Author Archives: Abhinav Bhatt

100 Days

Of return to Bengaluru

Ulsoor Lake

Ulsoor Lake

It’s been 100 days since I returned back to Bengaluru and have started to travel to work. Few observations, in no particular order:

  1. I wanted to avoid Traffic and Weather in this post but all in vain. No matter what, these 2 topics always come up in every other conversation. This city needs to rise up above this.
  2. Roads and Traffic are slightly better. At least on the ways I travel.
  3. So heartening to see Metro work nearing completion at some places.
  4. Rain now ruins both the road and the traffic like never before.
  5. New Eateries have opened up. They are now bigger, crowdier, and more Instagram-worthy! Many old places are now gone too. May be every 10 years things have a churn. This time may be due to Pandemic, changes are more intensive. Few comments:
    • The Rameshwaram Cafe: so much crowd that you want to avoid. But so much hype that you want to visit. Repeat.
    • The Filter Coffee, Indiranagar: becoming new Favorite. USP: Sambhar is not sweet here.
    • Iron Hill, ORR: Loved it.
    • Long Boat, ORR: Okayish.
  6. Working from Home, 3 days a week. Same feeling as earlier.
  7. Working from Office, 2 days a week. Welcome change. New faces. New seat. New view. But, it is not the same as earlier because it is still not feeling organic.
  8. Cycling is bliss. I bought a new one and am now very tempted to go everywhere on that. But, the mindset to give up generating pollution takes some time. Hopefully, the frequency of cycling increases.
  9. All the past relationships are almost vanished. Several people have moved out, or are yet to come back. Faces are becoming hard to remember.
  10. I am not regretting the return as much as I thought I would. It is like I just went away for a small break and life has become back to the way it was.

All in all, the return to Bengaluru is old news now. Things are returning to old times. Old is the new normal, I think.

Moved

So move is now complete. But the unpacking might take 200 more years. The money I saved by not renting a place last year has all been spent in moving and settling down. Fortunately new place is 90% same as my old place. So it’s all nostalgia and Deja Vu but hey paint is new!

Talking of nostalgia and Deja Vu, I went back to office today after exactly 3 years having been there last on March 11, 2020. Not sure why but I couldn’t stop smiling all the way from the parking lot to the desks. The feeling of sitting and working from office is a thing I craved for so long. I am not a proponent of working from office full-time anymore but with office, there’s so purpose in life and it feels like moving forward. Though the lights in office were too bright and the mood was as usual lull.

The sounds of mouse clicks, keyboard typing and occasional telephone was a welcome change. Seeing people waiting in cafeteria in a queue to get food was joyful for some reason.

Moving is a task and it takes a lot of money, let alone effort. It would be lot more fun if the move is intentional and working from home or office is voluntary.

Moving

12000 years ago, when Homo Sapiens had had enough of it, they decided to settle down. Their main motivation was to grow food themselves instead of running behind it. After finding a decent place by the river, where breeze was nice, neighbour sapiens were not too nosy, wild animals were distant, noise was minimum and view was decent they all decided to stay there. After spending 5 minutes or so, someone said, wait there’s a better place elsewhere. After giving a collective sigh of frustration, they all picked up their domesticated animals, bags full of produce, and a quintal or so of stuff they had gathered around on the way and bartered from nearby, moved to a new place. Again, after 5 mins, someone said, wait there’s a new place where even the weather is awesome, let’s move there. They again got up, and left for the new place. And, the cycle continues.

People move all the time. Some moves are intentional, some are forced, some are coincidental. Packing your stuff and then finding that most of the stuff wasn’t even supposed to be bought, let alone be packed, is a tiring job. And an expensive one too when you lack the enthusiasm to pack anything yourself and rely heavily on Packers/Movers folks.

I am going to go back to Bangalore after about 20 months. Although I have only worked during all these months so it feels like only 20 days. The stay in Jaipur has been a bliss but I hardly enjoyed as much as I should have. Nevertheless that’s to be discussed in a different post.

No place is perfect, (except Jaipur of course), but Bangalore has got really bad rap in last 2 years. Flooding, excessive increase in traffic, rent brouhaha, construction mishaps, recession impacts and general saturation induced by techbrospeak have just added to more confusion about whether moving back is the right decision or working from home forever and getting old sitting in same place is.

But as we know, negative news gets more votes than good news, so it’s time to take up the challenge and delve into the struggle again. Let’s see how much things have changed and what life brings. With some added responsibility, I would be back in Bengaluru tomorrow. This might also energize this blog too.

See you from the other side.

Hello 2023

I can’t be the only one who still thinks March 2020 was just a few days ago. Many things have changed since then but some part of the mind hasn’t moved on. Maybe it would move on once someone officially says that “Pandemic is over now. Go and enjoy life like there’s no fear!”. I know, I know that 90% of the world has already assumed this and that’s great! Hopefully, 2023 would be the year when we actually move past this and start afresh.

