Monday, June 24, 2024
cycling for charity
Saturday, June 01, 2024
marbella
5th of May: after much anticpation but not enough preparation, we were off to Spain!
the flight was at 6am from Belfast International Airport, and I did something crazy-ish: drove to the airport, dropped shruti off with the bags, then drove about a mile away to a spot I scoped out on Google maps to be legal to park, unfolded my cycle from the boot, and cycled to the airport! chained my cycle next to another one, and we were off on an uneventful but tiring flight to malaga. landed at 9am, took the bus to Marbella (and literally missed one bus by a minute!), dropped our bags at the Airbnb (Marbella is very hilly!) and then headed out to grab a bite at a street side cafe. walked around a little more, made a dinner reservation at a highly rated tapas place, headed back to the bnb, checked in, and took a quick nap. was so sleepy though, we couldn't bring ourselves to wake up for the dinner reservation at 7pm, but thankfully they allowed us to move it to 9pm and we were ready and fresh by then. after the relaxed dinner, we walked around a bit and clicked photos before heading to our Airbnb. super start to our vacation!
the next day, we set off for a "local" breakfast place. we had a late start, and it was quite busy by the time we arrived - we would have liked ot sit outdoors but those tables were highly sought after and we concluded it's better to sit indoors without the view instead. we tried what was to become our favourite hot drink of the vacation: "bombon" (coffee with condensed milk). went perfectly with churros!
breakfast was a little hit-and-miss though - the waiters didn't speak english, and our order didn't exactly arrive the way we asked, but we aren't fussy so it was fine.
we walked around town, clicked plenty of photos, shruti shopped a bit (just one dress, to be fair), we made our dinner reservation, headed back to base, and then after a brief nap, we headed down to the waterfront. we walked the "golden mile" (which was actually about 4 miles) of seafront from marbella to puerto banus. it was super hot and we needed plenty of rest breaks on the way, but we made it, and the seafront walk was very well worth it! we had drinks inside pienapples (very expensive, but worth it!) booked the ferry back, had an ice cream while we waited for it, and finally enjoyed the sunset cruise back!
all nighter
Thursday, May 23, 2024
Write a blog post about my concerns about personal blog posts being written by AI instead of humans
Saturday, May 04, 2024
a shaky start
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
leaving las vegas
yesterday was my last day at my job. I've only worked 3 full-time, corporate jobs in my whole life, and this is the first one that I quit just to change employers - for all the preceding ones, it was something else.
conventional wisdom says you shouldn't be emotionally attached to an employer. but in this case, I was - for personal reasons. if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't have been in Belfast. unlike Shruti, who had to build her friend circle the hard way, I was surrounded by friendly, welcoming people at work from day one.
and so, changing jobs because I wanted to change employers is a strange feeling. specifically, it was not to change my work. I loved what I was doing. I even loved the people I was working with. It was all the other things. the pay, the policies. the fact that something someone did to me a while ago could have a long term impact on my prospects despite my best efforts. the fact that the management couldn't do anything to set right what seemed to me to be an obvious wrong.
anyway. enough about the past. it's time to look forward to the future! this is the first time an employer actually provided me coaching to help me succeed at my new job. it was supposed to be an hour but we covered so much in half an hour, that that was all I needed. i feel armed!As I cycled to work yesterday, Sheryl Crow's "leaving las vegas" happened to play. This line struck me:
"Such a muddy line between
The things you want
And the things you have to do"
Monday, February 12, 2024
popf;ret
Friday, February 09, 2024
dad smiled
Wednesday, January 10, 2024
one week
Monday, January 08, 2024
Sailing from Charni Road to Portpatrick
I woke up at 7am and headed to Carrickfergus. It was a gloomy morning, and only two other people had arrived - the rest were on their way. We were going to leave for Portpatrick between 11am and noon, so I was very early. I took the train. Shruti, Kevin and Brenna joined me on the train as we headed to South Bombay. We got off the train at Charni Road (although from the layout of the platforms and bridges it seemed more like Mahalaxmi). I wanted to use the toilet. Shruti and I looked for it. We could only find the one marked Ladies but not the one marked Gents. We arked around and was eventually led to the station master's office. There were a bunch of people inside, a few sitting around a table, having some sort of meeting, while the rest were in a queue. It was a queue for the toilet!
