the office party

it was late one afternoon. i was in office. suddenly, the fire alarm went off. everyone made their way to the nearest fire exit. down the two flights of stairs, we were all in the lobby, about to head out the emergency exit. the lobby wasn't like my office building's lobby though: it was much later - maybe 8-10 times the size overall, and with a really high ceiling that was maybe thrice as high as my office's. it also had a completely different style - indicative of a glass fronted modern building, not the 100+ year old stone walled office building i work in.

anyway - the fire alarm turned out to be a false alarm and we were told over the PA that we could return to our respective floors. that's when I checked my pocket (front right - that's where it always is!) and realized I didn't have my access card on me, so I couldn't get back in myself. I spotted my manager Tim getting into the elevator (or actually - an elevator, because there were 3, unlike my actual office) and got into that one. it was a massive elevator - practically room sized!

I stood next to Tim, waiting for the elevator to take us to the first floor.

and that's when I realized I wasn't wearing a shirt.

a lady standing across me, wearing a business suit, seemed to notice the same thing at the very same moment.

she said "you might want to wear a shirt to work", to which I mumbled something and hurried out of the elevator, extremely embarassed. I had no idea what to do, but thankfully the lobby had emptied (presumably everyone had taken the stairs or one of the 3 massive elevators), and I had a moment to scan the seemingly bare lobby for something to save my dignity. I saw a crumpled piece of fabric in the corner. I walked over to it and picked it up. It was a discarded, dirty (but not overly dirty) grey hoodie. in fact, it looked exactly like a hoodie that's lying in my shed at home - it's what a handyman left behind after he built an awning for my motorbike in March 2022, and it's been lying in the shed ever since!

I dusted it before putting it on, and it fit, thankfully. I took the fire escape, as that was the only way back up that could be accessed without an access card. there was one access controlled door that I had to get through to enter the office though. thankfully, someone saw me through it when I knocked and let me in. my colleague Patrick. he asked me where I was and to hurry up and get into the frame.

everyone was posing for a photograph. everyone had a can of beer in their hand. I didn't want to hold everyone up so I simply posed without a drink, completely unaware of my grubby sweatshirt - I was on the sidelines as everyone was already in place for the photo, which was just as well. the angle from which the photo was being clicked was very weird - it required a lot of people in a verysmall space, so some were sitting on the desk, some squatting in front of it, and a few of us standing on either side.

the occasion was a visiting manager from one of our overseas offices, and after the photo was clicked, everyone took their seats. a lady (katie?) asked if anyone didn't have a drink and would like something. someone asked for a guinness. she said there weren't any more cans of guinness. someone said they hadn't opened their can of guinness and wouldn't mind swapping it for a can of heineken zero. I asked for a can of guinness zero, but there weren't any. I said any alcohol free beer would do - perhaps heineken zero then?

I took my can, popped it open, and took the last seat available - the one right next to the visiting manager. as we settled in, I looked around and was surprised to see, near the far end of the table - mom!

she was making some sort of hand gestures - she seemed to be suggesting she should move over and sit next to me. I realized that her moving over would be quite disruptive as she would have to squeeze past everyone on her side of the table, and then past the manager as well, and find a place to sit next to me, which was already occupied by plenty of people. and she'd have to find a seat as well, or pull one from somewhere else.

i tried to signal back with to her with my eyes and hands that she shouldn't move and simply sit there.

the manager had started speaking, and he was quite brief. somewhere in the middle I sneaked in a comment or question, and he replied with something humorous. towards the end he left it open for questions which a few of my colleagues asked, and he duly answered. once he wrapped up, he stood up and walked over to the breakout room where he made himself a coffee. everyone else got to their feet as well, and started mixing about.

mom walked over to me and asked me what i thought about the talk. i said it was nothing exceptional but definitely useful.

she asked me what prompted me to make that comment in the middle of his talk.

I told her it was simply something that came to my mind at the spur of the moment.

she asked me why I interrupted him when nobody else did.

I told her it's a fine balance of judgement about when saying something is welcome or considered an interruption. if he hadn't paused the right amount of time and I didn't have whatever came to my mind ready to say, I woudn't have said it. I told her it's something that takes years of practice and skill, and it's something that a lot of people don't seem to grasp how subtle but effective the skill is at building relationships - and also breaking relationships if done wrong.

she told me she was glad I was able to do it with such ease.

and that's when I woke up.

ungraceful degradation

"the ability of the human body to gracefully degrade under adverse conditions fascinates me :)"

- Kris, September 7th 2013

12 years ago. How much has changed since then.

