Sad lunch but fun talks with all [Wed 31]

disappointing breakfast burrito stuff, family and friend call, volunteer park walk, quinoa chickpeas and egg dinner

I write this a few days after, because I've been busy. Assembling furniture, going to parties, having fun, but mostly honestly just shirking the responsibilities to this blog and the weight of the work to the website. It'll of course be written, but I'm getting nervous.

In the morning I discovered I had 20 bucks in grubhub credit from the organization I volunteered for, so got the Mexican breakfast thing from Lost lake cafe because it was one of the only few open places at the time. Such a big disappointment. No flavor, nothing. The avocado...was it even guacamole(?) was the only saving grace, but you can't really mess up a guac can you?

Talked to sister for a couple of hours, we planned to collaborate on the website work, I'll write she'll create videos, she said, but I'll wait to see how she does before going further with the project. Talked to friend N in the evening, got updated on the going ons in his life. Big progress being made.

Afternoon was Volunteer park walk with audiobook as always.

In the evening I had quinoa and chickpeas with eggs for dinner, avoided writing the posts for my blog and did everything I could to waste time instead.

Lazy day much fearful chillaxing [Tue 30]

work matters, yogurt for lunch, lazy day, rest and chillax, midday nap, latenight write, stay in the dark, 

This is being written two evenings after, because things got tiring, my sleep cycle got all messed up, which further deteriorated the energy levels and I didn't write at all yesterday to catch up on the sleep.

There was a layoff of a sister team at work, which struck fear into everyone's heart even though all were aware they weren't doing much and actually this might be for the better. So that was a big bummer for all the parties involved, a big fat ugh. Didn't get much work done.

For lunch I had lots of (home-made!) yogurt and sugar. Went to volunteer park for a couple of rounds as walk, listened to fruits of the sand in audiobook.

Besides that, didn't do much, chilled, relaxed, napped for most of the day even though I should have been working on my website, and read a little bit. It was so relaxing, but also a little bit stressful.

Figured I wouldn't get much writing done, but somehow six posts got out of me. They were bad, but hey, numbers are numbers!

Review of A short History of Drunkenness by Mark Forsyth

This book was hilarious. I listened to it in audiobook form and laughed out loud on several occasions. The author says some vaguely naughty things, inoffensively, on several occasions, and that feels such a ride in these times, it was quite enjoyable. All the other books I've listened to have been more or less on the academic side, not specially witty, but the author, with his typical old-timey old British charm and wit wins the reader's heart.

The book covers...exactly what the title claims, a sort of anthropological study, an estimation of history, of how people might have gotten drunk, the circumstances, the company, the drinks and the social context, in several points in history, across a variety of cultures across the globe. But these are not just simulations or models, Forsyth adds color, the human factor that intrigues the reader and makes them wanting.

I will most certainly be reading more of this author's books even though they otherwise don't interest me.

9.5/10. This is no grade inflation, it's legitimately good!

Book review of Fruit from the Sands: The Silk Road Origins of the Foods

Fruit of the Sands, book by Robert N Spengler III, I read it in audiobook form. It's a history of all the food and spices that were distributed through the region that came to be known as the Silk Road.

The author charts the history of the Silk Road all the way back to 7000 years ago to modern day, and explains how the transport and exchange of people, ideas and food occurred over thousands of years, across empires and nations, through changing religions and cultures, in times of war and peace. After explaining the context of the silk road, the author goes in to deal with the individual stories of several dozen grain crops, vegetables,fruits, and spices.

This book was a tour de force. I wouldn't necessarily consider it a history of the Silk Road, or a history of silk road and food, but one of food items that owe their existence to the ancient trading way. It's a reference manual, providing scientific, genetic information as well as historical context of so many food items that are fundamental to today's world.

I found the book enriching and captivating, and would highly recommend it to anybody who's interested in learning about the history of food. It doesn't deal with the politics or culture behind the Silk road much, but that's all for the best, since we get to learn more about foodstuffs.

9.5/10

It's hard when the weather's not your friend

One needs to be reminded of the great things happening, and not focus on the less-than-ideal occurrences, such as the project for website taking forever to get started, the bunch of strewn unassembled furniture that's causing stress, no fiction writing on these pages, and other things too, who knows, plus the lack of goddamn proper sleep because everything is messed up. This is the only post I'm writing tonight because don't feel like it, my sleep has been all messed up since earlier in the week due to mild stress and possible co2 poisoning because it's like some sort of disease, as soon as the clock strikes eight or nine in the evening, my eyes are heavy as a gold-smuggler's laptop bag and I don't feel like writing or staying up at all. Terrible, this all. Where does creativity come from in times like this, not possible, no chance for fiction writing because hell yeah if I could get a bunch of words out, any shit that's a big achievement, and this is already as good as it gets. Third day in a row, or is it the fourth, in which I've told myself, reminded over and over again I'm going to go to the coffee shop, draw, work on my website, write good stuff, but nothing good has come of it. Miserable times these are, low on energy, no opportunity to meet with friends and acquaintances and nothing to do, except sleep and get terribly terribly guilty about it. Sleep feels amazing, the most incredible, when it's the most forbidden. Like I'm never as refreshed on a weekday as on a weekday when I have an early-morning meeting that there's no possibility of sleeping through. What bullshit is this even. Ack.

More on the work situation, and it turning out to be alright

One of the books I read recently told me to remind myself every so often: don't be so dramatic! things will be fine! You are probably exaggerating the impact of things, and their immediacy, just so you can use this as an excuse to shirk of your everyday responsibilities and goals. Relax, focus on the present, what you need to do. You are here, and now. Relax. Breathe. Chill. Breathe in, out. In. Pause. Out. If you know meditation techniques, do that. Feeling better?

The work situation that I was feeling gloomy and scared about on Tuesday, it turns out perhaps there was some overreaction from my side to it. The sky hasn't fallen (yet!) and if it does, there's no holding it up. It's one of the things I cannot change. I can change however is the mental state of being that is living in constant fear, and live more flexibly, fearlessly, ready to take on challenges by the horn and smash them by their butt.

So the work situation, there's no urgent need to freak out with great immediacy. Eventually, at some point, things might get less-than-ideal. That point is faraway, and not important. Not for right now. Breathe. Relax. Chill. Remember, you are a winner.  This. Too. Shall. Pass.

The unassembled furniture is causing me great stress

There's a few unpacked furniture,
That lie in my living room,
Waiting for me to assemble
and turn the room where I sleep,
into a bedroom, a place for rest
and refuge.

They shame me, for not being better,
For lack of discipline,
and deep within me the great fear
of not knowing, of failing
of the self and the furniture, the unraveling,
and remind me, get to us, you need to
we stop you from doing anything else
why won't you just take a few short hours
and finish the work,
but I fear
I might end up deeper
in the morass,
unknowing, uncertain, confused
on where to go
and what to do.

They cause me stress,
Those pieces of wood
Lying there all over
Unwrapped and unused,
I'm beckoned, invited
not seduced, but rather coaxed
to put some effort
into become a real grown man
who can assemble the flat-pak
furniture
all on their own.

A party invitation, to a. real. party. where. people. rsvp. At this day and age? Insane!

It'll be a short one. We have reached a stage where one wants to improve, writing and other skills, one desires to write fiction, and be known, respected and seen by the world. Oh but the gods throw wrench after wrench, such as the fucking writing class, registered after so long, gets cancelled. How? Why? How often does this even happen, and well...we can't say why me...but why now all of a sudden just when one had gotten their shit together.

Right. Back to point. Which was...what...exactly? Does it matter? Oh starting in February -- oh perhaps only for the month of February while I get my website writing done -- I'm reducing the quantity of my daily writing and hopefully upping the quality of the writing...4 posts a day, instead of 6. Doesn't sound much, but with the journal post removed, it's a difference between 3 posts a day and six which seems...reasonable. The hope is, when I'm used to the habit of actually writing good stuff at pace, for the one month of Feb...doubt it'll happen but I'll wish this into existence, I swear, I'll keep writing well.

Where was I. Right.

Oh yeah. So I got invited, to a houseparty, with 30+ people attending. A full-on house party like they have in college or a few years after, until everybody tires out then there's a global fucking pandemic and you move to Seattle where you have a good time, but no more large gatherings of people and you regret the days where you were out and about meeting friends of friends and their friends who would want you to ask their numbers and look at you expectantly but ohhh no, not you nuh uh you'd shy away and things would fizzle out and everybody would end up disappointed but you'd be too good for it until years later ohh.so.regretful. Who knows, they may have failed, but they might have worked out. Ah well, one lives, one learns.

So I'm going obviously, what's the strategy for talking and socializing these days even, how do you interact with a big group of people, what topics are hot and how do you convince people to hang out with you later? Take chips? Talk about how you brew your own stuff? Not talk at all and let them talk throughout? but then they might get bored and not want to hang out with you later? Can you sell better with your patter, or by paying attention? How desperate is one to make friends? Is this all a bit...too much? Gosh. Solitary confinement is a harsh punishment.

Lets just start working on the website already

The way to start working on the website
My personal one
On which my future stands
Is by
bothering myself enough
Banging on about it constantly
Until
I surrender
To the undying, unyielding need
To invest in the future
invest in my job and career
and for god's sake, just effing do it!

Ananta

Ananta: a cosmic snake

 Ananta literally means “without end,” “infinite.” It was a descriptive term used
of Vishnu and other gods. It was also used as a name of Vishnu’s serpent.
Ananta was the giant serpent that floated upon the Milky Ocean and formed
the bed for Vishnu as he slept during the involution of the universe (pralaya).
Ananta (also known as S´esha) was the son of Kas´yâpa, the grandfather of all
beings, by his wife Kadrû. Other serpents, such as Vâsuki, Takshâka, and
Karkkotaka, were his brothers. Bala-Râma was a partial incarnation of Ananta.

- George M Williams, Handbook of Hindu Mythology (2001)

Grocery trip and art class [Mon 29]

Buckwheat pancakes and chickpea curry for lunch, unpacking the furniture, art class, walk to the park, lots of writing, TJ's trip, rice and kimchi and yogurt for dinner, starting yogurt-making, late to bed

Writing this the next day despite being super tired and low on mood, which means the writing ritual part is safe, just need to get everything else in order.

