one year in belfast

(yes, this post is long overdue!)

it's been a year since we moved to Belfast. in hindsight, we took even less time to settle here than we did in the home we rented after we got married, in Mumbai. Going through my memories on facebook, it seems that in just a month we went from eating supermarket ready-to-eat stuff in an airbnb to cooking our favourite foods in our kitchen, with pots and pans we purchased the day we moved in, getting our daily fix of youtube on the chromecast hooked up to our tv, which is ever-so-slightly bigger than the one we had in India.

so... what did we do in the remaining 11 months?

we got our social groove on.

we resumed traveling (not the same pace as we used to in Mumbai, but we'll get there soon!)

we got our own bicycles, tent, and other outdoor stuff.

we got a turntable, amp and speakers. transported some of my old records here, and also purchased a few more.

i got my lego here. oh yeah!

we also resumed collecting souvenirs.

i tried my hand at gardening, and gave up when i realized i didn't enjoy it much.

i'm in the process of learning to drive, and also in the process of getting my motorcycle license. and eagerly waiting for the day i can get my own two wheels!

it's hard to put my finger on the exact time i could say our move was complete, but i can definitely say that when we visited india for a vacation in december, it felt like we were leaving home.

i guess it'll take a long while for Belfast to feel as familiar as Mumbai does (did?), but that's just a matter of exploring the city and its surroundings. i could still say that i know this city as well as i knew mumbai after my first 18 or so years in mumbai!

it's very interesting to see how quickly we settled in, mainly because it seems like moving seems easier to us now.

i'd go as far as saying that we could probably pick a spot that appeals to us on a map, and if circumstances were right for us, we'd settle there happily.

this one year seems to have changed us in ways we never imagined it would.

dreams and cynicism

i haven't blogged my dreams for a while. but this isn't the first such hiatus. this time, though, the reasons are quite different. i'd usually not blog dreams if i'm either facing sleep problems (ie not having lucid dreams), or having way too many of them, and it's getting overwhelming to note all of them - i usually don't have time to blog my dreams on the very day, so i'd make notes and keep them for later, but if i have too many dreams, this system falls apart.

this time though, i've been having interesting dreams, with a non-overwhelming frequency, but i still haven't been making notes (so obviously cannot eventually blog them either).

i noticed this happen a while ago, but haven't really thought about why, until today.

i had a nice dream last night. when i woke up, i described it to shruti. she liked it, asking me for details, which i narrated to the best of my memory. but i didn't even once think about blogging it. i've considered other recent dreams to friends who happened to be in them, but not blogging them.

so... why don't i want to blog them?

the easiest answer springs to mind: i have too much high-priority stuff on tight timelines to keep myself busy, and let's face it, blogging is not anywhere near my top priority.

but i do find the time to do pointless stuff. stuff that probably shouldn't be a priority at all. so why not blog my dreams?

the answer seems weird, even to myself.

blogging dreams is now too easy for me.

when i started off, there was an excitement. i loved the twists and turns and fantastic imagery my dreams brought to me. i loved being able to express them here, knowing that nothing i conjured with my normally rational mind could match up. but with time, i dare say, i've gotten better at it, and it's no longer exciting. and eventually, it's even stopped being fun.

also, i've started to "see through" my dreams, in a sense. in a large number of cases, i can actually attribute various features of my dreams to other things. the web of fantasy is beginning to unravel into a boring juxtaposition of influences.

would i resume blogging my dreams? maybe. but i'd have to find other reasons (or a change of priorities) for doing so.