43

another year done. this one flew by, but in some ways barely passed at all. last year, mom was here in Belfast. After seeing mom off to Mumbai (from Heathrow) I was able to travel twice to Mumbai - for a month in October and another month around Christmas/New year.

Christmas/New year was super busy with so much stuff happening (and I think I also worked for a bit? Can't even remember now!) that it was gone in the blink of an eye (and loads of partying - and Desiree and Tony getting married!). The October trip was noteworthy too, as marked my first proper motorbike trip on Carly (beyond goa!).

That was the eventful bit of my last year. Things went rapidly downhill once back in Belfast. Everything from health, vehicles, even stuff at home (I tried my hand at some DIY plumbing that predictably went wrong, and there is now a massive patch of water damage that I have no idea how to fix!).

On the positive side though, I did sign up for the IAM RoadSmart membership, and did a good couple of months of twice-weekly rides, before summer trips kinda took priority - I still try to make at least one ride a week, but it's been slow (almost painstakingly slow!) progress.

And yes, I started going to the gym. I was never a fan of gym, but I am currently in a state where I am so immobile my body was shutting down. Gym has helped with that - but it's still a bit of a struggle finding the time and energy to be regular.

Everything else has been pretty much treading water - or worse, desperately trying not to sink.

And yes, even that can get quite overwhelming. It is a stark and almost menacing reality that a single ill considered decision can take me out of action for days or weeks. Thankfully the only time I was out of action for weeks was last year - but the odd series of bad days is a warning that I cannot be complacent despite gradual improvement.

I try not to bring myself down with the thought of it but I am increasingly drawn to memories of good times more than the actual prospect of good times.

All said and done though, it was a relief to pull off one last vacation around my birthday. Oslo - Svalbard - Oslo. It was great, and I was able to enjoy it with enough planning, not as much activities as past me (or basically anyone my age) would, but still doing much more than nothing. Svalbard (Longyearbyen) was everything it was touted to be, and more. At the end of 5 days though, I think we kinda ran out of thins I could do, and so it was the perfect duration. I did crash for the last 2 days in Oslo, but given how my year has been, that was fine. In comparison, even my October trip to Kodaikanal involved at least a full day of rest after a full day of activity, so there's definitely been a small but perceptible improvement.

I must say though, my 43rd year has been a year of mostly being almost alone. Mostly just Shruti and me, but also times of being truly alone. It's supposedly not good for me, but I don't feel it yet. Only time will tell.

Anyway, I don't have many plans for 44. Just hoping to continue this slow upward trajectory. No goals (OK, maybe the IAM qualification!), no bucket list.

It was weird when I spoke to a friend recently and explained to him that I have given up 99% of the things I used to do. Definitely an exaggeration, but I was even more taken aback when he asked me what's the 1% I haven't given up.

I think the only thing I've not given up throughout this year has been trying. That's my last 1%, the one thing I absolutely refuse to give up on. I know it sounds pretty privileged given all that I've done over the past year - I know people with perfectly good health who do even less - but I was never one to compare myself with others. It was always only my past self that mattered. And that's the most humbling part of it all. Accepting that it is going to be slow and steady, and anything more aggressive will simply result in reverting to an even worse situation. Those are the days when I am literally hanging on to that last 1%. Get out of bed. Get moving. Move slowly, but move.

All said and done though, I am happy. It's a different happiness, a happiness I've had to search for, build up bit by bit. But it's there. And I look forward to preserving, strengthening, and building on top of it.

As the cliche'd phrase goes - happy birthday!

the dark birthday dream

Disclaimer: I hope it's obvious, but in case there is any confusion, this is only a dream. No correlation with real life thoughts and actions.

Shruti and i were on a boat. It was a powerboat/ferry sort of boat, but not a very big one. We were standing near the front of the boat. There was a very small cabin at the front (a weird place for a cabin, I'd say!) but a bit of room around the cabin between it and the railing. The cabin and the deck were white, and there weren't many people on the boat. It wasn't moving very quickly either - it was moving through a somewhat narrow waterway, and the waterway had a very strong flow of water against the boat. The water rushed so quickly that the bank and the water around the water were white with turbulence. The water was full of turbulent swirls and eddies. Shruti was wearing her olive green fleece jacket, the one she uses only in extremely cold/windy weather. She stood behind me and to my left, close to the other side of the boat - I was near the middle. It was pretty narrow as it was near the front of the boat. Two men walked past me on my right, till near the front of the boat. They were quite well dressed, a bit too formally dressed for a boat - trousers, shirt, woolen overcoat and both were wearing a shawl-type thing around their neck. All wool, in plain, dark colours. Not exactly the same, but quite similarly dressed.