For lunch I had the leftover buckwheat pancakes and chickpea curry. I should make the buckwheat pancakes in a much larger batch and make them last for at least a few more meals.

Went to the art class, super productive, we learned perspective and shading. Went to Volunteer park in the late afternoon, two rounds and a quick trader joe's trip for milk (yogurt supplies) eggs banana and chickpeas and tofu. So much protein! Listened to fruits from the sand audiobook.

Had rice kimchi and yogurt for dinner.

Wrote a bunch in the evening, despite being so lazy.

Boiled milk and started a batch of yogurt. Was a bit late to go to bed due to the laziness.

List of some things I want to accomplish in the next week

1. Assemble all of the new furniture
   
   
2. Buy lots of new bedsheet and duvet + cover
   
   
3. Get custom art printed for my bed room
   
   
4. Start on the hydroponic thingamajig
   
   
5. Bottle all of the fermenting chhyang
   
   
6. Buy the grains I've been eyeing for the past year
   
   
7. Start working on my website asap
   
   
8. Be less anxious about the job situation
   
   
9. Practice savour technique from mythical morning more religiously
   
   
10. Get my knee repaired, anyhow. It's turning into a nuisance, I'm beginning to get concerned.
    

I made yogurt after a long gap, and it was great

Don't feel like writing much, not feeling specially productive. Let's talk about projects. My water kefir has been getting ready, I'm preparing to make tu'rong by combining fermented rice with fermented soybeans, and I made yogurt last night, it is pretty decent! For the price of a gallon of milk, I can get a gallon of much more expensive, yummy food that doesn't upset my stomach at all. What a deal!

I don't feel like writing or doing anything productive

There's been a second round of layoffs at work, and that's put me in a mood. Didn't do my complete regular walk -- though to be fair it was partly to do with my knees still hurting -- and didn't write or work on my website either. And it's possible the initial low mood was because of lack of sleep for the last several days, which I have fixed by taking a nice long nap this evening. And deciding to not do anything productive but watch tv and relax.

My apartment is strewn with furniture, which is not ideal, I haven't hung out with people, I don't have many friends left in this fucking town anyway, and all of a sudden there's the uncertainty of what's going to happen to my visa if something rather not-great happens to my team.

It's reasonable, I hope, to feel like not writing or doing productive.

Obviously working on the website is important because it's the anti-dote to the uncertainties, as it increases job opportunities. But like...meh? So freaking annoying, everything.

I will say this: it's unclear if it's just me, or the weather, or something else, but the winters are taking their toll on me, this is usually not my social life in the summers. Though maybe...my circumstances...have changed? Perhaps this is an opportunity for me to be flexible and expand my friend circles. Actually reach out to people and work hard to maintain and create new social connections.

Ugh. guh.

Life is a use-it or lose-it situation, innit?

My grandfather has a laptop that he acquired in the late 80's. The first time it was booted and run was in 2019, when I was at their place, and he brought it out to show it, how he had laptops before they were cool. He had preserved the laptop alongside his cherished possessions, like a totem, a figure of prosperity and good luck.

My parents have a separate closet for the 'nice clothes', the fancy, expensive and often not used clothes that they claim to save for special occasions. Not a single occasion worthy of those clothes has arisen.

The other set of my grandparents, they had a special guest room for 'special guests'. Over the course of the five years I lived at their place, that room was used maybe three or four times. It was cleaned daily though.

It took me a very long time, and I haven't internalized the lesson yet completely, to understand that life is meant to be lived, not to be 'saved for later'. Everything has an expiration date, everything. Even the fanciest of things. In a sense, one is just 'renting' things when buying them, when they go bad, one must return them to Earth. The rent is paid up-front, and it's up to us to decide if we want to get our money's worth for things we acquire, or let our investment go to waste. There is nothing fundamentally wrong about renting a place to never use it, it's just a terrible misallocation of resources, often by folks who are specially lacking in those.

One way to look at things that has reshaped my thought has been this: I look at something that I own, put an estimate on how long it might last, and how much it cost, and do a simple division. The cost per year. At the rate of 10% inflation, the cost of ownership doubles every 7 years. Something that cost me $100 today will have been worth $400 if it lasts 14 years. Then the question I ask myself is this: how might I get my money's worth, get that $30 a year value by using it. Every year I don't use it, I've misspent that money that could have gone elsewhere.

That's one of the easier ways to see the fallacy behind hoarding mentality. That's not all. There's also the running cost of ownership. The cost of space inside one's closet is not nil, refrigerators need energy, that costs money, to keep cold, the higher the thermal mass of the items inside there, the more it costs to run the cooling system. There's opportunity costs too: the previously-mentioned $100 worth of good is a total loss of $800 over 14 years if that money had been invested in the stock market instead. Would one be okay seeing their cash decay in front of their eyes, instead of investing it somewhere more productive?

This is a complex topic, I want to write more on this as things evolve.

Unpacking the funiture, and realization it's not all terrible

Super quick one and bedtime for me.

I wrote how stressed I was about furniture and if I would have to buy new tools and how long it might take me yadda yadda yadda. Well the furniture is here, and I unpacked everything from the cardboard boxes earlier today, and like everything else I was being overly dramatic, making a mountain out of a sesame seed. Yes, they include all the tools needed. Yes they include all the instructions. Yes they give a very reasonable amount of expected time. Yes, if someone else were assisting me it would be a lot quicker, and my a lot quicker I mean 15 mins to 45 mins, but even all by myself it should take me no longer than two hours, if I can just keep my focus and not be too impatient. It looks great, by the way, and the number of nuts bolts and washers is manageable.

The next thing is to start looking for nicer bedsheets and duvet covers and custom posters -- the latter I have been talking about for the last six months.

Things are under control, and my bedroom is my citadel, it'll soon be a nice-looking not-embarrassing citadel too.

I wrote a letter to the local representatives, and they responded to my message!

This will be short, I wasted all the time I should have been writing on looking up dance studios near me and trying to buy amazing grains only to back out from paying for them. Not that there's much to write.

As a part of the YIMBY volunteering I wrote to a bunch of local representatives about increasing and encouraging construction in Seattle and they wrote back. One of them did, suggesting I look at their initiatives they've undertaken, and that they're working hard towards the goal. It was probably autogenerated, or written by a college intern, but man how responsive are they, responding to a random person's email in a matter of a few days! And here I am trying to reach out to Nepali elected politicians and public servants for years without response.

What a positive outcome this has been for my wee little step towards greater political activism and participation!

Dance class, pottery, and what else?

In 2022 I took standup comedy class. It didn't go as ideally as I'd hoped, but I put myself out there, tried something and well discovered it wasn't the best. Would I do it again? Who knows, maybe I will! If there's other friends doing it, there's no reason not to! Am I funny? Not at all! Should I do it? Absolutely!

I have my art class ongoing, and I'm absolutely digging it. I'm learning so much, getting a reviewer to comment on my attempts to draw and sketch, provide precious feedback at my pathetic attempts. The goal is not to become the master, conqueror of the seven seas, vanquisher of anybody who's not as good as me. It's to be better than where I am, and to get a new perspective on life and looking at the world. For example, my art teacher says, when looking at the world try to understand where the light is coming from, how the shadows interact, how each shape can be decomposed into simple basic shapes, and how perspective works, the lies coming and going and the horizon. I don't understand fully what the point about horizon was, but it felt important. Should have asked her to clarify it.

In February, a week from tomorrow my writing course begins. It's not as expansive as the sketching class, but it wasn't as pricey either, and it's online, with live instructions. Will I be any good at it? It's highly unlikely, the point is not to do something I'm already good at by taking an introductory course. It's to orient myself, understand the circumstances around me, improve, change my perspective of the world, understand how other people are taught to see things.

Multi-modality, I've been talking about it a lot lately. In how many different mediums can you express, can you sense, can you enjoy? Art, writing, cooking, humor, and so much more.

Dancing is one of such modalities. Seriously considering enrolling in a course (or two or five, depending on how things go). In the past I've humiliated, I don't have flexibility, my limbs flail about and I can't locate myself in physical space. So what? One can learn. And if that proves to be impossible, one can certainly try. Try I shall, because why not. The one with the moon on his head, he was bound to the rules because of his form as a stone. I'm not a divinity, I'm but a mere human. I can be flexible, become who I want to be.

There's pottery class that I've been eyeing too, for the past two years, this is the time, the right semester, to enroll into it. Before it fills up and the wait-list fills up too. The timing is a bit awful since Link trains are fucked, so commuting all the way up to Northgate might be a challenge. But such issues are solvable. Specially for an exciting topic of exploration as pottery and ceramics.

So many opportunities, I just need to open myself up to the possibilities and the world opens itself up.

Plants are fed, hau hau groceries [Sun 28]

mula and karela with quinoa and rice for lunch, aborted plans, picking up the furniture, plants, hau hau shopping, yummy banh mi dinner, sketching practice, evening walk, relaxing and writing and reading before bed

Writing this the evening of the following day, I've had a hard time getting myself to write or do anything productive at work, and the project for Greater Phoenix isn't going well...to say the least. Hopefully I can make up for today's lost posts tomorrow...

Got up early, talked to family, supported sister and went back to bed. Read a bunch of books in the morning and had mula and karela with quinoa and rice for lunch, with crispy chilly oil dumped in. Had made plans with AD to hang out with him and S, but he got sick and the plan was terminated. No worries, I had to pick up 80lbs of furniture from home depot and Target and carry them up four flights of stairs anyway.

Around noon I watered the plants, made a few cuttings and checked the state of my greenery, they had been ignored mostly for the winter as they were dormant and weren't consuming much water and doing anything exciting, but the relative humidity is decreasing, the temperature and brightness is increasing, so it's time to water them and repot them. My plan for this season is to trim a bunch of plants in a few weeks and heavily fertilize during the summer, so come late summer or fall, they really thrive.

