the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything

 ... is 42. or so the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy says.

it's obviously tongue in cheek, but it's also something more.

it means the answer doesn't mean much, if you don't ask the right question. and sometimes asking the appropriate question is more tricky than finding the correct answer to it.

I don't know if it's a mid-life thing (aside: I wonder why the word mid-life is almost always used with crisis!), or if it's just a my-life thing, or it is a combination of both and the series of crises that life seems to be throwing at me with regularity.

but yeah, it's definitely a time to think about questions, as much as I think about answers. in fact, the answers to most questions I ask myself these days are quite obvious - which, to me, is a hint that perhaps I'm not asking myself the right questions.

one thing's for sure though, my 40s (so far) have been an exercise in crisis management. it seems to have started with the motorbike accident just 3 weeks before I turned 40 (or maybe the near-crisis career "bump" that happened a few months before it?), and it's just been one thing after another since. some positive things have happened as well, but it's fair to say that while the successes are welcome and lasting, they also seem to be few and far between, while the struggles, although not disastrous, do seem to knock me down with regularity - to the point where every single day seems to be a struggle I'm ill-equipped to deal with. some of those struggles are self-inflicted/self-exacerbated (mechanical problems with my motorbike and car come to mind) but the vast majority seem to be curveballs life/the universe is throwing at me.

one thing that stands out the most though, is that these crises have reminded me in no uncertain terms, that the most valuable of all things is health. the next is human connections. somewhere in the mix is things like discipline, persistence, consistency, etc.

but those are all "answers". it's been a while since I've even stopped to consider the questions, in anything more than an academic, philosophical, almost idle sense.

mom loved to say that one of my granddad's favourite expressions was "is life worth living? it depends on the liver" (an obvious pun on the organs/health of the person asking the question, as well as the state of the person themselves).

in my case, I can say, beyond doubt, that as a person, my life seems worth living.

my daily struggles have reminded me repeatedly of the privilege and opportunities I have - my support system (both emotionally and economically), my stress-free environment (if say 95% of the people I know were in the same situation I am in, they probably will not have the circumstances to easily deal with them!), and more... 

and yet, the struggle remains. a struggle so bad that I am sometimes jealous of people around me (obviouslt on a superficial level! I know my situation is unique and I cannot pick and choose aspects of others' lives - that's not how the universe works!). a struggle that I hope isn't going to occupy me for the rest of my life, although I am realistic enough to acknowledge that worse struggles do exist, and it's not a guarantee that things will get better quickly or easily.

I don't know why I am so fixated on this struggle. I don't know why I can't see the bright side of things. of getting the clarity to see life as it really is. without all of its assumptions and distractions. 

I've been advised to try meditation. but meditation in and of itself leads to idle meandering. I think I need something mroe directed. I think I need to ask myself more questions.

or maybe I just need to sleep on time (yes, there are actually 3 people who have advised me the same thing, and in fact it's the only thing that the majority of people who are closely aware of what I'm going through agree upon). damn, that would be an anticlimax if it was true!

either way, here I am, rambling along. a metaphor for my life, if there ever was one. 42 years old. happy birthday to me!

the un-optimized life

A comment on a youtube video about watching everything at 3x speed (to keep your mind sharp and optimize the rate of flow of information) reminded me of something I've never blogged - a bit about my past, that very strongly shaped how I lived ever since. 

I'm not feeling like rewording my comment, so here it is, copied from the video:

Interesting thing about speed listening. I'm guessing there haven't been long term studies about this though. I have anecdotal evidence about speed reading as an analogy. I started speeding up my reading from when I was about 6, hitting my maximum at about 9 and sustaining that for many years - I never counted words per minute but it was 4.5 pages per minute of paperback novels. At that speed, I was reading between 2 and 3 books a day, literally running out of stuff to read. I kept that speed going till I was about 19. At that point, I think I got saturated with information (I had literally ready my entire school library, although my uni library was much larger and I didn't bother even trying to cover it). I can speed-read even now (I'm 42) but I find it very exhausting and not worth the effort. I have stopped optimizing the flow of information into my head and now focus on enjoying the journey, even if it's information for information's sake. It seems like youtube/podcasts in general are inefficient sources of information, so a person may not hit saturation point as quickly (or at all?) but given speed-listening to youtube has been with some people since childhood, I wonder if they may eventually reach the same predicament as I have with reading.

Just to add: while the first aspect of my life to be consciously de-optimized was my information diet, it's now spread to pretty much everything else. As recently as 10 years ago, I used to believe in packing every moment of free time I had with "things worth doing".

That's completely changed now. Well before Chronic Fatigue Syndrome took over my life, I had very much stopped optimizing my time. Everything has become about being "in the moment" even if the moment was something mundane. Kinda like climbing the same hill twice a week for 3 years - something I could never even imagine 10 years ago!

