu in Seattle. I must meet more people, hang out more, be out and about, overhear conversations, wet myself with the local knowledge, understand the population. For it is only by understanding people can you win them over. I don't need to be yet another outsider, a cloudliver in the emerald city.

I must learn to live a richer, more rewarding life in Seattle and make the most of my stay here.

Zaika Restaurant Seattle: A review

I went to Zaika the Indian restaurant with SA almost a week ago. Quick review.

It's an expensive place, that's the first thing to note. The reason it took me so long to go there was I'd never considered it to be worth going, because a single entree can start in mid-to-late twenties and go all the way to fourties, easy. For example, SA got an entree and a side, and paid 90 buckaroos, including tips, oh by the way they include 18% tips for everyone and then ask if you want to add anything on top which is...something.

So anyway, I ordered the veggie biryani and...it was okay? For 32 bucks, it was...ehhhh. Had it been 14 buckaroos, I'd have considered it to be decent value for money, but for the monies I ended up paying, honestly it was not worth the hassle. And dare I say this...dare I, dare I...if I were given 32 buckaroos instead, I could use that to buy raw ingredients, look up recipes and make up a better biryani than they had after a couple of tries. While learning a new skill and still saving money. And I don't consider myself a specially good cook. I don't feel so dismissive about other cuisines, or really good Indian restaurants, but they're not...for the very small size of the menu I tried, good. Definitely not worth the menu.

There is not much to write about ambience or service or anything, except the observation that it's quite popular among the Indian population of the area, so clearly they do have something going on for them and SA tells me his Indian friends swear over it, despite him not being a fan himself.

Interesting.

Maybe it's got something to do with regional cuisines?

I discovered why the goddamned samosa pie didn't cook despite being blitzed to death

I've written on this topic in several posts, making references to the failed ish cooking item, here's the conclusion to the whole saga.

I made a samosa pie, first time for samosa innards, and first time making a pie, for thanksgiving. Par boiled the potatoes and put them in the pie, expecting the rest to cook in 50+ minutes. Turns out the insides of the pie were kinda' raw. So two days later I put the pie in the oven at 375F for 35 minutes expecting the potatoes to cook finally. Still not fully cooked in the inside.

And then it all made sense. Air is a good insulator, one of the best. The insider of the pie is protected by other potatoes, and while 375 for 40 minutes may have been sufficient for fully exposed one-layered potato roast, it's not enough for a pie. It was silly for me to expect them to cook inside, and I should have pre-cooked them before putting in the oven.

Thus, my next thing is to put it all in air fryer or just the pan, and cook the potatoes like regular potatoes, fuck the pie. What a massive debacle this whole situation has been, but at least I understood the importance of heat transfer in baking ugh.

Eight times my cookiing has failed me miserably

1. This thanksgiving, when I forgot that putting par-boiled potatoes inside a big pie would mean the potatoes in the middle wouldn't cook well because of heat transfer, which is why despite blitzing the goddamn thing for almost two hours at insane temps, the inside of the pie still has crunchy taters.
   
   
2. That one time during covid when I tried to make soft yummy bready pretzels, but ended up with hard crispy pretzels instead, and had to eat it for the next to weeks.
   
   
3. That one time when my millet pancakes turned out to be millet porridge ish, and I had to force it down my throat because how else would I learn?
   
   
4. That one time when I added really sour bamboo shoots to an already very sour vegetable in Boston, and had to keep eating it for days and oh I was so miserable at the whole situation.
   
   
5. That one time in Boston when I tried making an eggplant dip, but didn't realize you were supposed to peel the eggplants first, and ended up with this really disgusting item that even I couldn't eat anymore.
   
   
6. That one time almost two years ago when I cooked rice, I think it was but it was so so wrong because the texture was that like of meat, and it was chunky, and I really really wanted to finish it but couldn't because my body would literally reject it. Had to waste it against my wishes.
   
   
7. When I was younger, in my early teens, I made several massive omlets with raw noodles in them, precooked ones, but still. Didn't work out. Terrible idea.
   
   
8. When I thought tripe was another name for honeycomb, and tried using it as a source of sweetness...uhhhhhh.
   

Eight fields Professor X (tm) has his super-expert Phds in

1.  Car-making, obviously, Prof. X has many many decades of deep study in the field of making cars, more so than any other living creature, and he has graced the world with his intelligence and expertise.
   
   
2. Metallurgy. Prof. X has an innate understanding of metals and their speciality and how to forge them and all the relative tradeoffs of all the alloys discovered and yet to be discovered!
   
   
3. Law. You may or may not know it, but Prof. X is an expert jiujitsu master in Law and can beat any lawyer anytime, you just have to challenge him in the open.
   
   
4. Speaking of challenges and jiujitsu, Prof. X is also a black belt in multiple martial arts, in fact he's taught all the major teachers. He just prefers to keep it in the down-low and won't give in to public challenges because he is so in control of his own emotions.
   
   
5. Search and Rescue. Prof X has been actively involved in Mountain rescue and deep-sea rescue for decades and knows everything there is to know about rescuing people everywhere, fullstop. He is the world's greatest expert in the field.
   
   
6. Artificial Intelligence. Prof X has created multiple intelligences, some of them sentient, that assist him in his everyday tasks. What the most cutting-edge companies are doing AI-wise, is just trying to barely catch up with what he's known for decades.
   
   
7. Tunneling. Prof. X has the world's foremost knowledge and experience in tunnels, and holes and equipment and technologies related. He has been consulted by the world's leading TBM companies for his great foresight and knowledge in the field, and it is only due to his humility that he hasn't brought it up in recent times.
   
   
8. Finance. Prof. X understands the needs of customers with regards to the finance industry better than the customers themselves do, and can pre-empt their needs and desires to come up with products that are going to be popular in the future. He is a genius, a visionary, a cassandra who's been given this vision but the world won't listen to him!
   

List of seven medicines I have to keep with myself at all times

1.  Lactase because I sometimes give in to the love of dairy-related products and the outcome is...not great.
   
   
2. Tylenol because that's always a good thing to have, combined with advil, as it'll keep you going for longer.
   
   
3. Smithycone, because bloatedness is still an issue for me every so often, and this solves a large number of bloatedness related issues.
   
   
4. Silexan, because I've got so used to it
   
   
5. Metronidazole, specially in places like Nepal because amoebae are the topmost pathogens for tummy issues, and it takes care of those so fast!
   
   
6. Allegra, or its generic forms because allergies are ever-present everywhere, and this solves the problem.
   
   
7. Antacids, because you never know what might burn up your intestines!
   

 

Review: Maya Chowk Restaurant

I went to Maya Chowk restaurant about 3.5 weeks ago and meant to write a review ever since, but like got in the way and it never panned out. So here we are.

This is a restaurant in Gaushala, a large spread out one that's made to the design of a typical traditional Nepali village of the west. Multiple buildings with traditional facades and interiors, a central space that is reminiscent of traditional 'chowks' and 'pati's, just the architecture of the place excites one's senses.