I have just spent a whole week, barely functioning. Literally just crawling out of bed to eat and rest and eventually sleep. Cooking is about the most I've been able to muster the energy for.

The funny thing is, metabolically, my body is supposedly fine. Not entirely fine - but probably in similar shape based on medical parameters etc. But it isn't behaving the same. Has medicine not reached the level where what's going on can be pinpointed? Or is this the result of the passing of some tipping point in a slow process which was in motion years ago, maybe even before 2013? Some doctors have said it could also be the result of a brief viral infection that left me but that my body has not recovered from.

Chances are it's a combination of at least two of those things.

One thing is for sure - biohacking does NOT work long term. All those things I did to push myself, thinking I had discovered something really smart about myself? They probably had long term effects.

Irregular sleep, low quality sleep, multiple short sleep intervals instead of one full night's sleep - the impact of those is clear to me now.

Screen time is now having an impact obvious enough to be measurable on a day to day basis.

The constant input of compressed information into my head may or may not be affecting how I process information now - but I know that my ability to process information has definitely been affected.

Embracing the internet and social media (back when it seemed fledgling and world-changing) seems to have had an oversized impact on me as I have been using it for far longer than most people. It's reached the point where the measures I had put in place to streamline my usage have been blocked by social media platforms, forcing me to use them as they see fit.

And then there's random age related (yep some things are clearly age related!) things that are simply making it harder to deal with everything else.

And so, we're at this point - where I'm struggling to cope. Where the degradation is no longer graceful or even sustainable.

But I'm still alive and functioning. I can still do most of the things that I used to, but just more carefully. I'm worried about how long that will last though. That is not a day of realization I'm looking forward to.

chronic fatigue

one of my daily struggles, in fact something that I'm surprised I've only mentioned on my blog once in passing despite it being such a massive part of my life since March 2024, is a unique yet pervasive (for me, since then) feeling. it's a feeling i struggle to explain to most people, and a feeling that very few people are actually even able to understand after I've explained it. the medical term for it is chronic fatigue syndrome, and it's something which, when it initially hit me and took over my life, left me completely hopeless, confused and literally on the verge of giving up. it's a feeling which, in hindsight, was completely alien to me before it hit me, and so crazily different from how I'd live before then that it has completely knocked me off my feet!

for those who know me well, I used to be like the famous battery advertisement (was it duracell or eveready?) - I could just go on and on. I was never too tired for anything. I could push myself to the limit, and when I was at my absolute limit, I could recharge a bit and keep going for some more. kinda like the latest phones that advertise a few hours of battery life on 5 minutes of charge, from their crazy high power quick chargers. there was a time in 2002 where I kept going for 68 hours without sleep, and was back on my feet after like a 2 hour nap... and another in 2007 where I did something like 32 hours followed by a 4 hour nap and then kept going for another 20 hours after that. most of my late teens were spent being up all night and napping through the day to keep going. there's this one episode I can't forget from 2001, when I fell asleep during a statistics lecture, and somehow kept writing was the professor (prof. Fernandes) was saying in my sleep. my friends claim I was so fast asleep I was snoring. the professor called my name, a friend shook me awake, and the professor asked me something she had just stated to the class. I was quite blank, until I looked down at my own notebook and saw I had scrawled the answer! I read it out and she was flabbergasted. she thought one of my friends had prompted me, but I showed her my notebook and she was forced to believe me. that's the sort of life I used to lead. even as recently as 2017, I once rode overnight to Goa after a whole day's work in office - I remember the ride to office with my fully loaded panniers as they touched a car while filtering in rush hour traffic, and then a friend clicked a photo of me before I rode off from the parking lot at sunset. after I reached my friend's place at Goa at noon (yes, I did take a nap on the way, especially after the sun rose and the heat really started getting to me), and I literally had a shower and was going to take a proper nap, when my friend was like "did you ride to goa to sleep?" and dragged me out for lunch, followed by drinks at one beach, then a swim at another, dinner, and fianlly a DJ/private party that went on till about 1am and I was in bed at 2am. that's the sort of thing I could do not too long ago.

and now, it's different.

if I over exert over a period of a few hours and sit on the couch, I might be in a position where I'm too tired to even get up to drink water, eat or sleep. if I over exert and go to bed, I might be in a position where I am unable to get out of bed the next morning - or even the next afternoon. there has even been a time when I was too tired to get out of bed in the evening, and literally got out at 8pm!

