kris.blog();

touch

2026-03-23T13:08:58.799+00:00

I was at a comedy show in Belfast - one of the halls of Queen's University. The comedian was Randy Feltface (fun fact: I saw him at Ulster Hall just a few days earlier!). The opening act was another comedian. During the opening act, someone heckled the comedian, and it was something so offensive, she decided to leave the stage.

After a few minutes of chaos Randy stepped onto his stage, masked as usual. The audience assumed the show would get on, but Randy announced that the rest of the show would be cancelled out of solidarity with the comedian and that such behaviour was unacceptable in any situation, comedy show or not.

After a bit of grumbling within the audience people started to leave the auditorium. I wasn't sure what to do as I had taken the afternoon off work for the show and had no other plans. After the auditorium emptied out and I was alone, I decided to walk around and kill some time.

Right outside the auditorium, there was a bunch of people, young people - looked like students... but there was also a load of camera and photography equipment. I was curious about what was going on and watched from a distance. They seemed to be recording some sort of music video and it involved positioning people behind pillars and they had to move out as the singer passed them.

Just then someone from the crew approached me. She asked me if I was free and happy to help out with the video. I said sure, I have nothing else to do today. She explained what I had to do, and reassured me I didn't have to dance or anything and they would edit the shot to figure what would work as they were running behind schedule or something.

I was positioned behind a pillar, heard the "action" call, and at the correct time (they were calling out the names of people as their cue) I put my left hand out, the singer slapped my palm, and I stepped out turned around, and walked behind and to the left of her, as another person opposite me did the same to her right. for the rest of the shot, we had to stick out hands out and slap the palms of everyone down the passage (not sure what they had to do, but we were the only people who had to follow the singer down the passage) and at the end of the video, the singer had to turn around and give me and the other lady who was walking beside me a hug. The song was something about touch, and basically every person behind each pillar had to do something related to what she sang at that line. Only me and the other volunteer walking behind her didn't have to do any specific moves - just skip along in step with the beat. It was only while we were actually recording that I paid attention to the song. The song was about how human contact impacts us and the catch line (or word) was touch. As the shot ended the words of the song hit me and for some reason I got very emotional. When I heard "cut" I felt tears running down my face.

As the singer let go of the hug (the closing shot) I apologised and said I was feeling very emotional because the words of the song really struck a chord. The singer was like awww and gave me another hug and said she's very glad it was so well received and that I was struck by it despite it being such a light hearted and cheerful song.

She said she hoped I was okay and I'm welcome to sit with the crew for a bit to regain my composure and also that I'm welcome to connect with her on her social media profile if I felt like it. She thanked me for helping out with the video and they really needed a guy who was about the same height as her for that part and they were really lucky I happened to be about.

As we walked to the chairs that were kept out for the crew she asked me if there was something about my childhood that caused the song to get me so emotional - some sort of trauma or repressed memories. I told her that actually, no, I don't think there was any such thing I could remember about my childhood - unless those memories were truly repressed!

That's when I woke up, crying, and asked Shruti to give me a hug. I told her I had a weird dream that got me emotional. As she hugged me and I tried to fall back asleep, I thought back about my childhood. Various flashbacks of cycling, making obstacles of all my toy cars and trucks and lego and then making pretend scenes of action movies with my toy G. I. Joe action figures, running around on sunny beaches and jumping down stairs with my friends. Yep, all happy memories!

deadline dreams

2026-02-28T23:49:00.001+00:00

last monday was a daunting day: I had 3 appointments, a 9:30am one for my foot (my first physiotherapy appointment after my bunion started acting up 2 years ago), another 2:15pm one for my foot again (review with the consultant looking at my foot orthotics) and a 4pm eye checkup. given the 3 appointments were all near office, I was also going to be working from office between them. I was nervous about the day for multiple reasons: this would be the earliest I've had to wake up in a couple of months, I was planning to park the car at the location of my first appointment and cycle between there and office and the other appointments, and it also weighed on me that my therapist (back when I was still on therapy last year) said I shouldn't plan for more than one appointment a day to avoid overwhelming myself - and here I was, doing 3!

anyway, all of this weighed on me, and I tried to minimize the chances of my brain fog getting in the way of me being on time. I packed my bag - laptop, snack box, fruit (no lunch as nothing was cooked!), showered, kept my clothes all in one place including my wallet and keys, put the folding cycle in the car, checked the tyres and brakes, and finally got into bed at around midnight, an hour after I planned to.

I was so tired just from the preparation that when I got into bed I forgot the most important thing: setting my alarms! thankfully I remembered before I slept off, and set two: 8:47 to wake up, and 9am to leave (I was supposed to reach 15 minutes early for my first appointment, and 9am would get me there at 9:10, so 5 minutes to park and to accomodate rush hour traffic).

in hindsight, 8:47 was too late, but thankfully, it wasn't a problem because I woke up before my alarm.

it reminds me of what I used to do some 20+ years ago, when I was experimenting with self-hypnotism: if I would ensure the last conscious thought before going to sleep was what time I wanted to wake up, I'd wake up without an alarm! This was before I had a phone or a personal alarm (I depended on dad waking me up!), and my body clock was accurate to around 5 minutes! also, I could see the wall clock from my bed so it was easy to notice when I opened my eyes.

anyway, back to Monday. the first dream woke me up at 4:30am or so.

the dream was about me going for an exam. it was MCA, presumably, as the professors were from there, although the assignments didn't seem computer related - they seem to be about English or something. weird. also, there was no written exam, I had to hand in my assignments and answer questions about its content - which I don't remember happening during my course!

I don't remember what caused me to wake up from that dream: it was definitely something weird that must have happened but I cannot remember it any more.

anway, back to sleep, I had the weirder dream: I was in a race. it was a motorbike race. the people I was racing against were people I know from Belfast, but I was at my hold apartment in Mumbai. My motorbike (Lisa, the ST1300!) was on the terrace of the apartment. it wasn't a race as much as a time trial: the other participants would time each other and me, and we'd finally decide the winner based on timings.

but this race was weird: the race started when I got out of bedm brushed my teeth, got dressed, wore my riding gear, etc. I was almost ready to get on my motorbike when one of my competitors asked me to get him a glass of water. I told him that's not fair, it'd add to my time. he told me he was thirsty and he had no idea where the glasses were as it was my home. and besides I wasn't ready to race yet.

I was annoyed but got him a glass of water. That's when I realized I wasn't wearing my gloves, and I couldn't start the race without my gloves! I started looking everywhere for my gloves and they were nowhere to be seen - especially where they should have been. finally, I looked outside and saw I had dropped them right beside the bike! and weirdly enough there were 3 gloves - one of them was an odd one from my old pair (identical to the new pair, only more worn out!). I put on my gloves and got ready to start the motorbike. I looked at the distance I had to ride - barely 40 feet! I thought to myself, this is such a ridiculous race - it would take 5 seconds or less to cover the distance, and took 35 or 30 minutes to get ready for it!

and then I woke up, 2 minutes before the alarm: 8:45am.

I thought to myself: what a strangely appropriate dream. I spent more than an hour preparing for my first appointment and the day, and have given myself just 13 minutes for the actual race (getting out of bed and getting ready to leave for my appointment and the rest of my busy day!). I spent all of those 2 bonus minutes thinking about my dream and how it prepared me for the day, which literally seemed like a race rolled into an exam!

strangely enough, after my first appointment, I got into the car and sat for 5 minutes, just to prepare myself to take out the folding cycle and ride oout and face the rest of the day. for some reason, during those 5 minutes, I thought to myself: I'm really not up for this.

I drove back home, parked the car, took an hour's nap, and then took my motorbike to work. and yes, I noticed the gloves were in their place before I was getting ready to leave, and heaved a sigh of relief!

the sea facing apartment

2026-02-23T23:15:16.135+00:00

I was in a sea facing apartment in Belfast. based on the position it would be obel, but based on the interior decor it was arc apartments. it was on the 10th floor, or so. it was a strange day: mid afternoon, bright blue skies and completely (or maybe mostly) cloudless... but the sea outside was raging. raging so badly that the waves were 5 floors high! sea spray reached all the way to the 10th floor apartment, splattering the spectacular, and scary view, with the blue sky making the scene even more vivid.

apart from the white foam of the massive waves, the sea was a pale greenish colour... the colour I'd associate more with a calm swimming pool than such rough seas. in the midst of it all, I thought I saw something large moving in the water. it was a whale - in fact, on second glance, it was more than one whale, maybe a school of whales! I peered out through the window of the room I was in, in awe of their magnificence and grace, when I noticed other things in the water: a pod of dolphins, initially below the surface, but then leaping above the waves, as if to show off! besides the dolphins and whales, there were also sharks in the sea. I'm not sure how I could tell them apart, but they definitely gave me shark vibes.