Food is pretty good, not particularly expensive. The service is excellent, the location pretty good. And they have free parking, not right on their premises but 3 minutes of walk away, which is as good as it gets honestly.

Go there and take all your family and friends!

If I've already reviewed this restaurant before, so what, here it goes a second time! It's that good, don't let them go bankrupt and close down people!

Frequently asked questions about the new miracle drug that reduces your weight and makes you look like Brad Pitt

Q: So this new Miracle drug, yeah, will it give me like six packs and make me look handsome and get me the ladies or what?
A: The new drug is targeted primarily at patients of Diabetes, to help their blood glucose regulation. It's been found to improve the diet of the patients by helping control their impulsive food habits. It has also been observed that it appears to assist with impulse control on non-diet matters as well, but that needs further research on a larger population subset to verify.

Q. Like, I won't need to workout or do anything after I take it right, because no more diabeetus?
A: Physical exercise is a fundamental part of human biology, and even outside diabetes and related diseases, it contributes a large part to one's mental and physical well-being. While the new drug has been shown to improve portion control and impulse in general, it is not a miracle drug that will replace a change in lifestyle. A fundamental lifestyle change is the only way to go from an unhealthy sedentary life to a healthy active one, nature cannot be cheated or hacked.

Q: Is it true I will end up spending less money after I take this medicine?
A: As we have said before, the drug appears to help with impulse control generally on a limited subset of the test population, and that has led to decreased expenditure in a subset of their expenses, most notably groceries and alcohol. But that has been replaced my increased expenditure in other fields, so as a whole, taking this medicine to make one more fiscally frugal and responsible would be ill-advised and unlikely to work. There is no evidence to suggest it would work for that at all...

Step-extraction of chhang and other homemade liquor: rediscovery of a traditional process

This might be one of my major achievements and understandings of my chhang making process.

I have rediscovered the step-extraction process of alcohol from rice and other alcoholic beverages that is commonly practiced in Nepal.

To do this you have to think of the rice-amylase-yeast mixture not as an ingredient that will lead you to the final outcome, alcohol, but treat it like a goose that lays golden eggs. Or alternatively, a cow that gives you milk as long as it's being fed.

The explanation itself is pretty simple. You let rice, amylase and yeast ferment for a couple of days, adding water to it according to your heart's desire. Once the liquid gets to the alcoholic level as desired, or other flavor profile however defined, the liquid part is taken out, with spoons and strained out, without putting in too much pressure, because remember, it's a cow, you want to squeeze out the milk, not the internal guts. Then, water is added to the original mixture, and the drink is let to sit out to ferment for some more, until it's again ready to be drunk. The second and third and fourth rounds are likely to take longer, and have different, possibly less-desirable texture and taste profiles, but that is not the point of the process, which again remains to be researched further. The point is to get as much liquor out of the starch as possible and turn it into alcohol, while using relatively low-abv yeast and less potent amylase, while maintaining acceptable texture and taste profile.

I think I've succeeded in doing that.

It's a work in progress, but it's looking good!

...and I already lost the goddamn bluetooth earbud, one of them anyway

Those goddamn bullshit bluetooth earbuds, I hate them so much, the ones inspired by airpods, they're hard to keep track of, they don't fit the ears well, and they fall our never to be found. The good news is I know with high probability that it's in my apartment. The bad news is, I don't know where, one of those earbuds. I'm so freaking annoyed. It's been a week barely and I've been as careful as I can be, as much as with everything else anyway, but it's so freaking tiny and hard to keep track of, makes me hella mad man.

Makes me want to create one of those 'neck bands' to insert the earbuds into so they don't get lost, basically turning those 'modern' tools into old-fashioned bluetooth headsets that have just as much flexibility and are harder to lose.

I'm not mad or disappointed at myself, I did the best I could, and it's extremely likely inside the apartment. Hopefully. Where, who knows. How can one be mindful or those things when they disappear on you so goddamn easily?

And then I got sick and had a nice long sleep

I got sick
With stomach cramps
and a bloated ass tummy
that made my ends dance
I turned and I turned
I shifted around
And for the entire day
I was loo-bound
What can be done,
to fix my pain,
No I'm not gonna try
a hit of cocaine,
and then it came to me,
a small bottle of medicine
that would fix
the pain I was in,
An anti-foaming agent
meant for just
what I was suffering,
I took two tablets of
Smithycone,
and two hours later
I was fit as a bone..
But the body was tired
and the mind slow
neither wanted to be
out and about anymore,
so I slept and slept
and slept some more
for the entire day,
and now on the Saturday
I'm ready to dance and jump around!

I shockingly undercooked potatoes which I thought was impossible and gave myself gassy bloats the next day

The details of the thanksgiving dinner are written in the earlier post, here I want to talk about those fucking potatoes that gave me the gassy cramps. Had be moaning in pain for an hour, and bedridden for an entire day, until I figured I had gas-x in my medicine cabinet, and it was all fixed in an hour. It's like magic how quickly it worked.

I can't understand how those goddamn potaotes got undercooked, I parboiled them for 17 minutes...10 pre-pressure and 7 after, peeled them, and put them at 450F for 10 minutes, and 350F for 35 minutes. Maybe...they cook slower when inside a pie? I mean I should have known when they were a bit crunchy, but I was having so much fun I didn't really notice it, and stopped right away when I figured something may have gone off.

Anyway, the moral of this story seems to be that you can never undercook the fucking potatoes, and gas-x is a great tool in my toolchest that has finally proven itself.

I organized a thanksgiving dinner, and it went shockingly smoothly, the cleanup too!

I write this the day after Black Friday. Would have gotten around to writing it the day before, but I uhh got sick, likely because of my own...issues, more on that later in a separate post.

This Thanksgiving I organized a small dinner at my place, and it went as well as it could have! Invited SA and N, and their friend from grad school, and did a small potluck. I made a samosa pie and apple crumble, the samosa pie was new because first time I was making a samosa mix and first time I was doing a pie, and the apple crumble was super easy and super good. It's possible I may have undercooked some of the potatoes in the pie that got me bloated the next day, but that's...a topic for a separate post.

People drank my chhang, ate my food, and theirs too, turns out SA really likes cooking at they made six different items, which was incredible. We talked politics, philosophy, education, faith etcetera, all of that interesting stuff, quite an interesting set of conversations were had compared to talks with the regular Seattle gang.

The cleanup, which I did this morning, one that I had been dreading forever, has gone...shockingly easily? Loaded up the dishwasher, which took fifteen minutes maximum, and cleaned to two large dishes, and that was it basically. I thought it would take me hours and hours, considering some of the past dinners I've done people have created such a mess, but no, so easy, simple and quick. At this rate, I can do dinners with people over every weekend!

Maybe I should consider that seriously though.

All that remains is so much of that fucking pie, I need to put in the oven for like 45 minutes in a blistering temperature to make sure every last bit of it is thoroughly cook. And the crumble that's like so so bad for me, but ah well, yum yum yummers.

