Weeknotes - 2025-W37
Sigh. Another late weeknote. This is becoming some kind of a trend now. Must really break out of it. For now, let’s get cracking. I have Thani Lokah Murakkaari playing in my ear, and the laptop on my .. well .. lap. The song is such a banger! Its been in my ear since yesterday and I suspect that it will be around for the next few days (weeks?) too.
As noted in W36, I ran/walked 16K at the Chennai Trail Ultra. The thing that really surprised me, was the kind of recovery I had this time when I woke up on Monday.
Usually, long runs mean that my next few days are spent in a bunch of pain. But I woke up on Monday … feeling fine? Other than one part being sore (the weakest link) - I felt good. I felt super puzzled by this because I’m used to another status quo. That’s when the realization hit me - All the strength training!
I felt SO empowered that I was able to literally business-as-usual my way through the day. Don’t miss strength training, kids. The returns are multi fold!
We finally had the rehearsal for the upcoming talk at PyCon and we got overall great feedback. We put in LOTS of work in forging the talk from simple interactions that was the seed for the talk and it felt really nice.
With that, we were locked and loaded for PyCon.
The work week was shorter, as we headed to Bangalore on Friday morning. This was my MIL’s first trip out of Chennai since FIL’s death and needless to say, parts of the Chennai Central station, the train journey and the Bangalore station was very overwhelming as they both were quite avid travellers. But she’s a strong woman - learning to live her life by herself after living beside a strong man for 30+ years.
We stayed at our dear friends’ place and it was such a safe space for Prasanna and her mother to be in. I have the privilege of having friends who really get the circumstance and show up as required. Invest in good people, kids. Its a force multiplier like none other.
The strength gains allowed me to also put my friends’ kid on my back to do full pushups AND lift her up. She weighs about ~ 15KG and I was able to easily do 5 pushups with her on my back. Both of us had different feelings about this whole thing. She loved it and asked me to do it everyday I was there. I felt humbled by the gains that I’ve had, that allowed me to do this. Its such a wonderful feeling when a kid feels safe enough to come to you and ask you to lift her high up.
I was also able to meet another set of dear friends for a morning 5K at Lalbhag - one of my favourite places in the city. Prasanna and I grabbed a cheeky darshini breakfast with them after that before heading back home.
I didn’t get as much time (as I usually do) to catch up with my friends because I spent 2 entire days at the conference. I hope to make more time for them the next time around. But like I’ve said in previous weeknotes - anytime with nakama, is time well spent.
✨ HIGHLIGHT ✨
The major thing this week, was the PyCon India 2025 event. PyCon has been one of my favourite conferences - ever. It was a nice 2 days spent at the conf - catching up with old and new friends. The great thing is, some of the people there, I’ve know for the large part of a decade+ and it still feels “new” to catch up with them. I also got to spend a lot of time with new people - forging new friendships and discussing non trivial things that we didn’t find answers to. I find it even more invigorating when I get out of these spaces with more questions than answers - I think that’s a great sign of a day well spent.
Our talk was on Day 2 and it was very well received. A few of them said really really kind things ⤵️
“In the entire conf, yours was the best presentation that I saw”
“I want to learn how to present an idea as clearly as you both did. Where can I start?”
A lot of students came up and spoke to us also. Its so nice to see the next generation in the pipeline. I hope that they use the great tech and tools at their disposal and become great programmers.
I’m so happy when I think back at the week that passed - meeting nakama, speaking at a conference, working through some hard feelings, eating great food, learning to trust my body even more.
I am 5 days late, and even though this weeknote might not reflect it all that much, the week past was one of my favourite weeks in this year. Maybe that’s why I pushed writing this, because I wanted to just live with all the feelings. It reminded me of this scene from one of my favourite movies ⤵️
Till next time 👋🏻