I turned my attention from the sea and everything outside to the task at hand: I was trying to clean the apartment, and also collect whatever little was in it. the apartment was mostly empty, with no furniture and just a few things packed into cardboard boxes. most of the boxes were already in the room I was in and I could see the few left to be moved. before I moved them though, I wanted to mop the floor. and then, all of a sudden, the sound of everything changed. it sounded like I was underwater. from where I was in the room, the outside looked a uniform green - the green of the sea. I went to the window and the apartment was clearly under water. I could see the blue-grey silhouette of sharks swimming above the level of where I was, against the bright green water illuminated by sunlight filtering through.

and then, the room, the apartment, and from the feels of it, the entire building rocked violently like a boat caught in the storm. I was thrown off my feet and onto all fours. water seeped in through the floorboards. I hurriedly crawled out of the bedroom, to the living room, as I wanted to be someplace with fewer boxes and stuff bouncing about.

and that's when I woke up.

lost baggage

2026-02-21T15:37:00.008+00:00

Shruti and I were in Mumbai, and had to fly back to Belfast. However there was some sort of major airline disruption and the airline was refusing to let us take the flight. We told them we were willing to pay for an upgrade as we really had to fly back urgently, but they said an upgrade won't help as the flight itself was not operating, and neither were other airlines.

I started checking options on reddit, facebook etc, and found someone with a chartered flight (a private jet) looking for 2 passengers to come on their flight. I contacted them and they were happy to take us along. They (of their own accord) said there was plenty of room on the plane for luggage as well so they wouldn't mind an extra bag or two. So at the last minute, I purchased a cheap suitcase (it looked identical to the extra suitcase I purchased in 2017 for Ajith to take my records to the UK for me, BTW!) and filled it up with random stuff that we were not planning to initially take along. Some books and snacks, mostly. The great thing about a chartered flight is that you don't have to worry about baggage handlers tossing your bags and crushing your stuff!

We showed up at Mumbai's airport, met the guys and got to the private jet area - a new experience for us! The rest of the passengers were British, and the person flying was not a commerical pilot - he was flying his own jet, as a private pilot. He looked at our five bags and said (not sure if in jest or seriously) that we took the thing about plenty of luggage space quite seriously! I told him we had 4 suitcases packed for our original flight to begin with and packed another one after he told us. We loaded our stuff into the cargo hold of the private jet - I noticed we were the only people with suitcases. The other passengers were really travelling light, mostly just duffel bags and stuff!

I enjoyed observing preparing the jet, taxiing, and finally taking off! I was seated just behind and to the opposite of the pilot flying (for some reason he was seated on the right, shouldn't he have been on the left? guess there was another pilot seated on the left as well, since it was a long flight!). Once we were up in the clouds, I must have dozed off (no inflight entertainment, but plenty of leg room!).

The next thing I knew, I was startled as we were descending sharply! The pilot (still the guy on the right) told me there was a weird noise coming from the cargo compartment and we were losing pressure, so could I please access it (there was a hatch at the back) and have a check.

I hurried to the back and unlocked the hatch. What I saw seemed like out of a sci-fi movie: there was a weird robot (not humanoid, more like a thing with 4 mechanized "arms") in the cargo hold, armed with some sort of metal cutting tool (like an angle grinder) that was cutting a hole into the bottom of the hold! It had started at the tapered end and not got to where the suitcases and other bags were but it was probably going to get there soon.

I rushed forward and told the pilot this. He was visibly nervous and said we need to make an emergency landing. He said we'll fly low anad slow so that there's a chance we could locate our bags later if they dropped out before we landed. He found a nearby airfield and was preparing to land. I asked him where we were. He said we were in north Africa - which seemend a little out of our route but I didn't ask why at the time. He said we were lucky as our bags had dropped about 5 miles away from the airfield, so there was a good chance we could get them. We were flying low above a forested area close to the sea, and there was no sign of civilization at all.

The next thing I remembered, Shruti and I were walking inland from a beach. It was a little past sunset - not quite dark yet. There were a few more people, all looking like tourists, dressed in swimwear, walking in the same direction - probably heading inland from an evening swim. A man struck up a conversation. He asked us if we had just arrived. I said we'd just landed and were going to call it a night. I told myself I will need plenty of rest as tomorrow is going to be a long day, looking for our baggage and trying to find a way to fly back.

And that's when Shruti woke me up.

I told her I had a very weird dream about being in a plane that had to be landed in an emergency and had to go find our bags as they had fallen out along the way.

As I went back to sleep I wondered how the robot found its way into the plane, and if those duffel bags were the target of the robot - and most importantly, if there was something illegal going on! I had vague thoughts about how such a robot could be built as well. It seemed quite cool and would have been interesting to take apart, although the cutting wheel probably make it quite dangerous!

the wrong house

2026-02-20T00:39:37.644+00:00

it was afternoon. I had just come home from cycling... I had my helmet on, and music playing on my Bluetooth earphones. I left my cycle by the front door and got in.

i remembered today was bin day so I might as well bring the bin back in (the bin is usually collected around 9am).

I stepped out and suddenly realized neither of our cars nor my motorbike were in the driveway. weird - my first thought was that they were moved to let the bin collection. but nobody else could move it, and they've never had to be moved before, and besides the bin was always kept at the end of the driveway, so nowhere near where the cars or bike would interfere. still, I thought, I should go get the bin back anyway, and think about the cars and bike later. I stepped out onto the driveway and looked for the bin. there were no bins about - neither ours nor the neighbours. now that I paid attention to the neighbours' houses, I realized something was weird. there was no car in the neighbour's driveway either. in fact the entire layout of the area was wrong, even though the houses looked exactly like they should. I looked at my own house and it was wrong too - it was like a mirror image! the door was next to the left edge of the house when it should have been along the right edge!

the house had a name plate next to the door. it was a similar size to mine, but was a completely different design - the house number was wrong, and the street name was etched into it too - it was something similar, but a little different (I noticed the name and remember it, but am not going to put the name here on my blog 😂).

I decided something was definitely wrong and I had to ask someone. I looked around and nobody was nearby. there was an unfamiliar family at the house 3 houses ahead on one side. on closer observation it seemed like more than one family, so I decided not to disturb what must be a social gathering. opposite that house was another house, and as I was looking around I saw the door open. as I walked towards it an unfamiliar lady stepped out.

I realized my helmet and earphones were still on and my music was still playing, so as I walked towards her I took off my helmet and tapped my earphones to pause the music. strangely enough, the music didn't pause. I had reached the house by then, so I took off the earphones.

to my utter surprise, the music continued despite my earphones being off! I held one of my earphones close to my ear to check if music was indeed coming from it, and I could hear some sounds - but that was different from the music I could hear! and the music I could hear wasn't coming from somewhere else - it was literally music coming from my ears, as if from earphones, even though it wasn't!

I collected my wits and apologised for interrupting the lady, and explained that I seem to be lost, and asked her if she lived here (it didn't strike me at the time that someone leaving their house alone probably lived in it!) but before she could answer another lady stepped out as well, with a couple of kids I didn't pay attention to. she was joined by the other lady as she replied that yes she did live there.

I explained that I'm confused as I'm trying to get to x (my address) and this street looks very similar but is different. both the ladies were confused, as my address sounded very similar but was obviously different, and they didn't recognize me either. I told her my house was in a corner at the very end of the street and overlooked a playground. I pointed to the space on this street where my house would have been, and that's when I noticed what was wrong: the house I had just left from was adjacent to where my house would have been if it was my street. I noticed that the space that should have been my house was instead a covered parking space for two minibuses! one of them was a schoolbus, in fact. and then I noticed that the space beyond the two buses was a rock wall - and when I looked up along the rock wall, it was the side of a very high hill! so high, and so steeply cut, that the houses next to the hill seemed to be at risk of landslides/boulders, etc - very unsafe!

meanwhe the ladies were discussing which street overlooks a playground nearby, and concluded that while they weren't very sure, it was probably just a couple of streets away - but they pointed in the direction of the hill and confirmed it was on the other side of the hill.

this worried me. I only had my cycle, and the hill was massive - would I be able to cycle all the way to my home? the ladies reassured me it's not as steep as it seems from where we were looking, and it's literally around the corner - walking distance! I considered leaving my cycle there and walking, but then I'd have to get back and take it later, and I wasn't even sure if the ladies were right about my street being nearby. best to retrace my steps and try to find my way, I thought.

I thanked the ladies and was about to walk back towards the house where I had left my cycle, when I thought I heard the doorbell ring. that's weird, why would the doorbell ring when I'm outside? but the music was still playing too.

the doorbell rang again.

this time, I opened my eyes.

I was in bed.

my bedside dock was playing the music I could hear all this while.

someone was at the door, ringing the doorbell.

I ran down so quickly I almost tripped down the stairs.

Shruti was at the door. I opened it for her.

the first thing Shruti said to me was "where's our bin"?