One of the two men jumped off the boat - over the railing, and straight away to the right. He hit the water with barely a splash - it was almost like a clean Olympic dive. He swam a few feet and then the other man dove behind him. By the time the second man hit the water, the first had already disappeared under it. Seconds later, there was no trace of the second man either. It was obvious they had drowned. And from the way it all played out and what the water looked like, it seems obvious that it was intentional. The two men had moved in synchronisation and coordination that suggested it had been planned and agreed in advance - some sort of suicide pact.

And that's when I woke up. It was around 9:30am. It was my birthday. It was time for coffee (which Shruti had already set the cafetiere brewing) and breakfast. When she woke me up, the dream instantly vanished from my consciousness.

There was loads to do today. But by about 4pm, I was exhausted. I really needed a nap. And after a few minutes on my phone thanking people for their wishes, I was asleep.

I was back on the boat with Shruti - everything was exactly the same as before. That's when I noticed a man at the bow of the boat. He was dressed a little more appropriately for the boat, with a heavy warm windbreaker, waterproof trousers and a beanie. He was standing there in silence, alone, leaning his back against the small white cabin. Another similarly dressed man walked past me and stood beside him. They both stood side by side for a few seconds, staring in the direction the two men had leapt off earlier. I could see a massive eddy had formed between the boat and the bank - it was more deep than it was wide, so while the edges were visible, the bottom of it wasn't.

The few seconds felt like an eternity. The two men stood side by side, not exchanging words or even a glance. Until finally one of them turned to the other for just a moment. I could not see either one's face, but I could tell they exchanged a glance. And as quickly as they shared the glance, they turned back to where they were previously staring. One of them dove into the water and started to swim. He swam powerfully and efficiently - barely breaking ripples in the water, barring a bit of white around his body. He swam straight towards the eddy. I was transfixed by how well and straight he was swimming. Barely a couple of seconds later the other man dove in behind him. He dove and swam equally well, almost (but not quite) synchronously. Within seconds, the first man reached the eddy and disappeared into it - followed by the second man.

Almost as instantly everything else, I realized we were now alone at the front of the boat - in fact, I had not seen anyone else on the boat all this while, despite there obviously having been someone at the controls of the boat. Shruti was still there, little more than an arm's length away.

I was confused about why we were there. Did we know what seemed like this boat was meant for? Were we intentionally there? Were we meant to see this?

In my confusion about situation my thoughts were interrupted by the realization that the four men were certainly dead. I felt a chill come over my body. Is this what the end is supposed to be like?

Fully remembering the glance the two men exchanged before diving in, I was afraid to make eye contact with Shruti. I tried not to. I didn't know what was going on in Shruti's mind. I didn't know if she had seen how the two men dove off after exchanging but a glance.

I couldn't stop myself from glancing at Shruti. When I did, I saw she was already looking at me. As our eyes met, I felt my body shrug, as if I was asking "what now?"

Shruti didn't say a thing. She simply took a step backward - just half a step in fact, barely a move. But a move nevertheless. A move away from the front of the boat. I stepped back myself, relieved.

And that's when Shruti woke me up. It's 7:15pm, and we had a dinner reservation for 7:30pm at a restaurant!

I told Shruti I was feeling really down. I summarised the dream best I could. She helped me out of bed and told me it's just a dream. 

L'été Indien

29th July 2026. I woke up as Shruti was dressing up for work. It was somewhere around 7 or 7:30am - way too early for me to be up, if I wanted to have a productive day.

A song was playing in my head. An old song. An instrumental song. A song from my childhood.

A song from a cassette, which was basically a mixtape. I don't know who made it. I do remember the day I first heard it though. It was in dad's workshop. He had these two cassettes on a shelf. I wanted to hear them as I had never heard them before (I was given a free rein to play any cassette and record from his collection at home, but these two were always in his workshop). He told me the two cassettes were what he used to test any cassette player he was repairing.

