Hello!

Vacationing so hard, that I don't remember what to write about.

It's been raining cats and dogs in the South, while I hear the North getting roasted with temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius for days. The summer here touched 40 for a couple of days, which was unbearable, I'm scared to think of that environment for weeks/months! I also hear the kind of devastation that awaits the breadbasket of India - crops don't like high temperatures too, and I've seen first-hand how stressed plants yield less.

On the slightly bright side, the random cloud bursts amid sunny days gave us rainbows this week.

The other amazing thing that's been happening of late is that all BBMP-run parks in Bangalore are open throughout the day. This has been a boon for us as we enjoy the sun and the green, and the weather has been perfect to soak in both.

-Teej

🥘 Cook-at-Home Challenge

The past few weeks have been hectic. With everything that's happening (or not happening) with the business, we haven't been able to eat homemade meals as much.It's usually been a roti-curry (a Bangalore invention), or some thali, or just sambar-rice meals. In any case, more food is made in kitchens that we don't have transparency over. And this has become important to us, given all the shams that the FSSAI has been under the looking glass for.

We decided to challenge ourselves to cook and eat homemade meals for the next 4 weeks. Four because it ends well with my partner's birthday near the horizon, and god knows I can't go a month without eating a plate of masalapuri (the pandemic has been a testament to this with us making variations of the dish during the lockdowns).The precursor to this endeavour was the breakfast ideas sheet from the 1st edition.

We plan on having a few stir-fries - a dish I've never made authentically, a lower reliance on foods completely made outside, and more prepped dishes like hummus and tofu to make the meals faster.We also have a flavour bomb of an instant rasam pudi that our friends and family have raved about. The powder is very versatile and makes a range of dishes for the South Indian palate.And of course, make more snacks. We've been on 2-meal diets and 3-meal diets, but invariably end up craving crunchy/sweet snacks and things like biscuits have been saviours. But we'd like to replace them with some homemade alternates.

Let me know if you'd be interested in this journey, or want to join us in the challenge 😀 having a community of people doing this will make things easier for all of us involved.

🌱 Alive and kicking after a week of neglect

We were away from our small balcony garden for over a week.

I left the pots on the sill to capture whatever rain runoff was available, and this seemed to have worked beautifully for the most part.The melon has grown larger, the basil has thrived, the curry plants died and it was known, and the multitudes of periwinkles have all taken root well.

Just when I think I've understood something about the garden, I end up knowing there's a ton more to learn.

We have a similar garden in my in-law's home. And I'm thinking of rigging up some way to keep the plants alive there too. I would deeply appreciate any thoughts/ideas that can help!

🧑‍🎨 Learning the fun of design

Modern Japanese design is known for its minimalistic nature and the zen principles it follows.

This great article talks about a kid's show that emphasises design and the ability to break down hard problems into solvable components. The playful nature with which the show ran with the segments that engaged and inspired kids and young adults was instrumental in putting modern Japanese design on the world map. There aren't many episodes on YouTube, but this playlist is a great start to the rabbit hole.

One great thing the article also talks about is that recognition of great work creates a feedback flywheel that enables more generations to enter the field.

This very closely reminded me of M.A.D. by Rob on Pogo, where the emphasis was on creating art with some functional aspect to it. Briefly scrolling show listings (yeah, I'm from the generation that has those), I very rarely spot a show with a similar agenda.Or maybe the YouTube culture has taken over this aspect, leaving the idiot box that adorns our walls to stay as an idiot.

Honestly, I've learnt a tonne from these shows and the SUPW (Socially Useful Productive Work) classes in school, about craft making and the sheer joy of building tangible things.

🕰️ Productivity lies

Speaking of Productivity, the race to stay productive starts as soon as one graduates, or turns into an adult, whichever is sooner based on the responsibilities held by the individual. Unfortunately for some, it's a lot sooner.

Social media has made escaping this busyness impossible, with everyone posting and relating to achievements and goals. We're often left with a feeling of existential dread, thinking we could've done a lot more, instead of doom-scrolling for 2 hours.

Apart from avoiding social media, Cal Newport's Slow Productivity talks about doing fewer things. 1 project a day. Lesser context switches.

We're often told about leveraging habits, to make things feel automatic - eg leaving your exercise shorts at the door so you're compelled to go workout, or leaving the charger outside the bedroom so you're not bringing in devices into your sleep area. This is akin to a ritual where you tie these tasks to specific times of the day.

Having a to-do list flooded with all your tasks simply adds to the overwhelm. An approach that's worked for me is maintaining 2 lists - 1 list of 3-5 things that I want to achieve on a given day, and another a backlog of things I would like to do at some point. Ideally, the backlog is tagged with required energy levels, so that it's easy to pick out what you want - but you discipline yourself to only dig into this backlog once your main list is empty. This is the principle of a pull-based task system.

A friend and I were just talking about how time has been zooming past in our 30s. There are so many things to do, and so little time to do it all. Having a list offloads the bulk of this overwhelm away from your head, so you're better prepared to seize the day.

📚 Play to learn

If someone can't explain it simply, they don't know it.Behind that jargon is a lot of insecurity.- Justin Welsh

We had a unique opportunity to test out a game with a set of children today.

The premise was simple - talking about the water cycle, and how settlements grow or die based on water available. The agenda of the game was to help kids understand the tradeoffs between growth and consumption, and what second-order effects would look like for a large population.

The game itself wasn't hard to communicate, but the underlying concepts were difficult for kids to fully understand. There was a disconnect in how ideas like evaporation and condensation were related to groundwater recharge and consumption. And we felt it wasn't just because of the medium of teaching, but the method of pedagogy the kids were exposed to as well.

Now, I'm no expert in these fields, but I know enough to identify rote learning from understanding. And the kids we interacted with today were quite the experts in the former - and I felt a sense of privilege that my parents could afford to put me in a school where I learnt to learn.

I'm honestly interested in this field, and want to dig deeper - education is something that makes me tick and the impact that's possible is immense.

Errata / Updates

* Long time since I streamed. I'm finally back home, and this will change in the coming week.

* I've been spending a lot of time watching and learning schematic design and PCB making. If you have any resources, please send them my way 😄

* A couple of you resonated with the multipotentialite post. Would you be interested in an accountability group, just to keep abreast of what's going on in your world?

End Note

If you've liked this post, I'd love it if you could share it with a friend. You can get them to subscribe here

I do my best to have 5 "fun" things I've been working on every week hopefully on Thursdays. I'm stoked you're here on my journey and would love to read/hear about what you think. If you think there are other things we can look at, do them my way!

Thanks for being here, and reading all this. See you soon!Teej

This is a public episode...

34.01 - Learning at the End of Rainbows