My daughter and I went for a Tree Walk in Camp, Pune on 26 March 2023. This follows the star party that we went together for.
We travelled to Camp by car and parked opposite Bishop’s school in Camp. We met with the group of about 10 people who had also come there. After a brief round of introductions, we started the walk.
The main thrust of the walk was not to make us overnight experts on all things trees. It was to get us to look at the trees in our surroundings with more curiosity. Learn how they transform through the seasons. How to identify them using the Internet and thereafter, by yourself. Observe how they flower and grow.
I tried to get my daughter to climb one of the trees but she was afraid to go more than a couple of feet off the ground. She collected a lot of fallen flowers, fruits, berries, etc. Being the youngest in the group, she got the attention of many others in the group, who helped her collect these things.
I did not follow all the tree related guidance too closely.
I delivered a lot of writing work this week. Left me in a high. But, this did not overflow to other writing. No blog posts. No newsletter. No other writing.
I am probably going to focus on one and not on both. I stopped the badminton middle of this week. I am going to focus on cycling.
I cycled for a day for about 11.3 km.
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All of you #space#isro enthusiasts who wanted to know why the C25 Cryo stage of LVM3 now sports a white colour, as opposed to the usual black/grey… the reasons are environmental-friendly manufacturing, reducing Solar absorptivity and using a light weight material.. read on.. https://t.co/CpSAMqhlq2
How did an ordinary estuary fisherman become Kerala's dreaded 'Ripper Jayanandan'? Is he really the dangerous killer the police have made him out to be, or is he truly innocent as he claims?
The lower volume of work completed in Week 9 meant that more work-related writing got done than anything else. I did not write any blog posts. I did not publish the weekly space newsletter. I did not attend the RozWrite sessions.
I did not publish the weekly space newsletter. I did not attend the RozWrite sessions. The contribution to the work writing was lower as well because of power cuts and fever.
OTT
I continued watching OTT. I moved from watching Malayalam and to other languages:
The Law According to Lidia Poet (Italian, English voice over)
Triptych (Spanish, English voice over)
I especially liked the alternate rock intro music and music interlaced in a period drama in Lidia Poet.
The writing done this week other than work was disappointing.
I only published one edition of my space newsletter. This, too, was simply a round-up of space news from India and did not feature a deep dive.
I wasn’t able to attend any session of RozWrites for the Long Form Writing Cohort 3 that I am a part of. This contributed to the lack of output this week.
I’m happy to share that I was able to start reading blog posts, fiction and non-fiction books again. I’m presently reading:
Listening on Audible: 4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
Reading on Kindle: So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport
In the blog post that I wrote in December 2022 called Note Taking 2023, in the section on Plain-Text productivity I had referred to Cal Newport having a system of using a workingmemory.txt file. I decided to read the blog post about it in detail and implement it at work. This led me to the book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You.
Cal Newport referenced Burkeman’s book during his appearance on the Tim Ferriss’ show. Ferriss then posted a snippet from the book on his blog. While Nathan Lozeron has a fantastic summary of the book on YouTube, I decided to pick the book to listen to it.
Cycling and Badminton
I did not get any cycling done this week. This was a major source of disappointment for me.
I started playing badminton and was able to play Monday thru Thursday.
I am playing again after a really long time and it feels really weird to play as an adult.
I am part of a Long-form Writing Cohort-3 (LfW-C3). We are a group of people interested and encouraging each other to write long form. The group organises something called RozWrite (daily writing) at 10 pm each night. We keep the video on and the audio on mute and write together.
I wrote about the Star Party that I attended with my daughter on Monday. I wrote about the cycle I bought on Tuesday. I wrote my newsletter on Wednesday and a little on Thursday outside of RozWrite hour. I missed attending the RozWrites on Thursday and Friday.
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My wife and I got back to watching Malayalam films on OTT this week. We watched:
I drove two stretches of cycling on Sunday (when I purchased the bicycle) and then again on Wednesday. I drove 11.7 km on Sunday and 10.2 km on Wednesday. I only plan to drive Pachu two days a week to begin with.
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Re-discovered the song again on YouTube, especially the melody at the 2:44 min mark.
Raj Shamani has an interesting podcast with Sahil Bloom on how he got to meet Apple CEO Tim Cook and some very interesting relationship advice.
I enjoyed watching the trailer of the Malayalam movie, Romancham.
I’ve always wanted to have a bicycle of my own, as an adult. Bicyclists are some of the out-of-the-box and contrarian thinkers that I have met. Other people with a similar mindset are amateur astronomers and open source enthusiasts. There is no sensible reason to follow these hobbies in this age of instant gratification.
Since 2023 had begun I had already hung out with a few amateur astronomers and so I was thinking about which of the other two I wanted to do. I could not find any meeting of the Pune Linux Users Group (PLUG) to attend and hence decided that perhaps it was time to look at cyclists.
The minimum requirement before one meets cyclists is to have a bicycle of one’s own and if nothing else to at least be able to ride it for a few kilometers. It was at this time that I came across this blog post on choosing a bike in India by Priyanka.
After reading the blog post I went through the websites of the bicycles that I had used as a child – Hero and Hercules. I also went through the websites of Montra. It was while discussing the distance of some of these cycle shops in and around home with Rakesh that he told me about a bike store above the Maruti showroom at Viman Nagar.
I went there a day before with my scooter and told them frankly that it had been years since I pedaled and asked for their bicycle suggestions. I also told them I did not intend to spend a lot of money. They showed me a few Firefox and Ninety One bikes. They explained the different types of the bicycles to me and finally suggested a Ninety One Viper X-101.
I decided to get the bicycle the next day. They thought I was probably not coming back again and tried to get me to book the bicycle on the same day. I managed to escape from their clutches and headed home.
I went on the next day a little after 11 am. I paid for the cycle and the accessories and then got instructions on how to use the gear system on the cycle as well as a few pro-tips on cycle maintenance and checks to perform before taking it out for a ride. I got a pic clicked just like I would get when I might have bought a car.
I then drove the cycle for 11.7 km on the journey back home slowly in the mid-day heat. I was happy it was February and not May. The gear system made sure that I did not sweat the couple of up-hills on the way home. I reached home in time for lunch.
The cycle did not fit into the lift in our building on its stand. It had to be lifted on the back wheel to fit in the lift.
I decided to name her Pacha Pana (green palmyra palm) and to call her Pachu for short. Pachu from Pune.
Parallel Spirals 