Now

Time passes quickly. I'd told myself I'd review weekly but it doesn't seem to happen 😅. I figure the resistance comes from starting from scratch. The plan was to journal daily so I have some raw material to go over — that way it's much easier. Hope I actually follow through. For now, I'm writing off my memory.

The most thrilling thing I've done is signing up for ICRA 2026 in Vienna. It's the premier academic event for robotics and automation. The work I'm doing at Fraunhofer isn't complete yet, but I plan on networking and scouting cutting-edge research vs. how industry's adopting it. It's thrilling because I'm spending more than double my rent for a 5-day event, trying to increase my exposure (my so-called luck surface area). Very excited to see how it pans out.

I'm also happy to announce a refactor of my site — I like this version much better!! And somehow I ended up with a base draft of my guestbook too, thanks to ky.decker. They've a really good guestbook, I was flattered to experience it. Want to have the same with a few changes — different cards, don't wanna just steal, gotta put in some work. And an email field, because I want to read every note and be able to reply if it affected my life or mood. Things like this can def make my day 😊.

I never mentioned — this "now" page idea is inspired by Derek Sivers, but I felt the need to archive my now entries; it's more like a running log of things I mentioned. It was only visible on desktop and now it's live on mobile 🥳. There are some UX issues, I'm working to fix them :) Also added RSS. Don't like the idea of email newsletters yet.

I'm glad I've joined Salsa Cuban, it's fun and empowering. It's a beginner course — I'd taken LA style last sem and I can see the difference.

Finally got around to writing my thesis expose. Went through a lot of anxiety; took me a while to figure out how I should be thinking about a thesis. You come up with a research question by reading literature that fits everyone's interests involved; for a master's thesis it's mainly you, your supervisor, and the lab you're working in. It was rewarding, though. Glad it was on me — made me struggle and learn how it's done.

Everything isn't roses in life. I usually don't talk about bad days or parts, would start sharing gradually as I feel more comfortable. I was very excited to start the seminar on "Nailing your thesis" — I went to the lecture hall and found out it's only happening online on Zoom. I got really upset, restless, and furious. It shattered me — I think it's the idea that it's far from my expectation and I can't enjoy the in-person experience of taking a lecture. I quickly checked other seminars I could take but later realised it's not worth it; this is the exact seminar I went to take 😭. It's always better to keep expectations low, but things like this hit out of nowhere.

That's all for now. I've been experimenting with agentic harnesses lately for personal projects and work — mainly Hermes and Pi. Pretty cool stuff, might write about it someday.

Nearly two months I have been away, semester has ended and so does university sports, it's bit sad.

Overall I'm happy, I have come to like frisbee and salsa. Improv was good but I guess we didn't manage to find same people coming over and things didn't go well, I lost interest slowly, would still be interested in trying out friend in future if opportunity arises, having people you're very comfortable around makes it easy and much more fun.

We have semester free period until march I guess, I plan on doing frisbee and explore english debate club at uni. I've some friends interested in badminton, hopefully do some games and I want to host my friends for board games soon!!

I recently finished reading "why we sleep", loved it! It's irony that the day I finished reading the book, I slept at 4 AM(like first time in last 3-4 months). There is something odd about it which I've hard time realizing what exactly. I've decided to pick up "surely you're joking mr. Feynman!", I'm hyped as always!! While scrolling now pages I found Do you make other people's problem yours own? by Ranjana Iyer and enjoyed reading it, having to deal with same problem it was just like getting validation of me not being wrong. Maybe at some point I might write something like that(in terms of genre), not sure though.

I have some hold of my masters thesis and having been solely focusing on work, thesis, this site and life(too much for solely right ;). Finally I've started to track my food, weight, workouts. There exist a big difference in what we subjectively believe we are doing and what we actually do(as you saw my sleep). I want to better track my sleep and water(I'm sure I'm not drinking enough or maybe I'm just too worried) too. It's difficult to sleep on time at times but I find it really joyful to have a night time routine, no digital devices after 8 and the only thing I do is read a book while snuggled up in bed.

I'm kinda finished with my site structure and outline and hopefully would remove site under construction banner after finishing few articles which I believe needs done flag.

Last few weeks have been stressful, I celebrated my 24th birthday last week and it was a long and surprising ride.

I went to Blerta’s celebration and felt that I should also do something like that. So I started thinking about it 20-25 days ago but we had potluck November 1st so I derailed it a bit, idea was first to just send invitation to people and fix the date. Which I figured wasn’t that straightforward as I had trouble deciding which date to fix.

Notes: I would prefer to celebrate it on Fridays or Saturday’s so people don’t feel rush to leave early for next day!! Tbh it’s trade off, I can celebrate on the day itself and actual friends would stay long enough :p

I planned for Desserts, Drinks and savoury snacks along with what I would gift my guests.

When shopping I figured, Action is most affordable followed by Tedi and Woolworth for cutlery and decorative items.

On Sunday I went to pick flowers from nearby forest and figured you find it mostly on plain patch of land with grass and nearly side walks of canal and roads 😅. For drying just hang them upside down.

