Weekly Notes 2024 W12

I am writing this on a late Monday night. Sunday, I was too tired to write anything down. I have been using logseq back again. I make some entries there every day and use that to write my notes here; otherwise, I usually find myself blurring through the days – if that even is a word.

I stayed with my planned diet mostly, except on Sunday. I worked out 3 times a week.

Work-wise, my struggle continues, my efforts to seek help from my colleagues to stay on track largely failed this week.

Monday was mostly non-eventful. I simply existed and made it through the day. I went into a few rabbit holes. In Greybox, one of my trainers told me about the TCS 10K run.

Tuesday, I wanted to see if I can run and how much. I tried my old shoe, but it bit me. Acting on my impulsivity, I purchased a new running shoe from Decathlon. I tested it out with a brisk walk for 5K. I enjoyed it and recorded it on Strava. I also found out that they had closed registration for the Open 10K category. I was disappointed but then decided maybe it was for the best. I don’t have prior experience with running, and this whole being physically active thing is new. I’m now planning to participate in a 5K category. I discovered the “Couch to 5K” (C25K) program/community. I tried a few apps, but all were proprietary and cost way too much in INR.

Most C25K programs span 8 weeks, but I only have about 5 weeks. I found this chart online that I am roughly following and tweaking according to my needs.

Wednesday, I went on my first C25K run. It consisted of 1 minute of walking followed by 1 minute of running, repeated for 10 laps. I was surprised that I was able to do it, and it built my confidence. Also during my gym class, we were training to do a hanging L-situp. The first step is to hang – and after some practice, I was able to hang for 15 seconds. As someone who is overweight and has never been physically active, this felt great! I loved the feeling, and it was a major confidence booster.

I also shipped the color film I shot at my nephew’s birthday to Zhenwei Lab. I was anxious and excited to see the images.

Thursday, I registered for the TCS 10K run, in the 5K Majja category. Team meetings took a lot of my time.

On Friday, my Vision 250D color film was delivered from the Panchrome project. I plan to use this for a secret personal project that, if the state of things in the country continues, will probably never see the light of day.
I also published this post, as part of my homework for the Urdu course. I chose a poem by Nida Fazili.

Saturday, I woke up at 1 pm. I overslept through my alarm and missed my Urdu class at 11 am. I then went to the office to develop my film roll from last week’s Shivajinagar photowalk.
Orange, our office cat (whom I wrote a lot about in earlier weekly notes and used to post pictures of at the end of each weekly note), was limping and was “off” than her usual self. This made me panic. I spoke to a couple of colleagues to understand how she has been this week. She was fine a day earlier and was out the previous night and Saturday. She usually stays in at night and is in and out during the day.

She went into hiding below the sofa, and it wasn’t easy to check her. My colleague Sachin came to the office late at night to help check on her, and we somehow got her out of the hiding. We discovered some tar-like substance on one of her paws. We could not see any injury. We decided to keep her in for the night and give her some space to relax, given she was terrified and shocked.

Sunday, Akshita, my Urdu Instructor, was gracious enough to arrange for another practice class. We practiced reading from BBC Urdu and a storybook. We also practiced some writing. I enjoyed this class.

I came to the office by noon, and it took some creative strategies to get Orange inside the cat carrier. I then visited Cessna Vet Hospital. This was my first time at the Vet, as earlier Sachin or Srinidhi would take Orange to the vet. Orange was brave and calm. The doctor inspected her and decided that the limping was very likely due to skin abrasion from being stuck on the tar. They injected her with some painkillers. I was surprised to see her not react to the injection.

After leaving Orange back at the office, I went out with Orpa to Shivajinagar again, but this time for a food walk. We had lots of tasty food :D

In Other news

  1. I am using Track And Graph to track my weight. This is not a weight-tracking app, but a generic tracker app. It is Opensourced and you own your data. It is important to me that I can get my data out of an app easily and my choices have been directed by that recently.
  2. I am using RunnerUp to train for C25K. It is a simple app that you can Interval train with. It will give Audio cues at the start of each lap. This too is open source and can export data as files, and also can sync up with external services.
  3. I am also using Strava and joined Bangalore Runner’s group. RunnerUp syncs nicely with Strava and publishes my data there.
  4. I went into an accidental rabbit hole, as I was trying to determine what is the best way to view my weight-tracking data to get a trend. I currently use the “Weekly moving average” on Track and Graph, this works great.
    One Reddit comment led me to this. A book on weight loss written by John Walker, founder and author of AutoCAD. I have skimmed through the book, and what is interesting to me is how John approaches weight loss as an “Engineering Problem” - which is similar to how I am thinking about this. I’ll probably give it a quick read-through. John’s website too is an interesting space to explore. Seeing the website you know that this is from the 90s and by a nerd.
  5. I realized I still haven’t collected my Engineering graduation certificate from my university. It has been 7 years. Blockchain would have solv- I am kidding.
  6. I developed the film roll I shot during 2024W11. You can find the images here.
  7. End of the week, I was able to do 2 minutes run + 4 minutes walk X 5 + warmup and cooldown amounting to 5K.
    This whole stint with physical movement, at gym or with run has taught me that this feeling of “I’m dying” is temporary. I can push myself a lot more than I thought, and that it feels good at the end. I don’t feel this about myself usually - but I’m proud, and surprised about myself for keeping at it.
  8. I am enjoying Rage against the machine during my runs.

    The band was known for melding heavy metal and rap music with punk rock and funk influences, as well as their left-wing views.

  9. I’m also listening to a lot of truecrime when cooking. True crime Bullshit is one that has intrigued me. This follows through the case of Israel Keyes.

Other shows that I’m listening on weekly basis are

Till next week -