I gotta take care of myself so I can take care of others

Silly little thing, will be a short one.

The thing is, people get responsible and serious and stop wallowing in self-pity and helplessness only when they must, only when they have responsibility of other people and important life matters to take care of. And I am at that point in life, more or less, that the opportunities for considering ohhh how bad I have got it, and how much I'm struggling to write my posts, and Seattle's terrible dating market, are going down. That is good. Such thoughts and mindset are bad and not at all helpful and that mental energy could be channeled to much more productive and useful activities, like taking care of others and being responsible, taking important decisions etcetera.

I have been given that chance, put in that position, and I must not waste it. I must take it with magnanimity and seriousness.

That is all.

Seventeen hella frustrating things

1.  When you lose one of the earbuds you got recently inside your apartment but have no idea where and you don't know how to search for it!
   
   
2. When you meant to fart but uh ohhh that was a wettie!
   
   
3. Trying to clean a bottle, and it just won't goddamn clean because your tools won't reach that specific spot.
   
   
4. How the hell do you window sills get so dirty so often, you just gave a nice wipe the other day!
   
   
5. Your work doesn't understand you being in the office is actually a net loss to you and to them but it doesn't matter as long as you got your butt in there, and you try to make them understand but ugh they just won't get it!
   
   
6. Trying to make old people understand literally anything.
   
   
7. Giving advice to young people because you know their lives would be so much better if they just listened to you but ugh they have to learn all of those stupid lessons by themselves whyyy
   
   
8. When you leave your shopping basket to get something else, and by the time you're back, somebody's taken your favourite limited item from it!
   
   
9. When you're bloated, trying to burp but you can't, and it's not at all satisfying.
   
   
10. Private company bureaucracy in a monopoly, like utilities and internet.
    
    
11. Dealing with insurance and healthcare providers
    
    
12. Stupid local governmental policies
    
    
13. Incompetent people at work
    
    
14. Netflix letting you log into your friend's account some days but not others, get it together man, figure out how you want to deal with me!
    
    
15. Laziness
    
    
16. People being indecisive, despite knowing the massive consequences of indecisiveness.
    
    
17. How all the things you want to eat are also the ones that are the worst for you healthwise!
    

Apartment is in a semi-manageable state, and I need to clean as I go to keep it this way

It has taken me a week plus, and three days of incessant cleaning, but my apartment is now in a semi-clean state. The living room, bathroom are as clean as they'll get, the kitchen is at a pretty acceptable stage, and the bedroom needs maybe an hour of clearing shit up to be up to my standards. I basically dumped all the unwanted things from the living room here, so it's only understandable. But I put away all the boys' shit away in my living room closet, and the place is so much tidier, it's amazing.

The thing is, to maintain this state of things, I need to clean as I go. Eat a meal, clean my dishes, create a mess, clean it up immediately, the way I used to do things back in the day, but then I stopped doing them because it felt to me like I was putting too much pressure on myself. But that wasn't it, it felt that way because I was just getting around to being a responsible adult with chores to do, and my body was taking its type to be comfortable in the new state of matters. Should have pushed on that harder instead of just giving up. In any case, I have more experience with life now, and know what needs to be done, and cleaning daily before things get out of hand is the way to go. In kitchen, in the living room, and in life. Never let things fester, never ever.

Should I really join a political party?

I wrote about wanting to join RSP in Nepal a couple of weeks ago, and then a week later I went to their website on my phone and filled the membership form as far as I could get. There was a requirement to upload my personal identification document, they asked for a passport, which I found a bit sketchy and too much of a hassle and didn't go along. Primarily because I don't trust the cybersecurity of Nepali website and it feels more like an identity-stealing strategy put inside a party membership form. There has to be an easier way to do it, surely.

So if they really want all of such personal information, and that too through a boring old web form, now I'm rethinking the entire joining the party thing, even though I'm confident they're good people. Maybe the next time I'm in Nepal I can go to there party offices in person and get the membership. Otherwise...it does not seem to be worth it, because information security issues and identity theft possibility.

Ugh.

The internet was a mistake.

This has been a shockingly sunny and bring winter: part deux

There has not been a single day that I can think of since I returned to Seattle ten days ago, that we have gone without seeing the sun, or even it being sunny most of the day. The winters in this town are famously dark and cold, and it's a bit crispy cold yeah but shockingly bright and sunny and amazing up to this point. If the entirety of the winter were to be like this I doubt if anybody would ever leave Seattle because it's that good.

What a pleasant and totally unexpected gift from the gods, like it's hard to go this long a stretch even in the summer, and we have been given this long stretch of incredible winter. All we can do is be thankful and pray for this to last as long as it can possibly!

Apartment cleaned, lots of reading and writing, calls with friends and family, volunteer park walk, potato pie reheating failed, apartment becomes livable and nice! [Sat 25]

I'm writing this the day after, got so much writing done, so much resting and relaxing that it feels..a little wrong that nothing big remains pending. Only thing left to do is complete today's journal posts and I'm all set after this. Oh and still the April journals and project 120 (reduced from 240 because I've been writing like a demon for my daily posts) but besides that...Yeah. Like I can maybe start thinking seriously about my hindu mythology podcast seriously at this point, forreals this time.

Right, back to scheduled programming.

In the morning I cleaned up the kitchen and living room, man doing the dishes after a big party used to feel like such a big deal back when I started inviting people but the longer I do it, the easier it feels because it's mostly about loading and unloading the dishwasher at the very worst. At the absolute awfulness limit of cleaning up, I have to do two rounds of dishwashing which is not the worst, it's pretty good all things considered. Ed Gamble from off menu podcast apparently does all the cleanup while people are just chatting and drinking up and doesn't even feel like he's cleaning up so by the time everyone is done, the place is cleaned up as well and while I don't drink really, it's something I should look into.

Talked to parents and PN and N in the day.

Read a bunch of books in my kindle and wrote like 20 posts during the course of the day, which was...great.

Went to Volunteer park for afternoon walk, took only two rounds because I thought I'd come back and go to the indian store thus getting my full steps but didn't do that so I was short by 400 to get the 10k steps.

In the evening I played around with tea making and drinking and got really spicy tea in almond milk, not ideal. Also the texture was all weird. NG told me they use some oat milk that's available in Asian stores and whole foods that's got the right flavor and texture, should look into that, because otherwise it feels like drinking hot chocolate, the whole experience.

Tried reheating the potato pie for 40 minutes to get the insides cooked, as I wrote, failed, discovered the important role of heat transfer in baking and how I'd have to deconstruct the pie to eat thereon.

The apartment, outside my living room looked really nice! The bedroom remains a challenge to maintain and make look nice, but a future post will deal with the options I'm exploring to fix that matter.

Rest day, terrible tummy, desserts for meals, medicine makes things better, sleeping all day long, recovery by day-end, got my annual checkup scheduled [Fri 24]

I'll cut it short, I had a terrible tummy ache for a large part of this day due to what I suspect was my undercooked potatoes in the pie the night before. I suffered a lot until remembering that I had smithycone in the medicine cupboard, and then felt so much better. But the rest of the day was spent sleeping and relaxing and recovering.