worst of all, there are no warning signs - I just have to anticipate it. I have been out cycling for 35km a couple of times - it doesn't feel weird while I'm out and about (other than the actual reduction of my physical capabilities after the last year and a half of minimal exercise), I get home, put the bike in the shed, wifey brings me a glass or two of water, I sit msyelf down on the couch - and that's it. I can't move for the next few hours. sometimes even 6 hours. my brain's awake and active, which is terrible when coupled with the entertainment laptop hooked up to the tv (and of course and endless list of things I could "get done") while seated there in my half-zombie state.

it's such a regular phenomenon that I've actually identified missing gaps of unaccounted time (literally hours) where I know where I was, what I was trying to do, but can't really match the total elapsed time with what I achieved. I was obviously better off going to bed... but I didn't. because it felt like I couldn't.

and then there's the mornings. my alarm goes off at 8:13am, labelled "wake up". I have practically never woken up with it. I do wake up physically and either dismiss or snooze it. if I have enough energy i change the snooze time from the default 5 minutes to a more realistic (in my head) time before snoozing. I have tried keeping the phone out of arms reach, and on such days, depending on my energy levels I might get out and reach it and drag it back to my bedside before dismissing/snoozing it, or on bad days I just let it ring out for half an hour or however it takes.

my next alarm goes off at 9:15am on weekdays, appropriately labeled "start work". this alarm has varying levels of success, although of late it's not been looking too good. some days I've managed to snooze it at an appropriate point where the subsequent ring has caught me at a time when I've had the right amount of energy to get out of bed. some days I've forced myself out of bed even though I felt like I wasn't ready for it, and 10 seconds, a minute, or sometimes even 2 minutes later (ie after I've pee'd) I have gotten back into bed.

My mornings are so fuzzy I don't really have any data about which strategy works better or worse, and certainly no data about what works so badly it needs to be abandoned altogether.

if all has gone well I'm out of bed and somewhat ready to tackle the day. if it hasn't, I'm back in bed. this is where the real disaster begins to unfold. over time, my fatigue from the previous day seems to overlap with my lack of energy from being in bed for so long. I get thirsty but don't have the energy to grab a glass of water from the bedside table. or even worse, I do, and the bottle is empty because  I was so "barely awake" when I got out of bed the previous morning I forgot to take the empty bottle down with me - and of course nodbody is in the bedroom during the day so if it's skipped in the morning nobody will notice. even later, I'll be so hungry I don't have the energy to get out of bed.

sometimes I'll be fast asleep for hours, other times I'll be half-awake, lucid dreaming, and there are days when I'll literally be wide awake, alert, and able to have a whole (albeit brief) conversation with Shruti across rooms. sometimes I'll have the energy to check my phone, see messages from work, see work meetings/appointments (and yes, over the last year or so, I've actually had more medical appointments than work meetings!). sometimes I'll have the energy to message my manager that I need to take the day or a few hours off work.

on some days, I will appeal to Shruti to help me out of bed, and she'll physically get me to sitting, help me get my feet to the ground, help me to my feet, take me to the bathroom or down the stairs.

on other days, I won't even have the energy to call out for help.

she's tried getting me out of bed when I'm not ready and I'll literally fall back into bed as soon as she's not helping me up, or sometimes I'll beg her to let go of me and I'll get back into bed. there was even last tuesday when she physically took me to my work desk and I sleepwalked through the next few hours until I had the energy to get out of my chair and back into bed.

it's the sort of problem that has me completely flummoxed - I don't know what will work, or what won't, until it does or doesn't.

as a result, I've begun shying away from challenges - or taking up challenges fully anticipating completely disruptive setbacks.

I've stopped hiking.

I've (almost) stopped cycling.

I've almost stopped sailing.

Even the vacations we've gone for have had nap times scheduled.

If I had to explain all of this to 40-year old me, I'd have thought it was some sort of joke (or horror story, more likely).

Oh and there's the accompanying brain fog. But that's another long story.

Somehow, I feel relieved to finally get this typed out.

Based on all the medical advice I've been given, chronic fatigue syndrome doesn't need to be experienced the way I currently am experiencing it. There is a path to living with it which isn't disruptive (or even noticeable to others). It's just that all my attempts so far have not succeeded for extended periods of time.

But there is hope. And I'm counting on it.

Right. Off to bed now.

y u lukin lidat

May 2012... 13 years ago to the day. I did a 600+ km  overnight motorbike ride across the country as I was on vacation and had just got a job offer confirmed - they expected me to start on May 28th. left Karnataka at like 6pm and reached home at about 10am. there was no network for the first 6 hours or so, and Google didn't have offline maps back then - I was riding in the dark along (and sometimes beside!) country roads in the hope of getting to a highway... which I did at almost midnight. I remember the sigh of relief when I pulled into the Kolhapur McDonald's, finally able to freshen up and grab a bite. 