I was so shocked that I had to check outside and make sure our cars and my motorbike were still in our driveway 😳

what chronic fatigue syndrome has taught me about myself

2026-02-08T14:33:00.005+00:00

yes, this was the title of the previous blog post, but as I started typing it I realized it went a complete different direction! these observations are much more significant and long term, so I feel like I must blog them anyway

chronic fatigue has made me more sensitive to things that were easier to ignore otherwise
the dopamine feedback loop of technology is almost all-pervasive and is literally dragging me down
mornings (waking up on time) absolutely set the tone for the rest of the day. the difference between waking up at 7am and 10am is the difference between feeling on top of the world (relatively speaking - it's still a struggle, but more bearably so!) and dragging myself through the day. if I'm still in bed after 10am I can pretty much give up on the day (with some exceptions - hopefully today is one of them!).
nights set the tone for the next morning. I absolutely NEED to be asleep by midnight, and that means winding down physically by 11pm, and mentally by 11:30pm. if I want to feel fresh the next morning, midnight is too late, and I should aim to be alseep by 11 - something I haven't managed to do in months, which explains my worsening fatigue. I need to wind down, not get things done. I need to resist the urge to tackle things as I see them, especially as bedtime approaches.
productive non-work time needs to be used productively. it seems like my productive time hits me when I'm in the mood for entertainment, and that's where the tech dopamine feedback loop takes over.
I tend to prioritize short term rewards over long term rewards even though it seems perfectly possible to do the latter. before chronic fatigue hit, I was easily able to do both by just pushing myself to tackle the long term stuff when I was in the mood for it (which usually happened after 10pm, frequently after midnight!)
timeboxing is my weak spot. I lose track of time when I'm being productive. I have all the tools, I just don't use them, and that's what turns positive activities into problematic knock-on effects.
physical activity is a feedback loop. once I cut down on it, it just gets worse until it feels like I cannot get out of the loop. it literally took me all of last week to bring myself to the point where I could get out and go for a walk. I have literally dressed up and then given up.
the small thigns add up. I do not factor in the effort I need to take to be ready to get something done, some I frequently have to give up before I've even started. the small thigns add up even more when it comes to my moments of weakness - mornings and nights.
chronic fatigue has unmasked the problematic areas of my life that I have literally struggled with since I was a kid - just that the ability to ignore them and carry on has been taken away.

wait, 10 is a repeat of 1! I think that'as a hint I should stop here. Time to get some long term things done, and make sure the negative cycle ends today!

what am I doing wrong?

2026-02-08T14:14:00.004+00:00

Sitting on my couch at 1pm on Sunday afternoon, still groggy and not feeling fully awke, my "morning" (made half an hour ago) coffee half-drunk and cold, but sipping it anyway as it's too much trouble to reheat it... and the inevitable thought hits: how did I get here? Not in the metaphysical sense, but in the more short term sense. What did I do wrong yesterday? And this morning? Does the problem go further back?

I got into bed at like 1am. But I was unable to fall asleep. after 20 minutes (the amount of time I was told I should allow myself to go to sleep - and if that doesn't work, I need to get out of bed and do something that calms my mind down to prepare itself for sleep - lying in bed for extended periods is counterproductive). during those 20 minutes I had put on my favourite playlist (DJ Tiesto) on the ipod bedside dock.

What did I do wrong? Get into bed too late, without enough "calming my mind" first. Also played something that I like but wasn't calming enough.
I got out of bed and decided to do a bit of tidying up. I moved some of the stuff that needs to go into the atticc up to the landing, moved other stuff that had to be dusted and put away from the 2nd floor landing to the 1st floor "office room". Stuck my watch on charge as it was less than half-charged. Entered the bathroom and was about to put away the electric razor head which I had washed on Friday night after shaving my head... when I noticed it wasn't as clean as I thought it was. I spent some time (no watch so no idea!) just washing it again, btu more carefully, with warm soapy water, which cleaned up about half the stuff stuck between the blades, but obviously that wasn't great. One thing led to another and after a year (or maybe two - I don't remember) I finally realized the right way to clean the razor head (and why it wasn't working as well as it should have) was to pop out this plastic retaining structure, so that the individual blades pop out. The blades were absolutely caked up with hair! And this was a really quick and easy way to clean the blades. So this was waht I was missing all these years! RTFM should have done it but the manual (as always) had been packed away as soon as I unboxed the razor without even a glance!

What did I do wrong? Getting sidetracked into doing something simulating instead of calming, not keeping my watch on meant I couldn't timebox it.
After these razor shenanigans, I started feeling hungry! And it wasn't a mild hunger but the cloying hunger that I knew wouldn't let me sleep. So I headed downstairs, looked for something quick and not too bad to eat at that hour. I thought half an avocado should do it... but it didn't. A bit of iberican jamon followed - but that didn't help either. I decided to give it a few minutes to see if that helped, so while I was waiting, I unscrewed the jamon from its stand and tried to move it to a position that seemed more similar to what was on the box... but it didn't work. By the time it was mounted back firmly it was back in its original position, but with a bit of mess created in the process. So I had to clean up the jamon crumbs cos it probably wasn't a good idea to leave them on the chopping board overnight. I wasn't feeling any sleepier and still hungry, so I downed a single serving bag of crisps. At that point I decided I had to go to bed no matter what, so I took my watch (now almost fully charged), turned off the music (which had just been left playing all this while) and went to bed. Don't remember the time but probably soemwhere between 2:30 and 3am.

What did I do wrong? Doing things standing up, physically intense (mounting the jamon on its stand took quite a bit of effort). Eating junk. Taking way too long away from bed at bedtime.
I went out for dinner with a couple of friends yesterday. The dinner was extremely hearty (I think I overate! but it was so good I couldn't help myself - I did leave a bit on the plate though, very uncharacteristic of myself but at that point I knew I was going to get myself into trouble! I got back home by 9pm, extremely tired, but I felt like I shouldn't go to bed so soon after eating. I turned on some youtube, and watched some absolutely pointless videos (the war on ukraine, why replacing generic windows drivers for SSDs with manufacturer-supplied ones won't help performance when the SSDs are part of a software RAID array, why Irish wool is barely turning a profit for all the businesses involved). During the first couple of videos I would pause them when I was getting out of earshot and resume them once I was back. Basically I refilled the bird feeders, took the recycling out, tied the recycling bin to its usual spot, took out the food waste, stuff that was mostly outdoors and involved heading in and out.

What did I do wrong? Increase my mental load by mixing outdoor activity with youtube on the TV, when I should have just stuck it on my headphones or listened to music instead.
That done, I settled on the couch with more pointless videos playing. I was absolutely exhausted at that point and quicly moved from sitting to lying on the couch, and I was zoning out of the videos. At one point I definitely dozed off because when I woke up the video had finished. I ignored the sign though and re-watched the video, now fully awake. Once the video was done I turned everything off and went upstairs for a shower. Before heading up I put away my shoes which I had left outside the shoe cabinet to air out. I noticed a pair of shoes I had stopped using after my feet expanded was still in the shoe cabinet, and decided to wash it during my shower so it could be put away later. Washed shoes first, then showered, but both with the window closed cos it was too cold outside. Once done I left the bathroom window wide open to let the moisture out and told myself I'll get back in 20 minutes to shut it before going to bed. I headed downstairs to find something to do for 20 minutes. I found my tabled charged and decided to play some games on it.

What did I do wrong? Ignore the obvious sign that I was exhausted and ready for bed, do more than the absolute minimum required before going to bed. Playing games on the tablet is the opposite of relaxing/winding down before bed.
I got out of bed at 9:15am yesterday. That's after setting an alarm for 8:45 (and another for 9, cos I was sure the first one wouldn't get me out of bed). That's the earliest I've got out of bed in over a month (if you ignore non-negotiables like catching flights etc). Earlier, I had figured that my energy levels are a lot better if I get out of bed when I first open my eyes - ignoring the urge for "a few minutes more" or "it's too early" - but back when I arrived at that conclusion and started practicing it, my eyes would open at between 7am and 7:30am. These days, without an alarm, my eyes first open at 11 on some days! Thankfully though I didn't feel the slight dizziness/rush of blood to the face (a hot flash!) I ususally get when I try to get out of bed, so I guess my body was OK with the reduced sleep/early wake up. The problem was I had only slept at 3am the previous night - I had friends over till midnight (I invited them over for dinner and we lost track of time) and after they left I had a shower and shave, and then tried to clean the razor. And finally, I took the tablet to bed and played games before falling alseep - only stopping when the tablet ran low on charge.

What did I do wrong? Do more than the absolute minimum required before going to bed, knowing I had an early start the next morning. Play games when I was already ready to sleep. Play absolutely way more games than I should have!

