Gluttony & spices don’t go well together

tldr: skipped meal + spicy home food => gluttony => discomfort => finger sandwich => further unease

Thanks to an uber productive morning, both at work and run, I missed a meal yesterday. This meant that I was quite hungry by dinner time.

Mother in law was making their (Gult/Tam) version of Punjabi pooda. Almost the same as my mom’s except packed with chillies 1. Additionally, Raghs and I, sharing a plate had a ton of her chilli mint chutney with the poodas.

It was quite a yummy combination, and combined with the hunger from missed meal, it meant I had quite a few. And then some more. Literally!

Paid for it dearly.

I was walking around the house at midnight, trying to ease the discomfort in tummy and chest from *all* the food, and chilli.2

That didn’t help, so I resorted to a more drastic option – a finger sandwich :(

Did a small vomit, clearing up most of the oesophagus. Cleaned up – myself and the pot. And then, suddenly, came the involuntary puke – emptying half my stomach. Worse, some of that super hot chilli puke entered the nasal channel from behind, causing even more agony.

10 mins later, my eyes were red and bulging, nose burning, and head throbbing. Well, at least the stomach and chest were clean(er).

It’s almost 12 hours since that episode, and my nose and throat are still feeling the effects, with odd spittle of blood coming through.

And I’m feeling weaker than I have in a while, probably jeopardising today’s run.

Lesson’s learnt:

  1. don’t skip a meal
  2. don’t eat spicy grub like a glutton
  3. go for a run to move grub down, rather than use a finger sandwich

  1. She doesn’t like the frozen English red chilli we have at home, so packs them in heavy to make an impact ;) 
  2. No, it wasn’t to increase my day’s step count, and create some space between MiL and me :D 

Presentability = fn(Personal grooming, personal fitness)

I have a relative. He’s one of the most well-groomed people I know – always immaculately dressed, shaven, clean shoes, perfumed, even a fancy car. He’s probably the unfittest person I know of my age. But that excellent grooming overcomes, if not obliterates, the lack of fitness – as far as appearance goes.

I’m probably the fittest amongst all my relatives of my generation. I also probably rank in the bottom quartile of them in personal grooming. I don’t like wearing formal suits – even for work or social events. I don’t iron my tees and jeans – just fold them out of the drier. My hair is perennially a mess. I shave twice a week, at best. One of my shoe laces got shredded in bike chain 8 months ago – I’m still to replace it. And still, despite dressing like an undergrad hosteler, I’m modestly presentable (though never attractive) – the fitness bit covering up partly for the ill-groomed bit of the personality

Then there’s the person who connects me to the relative above. She’s almost as unfit as the relative above, if not more. And she may probably be the only person I know who’s worse at personal grooming than me. This combination of lack of personal grooming and personal fitness is not attractive. It’s often repellant.

It doesn’t help that both of her families – the one that she shares with me, and the one she shares with him – have a dismissive, almost repulsive, attitude towards personal fitness. It’s worse that she seems to have picked up from me the one trait that I don’t share with rest of the family – (lack of) personal grooming.

I’ve tried nudging, inciting, incentivising her towards improving her personal fitness, to little success. I believe the other person must have tried similarly on personal grooming, to little success.

I love her, and this lack of attention to her appearance, upsets me (her lack of fitness upsets me a *lot* more).

Yet there’s nothing I’m able to do. Help! :(

Different.

Sister went to Barcelona, and found Sagrada Familia boring. Didn’t even bother going inside.

I spent half a day in & around it. Could’ve well spent more. And will definitely be heading back next I’m vacationing in/near Barca.

I’m the atheist, while she’s the religious one! But then I’m the one who drags f&f to art, architecture and history shows, while she’d rather be snuggled up in a sofa with warm cider and *my* dog ;)

Wondering which one of us was adopted.

Un-friending saves friendships

Facebook is, behind the covers, a test of friendship.

And I came out of it yesterday bruised, yet smarter.

There’s this friend I really like. We share a lot of interests – hiking, outdoors, animals, spanish, Raghs, travelling on a whim, and more. She’s the only one of my wife’s friends who really, openly welcomed me when we started dating. And has stayed friendly, and in touch, since. Also, she has two strong, winning moves – she yaps like there’s no tomorrow, and she smiles a lot.

So, she was amongst the barely half-dozen people I actually *follow* on Facebook. Unlike the many dozens I’m *friends* with, but don’t follow.

Yesterday, she started liking and sharing posts about an extremely popular, and divisive, politician. I don’t like him, and quite abhor people who blindly praise him, and/or attack anyone perceived to have criticised him. And here she was, going all fan girl over him.

From amongst the two choices, debate or ignore, I chose the latter. I rated her friendship far higher than my dislike of the person. Had she been valued lesser as a friend, I might have jumped in to debate/criticise her idol, possibly polluting, if not ending, the friendship (given how strongly people feel for this politician).

For her, and for our friendship, I just unfollowed her.

We still have our shared interests, and shared memories. We still can continue to (plan to) explore, travel, hike, chat, and do the things that friends do. And we’ll continue without any lingering bile from a debate over a politician.

There are, after all, far more important things to debate – cats (hers) vs dogs (ours)!

Lesson learnt:

The best way to save a friendship, sometimes, is to unfriend someone.


Continue reading Un-friending saves friendships

Change

Yesterday was a happy day.

Started with a happy morning. Not a productive one, just me swinging to DTPH songs all morning1.

Followed up with a high-energy mid-day. Ran againWorked – short, but highly productive in output. Resolved a bug in ClutterFree. Had both breakfast and lunch.

Evening was mostly about travelling to/from and attending ProductCamp London2.

Read an interesting short story on New Yorker, The Weir, on the way there and back.

Finished off the day with another short, but highly productive, bit of work.

Dropped asleep within minutes of landing in the bed, happy and tired.

Yesterday was a strange day.


Days that start so well, so high energy, usually peter out by mid-day, and end in a post-euphoria depression for me. Not yesterday. Something was different.

Saying this at the risk of this being shoved in my face for the next 20 years:

Raghi’s new daily plan, combined with daily runs, may be working.


  1. And posting random lyrics to Twitter and FB. Sorry about that! ;) 
  2. Lisa Long was amazing – in content of her talk, in its delivery, and in the Q&A. Would love to work with her some day!