From stert to finish, I listened to this song on loop and sang along - literally the entire night, to keep myself alert:

Inna - Amazing

When I got bored of the existing lyrics, I made up my own. Mostly funny and sometimes rude, some so rude I can never repeat them out loud. Not that it really matters what I sang though. It kept me going.

Y U Lukin Lidat!

the universe is finite

My YouTube viewing list (and also my subscriptions, now that I've actually started subscribing to stuff) is predominantly science-y content (with the odd aviation, coffee and motoring stuff that creeps in). Last week was particularly physics-y though. So much so that I had an astrophysics dream! The dream was of the universe being a cube (strange, because everything we know points to it being spherical or spheroidal), but the stranger bit was what was happening inside the cube:

The cube was initially entirety and uniformly lit bright, and then suddenly seemed to undergo an implosion of sorts, after which it went from bring brightly and uniformly lit, into being filled with rapidly shrinking specs of light. It remained a cube throughout, but the contents of the cube were changing. 

When I woke up and had a thought about it, I realized it was a different way of looking at the universe. A finite universe.

And that's when it struck me: the total mass and energy of the universe has been and will be constant. The universe seems to be expanding very quickly, but that expansion is a function of time. If one was to use time as a scaling factor of the universe, it doesn't seem infinite at all.

The universe was never born, and will never die. It's just constantly being scaled by time. In fact, could it be that the only scaling happens in our perception?

I need to ask a physicist. 

a new day has come

Saturday. 1:30am. I know I'm supposed to go to bed, and nobody would fault me for doing so, but I have unfinished business. a feature I wrote 3 weeks ago, which I was unable to get around to testing until Monday... when it bombed spectacularly (I exaggerate - it bombed, but could be switched off in 30 seconds so we could get on with other things that were being tested). It's been playing on my head all week. I took a stab at fixing it on Thursday, to no avail. Something was wrong and no amount of logging helped me locate the problem. I wrote a test case so I could single-step locally (did it seriously take me so long to start writing a test? embarrassing!) The test case only confirmed the problem was not obvious. Single stepping while rewriting my code to get the test to pass the most basic scenario still didn't help! I had logged off at 6:30pm on Friday hoping a walk would clear my mind and give me a fresh approach - but 2 hours of walking by the sea didn't. But I didn't want to give up. I didn't want to start my Monday morning still clueless about what was wrong. And so, after everyone was in bed, I was back at my computer. 

Saturday. 3am. The YouTube video playing in the background gives me goosebumps for the third or maybe the fourth time. I switch to my browser and start typing a comment to let the world know how this video touched me, despite it being about the physics of black holes. Something about it elevating me beyond my mundane existence. I pause the video because I can't type while paying attention to the video. I post the comment but leave the video paused. It's been emotional enough. It's obvious the video isn't helping me solve the problem with my code, but that doesn't seem to matter. Nothing seems to matter. I'm on autopilot.

Saturday. 3:45am. The problem has been found. The most trivial of scenarios work. Time to clean up all my junk troubleshooting code, delete unnecessary logging and finish the test case. No more single stepping. The sky outside isn't pitch dark any more. 

Saturday. 4:45am. I am happy with my code. Everything is committed and pushed. Merge requests raised. I switch off the light as it's now a bright dawn.

Saturday, 5am. It's a beautiful morning. I gaze out of the window. It's the same sight I've seen hundreds of times before - but it somehow looks better at this hour. I think to myself that I might be the only person admiring this view at this moment. 

Mom's alarm goes off. It's supposed to remind her to go pee. It doesn't wake her up - it never does. 

The alarm is a soothing morning-y tune. 

I have goosebumps again. 

I'm not tired. I'm a little emotional. In this moment, everything feels right. It doesn't matter if I've spent the day and the night doing something that could have been solved in about 15 minutes (without the test case though! good tests always take time 😁). The process has left me fulfilled. I have stayed up all night doing something I love. I have finished it to my satisfaction. It's been a while since I did this. I feel connected to my past. I feel exactly like I did as a teenager. I am happy that of all the things that have changed, this feeling hasn't. 

I look out from another window. A seagull is perched on a floodlight. It reminds me of the morning in 2012 when, after a whole night up and at my computer, I stepped out with my camera at dawn and spent half an hour clicking random photos of birds and flowers before finally going to bed. 

It's time to go to bed, not because I'm sleepy, but because I want to savour this feeling and not dilute it with any other.

Good night! 

ps: title inspired by the Celine Dion song - or rather, its music video. another throwback to times long past!