In short, my biggest problems seem to be: sleeping late, not winding down before bedtime, doing more than I should when I am tired, ignoring the knock-on effects of having less sleep one night, on the next day and especially the next night! The other thing I have noticed is playing games is how I blow off excess mental energy, but I shouldn't be doing it when I'm already low on physical energy. I don't recognize in the moment when I'm not doing what I should be. I don't timebox activities that I am doing for a specific purpose.

On the other hand I think some things are being done right - I am not feeling isolated or down, I am doing an appropriate amount of physical activity. I am not ignoring my basics/baseline activity (it had actually gotten to a point where I had stopped showering before bed daily because I wasn't feeling "up to it"!). I am getting things done.

11 years of krist0ph3r.com

2026-02-07T01:19:00.004+00:00

well, I actually missed the date. it was 3rd Feb. The email from goDaddy said I purchased it for 5 years, at what now sounds like a steal - INR 2635, so absolute peanuts. In fact I remember being presented the option of purchasing 10 years at the same rate, but going for 5 because I had no idea how useful it'd be - at that time I was still hoping to get my hands on kristopher.com, as the dude who owns it had a single notepad-written unformatted html page of some random text and a photo of a deer.

anyway, kristopher.com has now been revamped (so the odds of him selling/giving it up to me are slim to none), I renewed krist0ph3r.com at full price in 2020 (USD 114.84!) and I have embraced the domain as my identity (basically about a dozen initially burner emails are now in permanent use!) and I'm not going to discard 11 years of SEO just like that... so it's going to be krist0ph3r.com for as long as I'm of sound mental and economic status.

what's funny though is how little has changed since maybe the first month after I set it up - it's basically run like clockwork. the only things that changed were the subdomains (well, only one, added in 2016, and has stopped working now - I don't see the need to fix it 😁) and a bit of DNS shenanigans when I migrated from goDaddy to NameCheap in 2020.

Interestingly, this time of year marks the anniversary of many signups of things I still have active accounts for: I signed up for Facebook, twitter and my blog in Jan - Feb 2007! 19 years... is a very long time! Strangely enough, the person who convinced me to join facebook just showed up in my friend suggestions - obviously because she's now unfriended me. LOL. But I'm happy these sites have kept going for as long as they have. At least I know my blog can be kept alive for as long as the internet exists... Facebook and twitter, probably less so. So for anyone who wants to keep in touch, you can email me at any address ending with @krist0ph3r.com and I will get it - of course no guarantee that I'll read it, but you've got a path to get in touch.

Anyway, I've rambled enough. Happy birthday to the domain! Regular programming shall commence.

2025

2026-01-24T11:30:00.001+00:00

2025 ended and 2026 started over 3 weeks ago. It's been quite the year - and I think I need to write up some of it "for the record" lest I lose track of it. In fact, I've been actively putting this off as it's been a year I still have mixed feelings about. But since I've already just posted my first blog for 2026, now is probably the best time to give it a go.

2025 started with me in A&E - we went for a movie on 31st december, I had intense lower abdominal pain that was gettng worse, and we had to leave the cinema and take a taxi to hospital. bringing in the year in hospital felt surreal. almost a throwback to 2007, when I "celebrated" my birthday being admitted to hospital right after lunch with family and cutting (and eating) the cake. the only difference this time is, unlike 2007, when I remember telling mom she didn't need to stay with me in hospital, and was left there alone by my choice, feeling absolutely down and in tears, I had Shruti by my side this time. I started the year grateful for the people around who supported me when I really needed it. oh and the first thing that happened to me after midnight was a rectal probe - Shruti and I laughed that it was the absolutely weirdest start to a year anyone could have had!

even though kidney stones are not dangerous, painkillers weren't doing the trick, and the year continued with two more trips to A&E, the third ending with me being admitted and the stones "taken care of" - a week into 2025 and I had another achievement to be ticked off, my first ever hospital admission in the UK and the 3rd hospitalization of my life.

a few days later, there was another shock, when Shruti's mom, who had been visiting, had a cardiac arrest that she never recovered from. it's another moment that I can never forget - having to do CPR for the first time on a person, after the half dozen or so times I've practiced on a training dummy. taking a break while the ambulance crew used the AED on her - unsuccessfully - then the adrenaline injection, still unsuccessful, then another go at the AED, and me doing CPR in between all of this. The relief when her heart restarted. the surreal experience of being in the same hospital, the same A&E, that I just got out of less than a week ago.

what followed was three weeks of ICU, having to come to terms with the possibility of her never regaining consciousness, and finally being told by the doctors it's time to pull the plug. 6 days of watching Shruti grieve by her mother who was still alive, but inching to a guaranteed death. and when the time came, organizing the wake (sort of) and the cremation. after family left, it was time to help Shruti get on with her life, while simultaneously trying to get on with mine. back to work, back to trying to deal with my chronic fatigue without the help of Shruti's family and our friends who pulled together to support us when things were really rough.

a few weeks later we travelled to India. that was another emotional whirlwind for Shruti, reopening fresh emotional wounds every time someone would ask about her mother's death, every time she had to submit a copy of the death certificate to get some more paperwork done. that month was a blur - I still don't remember much about that trip other than it involving loads of paperwork and form filling and Shruti crying every night. I convinced my mom that now was the best time to travel to Belfast, and we were able to organize things so that we could travel together.

april to september 2025 went by in a blink of an eye - it's the longest time I've spent with mom since I moved out in December 2016. It felt great to reconnect with her, but my fatigue got significantly worse during those 5 months and while she didn't say too much I'm sure it hurt her to see me struggle so badly with my health. Shruti turned 40, I turned 42, mom turned 76. I earned my day skipper at long last (literally 4 years of workong towards it!). Those 5 months were a blur of walks (which tapered off a couple of months in as my fatigue got worse), fatigue-induced-haze, and trying to work. I did start getting better towards the end of mom's visit though, and was on the upswing by the time she left in early september.

my own trip to India (second of the year!) was in early october, and by thast point I had steadily got better in terms of fatigue. it was literally the day before my flight that I had my last therapy session, and the flight to mumbai felt weird, as it was the first time in over a year that I had nobody to be accountable to for my wellness, than myself. something any adult should normally feel, but honestly given the emotional mental and physical turmoil I had been through so far in the recent past, I felt like I was a child who had just learned to walk all over again.

I think my therapist was right in deciding I was ready to face the world and my fatigue without professional assistance. I was able to function. I was able to live within my limitations and energy levels. definitely not as well as before, but I wasn't spending days in bed like I did only a few months earlier. three weeks in, I felt ready for what (to me) felt like the ultimate test of my recovery - an ambitious motorbike trip across the country to harshad's farm near kodaikanal. it was not without hiccups, but by the end of those two weeks, I had returned home with something I was really missing all this while: evidence to back my hope. evidence that things are concretely getting better, I can still do things I enjoy.

I returned to Belfast in early november, and while it wasn't smooth sailing throughout, I was able to get back into the grind of work, life and day to day stuff, and I definitely felt like things were sustainable.

come end december, we were off to Mumbai again - after a tiring day and a half of travel, we landed on Christmas eve, for the first Christmas in Mumbai since 2018 (and back then, we couldn't really enjoy it as we flew back on the 26th!). This was the first time in years that I was on leave in Mumbai without any plans, and while in hindsight it felt like I didn't do much, I think the relaxation and family time, meeting friends, a good amount of digital detox, really helped me end the year on a much better note than it started.

2025 ended with a bbq at Myron's, and 2026 started with Tony's Ros - defintiely an improvement over the previous year!

that's it for 2025. the year that was so crazy that even when it ended, I didn't want to think about how it went, what I've learned, or what I want 2026 to bring me. I'm just happy and grateful to have survived it, come through stronger, felt feelings that must be felt, and kept going through it all (even if just barely!)

footwear shenanigans

2026-01-23T22:39:00.008+00:00

I was in a local train in Mumbai - running northbound on the western line. It was late afternoon. I was at a window seat, in the direction facing the breeze, just ahead of the door - an absolute prime position. The train was fairly crowded - all the seats were taken and there were even a fair number of people standing, but it wasn't packed like rush hour. I was reading a book, and had my lightweight fabric bag on my lap.

I looked up from my book and out of the window, trying to identify where I was.

I was pretty sure I was approaching Malad.

I put my book into my bag and (yes, I can't really explain this!) squeezed through the window! I hung on to the outside of the running train by holding myself up, like an extreme pull-up, from the bars of the window.

That's when panic struck: what if I got it wrong? What if I was not actually seconds away from Malad (or indeed, any?) station? I didn't dare look ahead. I just kept my grip and tried not to overthink the situation.

Thankfully, I was not wrong. The train entered Malad station seconds later. I waited for it to slow down enough before letting go and alighting on the platform without incident.

That's when I realized, I had kicked off my shoes when I was sitting and reading. I was barefoot on the platform!

