Week 31/2025
28th July to 3rd Aug 2025 (Monday to Sunday)
I am writing this weekly note on Tuesday evening from my bullet notes and publishing it with a backdate (2nd Aug). I put pointers in my simple note app about the week and finally elaborate on it on Sunday late evening to publish it, but many times I don’t get time on Sunday to sit and do this task, so I do it on Monday or at the latest on Tuesday.
Monday - I was thinking of starting morning yoga at a nearby place, but finally we decided to join an online evening yoga class. It is difficult for Nidhi to wake up early and go for yoga class, and the yoga center doesn’t have mixed-gender batches available in the evening - they only have female batches. So we settled on a YouTube live-based yoga class. The subscription is ₹3k for a year. They live stream new sessions every day; you can join morning or evening batches plus there’s a WhatsApp community. It’s nice. But the only thing you miss is live interaction because you can just comment on YouTube during live streaming. The yoga teacher won’t be able to see your posture and guide you. You need to do it by yourself. The benefit is you get curated yoga sessions and a WhatsApp community which motivates/reminds you about the sessions.
Lately, I’ve been looking for some app or online guided sessions for breathwork/meditation. I found something called Still. But it’s very costly for me. I like the founder’s story. I tried attending one more guided session with different app, but the facilitator’s vibe didn’t match.
Tuesday - We watched ‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’. Nidhi grew up watching Bollywood movies, especially Shah Rukh Khan films… she still loves watching them. I never got the chance and motivation to watch any of SRK’s famous movies, so she’s taking me through that trauma journey… I somewhat enjoyed the first half (after shutting my brain off).
Wednesday - At the office, I finally started working with children/taking daily sessions with kindergarteners. I’m feeling so happy and grateful to the universe.
We met an educator friend in the evening at a cafe called ‘Native Stories’.
Thursday - I met with a small accident while going to the office. I was trying to cross the road on my Activa when a bike rider hit me. I got a jerk, and because of the weight of the helmet, my neck’s soft tissue muscles got damaged. It took three days to get back to normal. I took medicines plus the support of a neck belt.
Now, the more interesting part: while this happened, my laptop bag fell down from the Activa onto the road. Before I could pick it up, someone drove a car over that bag. Both my home laptop and office laptop got damaged. Both are ThinkPad laptops - one has an aluminum body and the other has a carbon body. The office laptop’s (aluminum one) screen got more damage. The home laptop (carbon) also got screen damage, but it’s just a small crack and flickering screen. Very bad day… but somehow I managed.
Right now my office laptop is in the ICU. I’m using my home laptop as a desktop with my LG monitor. It’s working pretty well. I’m surprised how this machine survived after a car went over it.
Friday - Took the day off from office because of the pain. Spent time with Nidhi, planning activities to do at the learning center.
Nidhi started volunteering for a course called - Education for Dialogue, Maitri and Justice (by Prof Aman Madan, Ruchi and other facilitators). She’s going to attend all the online sessions and an in-person workshop at Bhopal - Eklavya campus.
Saturday - Took the day off from work. Did morning yoga with Nidhi. Started a learning project with Dr. Srivi Kalyan around Aesthetics Education for educators and primary grade children. I will share more details soon.
Nidhi’s session got cancelled, so we went to Manek Chowk and explored Ahmedabad’s pols and did some shopping.
Sunday
Sunday was a hectic day. In the morning, we organized an online meeting for our friends working in the development/education sector who are looking for jobs or better career opportunities. We heard all the points where they feel stuck and tried to share some ideas, insights, and frameworks about how to approach this whole thing.
- Large-scale organizations give good money, but the work isn’t meaningful
- Cities have better job options, but lifestyle is better in villages
- I want to work directly with children, but field people or ground-level people get less salary while management people get more
- I don’t know what skills I have
- I don’t know what type of roles I can do
- How to find work-life balance, how to find meaning in work
- How to judge an organization before joining it
Many more queries…
In the afternoon, I spent time with my dear friend Malay. In the evening, I went with him to a board game cafe in South Bopal called ‘One 20min Hub’. We were a group of five (Malay, Mihir + Malay’s friends), and we played 3 games. I tried and enjoyed playing board games for the very first time.
I feel a little anxious in vocabulary-based games. We played ‘Codenames’… I made mistakes but still somehow managed… enjoyed it. I wish I had better English vocabulary.
Apart from that, we played Carcassonne and Splendor. Enjoyed them.
Apart from all of this, I thoroughly enjoyed talking with Malay about philosophy, aesthetics, games, and life…
Nikita di sent really good books about Shree Ramana Maharshi from Tiruvannamalai. Really thankful to her.
I got a new idea to add to this website. I want to do something like an ’email to blog post’ feature. What if a laptop isn’t available? I can just email to a specific email ID with the content of weekly notes, and some script triggers, copies that content - makes a .md file - puts it in the relevant folder of the GitHub repo and pushes it - Cloudflare Pages will build the Hugo site and publish it. I tried doing it with the help of ChatGPT, but it’s pretty complex for me. I need some help. I will try it again.
I got new borsil water bottle as a gift from Tanu :)
Photos