Also, I didn’t do a roundup of the whole of last year this time. In fact, I did only 1 blog post in the whole of 2022. I usually write when I want to write as a habit. Or when I feel something strongly about something (even if that strong feeling is temporary). But in 2022, I didn’t feel strongly about anything and I didn’t want to delve into a habit that cannot be sustained.

While sounding bold, here are my predictions for the year 2023, for the world and myself. Humor me:

World

Work from Home / Hybrid Work / Regular Office fans would try to stick to what they like and if someone tries to force them to do the other, it would lead to friction and that would generate heat. This might lead to further division in society and an increase in global warming. Blame Modi for this, of course. Meanwhile, choose your favorite while adjusting to what your manager wants.

Ukraine Russia War will reach its conclusion this year.

India-China Competition will intensify. India will try to manufacture like China and ‘Made in India’ will become synonymous with ‘Made in China’.

AI-generated content may seem novel and exciting at first, but it will eventually become just as mundane and predictable as human-generated content. This is because both AI and humans are limited by their programming and experiences, leading to a limited range of ideas and expressions.

Obviously, the above paragraph is from ChatGPT.

https://chat.openai.com/chat

MCU vs DC rivalry (which isn’t a rivalry as MCU has already won) will diffuse and a new superhero movie or series would change everything. It won’t be The Boys even if that seems anti to everything.

Reels and Social Media – Social media is dead. How long ago did you spend a whole day on Facebook now when you can waste it watching Reels/Tictoc/Shorts. The shortest video snippet-type content would stay and would become the biggest waster of time on the planet.

Electric Vehicles will become normal. Their charging stations should start appearing everywhere. Outside actual petrol pumps as well as near your favorite paan shops.

Elon Musk would get tired of his own tweets and start to concentrate on making some things that are actually useful for humanity.

Personal

I have to move back to Bengaluru and find a new place to stay. Whatever savings I have done in the past 1 year would be evaporated for the new accommodation. I haven’t watched KGF yet so not sure if Karnataka is open to accepting me again.

I will definitely visit the office this year while inhaling the freshly stale air of office air conditioning, regret coming back.

Staying Thethered

A couple of days ago, I appeared for the final exam of my Masters in Data Science. So, it’s finally over, done and dusted.  Did I learn something? Yes. Could it be done better? Definitely. Do I feel happy? Of course. Do I need to study further or is it the end of education? Hah no. Struggle has just started.

It has been an amazingly unpredictable last 2 years. This blog has been a witness to it. Many new things happened lately too. Mostly good, still some bad. I finally received something due at workplace which was pending from a long time. Should I jump in elation? Yes. But has the work reduced or became easier? No.

All in all, the point of writing this post is to remind myself that no matter how high one can go, there would be something which would keep you grounded, thethered or in orbit. There will be happy news in life. It might be delayed but they will be around the corner. There will also be some regrets, some health issues, some outrage.

I guess, it is okay to be tethered. Even when one takes a leap of faith and jumps, there is bungee.

Year 2021 End Blog Post

This might be the shortest Year-end blogpost ever on this blog although the year was one of the longest for me.

Professional

I am saying this every year since 2018 but I might have put together more working hours than many previous years combined. It felt so, at least. This year brought technological leaps one had to grasp quickly, farewells of people who had been colleagues for half a decade, newer chaos and managerial lessons, and of course, virtual fatigue. To top that, I had to balance all the newer challenges at work with post-graduate studies, upcoming family, and personal health. Out of all of the above, health is the one which has been sacrificed the most.

I guess I am at an age that marks the onset of sedentary problems a human might face. I genuinely wish that 2022 will be more active physically in a good way.

Personal

It was hardly the first fortnight of 2021 when I got to know that I am going to become a father this year. That set the tone of the year and changed everything for me. Each and every step we took was more cautious than before. When the Second Wave of the Pandemic was high and mighty, it was the middle of the term and we had to visit the doctors for routine check-ups every few weeks. This means that the doctors never saw our faces and we never saw theirs. The journey I went through as a father (spectator of pregnancy), was most fulfilling. Although the real journey has just begun but being able to witness the 9 months up close because of working from home was rewarding and educational. I cooked delicious food and made me confident that if in case I have to live alone on Mars, I can survive with not just potatoes. Also, I returned to my hometown and was able to live there for a tenure of more than 2 weeks for the first time in a decade. Still back home for the last 7 months!

Not sure what 2022 brings, I just hope that it ends the fear we have been living under for the last 2 years. I wish I could say that I will not discuss pandemics anymore but we all know how that jinxes everything. Let’s just say that 2022 turns out as a year of opportunities for everyone who missed it in the last 2 years.

Now, when the year is drawing curtains, I am going to help my child sleep before 12 and hope that she doesn’t get disturbed by firecrackers if any.

To a Happy 2020 everyone…

Update [March 15, 2022]: I meant 2022 above. Heh.