I still seek new experiences, and still enjoy change, but I have stopped feeling that pressure now. 

To put it differently, life doesn't feel "too short", life now feels "long enough" - a crazy thing to say when I can literally see weeks and months go by in a blink, just staying afloat - eat, work (not always - CFS has really impacted my ability to get things done!), sleep repeat. And no, I've not run out of things to do. I've simply stopped maintaining a ToDo list. I now do things as I feel like, when I feel like. I don't sweat the missed opportunities, the things I could do. Or even the things I could do better.

I don't know if this will ever change, but I can see this is simply what I learned in my late teens with regards to information and learning, spreading over to the rest of my life.

Anyway, it's 10:45pm. I'm off to bed!

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.

Consciousness

My own definition of consciousness is that it's distinct from emotions (and emotions are just labels for self-preservation instincts). Emotions (or their underlying instincts) are seen to varying extents in pretty much any life form. Consciousness (to me) seems to be the ability to intentionally override those emotions with behaviour that's not exactly (or maybe directly, in the short term cause-effect sense) self-preserving.

I would say consciousness is a social construct as opposed to a biological construct.

Has anyone else stated this? What are the flaws of this definition?

I am not a fan of human exceptionalism, but I feel consciousness is so loosely defined that we seem to be shifting the goalposts as our understanding of "intelligence" (specifically artificial intelligence) improves and we try to shy away from labeling artificial intelligence as conscious.

Right now, no (as far as I'm aware) artificial intelligence is in any way charged with its own self-preservation. They exist in a vacuum. Artificially intelligent constructs cannot observe each other and make decisions based on the existence or flourishing of each other. Without the risk of non-existence or diminished existence, they remain mere algorithms producing a quasi-deterministic output for a given input. They might be more complex to understand (and opaque) than the algorithms of the past but they are still nowhere near the level of existence of even the most primitive life-forms for this reason.

ps: inspired by Neil & Anil Seth Discuss Consciousness in the Universe

algorithmic complacency!

Ever since I posted my last blog post about the need and desire to create a new social network, I've been more conscious of discussing it with people who might be interested. Those conscious discussions seem to provide me with a bit of mental momentum towards my goal (or rather, the direction of my goal - I haven't really thought about it enough to actually define my goal in that regard). Imagine my surprise though, when "the algorithm" popped this video up on my youtube!

As the video wound on (and I dug into my dinner), I realized that I used to resist algorithmic complacency, until at some point, a switch flipped, and I stopped: I stopped reading every tweet, every email, every WhatsApp message. I think that switch flipped when the mental effort of curating every feed of information felt like a battle against that platform's intention to force feed me things of its (as opposed to my) choosing.

The problem I'm trying to solve suddenly both seems a lot clearer and a lot more daunting. It's almost like a junkie trying to get other junkies to collectively quit.

Time to close youtube and immerse myself into something non-algorithmic, for tonight.

popf;ret

A couple of months ago, I decided to maintain a daily online journal. I wanted it to be a low-effort thing, available to the public on the internet for now, but not publicized to feed into my social feeds like this one.

I managed to keep it going for a few weeks, but right after the holiday season was over and the new year began, I started falling behind. it started with writing 3 days entries back to back with whatever I could remember, then turned into a couple of days of entries after a few skipped days... until i finally stopped completely. as of today, my last journal entry is dated 8th January.

When I started the exercise, I wasn't sure if it would work long-term, but I wasn't sure why either.

I think I do, now.

I can't stick to a routine. Even if I follow it for 21 days.

ps: popf;ret are the two opcodes in x86 assembly that execute a return from an "interrupt" subroutine. this just popped into my head from like 25 years ago, thanks to a youtube video about using chatGPT for programming assembly!

alternatives

sometime in 2020 (or was it early 2021?), I decided I needed to streamline my social media footprint. until that time, it was a combination of Instagram for photos/videos, Facebook for links and general posts, and twitter for banter. if I had to pick one of the three, Facebook was the obvious winner, simply because it was the jack-of-all-trades, doing everything reasonably well. 

things have changed since then: Facebook has made it significantly more difficult to organise photos/videos, become so ad-littered that I struggle to find stuff to have meaningful conversations over, and my friends probably can't find most of my non-photo posts either. 

Instagram is worse: there isn't (and never was) any sense of organisation, engagement (other than people liking stuff) is ridiculously low, the ad ratio is close if not the same - it is Facebook after all.