One of the cassettes was a test cassette (basically a demo tape) by some manufacturer. It was the shortest audio cassette I had ever got my hands on - barely 3-5 minutes on each side. I don't think I ever listened to that cassette again.

The other cassette was more mysterious and interesting. It was the first 90 minute cassette I had ever seen. Dad told me I could take it home and listen to it. There was no list of songs. Only the text "Herp Alpert" written in a cursive hand that wasn't my dad's, on the title side of the case inlay. And the cover - it was a picture cut out from a magazine or something, and stuck onto the cassette inlay.

I think it was one of my favourite cassettes from that day on. It's hard to say that it was my absolute favourite, but it was definitely in my top 5. Kevin and I called the cassette "Herb Albert" (I assumed the person wrote it wrong on the cover - or maybe I didn't care? I didn't even know if Herp or Alpert were real names, and Albert definitely sounded more realistic!)

I played it over and over again. And thanks to its length and my cheap player, it had a tendency to get chewed up. Every time it got chewed up, dad would dutifully chop up the bad bit and splice it back together. I don't know how many times it happened, but dad eventually taught me how to splice the tape myself. He had a special non-residue "splicing tape" for this. I don't know how many times I spliced/tried to splice it myself, or indeed if I was ever successful, but I know that at some point he decided it wasn't worth the effort and decided it was best to split the tape into two cassettes. He gave me a dummy box, two dummy reels, and I split it myself. Ironically, I do not remember what was written on the label of the other half, and I think that half has been discarded along with the other cassettes I wasn't interested in.

As the years passed, my musical tastes expanded, and while this cassette remained a favourite, I don't think it was in my top 5 or even top 10.

Eventually, we outgrew cassettes. The drawer of cassettes wasn't touched for years - decades, even. After moving to Belfast, and moving most of my records here, I went through the cassettes. Most of them didn't appeal to me any more. But I still wanted this one. I've even played it in Belfast a couple of times - notably, the last time I played it was when I was fixing a cassette player myself!

I identified some of the Herb Alpert songs. Hits like Rise, Rotacion, Aranjuez, etc. But I never tried to identify this song. Or maybe it was because I couldn't? What would I even look for?

Until the morning of 29th July 2026. I woke up and started humming the tune. Shruti heard me and asked if everything was alright. I told her I am trying to remember a song from my childhood.

I went back to sleep, and she went to work. But later that morning, I used Google Gemini to identify the song from me humming the tune.

The search results looked weird. I clicked the first one. It wasn't English, for sure. The video was kinda weird. The man was half talking, half singing. I wasn't even sure if it was the right one. But played it through, half asleep.

But the tune was right. I had found it. Not the version on the cassette, but this was the song! The original, in fact! I also found the exact version that was on the cassette - it was a cover by Paul Mauriat!

And yes, it is even more beautiful now, some 35 years later, now that I have looked up the lyrics and their meaning.

ps: Listening to the cassette as I type this, there was one song that had the distinctive series of clicks of a lightly scratched record. I never noticed it until today! And I haven't identified more than half the songs to this date.

fun with phones

the time of landline phones will always hold an element of nostalgia for people who lived through it - and a facebook post about it reminded me of one such incident. and yes, this was before we even had caller ID.

I must have been about 16 or 17 at the time. I picked up the phone to make a call (probably to Satej?) but instead of the dial tone, there was silence.

I was surprised, as it wasn't raining or anything (that's usually when the lines went dead!). after pressing the hook a couple of times with no success, I call out across the house: "mom, the phone's dead!"

and a voice on the line said "kris?"

turns out aunt Avita had called us at the exact same moment as I lifted the phone off the hook, so I didn't hear it ring, and she didn't hear the ringing tone on the line either!

it took a few seconds for us both to understand what happened, and I still marvel at what set of coincidences led to this happening!

also points to the time when phone circuits were fully analog, and you didn't hear the ringing tone on the line until the phone rang at the other end!