Went to Hau Hau market to do groceries, bought four different kinds of greens, radish, karelas, iskuss, raw bamboo and other goodies. If I end up eating all of them...I mean I obviously will, why is an if there, in a good amount of time, I won't need to worry about my diet ever again. I'll finally consider myself a goddamn adult capable of taking care of myself and other people, and celebrate accordingly.

On my way back, stopped by the banh mi place, picked up the 6-dollar banh mi and had it at home. So. Freaking. Good. And satisfying. At this rate I'll be running through my regular groceries just so there's a reason to buy from Hau Hau, and get the sandwiches on my way back.

Did an hour or two of sketching from observation, as a 'homework' for the class. Walked for 30 minutes, and relaxed, listened to podcasts, wrote here and read a bunch before going to sleep. Took a while to fall asleep because of assholes who were being super noisy outside.

Adding diverse proteins to my diet

Protein intake has been a little lower than usual, with dal being too boring and beans so old-fashioned and repetitive to eat. But then in a bit of a co-incidence, my decision to avoid eggs also coincided with the whole situation, plus tofu was taking a long time to ferment. Which meant that the protein intake in the past two weeks or so was much lower than the recommended amounts. Probably why my knee took forever to recover, due to the proper nutrition.

It's being turned around now. Chickpea-based sattu and protein powder will be brought back into the diet, and so will eggs and home-made yogurt, because that needs to so start again. Plus I don't really hate beans, just the boring versions, and chickpeas (or any beans) in sour sauces is such a refreshing twist on an old dish, I can't help but gobble gobble. So for the next several weeks I'll be on a high-protein diet, with the intention of building stronger muscles and gaining body mass while increasing physical workouts. The hope is that the knee recovers, and I can push hard with the physical workouts.

How's the art class going, you ask?

Third art class was earlier today, and I know it's silly to write about every. single.class. I. go. to. But no, it's important, for me anyway, because art for me is terrifying, this is equivalent of somebody playing with a giant python and doing that on a weekly basis. Okay not giant python exactly, because that's actually dancing or sporting activities, but something similar. Maybe a large slimy earthworm that won't stop wriggling aggressively at all, and you feel bad for it, and also for yourself, because what the hell are you doing torturing that poor earthworm.

Here's the gist of it: my learning may be slow, but it's certain. There is no doubt, not a shred, that against all odds, that I'm learning. Not as fast as other students are, and it takes a couple of (metaphorical) hits on the head to go duhhh and figure something out, but every lessons I've learned something new. First lesson was the thickness/thinness of  lines and using basic shapes to quickly sketch one's surroundings, second was on proportions and intro to shading, and this class was on perspective and proper shading. And boyy did I shade! Turns out I'm a fearful shader, that I'll avoid shading confidently because I'm afraid of what I'm doing. And my perspective is all wrong. The instructor corrected those on multiple occasions during the class, the hope is the learnings stay with me.

I'm excited, will very likely take the next art class the following semester.

The best garden party of my life

I'm writing this almost ten months after the event that's being discussed about, it's an error that should have been corrected, but I was so intimidated by the topic, by not doing justice to the great events of the day, I never wrote about it. It's a pity too, what wonderful times were had.

Here is the course of events, in the most boring and matter-of-fact way possible. If there's time I'll add color and spice to the description, to try to make you live the day, experience it the way I did, but it's bedtime and there's four hours of nonstop meetings tomorrow at 6am so it's...uncertain.

Friend PU had invited me to a house party in Lalitpur, the fancy part where all the rich INGO expats lived. I hadn't really given it a second thought because there was lots happening and a 'party' is often a code for people getting very drunk and noisy and running around, which wasn't something I was excitedly looking forward to. Old friends would be there, that much was known, and it was enough to keep one engaged and slightly interested.

How did we get there? PU should have had her car but she didn't. I remember walking up to there, it was somebody's birthday and my friend met me outside. It was such a fantastic house, fully rented by the couple that was in upper management in the American company that does factory of data in the cloud, and they had subleased the ground floor to a couple of young non-profit workers, girls from  Europe and America in a unit that looked like it could be straight out of Southern Spain. Cool, white, open.

Oh and the house had a massive backyard. A large garden that could host a dance party with hundreds of people, and a kitchen garden beyond that.

Where do I start: there was so much food, way more food than anybody could ever eat, the people there were a good mixture of Nepalis and non-Nepalis, and everybody was cool and chill and fun to talk to, I met old pals from KCM days, had really interesting eye-opening conversations with dozens of people, there was a really good dj who played through the night, everybody danced on the outdoors dance floors until wee hours of the morning, it was a literal dance party with a really good dj playing at somebody's house, and I knew so many people there. I have never had an experience like that, not in Nepal. Because it's a family connection, not friends-and-fun situation. And not in Kathmandu, never. Who has that sort of land, and who even organizes these fun parties that don't turn into weird show-offy loud boisterous fights soon after midnight! Not Nepalis, not those I know. And possibly, not non-Nepalis of the older generation. It was the right mix of people, in the right place, and the right time.

It was heaven.

I would like to find myself in such situations in the future, forevermore. I wasn't stressed out about the state of the world, I wasn't worried about the I/NGO talk -- which was my biggest fear early in the morning -- I wasn't lonely or friendless, so many contacts there, and I didn't feel lost. It was so. my.jam. Restrained luxury.

Yum, yum, yum.

I created templates out the wazoo for the website plan, now to fill them...

We are all tired of my great plan to work on the website, and how excited I'm to do it and so forth, and how much I've not done it at all. My 'planning' of the entire process now runs upwards of 4,000 words, inching ever so close towards the 5000 mark. 

Every 'genre' of writing that is to be done has been templated out to hell, all the structures have been created, I've setup the timetables and expectations and what sort of stuff should be done by when and when I should be worried I'm running behind the plan. The only thing I haven't done is assign the pieces for the days, and force myself to write articles to the day I've planned for myself, but that sort of micromanaging of self would be not very productive methinks.

All that remains is to write them out, and complete the website. Funny stuff, the total wordcount I'm targeting for the project is around 70k, and I've got 5k in planning already. If only I'd spent all that time and energy in actually writing instead of...writing about writing, and writing about that, but one can dream.

At this point, it's going to be really really really really hard for me to avoid doing this work because there's no way out. No excuse to look out for template for a certain structure and waste a day on that, or wondering what topic I might need to write on, or how it might show on my website, or ideate on the possible content on the website. All that work is done, and planned for. What's needed is the execution, the on-the-ground writing. Pen-and-paper, fingers and keyboard, word on the screen right from one's brain, and that's it. There's no running away, no hijinks. If I want  a solid web presence, this is the way to go.

I must jump.

Book review: On Spice by Caitlin PenzeyMoog

It has occurred to me, only as I write these words, that the author's last name should have been a clue, which went over my head completely until this point. For those not in the know, Penzeys is one of the largest suppliers and sellers of spices in America, it's as 'big' as spice can get. The author kept mentioning how 'spice' meant her family, how that's all that was discussed in her family gatherings and how her grandparents were obsessed with spices. I had taken that to mean there family must have been a very passionate middle-class family with specific tastes in their choice of spices. As it is, she's likely a 'Penzey' of the 'spice brand' name.

I listened to this book as an audiobook over a couple of days.

It's a quick introduction to the top 40-ish spices of the world, much like the other book on spices that I recently read and reviewed. Here, though, the author focuses less on the history and anthropology of different spices, and more on how they are used. What do the Indians use it for, why is so-and-so combined in such a ratio, what's the point of it, and so forth.

What I loved about this book, compared to the other one, is she doesn't limit herself to the powdered spices, but also considers herbs, and onions garlic, ginger to be part of the larger 'spice family'. She talks about their usage, gives tips on ways to make the most out of them, (or in garlic's case, how to get rid of garlic-breath), and what sort of dishes can be enhanced by a spice.

The one thing that the other book didn't touch and this one does, is the matter of spice mixes. We are introduced to a variety of flavored salts and spice mixes, explained the ratios and combinations that make them, and how the constituents take the flavors towards various directions.

Loved it, this is likely going to be a re-read for me. 9 out of 10 stars. Highly recommended!

Chickpea-buckwheat cooked, knee pain stops exteneded walk [Sat 27]

mula-jhol and noodles, walk to the park, interrupted walk due to leg-ache, fapar pancakes and chickpea tarkari cooking, evening writing, lots of reading and writing, chhyang processing

Writing this the following evening. This has been one hell of a hermetic weekend, productive but limited in social interactions despite the plans otherwise. Regardless.

For lunch I had mula ko jhol and noodles, separately. Tried frying the shin ramyun noodles from the evening before, turns out they were already over-spiced, and taking away water from them just concentrated the salt and the flavor. As a result, most of the noodles were thrown out, it's fine.

In the early-afternoon, went on a walk to Volunteer park, tried going to interlaken but by legache reared its ugly head, back to volunteer halfway through.

Processed one jar of chhyang by adding sugar and bottling it. Have about 60oz of chhyang. Should be ready to do the rest in the next few weeks. For dinner I made fapar ko pancakes which took forever because I'd forgotten how the flour worked, and chickpea and tomato curry. Yum yum yum, so freaking good. This is what I was missing it turns out, chickpeas and tomatoes in my life, sourness and brightness of the tomato and the heartiness of chickpeas. I feel at home. For real.

Read and wrote a bunch, had plans to go out and about, but didn't, played age of empires for a bit, got 'caught up' with the posts in this blog, and slept at a reasonable time.

My new furniture's here, a hell of a time it'll be to assmeble them

My furniture's here! I dragged the 60lbs of bed up the four floors, ready to die, and the 20lbs of the dresser which was so much easier, earlier today.

Concerns, considerations, I have a few. First, will I need extra tools to assemble the bed, and what tools exactly do I ask at the store. Second, how long should it take to assemble because I'm afraid I'll end up spending the entirety of the day setting it up and still not get it right. Might have to sleep in my living room for days and weeks because my bedroom will be in a state of assembly. And what if, after all of this, the assembly fails, my shoddy handiwork is thwarted by my bodily wait, and on night I wake up on the floor, the wooden legs having been crushed.

