random ramblings

  1.  I travelled to Ernakulam for a day this week. For the first time, took the new Vande Bharat train - it was clean, comfortable and quite fast. Came back the same day, in a state transport bus. Online booking systems have become better. But the bus was delayed by more than an hour and the only way to track was to call the bus conductor to know where they were. Being Easter long weekend, there were a lot of students going home and it was crowded. Onward in the train took about 3.5 hrs and the return through bus took about 6 hrs. Met a couple of friends there, had ice stick candy at a place called Peni, lunch at a Punjabi dhaba opposite Cochin ShipYard and continued the discussions at a juice shop called Haji Ali.  2.  We were at Kollam for two days this week. Both days, I picked a random pin near the ocean in the map which was about 30 mins away from home and walked there. I am convinced that there is something going on, maybe in that community around, where peopl...

  1.  Watched a series, The Old Man (Disney+), primarily since I wanted to escape and take my mind off things. It had some promise - of an old ex-spy who still can beat much younger professionals comprehensively and his daughter who he wants to save. Good writing - even though I was wondering if the profound dialogues about the meaning of life will really hold muster if we try to understand what it really means. It all sounds like zen koans or beautiful poetry and hints that someone has achieved enlightenment to be able to grasp bigger truths, but is it anything better than hallucination? Watched a movie in the theatre after a long time, Premalu (Malayalam). It had many laugh out loud moments and I like the main characters from their previous movies (Naslen and Mamatha Baiju). I am not sure if my mood is colouring my perception, but I was thinking if this is degrading the expectations from average Malayali boys/men, who can use booze to forget disappointments or failures and g...

  1.  I had written daily diary on and off last year. Restarted again last week and wrote every day. Even on the days when I think there was nothing noteworthy, once I start writing, reflecting about the day, there was a lot that happened every day. I keep reading about the advantages of daily journaling and I can see why. It helps to be reflective, realize days are not wasted away and hopefully helps with the memory. Hope to continue.  2.  This week I got back to The Seen and the Unseen podcast after some time. It covers people from all walks of life in India - most other popular podcasts are monopolised by Americans, so this is refreshing to know stories closer to home. It has gotten longer and longer, with interviews running into more than five hours, so I had left it at some time, but other more serious ones have become too much of a good thing. I couldn’t make myself listen to one more product management or business or tech podcast. So maybe it is time to take a...

  1.  It was a busy week at work and some sickness at home. Holiday for Sivarathri at the end of the week helped to get some rest. During the week I had to make some quick decisions at work which may have some long term impact. I was thinking about how communication abilities of people become achilles heel for some talented people. I don’t find good ways to find fixes for it, to change people and I continue to try despite knowing it is near impossible.  2.  Watched three movies. Anweshippin Kandethum (Malayalam) - which is a crime thriller. I think it doesn’t add much to the usual stories, but it had some good acting and was a good watch. It was good to see the locale of remote Kerala villages compared to city based stories.  Merry Christmas (Tamil) - watched since I am a Vijay Sethupathi fan, but the film was disappointing to me. It is an adaptation of a French crime novel. The story, the plot twist and suspense was good, but for me it looked forced and artific...

On e day this past week, I listened to this podcast interview of Cyan Banister, in Invest like the Best. Due to some reason, I felt I couldn’t listen to anything else that day. I usually listen to politics or product management or economics, but that day anything else would have spoiled the mood I was in. It may be that some days are like that - when the mind is contemplative, no clutter or anxiety, less cynical, the body feels healthy and open to receive. Or it may truly be that there was something in what I had listened to.  Cyan seems to be a successful investor in Uber, SpaceX among others. Of late, I feel all successful people think that they have wisdom to share and everyone is becoming gurus online. Other day I was reading such pearls of wisdom from someone who is good at product management and it was nothing about product management, but about how to live one’s life. It may be that to become truly good at something, one has to become a better person first and in that proces...

Yesterday at the end of the day, I wanted to read something before sleeping. I didn’t have any fiction books with me, at least any that doesn’t need much labour to get through. I was scrolling through some poetry accounts and such, looking for a perfect poem. I wondered what if there were blogs that had a slice of life from somewhere that is worth reading. But then I thought, what if I write something - try to describe one person from my world each day, someone who I interact with most days in some way. I could think of many, most of whose names I don’t know. I could use this as a way to remember them. Let me see how this experiment goes.  First one at random who came to mind is a cashier at the modern “chayakkada” (tea shop) at the office. It is a re-creation of the roadside tea shops, with its thatched roof, built with dried coconut leaves and bamboo, with posters of old malayalam and tamil movie on the walls, glass shelves displaying the snacks, chalk board listing out the day’s...

1. Finished reading book 5 of this year - Tharakan’s Grandhavari (Malayalam, fiction) by Benyamin. I had read three of his books before - Aadujeevitham, Al Arabian Novel Factory and Manjaveyil Maranangal (Jasmine Days). This one is an experimental fiction where the book was originally printed as cards in a box that can be read in any order. Each copy of the book has a unique order, hence they think this can be read in gazillion ways. Be as it may (picked up this phrase from a podcast in the past week), it was a difficult read. There is a story of a murder of youth, suicide of another who is possibly mad and writing two novels himself and there are two stories through that and a secretive lodge. I couldn’t eventually figure out all the stories, it may have been left to the reader's imagination as to what might have happened and my reserve of patience ran out before I could piece it all together. In parts, it was brilliant writing and in parts it felt made me wonder why I put myself ...

Listened to 20 podcasts in Feb. This is one new year's resolution that is still going. I have started taking notes in a running list. I listen to podcasts during the morning walk/run, while doing some chores or during office commute. It is difficult to take notes while listening and I forget afterwards, so I started using speech to text.  I had used an iPod, some other device in between, downloaded podcasts to my phone when mobile data was at premium, Spotify and Google Podcasts before. Now settled on the AntennaPod app on Android. It is mostly stable, has only podcasts, so no other distraction. I have subscribed to a few podcasts, check the episodes list a couple of times a week and add interesting looking ones to a queue. I pick only the ones that seem interesting and don’t worry about the huge number of unlistened ones in the feed. This keeps the queue ready to go before I step out of the house than trying to figure out what to listen, which kills off the routines otherwise. I h...