Had my apple crumble and chocolates from TJ's for meals because anything else would have hurt like a pokey stick inside my intestines.

So much sleep, I guess all the complaints about not getting enough snooze got heard and I 'caught' up with all of it.

Setup my annual health checkup for Monday morning, and checked my past reports and man from 2021 to 2022 the numbers only got worse and I'm a bit fearful they're gonna get even worse from now on, but then it's not a certainty, I did eat quite healthily in Kathmandu, I've been walking a lot and mixing things up so it's possible my cholesterol and other bad chemicals aren't as bad as I fear, fingers crossed.

Apartment cleanup, garbage clean, pie making and apple crumble baking, hau hau trip, dinner with friends, intense conversations, good food, long dinner, successful hosting! [Thu 23]

In the morning and early afternoon, cleaned up the rest of the house, threw out the trash, made living room presentable and propped up the nicer side of my plants and generally wiped all the dusty surface of the house so that the guests who'd be coming in a few hours would find the place a suitable abode for a mature responsible adult man.

Pressure cooked potatoes and peeled them and got around to doing a bunch of other things, every thing besides writing because didn't get around to doing it. Then went to Hau Hau market, talking to my sister on the phone and then TD, and bought rice lime, and apples. Somehow I paid only like eleven bucks which means I didn't buy a lot but I spent a long time there so that was weird.

After walk back I got a bit ambitious and looked up apple crumble recipe and decided to make apple crumble too. That took forever, then the samosa baking took forever and the irony in hindsight is it didn't even cook properly.

Right on the dot around 6.30 the folks showed up, just as I was throwing trash and recycling out, and I welcomed them to my apartment adorned with like six alight scented candles and with low light. They loved the plants and the candles and the rest of the vibes, and they brought lots of food too. I started them with chhyang and moved with the rest.

Spent 4/5 hours in my place and called it a nice, and I think it was a massive success, the dinner party!

Veggies mustard and rice for lunch, got off work early pre-holiday, walk to target and rejecting big box, cleaning plants and setting up the apartment, Trader Joe's trip for pre-thanksgiving shopping, chhyang extraction and rewatering, rice beans and egg sauce for dinner [Wed 22]

So I'm writing like four days after the fact, some of the things may be missed out but here we go anyway.

For lunch I got about to finishing the remainder of the mustard greens I'd bought way wayyy back that had been chilling in my fridge, the fermented one, and mixed it with the chickpeas, ate with rice.

This was the last day of work before the thanksgiving break began, so they gave us the day off after 12 EST which meant I was free from 9 in the morning, whopee!

I used that time to go to Target to pickup a rubbermaid box set and a carpet brush. Actually I'd ordered to rubbermaid sets but they were so friggin' large it wouldn't make sense for me to bring them both, so returned one immediately, apologizing profusely and brought one with me. Still don't know where to put it all, the box sits in my living room currently. The carpet brush helped me with carpet cleaning significantly.

Broomed the apartment, turned the carpet around so the dirty side is hidden from view so that the mess I created while attempting to carpet clean doesn't show, and then took out the plants from their tables and gave them a nice cleanup. And then finally reorganized them, it had been a while and the new arrangement looks nicer, a bit novel anyway.

The apartment was quite clean at this point, almost ready to go but small bits and bobs left, besides the bedroom of course, that I'll write in a different post.

Went to Trader Joe's in the evening, bought pie crust, potatoes, and several different chocolates, apple cider, among many other things. Big shopping for thanksgiving, man going to a grocery store on the eve of Thanksgiving isn't a good idea, not that it needs saying anyway.

In the evening I lightly squeezed out the chhyang from my rice brew, and rewatered the rice mash, and took them all out of the fridge so they can still break down and ferment for the next several weeks. I've written about the process of extracting chhyang in a step-wise manner to get multiple batches out. Anyway, it was good and I'm proud of it and fingers crossed the experiment works out but even if not I tried something and failed and whatever.

Since I'd already gotten my 10k steps, didn't go out on a separate walk, had rice and the leftover beans for dinner, mixing in eggs to make a quick sauce, yum yum yum, so good, with some achar. Man, I know I shouldn't be eating a lot of rice, but can you really blame me?

Good restaurants in Nepal are in a global competition for quality, finally, and money may be the reason

I've complained so much about Nepal in recent posts and also brought up the silver lining of good tourism prospects. Want to bring up something related here.

The quality of fancy restaurants has grown considerably in recent years in Nepal. And so has their count. Because they are expensive not just by Nepali standards but in global standards, and their costs are still more or less in Nepali rupees, they have the resources to invest and innovate. So I have found that the nicer Nepali restaurants, those that are not even crazy expensive, are actually quite decent, not just by local standards but global ones too.

Which means one of the best pizzas I've recently had has been in Kathmandu, the place has decent Italian food, Mediterranean food wasn't particularly disappointing either. People there have told me you can't really compare foreign food in Kathmandu to that in the U.S and one is just setting oneself up for disappointment but let me go the other way and claim that for pricey enough places, there's no reason for them to not be able to compete or even better the foreign places even in the US (if not the award-winning restaurants), and I think it's fair game to compare them against US locations as they're actually in that league now. The cooks are foreign trained, experienced, they get feedback from people experienced in foreign foods, and quite often they've traveled wide and far themselves. And the same goes for the owners.

The future of the Nepali restauranting business is exciting, and I'm eager to see where it goes!

I need to not waste my work time anymore

I waste a lot of my work hours in the computer, watching youtube and other random websites including the orange website even when I'm not working actively. I need to stop doing that and use that time more productively for my personal usage. Because either way I'm wasting my own time, and if I can waste it in ways that can take off the boring work from my personal time, then there's more stuff for me to do when I'm off of work. Which means I need to reduce the youtube-watching, reduce the news-reading and forum reading.

What else would I do? Read! Write! Clean my place! Get out of my goddamn ass and maybe even walk around a bit, cook something, make a drink for myself and act like a proper adult human being who is fully functional and not a child who wants to get away from their class time and will waste their school hours because it feels so good. I need to control the horse of my desires, specifically during low-stress work time!

I'll be eating a lot more traditional Nepali y'all

This kinda relates to the earlier post, in that I finally got around to unpacking, arranging and labeling all the spices and flours I brought from Nepal.

That involves the sattu powder which I can eat raw with water, the millet and buckwheat flours, the eight different kinds of spice powders and a couple of new 'experimental' spices that the mill guy sent with me, he said they were selling like hotcakes and I wouldn't regret bringing them over.

So obviously that means I'll have to make use of them before they expire, which means I'll be eating a lot of those Nepali flours and spices. With that combo I obviously can't make non-Nepali flavors and dishes, as number one, I don't know how to, number two, I can't be assed to, and number three I don't want to to risk an unknown with a raw ingredient I've barely got experience using. In conclusion, it's going to be lots of very traditional village cooking in my apartment, a bit like happened during the pre-covid and mid-covid days in Boston, and I'm not unexcited!