My first reaction was to try and find my seat and wear my shoes. Easier said than done though. There was a pretty big crowd of people boarding and alighting the train. Also, I couldn't quite locate the door next to which my seat was. There was some confusion as I thoguht my seat was betwen the ladies' coach and the first class section, but when I located the two sections they turned out to be adjacent! Given the crowd and difficulty locating my seat, I decided to abandon that idea and buy a peair of shoes at Malad. I was afraid of getting my feet injured in the crowd, which was beginning to resemble rush hour from what I could see.

I walked out of the platform and on to the road, keepign an eye out for anything that might injure my feet. To my disappointment, there were no shoe shops nearby. I walked a couple of streets and finally found a small shoe shop - actually just a wooden shed, resembling a cobbler's shed. A young girl manned the shop - maybe in her late teens. To my surprise, she spoke perfect English! I pointed to a pair of shoes (a white canvas pair) and asked to try it out. It was quite a snug fit, but I was able to adjust the laces to get them to fit comfortably. I asked her the price, and she said they were Rs 3000. I was quite surprised, as I had picked that pair expecting it to be cheap. I told her I had lost my shoes getting out of the train and just needed a pair to wear to get home. She told me I had picked a high quality pair that had quite an advanced design and pointed out some of its subtle features that set it apart. I told her I wasn't interested in any of that, and actually had a canvas pair that costed barely Rs 1000, and suited me just fine. In fact I liked that design so much that I had two identical pairs, as did my wife and my father in law! She said that unfortunately this was the cheapest canvas pair she had and she recommended I buy it.

That's when I noticed that the bit under the laces, leading to the tongue of the left shoe, seemed to be darned. I asked her if the pair was new, which confused and then surprised her when I told her it looked like it had been darned. In fact, on closer inspection, it hadn't been mended properly, and a bit of the fabric was still ripped.

She told me this was a really embarassing mistake and she had no idea how such a pair was in her shop as she only stocked brand new shoes sourced directly from the manufacturer. She told me I could have the pair for free as she was going to complain to the manufacturer and get a refund. I thanked her and left the shop, thikning I had done well for myself, having got a pair that looked cosmetically new, and which could probably be mended cheaply!

But that's when I remembered I still didn't have the insoles that I was supposed to wear when walking. Those were way more expensive than my shoes and would be a pain to replace! The more I thought about it the more hopeless it seemed - the insoles had my name and phone number on the underside, but the phone number was missing the international code for the UK, so any attempt to contact me would be futile. Even worse, I realized that someone who found my shoes in the train would be unlikely to take out the insoles and check the underside so the odds of anyone even finding my number are probably close to nil. I was so disappointed I just stopped walking, closed my eyes and tried to visualize my shoes, cursing that moment I decided to leave them behind. Why did I even go through that train window? It didn't make sense. But then I remembered, those were my blue slip-on shoes I had been wearing. The ones that didn't have detachable in-soles. My (expensive) custom in-soles were in my black pair! Which means they were still at home!

A sense of relief came over me. All was not lost. In fact I had just got myself a nice pair of shoes for free! What a turn around!

And that's when I opened my eyes, in the dream and in real life - I woke up.

ps: my first thought when I woke up was this dream was based on very recent events - it's only been 5 days since I last rode a train in Mumbai, and the blue slip-on pair I supposedly left behind in the train was given to me by my father in law only three weeks ago! my second thought was... WHY ON EARTH WOULD I CONSIDER SQUEEZING OUT OF THE WINDOW OF A RUNNING TRAIN?

pps: I thoguht I'd add a photo of the blue slip-ons for the post but it turns out they're still drying in the bathroom as I washed them last night before going to bed! wonder if that's why they showed up in my dream!

a journey

2025-12-29T08:48:00.001+00:00

lying, face to the lamp, but eyes closed. ignorant of the mosquitoes. take a deep breath. feel the energy, the fire, getting into you. it fills you, making you bigger and brighter, as the music fades in insignificance to the rush in you. you feel the rush, the brightness, spread. rapidly, then slower, as it reaches your extremities. it leaves a glow, a calm brightness, even as it begins to cool. imperciptibly, then noticeably, as the rush turns to a measured pace. but it doesn't stop. because as the light fades, you prepare the next one.

ps: this is one of those weird things that I typed a long time ago (precisely 12 years ago - December 2013) but didn't post at the time. I was reminded of it in a conversation last night... and it's something I remembered typing so vividly that I was able to pull up the draft mid-conversation in seconds! I still can't comprehend why I kept it in my drafts for 12 years despite it being fairly visible in my consciousness!

pps: the circumstances of this post are intentionally kept vague, but let's just say it was typed towards the end of a rather eventful evening in Hampi, and Clive (who experienced those events with me) was surprised I even got far enough to type it coherently 😂

my first favourite dish: sorpatel!

2025-12-22T20:33:00.008+00:00

I'm not one to usually follow a recipe, let alone remember it, so this post is quite likely a one-off.

First, some back-story: growing up, sorpatel was my numero uno favourite dish. I wasn't given much agency as a kid in terms of food - I ate what was presented to me, although my parents were quite aware of my preferences. Once I finished school I did get to eat out a bit, but it was mostly snacks. I do remember the first time I was ever asked what I'd like to eat though. I was about 19, and my parents were going to be away on a pilgrimage for 10 days. It was going to be the first time by brother and I were going to be left alone at home for more than a few hours. They asked us what we'd like them to cook and refrigerate for the time they were away (we had never cooked independently, other than frying eggs for breakfast - I don't think I had even ever made instant noodles!). I don't remember what Kevin said, but I do remember saying that I want 10 days worth of sorpatel. And the end result was us eating sorpatel for 9 days (we loved it so much it didn't last 10 days, and I remember we cooked a very terrible chicken curry for day 10!).

So yes - sorpatel, my favourite by a long margin, made even more desirable by the fact that it was only made a couple of times every year - Christmas or Easter, birthdays if we were lucky.

And then, when I was in Bangalore last month, Neena gave me sorpatel for dinner. Two days in a row. It was so good that on day 1 I told mom she had ordered it from someplace, not even stopping to consider that such good sorpatel could be made at home (sorry, Neena!). When she told me she had made it herself, and it was our grand-aunt's recipe, I was mind-blown. It was the comfort food of my childhood, only better! I had to have the recipe!

Couple of weeks later, back in Belfast, Neena sent me the recipe. It wasn't in the usual format, more of a flow-of-concsiousness style, which works great for me except when I'm out shopping for ingredients (and my brain-fog does make things worse when I need to approach unstructured things too)

So, one Friday I decided that was the weekend for Sorpatel. Friday night was spent first transcribing the recipe, then restructuring it so I have ingredients first and then the process.

I woke up at noon-ish on Saturday (as has been the case for a few weeks now - long sotry that probably needs its own blog post) with only one objective: I will not go to bed without having made sorpatel.

And so, here is Aunty Flo (yes, that's what we called her!)'s sorpatel recipe:

1.5kg pork (can include liver)

6-8 onions

15 garlic flakes

1.5" ginger

5 big green chillies, halved and slit

3-4 bay leaves

1 teaspoon sugar (optional)

tamarind juice (optional)

pork blood (optional)

for spice paste:

20-24 kashmiri chillies

2 rounded teaspoons jeera

10 whole peppercorns

1/2 teaspoon mustard

2/3 teaspoon haldi

15 garlic flakes

2" ginger

9 cloves

3" cinnamon

5 elaichi

vinegar to make paste

salt to taste

2 teaspoons oil

grind spices with vinegar to make a paste

if using liver, boil with salt and discard water

parboil remaining meat with salt. retain water.

chop meat small.

fry small quantities of meat lightly in oil till lightly browned and fat renders. fry liver last. retain rendered fat.

fry onions lightly till soft in rendered fat

add garlic, ginger, chillies

when onions begin to brown add the spice paste

add meat water to make a thick masala gravy

add sugar if desired

add bay leaves

simmer for 10-15 minutes for spices to cook

add tamarind juice if not sour enough

add meat and cook till tender ensuring gravy reduces till it's thick

optionally add pork blood for the last 5 minutes of cooking

Of course, I didn't fully follow the recipe. Here's my modifications:

1kg pork loin and also 600gm of sweet and spicy pork belly that happened to be in the freezer
double the garlic flakes
balsamic vinegar instead of normal vinegar
some random type of chillies that were in the supermarket - not green, but fleshy and red. less spicy than the green chillies the recipe called for
more than 2 teaspoons sugar (basically just finished the last bit of sugar in the house!)
I did use tamarnid juice but no portk blood
I forgot the bay leaves (ironically, I have way too many bay leaves in my spice stash! I really need to use them more!)
4 tablespoons homemade mustard paste instead of whole mustard - it's been lying in the fridge for 3 months so I was hoping the flavoud had mellowed a bit
did not have whole kashmiri chillies but had a mix ofcrushed kashmiri and guntur chillies (that we basically use for our everyday cooking). I have no idea how much I put. basically just topped up the mixer bowl, adding more as it ground until it was a bowl full of paste.
did not boil the pork. chopped it raw. did two rounds of lightly frying the pork before adding to the main pot before I decided to not bother and tossed the last half kg of chopped pork straight in.
since the pork wasn't boiled I rinsed the mixer bowl and used that water instead.
simmered for about an hour after it was gently boiling to compensate for not boiling or frying the pork.