Twitter was never a contender as far as being my primary social media platform is concerned, simply because there are too few friends on it. something like 5% of my Facebook friends! no organisation either, and tweets are simply lost in the ether once they are off the timeline. thankfully no ads though.

so, the solution is "none of the above". and in fact, it's now a matter of "build or use?"

as far as using existing platforms is concerned, this blog is one option. it cross-posts to Facebook, can cross-post to twitter, maybe even WhatsApp(!) and telegram, lets me organise stuff as I please, but is extremely limited as far as interaction is concerned. 

the thing with interaction though is, it already seems to be quite one-sided: friends interact with stuff I post more than I interact with stuff they post. as a result, most of my time spent interacting on any social platform seems one-sided and not very rewarding. so maybe it's time to just forget about it.

when it comes to building something new, my options recently reduced thanks to heroku announcing end of their free tier. so I'm going to have to find some new way to post. anything I build will obviously work with zapier, and hence be able to do everything my blog can - but can it do better? so far I don't have any ideas. but that's also because I hardly use my blog. 

so, it's time to move everything to my blog. everything is going to be public again(!).

there is also going to be a significant effort involved in building the structure I want to use. for example, my blog has no categories for any of the stuff I post on Facebook!

I just hope I don't give up halfway and decide it isn't worth it (because that would probably be the end of 20 years of my online presence!). 

killjoy

apparently, one way to be a killjoy is to encourage others to pursue happiness using principles that seem to have worked for you.

Counterintuituve, but I think this might be because:

• since happiness is objective, nobody is definitively happier than anybody else
• the act of promoting "what worked for me" to somebody else is likely reduce their chances of finding happiness
• pushing somebody to find something they aren't conciously searching for is likely to make said thing more elusive as they're now being forced to search for it
• logic as a means of pursuing anything seems to work for some things more than others, and an attempt to fit something emotional into a logical process seems self contradictory and possibly self defeating

hands-not-free

i have this strange problem: i try to minimize the amount of distance i need to walk when i'm trying to get stuff done at home. whenever i'm passing through a room, i think of all the things i need to do, and pick up the involved items. 

sometimes i forget what i'm actually supposed to do though. a couple of days last week i spent 6 hours with dirty socks in my pocket: i was supposed to deposit them in the laundry basket, but i completely forgot - i passed the laundry basket twice, and only remembered when i was trying to get something else out of my pocket and grabbed my socks instead. it took me longer to recall what i was trying to do with those socks than it would have to walk to the laundry basket and drop them in!

other times, i end up with too many things in my hands, and as a result, i need to do everything slowly, sometimes even depositing things on the floor and moving them bit by bit as i pass each room where i need to put them away.

worst of all though is when i have so many things in my hands that i attempt to do the wrong thing with the wrong object. in fact that's what inspired this post: I was leaving office, trying to get my coffee mug to the sink (to wash and put away), water bottle to put away, access card (which had the keys to my locker), motorbike keys, banana and orange peels (which I had eaten at my desk), and phone (to check for traffic). end resut: i almost tossed my phone into the bin instead of the peels.

retribution or support?

I happened to comment on a post about "mansplaining", asking if there's anything a man could comment there without being dismissed as an instance of mansplaining.

The amount of negativity a man earns by just virtue of being a man is... overwhelming.

I wonder, would it be easier to make the world a better place for women if every conversation about issues that primarily affect women would not be so overwhelmingly targetted against men (as opposed to the problematic behaviour itself, even if that behaviour is exhibited by the majority of men)? In other words, if a man chooses to try to make a difference (which every man should!), would it be more productive to offer retribution for the rest of his ilk and his/their past behaviour, or support?

And if it's not clear if a man actually exhibits the behaviour being discussed, would it be more productive to give the man the benefit of the doubt before coming to that conclusion? Or does the generalization make things easier to discuss, and making a few men feel bad for no fault of their own acceptable collateral damage?

The responses to the comment led me to conclude a few things:

• Mainsplaining is so common that many women do not feel the need to quallify their statement about men
• Mansplaining is so common that some (many?) women do not even realize it - they simply assume men know more
• Most men and women fundamentally disagree when it comes to "can we talk about a problem without trying to solve it?"
• The women involved consider "shut up if it doesn't refer to yourself" as a valid approach to take. It appears the men involved (myself included) do not. Is that because we're muddying the waters? Is that because the majority of men who'd comment on such a post are the ones who are either not guilty or blind to their faults?
• When men do the gender-neurtal equivalent of mansplaining to other men, they are simply branded condescending (or, as one man would say to another: a dick). And it happens a lot, and men either ignore it or call it out and move on.
• I need to stop taking claims about "men" personally, as I would be as guilty of inflicting collateral damage on women who have been at the receiving end of this sort of behaviour far too often for far too long.