Finally got around to unpacking and arranging the spices!

 After exactly a week since coming back to Seattle, I unpacked my luggage and arranged all the spices and flours I brought from Nepal. That doesn't mean my apartment is fully arranged yet, it's going to take a full  day of cleaning and folding and getting rid of crap things and hanging my clothes where they rightly belong after the guys uhhh packed them away while I was gone for three weeks, but I'm much closer than I was yesterday and let me tell you it feels freaking great!

As in, my kitchen closets feel fancy, I've tagged all the spices, put them all in reasonably nice bottles, put the nametags in all the sides so they're easy to read, and organized them in a logical way so when I need to cook something I know exactly where to look for.

Oh and the Nepali flours too, I'll put them in a whole different post, but they're so freaking well organized and packed, I'm patting myself on the back...they were messy and all over the place, but not anymore.

Give me three to six more hours and my apartment will be spanking fucking clean and I'll finally have some peace of mind!

Top 9 ridiculous things on Seinfeld I saw earlier today

1. Even for the 90's, the decoration and interior design and vehicles of the show are so comically outdated, it's so clearly a product of a very different area, there's a dissonance watching it lately.
   
   
2. George the loser so many wins, and it becomes less believable as the show progress that he is the loser the show intends to make out of him. It stops being funny at a point.
   
   
3. The show creators don't seem to know regular people doing regular jobs and have a hard time figuring out what happens in an office everyday because all the workplace interactions are so absurd.
   
   
4. Kramer has limited redeeming features, let's just say that, and IRL jerry would tolerate him a lot less...
   
   
5. How the freaking shit are they driving so much, despite living in goddamn Manhattan!?! Where do they park, how do they deal with the traffic, or were the nineties really that crazy?
   
   
6. Also isn't it crazy the characters have a large group of friends in NYC where everybody knows everybody including the big politicians and the philanthropists etcetera? You woulda' think it was a small village by the way they deal with the matter!
   
   
7. Speaking of the nineties, we know New York was a different beast then, but hey it wasn't the 70's still, and the crazy crimes they show happening all the time so casually long the tales of the past!
   
   
8. Everybody's parents besides Jerry's are awful, and even with Jerry, everybody he's related to besides his parents is not likeable. It's an interesting choice to have made!
   
   
9. Funny how they're people in mid-thirties in New York Ciiitayyy, and their interactions with booze or the devil's lettuce are so limited in nature, it's the more fabulous part of the story, in that it could only be a fairy tale!
   

The solace in self

I asked a friend,
A newly trusted one,
How do I
Get away not texting
and dying slowly
in agony,
and see said,
be the solace
you seek in the world
within yourself,
Trust that you are the best
and you will find
somebody you deserve
and that the best is ahead
of you,
and that good things will happen
as they come, and this is not the end,
you deserve happiness,
you deserve love,
and you deserve somebody
to trust,
and most of all,
remember that you will always have
the most reliable person of all
with you,
your own goddamn self man,
so stop moaning and get out there
and give life a hell,
because self love is the greatest of them all.
And oh yeah, I figured,
I should have reached out to friends
and family and well-wishers
all this time, over the years,
and seeking solace in yourself is great
and even greater
is seeking comfort in the company
of good family and friends.

Now, if I could only write journals on kindle...OR...Writing journals in the Kindle is a lot slower

As I've been bragging or moaning, or excitedly babbling for the last two months, I freaking love my scribe for reading and writing, and by this point I've written like two hundred posts in it already. I did finally find out some minor downsides of the device in the way I use it and wanted to bring it up here.

The problem is journal posts for this blog. As in, I didn't write them at all for the last month because it was far too month to do research and check up the dates and write. And when I finally did so like a couple of days ago, it took me about twice the time it usually takes me to. That's because I handwrite a lot slower than I type, the editing is nigh-impossible, and post annoyingly of all, checking location and photo history on the phone and writing on the device is so much slower than checking them up on google maps on the browser and writing the topics and the material on a desktop/laptop browser. So the typing is itself slower, and the research gets a lot slower as well. Plus it's not an ideal writing experience.

So the downsides of writing on the Scribe are, anything that needs even a bit of reference and moving around in technology takes a long time, the process itself is less frictionless and slower than typing, and well you still need to put into the blog at a later point.

Just to remind myself that there are downsides to this new exciting technology as well...

Ear-difficulty with new air pod-style earbuds

I got the airpods style ear buds, and they're great in that you can use one at a time while the other charges, they're portable and can charge in their carrier, etc. The downside is, besides the obvious one, which is it doesn't have a convenient place to hang on my neck, is that they don't fit well in my ear canal. They don't have the rubber fitting that goes snugly into my ear like I had with the older bluetooth ones, and like buying new ones is as pricey as getting a new pair of ear buds. So I have to squeeze them every so often, which is annoying, plus they're extremely sports-unfriendly as even a slight tug will dislodge them from the ear. If I'd known this, I'd have seriously reconsidered getting those (for free that I got, but still) and chosen to reallocate the free marketplace points into other rewards.

Speaking of free marketplace points, I got a clothes steamer thanks to the mentoring program I've been helping out kids with, they wanted to send me some other random gift but I chose the steamer instead because I wanted my clothes to look nice and tidy. And then as I unraveled SK's belongings, turns out he has a clothing iron, so that was a bit of a waste. Oh well...

The good news is my clothes will be hella ironed in the future.

I might make back kindle's worth in Library books

I have been borrowing, flipping through, and reading so many freaking books in my New Kindle. Oh yeah, I said, right, that I can borrow library books in my new device. Turns out I can do that in the old one too, but that's neither here nor there.

The point is, I've read or flipped through a good number of books, self-help or otherwise (not into fiction yet because you really really need to get into those and I'm scared of being real addicted in them), and will be doing so in the future too. And I've complained about how I spent so much money on the device? Well if I'm like borrowing 300 books a year, if I'd otherwise do like a hundred, plus posting hundreds to thousands of posts on the device, the machine will have paid for itself with my intellectual growth in less than a year. Now that's something worth investing in!

Looking good at this point, kindle!

Thanksgiving week perfect time for 240 posts?

I'll have like 4/5 days off for Thanksgiving, since thu/fri are off, plus the two days of weekend and Wednesday might as well be off. So I'm thinking...if I might be able to get project 240 done during that time...Obviously not the entirety of it, or I'll kill myself with the stress and pressure of it, but even if I get like 180 posts done, at an average of like 40 posts a day, it'll be quite an achievement, because I can do the rest in December, or later when I have more time?

I already have written down the topics for fifty posts like, and 40 posts are going to be poems, I just have to think through the topics for 100 posts for the time being, and spread over five days it doesn't seem to be as intimidating anymore? Of course the journal posts for April still remain, but once those two pieces of writing are done, 2023 will have been an accomplished year!