The weird restaurant with alive crustaceans

I was riding Carly. I was at the d-mart signal, the one that was next to the police station, planning to take a right at the junction towards IC colony on link road. The signal turned green, but as I was about to turn right I saw link road was closed with metal barricades, with a sign saying parking only. it seemed like there was some sort of event happening further down link road, and the road was closed to provide motorbike parking for people attending the event. while the side of the road that was closed was for oncoming traffic, I decided to not bother trying to go that route, and went straight from the signal instead, taking the inside road to IC Colony. As soon as I got through the junction, I noticed a bunch of policemen stopping vehicles. Before they could stop me, I approached them and asked if the road going ahead was open as I had to go to IC Colony. They said yes it's open so I rode ahead. Instead of taking the main SV road, I took the turn into the shortcut through the slums. The start of the lane was as I remembered it, but then it got much narrower and there were loads of motorbikes parked, leaving barely enough room for me to get through. At one point, Carly even scraped a parked motorbike, but it was at low speed and I was riding cautiously so hopefully no damage done (the bit that scraped was the left passenger footrest). but ahead, the space got even tighter - so tight that it felt like I was riding though a house or something - the roofs of the structures on both sides met over me, and while there was still daylight filtering through from somewhere, it was barely broad enough for Carly!

The road then literally ended at a door. double doors, rather - wooden, and perfectly painted a glossy white. Thankfully, the doors weren't locked, and I could see one side was ajar. Not sure if I should continue riding ahead, I stopped, dismounted, and opened the door to look inside. It was a house, or a restaurant - definitely not the road through the slum! The room I was in had a kitchen to one side, and a lady was preparing something. THe lady asked me if I had a minute and if I could help her with something. I told her I was just passing through on my motorbike and somehow got lost. She told me she'll guide me through but I had to just do her one favour.

She was preparing some sort of dish - it was a pie-shaped thing with fish inside it, which she topped with a disc of rolled dough. On the side of the plate there were some sort of crustaceans - maybe large prawns, or maybe langoustines (I don't remember seeing claws though!). I assumed they were cooked, but it was hard to tell from their appearance. The pie and its lid were definitely raw though. I asked her was the pie thing was and she said "it's a chapati" which struck me as weird, as the dough was white like refined flour, not brown like wholewheat flour, I didn't ask any more questions though as she handed me the plate and asked me to check with the person in the next room that it was plated correctly.

I entered the next room while the lady went off back to where she was working, seemingly to plate another portion. The next room seemed unoccupied, although there was a large table, with a few places set with cutlery - and one place was set with a plate as well, quite similar to what I was holding.

As I couldn't see anyone, I set the plate down and walked to a doorway or passage in the corner to check if someone was in the next room. I saw someone there and asked them if they could come to the table to check if the dish was plated correctly. She asked me to bring the plate over instead. As i picked up the plate, I noticed the crustaceans were alive - and in fact they were twitching their legs and moving their tentacles/feelers. It really creeped me out and I set the plate down hurriedly, dropping the crustaceans onto the table as I did so.

That's when I realized I had picked the plate which was already set at the table, instead of the one I was supposed to get checked. However, the crustaceans on that plate were moving as well, and I found it too creepy to pick that plate up. Instead, I did my mest to get the crustaceans that I had dropped from the other table, back on to the plate. It was a little difficult, as I didn't want to touch them, and I also didn't want ot dirty the cutlery. I did my best to pick them up with two knives, handling them as delicately as I could to not injure or kill them.

That when I noticed the crustaceans on the other plate were trying to get onto the table as well. I was at my wits end, thinking there's no way I could undo the mess being created.

And that's when I woke up.

the problematic motorbike ride

I was out on my motorbike for a ride. It was a Saturday morning ride with "CoBAM" (ie City of Belfast Advanced Motorists). We were midway through the ride, at a break, when my "observer" (basically the person I was paired with for my ride) asked me a few questions about the bike. Like when were the tyres, brakes, etc serviced. He asked me to press the front brake lever all the way in, and to my surprise, I was actually able to! I told him that's weird and has never happened before. He asked me to press the brake hose with my hand. Strangely enough, the brake hose was soft and squishy, and when I pressed it, it was more like a rubber garden hose than a brake hose! He said that's the problem, there's air in the brake hose. He said the brake should be bled and topped up with fresh hydraulic oil. I explained the braking system of my bike, that it has a combined braking system, and that the brake bleeding procedure is a complex 5-step process that needs to be repeated multiple times to work. Also, I didn't have any of the tools for it.