End result: the pot was off the stove at midnight. It smelled so good I decided I had to make rice to go with it. So I boiled some long-grain white rice. Also, the end result looked too monotonous for a photo so I chopped some chives and sprinkled on top (just for the photo - the sorpatel completely overpowered it!).

A meal made in heaven. Think I ate sorpatel for 10 days, with some breaks in between.

Yep, still my favourite dish.

BTW, for all the chilli I put in (which I have a feeling was way more than the recipe called for) it still wasn't overpoweringly "hot" spicy - but it was off the charts in terms of "aromatic" spicy. it ws so spicy that when I ran the pot (my cast-iron dutch oven) under hot water, I started coughing! I think the copious amounts of sugar (as well as the slight sweetness of balsamic vinegar) offset the spice.

I have a feeling that just like how 2025 was the year I got comfortable with biryani, 2026 might be the same for sorpatel!

bring back search engines!

2025-12-21T20:51:00.006+00:00

Today, while poking fun at a friend (hinting that he his assets are hard to find because he is rich and well connected). I mentioned Parkinson's Law, a book I must have read about 30 years ago - I read a copy that belonged to my dad, which has probably been disposed of by now and definitely not read since I finished school.

I tried various searches before giving up and assuming I remembered wrong. I even managed to find hte lsit of chapters of Parkinson's law, but nothing jumped at me (I did skim it pretty quickly though!).

The friend had his curiousity piqued though and requested a link to the ebook... which I found, trangely enough, as a PDF that looked like it was typed out in Microsoft Word. Not sure if it's legal to share now (the book was written in the '50s!) But anywy, I'll let you be the judge of it - here's the copy of Parkinson's Law I skimmed.

And then, as I was about to close the tab a few hours later (after telling the friend that's not the book but it's a good enough read anyway!) I started reading the book backwards. It was chapter 11! "Palm thatch to Packard or a formula for success"

My search tab was still open, so I decided to follow up a bit.

Call me a skeptic (which I most certainly am - probably irrationally so!) but the search engine's AI definitely worked much worse than I think same the search engine would have, a decade ago.

Anyway, to summarize my "conversation" with the search engine:

Me: "flunkey puzzle book rich chinese"

Search engine (I'm paraphrasing): "The search results do not mention a "flunkey puzzle book" or any direct connection between the term "flunkey" and a puzzle book related to a rich Chinese character or story. It's possible there may be a misunderstanding or misremembering of the title." Followed it up with a few unrelated books.
Me: "it's a chapter of a humourous book"

Search engine (direct quote this time): "The term "flunkey puzzle book" does not appear in the search results, and no humorous book chapter by that name is identified. However, The Chinese Puzzle by Ernest Bramah features humorous and satirical stories centered on Kai Lung, a fictional Chinese storyteller, blending wit and parody of Chinese philosophy and culture.
One chapter, "The Story of the Man Who Was Thrifty," exemplifies the book’s whimsical tone, where a man’s extreme frugality leads to absurd consequences, told in an exaggerated, tongue-in-cheek style."
Me: "the chapter refers to the tendency of rich people to stay under the radar until they get so tich they are beyond danger"

Search engine (direct quote again): "There is no evidence in the search results of a "flunkey puzzle book" chapter describing rich individuals staying under the radar until they are financially secure. The term appears to be a misremembering or confusion with titles like The Chinese Puzzle by Ernest Bramah, which features humorous tales of Kai Lung, or other books with "Chinese Puzzle" in the title that focus on culture, mystery, or religion rather than wealth evasion.
None of the chapters in these works address the behavior of wealthy people avoiding attention for safety or strategic reasons."
Me: "Why do wealthy individuals avoid public attention?"

Search engine (direct quote, as before): "The search results do not directly explain why wealthy individuals avoid public attention, nor do they confirm the existence of a "flunkey puzzle book" chapter on this topic. However, based on general understanding reflected in cultural and literary themes (such as in The Chinese Maze Murders and The Chinese Puzzle), wealthy or powerful figures may stay under the radar to avoid scrutiny, protect assets, prevent extortion, or maintain strategic advantage—especially in environments with political instability or social tension."
Me: "is there a chapter of a humorous book refering to this phenomenon"

Search engine (direct quote): "Yes, the novel Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner features a satirical chapter-like narrative about an "extraordinarily, absurdly, kidnappably rich" Jewish family on Long Island who live with constant anxiety despite their wealth. The story humorously explores how the patriarch, Zelig Fletcher, amasses a fortune as a protective "amulet" against historical trauma, believing money can shield his family from disaster. His children grow up under this shadow—ostentatiously wealthy yet emotionally stunted—highlighting the absurdity and psychological cost of wealth used as a defense mechanism.
The book satirizes how the rich, despite appearing powerful, often live in fear and go to extreme lengths to stay safe, not necessarily under the radar, but in a state of hyper-vigilance shaped by inherited trauma."
Me: "I have found it. It's chapter 11 of the book Parkinson's law, titled "Palm thatch to packard or a formula for success""

Search engine (first para of the response): "Yes, Chapter 11 of Parkinson's Law by C. Northcote Parkinson—titled "Palm Thatch to Packard, or A Formula for Success"—does address the phenomenon you described. In this chapter, Parkinson humorously observes that Chinese businessmen historically practiced evasion and modesty until their wealth became so substantial that ostentation became safer and more advantageous."
Me: "Why was this chapter so hard to find using my previous queries?"

Search engine (direct quote): "Your earlier queries were difficult to match because they used inexact or misremembered terms like "flunkey puzzle book" instead of the actual chapter title, "Palm Thatch to Packard", and did not mention Parkinson's Law or author C. Northcote Parkinson. Search engines rely on precise keywords—without them, results drift toward unrelated books with similar phrases (e.g., "Chinese Puzzle")."
Me: "the phrase flunkey puzzle is not very common and is used in this chapter"

Search engine (direct quote): "The term "flunkey puzzle" appears in Chapter 11 of Parkinson's Law by C. Northcote Parkinson, titled "Palm Thatch to Packard, or A Formula for Success." It is a rare and distinctive phrase used humorously to describe how wealthy individuals—particularly in historical Chinese society—deliberately concealed their success ("flunkey" implying servility or low status) until their wealth made them secure from threat or envy.
This obscurity explains why earlier searches failed: "flunkey puzzle" is an unusual, context-specific term not widely indexed outside direct references to this chapter."
Me: "are there other cited works of literature that talks about something called a flunkey puzzle?"

Search engine (direct quote): "No, there are no other cited works of literature that mention the term "flunkey puzzle" besides Chapter 11 of Parkinson's Law by C. Northcote Parkinson.
The term is highly unusual and appears to be unique to this chapter, where it describes the strategic modesty of wealthy individuals—particularly in historical Chinese society—who conceal their status ("palm thatch") until they accumulate enough wealth to safely display it ("Packard").
Search results confirm that "flunkey puzzle" does not appear in other literary, academic, or cultural contexts. References to "flunkey" alone relate to characters (e.g., Flunkey the baboon in The Jungle Book) or synonyms for a servant, while "puzzle" appears in unrelated titles like crossword clues or educational exercises."

So, there you have it. I used a unique phrase in an indexed work of literature, with some (perhaps initially vague but increasingly refined and accurate) terms and context and it couldn't be found. A few questions spring to mind:

Have people been so bad at using traditional search engines prior to the introduction of AI/LLM based search engines that what seems like a step backward to me is a step forward to them?
Has the AI hype bubble driven this direction despite its ineffectiveness?
Is my search style so tuned to text search engines that LLMs can't work with it?
Is this all simply my confirmation bias?

