Recently, I participated in a 10k running event called 12th August Half Marathon 2024, also called “Run for mom“. It is organised on the Thai mother’s day every year on the birth day of Queen Sirikit, the Queen Mother of Thailand. The event is held at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Center also bearing her name. It was my fourth 10k in Bangkok.
In previous runs one of my main problems was getting transport to the venue so early in the mornings. However, thanks to the motorcycle, it was not a problem this time.
The Run
Queen Sirikit National Convention Center
The run was very well organised and started on time. This run also attracted some important people, including the governor and a handful of ambassadors. Coming from India, it was weird to watch them running with regular people and no security around.
The run was quite fun because we had to go over 3 flyovers and the last 2 had a view of the river, although it was a bit too dark.
Queen Sirikit National Convention Center
The Statistics
12 August Half Marathon 2024 10k statistics
I did slightly better than the last run, but still could not break the 1 hour barrier.
12 August Half Marathon 2024 10k SplitsHR Zones in 12 August Half Marathon 2024 12 August Half Marathon 2024 10k Heat Map
I made very good time for the first 5K, but kind of died after that.
12th August Half Marathon 2024 10k participation medal12 August Half Marathon 2024 10k participation medal
Keeping in mind that I am not getting younger, I don’t think my performance will get significantly better anymore.
However, turning 40 next year, I would be among the youngest in the next age bracket.
This was also probably my watch’s last 10k, as it is at the end of its legs.
This article is about how my friends became NRIs and PIOs and went from decent people to being the biggest pricks ever. To start off with, some definitions:
NRI – Non-Resident Indian. Basically an Indian living abroad while still holding Indian citizenship. Prick Level 1.
PIO – Person of Indian Origin. Basically a person born an Indian citizenship, who has since taken up citizenship in another country. Prick Level 2.
I have already written about NRIs in general, this post is specifically how my friends turned into pricks once they moved abroad.
Prick 1
I have written about Prick 1 before. Even though our relationship was strained after he failed to get me into a Ponzi scheme, we used to text frequently and were friendly. Then came the big Australia PR exodus and he left to live in Australia and cut off more or less all contact with me. We still kept in touch, but it was one-sided. He replies to my texts, but has never contacted me on his own, not once in the last 10 years. But at least he replies, which is more than I can say about the next one.
Prick 2
Prick 2 and I used to be colleagues and really good friends. We frequently met outside work and our families knew each other well. We shared details of our personal lives with each other. Then came the big Australia PR exodus and he left to live in Australia and cut off more or less all contact with me. But unlike Prick 1, Prick 2 went one step further and refused to even respond to my messages. He does read messages, just doesn’t bother to reply. One day, out of the blue, I received a call from him saying that he’s in Delhi and if I wanted the honour of meeting him, I would have to come over within the next hour or lose the opportunity. What “friend”, calls someone to meet on the last day of their trip within a 1 hour time slot?
But still not the biggest prick in this list.
Also, Prick 1 and Prick 2 were friends with each other in India, too, now both live in Sydney but avoid each other at all costs.
Prick 3
To be honest, Prick 3 was a prick from the day he was born (Probably because he was from Chandigarh), but his prickliness touched new heights once he moved to Australia (I see a pattern here). He was my senior and a roommate in college and we lost touch afterwards. I made an effort to re-establish contact in recent years. Unfortunately, soon, he planned a trip to Bangkok and asked to meet. From the second I met him, his behaviour was grotesque. Below are some gem dialogues I got to hear
Scurvy I know you live in Thailand and that is nice and all, but you must make an effort to move to a developed country. There’s no comparison.
I worked on Wall Street for many years. You know, like in the movies.
This club in Bangkok weren’t letting us in, till we flashed our AU/US passports and at that point they fell on our feet.
I hate it when people call me Indian. I am Australian, not Indian.
There’s going to be rain tonight and I am afraid my pools may overflow (Proceeds to call wife to drain the pool many times).
You know I have 2 houses in Sydney.
You know I have 3 cars. One of them is 2-seater.
Ew, your locality feels like Pune.
