Feed for Shrayas
20 years ago, I asked a girl a really stupidly phrased question. I don’t know if it is because she found me cute or if she was expecting that question already, but she said yes without a moment’s hesitation. I still remember how the sun shined that evening and the warmth of the room as I asked her this. I still remember giggling through the auto ride back home, because I now had a girlfriend. It…
Bread basket I’m making a habit out of this clubbing weeknotes I think. I really need to chalk out time to sit down and write the weeknote. Currently I’m doing it by the fag end of Sunday and I think its a time schedule that can easily be thrown out of whack under the pretext of watching something, or being tired by the end of the week and wanting to sleep. Will fix. The whole of last week went in…
Ella & Hikkaduwa, Sri Lanka A bit of a clubbed up set of weeknotes covering 2 weeks this time. I had the final-ish meeting on the new project that I want to start working on, now that Strongerr is feature stable. I need to start crystallizing this into a document that is a blown up specification of what we discussed over multiple meetings. Its been a fantastic set of discussions thus far and I’m…
This was the week that Strongerr went live. It was nice to see people use the application and interact with it. I absolutely love the statement: Customers don’t know what they want until you put it in their hand. And that’s what I’ve always observed. There was a bunch of putty tinkering to do on Strongerr as I saw it being used. And that’s what most of my weeknights went into this week. But as I’m…
✨ HIGHLIGHT ✨ December 23rd 2025 is when I started working on a small platform that allowed Muthu to manage his members at Strength Tales and allowed his members to reschedule their sessions. 47 days later, Strongerr was launched today! I worked on it diligently through nights & weekends to get it here and what a buzz it was to launch it and see requests come in. Its been such a consolidated…
A childhood dream realized - Linkin Park Live @ Lollapalooza 2026 I’m going to combine both W04 and W05 in this, simply because this felt like one long big ass week in my head. Firstly, happy birthday to one of the most beautiful people I have the privilege of getting to know in my life. He’s a kind, handsome young chap who I’ve grown alongside. If it wasn’t for him, I’d not have experienced many…
I’ve slowly been building up my sumo deadlifts and I got to 115 this week. Sumo I felt is far more complex in technique when compared to trapbar (on which I managed 125) and conventional. It took me a few weeks to even get the hang of things. But now I feel comfortable enough with the technique to work on the weight. With that, I finished up another sheet of programming. Its been an absolute riot…
Bisi bisi southindianical filter coffee 🍵 Another late Weeknote, sigh. But there’s a good reason, read on! ☝🏻 Started the week with yet another visit to the ENT because my upper respiratory complex just didn’t cut me any slack. After 1 x endoscope down my nose - I was started on more meds and I’m finally feeling somewhat like myself after that. Received a wonderful book - Wild Himalaya from a…
Happy new year to everyone. The story of why Jan 1 is “ new year” was a video that I found super fascinating. Watch it here . Even though Jan 1 is arbitrary, I think there is still some sense to a world wide accepted reset that is worth thinking about. We all need second chances and it feels like every Jan 1, the world collectively gets a second chance on everything that they did or didn’t do in…
Let’s go, 2026. I know this is late, but I’m going to write this as of 31st of December, so 1 week + 3 days. How bizarre is it, that this year has already ended? (We say this every year don’t we?) It just feels like I was sitting in my room in the first week of this year deciding to start writing weeknotes and I’m here writing the 52nd one. Time really moves fast sometimes and moves slow…
A kaiendhi Bhavan This week I headed back to $ WORK after working from home for a week and it was quite hectic with having to do a lot of coordination and meetings. A lot of projects are shaping together very nicely and its always good to see things come together. A colleague and I are debugging a nasty SSL issue that’s not being very clear to understand. But we hope to get to the bottom of it in…
Sam and his rocket - The SamX Weeknote 50 means we have only 2 weeks left till end of year - geez. Anyhu This week was a miserable week, health wise. The sickness took full swing and is now in its second innings with my usual allergic cough. I just hope my cough doesn’t decide to put partnership like Dravid and Laxman (Yes, that was a cricket reference. Yes, I made it. No, this is not a sign that…
Loyola College, Chennai A delayed weeknote this time. It rained a LOT in Chennai this week, owing to Ditwah . Thankfully, there wasn’t too much destruction. I feel that it was because it wasn’t an all at the same time kind of rains, but a lot over a period of a few days kind of rains. This was my first week working out at Strength Tales and it was awesome ✨. It was a whole new program for me as…
I think this week, I want the weeknote to be about Muthu’s new space - Strength Tales and my reflections through my involvement in it. I remember when he first spoke to me about setting up his own space, it was only a few weeks in getting to work with him and so it didn’t seem all that ‘ significant’ to me. But as time went on, I got to see the passion inside him for setting this space up that…
✨ HIGHLIGHT ✨ This week marks 4 years since Minnal ( AKA BOBBY ) and 2 years since Sam ( AKA Jammy) came into our lives. Coincidentally the “ gotcha day” for both of them is the same day, 2 years apart. I think I speak for both Prasanna and I when I say that having them in our lives has made both of our lives that much richer and that much more meaningful. Cats are not walking talking affection…
I think the last time I wrote a proper weeknote was in W40 . A lot of life has happened since and I don’t think I have the energy to detail much of it here. So I’m just going to summarize it by re-quoting something that Prasanna has often quoted to me: “ There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” ― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Thankfully, everything is back to…
Too late for me to write anything at this point. I think I’m OK to let some weeks pass like this.