Either way, I'm increasingly annoyed at not being able to find what I'm looking for.

ps: it's only a couple of days ago that I was looking for a BT song that I happened to be listening to, and the search engine couldn't find it despite me typing the lyrics of THE WHOLE FIRST VERSE into it! I should have asked why it cou;dn't find the song, but hey. I did take a screenshot though! Hopefully something to laugh at 10 years from now, assuming things get better by then 😁

for my eyes only

2025-12-16T23:49:00.016+00:00

two occasions I missed having my dashcam on today:

the first one:

google maps taking me on a 55 minute drive through the countryside on completely unknown village roads (even crossing major roads and highways but not offering them as alternative routes) to rat-run a massive traffic jam on the highway at rush hour... I was doing 40 on many of those roads cos I was too scared to go any faster! I was cursing my luck but didn't want to stop and switch to Waze in case I lost network, because then I'd be well and truly lost... also it would have been very risky to park on those narrow roads on the chance that another city-slicker was blinkly following google maps straight into the back of my car! also the dashcam would have caught me audibly cursing... I was so glad I was alone in the car. Don't think Shruti has ever seen me scared when driving!

ps: found the route in google maps' location history. it looks like I could have easily been routed along highways instead!

the second (and more noteworthy!) one:

a fox ran across my path on the M3 exit at J1! thankfully, safely!

law of conservation of energy and computing

2025-12-10T00:26:00.003+00:00

A question I've been mulling over for weeks, and wondering who to ask:

Computers use electrical energy and produce heat. Is the heat produced by computers less than the electrical energy consumed (I would assume so, but would like a definite answer!) and if so, what is that residual energy "stored in" computing? What happens to the energy when say the result of the computing is erased? A lot of the computing is just lost to the environment in general as well, so what happens there?

Trying to wrap my head around the law of conservation of energy in this special case.

Speedo Error

2025-12-07T21:43:00.002+00:00

I recently calibrated my motorbike against GPS because my speedometer had stopped functioning on a 1200km ride, so I needed to have an idea of the speed from the tachometer. After 12 years and 150000+km of believing 5000 rpm in 5th gear was 80 km/h (the indicated speed on the speedo, when it was functioning), I was confronted by the fact that it was actually only 71 km/h! My first reaction was "it feels like my entire life has been a lie" 😂

ps: this was another forgotten draft... from March 2024! Strangely enough, Carly's tachometer (in fact, the entire meter console) failed a few months later. as of now it has a working backlight but only indicates high-beam, neutral and turn signals. I now adjust my speed based on the sound of the engine, and my biggest surprise was looking at my GPS speed and realizing I ride faster by sound... about 10 km/h faster than I think I am!

Locked!

2025-12-05T16:08:00.000+00:00

My phone regularly changes the wallpaper even when locked. Today, it changed the clock from digital to analog, applied a "warm" filter to the wallpaper, added some random text and emoji to my "emergency contact" message on the home screen, and replaced the left shortcut from phone to some random app. When I took my phone out of my pocket I almost couldn't recognise it!

On the plus side, I finally figured how to change the emergency contact message (I realized two months ago one of the digits of my emergency contact number was wrong - and it had been wrong for at least two phones/6 years now!)... so it evens out.

ps: posted from a forgotten draft from 11th April 2024

pps: I now protect myself from in-pocket shenanigans by always keeping my phone screen side up!

old jokes get funnier

2025-11-30T21:37:00.001+00:00

In school, I had a teacher who had some sort of speech impediment where she would pronounce desk as decks... and it sounded like suspiciously like dicks in her thick Marathi accent 😂

her favourite thing to say when she'd see us boys fidgeting would be "put your hands on your desk - it'll help you concentrate". when we were like 10 it seemed innocent enough and we'd comply dutifully, but as we grew up it got funnier and funnier until at like maybe 13 it stopped working altogether and would just get the classroom in splits laughing 😂

ps: i'm not sure why, but this post has been in my drafts for at least 5 months... and i finished school 26 years and 5 months ago!

the great road trip

2025-11-08T14:10:19.892+00:00

2025 has been a rough year. I've had plenty of time off work, but it was never by choice - always because I couldn't work. to an external observer, both probably look the same... but as the battle is one that is largely internal to me, what's in my head probably matters more than what I appear to be doing.

two weeks off work. it was planned so that it should be more than enough. it should make me feel completely unpressurized in any sense. and when I left home, that's exactly how I felt. leaving at 9:30am (well-rested but actually sleepless from excitement!) meant I'd face the full blast of the October sun... and I did. by sunset I had barely covered a third of the way to goa. but my strategy paid off - taking enough breaks kept my energy levels going, and even with some really bad roads I was able to ride through the night and reach goa at 8:30am. 23 hours! that kinda set the pace for the rest of the trip. I rested that day and the next, before setting off for my next destination, bangalore. once again without adequate sleep, just 3 hours, and a very arbitrary route: I ignored Google maps and retraced the route I took 12 years ago, in October 2013. I reached bangalore at a little before midnight, with my bike giving me a couple of hints that all was not well.

the next day, I spent the morning trying to locate a good mechanic to solve what didn't seem like a trivial problem, but when I set off, carly simply died on me and refused to start. thankfully not even 100 feet from a mechanic who worked on the bike for an hour but took half a day to answer my call, leading to me only collecting it at sunset.

he reassured me the problem had been fixed, but I had massive doubts as what he described as the problem definitely didn't match the symptoms I saw the previous day, but did match with it not running at all.

I left at midnight, practically to the minute.

In hindsight, it seems foolhardy, given my misgivings, but this is probably just one of the many questionable decisions I took during those two weeks.

thankfully, it played out. the bike ran fine, only giving occasional starting trouble... until I had a surprise when the chain skipped the sprocket halfway through kodaikanal ghat! however it was so loose I was able to pop it on by hand, and I was in kodaikanal by noon. located another mechanic, and while I was explaining the problem I noticed the chain had basically lost a link! regarding the electrical gremlins, this one said there's no problem, I simply need to use the electrics sparingly. obviously not the case, but I decided to take my chances and ride on. I decided to swap out carly's front tyre though, despite the mechanic insisting it was good to use... and from kodai, carly played ball, until literally 500 metres from Harshad's farm! after a couple of half hearted attempts to get her going, I called for help and Harshad towed the bike to the parking area a short walk from his property. we left carly there overnight. it was time to forget about the journey and enjoy the destination.

and enjoy I did. Just two and a half days on his farm gave me the shot in the arm I so desperately needed. the sounds of nature, his pets, the home grown and the home cooked food, being surrounded by people who were running on a slower clock than urban India, had its desired effect. Come Monday morning, I was ready to begin my journey back home. and then carly sprung another surprise - the choke cable, essential to starting, and in case of uneven running, keeping her going, gave way. we managed to get carly started using a pair of pliers. the ride to kodaikanal was wet... nay, soaking, and by the time we reached the only dry bits were inside my tank and saddle bags. kodai was dry and warm though, and the mechanic listened to my list of gripes and did his best. I also took the opportunity to give carly fresh brake pads and swap out the other cables... again despite the mechanic saying the existing ones had plenty of life in them.

Harshad and me at the mechanic in Kodai, just before I set off to return

a relaxed lunch later, I bid farewell to Harshad and was on my way. carly ran fine until almost midnight, when, right after shruti insisted I not ride all night, carly stopped and refused to start. thankfully I was just 3km from a major town, and was able to hitch a ride to the main bus stand opposite which I got a hotel room really cheap.

the next morning was spent trying to find a competent mechanic, and once I did, carly started without a hitch. a common pattern was becoming apparent. a night's rest seems to sort things out. that's a decent strategy, but I was only 50km from bangalore and had plenty of advice regarding which mechanics could help. so that's what I did. the first mechanic outright refused, and when pressed further, pointed to another karizma (a white one, at that!) which he claimed was lying in his workshop for 6 months awaiting spares. I decided to call it a day. the next morning, I headed to another highly recommended mechanic, intending to arrive right as they opened. unfortunately, I was told the exact same thing.

I had a tough decision to make. ship carly from bangalore or ride on. it was only Wednesday morning, so I had 5 days of riding to cover 1000 km, and going by the previous whole day of riding, carly could be expected to do 350km without a hitch.

another questionable decision, but I trusted my gut. I was on the road by 2pm and this time voluntarily picked a hotel at 10pm after covering 250+km.

feeling heartened, I set off the next morning, expecting to cover half the distance to Mumbai - a reasonable (or even conservative) goal, given how carly had been riding. but it was not to be.

I took a long evening break with the intention of riding till midnight before calling it a night. but carly had other plans. she died once less than 50 metres from the restaurant parking lot, and again another 500 metres later. I saw a hotel opposite where I was on the highway and decided to not push my luck and call it a night at 8pm.

that evening was spent nervously consulting Google maps. it was Thursday night and I had 3 days to cover 450 km. a fairly achievable proposition. but there were questions. I could not ignore carly's tantrums getting more frequent. I decided to keep going the next morning and play it by ear. I skipped breakfast and just headed out, on a limb and a prayer.

within an hour, the indications were plain to see - carly was getting increasingly difficult to start and was dying more frequently, and within an hour of getting going.

on a whim, when I was passing the next city, karad, I asked a motorcyclist where I'd find trucks parked. he directed me to a spot near the petrol pump, a few hundred metres away, on the highway. I asked two travel and tours companies - they advertised bus services but I hoped they could connect me with a trucker. the first one refused, but the second one agreed. he agreed to put carly on a bus to Mumbai that evening and me on a seat on the same bus.

