Month: January 2019

Spanish word of the day: batiburrillo

Batiburrillo
Noun.

Meaning: hodgepodge.

Examples:

“Un batiburrillo de gente.”
A real mix/hodgepodge of people.

“Menudo batiburrillo de cosas que hay en esta caja: Cables, lápices, pilas, llaves…”
What a mix/hodgepodge of things we have in this draw, cables, pencils, batteries, keys…

I love this word :)

Discovery, and quotes, courtesy of Ben y Marina.

Successful tweak – meditation before sleeping

For the last 10 days, I have meditated in bed before sleeping.

I updated my pre-sleep routine. It now starts with meditating for 10 minutes – usually Daily Calm, though yesterday I tried and liked a quiet meditation. Then I massage my feet, ankles and achilles with a massage ball before wearing sleeping socks (keeping feet warm). Finally, I read a book till the eyes shut off – usually 5-15 minutes.

I have been really enjoying this routine. The meditation calms me down drastically. The massage helps the feet stay fitter while I am increasing running mileage (or at least I think it helps). Then I read something – an easy book1 or a few paragraphs of Meditations (Marcus Aurelius).

I have been having really good sleep – drifting into it peacefully, and waking calm. The anxieties from rest of the day have mostly kept at bay. I’m lovin’ it.

Continue reading Successful tweak – meditation before sleeping

Marcus

Today I opened a savings account with Marcus – an online consumer bank by Goldman Sachs.

It took me about 5 mins to open the account. In another 5 minutes I transferred some funds into it. That’s it, done.

That’s less than the time it would take me to travel to a bank branch, or to queue for attention in the said bank branch, or to fill any forms in the said bank branch, or …  – you get the idea.

- Marcus gives a 1.5% interest (about 10x of what Barclays gives me currently, and 2x of other interest-paying challenger banks).
- It has a simple one screen interface. All I can do is see my balance, and request withdrawal (it takes a day).
- I can only transfer money to and from my linked bank account, so there’s little leeway for fraud.

It’s perfect, as a simple savings account. I’m lovin’ it.

Personal relationships & the peak-end rule – a case study

The Peak-End rule:

… people judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak (i.e., its most intense point) and at its end, rather than based on the total sum or average of every moment of the experience.

These are three relationships I have had all my life – U1, A1, and A2. They are all equally closely related. All of them did something terrible recently – together – that has ruined these relationships.

The three relationships - over time
The three relationships – over time

The question is, are the relationships equally spoiled? Or, despite their joint betrayal, I should treat them differently based on the ‘sum total’ of the past experiences?

Continue reading Personal relationships & the peak-end rule – a case study

2018 – Some successes

There were lots of setbacks in 2018 – some of them enough to drive me back into depression just by themselves. So I am not going to pore over them. Instead I am going to take note of some of the successes…

I climbed at least 10 floors every day++

Floors goal streak (continues in Jan 2019)

I averaged about 23 floors/day, with a peak of 154 floor equivalents* on a day when I went for a long hilly run.

I climbed 10 floors even in the days after injuring my ankle. Neighbours noticed as I hobbled up and down (down was worse) our steep drive way to get those 10 floors.

Steps target completed every day for 6 months++

Steps goal streak

I finished my step target every day for the later 6 months of the year. I started on 1st July, half way through the year, and a month and a half after the injury so the foot could manage 5K+ steps without discomfort.

Continue reading 2018 – Some successes