Category: 2019

There’s nothing significant to report today, really. However, I have noticed that my interest in space has returned – something I’m really pleased about because it means I can immerse myself in several sci-fi/space opera worlds without really forcing myself to enjoy it.

It also means I can marvel at what I consider to be one of mankind’s greatest accomplishments – the fact that we’ve managed to get to outer space. How cool is it that we’re able to explore the origins of the Universe.

Also! In case you missed it, we have our first picture of a black hole.

Read more about it here: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47873592

Also, about the researcher: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/12/astronomer_schools_sexists/

I tried out a new barbershop today, motivated largely by my desire to drink cold coffee and walk back to campus as the sun set. The haircut has left me feeling very porcupine-ish, more porcupine-ish than I usually feel post haircuts. But the cold coffee was 100% worth it. Wow. So good.

Today’s been a lazy day – even post the haircut and everything. It took me 5 hours to write my book review for today, which was way longer than I anticipated – because I kept getting distracted by the internet. I found several cool memes, found some fun stuff to keep an eye out for over the summer, and discovered a pretty cool Spotify playlist. Of course it would have been great if I was productive alongside all of this – but I feel like if I looked back at April 8, 2019, I’d much rather remember the cool new song I heard, rather than a project I finished off.

I did get started on the project, so something got done.

In class today I was thinking a lot about how we need to find more efficient ways of using classroom time and contact hours. Ideally, it should be to impart wisdom about things that I can’t find myself, or provide perspective to an opinion held. I feel like doctrinal education is too much of a time-waste. If there’s some teaching mechanism that would address this, I feel like we’d get a better value for money in terms of our education.

Oh well. That doesn’t look like it’s going to happen for a while.

RCB lost again,
Today is Sunday,
The weekend was meant to be longer,
But tomorrow is Monday.

This is my weekend in four sentences.

First, I cannot believe RCB lost again. I will support this team unwaveringly, but they’re making it very difficult to be loved at this moment. I don’t even know what is going wrong. Some fortunes must change, a match must be won. At this point, I’m worried this is going to be like the first season of IPL. My roommate chuckled and said that the team’s results crashed the way Mallya’s fortunes did. I did not laugh.

I bought my first ice-cream of summer today – a nice Vadilal chocolate cone. The pleasure of chocolate cones in general, I believe, is underrated. Aside from the deliciousness of the ice-cream itself, there are surprises in every bite of the cone. Especially the cute cone tip at the end, which has a nice little coating of chocolate. Eating this ice-cream is an artform. Find me one person who can eat this chocolate cone without leaving any marks of gluttony on their hand, and I will buy you your own chocolate ice-cream.

Wow.

What a delicious. Made my entire weekend.

Sometimes lazy Saturdays are all you need to keep your drive going. I’ve got a mountain of work and several things to do before Monday. All things I know are achievable in a 5-hour time-frame. So I have the option of procrastinating till Sunday afternoon-evening, and then beginning to hack at it. Which I’ve gloriously taken. I plan to sit, read, make playlists on Spotify, watch some stuff on Netflix, and genuinely just take some time off for myself before the week begins again.

I’m missing high school right now. Specifically the fact that I used to binge-watch shows on my laptop at home on my beanbag with my AC on. That’s probably the most “first-world” problem, but it’s honestly a feeling of comfort I associate with summers in Bangalore a lot. All of this was supposed to be when I was studying – but I used to genuinely have a whale of a time doing this when I wasn’t solving past papers.

I miss discussing prep with my friends. We had this site called xtremePapers we used to all use, and when any of us got stuck, there used to be a photo on our group. All of us used to attempt solving it before seeing the mark scheme and figuring out what the right method and correct answer was. It was honestly reverse-engineering at it’s finest.

I miss loafing around on the piano, being pushed out of the house by my mum, playing basketball with friends – and being very average at it. Buying ice-cream at Namdhari’s.

But while I miss that, I’m well aware of the fact that I’m living in the present – laying on my bed, wearing the comfiest cotton shorts, and typing this piece on my blog.

As an update, everybody needs to know I managed to eliminate that stupid adware/malware I had accidentally installed onto my system. I spent three hours trying to get rid of it. Nonsense. It embedded itself deep into my system drives and I had to do all sorts of stuff with Command Prompt to get it out of the laptop. I hope that never happens again. Will this prevent me from downloading things onto my laptop? I think not. Will I try to be more responsible? Maybe. Only time will tell, really.

I spent a lot of time thinking about things today. Over the course of one hour, I found good music I was vibing to, a nice article I was reading – and several thoughts were panning around in my head – largely concerning my current position on things. It felt like an appraisal of sorts. I arrived at certain conclusions.

Do I like sauce? The answer is still no. However, I love Tabasco, and I really enjoy Nando’s Peri-Peri Sauce.

What would I eat for breakfast, if I could eat only one thing everyday? A nice mushroom,bell-pepper,cheese omelette, made with 3 eggs, and served with 3 slices of buttered toast. Alongwith a glass of cold chocolate milk, or orange juice. Lies. Dosa.

If I could change one thing about my room right now, what would that be? Air-conditioner.

You get the gist of things my brain was doing.

At which point I opened up ESPNCricinfo and saw that Royal Challengers Bangalore, a team I support in the Indian Premier League had ended up with a total of 205, with both of our best batsman firing on all cylinders. I was pretty sure we had this game in the bag, especially after a 0-4 start to the season. And more than anything else, as an Indian cricket team supporter, I really needed RCB to win so that Kohli would get confidence in his captaincy before the World Cup. There’s more at stake than this nonsense competition.

BUT OF COURSE WE LOST.

IDIOTS.

Why did I open the ESPNCricinfo page? I should’ve just stayed away from it. But NO! I was curious. I had to know how my team was doing!

UGHHHH.

One match bro.

That too after Bengaluru FC killed in the Indian Super League.

Why is being a fan so difficult?

I feel like every day is a new opportunity to write on something I hate about summer. Today, I present to you, the clothing dilemma. Every single morning, I am required to wear pants of some kind. I generalize, but essentially, my University has a mandate that we must not showcase our ashleel ankles, or any part above them. Arms are okay. Because apparently arms do not create any issues in society. I wonder if anybody has been slapped. Arms have the potential to cause a lot of damage. Yet we don’t cover them. You’ve got to ask yourself why, I think. Anyway, coming back to the thick of things – the clothing dilemma is something I experience every morning. After bathing, as I put on these pants, and as I fasten my belt, all I can think about is how long the Sun must shine today before I can expose my shins to the world. This is because all I want to do is wear shorts.

In other news, in an attempt to fulfill my ambitions of making music again, I tried to install some software and accidentally got some adware onto my system. I’ve got rid of most of it, thanks to a timely installation of anti-virus software. But God, is adware irritating. I guess I got too excited last night. This is my punishment.