Chennai put up an electrifying sunset as the curtain closer to Sunday Work wise, this week was only a 2 day working week. Since 1st and 2nd were holidays, we gave off on 3rd and the entire team will be working on the upcoming Saturday instead. So the team had a 5 day holiday to spend with their families. I feel this is a wise thing to do, since it allows them to unwind from the happenings at work…
Supergiant games, for the win! ✨HIGHLIGHT✨ From a body POV , I think I might’ve had one of the most satisfying weeks in a long while. I managed to work my way out from a plateau that I seemed to be having at the gym with the bench press. I also managed to hit new highs at squats and deadlifts. But more than that, everything felt “ in the right place” and working together very well. Overall, I was…
On Tuesday, I caught the Demon slayer movie at Escape and I was happy that I managed to catch it before it went out of screens. Demon slayer was one of the mangas that I binge read in the months just after I lost my FIL . I didn’t know how else to fill the “ free” time that I had and I resorted to binging 3 mangas in that time - Demon Slayer, My Hero Academia and One Punch Man. And of the 3, Demon…
Sigh. Another late weeknote. This is becoming some kind of a trend now. Must really break out of it. For now, let’s get cracking. I have Thani Lokah Murakkaari playing in my ear, and the laptop on my .. well .. lap. The song is such a banger! Its been in my ear since yesterday and I suspect that it will be around for the next few days (weeks?) too. As noted in W36 , I ran/walked 16K at the Chennai…
Wading through knee deep waters This week was a really hectic one, specially on the work front - we’re having to tackle problems from multiple sides and its not been easy. Some of the problems are entirely new and some of them are old and resurfacing. It’s not been easy, but its stuff that we must handle and do. Onwards and forwards. Rengaraj and I have been doing many rehearsals to iron out the…
Nothing to beat a hot south indian filter coffee in the morning Sigh. I didn’t expect that I’d miss a week - but it is what it is. I’m writing this on 7th September (the end of w36 ). I’m not going to take it too hard on myself - I feel its OK to slip off the wagon sometimes, and then you realize why the wagon was essential in the first place. So, now we’re back. Note: I will write as if I wrote…
After the insanity that the previous week was, this week was an utter contrast - with a lot of happy things happening. And all of it happened around friends - coincidence? Yes please. Am I complaining? Abso-fucking-lutely not. Let’s get the mundanity out of the way. I played badminton for 2 hours this week. We were only 4 of us, so we played the entire 2 hours and was I tired by the end. Not to…
The only thing that comes to mind as I sit to write this, is that we made it through this week. Monday & Tuesday were the rituals for the 1Y ceremony of my FIL . Wednesday was his birthday. I’m sure as you can imagine, it wasn’t necessarily “ comfortable” by any stretch of imagination. Even though I don’t have any belief in any of this , it is still hard to digest that a ceremony is being…
“Effort” The picture above is 4 weeks of work at the gym. I take it with me whenever I go and write down the effort, the reps, the weight, everything on it. It has taken some beating and isn’t exactly a shining trophy. This week as I was looking at this, I suddenly realized that it really was a trophy but not a shining one - a one that concretized the “ effort” that I’ve put in over the past 4…
A post outing nap 31st July marks 19 years to the day on which Prasanna and I started dating. I sometimes cannot believe that I have spent more years with this person in my life (19), than I have spent without her in it (16). In many ways, we have seen each other grow and have been there for each other through the times that both were assholes back then, to the time now where we hope we are lesser…
A bird’s nest right outside our balcony. FIL would’ve enjoyed this thoroughly. At the start of the week - Prasanna and I went to Little Italy, Besant Nagar for dinner with parents and their friend “ J” + J’s daughter. The food is always great there and they’ve managed to keep it standard through the years. By the end of the dinner, the conversation drifted to talking about J’s husband - whom she…
A paarijaatha / Pavazhamalli flower On Monday, just as I was leaving to the station, I got information that the train was delayed .. by 3 hours. So I stayed back at my dear friends’ place to finish breakfast and head out (food at their place, is always something I cherish very deeply). Given Bangalore’s peak traffic, I almost missed my train back. I am very thankful to the auto anna who took all…
The great shri shri Minnal maathe waiting for her food This week marked the start of a new gym plan for me, with 1 month being done. My trainer asked me if there’s something I’d like to focus on specifically and I told him that I’d like to focus on being able to do pull ups. He incorporated this into the program and I can tell you that after a week of doing it, it is hard . But what isn’t? I also…
Sam’s spot for pre nap naps ✨ Highlight ✨ This week was a most epic week for Sundarakala. All the totes that were put up for sale sold out!!! Within a matter of minutes. And there were folks who placed orders for more too. It feels so nice to see that there is a market for the work that Prasanna does, on other mediums. Come on, free markets! Do your thing! Avid readers of my weeknotes (hello, 5…