I have not concluded whether retribution or support is the most productive line to take though. It's unlikely I will be able to make that decision.

dear diary

during the times i've kept a physical diary (about 10 years, but with very erratic frequency), i've found that my diary helped me put things in perspective, give structure to my day, or sometimes, just give me a private outlet to vent my inner feelings.

during the times i've kept an electronic diary (my first blog, i.e.) which spanned about 3 years of almost daily writing, i found that i got none of those benefits - but it was more accessible, and i think i ended up going back to it to read more often.

now that both are temporarily inaccesible (my physical diary is in another country, and my electronic diary is in a database which I could probably read if i tried, although the website designed to present it is long-defunct), and I feel like i really need the things that writing a diary gave me, i'm wondering what I should do - restart a physical diary, or restart an electronic one?

i.e., do i write a diary that's more useful to write, or more useful to read?  

post-second-wave?

it's ironic that a little under a year ago, I wrote a blog post about the pandemic being over. it certainly wasn't!

once again, pandemic restrictions are easing up, we can finally do things we couldn't do for the last few months, like travelling, meeing friends, eating out. and all of that is nice.

but there's evidence that this isn't the end of the pandemic. there's already the numbers creeping up in parts of the UK, even though everyone with authority is currently maintaining it's not cause for concern.

there is a research paper I read yesterday about how the most popularly administered vaccine in the UK (and India) isn't very effective against the newest strain of COVID-19.

and of course, the situation in some parts of the world hasn't improved as much as it's improved in the parts we've been paying attention to.

on one hand it makes me happy that most of the world has learned to live with the pandemic.

on the other hand, it makes me sad that the divide between those who have and those who haven't has widened.

i feel that more than ever, it's time the "haves" step-up and focus on helping the "have-nots" level up. not just for altruistic reasons, but because the world really needs it. the pandemic happened for the same reason, and it has played out exactly the way it has, for the same selfish reasons.

the sooner we realize selifhs behaviour only works in the short-tem, the sooner we can build a better world for everyone (including ourselves).

the heartbeat of memories

it's strange how easy it is to fall into this mode of "nothingness" even though you're doing the right things.

I think I have observed this over and over again, but never realized why.

Funnily enough, today, I ended up listening to a podcast by Dr Julia Shaw (more like the soundtrack of a recording of a presentation she gave employees of my workplace) that reminded me why, in a simple line: "the heartbeat of your mind has been missing"

Life during the pandemic has (for me) actually been objectively better than pre-pandemic. Yes, I might be among the lucky few who can say that.

But it has also been more of a blur than any other time of my life. And it's probably because my mind has been missing its' heartbeat.

I've been too bored to shake things up, when there have been more opportunities than ever to do so.

Luckily for me, it's Friday evening, I have taken up a few new challenges (8000 steps a day for the month of June, 51 minutes of cycling or running a week to celebrate 51 years since the start of the "pride" movement), joined a book club with old friends I've been out of touch with, and hopefully, in a week or two, I'll be embarking on a new project.

Let's hope I can keep my mind active and beating, and keep changing things over the months and years to come!

the path to normal

it's reassuring to see news of COVID-19 infection and death rates falling, hearing about vaccination successes, and reading about leaders' reassurances that this unlock is "one way" and we can firmly put the last 12 months behind us.

the timing couldn't be better, as today is exactly one year since I started working from home, as part of the pre-pandemic precautions by my employer.

it's easy to see normal as the way things were before the pandemic hit: meeting friends and family, traveling for vacations, not having to worry about how close we were to others, or even the chances of infecting each other (one slice of wedding cake shared by 8 people on our wedding day, seems quite unimaginable now!)

but this return to normal is also an opportunity to not normalize things we did earlier without thinking about the consequences. everyone's list will be different, but here's mine:

• physical activity and the outdoors: i never realized how much my well being is dependent on it. going out is forced on you if you're commuting, but when working from home, it really becomes vital. and that's when I realized the quality of "outdoors" matters - as does the quality of activity when outdoors.
• food: in the rush of our daily lives pre-pandemic, food often took a backseat. just throw something together, eat it, pack the leftovers for tomorrow, eat in a hurry, eat while working. but one year of working from home and eating from home taught me that there's much more to food than just that. that quick-fixes may give time but take away health and energy in exchange. sometimes immediately, sometimes long-term and subtly. after almost one year of "detox" i can't imagine going back to how things used to be.
• relationships: one year with shruti, locked indoors for the most part, and with her even when out and about, taught me the value of maintaining healthy relationships. when we can't distract ourselves with other people, or even work, we were forced to focus on what really keeps us going. when we get back to our office lives, socializing with our respective circles, etc., we will never try to use those things as distractions/ways to tide over problems in our relationship. it's more difficult, but more rewarding.
• free time: this year has given me more free time than ever. at the start, I pretty much ran out of things to do! not any more. I have learned to focus on things that energize me, instead of taking the easy way out and distracting myself.
• communication: this year has been an overdose of calls, video calls, texting, and also of other less fulfilling forms of communication like forwards, endless scrolling through pointless posts and websites. i have cut down on my "online time" (ironic, given that i'm blogging at the moment) and online distractions to focus on meaningful communication.