Prick 4
Prick 4 is still a good friend of mine. But he is kind of a prick now. Prick 4 moved to UK many years ago and although he was not as bad as Prick 1 or 2 or 3, we sort of lost touch. This was till the day Prick 4 and his wife (who is also our friend) received their UK citizenships. That was the only time in many years he contacted me on his own ad had a proper conversation. He also claims not to remember much of his life in India including our time spent together.
Of course, not everyone changes this way. For every Prick, there are the decent ones who also live abroad and don’t have all the attitude in the world.
Recently I got to thinking why some NRIs and PIOs become pricks. Why do some Indians change so drastically once they leave the country? I can think of the following reasons:
Rising from a life in a garbage dump to living in a developed country overwhelms them so much, they lose their minds.
They like showing off their lifestyle to others and get a dopamine hit when people acknowledge it.
They went to show that they are better than others (especially the people still “stuck” in India).
To give you a bit of background on where this is coming from: I was into photography in the 2010s. To the point where I had a camera, multiple lenses and more assorted kit. Eventually I sold all of it, but I still like taking pictures today. This article is about how I struggled with photo sharing on the internet, especially recently. A timeline below, interspersed with completely unrelated photos:
As long as I remember, I have been a loyal user of Flickr. At first, I used to use it as a service to backup and store my photos and share them with family. With the advent of more private cloud storage services, I moved that function to OneDrive and eventually iClown. Still, I kept my Flickr around to share photos publicly.
For most of these 2 decades, I paid for a Flickr Pro membership, too. Although in the initial days it was not required, I paid to support the service and get rid of advertisements. Eventually, they put a 1000 photo limit for free accounts & I was forced to go Pro. Overall though, Flickr has been good to me. It has consistently surfaced my photos in search results and they have been used on almost hundred websites including Wikipedia.
Last year, I started to question why I was paying for this service. It is not like I was earning anything from sharing my photos, they were openly licensed to anyone who wanted to use them. So I decided to take the drastic step of moving away from Flickr.
I decided to make my own photo blog and host my photos on it. I chose WordPress as my platform because of how ubiquitous it is. As you may know, WordPress natively is not a photo sharing CMS, but there are plugins that can help. I decided to move away from the album format of Flickr and post my photos as part of posts.
I spent a lot of time sifting through my photos and narrowing them down to 2200 photos I deemed worthy of the blog.
It took me 6-7 hours of work everyday for a week to finally put everything up. Time consuming tasks include:
Setting the correct Title and Description for each photo
Setting the correct Caption and Alt Text for each photo
Geotagging photos where location information was missing
Devastated at having lost my blog because of one erroneous click, I decided I couldn’t go through with doing all that one more time and went back to Flickr. Of course, I had deleted my account already, so had to start from scratch.
It took me 6-7 hours everyday for a week to get everything posted on Flickr. Time consuming tasks include:
Setting the correct Title and Description for each photo
Geotagging photos where location information was missing
Sorting photos into albums
Adding photos into groups for visibility
It was nice while it lasted, but within a few weeks, I started to miss my photo blog. Two factors (in de ja vu format) led me to the next steps
Why am I paying for a Flickr Pro subscription when I am not earning anything from it?
Why am I relying on a 3rd party service when I can have my own photo blog.
So I went ahead and deleted my Flickr account, yet again.
Phase 4: Nov 2023 to December 2023 : Photo Blog Part 2
Then I had to go back and ask the people who has previously subscribed to my blog to subscribe again. Embarrassing as fuck. The honeymoon period lasted all of 2 weeks.
Eventually, I began to notice that the traffic on my photo blog was not as per my expectations. Eventually, I found out that search engines were not indexing my photos. In fact, Bing straight up blocked my domain. I request an appeal but it was denied.
After consulting with the wise people of Reddit, I came to the conclusion that WordPress is not good for photo SEO and nothing could beat Flickr when it came to indexing photos on search engines.
So I deleted my blog, yet again.