Flights confirmed, sandwiches for lunch and dinner, spent the entire day cleaning the apartment and arranging the spice and flour cabinets, the kitchen is now kingly! [Tue 21]

Confirmed my travel plans and my flight to Virginia. I'll be on sketchy grounds here as I'll be taking slightly more weeks away from work than originally planned, but uhhh whatever, we'll see how it goes.

Had sandwiches for lunch and dinner, lazy times.

Spent the entirety of the day cleaning up the apartment, specifically the kitchen, and arranging the spice and flour cabinets. I had brought with me 2 kg sattu, 2kg millet flour, 2kg buckwheat flour and a tonne of other spices, which meant I'd have to clear up a bunch of empty containers and spaces in my kitchen cupboards to put those things. And I did! My cereal and flour cupboard looks hella impressive, and much of my spice cabinet is well-labelled and better organized!

Really, my kitchen is a pleasure to cook in now, thanks to this day.

Oh also put like a bunch of my Nepal-brought spices in the freezer because the mill guy told me to, and what's the loss I thought, might as well.

Sohla book in the morning, morning walk, sandwich breakfast , curry and rice lunch, lots of reading and writing, catching up with the journaling for last month, Zaika with SA [Sun 19]

Read Sohla's book on cooking in the morning, it's pretty decent and the recipes are good but it's no SFAH.

Went on a morning walk to Volunteer-Interlaken park after so long.

Had the classic potato and patty sandwich in the morning.

Chickpea curry with rice for lunch.

Wrote a bunch in this blog, read a bunch of books on my kindle, spent a couple of hours catching up on the journaling from last month. I need to figure out a quicker easier way to journal.

Our evening plan was to meet SA and N for dinner at Zaika. N couldn't make it so it was just the two of us boys. Talked a lot, discussed serious matters, had a decent dinner, and came back home to read some more before going to bed.

Finishing the last selroti, getting all of the Nepal-based writing completed, sandwich lunches and sattu dinner, evening walk in the Volunteer park [Mon 20]

Finally a week after my arrival from Nepal I finished the last selroti that I'd been sent with, bittersweet memories.

Spent the day finishing the remaining pieces of written work and 'catchup' writing, so now after this day I was fully on Seattle time, so to speak, no journals or nothing of that sort left.

Had sandwich for lunch, the standard tomato, spread, bread and a patty one, and sattu with kombucha, protein powder and black salt for dinner.

Went to Voluteer park for the evening walk, got all my steps in!

I shouldn't be missing you...

 I shouldn't be
missing you
but I do,
knowing that
it's not the same
for you too,
it's not a
good idea, I know,
and there is nothing
for us to do
but what can I say,
I can't help it,
despite myself,
I can't let go
of the thought of you
and so much more too.
It wasn't too long,
that we met up for,
why is it then, this stabbing hurt,
I would rather
just go about my day
but I count, it's those few
memories of us, together
that torture me with bother
and I tell myself you must hate me
but maybe not,
definitely worth a telephony
No, I insist, but my heart won't let it go
and get again in the quicksand of torture of a broken heart I go,
oh no no no no no,
Thankfully,
You can't hear or read me.

How the hell does walking in the cold make me so relaxed?

This is one observation I've had for the past two years that I wan't to understand the science and psychology of.

My favourite Seattle weather is crisp and a bit cloudy, and my favourite activity during that is to go on a walk listening to something funny.

I was doing that earlier today, and the amount of peace and joy I got out of the whole thing was... something they tell stories to people about. Remember how I mentioned Ananda and having a ball of a time in Seattle? It was that specific experience, so easily accessible, that I was talking about. That something so simple and easy and regular can bring so much joy is fascinating.
Though since I'm reading the book Flow, it shouldn't be too surprising because that is what my flow state was, and I think the idea is for one to train themselves to be in that mindset in all the other everyday tasks too. Writing? Gives one joy and ecstasy! Cleaning dishes? Yes of course! Cleaning the bathroom? Oh please what could possibly be more £"" Loving that book, and excited about finding myself in constant state of ecstasy by training myself how to!

Twelve times Jezz acted hella stupid

1. Oh that time in the Nether Zone when he thought they might run out of air in the corridor!
   
   
2. When Sophie brought up the 'timeline' thing for her pregnancy, and he thought the baby would be Benjamin Button
   
   
3. I mean... what else was he expecting out of the whole orgazoid situation anyway?
   
   
4. Crazy how he went along with the American Nancy's demands for him to put on face paint...
   
   
5. Speaking of which, he agreed to do the thing with Michelle, the sex thing, because he thought it'd hurt his credit score!
   
   
6. Oh and the whole Mark's sister and uninterested S&M situation.
   
   
7. How on earth did he think hooking up with Sophie's mum was a good idea?
   
   
8. Oh and what a fool he was to think effing Mark over with Callie would help his career with audience of one lol.
   
   
9. He was quite a gullible mark for the cult, wasn't he?
   
   
10. The whole Toni-Hans-studio situation made him a total buffoon!
    
    
11. How on earth was setting a post box on fire a remotely good idea?
    
    
12. Oh how about that poor gym instructor the Jez really jazzed up because he happened to fancy Nancy?

Brewing book, ill-fitting earbuds arrive, nice luxurious walk to volunteer interlaken loop, high spirits, chickpea cooked, eggplant and chickpea with rice for dinner, parents call, 100 posts [Sat 18]

In the morning got up quite early, started this book on brewing and finished it more or less by 11. My new Bluetooth earbuds had arrived so I wore them on my volunteer-Interlaken walk, but they are quite ill-fitting without the rubber pins And they come out so easily ugh. I have to buy the rubber caps separately now. But man, the walk was hella nice and relaxing. Had sandwich for lunch.. Cooked chickpeas from scratch in the pressure cooker, first time ever, and added my own spices.

Ehhh. Not so much better than canned.. 

Posted 100 posts from the kindle to the blog, talked to parents in the evening read a bunch, and went to bed around 10, which is like super late for these times!

I broke blogger by posting too much

Silly thing, but I finally got around to posting some of the posts written on the kindle to the blog, and guess I discovered the real-world limits of the blogger API! Which is at 100 posts per 24 hours( I think and hope). So silly I encountered it because it wasn't remotely in my consideration.

Also discovered that the posts from the kind b- can be published quite rapidly, at a pace of less than One minute per post, which is useful information for future posting cadence. I've been back to Seattle for six days now, and haven't gone around to posting from the PC yet, all the posts are still handwritten and then transferred over, including this one.

Speaking (or writing by hand) of breaking blogger, I know this year has basically ended, but seriously considering executing Project 240, which is my insanely ambitious plan to post 240 articles in a short time, using the kindle. On the one hand, yes, I write slower than I type but then this is so less distracting. If I can just plan it out right, then I don't think it's as insane an idea as it sounds. Write for 2 shifts of 5 hours each for 5- 6 days and BAM! we are done.

Since we're in that zone, have to remind myself the the journal posts from the last month, and from April are still pending. Once that is all done, I can end this year a mostly relieved in the specific context man!