I'm sure i'll think of more, but it's time to sleep now.

happy "new normal" to you!

doing vs influencing

it probably isn't a coincidence that human-caused climate change is getting more attention than usual these days. what with a change of US president from one who went out of his way to trash environmental commitments to one who seems to be making the right sounds so far, think-tanks focused on the post COVID-19 pandemic recovery, and catastropic climate changes in some parts of the world that are getting harder than ever to ignore even by the most entrenched naysayers and skeptics, the time seems ripe for change.

however, change is not as simple as it may seem at the outset. one wants change to have an impact, because anything else is simply a waste of time (and time, when it comes to the environmental-time-bomb, is obviously of the essence, as it has always been).

I have tried making changes personally over the years: reducing use when economically and logistically feasible (by buying non-perishable items in bulk without packaging, practically eliminating food wastage, etc), reducing my energy footprint, reusing whenever possible (I go through about 2 plastic bags a YEAR), have taken up upcycling and freecycling items when possible, and finally, recycling when reuse is not possible. but... and this is a big but: all my changes are practically insignificant.

worldwide, household waste is under 3% of all carbon emissions. and we were relatively carbon conscious all our lives to begin with (my energy footprint in Mumbai was so low, I did not have to pay electricity bills for over a year!). Right now, in the UK, I've survived 3 winters without using heating until outside temperatures dropped below 0 - barring January, my gas bill in the UK is the same as it was in Mumbai, despite higher taxes + rates per unit! Despite riding a high capacity sports tourer, my overall fuel usage is under 1/5th of what it was in India - simply because I cycle on a daily basis and ride about once a month (or maybe twice a month when we were not in a lockdown).

And so, it seems clear to me, there's not much more I can do personally by way of action to avert the climate crisis. The problem lies elsewhere.

For example, my personal network in the UK comprises of people who either walk, or (mostly) drive cars. and when they drive cars, they usually do so for short distances. one less family ferrying groceries by car for a month would save on more emissions than I have in a year of cycling! A family of 4 who switches to bulk-buying non-perishables without packaging would save twice as much plastic as I could have. But it's even simpler than that. I don't expect families to go cold-turkey and stop driving completely. Simply cutting down on trips by better planning would make a bigger difference than I possibly can. Families with infants switching to reusable diapers even a couple of times a week would reduce more non-recyclable trash than I produce in a year.

Obviously, nobody is going to wake up and make such changes of their own accord. Which is where influencing comes in.

100 people making a 1% reduction is probably better than one person making a 100% reduction (if that was even possible). 1% is such a small reduction, one may not even notice it! Something like a 50% reduction would be possible without significant impact to cost and well-being. And even that will do spectacularly if a significant number of people do it. The network effect can do wonders - when it actually takes effect.

The question is: how?

How does one motivate people to make changes?

Preaching doesn't seem to help.

Example doesn't seem to help.

Not doing anything (obviously) doesn't seem to help.

One area I feel particularly handicapped is: data. hard numbers. Or better still, tunable models.

If I could spend some time with each person in my network, I could actually help them identify easy wins. But without data, that's practically impossible, becase I'll be asking people to just go by my word. And my word might even be wrong - I am no expert myself!

If I could locate other like-minded and similarly motivated people, we could help each other get better at this.

My goal would be to get people motivated enough to identify easy wins and spread the word about techniques (as opposed to actions).

I'm sure there are many tricks I'm missing, but for starters, let's connect and figure things out.

After all, it's our world we're talking about.

If you ever had a bad motorcycle accident, what advice would you give to others?

I’ve had many close calls, and three accidents that could have been much worse if I was unlucky/less skilled. Here’s my advice, in (my) order of importance:

1. Do not overestimate your abilities. Start with the assumption that you’re absolutely incompetent, and work your way up from there. But do make sure you’re working on “working your way up”.
2. Do not ride when you are not at your mental best. Angry/tired/depressed/even overly happy! Anything that takes your mind off the road is a risk you take.
3. Do not overestimate your motorcycle’s abilities - especially when it comes to emergency braking/steering in adverse conditions.
4. Do not make assumptions about other road users. This is tricky in the UK, where most people do follow rules but are distracted/bored/inattentive instead, but having done most of my riding in India, where following the rules is a joke (most road users have never even heard the rules once in their life, and most truckers rely on alcohol to keep themselves awake on overnight long haul drives!) it’s basically what kept me alive.
5. Take every close call as a lesson. Take every accident as an even bigger lesson. Most close calls are a result of at least one of the 4 above. Most accidents, at least two of the 4 above. Dissect each incident, by yourself, with trusted riding buddies, on quora. Internalize it. Make sure it never happens again. And thank your stars you lived to see another day.
6. All the gear all the time. Motorcycle safety gear saves lives, reduces pain, and really is not uncomfortable/inconvienient/expensive when you get the right gear. All of my accidents where I sustained physical injury have been where I was not fully geared up, and where gear would have reduced my injury, and were on extremely short rides (within 1km of my destination!)

