Weeknotes - 2025-W10
Cover image for 2025-W10
The image for this week are the flowers on Prasanna’s desk. I think it will take me a lot of words to express how I feel when I see her sitting at her desk, illustrating. She is the most hard working person that I’ve known in my life. She has aced everything that she’s taken up. It is just unfortunate that the thing she has to work hard on now, is learning to live without the man she loved the most - her father. But she has been putting in the donkeys work on it and her own art, is being her saviour. I have seen her help many people through the pandemic through her workshops and now, that very same art, is saving her. Just the fact that she sits there, every day, and got flowers for herself this morning, feels like she’s made the decision to work hard(er) on this - to work through the grief. In the most unromantisizing way, it is my utmost privilege to sit with her through her pain - despite every cell in my body screaming to want to do things to “fix it” for her.
We started the week meeting a friend at Tuscan Table which IMO is one of the overhyped places in the world. Its like they’re trying TOO hard to be grunge. The only saving grace was that we met a wonderful friend of ours and that kept us afloat (sailor joke because said friend is a captain on a ship).
Got in the usual 1.5h of Badminton also in the week. Other than that, I got a lot of mobility done in the week as well, along with brisk walks. I’m unable to get my ass to go out for runs because I’m just so beat this week. I’ve not been feeling rested since the past few weeks. I’m getting sleep but the feeling of rest is somehow absent. Need to work on this.
Had a great mid week GCPP session on writing with one of my favourite faculty. He really helps losen up the writing muscle and to think about things in a very structured way but allowing us to find our voice through it. Really top notch teaching.
Ended the work week with a call with a dear friend. He was just headed out on a walk and the call dropped for a few seconds because he switched from WiFi to mobile data. We then geeked out for a good 20 minutes about why we both think this happens. Ironically, by this time I got home (from work) and the call dropped again, because I switched from mobile data to WiFi. It feels so wonderful to geek out about these things. I’ve known him for over a decade now and we grew the relationship as equals arguing on tech and it feels so good to be able to do that all over again. I still remember the night him, another dear friend and I sat down and the RSA encryption just clicked for us on pen and paper, the night before our Cryptography exam; or the evening when him and I almost beat each other up arguing over whether a batteries included framework (Django) was better than a no batteries included framework (Flask). If you’re a techie, trust me when I say that it is a privilege to have tech minded friends to grow up with - who call you out on your bullshit assumptions. In the age of AI, maybe we will end up losing that because we have come to care more about the output now. Or maybe this is the environment that we must build in education - a rant for another day.
Saturday was a long day. There was a framework application exercise with my squad as part of this week’s GCPP classes. This was hard and in general, I am finding GCPP hard. But that was to be expected. I was just thinking about the fact that, the last time I put myself through being a beginner was over 15 years ago when I just started learning computer science. So when I’m trying to wedge this through my brain, I am sure that its not going to accept it - but I’m not going to give up. I can slowly see a version of me that engages with policy and tech and I’m going to make sure I bloody well get there!
Wanted to take the Sunday slow, but ended up getting pulled into a work thing because a production issue. Finished watching Dabba Cartel on netflix. Liked it since it was very flow-y. The story could have been tighter but it worked for me. Recommended.