Tag: 2025

  • Pen Festival 2025 + Ramsar Bakery

    I went to the Pen Festival yesterday with my daughter. I had written about the last time here.

    The Festival had graphologists, pen doctor, leather covers and bags, lots of fountain pens, some paper stationary, and inks. We met Vishwesh and Vipul.

    Image: V’sign Neo (maroon) for my wife. V’sign Cute (green) for my daughter, her first fountain pen. Daughter and me, on the right. Image credit: Pradeep Mohandas.

    We got two pens – one for my wife and another for my daughter.

    We were heading back from the venue back home when the pleasant aroma of the bakery caught me.

    I drank the cola flavour after a really long time. I opened the crimped down glass bottle cap with an old style bottle opener tied with a twine around the refrigerator handle.

    The refrigerator had various flavours. My wife drank the lemon flavour a day before when we passed through here. I tried a sip.

    We got this at Ramsar Bakery in Pune. It was on the way home on a route Google Maps had suggested we take.

    Image: Crimped Down bottle cap (left) from a brand from Pune called Ardy’s. Nankhatai (right).

    We bought nankhatai. The man sitting at the counter offered our son one. When his eyes lit up at the taste of the nankhatai, the man offered him one more. We bought a pav kilo (250 gm) of it. My daughter liked it too. My wife was crazy about it too. We finished the pack that evening.

    My wife said we should buy these every time we pass through that road on the corner of a busy street where the scooters park adjacent to the side walk, sometimes causing a traffic commotion – a cacophony of horns from scooters behind them who now have to change their paths.

  • Weekly Notes 3/2025

    2173 weekly left. 5 Weekly Notes shipped including this. Yay, etc.

    AI generated image to try and represent this week. I wasn’t this relaxed, though!

    Space Heavy

    This was a very space-heavy week. Most of the week was spent on X and LinkedIn, where these updates are mostly available. I wish it were not so.

    India docked two satellites in orbit, 3 Indian space startups flew to orbit onboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin reached orbit, SpaceX’s Starship had a wonderful booster catch and the blow-up of the Ship on the way to orbit.

    I summarize most of the Indian activities in the 65th edition of Pradeep’s Space Newsletter.

    Personal

    This was also a week of doctor visits – for my son and for my wife.

    I missed going to either the Indian Science Festival and the Pune Public Policy Festival. I am planning to go for the Pen Festival.

    I got my driving license renewed after holding it for 20 years. Renewed for 10 more years now.

    Reading

    I am continuing to read these books:

    • Moustache, S Hareesh, Trans. from Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil (77% completed)
    • The Notebook, A History of Thinking on Paper, Rolland Allen (37% completed)

    I also enjoyed reading these links:

    Watching

    I only watched Asura this week on Netflix. I need to write about it here on the blog. This line from the trailer made me choose to watch this, “Girls are like Asura … Asuras are Indian gods. Outwardly, they have virtues like justice, wisdom, and courtesy. Though, they love to slander.” It made me think again about what Asuras really are.

    You may also enjoy watching:

    Writing

    I am so happy with a lot more personal blogging that I did this week.

    Blog posts

    Newsletters

    I got back to writing on Roam Research again.

  • Hold-it-all

    My wife gifted me this hold-it-all for New Year’s.

    I had been browsing Amazon, Flipkart, and Instagram for a hold-it-all from Indian artisans. My wife saw me frustrated with the search and decided to make one herself.

    On the very next day, she stitched the hold-it-all from left over clothes from her various tailoring experiments. If you notice the picture carefully, you can see an orbit close to the bottom of my heart with a P in it. With just this logo, she captured my current interest in healthtech and space!

    She had missed one of the end bits of stitching. She has since been delaying stitching that bit till today when it was finally ready to show the world.

  • The Morning Tea Incident

    This is the only remnant of the event that happened this morning. Interspersed with his scribbles.

    Tea stains among the scribbles

    My son was trying to get my attention. I was discussing something that was then important with my wife. So, despite shouting my name three times, he did not get my attention.

    I would like to think he considered the options before picking up my Portronics power bank and threw it at me.

    Weapon used to perpetrate the event

    My wife and I were looking forward to drinking a cup of tea after doing work in the morning. I was especially excited because I was going to drink tea in the new A47 The Explorer mug.

    The unfortunate target

    At this moment, I was looking at the updates on ISRO’s SpaDeX mission in  one hand and holding the Explorer mug in the other hand.

    The power bank grazed the cup and fell on the floor near the bed. The cup tilted enough to drop scalding hot tea on my waist and thighs.

    I managed to remove the Jockey athleisure pants that offered no protection and my new Wellbi bamboo t-shirt that did a good job of protecting my top.

    My wife applied the gel from the aloe vera plant from her garden to soothe the burned regions of my waist and thighs.

    My son looked at me as if to say, if only you had listened.

  • Weekly Notes 2/2025

    2174 weeks left.

    This week has been a blur. But, I loved the content that I consumed.

    Watching

    I am currently watching The Playlist about the Spotify story. I have reached the episode on The Coder. An important thing I learnt from watching this is the inevitability of compromise.

    • The Breakthrough – I liked the whole story but did not understand the ending and a few plot points in the middle.
    • The Grey Man – Surprised to see Dhanush in this one. Otherwise, quite an ordinary spy story.
    • Missing You – This was a layered story. I did not what this story was really about. The title applied to the core story as well as all of the side stories. Great storytelling.

    Reading

    I am still reading Moustache and The Notebook I mentioned in the last Weekly Notes.

    Writing

    I wrote two X threads, with the help of Grok.

  • Weekly Notes 1/2025

    2175 weeks left.

    I spent the New Year’s with my wife and kids.

    I had met up with Jatan in Pune during the science journalist’s conference. We had discussed about social media there. He’s written himself about some of the weirdness of social media here. People build an audience on a social media platform, the social media platform attracts more people who want to build an audience, and the social media platform wins while the people don’t. Yet people continue to flock to the different social media platforms.

    Writing or building your blog or website slows down the discovery process (like this, for example or on people’s blogrolls) but the people who discover things this way have a way of remembering you that is much better. I remember the people I found on blogs much more than the people I engage with on social media platforms. At the conference, I realized it is true the other way as well.

    I picked up writing on the blog from the next week onwards.

    Reading

    1. The City and It’s Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami – I wrote a review here.
    2. The Notebook – A History of Thinking on Paper – Roland Allen – I made slow progress reading this week.
    3. Moustache – S Hareesh, Translated by Jayasree Kalathil – I started listening to this today.

    Writing

    1. I wrote the seventh edition of the healthtech newsletter, Towards Eternity.
    2. I got back to writing my space newsletter this week. You can read the sixty third edition of the newsletter here.