This is, unfortunately for me, the first time I'm assembling furniture all by myself. Every occasions before this I've done it for friends or their friends, or other people. It's a lot easier when you're doing it for other people because you're not as invested, you don't have to worry about where you'll be sleeping for the night should the assembly fail, and so on. But that option's not available for me.

Oh then to assemble the drawer, maybe it'll be fine, or maybe it looks like shit and I have wasted hundreds of dollars on trash, spending hours assembling it, all for naught!

Finally, I'll have to orgranize the bedroom, no more excuses, things are getting real at that point.

The scariest of all is the fact that there's going to be an unfinished bed in my living room for who knows how long. Will I get it done in six hours? Where am I going to find six hours of focused downtime to assemble it? What if it doesn't get done for weeks? What if it's supposed to take like 30 minutes of an average man, and I take twenty times that number. It's certainly possible!

So many issues on the horizon, wish. me. lock.

Dave's Hot Chicken Capitol Hill Seattle: A review

Dave's Hot Chicken opened recently in the neighborhood, replacing a casual fast food place that nobody ever went to. I didn't see anybody there anyway. Dave's on the other hand, has people lining up outside in the coldest of days for hours, just waiting to order. It's another half hour on a good day to receive your order.

Friday evening, I had to go to work to tap in, and the crowd seemed thin, the perfect opportunity to go. Low-stakes and low effort. Oops. Had to wait in the line for fifteen minutes, then had to repeat the order twice to make sure they got it. Vegetarian dave's sliders, I said, twice. Surely they wouldn't mess that up.

Waited for twenty-five minutes after that for my food to arrive. This is not for the impatient, that is for sure. Eventually it was my turn, I left the seat for about ten seconds to pick up the food, and by the time I was back, the seat had been taken. Ah well. It was time for standing tables for me.

The veggie chicken was so good, it was suspicious. Too good and juicy it was. Turns out it was too good to be true, they messed up the order and gave me chicken. The fries were just okay, maybe it was the disappointment of getting the wrong order, or maybe my tiny appetite was satiated by the first bite of meat in years, but I picked up a few fries from my order, and threw it all out.

The manager/owner of the place is really quite hands-on and takes care of the customers, so that's one thing I like about the place. They messed my order despite me repeating it, I should have checked, oh well. The sandwich wasn't anything to die for, the spices were decent, the texture was great. The fries were just meh. I paid 11 bucks for chicken slider and fries. With a shake it'd have been fifteen. The wait was quite long too.

If one's a fan of fast food chicken sandwiches, or into trendy foods and restaurants, or has the patience to wait for hours for their food, this is the place to be. Otherwise, I'd skip it.

7/10 for the entire experience. 8.5/10 for the food.

Exciting learnings and discoveries about the AI/ML world

I spent the entirety of Friday trying to understand how LLM's work, what goes on with these generative models, the difference between encoder and decoder models, why one might want to use encoder models to embed documents, and use decoder models to generate new content and so forth. It was all quite interesting since I'd zoned out on the happenings in the field for a few years, as things seemed to be moving so quick. Now it appears things have stabilized a bit.

The most exciting thing that I found out though was langchain. Well not the library itself which I'm made to understand is terrible, but the concept of chaining steps in models, and giving model the tools to accomplish its tasks. So you can tell a model: hey, call this function if you want to run google, call this function if you want to run calculator, run this function if you want to run wolframalpha, and it does all of that. It identifies the steps it needs to take to accomplish a task, and if the steps have been made available in terms of tooling, it uses them!

Which means it's not just a model now, the whole world is wide open. It's just an orchestration platform for other tools. Yes, the 'controller' is still text-based ui, and a cli in the end, but all of a sudden it's not a tool boxed up, it's an interactive tool that is able to leverage other tools, which gives it so much more strength.

Started bottling the second water of chhyang and other project updates

Haven't done a project update in a long while, so here we go.

The rice wine that we had before I left for Virginia, I had watered it and left for second water. The second water it turns out...is alcoholic, but nowhere as sweet or flavorful. I added a bunch of sugar to the bottles after bottling and they're drinkable, but it's clearly not as good as the first water. But I know now. Also the remainder of the rice was so little, it's clearly at the end of its life. One could push somehow for third water, but that would be a terrible weakass drink not worth anybody's time. Still, as I bottle the rest of the gallons in the coming weeks, maybe I'll consider that...

Speaking of which, started two experiments at the end of the chyang harvest. First, there appeared to be lees on the bottom of the jar, I'm using those to try to start my colony of yeast to ferment future batches of rice wine. It's unclear how that'll work, but I put it in a bottle with a couple spoonfuls of sugar, we'll see how that goes.

The other experiment involves the leftover rice, which I added into a new bottle with new water and couple of tablespoons of salt, plus kinema. That's how the viet sauce Tu'ong is made. I am hoping to see how far I can get with that fermentation. The strong brine will likely prevent anything bad from happening to the bottle, I can keep adding more leftover rice in the future.

Haven't started fermenting kefir(s) or kombucha yet because the weather is still quite cold. Might do yogurt from a store-bought batch soon though. Around mid-Feb the projects will probably pick up pace.

I wrote about this earlier, but I'm actively using my old kombucha, the vingaried one, as actual vinegar for cooking, and it's...fine? It's got its own flavor, if one knows what they're doing its a such a powerful tool.

The need to popularize and export rarely-used and known exquisite Nepali spices

The Book of Spice taught me that there's a very close relative of the Arab spice sumac found right in Nepal, and it's used to make achaars and much else. It's barely exported and little-known. It would be such a coup if folks were able to source premium high-quality bhakimlo (that's what it's called in Nepal) and export it to Western markets. The branding is important, along with quality control because once it gets commoditified, it's hard to compete on volume, specially for a place like Nepal with small area and non-automated agricultural practices.

On a similar theme, siltimmur. Surely I've mentioned the spice here. It's sichuan pepper prickly-ash found in Nepal, but much stronger than the regular timmur. So sharp is the taste and the experience of eating it that 'to eat siltimmur' (siltimmur khanu) means to die.

The sad fact is that the spice is barely known inside Nepal: my parents and all of my friends who I asked about it knew the phrase it was used in, but never thought that it was something edible that might be related to the very common spice timmur. They thought it was just a turn of phrase nothing more. And so I have been unable to source the spice while in Kathmandu. If only somebody could scale up the production and export of this spice...

The magic of ml, wrong order feeds me meat [Fri 26]

Working quite late exploring the ml world, yucky lunch of oily mayo and rice,  walk to work late in the afternoon, through Dave's hot chicken, long wait wrong order, meh meal, to office to tap in and read, tea and sage, and a wet walk back, evening reading and early to bed 

I write this the evening of the following day, despite not having done much on Friday writing wise. I'm still crazy behind on the Project Phoenix, but we'll need to setup timelines and plans, without that the projects not going to succeed in anyway, that is for sure.

I was working quite late on this Friday, exploring the magic of AI, and how various models can be chained to one another to give a model the ability to use various external tools and abilities. Learned so much, I;m much more ready for the AI future than I was two days ago.

Had a yucky lunch with tabasco sauce and mayo, on rice. Because I wanted to taste what it'd be like. It was alright, just made me feel disgusting and never ever ever want to do it again. In the evening got ready to head to work, stopped by Dave's hot chicken on the way and ordered cauliflower sliders and fries. After waiting for 20 minutes I got chicken sliders and fries. I didn't complain, just ate the chicken and dumped the fries because they were too much and I was made. More review incoming.

Walked to office, had two cups of tea, listened to audiobook, picked up rosemary bush, and walked back. It was raining quite heavily at this point and I got very very wet when I got back.

Changed my clothes, read a bit and was just about to write that I happened to shut my eyes in the living room. Next thing I know it's 5am.

How the hell does one write fiction in a rush, when there's always something else happening?

The thing is, it's a struggle to write on a daily basis as is it. Yeah the current six-a-day posting schedule is hectic to the point of absurdity, and starting this Feb, it's going to be abandoned in favor of 4-a-day, because that way one has the room to breathe and plan ahead and actually think what's being written rather than be hurriedly thinking about how to get those goshdarned words out so and the post after that and then the one after that. It's fair to say the insane posting pace has made me a better person, a more diligent and hard-working person who realizes if daily posts aren't made here then there's hell to pay for later.

But. It's always a rush somehow, innit? There's always excuses, events, people come over, oops I had to go grocery shopping, ahh I was actually processing chyang so didn't get around to doing so and so. So many reasons whatever the circumstances are, and in the end I'll have saved like five hours to write, but have only an hour or so to write properly. For the sake of argument lets say there's enough time.

How the hell do people get caught up with where they were last in their writing journey and pick up from there? It takes me like twenty minutes to even get in the mood. And then write I must, moving my fingers and thinking ahead. Waiting to catch up with what was happening the previous day, to pickup the thread of story and one's mental state seems like lots of hard work. And that's not just for a couple of hundred words either, we're talking thousands and thousands of words!

That's something I really want to learn. I'm okay with the writing part, pushing myself to insane limits of the number of posts and the word limit. The next goal should be quality, but consistency in staying with one piece comes before that, methinks. Thus i'd love to know, how does one pick up where one left the day before, or the week before? Is it to leave in a critical sentence or thought so the mind absolutely cannot do without writing? Must one read everything previously written to pick up? Or should there be an overarching plan, and the continuation of writing is just implementing the next stage of the original grandiose plans?

Now that I'm getting into the nitty-gritty of the writing craft, things are getting saucier. Wish I had a good teacher or a guide to walk me through this journey.

Food options getting boring, must diversify cooking

My diet has been extremely boring and a bit plant for the last three weeks. It's been kodo and buckwheat pancakes with kimchi, achaars; rice with various veggies and achaars and kimchi, and oats with the same. I've eaten yogurt every so often, and fruits and vegetables with most meals of course, but I'm getting bored and tired of the mix. It's not necessarily bland, no, but so 'same-same', nothing exciting to tingle the senses, nothing wild and unexpected to make one feel shameful. Not that I should be eating what is bad for me of course, but I wish there was more variety, more interesting techniques and ingredients, more 'classes' of food included in my meals. Dumplings, I promised I'd make them and have explored them but why haven't I made them? 