Thr toilet and the station master/meeting room were in one big room, with nothing to separate them - the toilet was a commode surrounded by filing cabinets and files and stacks of paper other things you'd expect to see in a station master's office. I didn't really pay attention to the queue ahead of me and before I realized it, it was my turn. There was nobody queued up after me, and I was thankful. I would have really liked some privacy but the best I could get was the fact that there was nobody in the room other than Shruti, and the bunch of men having a meeting in the other half of the room - the men were bent over something on the desk and discussing it animatedly, so Iwas quite sure they wouldn't pay me any attention.
Right after I sat on the commode, I started feeling very weird. I felt dizzy and unstable. I asked Shruti to come closer and hold my hand, as I felt I was about to faint and fall off the commode and make a mess. She held my left hand and asked me what happened and if I'm OK. I told her I'll need a minute but I feel better already.
In the meantime, a lady walked in, wearing a white nurse's uniform, including a nurse's cap.
I somehow assumed she was in charge of keeping the toilet clean, and complained to her, while still seated on it, that it was not. She replied that it's not her fault it's not clean, as I'm the one currently using it. I told her it wasn't clean before I used it, and in fact I almost fainted as it was so dirty. She refused to believe me until Shruti backed me up.
Job done and I was back on the platform. We took the bridge on to the road. We were trying to get to the beach, but I took the wrong bridge out and we had to walk along the road, and take another bridge to get on to the beach. Kevin and Brenna were waiting at the end of the bridge, and I told them they should come sailing too. At that point, a group of about 3 or 4 older people (one of whom resembled my school science teacher) told me it was too late to go sailing - it was already noon! Also, we were at Charni Road, and the boat left from Carrickfergus!
I wondered why Hugh didn't call me when he was leaving - I thought about it a bit and realized he may have not left yet, but I definitely wouldn't make it, so I should message him instead and tell him that I couldn't make it. I also told everyone that we weren't sailing today as it had gotten too late.
And that's when I woke up. It was 8am. I had dismissed my 7:40am alarm in my sleep. If I didn't leave at 8:30am, I'd have been late to get to Carrickfergus to go sailing! I thought to myself, damn - that was really close! If I didn't wake up when I did, I'd have actually missed sailing that day!
ps: Turns out I had not read my email and we were actually supposed to get to Carrickfergus at 10am instead of the usual 9am. Still!
Thursday, January 04, 2024
I'll fly away
Tuesday, January 02, 2024
serial killer dad?
a recent dream was too traumatic to even blog, but I guess if there's some hidden meaning to it, it might be worth interpreting. in short, it was a dream about dad being a serial killer, him killing someone and dragging the body into our living room and propping it against a wall. for some reason we didn't seem to even react to this other than saying hello to dad as if it was just another day.
the victim was shot through the head so cleanly he had bandaged the bullet wound and it seemed like the victim (who was a bald middle aged caucasian man, btw) had simply had a bump to the head. but after the body was in the house (which looked like our mumbai apartment from the inside), we were surrounded by police cars (they looked like UK police cars) hiding in the thick pine forest surrounding it. the house was on the side of a hillock that was slightly higher than it, and looked like some sort of modern glass and metal house, with one side built into the side of a hillock and the other side held up by stilts, with a garden below it.
I had to get out of the house to go to the shop for something (seemed like something mundane like milk) and basically had to get away on foot without being spotted by the police. thankfully there were only about 3 cars and I was able to evade them by moving outwards in a spiral.
and that's when i woke up.
ps: I've had recent conversation about the hidden meaning of dreams, and while i insist there isn't any, my friend who I was discussing this with (and a few other people I know, and loads more on the internet) said they mean something. so - what does a dream about my dad being a serial killer mean?
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