Phase 5: January 2024 to January 2024 : Flickr Part 3
On my third Flickr account, it took me 6-7 hours everyday for a week to get everything posted on Flickr. Time consuming tasks include:
Setting the correct Title and Description for each photo
Geotagging photos where location information was missing
Sorting photos into albums
Adding photos into groups for visibility
Voila! I had to wait a few weeks, but eventually my photos began to appear on search engines again.
It was nice while it lasted, but within a few weeks, I started getting disillusioned with Flickr. Two factors led me to the next steps
Why am I paying for a Flickr Pro subscription when Iam not earning anything from it?
Why am I relying on a 3rd party service when I can have my own photo blog.
So I went ahead and deleted my Flickr account, yet again.
Phase 6: April 2024 to May 2024 : Piwigo
This time I decided that I won’t use WordPress for my photo sharing, so did a lot of research and narrowed it down to Lychee and Piwigo. I couldn’t get Lychee installed, so decided to go with Piwigo. I immediately ran across a few problems
The interface was dated and the theme selection was limited
There was no SEO to speak of, even with plugins
Like all Open Source software (But unlike WordPress), it required a lot of tinkering in PHP to get it to work correctly .
Thankfully, I didn’t waste time posting 2200 photos, rather posted just 2 albums to see how they perform.
After waiting for a few weeks, I realised that my photos weren’t appearing on search engines and decided to scrap it.
Someone on Reddit recommended me Unsplash so I decided to use it. Again, thankfully, I only uploaded 2 albums. Unsplash is a beast when it comes to surfacing photos. I was receiving likes within minutes and had up to 100 downloads in 48 hours for 20 photos.
Unsplash seemed like a dopamine dream come true, until I read their licensing. Long story short, Unsplash lets anyone do whatever they want with your photos without requiring attribution. I may have been OK with it, till I read horror stories from photographers about their photos being used on other platforms, while being attributed to someone else. This was a deal breaker for me, so I deleted my Unsplash account.
Phase 8: May 2024 to June 2024 : Wikimedia Commons
By this time, I was dead tired of doing the same things over and over again, so I decided to take a step back and list down what I wanted and what I didn’t want:
I did not want to earn money from my photos.
I did not want to the dopamine fix of likes and comments.
I did not want to share personal photos and did not want an image storage platform.
I did not want to pay for hosting my photos.
I did want my photos to be indexed by search engines.
I did want my photos to be used freely by others, but with attribution.
When. I thought long and hard around the above requirements, the answer came to me. Wikimedia Commons, one of the most extensive media repositories ever.
I was already an occasional contributor to Wikipedia, I could just extend my contributions from articles to media. Many of my photos have already been uploaded to Wikipedia (and consequently wikimedia) by others, I just had to complete the collection.
It took me around 10 days, working 6-7 hours a day to put around 2200 photos to Wikimedia. Time consuming tasks include
Setting the correct copyright & license information for each photo
Setting the correct Title, Caption & Description for each photo
Assigning photos to the correct category (Quite tricky with nested and overlapping categories)
Assigning depictions to each photo
Finally, when it was done, I heaved a sigh of relief and promised myself not to do this all over ever again. Indeed, even if I wanted to, there’s no easy way to mass delete my photos from Wikimedia Commons.
In fact, once you upload photos, there’s no temptation (or a way) to see stats, likes or comments. Luckily, 1 month in, I don’t regret doing this.
Continuing my series, this is my latest road trip, to some scenic places in Nakhon Nayok province. The province of Nakhon Nayok is dotted with beautiful places, with more than 10 waterfalls. Covering all of them will take multiple trips, so I decided to do 2 places in this first trip:
This time, I used the lessons learnt from my previous road trip and did not have to stop many times.
It had rained the entire day and night before my trip, so I was a bit apprehensive about getting stuck in rain. Once again, I stated my journey on rain-soaked streets with BBC World Service in my ears.
Unlike Pattaya, heading out of Bangkok was a breeze. There was hardly any traffic and within 30 minutes, I was on the 6-lane highway 305 to Nakhon Nayok.