I really need to throw a curveball in my cooking, something that makes me look forward to my meals and not be just tired and hopeless at the ever unending cycle of eating same predictable healthy and appetizing but unchanging meals. I must innovate, recreate, rethink my culinary life.

The seven reasons I absolutely love walking and listening to audiobooks (and podcasts)

1.  It's a solid form of meditation. Everything else shuts down, no stress, no overthinking, and very limited planning. All focus is concentrated on the material playing into my ear (just one, because the other pod's been lost). The mind wanders of course, but then I quickly realize, unwind and get back in the groove.
   
   
2. So easy to read books! I don't have to worry about losing focus because there's not much else happening, skipping pages and chapters is so much effort I barely do it, and even books and chapters that I otherwise would never have read are gone through well enough because I don't have the energy to seek to a different point in the playing media.
   
   
3. Walking is a workout, gets me some physical exercise. The way I'm doing it, specially when my knees haven't been on the same page as myself, isn't great for high-intensity training, but just being out and about means the body is not cooped up inside, and that's not something most people can say.
   
   
4. Being with nature is its own benefit. Most days I go to Volunteer park, and interlaken park on good days. Need I say more? When I recover with the right knee, the arboretum too will come back in play.
   
   
5. The time walked and listened is the time not wasted and stressed. Getting away from the computer, no matter what, is always time well  invested. What a fantastic excuse to not play on my phone or use the computer!
   
   
6. What a glorious opportunity this is also to get wet in the rain, be cold, experience the seasons and the weather. Walking for walking's sake is one thing, walking in every weather, come rain or shine is a whole different experience, an elevated one.
   
   
7. Avoiding the cacophony of downtown seattle traffic is a benefit in itself, as I have to walk at least twice-weekly to Downtown Seattle, and without the earbuds, it would be a lot more stressful, all that car noise.
   

Trader joe's chai mix with their oat milk is my jam

How does one find the perfect mix of a good tea, affordable for daily cuppa or two, and the perfect mix of the combination of addons to go with. Hot water is a great place to start, but there's no body, not enough 'background' flavor to complement the herbal sweet nodes of the tea. Hot water and tea, with no addons feels like a tonic. Fantastic if the goal is to heal oneself, not necessarily so if it's to enjoy a rainy winter afternoon cozy inside one's living room.

One of the better teas, for me at least, has been spiced chai mix that Trader joe's sells. It's comforting, unoffensive, and well...tea. One cannot ask for more. For the longest time, the base that went with it has been plain hot water, because you can't go wrong with simplicity. Eventually though, it felt deficient, lacking a certain pizzazz. Eventually, after coming from Virginia earlier this year I considered trying it with oatmilk because PN drink all their teas with it.

And who woulda thunk, it's the perfect mix. The oatmilk adds thick, slightly sweet, body, comforting, not terribly forward in its own smells or scents. A perfect base for the tea. It's been fantastic. Couple of spoonfuls of the milk, and the tea, and one cannot ask for a better combo for when the mood is not the best, or when one's looking for comfort.

Something I've learned is the milk straight out from the fridge lowers the temperature significantly, so in the future I'll be microwaving the milk before adding it to the tea. And see where that gets me.

Book review: The Book of Spice, From Anise to Zedoary Book by John O'Connell

The book was consumed in audiobook form. It took a few days to finish because lots of stuff was happening. It is quite an interesting overview on the most popular spices, the ones most used across the world, including their histories, how they were discovered, the mythologies associated with them and the claims of their positive effects and how much of that might be true, historical and cultural counterparts, and why some spices thrive but others don't.

A fantastic overview for somebody new to the world of spices, such as myself to get a good foundational knowledge on what spices are, what sort of usage they find across various cultures, how they are used, how they came to be the way they are, and how people make-do with their alternatives. It had a few recipes, but that's not what I was looking for anyway.

Nine out of ten stars, perhaps I'm being too generous of late, but there's not a single thing to be complained about, and it made me understand so much about the world of spices. I feel good after having heart it, smart and knowledgeable, and just that puts it on the top notch.

Second meetup in two days escaped, shin ramyun can be disappointing [Thu 25]

Rice and mula-veggies for lunch, afternoon writing and nap, to Stoup Brewing where not much fun was had, pretending to be busy, back home in a jiffy, a lowkey dinner, somewhat sad of ramen and veggies

Had the annual performance review at work where I exceeded performance once again in a multi-year stretch, but lost a point here and there, which make me a bit annoyed. Didn't feel like doing much for the rest of the day. Well that and the conversation from the previous night, where conversation was had with home about what the future may hold. Lunch was rice and mula and titey karela, after which I wrote for a bit and napped. Despite not feeling like it, I had challenged myself to go to Meetup events, and that's where I went for an MLOps get-together in the evening, far too late, after talking to PN. It was alright, talked to a few people, got a general vibe of the room which was: everyone's looking for work, everyone fears what the future may hold. They shared contacts amongst themselves on Linkedin Qr code, it couldn't be done for me as I have no Linkedin, I told. Then a quick-networker came in, banging on amount how much his startup was making. That's how I knew it was time to escape. Pretending I had to pick up a quick call, I returned.

Dinner was alright, with mushroom and shin ramyun. Not the greatest of flavor as I used my own spice mix, and perhaps it was the mushrooms or something else, or the spiciness, but the state of my tummy was slightly upset.

Was up reading late at night.

Fridays are for early night in

Fridays are for early night in
When you've reached your thirties,
not a worry in the world that you're alone,
or you're not, unlike the rest, having fun,
not a concern of the sounds of joys and cries,
of the drunken crowds returning home
from their latenight reveries
for you know, by this time,
all that matters is one's peace and calm
and a Friday night that's easy on the body and the heart,
no commitments, no fear, nothing on the calendar,
short quick dinner and a goshdarned good book to read
that's all one does need to make the soul feed,
with cheer and joy, full of satisfaction,
until one's eyes grow heavy with sleep
and seven hours later one does get awake
in the living room, having slept through the late evening
but unsatisfied with that, one does go back to bed,
Until ten am of Saturday,
rich with rest, not a bother in one's heart,
welcoming the weekend with a fresh start,
no hangover, no tiredness, strong in mind and body,
a fulfilling weekend will be had.

Seattle the hermit city of winter

The cold has gotten better,
But the winds and the rains are bitter,
The clouds hang low, and the drops large
And nought a young person or an adult
Has the drive, or the motive
to meet up friends and acquaintances.
The rains are constant, don't stop for a beat,
And the darkness oh, it's forever on its feet
not a lot to do out and about,
neither hiking nor kayaking is an option
picnics in the park or long walks together
are completely out of question.
So all there are, they lay low
Happy in the company of their own selves
not a single person met for weeks
no social activity or events for nobody,
but the boardgame geeks.

Oh Seattle, the great city, my love
Whom I have called heaven on earth,
My judgment stands true to this day,
for not a city with better weather there can be,
you have made a hermit out of me.
And the thousands and millions of
younger adults in this town,
who would rather stay home
in the sleeping gown,
drinking tea and coffee, reading mythology,
instead of running about
being drenched in the slow but persistent
rain.

We are all hermits, oh Seattle city
hermits and ascetics, we worship thee,
change your tune for our sake
make it possible to socialize and have fun
around the town and about the lakes.

Great phoenix, all cylinders firing

Project Great Phoenix is on, one might even claim, with all the cylinders firing, if one dares. In reality, I have done so much planning and strategizing, that I know for sure what I want, exactly what the steps are to achieve the goals, but achieving them seems a bit dicey? Like there's so much aggressive all-encompassing concepts, with the templates being so through that I could spend an hour or two on one of the 'throwaway ideas', and there's about fifty of them. And they're the less-interesting part of the whole plan, there's blog posts, there's poems, there's reviews and what not.

At least though, I've started working on the templates, and it's clear that I know what I need to do to get the work done, and am fully aware of the massive scope of the work and effort that needs to be put in if I want it to succeed. And of course this is not a thing to be done in one 'gulp', I can always do the majority of the task within the next month, and keep making progress in it as time goes on, much  like how I covered up for the unwritten posts for 2023. 

The plan is to build a gigantic tower, an effort to scare the bejeezus out of the gods, it might seem. If this gets done, though, it'll be a ridiculous rebuilding of my online presence. From basically nothing, as I have right now, to a wild plethora of (admittedly self-contained, but still) articles and thoughts and poems, all of it pointing to a rich a varied interests and set of skills.

Then the step after that will be writing articles based on all the content I will have produced on the website, to sell them to the outside world. Oh you want to explore marketing your ethnic cuisine? Well here's like seven resources published in the top newspapers of Nepal, go hog-wild, and all the best, but if you want detailed consulting, here's my price list.

All cylinders are firing in terms of the planning and excitement, but the gears have not yet been engaged, the tires haven't spun yet.

The domestic lives of Shiva and parvati

The home life of Siva and his spouse does not appear to have been of the happiest.
As they could each bestow gifts upon their worshippers, it sometimes happened
that the one wanted to bless those whom the other wished to curse. In the
Rāmāyana and Mahābhārata247 is an account of a dispute between them in
connection with the struggle between Rāma and Rāvana. In the earlier part of the
contest, Rāma being unable to overthrow his enemy because of the assistance
afforded him by Siva, the gods whom Rāvana had oppressed went, with Rāma at
their head, to ask him to withdraw his help. Siva consented to accompany them on
the seventh day of the conflict to witness the destruction of their foe. Durgā
(Pārvati) severely reproached her husband, asking how he could witness the
destruction of his own worshiper, a worshiper who had stood praying to him in
the most sultry weather surrounded by four fires; who had continued his devotions
in the chilling cold, standing in water; and had persevered in his applications,
standing on his head, amid torrents of rain. She then poured forth a torrent of
abuse, calling him a withered old man, who smoked intoxicating herbs, lived in
cemeteries and covered himself with ashes, and asked if he thought she would
accompany him on such an errand. Siva now gets angry, and reminds his wife that
she was only a woman and therefore could know nothing; and further that she does
not act like a woman, because she too wandered about from place to place,
engaged in war, was a drunkard, spent her time in the company of degraded
beings, killed giants, drank their blood and hung their skulls around her neck.
Durgā became so enraged at these reproaches, that the gods were frightened. They
entreated Rāma to join them in supplication to her, or Rāvana would never be
destroyed. He did so; she then became propitious and consented to the destruction
of the demon. Durgā is represented in the Sivopākhyana as being exceedingly
jealous because her husband, in his begging excursions, visited the quarters of the
town inhabited by women of ill-fame, and in the Rāmāyana is an account of a
terrible quarrel between them because Parasurāma beat her sons Kartikeya and
Ganesa.