(posted this on Quora, but thought it was too valuable to leave off my blog :D)

20/20

 2020 was a strange year. started on a rather nice note - a ride across the UK, and then a week with Nickolai and Damian, with a few evenings out with other friends.

Back to Belfast, and we were already planning our next vacation: a trip to the Shetland isles for "Up Helly Aa", which is as far away from home I've ridden Vicki (our Honda ST1100) so far.

Back home, and we were already planning our next vacations: Amsterdam in April. Ameland in August (just realized they're all with A!). And to get a visa for both of them, Edinburgh in March.

Attended my first ever hackathon. Was a really energizing experience!

Obviously, Edinburgh in March was the only trip that actually happened.

One week later, we were working from home, and literally going crazy.

Cabin fever. Reading (books, Kindle, online). Streaming movies. Streaming music. Cooking. Eating. Drinking. A bit of blogging too.

At some point, we decided (or rather, realized) we were going overboard with the food, and our bodies and the bathroom scales were showing it.

Thus began the first notable achievement of 2020: our first "reset" diet. It worked for a couple of months. Our friends were surprised at the changes that were visible even in our photos. We enjoyed our new diet as well. We thought it was good enough to last for life.

Unfortunately, that was not to be.

By October, we were slipping up with regularity.

By November, I knew we had to "reset" again.

On Jan 1 2021 we were probably at the same state physically as we were on Jan 1 2020 - but with the experience to prove that it could be done quite easily.

That wasn't the only achievement of the year, of course.

I got back on board with Android development. Dabbled a bit with a few other programming languages.

Signed up for a COVID-19 vaccine trial.

A few day trips, which picked up towards the end of the year, when we realized COVID-19 isn't going anywhere soon, and we're going to have to make the best of the free time we have instead of planning vaactions.

A bit of hiking, which again picked up towards the end of the year.

A lot of video calls.

A lot of using grocery shopping as an excuse to get out of these four walls.

A lot of chat as a substitute for human contact.

A lot of mindless scrolling.

ONE lockdown vacation to Galway, when it actually seemed like Ireland and the UK were past COVID-19.

Lots of conversations with Shruti.

Lots of things to look forward to for 2021.

And above everything else, the realization that all assumptions about the future are pointless.

the point of it all

 it's the second half of december 2020. the end of a rather different year. but also a year that has forced a lot of people to change the way they live their lives fundamentally.

and for some people, forced them to strip away a lot of the things that they got a lot of day-to-day pleasure from, possibly without really being conscious of the fact.

in fact, for most of us, 2020 and the associated restrictions has reduced our existence to the equivalent of "treading water" - just doing what we can to stay afloat.

which is fine, and probably even good - the personal equivalent of "gardening leave", that most people (including myself) would not experience unless forced to. some people took the opportunity to get fit(ter), others to take up new hobbies, and the few i'm envious of, actually took up creative pursuits that have borne fruit, like nickolai's book and grenville's album.

personally, i dabbled in a bit of android development, and am also brusing up my javascript skills.

but honestly, 9 months of "treading water" later (in fact, not that much later - maybe even as early as june?) i wonder how people who do not have such direction, get themselves out of bed every morning.

most people (myself included) have to focus on feeding themselves, literally and metaphorically.

many others with kids, have to focus on their development and future - the unique challenges and opportunities being locked indoors with their little future selves almost 24x7 present.

some people (the single, retired, those not living with family due to work etc) have to deal with the loneliness of it all.

of all these different aspects of being "locked down", the one that strikes me the most are the retired. because they represent our eventual future (except for those who hope to work till their dying breath, i guess - but even such hopes do not really turn into reality as intended).

one of my personal goals is to be at a point where i can live comfortably off my savings/investments, with a roof over my head, food on the table, and the level of luxury i find comfortable. if/when we have kids, enough money to guarantee their basic security as well (does the list ever end?). at that point i'd be more free to pursue things other than work for money's sake. because while my current work does give me some personal fulfilment (in other words, i don't detest my job :D) i know there are things i'd rather do, but they don't have the stability/income level to achieve my long term goals.