I suggested simply topping up the front brake system, and squeezing out the air, instead of bleeding the whole system, as a quick fix to be able to ride the bike till I got home. I had a screwdriver on my keychain (fun fact: that keychain was purchased in August 2021, when my previous bike's rear brake had jammed locked, and purchased the screwdriver-keychain as it was the only suitable tool available at the petrol pump bang opposite where the bike had jammed!). Opened the reservoir and it was completely dry. 

I walked to the nearest petrol pump and purchased a bottle of hydraulic fluid, and filled the reservoir full. Then closed the reservoir and we both tilted the bike to the right to give it the best chance of draining down. The plan was when the bike was tilted, I'd pump the rear brake pedal, which would pump the front brake system, from the opposite end to the lever, forcing air out and pulling hydraulic fluid in. Unfortunately, we tilted the bike too far and it actually tipped over - right on to me!

Thankfully I was not completely pinned down and I was able to wriggle out without any injury - we then got the bike upright, and decided to try a different approach.

And that's when my alarm went off, and I woke up - an hour before I was supposed to head out on my Saturday morning CoBAM ride!

Thankfully, no technical issues on the ride, but I must admit I was a little nervous when I performed the "rolling brake test" as I headed down the driveway!

ps: I forgot to note this earlier, but in my dream there was also a drawing pin stuck right in the centre of my bike's brand new front tyre! I remembered it as I walked past my bike in the driveway today, and felt the urge to check the front tyre!

Are we teaching programming wrong?

A YouTuber's channels ("Dave's Garage" and "Dave's Attic") frequently leads me down a bit of tech nostalgia as he's very much into retro tech but in a much more accessible way than most Youtubers do. He also responds on video to some comments on his videos, and has even responded to mine a couple of times, so I do like his stuff.

Anyway, one of his videos sparked a discussion about how people learned programming in the past and how constraints helped people learn better. And my comment reminded me, I still remember the actual hex dump of my first ever assembly/machine language program, 30 years later!

The story behind it is weird: in 1996, my dad brought us our first home computer. It was a 286 with 1mb RAM and a 40MB hard disk. It was loaded with MS-DOS 6.22, Windows 3.0 and a few random things (Dbase 4 and WordStar 7 as I was learning those in school) and Microsoft Qbasic.

At some point, dad had picked up a "MS-DOS 5.0 User guide" and "MS-DOS 3.0 Programmer's guide" from a "raddiwala" (ie a scrap shop/recycling shop). Both books were wildly outdated in 1996/1997 but as I felt like I had already exhausted the possibilities of what could be done using QBasic, I lapped up and assimilated the knowledge contained in both those books very eagerly. My only problem: I had no way to put them into practical use! I lacked access to an assembler, and before the days of the internet, I didn't even have access to a way to get one! However, I figured a workaround, a way to make a start.

MS-DOS 5.0 onwards contained a tool "debug.exe" (the Microsoft debugger) which allowed debugging of running executables. Buried in all of its functionality, it had the capability to overwrite code manually using x86 assembly. So I loaded a random executable in the debugger, and overwrote the code with my own program. Once done, I used the hex dump functionality to take the binary representation of what I had just written - and wrote it literally on pen and paper. Yep, this was back in the days before copy-paste and screenshots!

I then wrote a QBasic program to create a binary file, which I could then execute and test. And it worked!

The whole process was so long and tedious that the hex dump of that program is etched into my own non-binary memory. It's all of 2 bytes, which makes it easier to remember, but still, here it is (in Hexadecimal):

CD19

It's so weird that I actually remember it so literally, that I had to double check that I indeed remember it correctly - and I do. I remember it so literally that I had to actually convert 19 in hex to decimal (ie 25) to know what to input into the online assembly tool!

This is the sort of effort that definitely etches things into your memory. I don't remember any other two bytes I've "composed" myself. So yeah - my first ever assembly program, and it was written without a proper compiler because I didn't have one.

Thankfully my cousin Ted was into programming and he had MASM and TASM, and I managed to get them on floppy disks (he had a Pentium-100 running Windows 95, absolutely blazing for the time and for me!). And so my second assembly program was written on a real compiler.

ps: if anyone is curious, the assembly for my first program is "int 25", the execution of which triggers a software interrupt that's handled by the IBM BIOS as the first step of the boot process - basically, initiate a software reboot! it needs to be in a ".com" file as ".exe" files need a header which I obviously didn't know how to write!