- Hindu Myths, Vedic and Puranic, by WJ Wilkins (1900)

Work stuff

Complaints complaints complaints, that's what we're doing here. We;re complaining. It was the annual performance review and well I did alright, pretty good with everything else that was happening but the numbers weren't as great as last year, so I got mad and spent a long time pushing back and complaining. Though not too much because I do want to retain this job because the other option is to get kicked out of the country despite everything else.

What this has inspired me, driven me harder than anything possibly at the employer, is to push hard to create my personal brand. To keep writing and producing content all on my name, and dance to my own tune, sure the genre can be theirs but nuh uh no more doing whatever work they ask me to do and not much because what I'll do is pick easy task, hit 'em out of the park and get busy with my own personal-brand building. Writing interesting posts articles, reviews etcetera in company time and posted in company resources, some of them, so they can see that I'm not spending my time just staring at the walls, but doing something productive.

First meetup in years! [Wed 24]

Productive day at work, savour technique practiced, bhat-mula-tite karela lunch, bought bedroom furniture, finally, walk to Volunteer park and back, tea and reading, yimby event attendance and a grand old time, lots of call from home, late to start writing and late to bed

It was a productive day at work, attended lots of meetings and did serious decision-making. Practiced the savour technique from the mythical morning book for the first time. Lunch was standard bhat-mula-titekarela. After work I was antsy about going out and wanted to do something fun and interesting but didn't quite figure out what it was that I wanted. Ended up buying a low-bed and a nice dresser for my bedroom. Also ordered a bunch of engineering print posters but office depot refused to print them, fuck 'em, don't care.

Walked to volunteer park listening to various podcasts and audiobook, had tea with oatmilk and read on Shiva mythology. In the evening forced myself to go to the yimby event despite not wanting to and thank god I did because I had such interesting passionate conversations with a tonne of people and joined their volunteer group immediately after. Also met a lot of really interesting single women but ah well we'll see if anything happens in the future.

Had a couple of calls from home and from RD, was a bit stressed out because of all that, so didn't write much, only three posts and went to bed around midnight.

Just use templates man

There has been no need to organize and structure the posts published in this blog because they're for me. Any reader who comes across these posts is incidental, accidental even, and these words are written not for their sake but for mine, the future me.

But when I'm writing for my website, that won't be the case anymore. I don't get to sound like a moron anymore, I'll need a proper introduction, a body with several paragraphs, and a conclusion. The pieces can't be too boring, or too repetitive, they can't be grammatically incorrect or experimental, and one cannot play around with 'interesting' structures, because that sort of cheap tricks is not what the readers of technical engineering blogs care for. It must be to-the-point, reflect accurately what is promised in the title, and give the readers the value for their time invested in reading. Which means writing them is going to be extra hard: I will need to organize them, structure them, think about what goes where and so on.

The concept of writing templates is relevant there. Writing templates are basically 'structural example / skeleton' that are pre-created to suit a genre or a type of writing style. The writer doesn't get to or have to think about how they want to structure their piece, or what material themes they might want to introduce. They 'plug in' their specific topic material into the template, and bam! they have a written well-organized and structure piece come out of it.

Many serious authors consider it hacky and cheap, something for the lazy and untalented to do, but that's where I find myself in the current scenario, with too many real posts to write than my mind can handle. What is there to do even besides that?

Therefore my plan is to just create a bunch of templates for the pieces i want to write, and fill them out as I pad out the contents of the website!

I bought bedroom furniture

Silly stuff, but I bought a large dresser, because there wasn't enough space to store knicknacks that were always strewn about, and a low-bed because the reason my bedroom cleanup hasn't been great is I haven't been able to divide them into separate spaces, so the floor and the sleeping space is undistinguished, there is unclear separation of what lies where so I just treat is as one big pointless area, where the floor is open game since by bed's already there.

It's going to be interesting though, how the bed will be transported up the four stairs who even knows, but eventually I will succeed, I'll fix it all together, put my clothes in the dresser. Then the final stage in my bedroom change process: the wall decorations. It'll be all so good after that!

I have sketched up big plans for my personal website, when will the work actually start?

I know what to do with my website. I have 2.5k words written as a plan. I know the topics of the posts that will be written, with the templated out structure, the nature of the startup website that will be made, and everything else. Literally, all that needs to be done, is for the webpages to be setup, and the content to be filled. The template needs to be written.

And I didn't do anything on the writing aspect yesterday and today, so that's a big loss. The idea was to continue for three more weeks and get it done with, but how will I get done in so few weeks when even getting started is taking a week? What's stopping me? It's definitely not a lack of clear vision, or not having an idea about the next steps to take. It is most certainly not knowing how to write either.

In the end, the rubber must hit the road, there is no escaping reality, the hands-on execution of one's plans. They're painful, take forever to be done, and one would very much rather not do them, but that's not an option, is it? One has committed oneself to re-inventing one's identity and online presence, and that requires complete reconstruction of everything, forever. That's the way to go.

I.must.write. I must move on, progress. There's no way around it. No cheating with these random personal posts. No running away like my workouts and meditation plan. NO ignoring like my work. This is it man, where all of it comes to head.

A list of twelve things I want to start doing, or do more of!

1.  Go to more meetups, a few every week if I can wing it
   
   
2. Write during work hours
   
   
3. Meditate and exercise
   
   
4. Read more
   
   
5. Get back to my projects, now that the winter's gone!
   
   
6. Go out on the weekends
   
   
7. Live by timetable
   
   
8. Invite people for meals
   
   
9. Cook more
   
   
10. Go on hikes
    
    
11. date
    
    
12. think and write 'serious' stuff
    

First social meetup event in years! Glad I went

I went tot he local YIMBY mixer yesterday, my first social meetup event in years. So glad I went because I found so many similar-thinking young men and women (and not so old too!) who wanted me to join their political cause and activism. I volunteered on their website and now I'll be attending the meetings and canvassing etcetera. This is the beginning of my political career, I hope.

There were some cute, single, and ready to mingle women too, but I didn't care, the political cause was far too important. We're going to do change the freakin' world, and most definitely this city, and nobody can stop us! Dense development for all!

Work and Uniqlo [Tue 23]

 bhat mula ko tarkari, tito karela for lunch, walk to downtown and the office, uniqlo, audiobook, afternoon reading and TJ's chai with oat milk, second walk, oats kimchi is shockingly yummy, cleanup and evening write

Ate bhat mula veggies and karela for lunch. Then walked all the way to downtown office, got some lemon tea, walked by Uniqlo as I listened to a podcast about spices, didn't find anything enticing there as the winter deals were done with. Came home to write down, but confusingly tired, had two cups of tea with milk of the oats to feel far better. Read the book on Daruvana situation, then went 1k steps for the evening walk to get it all covered.

Back home had oatmilk and tea, and oats and kimchi with chicken crisps and fish and oil for addons.

Cleaned up the place and made everything look nice, and then wrote six books in the evening.

Frequently asked questions about the amazingly rare spices you just bought from us

Q: Where do these spices come from?
A: Well well well my dear friend, wouldn't you want to know. But know you want to, so be prepared to hear the fabulous tale of intrigue and betrayal. We go all the way east where Eagles are twenty fit big, large enough to pick up an elephant kid. Those birds of prey, they fly high in the sky, and they pick out the twigs, from our wonderful tree, from lands unknown, for them to build a nestled home. In the winter when all the words are deep in sleep, the bravest of the bravest of the men amongst us, sneaks up high in the mountains, right to the giant eagles' nest, and steals in great secrecy a piece of the very secret spice. Hidden in thick clothes he runs, away from the bird's powerful vision. He comes to base and hands it in, and for a whole book he is not to be seen, for the man needs rest, and recovery, from an adventure of a lifetime. From there we bring the spices to you, dear sire!

Q: What are your margins on these anyway?
A: Oh dear sir you don't mind, we aren't making much money, I swear on my own dear bride. Our enemy might say, oh you fool, what he bought for seven dirhams in the Eastern waters, he sells you for four thousand, but listen not to talks of these goddamn fools. Listen sir, listen, this trail of misery and suffering, where hardworking men of the imperial environment, toil away in the sun, flowing with their sweat and blood, work day in day out, to bring in what you care about. And then dearest of sirs, the topmost of our customers, you ask if we're being real? Sir let me tell you this: not in the world wde world of the East, was anybody able to bring up books to counter those that did exist. A

I will write poems, even at work, for work

I will write poems,
Even at work
and for work,
I have decided!

I will write down the tales
Of epic engineering fails,
Of journeys so deep and vast
into bug reports and pull requests
going way back in the past,
I will chase down bugs
Until I get them right
And write it all down, in rhyme
with the greatest might!

Will will build and deploy
all my code, day and night
I will keep fixing my lint errors
Till I get it completely right,
I will give tutorials,
and participate in planing meetings
All of this I shall record
In poetry form to sing!

The tales of days lost in search
for that one venerable command,
Or the spells required
to fix our breaking program,
All those journeys I shall write about
In the form easy to understand:
in poetry form, that might ryhyme!