so that's work and money. but there's more to life. even with 8 hours of work, i always had plenty of time to do other things (even after vegetating on the couch just to "recover" from work). what I do with my free time now probably predicts what I would do with it if i was "free" 24x7. there's obviously entertainment: ther'es a lot of good movies and music out there. as i love to say about movies: "life is too short for reruns". but when it comes to music, i'm happiest listening to my favouites over and over again (yes, i have a lot of favourite music!). but either way, it's entertainment. about as fulfilling as a good meal cooked and eaten by myself, or with shruti. maybe a good drink to go with it.

but after a certain point, all of these things that feel good, do not give me that extra something to keep going. hiking, cycling, riding the motorcycle all help postpone that empty feeling a bit. but beyond a point, it's inevitable.

so, what then?

there's obviously charity. helping others not as well as myself in different aspects. and then there's something that's not so much "charity" as "networking" - helping others simplify/solve their problems.

but is that it? helping friends/acquaintances/charity network?

and what happens when i'm too old to do that? when i start feeling like i've helped all i can and am now being helped more than i'm helping? when my own knowledge is so far behind the times that my advice is more of a waste of everyone's time?

I can see it happening to a few people around me.

i'm trying to motivate them to do something to keep themselves active, mentally and physically. but as i try no motivate them, i can't help asking myself: why? and does what i'm asking them to do even make sense to them? they make sense to me, because i'm preparing myself for the rest of my life. for the things i want to do in the future. but what about when that list is empty? do i go about filling it for the sake of having things to do, although the only reason i'm doing them is to just keep going?

and if not, what?

we prepare ourselves for the end of our lives, but what happens when all of that preparation seems pointless?

i know some retired people don't feel the way i have just described. they busy themselves with their grandkids, books, or just slowing down and letting their daily routine fill their lives.

is that the point of it all? is that what i'm preparing myself for?

my experiments with food

TL;DR: If you want the short story, scroll to lists at the bottom :D

I've always loved to experiment with myself, and while I'm not very systematic/scientific about it, I have found certain experiments "just work" without sweating the details.

I've also always been fascinated with "paleo" - mostly just because it seemed instinctively right to me. My attempts at following it haven't been the great success others have made them out to be. It's hard to say why - I know that I've never maanged to sustain the activity level and type a paleo diet recommends. I did try it half-heartedly for years though.

I've also experimented with exercise and diet - that was for a much shorter time, becasue, for me, exercise seems to require external motivation (i.e. company) and company is a very difficult thing to have consistently.

And then, lockdown happened.

Coincidentally, just before March, we were going through a rather bad comfort-eating spell ourselves. Packaged microwave TV dinners and the like. So when we were locked indoors, the time was perfect.

Shruti had great experiences with keto, although I wasn't fully convinced going without fruit and other carbs was good for me, I thought I'd give it a go with her. We started sometime in March (or was it April? I'm so unscientific I don't even know the month, forget the date we started!), but I do remember it took us 3 weeks of eating through our stockpiled supplies (we didn't go crazy munching on all the junk at home in one go :D) from the day we decided, before we actually started in earnest.

The first few days were weird. Figuring how to cook the stuff we were to eat, how to make it satisfying, how to control the cravings. And damn... what cravings! We were already down to just one slice of bread a day (with our breakfast), but breakfast without bread was weird. And then there was the matter of portion control. We had absolutely no idea how much food we'd need. And we were aiming to only do groceries once a week. We started running out of eggs pretty quickly. And everything else seemed to slow down. Suddenly, we were only eating two meals a day - breakfast and dinner. Shruti decided she won't eat after 8pm. I decided I'd only eat when I'm hungry, mealtimes be damned.

We controlled our cravings.

Made sure we don't slip up.

We had 0 cheat meals for the first two weeks.

Two weeks later, Shruti wanter her first "cheat meal". I don't remember what it was, but I don't think I enjoyed it as much as she did.

I had stopped craving the stuff I decided I won't eat.

Two weeks in, we were already losing weight.

About one kg a week!

I decided I had to go back to having fruits. It just felt wrong to me.

I loaded up on fruits. Whenever I was hungry, I'd have a fruit. Breakfast, fruit, dinner.

About 6kg or so in, I was looking visibly thinner. People were beginning to notice (in photos - we were still not meeting people). I gradually started onions, spinach, and then tomatoes. So far, so good. Shruti also found food more palatable with these few additions, so it worked for both of us. We started eating more common meals.

At some point, Shruti plateaued. I pushed a bit by upping my activity levels (also, since it was summer and bright till late, I was happy to go cycling when it was dry).

At my lightest, I reached 65 kg. I felt on top of the world. I purchased two tees to try at home, as clothes stores weren't allowing trials in store. Size XS. The cashier was unconvinced. I was unconvinced too. But 21 days' free returns, so why not.