I prepared [[Zuchini Halwa]] 4 days before, came out pretty well but sweeter for international tastebuds. Next day me and my friend Shalini prepared choco chip cookies, people loved it a lot!! Next day we made red velvet cake, we planned to make 2 layers but due to cocoa powder first batter was looking brown and not red so we turned them into choco caramel fudge and second layer we didn’t use cocoa powder at all and it was red 😁, really happy how it turned out after butter frosting!

Note: it’s not very good idea to use pizza dough for making puff pastries!!

On Thursday, I had Nevil and Purva to shop for savoury items, Purva made cheese cake, I prepared spinach feta riccota puffs while Shalini was doing butter crème frosting. Me and my friend also went to get 11l water dispenser. After all desserts were ready around 1.30 AM, I started writing thank you notes and preparing personalized origami.

It was stressful cause I had lot of plans but execution wasn’t smooth, I could prepare guest gifts well in advanced and now I know I can buy things for decorations in on day instead of roaming stores in different cities. And for drinks I don’t have to use drink dispenser to look cool, I could also have someone prepare live drinks which make it even more fun :) and Most cleaning should be done a day before. But overall it was great experience for me, I really enjoyed the party.

I was bit overwhelmed and very excited for the celebration and enjoyed it but the day after I felt void and lonely, it felt like I suddenly moved away from having lot of people around me to being alone and feeling of loss hit me although I didn’t loose anyone technically but feeling was real. Took me whole weekend to accept and rest. It’s surprising for a moment you have everything you ever wished for and the next moment everything feels shattered 😭.

Now it’s time dial down on My seminar, thesis finding, office work and health ✨.

It’s been great week, except I still feel bit fatigued.

Day before yesterday I made Zucchini Halwa and Cauliflower Wings, I do like cooking, didn’t realise it was 12.30 mid night when I finished, wings are pretty tricky, I might want to write my experience cooking recipes first time and how I evolves, I believe some things are better learned from experience, I basically followed Gemini on how to do both, posting my experience might also help me get feedback on what I shouldn’t have followed and what really matters while cooking it.

With zucchini halwa, I was surprised to see that it did really have lot of water like Gemini cautioned(ya my common sense is on vacation, I had carrot, bottle gourd and zucchini on same level. While cooking halwa). But out of 780g raw zucchini I drained around 300ml water. I could have gone bit more hard on it but cloth I used started to tear apart. While I was making halwa, I got call from Gurukul friend and soon it was 5 people on call, talking random things and about old days, nostalgic! It’s fun to get on calls like this. I also added lot of milk to it, relatively to what I had done before. Took long time to boil it off.

I’m planning to add kitchen odyssey, and worried about the structure, should it look like post? Hope to finish it by next week!! Yes why not, just go with it until you face a chat or covered with post.

Kitchen - welcome to my kitchen, here I share my cooking experience and opinions.

Zucchini Halwa

• yap a bit
• Ingredients
• In the making

I really like the idea of using the commute time to write drafts and ideas :) I was frustrated because it’s public holiday, I didn’t think much and left for team sports only to know it’s not happening today 😭. But good things did happen, got idea about adding kitchen and add recipes while I was writing for this weeks now updates 😊.

yesterday we had potluck, was pretty fun! we ended the day with board games :D

Last month has been hectic and I suppose next would be very similar. I got invited to a lot of Diwali and New Year celebrations, and I’m feeling very happy about it!!

It’s the first time in my life I got invited to so many places in a month — was 18, 19, 22, 25, and 26. I’m also planning for a potluck and my birthday celebration next month, and there’s already an invitation for the 30th. I said yes to all of them to see how much social interaction I could handle; surprisingly, I was able to manage it pretty well. But it does feel hectic, and I feel I’m not able to do anything else apart from events and office work (it’s a struggle to manage this along with my sports, which is 4 days a week).

I’m grateful for all the invites, and I am currently trying to get time for myself and do relevant stuff like applying for my master’s thesis and working on my seminar. I’m hoping to get time to improve this site, write articles, and work on Kosha. I recently met a new penpal on Slowly, and it’s really exciting to share long letters — but it’s taking up much of my bandwidth too. I’m looking for ways to sustainably handle all this mess :)

Last week I got bored a bit by Antifragility and decided to pick up Why We Sleep. It’s surprising how it gets me imagining how sleep mechanisms in us could inspire new AI algorithms and model architectures. I’ve decided to write an informal proposal about it — hopefully, you’ll find it soon on my writings 😁.

Life is full of surprises. I was looking up the university sports website to check the amount I paid for each sport and found Salsa had spots left. I texted my friend who wasn’t able to register before, and now she was able to 😄. I also found a spot for Sports Buddy (team sports where we play different team sports every Saturday) open 🥳 and finally registered. I really adore Sports Buddy!! Yesterday, when I went to class, I saw another friend of mine who registered just that morning.

This page looks annoying and needs some work :P

Anyway this week was fun, I spontanously registered for Salsa, Improv Theatre and Frisbee. I had first class for Salsa and Improv, and I'm really liking it!!

I'm currently reading Anti-Fragile by Taleb, currently on a section where he talks about political systems and I find it super boring. Makes me think if I should pick up, Why We Sleep for a week.