The second sketching class: lesson on misperceived perspectives

On my second art class I discovered what's wrong with my art: my perception of proportions in perspectives and angles is really bad. We drew the 'mechanical hand' by one of the classic European artists from the 15th centuries and kept getting it wrong. Unable to tell which portion of my sketch was messed up, I got increasingly frustrated because the piece looked oddly wrong and I couldn't tell what exactly was off. My instructor thankfully intervened and helped me fix my misconception and misunderstanding, and by fixing a totally unexpected part of the sketch, she fixed it! The risk is, she's not going to be there for me forever, or ever even, how will I fix my art when she's not there anymore? I need to learn to see the world in terms of basic shapes, and shades and their relative sizes. That's the first step to being a good artist. Perception is just as important as presentation, and my perception of the world is completely off. The angles are wrong because I don't know how they are 'right' in the real world.

It's the same thing with shadows. My instructor got frustrated having to explain how to shade correctly to give the depth and texture of materials. Just look there, she would say, can you not see how this is darker and how this is brighter, and you can present it by shading this part dark and this light? And I went...uhhh no, I can't they look all the same to me. Maybe it's my eyesight? Perhaps I'm really bad at looking at the world with an artists eye. It has to be a skill that can be learned!

Oh what a superpower it would be if I could look at the world in terms of basic shapes that can easily be represented. What a win it would be if I can draw from observation a scene in front of me in a matter of minutes, not hours. Including the shading. Oh and if I could do portraits even, how great would it be!

I need to do more sketching and drawing, thirty minutes every day, if not an hour. That improves one's attention to detail. Details were something I felt one could safely ignore until they actually mattered. Maybe it's not so. Maybe focusing on the details from the start is what makes one see the whole picture accurately from the get-go.

I've become a small semi-amateur in spice history and hindu mythology, can understand recurring themes and stories

This is positive growth in reading and understanding of some very specific niches of history. For the past two months I've been reading on the history of food and spices, and hindu mythology. And I can call myself an 'advanced beginner' student of both fields because I can see the progress in my studies!

For example, I've been able to recall stories and references across different books, identify what the original text was and what other sources might be cited if a topic comes up. For example, the tales Arab trader wove in the first century AD to Greeks to explain where spices came from are so ridiculous they're noted by several Greek writers. That reference comes up quite so often in books of culinary history, and I've got used to them. Pompeii too comes often, and I know exactly what their primary source is, and how it came about to be. I have also read many references to works by patrick mcGovern, whose primary sources I have read too. It's exciting because I know exactly what point the authors are making, including what their references say!

Same thing with Hindu mythology. Even a passing reference to some event or myth in a text is identifiable: I can often pin at least one version of it to an original text, I know what the difference in content between Vedas, Puranas, Brahmanas and the Upanishads. More particularly, there is only so much material on Shiva, and a large portion of it is compiled in Shiva Purana, those references have been categorized and given a timeline, so referencing such a diagram has made me put everything in context. Yeah the stories are presented differently in different texts, but the gist I understand. It gives such a great sense of knowledge and context, I'm loving this.

To be continued, I am a born academic for sure.

Working on the next big personal project

The next project, after project 120 is remaking my personal website. The idea is to turn it from basically nothing that I have online into an extensive reflection of my interests, hobbies and professional career work I have undertaken. It shall be called...Project Great Phoenix. Phoenix because it's going to be a rebirth of my website, and 'great' because I did something similar with this website in 2010 when I wrote a great amount of text over several months. That was regular phoenix, I was younger and the blog was immature. I'm older and the consequences of this working out will be great and all-encompassing. Project Great Phoenix has already begun!

Earlier this evening I spent two hours strategizing how to proceed. The guideline I began with was the post I published couple of days ago here on what the new website might need. Kept adding to it, and adding details and things just escalated. Now the plan outline itself has 2000 words, focusing mostly on the content than the presentation medium.

The idea is to write 30k+ words in blog posts, another 20k+ ish words in 'ideas' series, have my innovation proposals in there, make a list of all of my failed ideas with a postmortem on why each one of them failed, and an extensive resume that covers basically everything I've ever done. That in addition to personal introduction that might go on for a few thousand words, and some hobby logs to update the readers on the status of my hobby projects.

When I started out, I figured out the website would be the hard part, but it's clear at this point that the challenging sweaty part will be the content. I write 2k words on a good day on this blog, and the quality is...subpar...to say the least. I will need to repeat that, but have the material be relevant to my interests, thought-provoking and actually useful. Dunno how I'll do that. And the website work is the fun part! If I'm just writing the blog posts, the website will remain the same and it'll feel like I'm not doing much? Maybe I should write the articles in my site from the company, and copy them over.

Finally there's the website for the startup that I need to begin and finish. That too will require some serious amount of copy writing in addition to architecture and figuring out the business idea. It's a whole lot of work I've put on my plate, and who knows how long it'll take to accomplish. This work should have a hard deadline. I will get around to figure that out once I'm started. Maybe it's easier than I'm expecting it to be?

Mula and karela, art class [Mon 22]

Cooking mulaako tarkari and karela for lunch, rice with shin ramyun spice, art class, walk to the park with audiobook on, borrowing dozens of audio books, oats achar and seaweed for dinner, evening writing

For lunch I cooked mulaako tarkari and karela, had it with rice which I made by adding shin ramyun's spice mix. It was actually quite good! Eating rice for at least one meal a day is such a relief because it's easy to think of the structure of the meal, and don't need to worry about where the next meal is coming from. Rushed to art class soon after cooking and smelled like spices so bad. In the class we made hands and gloves, we learned perspective and I discovered I'm so very bad at reading shadows and perspective. Maybe it's not that I'm a poor artist, it's possible my perception of the world is skewed, and thus any portrayal of it is inaccurate.

Walked to Volunteer park after relaxing in the apartment for a while, just one round because of the walk earlier in the evening. Finished listening to How to Feed a Dictator, and borrowed like a dozen more books after getting home.

Dinner was oats, achar and seaweed in a strange sushi of sorts. Wrote 6 posts in the evening, I've realized that six posts are quite doable as long as there's not much expectation of quality and the time pressure is intense. Specially after coming in from writing dozens and dozens of posts every day, this is such a relief. Just need to maintain the habit of writing without getting distracted!

Recipe for rice pudding to serve the ascetic in the pine forest that has stolen everyone's attention

Ingredients

Rice: 2 cups
Milk: 3 cups
Sugar: 4 spoons
Nuts and raisins: a good handful
Salt: just a pinch
Ghee: 2 spoons
Optional: Mango (four small slices)

Steps:

1. The most important part of the recipe is to pay attention to the fire and your pot, and not at the extremely attractive ascetic walking on the street whom they're calling Yogeshvara, Shiva, king of the yogis, the ultimate practitioner of the art to bring one to a higher realm. Focus. Focus!
   
   
2. Boil the rice in milk until it's soft, add sugar to the milk as it starts warming so you don't break the cooked rice.
   
   
3. Add chopped nuts and raisins 3 minutes before it's cooked.
   
   
4. Add a pinch of salt and ghee after the pudding has been cooked and give it a couple of swirls, make sure the ghee is seen, you want the dreamboat ascetic who's attracting the wives of the sages like a sweet attracts flies, do not give in to your desire to follow him like somebody who has lost control of their senses. DO NOT LET YOUR CLOTHES FLOW OUT OF YOUR BODY! Cooking unclothed is a bad idea and accidents can cause great bodily harm to you.
   
   
5. Make sure you're looking at the mango as you're cutting it into four long slices, you don't want to cut your fingers as you stare at the ascetic or imagine him the form of the mango and desire him until you can do it no more.
   
   
6. Carefully transfer the pudding into a bowl and garnish it with the slices of mango. Make sure you let it cool down before you  take it to the ascetic otherwise you'll burn your hands. Don't be distracted and lose your mind, pay attention to what's happening around you!
   
   
7. After the pudding has been cooled reasonably, take it to the ascetic, while still maintaining your senses and good judgment!
   

Shiva's lost game of dice

He rolled the die
And lady luck
Disfavored once again,
He lost his ornament lunar,
The trident, drum and the serpent around his jugular
In the end he didn't even have
the bowl of skull or the tiger skin.
The end of time and death,
Destroyer of the triple cities
had nothing to call his own.

His other half grew in strength
As she took from him everything
that defined the meaning of the void,
Bhringin's scream mattered no more
For from one, there were now two.
Never to be subsumed into unity
again.

And thus the mother goddess
saved us all.

Top 11 cutting-edge AI/ML things I want to do

1. Train a LORA adapter for LLM on my mac, adapting massive models for my use without thousands of dollars in GPU dollars. Use it as an english teacher.
   
   
2. Play around with a local visual generative model and see what interesting creations I can come up with without using the frustrating Stable diffusion online that's started taking forever to run.
   
   
3. Use candle to turn standard models into 'serverless' deployments.
   
   
4. Use open-source models as my personal assistant for everyday tasks, a CLI-based guide to help me with various things, all for free.
   
   
5. Use NERF models to generate 3d models and 3d prints based on point-cloud generation from an image/video from a regular phone camera
   
   
6. Actually find good uses for LLM models to improve everyday efficiency for personal gain (or professional gain) that is measurable
   
   
7. Start a consulting company that installs local LLM's for companies wanting to explore AI/ML without investing in large infrastructure.
   
   
8. Write a lot on AI/ML stuff and be a 'domain expert' so I can use it to get other gigs.
   
   
9. Actually use AI/ML for one of my projects, to generate a new idea or something useful that's not super lame. When I tried chatGPT to generate topics for my podcast they were super...how shall I say...lowbrow.
   
   
10. Quantized models. What are they? How to use them? Figure it all out!
    
    
11. Understand the weird data structures, such as bloom embedding used for ML/AI
    

I should be able to train an ML model to help me improve my writing!

Here's the plan, gang: my writing is mediocre and barely-readable in the best of times. So how about I train an LLM (large-learning model) on my past works to make it understand what I'm doing wrong, and use it as a teacher to guide me to improve my writing. It's unclear what the process of training it to do so would look like, perhaps I'd just dump my writing and ask it to make recommendations. Or maybe this inspires me to explore into LLM's further.