I heaved a sigh of relief.

the road trip was over for me. I pushed carly to her limits and found the limit of my risk appetite (though not my physical ability).

those 5 hours of waiting for the bus, sitting at the bare shop of the tour operator, gave me another chance to think. and think I did.

I concluded that this trip has been a success.

for the first time in a year and a half, my body and mind were not the limit.

I'm obviously nowhere near my previous level of abilities, but this was reassuring. I still had it. I can still do things I enjoy. and I did enjoy those two weeks. as Harshad said when I called him to inform him of my decision: "I sense a long blog post coming up"

this is the long blog post. but it's not long enough. there was so much more to these two weeks. to reduce it to the three way tug of war between body, mind and machine would be to lose the essence of this adventure.

this, though, is where words fail me. emotions and feelings wash over me and leave me bedraggled, like a shell on the shore.

all I can say is it feels great to be alive and here. it feels great to feel great. heaven knows I've missed that feeling long enough. life has been reduced to going through the motions for long enough for me to lose sight of it. but just like a shell on the shore, I am not impervious to my circumstances. this post is a reminder that no matter what the struggle, I still have it in me.

before I prepare to touch down in Ireland and be reunited with shruti and resume my "life as usual", I am going to close my eyes for a few minutes and let those feelings wash over me again. soak through my very being. let my soul absorb as much of it as I can, like a sponge.

it might sound clichéd but it rings true: four wheels move the body, two wheels move the soul!

Inertial goals

2025-11-08T13:00:08.211+00:00

Sitting upright, belt on, with the in-flight entertainment counting down the minutes to my destination, and with nothing else to occupy myself than the physical sensations being fed to my ears, I feel tuned in. The flaps extended. Once, twice. The engine goes quieter, almost silent, on my noise cancelling headphones. It feels like we’re floating. Another sound, this time a longer rumble than the flaps being extended. It must be the landing gear. To confirm my gut feeling, the sensation of floating changes to the sensation of being held back very gently by my seat. I’m somewhere near the centre of gravity of the plane, but I feel a slight change of attitude. Pitch down. The stabilised glide slope should be 3 degrees, so the correction couldn’t have been more than a fraction of a degree. We’re floating again. Then we’re slowing down. First for a couple of seconds, then for maybe 10 seconds. The wind noise is much louder than the engine noise now. The noise dies. We’re ready to land! I’m far from a window so my only indication is the actual touchdown. I didn’t feel the flare, only the touchdown. Firm braking and a right turn to the taxiway when we’re still at a decent speed. Flawless.

Flying must be like riding a motorbike, except with more controls. It feels the same… except that everything is more measured and precise. Makes me wonder, how would I do as a pilot?

And then I remind myself, I can’t keep a 40 foot yacht in a straight line unless I have a point on the horizon to aim at 😂

the diary of an excited man

2025-10-19T01:50:00.001+01:00

it's 6am. the birds are awake, although the sky is barely aglow.

I'm awake too. I shouldn't be. but I know why.

it's energy. it's adrenaline. right when I don't need it.

I don't want to think about what I'll do when I need it.

my hope is, there are enough safety margins. there is no inclination, motivation or reason to take risks.

I'm taking it easy. this is for fun.

I need to reinforce my self-belief in what I can do. heaven knows I've been reminded enough of what I can't.

I don't want to think about if I'm ready... or if carly is ready.

is everyone around ready?

maybe there is no such thing as being ready. we are where we are, and we move in the direction we want to go.

the highway awaits. some familiar territory, evolving over the years, yet somehow still the same. and the most exciting part: unfamiliar territory.

on the road and in my head.

you know what? I'm ready. off we go.

thank you

2025-10-03T09:15:00.001+01:00

after 8 months of regular sessions in the "condition management" programme and a little under year of CBT before that, today marks the first day in a very long time I am out in the world without the reminder that a healthcare professional is going to check up on me in a few weeks. while I'm going to keep doing what I have been doing for the past few weeks/months that culminated in me getting off the programme, it has to be said that my social circle is in no small way responsible for my recovery... and I'm grateful for the friends who have helped me get back on my feet. it's ironic that I'm putting this up on my blog when all of the benefits have come from meeting my friends in person... but I feel it must be said anyway. I may not always have the energy to meet my friends, but sometimes even trying is more than half the battle... and knowing I'm being thought of and my company is valued means a lot more than it might seem in dark moments when things don't feel very hopeful.

I don't know how to end this post, other than say thank you, and hope things keep moving in their current trajectory (ie upwards instead of downwards!).

take care!

n-gage'd

2025-09-20T01:05:00.000+01:00

Found a 20 year old photo in my "to sort" directory in my photo dump.

1st September 2005.

A photo of my first phone, a Nokia n-gage, ringing as I called it after transferring my own sim to a friend's phone for this experiment. I think there was a way to take screenshots on the n-gage, but it didn't work when the phone was ringing.

That phone doesn't power up any more (not sure if it's still around or trashed), but the 1gb memory card that was in it is still with me, with all the data that was on the phone when it was last used! Among other things, it has a backup of the internal memory of the phone, a paltry 4mb... of which some 800kb was taken up by every single SMS I received over 4 years - 2004 - 2008. I don't know of any software which can read it, unless I fire up a Symbian emulator and install the app to restore the backup (I think I still have the installer in a backup somewhere!)... that will make for some interesting reading!

A typo finds "news" from the future!

2025-09-07T18:42:00.001+01:00

Today is 7th September 2025 (yes, I double checked!). It's 18:29pm (British Summer Time) as of writing this. And so, I was wondering how this "happened":

Funnily enough, accepting the search suggestion (ie correcting the typo in my search query) fixes the news as firmly in the past - despite it claiming it searched using the corrected text to begin with!

ps: worth mentioning, I used "search.brave.com" - I didn't know Brave had switched to using it's own engine. I thought it was using google - not that it matters, seems AI crap is finding its way everywhere!

spider and fly

2025-08-25T21:53:00.003+01:00

while showering a couple of nights ago, I was surprised to see a rather large fly flying about in the bathroom - it probably entered through the open window, attracted by the light - that usually attracts moths, but there's always a first, and this fly was it. while it was buzzing around one of the downlights, I noticed there was a single line of spider-web-silk that started somewhere else at the bathroom and ended at the light. nothing unusal about it, but the light made the web particularly obvious - so obvious, that I could spot the peturbation in the web, as the fly flew around it. it wasn't very clear if the fly flew into the thread or not, but it was clearly having many close passes at the very least, as it seemed to be flying around the light. there were a couple of rather big jerks to the web which were clearly the fly making contact.

shortly after that, the fly seemed to come to rest on the light. my first assumption was that it was basically as close to the light as it could get to and couldn't figure what else to do. I had also finished my shower, so I turned the light off while I dried myself off, so that the fly's movement from that spot might indicate if it was free to move about. I also noticed the the fly was not moving quite as a fly might be expected to - perhaps indicating that it was struggling with the web, although maybe it was also having some sort of seizure due to being so close to such a bright light.

dried off, I switched the light back on to observe the fly. it was still moving in that weird manner - it seemed like it couldn't move one wing in the same way as it could move the other, and same for one or two legs. I also looked around for any obvious spiders, especially around the web. there weren't any.

I switched off the light again and opened the window as wide as I could to air out the bathroom, and hopefully also give the fly as good a chance to fly out as it could have. I shut the door and went on with my evening, wondering what will happen next with the fly, and reminding myself to check on it when I bring the window to its normal ajar position.

about an hour later, I stopped back to check on the fly. to cause minimum disturbance to the fly, I switched off the lights outside the bathroom, opened the door as little as I could to get a look at the fly. I also didn't turn the room light on, but instead, I used my phone's torch. the fly was still there, and it didn't seem to be moving at all (unlike earlier when it was moving erratically). as my phone's light didn't seem to disturb the fly, I entered the bathroom and switched on the light. the fly was completely immobile and didn't respond to the light at all.

I was quite surprised. did a couple of encounters with the web (and not a big web, just one thread!) trap the fly to the point where it was unable to move at all, possibly dead?

how strong is a spider web, and is there something else to it like the stickiness, or the way it catches on the body of the fly, that causes even slight contact to get it into a more tangled position where it cannot move at all? or is there something on the web that paralyzes or otherwise affects the fly?

I spent a few moments observing the fly and thinking these thoughts, before I turned the light off, left the bathroom and shut the door. I considered taking a photo, as this blog post was definitely half-formed in my head (even the title, inspured by a memory of this animated series from my childhood!), but my phone was charging, and thought I could get a better photo the next morning.

next morning, I went to the bathroom, phone ready.

there was no trace of the fly. none whatsoever. not on the light, not on the ground. no trace of the web either.

since the window was left very slightly ajar (in fact it had shut enough overnight to not allow a fly to get through) it was impossible (or maybe very very unlikely) that the fly had revived and escaped.

the only other plausible explanation was that the fly had been completely consumed by the spider overnight.