I need to change my Seattle social life

Let's cut to the chase.

I need to make more friends, hang out more often with people whose company I enjoy and start dating in Seattle. I have lived and enjoyed a hermetic experience a recent times and that's well and good but that is not what brings me joy, satisfaction and connection to my surrounding community. For that, I need to be less selfish, open up my social universe to other people in the Seattle area, do as they do, and actually try to understand and have empathy for others. Being a Loner is fun and all but that is the easy way, avoiding going beyond one's comfort zone, and that is not how personal or social growth happens.

Also I need to start taking more classes, start volunteering and generally talk to people not in my immediate circle. The social circle needs to expand, if for nothing else than my intellectual and emotional growth.

Holiday travel plans etcetera

Finally I know for certain my holiday plans. I'm not going anywhere for thanksgiving because no tickets were bought and $600 for a round trip to the East Coast is not something I'd pay for a holiday I don't celebrate.

The new plan is to go to work the first two days of december, then fly to the east coast, be there for XMAS& new years, be back on the first week of Jan. That way I'll get to spend time with all the friends, and the family, in the area, optimize my 'office' situation, all without getting in trouble, getting a whole freaking month out of the whole experience.

Will give the keys to PG to water the plants so none of the existing BS happens again.

Okay I'm a real bad poet, Shit!

So I borrowed this book about old cultures, spirituality and alcohol brewing, and there was this tale of the Picts us Scots in Scotland where the last two removing Picts would rather see themselves die than tell the secret of their brews to the invading tribe. It was a rather touching, poignant poem by R. L. Stevenson, the same guy from Treasure Island, and the Invisible Man, I think.

Anyway the point is this, that poem was so freaking good I almost burst to tears, and it even rhymed.

Comparing oneself to the great is not good for the ego, but reading the poem it feels like the sort of content that rhymes which I produce shouldn't even be called a poem. Maybe a song, or a ditty at best because those two artistic creations are leagues and leagues apart. Perhaps that also suggests though that I should get in the habit of reading good poetry, the good sort that touches me and makes me want to emulate, instead of youtube and random internet forums?

Back to savory oats

For dinner yesterday I had savory oats. Oats, soy sauce, butter, kimchi, and crispy chili oil. That was a part of my regular diet in Boston, that and grits, but I grew too tired of it so there had been a log.

It was my second meal of the day in like 2 hours too because only an hour or two before I had had a filling sandwich but I guess all the physical work made me extra hungry.

Things I like about savory oats in bowl: quick, yummy, healthy, minimal effort required. Things I don't like-the oats get clumpy and gross if you don't finish right away and the texture makes it hard to eat.

There's a variation in texture, but I'm not sure if it's enough to make things work.

What I'm thinking is, if I can find the tae Karis, spices and textures with South Asian cooking to go with Savory rolled oats, then I'll have something 'good going!

One month worth of posts and journals coming up ahead!

Even though I've not posted for a month, I've been writing all the daily posts (but not the journal posts, unfortunately, will get around to that soon, hopefully this weekend) in my Kindle. So for the next day or two, readers will find the past month 'backfilled' all of a sudden. Have no fear, that is only to be expected. So much has freaking happened etc...Hard to keep track.

I go insane brooming the house, spending 3 hours doing carpet wash to make things worse, burger-potato-veggie sandwich lunch, savory kimchi oats dinner, early to bed tired [Fri 17]

Since I didn't have much happening at work besides the meeting with manager, spent the day basically watching Youtube. After work broomed and hand-brushed the living room and was left with 316s of doggie hair and 2 lbs of dirt. Then I spent the next three hours stupidly trying to undo a stain I had created to clean the carpet before leaving. It was hard work, I got friction and chemical burns and the carpet ended up much dirtier than I started. Had Indian burger bun, potato patty, veggies and cheese in sandwich for lunch and savory oats with kimchi, chili flakes, butter for dinner.

Was so tired with everything went to sleep pretty early in the evening.

Cleaning the carpet & alternatives

Yesterday I discovered why nobody hand-cleans rugs and got myself chemical burns on the way.
I tried doing two things, both by bare hand-remove dog hair from the carpet and clean out a dirt spot that had had baking soda and soap applied to it. For the first I discovered the process was not scalable as the friction burns would soon start hurting and gettin a carpet brush would save tonnes of time and pain.

For the second, I found out, after 3 hours of trying ' to get those goddamn suds off the carpet that rugs don't wash off like clothes and using soap was a super bad idea. There's a reason why there are so many powerful carpet cleaning products and services, should I feel the need to invest the time and money to clean the $130 rug.

Most importantly of all, I had a realization. I don't have to clean the carpet at all! It's been 2.5 years since my move and half the carpet is dirty. If I rotate it 180 degrees, I can expose the clean side and hide the dirty one and hang on for a few more years! And who the hell knows what will have happened or where I will be, by then!

Great life lessons being learned from the stupidest situations.

On cleaning 'my fucking apartment

As I've written in earlier posts my apartment is quite a mess, and not because of me for a change. There's so much dog hair like you wouldn't be live, and so much mud stains and the rest, it's wild. It's so bad that I'm separating this into two posts, the next post is going to be about me cleaning the rug.

I Groomed my apartment yesterday, and just from the living room I cleaned maybe three pounds of dog hair and two pounds of soil. And I'm not exaggerating, it was literally sand and mud and leaves.

It's been quite an exhausting experience, a learnable moment if there ever was one. People have different standards of hygiene, and mine is higher than other people's, which means a thing's-I need to tell guys to clean my place when( if) they are in my apartment, and I needn't worry about my place before inviting people for lunch or dinner because it's okay, people have varying standards Also, not living with the 'clean as you go' principle is the way to madness.

And then there's the matter of the stuff the guys have left abandoned in my apartment. They're going to be auctioned off if nobody picks them up. I'm kinda done

Updates on the collections issue & escalating

The wrongly-charged utilities issue has not been resolved yet. I asked the collections agency to send me a contesting documents, and they said they had-three weeks later and I haven't received anything. I need to escalate the matter with them and the utilities company, keep moving it higher until something gives.
I'm not giving up so easily people, you're going to give up yourselves before I do! I'll use help of GPT if I have to, to sort out the matter.

More booze-brewing 'plans

This is a bit of a lazy post considering I posted similar stuff earlier, but work with me here.

Turns out Nepalis make Chhyang 'not just out of rice, but also millet and polenta. Which means that's my next plan, tongba out of multiple grains, chhyang out of multiple grains. Might have to use digestive enzymes like digezyme or similar ones that have a combo of various enzymes to break down the fruits and grains completely, though possibly risking certain off-flavors as a result.

The other thing I discovered-the milk wash method& the red bubble tek to extract Keaton, wonder how I might be able to use those techniques as well.

My awesome Uniqlo fluffy jackets have unfluffed

 I have two Uniqlo fluffy fleece jackets that are my absolute favourites  --a blue one and a orangish brown one that my grandmother has the exact version of. They're both my favourites because of comfort, perfect fit& making me look fly.