The idea is that LLM's cannot replace human teachers who can give exact to-the-point feedback and guidance on how to improve one's skills, including for writing. What they are, however, is better than nothing. So somebody would be able to evaluate if they need an instructor in english writing by first using the LLM for guidance. If there's reasonable success, then maybe a human teacher could take them to the next level. And if the LLM is just completely rewriting one's work, perhaps more effort needs to be made to get caught up to a decent level before seeing a paid teacher.

That's my plan: to create a teacher for myself much like Eklavya in the story of Mahabharata who created his teacher out of clay when Drona refused to teach him archery. Except this Eklavya is creating and artificial teacher to evaluate how to make the most use out of a human teacher and improve the quickest.

Hopefully this will be a work in progress, because I'm so pumped to explore this idea more.

Book Review: How to feed a dictator

The cooks that made food for dictators like Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Enver Hunxa, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro are interviewed for the book How to Feed A Dictator. It contains interviews with those people, some chapters providing context of the historical circumstances around the dictators in question, and even certain recipes.

It has food, it has history, and it has a curious framing device, what's not to like! The history of world seen through what people eat, at a personal level, is a curious one, and it's a great gift for readers like myself that the Polish journalist Witold M. wrote this book.

I could go on and on about various characters, the lady who appeared to have been in love with Pol Pot and still won't admit he did anything wrong, or Saddam's cook who states Saddam was by far the sanest and the nicest person in the household, but that's just a bad writer rephrasing a great piece of work. Disappointing and not reflective of the charm and shine of the original work.

9/10 stars, highly recommend it to everybody, it's possible I might go back to read this book quite often.

Sad wunderground, staying-in on a gloomy day [Sun 21]

Lunch with a friend, sad little burger, friend talk, relax and recovery, read, evening write, popcorn for dinner, why not

I write this on the evening of the day after, having finally finished my project 120 posts and ready to move on to my 'website' project. Tonight I'll be all caught-up with the daily posts, and the plan/hope is to reduce daily post counts in favor of working towards the website, should the need arise.

Got up late in the morning because had gone to bed at like 4am. Met up with PG for brunch, but was late because I spent about 45 minutes writing a long feedback to Blogger people explaining to them my frustrations and why they won't take a better leadership of their product.

Wunderground cafe was a dud, the food made me energetic and perky but it's unclear if it was my general mood, or their food, because my hunger only increased after eating the tiny sandwich. Great talks with PG, need to start inviting people for dinners once more.

Rested for the remainder of the day, talked to friend N for an hour and gave him relationship advice, took a quick powernap, and just chilled. Read books on Shiva mythology for a few hours. It was cold and rainy outside, my knee hadn't stopped aching yet, so no walk for me on this day.

Wrote a bunch in the evening, finally getting caught up to my regular writing cycle. Had popcorn for dinner with Asian achaars because I'm trying to mix-and-match the grains I eat, and this day was for corn!

Slept at a reasonable time.

Review of Wunderground cafe, Seattle

Some places don't look great on paper, and their online reviews are terrible but when you're there you realize actually everybody else is a moron and the place is wonderful. Wunderground cafe was not that. It was pretty decently well reviewed and turned out to be quite mediocre.

I got one of their sandwiches, for thirteen bucks, fifteen including tips, I was expecting a sizeable portion of food, and maybe some sides. Nope, it was a small thing that could have acted as an appetizer elsewhere and only teased my palette and made me hungrier if anything else. The 'non-table' chairs to sit down are weird, almost as if they were designed to discourage customers from sitting too long. The place was crowded for far too long, but didn't have a cosy vibe at all...there's so much empty space and echoey cement there, it could pass as a small warehouse at nights.

There were a lot of customers there who were chatting and had a good time. We stayed there for two hours, PG and I, and had a good time. But it was in spite of the place and not because of it. It's not specially affordable -- even for the area, there are better places with comparable pricing and better food -- it's not got an ambiance to vie for, the service was bare and half-hearted, and one wonders...what's even happening here. It's targeted at the mushroom-loving crowd, I understand, but the whole situation felt less than ideal.

7.5/10, I might give it a second chance, but not more.

Shiva's Game of Dice: A review

Last Thursday night there wasn't much else happening and having done writing on this blog, it occurred to me to pick up a book to read a page or two from before falling asleep. Three and a half hours later, at half past two in the morning, the book was almost finished, with maybe ten pages remaining. I picked up God Inside Out: Śiva's Game of Dice the next day, thinking there was probably half the book remaining, but no, I was pretty much done. I read a dense, academic book on mythology in one sitting on a work day at the cost of my sleep. That's how good the book is.

It explores themes of agency, randomness and god's control from a tale in Shiva myth. The writing is fantastic, and I was introduced to so many new concepts, including reading (translated versions of, obviously) Kalidasa's poetry.

It expanded the way I look at the world and philosophy, and it's quite likely I'll go back to referring to this book and reading it quite often in the future.

9.5/10 stars, really great book, would recommend it to anybody with even a little bit of interest in Shiva mythology.

Must. Be. Flexible. With. My. Indentities.

Shiva's Game of Dice suggests the difference between gods and humans is Gods have a fixed identity, that of the immortal super-beings, and we humans don't, we are not bound by rocks or rules of heaven, and we can be whoever we want to become, within reasonable bounds, and change identities like a chameleon changes its colors. Even in the same moment we can hold multiple identities with ourselves without them clashing. The benefits of having flexible self-identities are such that even Gods come down to earth by taking human forms, often those forms taking other 'fake' identities, because they too want to experience the freedom of being, and changing one's being.

Something very similar was said by Srini Pillay in Tinker Doodle Dabble Try: that one's identity must be less rigid and more open to changing under changing circumstances if one wants to succeed. It must not be unyielding, uncompromising, unchanging and fixed. We are not made of stones, we aren't bounded by steel in choosing to be who we are and how we are.

I should be more flexible with my identities. It doesn't matter who "I" am, I can be whoever I want to be, temporarily so, if it so benefits me. It's not of much significance that board games aren't might thing and not my people, should the circumstances present me opportunities to benefit were I to get into boarding, I should do that. And so on and so forth.

The way to getting through tight spots is flexible motion and adapting circumstances. Given the choice, why would anyone choose to not be adaptive, and choose too work for only a given set of circumstances. Not met. That would be sunny.

I need to reform and recreate myself.

I should act in real life, to bump up confidence

This is something that was brought up in Tinker Doodle Dabble Try, but also is an advice given to creative professionals (or boring professionals who want the spark of creativity in their lives): to act. Not necessarily in the stage, no no, and maybe not even exclusively then. To act in real life, temporarily. To take somebody else's place, think from their perspective, become them. Be in somebody else's skin, not exactly but similar to that wolf who tricked the shepherd boy. Pretend for a day or two I'm a successful entrepreneur, and interact with people under that mindset. Or convince myself I'm a really outgoing and gregarious person who loves meeting new people, and doesn't mind if people make fun of him or hate him for it. What does it matter if that character gets the hate, it's not me, and it'll be limited risk anyway.

I must act, change form, be water, take the shape of the container that I wish to take form of, and become it, without ever fully understanding it. In the past I've said I'm like water and adjust myself to fill the vessel of people that surround me. Now I must become water and take the shape of the vessels I've never encountered and present myself as a vessel to other vessels and waters.

If nothing else it'll be a cute little fun adventure worth writing about.

Chayote iskuss is hard to cook!

Chayote iskuss is so difficult to cook, I tried air-frying it and ended up just burning all of it, all four of the pieces I had in my fridge. They'll need to be thrown out now, for some reason I still have them preserved in the fridge.

The way to do it, it seems, is like how my mom always did it. Turn into a soup or a curry out of it, mix with water and spices, some lemon and other liquids, and pressure cook the crap out of it for thirty minutes. If it ain't cooked, hit at it for thirty more minutes, and let's see how it survives the pressure of a super-heated high-pressure cooking!

I like the veggie, but what a pain in the butt to process. Should have looked into pressure-cooking right from the start, but at least now I know better. If you don't know how to cook something: pressure and heat till it submits to your forces! Cooking, like war, demands consistence and persistence.

Who would have known...

Sunny walk, long night [Sat 20]

yogurt lunch, late to wake, long cousin conversation, walk to the park in the Sun, temperatures high, no writing in the day, pasta dinner, writing until 4am

Got up late in the morning because the precious night I'd gone to sleep very very late. Had yogurt with honey and nuts for brunch, didn't feel like eating anything bigger. Had readied to go out on a nice day walk when TD called and we talked for about 3 hours. Great conversation about politics, philosophy and history.

Headed out to Volunteer park, three rounds, it was warm and sunny outside after so long during my walks. I felt like a new person, such strange times to be able to feel warmed in this godforsaken city that I do enjoy the winters of quite a bit. Sorry, had to complain there, it's habit.

Came back, couldn't motivate myself to write at all, made pasta, watched tv, used youtubes etcetera, and eventually when I should have gone to sleep, I started writing. Wrote a pretty decent amount, a dozen posts or so before going to sleep at 4am.

Tinker Dabble, Doodle Try Book review

This book came to me as an audiobook through my local library and I completed listening to it in three sittings. A quick review.

The things I liked were: it is inspirational, it does give some very real techniques to improve the 'unfocused mind', techniques I've used in the past, and the overall framework for productivity is pretty decent. I don't know if this book is the final word on the 'unfocused mind', but it's a pretty good high-level summary of how one can shape one's less-productive and creative tendencies towards tendencies that encourage creativity more.

The things I didn't like: on several occasions Dr. Pillay brings straight-out pseudoscience, lies, and woo-woo into the book and treats them as real concepts and theories. It's hard to understand who they're targeted at, coming from a respected renowned practitioner, but those decrease the reliability of the books somewhat. Because I'm a student of cog sci and pop psych, I can distinguish between what's likely real and what's likely bs, but it'd be unfair for those people with no such background, to throw a barrage of true facts and a bunch of lies at, at the same go. I can ignore, they won't be able to.

Would I read this book again? Most definitely yes, many times over, I'm even considering buying a hard-cover version for myself. Is it a great book: not with that sketchy stuff still around.

7 out of ten, deducting 2 points because of obvious reasons.