Week 16/2025

2025-04-20 · Mihir Pathak

17th April to 20th April 2025 (Thursday to Sunday)

My weekly note cycle got affected because of travel. I published my last note on the 16th. I could have published a combined note for weeks 15 & 16, but I didn’t want to miss anything while combining them. Combining two weeks felt like a ‘very long time’, and I wanted to be there with my fellow weekly note-writers… so here I am with weekly note 16/2025.

On Thursday, I went to the office after a week-long break. There were very few people from our team because of the long weekend.

My back pain returned. I was standing and tried to pick up something from the floor when it hurt terribly. I just got to the fridge, and Nidhi helped me with an ice pack. It worked.

On Friday, we spent time decorating our home with small items we have, like fridge magnets and some toys. The paintings are still waiting to be framed.

Nidhi made a bandhanwar.

Our Activa wasn’t starting. We tried repeatedly and finally went to a nearby garage. The mechanic put in a new battery, serviced the brakes, and changed the engine oil. Now it’s running very smoothly.

In the evening, we went to CEE. We visited a new shop called InStore and tried to visit CEE’s nature shop, but it was closed. We went to Aarambh Cafe and had hibiscus tea, dosa, and uttapam.

I like the sambar from this place. The hibiscus tea was costly but we enjoyed it. We ate out a lot last week, so we decided to work on getting back into our cooking rhythm.

InStore’s curation was super cool; I really liked their collection of origami lamps, ceramic wind chimes, and other items. I was amazed at how “eco-friendly,” “organic,” and “sustainable life” products have been commercialized. Nidhi mentioned after seeing the products that we could make these at home. But do we have the time? Do we have the skills? And again, do we have time to invest in developing these skills?

On Saturday, we conducted a natural color-making workshop with children at the Tatvic office. Nidhi led the session. It was fun!

I cleaned my laptop with isopropyl alcohol. It looks nice now, and I enjoy working on it more.

We went out to find materials for Sunday’s workshop. We wanted plastic straws for making “toys from trash” (Arvind Gupta toys). Surprisingly, we didn’t find plastic straws in stationery shops, Mr. DIY, or shops selling disposable items. Everyone is selling steel or paper straws. We couldn’t find plastic straws at all, which was interesting! Anyway, we only checked around the Thaltej area, so geography matters.

On Sunday, we conducted another workshop on “Fun with Science”/toys from trash with children at the Tatvic office. We made a balloon rocket, which didn’t work for some reason. We did two more interesting experiments that amazed the children. They shared lots of ideas about how those particular things work. I’ll try to write a detailed post about this.

We ordered a helmet from Amazon—a Vega Atom. It’s a nice, compact, lightweight helmet. I like it. Now I can drive more confidently.

we are now using AC on daily basis. We are getting habitual, which we don’t want for multiple reasons.. environment, money, health.. we are thinking to buy small cooler.

The situation at home is bad again. I get anxious whenever someone calls me from there. I really don’t know how to handle this. I feel helpless. Last week everything was ok, suddenly things changed.