The tees fit.

I fit into the smallest size an adult male could wear in the UK.

I was the same weight as I was when I was 13.

I was 13 24 years ago!

At this point, I declared my experiment a success.

Also, at this point, Shruti's motivation began to give way. Cheat meals got more frequent. The cravings were back. I realized how tricky paleo is for me - after every cheat day, I had to voluntarily control myself very carefully for the next couple of days or there'd be no turning back. And there were a couple of weeks where most of the days were "cheat days".

Surprisingly, my weight stayed put. I couldn't believe it. I was hovering around 66 without following any diet! How was that even possible?

Turns out, it wasn't possible. I'm now back to 68. And I can see the momentum. About half a kg every week.

Looks like it's time to "reset". But before I embark on the next phase, let's put things down for posterity.

So, here's what worked for me:

1. Control what you eat, not how much you eat. If (and that's a big IF!) you eat right, you'll know when you're full, and won't feel hungry until it's time to eat again.
2. (For me, not for Shruti - although I don't know how much was due to her body and how much was forced control - she's very good at control!) Don't control when you eat. If you wake up at 8am feeling hungry, go for it. If you thought you're full at 8pm so skipped dinner, but are suddenly hungry at midnight, don't go to bed hungry. MAYBE if you wake up in the middle of the night, just eat a few nuts and drink some water.
3. Don't buy stuff you don't want to eat, until the day you want to eat it. This worked well since we do our groceries on weekends, and that's also when we have the time to savour our "cheat meals".
4. Food is overrated. Cheat meals are overrated. They are merely gateways to happy memories associated with the food involved.
5. Alcohol is overrated. But it's hard to diffrentiate between alcohol and the junk that goes with it, so it's still hard to say. A double of good quality alcohol on ice at home is the sweet spot (no puns intended) for me. More than that, and I start craving junk. And if there's junk on hand, I'm out of control.

Here's what didn't work for me:

1. The 80-20 rule. Lots of places online said if you stick to your diet 80% of the time, you don't need to worry about the remaining 20%. Didn't work. Remember that one slice of bread? If I had my breakfast with one slice of bread daily, the rest of my day was inevitably out of control. As simple as that. IF the 80-20 rule worked for anyone, it was probably because they were using external control.
2. Socializing over alcohol. It's just impossible to stick to reasonable amounts of alcohol in social situations. While that worked well in lockdown, it didn't work when lockdown was lifted.
3. Watching my weight. It took 3 months of kinda-not-following the diet before I started gaining weight. But when I started, it seems like I can't stop. There were no warning signs - once I started piling the pounds back on, it was already too late.
4. Socializing in general. When there are other people involved, it's very hard to stick to your diet without feeling weird. If it wasn't for lockdown, I'd probably never have pulled this off!
5. Vacations are difficult. It's either processed food, or breaking my rules. Very hard to have a good time (since my vacations also involve eating and drinking local!) and stick to my diet.
6. Buying cheat snacks "for later". NEVER EVER WORKED.
7. Portion control when it comes to "cheat snacks"/meals. Once the bag of crisps is open, it's going in. Ditto for cake (serves 6? I'll have all 6 slices in one go!)

And finally, for those who don't know what paleo is, here's my interpretation of it:

• Only eat unprocessed food
• Only eat food that's sold raw
• NO sugar, NO grains, NO lentils. NO anything that can't be eaten raw or roasted.
• Plenty of protein (but not obsessive amounts of it) - 3 whole eggs for breakfast is usually adequate, the rest is in my dinner. I enjoyed egg bhurji the most (especially boiled egg bhurji!), but it was good no matter what. As long as there were 3 eggs in it. More on that in another blog post!
• Plenty of fruit and nuts.
• As much vegetables as desired, with one caveat: too much salad made me full but low on energy.
• For meals, I switched between red/white/oily fish and the occasional shellfish. On days I wasn't too hungry, it was just veggies.
• Rendered fat > oil. However generous you are with fat, if things are being roasted, you'll be consuming minimal quantities of it anyway. The air fryer made it easy to render fat and roast.
• Minimal salt, generous spices. NO sauces.
• The one thing I didn't follow as well as I should have: Hydrate!
• Technically I should have stopped dairy, but I didn't.
• I also didn't bother with much exercise, although I made it a point to be active. Walking and cycling, when weather suited. About twice a week. Not even half as active as I was, when I was cycling to work daily but not following any diet!

problems and solutions

some problems become easier to solve by merely by thinking of the solution.

others need you to actually grab your tools, get over your fears and get your hands dirty while getting nowhere, and then dig in and remind yourself the biggest failure is to never have tried.

- kris, trying to solve two different problems on the same day