Now though their active service appears to be coming to an end. The backs of both jackets have been majorly unfluffed to an extent that they look kinda gross. It's fine to wear in the house or amongst friends but maybe not as good of an idea to wear it to work or among strangers. They look bad.

It seems you aren't supposed to machine dry them because the synthetic thread kinda goes soft in very hot and airy temps, and the recommendation is to air dry them. If I'd known that I'd have legit done it because I love them so. Still, kinda sees that only the back side is tucked up and not the front . I did put the entire jacket in the machine, no?

I've been eyeing newer colors of the jacket at the Uniqlo downtown. Will need to buy more of my faves soon!

Leftover rice and Tarkari lunch, returning the old router, walk to office in the afternoon, Uniqlo and Target trips, oats, Tj's full grocery trip, pesto-and-veggies sandwich for dinner [Thu 16]

Had the Tj's tarkari with leftover rice for lunch. After work I went to the downtown Xfinity store and returned the old routes, walked to Uniqlo and chilled, went to Target and bought rolled oats while talking to friend N. Ended up at the office after tapping in was at a boring party where I barely knew anybody. Ate some chips and socialized a bit. Walked back straight to Tj's and did a more complete grocery shopping.

Had pesto and veggies with cheese sandwich for dinner, fell asleep pretty early, woke up, wrote and went back to sleep.

I should update my resume

I haven't updated my resume in three or four years despite having done a lot in the meantime. Plus the whole innovation consulting thing I feel passionately about. Like my Job has changed significantly in the past three years and my resume should reflect that. Plus the prom­otion too.

It's not necessarily for a new job though, just as a reminder to myself that I've achieved a lot, have quite a bit to show, and that I need to be proud of my work. It won't even take a long time, just a couple of hours on the computer writing and re-writing the same document. Not like I can apply for a new job in my present v is a situation, but even if I could, and the hiring ' market was better than it is for folks like me, having an updated resume is never a bad idea!

Happy Bhaitika to You All!

Happy Bhaitika everyone! Yesterday the six of us cousins from my mom's side gathered on Viber and celebrated it virtually, for the first time ever. It was great catching up with everybody, we should do that more often. We were in 4 cities across 3 different countries and continents, two hemispheres!

I wanna start meat prepping

I gotta start meat prepping.

As I wrote a couple of posts ago, I want to start eating more number of meals, but don't have the time to cook three times a day. I'm like so sick and tired of cooking big batches of food and eating the leftovers till all eternity too. Meal prep saves me the time and energy required to make three meals a day, while providing a change and variety in meals within a day and across different days, as most plans have alternate-day dishes. For the pretty reasonable cost of a bunch of lunchboxes, and bulk raw ingredients which I'd buy anyway, I have the privilege to eat 3 home-cooked meals with a variety, by putting in time on Sunday that I have put on a single meal many-a-time. Seems like a fair deal-Should get in on that if I want to start eating properly.

I used to love the Return to Office( RTO) mandate, but now it might make me frustated enough

The senior management at my company have been making terrible decisions about the Rto policy and flexibility around that. Well unless the goal of their decision is to force a lot of people to quit out of frustration with the whole situation because in that case they've been hitting it out of the park, well done!

I used to be a fan of working from the office as I've written here quite often. But it's started making lesser and lesser sense since there's nobody I know at the office, my meeting's are disruptive the most when I'm at the office due to the background noise, and I can't even celebrate in-office events as they either conflict with my job meetings or are held beyond my office hours.

Add to that the fact that a higher up sent an email saying we could work fully remote but only during the two weeks of holidays and not a day beyond. Which is way more inflexible than it has ever been. My plan is to go to the East Coast between Thanksgiving and New Year, but that might not be possible, I'm hella mad. I'll ask my manager tomorrow and ask for maximum flexibility, and if it doesn't work out, it 'l I seethe a lot. And... well that's it!

Xfinity sent me a new router, I was super sus about my current offer changing 'but now it's installed

When I was still in Nepal, two days ago, Xfinity sent me an email offering 'a new router. Suspicious as I am of that company, I completely ignored it. But when I got back, the memories of terrible Teams calls with my team at work came flooding back. But had to deal this with caution-a call to xfinity support made it clear there would be no additional costs and my contract would remain the same. So I pulled the trigger and ordered it yesterday. It came in today, and 30 minties, which included a 20-minute call with a very friendly and chatty Pinay customer support, it's working now. The internet feels faster, the machine looks so modern and everything is well.. Well... I still need to return the old router but that's just a matter of a 20-minute walk to the Xfinity store in SLU.

For once, somehow, things are working 'well. I'm mighty suspicious, oh yea I am!

Online bhaitika, quick TJ's trip, leftover rice and TJ's veggies dinner, evening walk, biphasic sleep [Wed 15]

Since not much was going on at work, talked to Sb& Td for an hour in the morning and then 1. 5 hours with all the cousins later in celebration of bhaitika. It was the first online celebration that way and I really liked it! In the afternoon I went for a short groceries trip to TJ's, the veggie I mixed with leftover rice for dinner. Went to volunteer park for walk, 3 rounds, but was asleep the entire way back, even at 6pm. Went to sleep right away, woke up at 12, wrote a bunch and chilled, back to sleep at 2am.

This Apartment will make me sick, if I don't remediate the allergens

I'm considering getting a maid to get my apartment deep cleaned. Because there is freaking dog hair in every goddam n spot, I can't get away from that sulfuric smell and it'll be damn-near impossible to get those dark things off my carpet without spending ' several hours of my elbow grease on it.

I think I'm developing allergies to whatever u h h foreign materials exist in the apartment since I have been coughing ' incessantly since the day I came back: Can't keep the windows open either coz winter. I find myself in a difficult situation, the only reasonable way out being either a deep clean, or spending $500 on a heat pump air conditioning unit that will exchange the air in my apartment without losing the heat. Which, honestly, not the worst idea in the world if it can buy me peace of mind, cleanliness of air and sanity.

Regardless, this situation needs to be remediated, ASAP, because it's ideal for nobody to live in a place that smells like wet rag.

It's not jet lag, but my new sleep cycle is weird

I went on my regular Seattle walk earlier today and it was one of the strangest walking 'experiences I've had. For I was walking ', that much was certain, but everything was confusing, as I was clearly not fully awake and every intersection needed super duper extra attention because I wouldn't want to sleepwalk into an incoming cat. There was a fog of sorts covering my brain, and it was quite hard for me to make sense of my surroundings if I didn't focus super hard on it. I came home at 6. 30 ish, put on Peep show on Tv, and napped for five hours like.

It's not the first time either. Last night I went to bed at 8, got up at 12, was up until 3, and then back asleep for three hours.

I have found myself in this strange biphasic sheep pan that surely my titling is not to blame fully for anymore, and it's been... interesting '. Haven't faced too many negative consequences yet. But surely this is not conducive for a normal and healthy lifestyle!