Highway 305 to Nakhon Nayok
Unlike the motorway to Pattaya, highway 305 is much more biker friendly and much less scary. In fact, after 50kms or so, it turns into a 4-line winding road running parallel to a Khlong. The entire route smelled of rain-soaked vegetation which I loved. Reminded me of early morning bicycle rides in Durgapur.
Highway 305 to Nakhon Nayok Adjacent to a Khlong
There are quaint little bridges all over the Khlong for people to cross.
On a bridge over Baan Khlong Malong
My motorcycle is on its second phase of running in, so I rode at a base speed of 70kmph with bursts up to 80kmph.
Wang Ta Krai National Park
First stop was Wang Ta Krai National park with a waterfall of the same name. You can ride your motorcycle a bit into the park.
Premises of Wang Ta Krai national park
I was surprised to see that cars, on the other hand, could go all the way in. Perhaps it is because of the horrible noise that Thai scooters make.
The waterfall is not very impressive; is a series of small falls over a long distance. Next to the gentle stream, you can see people picnicking.
Stream in Wang Ta Krai national ParkWang Ta Krai national parkStream in Wang Ta Krai national ParkPeople wading in the waters of Wang Ta Krai waterfallWang Ta Krai national Park
I spent an hour there and then moved on to my next stop.
Khun Dan Prakarn Chon Dam
The dam is only a short distance away and the last few kms are winding hilly roads which I loved to navigate. The dam itself is quite imposing.
Khun Dan Prakarn Chon Dam
I was happy to see some fauna there.
A pet dog at Khun Dan Prakarn Chon DamSoi dogs at Khun Dan Prakarn Chon Dam
After the dam, I went for a coffee to Nong Coffee, a modern cafe nearby.
Iced Espresso at Nong CafeNong Cafe
The trip back was as fun; I stopped only once for a bio-break. Also, unlike the last trip (where I couldn’t wait to get back, this time I was a bit sad as the distance to home wound down to zero.
Last week, something unthinkable happened. Apple finally allowed emulation of any and all OS on iOS and iPadOS. The intended purpose is to emulate retro Windows based games, which matches their recent trend of approval of gaming-system emulation apps. However, for me, it restarts a long-time hobby of running retro OSes purely for nostalgia and hobby purposes. This was not possible before because I don’t have a real computer, just an iPad. The first app to take advantage of this change of heart from Apple is UTM SE.
Now, UTM SE has been available on macOS and jailbroken iOS and iPadOS for quite some time, but this is the first time the app is officially available through the App Store.
Overview
The process to configure a new VM is much like most virtualisation apps out there. You use either an existing image or create a new one, select various parameters like RAM, HDD, CPU architecture, cores etc.
UTM SE: New VMUTM SE: Mount CD/DVD or Floppy imageInside UTM SE: Select Platform, CPU architecture, RAM and CPU CoresUTM SE: Select HDD Size
Your Bluetooth mice/keyboards can be mapped to the guest OS via USB or PS/2 emulation. For older OS (Pre Windows ME) which don’t have out of-box support for USB peripherals, you need to disable USB support for Mouse/Keyboard so that they are emulated as PS/2. Even touch gestures can be used in lieu of a mouse, although the experience is clunky.
UTM SE: Switch between USB or PS/2 for mouse and keyboard
Another useful feature is that you can map a folder on your iOS/iPadOS filesystem to the guest machine allowing you to transfer files easily.
Select Shared Directory
Also, you can choose to include your VMs in your iCloud backups.
For me, the performance is roughly similar to my first Celeron 400Mhz computer. Which, when compared to the 4×3.49Ghz high-performance cores on the Apple M2 means there is an approx 35x performance penalty for emulation. No wonder the “SE’ in UTM stands for “Slow Edition”.
Also, switching to another app causes UTM to suspend the VM after a few minutes. None of this is UTM’s fault, but needless restrictions from Apple to stop iPads from cannibalising Mac sales.
Also, the iPad screen locks after inactivity, which I think is on UTM, because apps (especially games) have been able to keep the screen unlocked through inactivity.
But the good thing is, you can resume from where you left off. Also, you can run multiple windows of UTM itself, even with multiple windows mapping to multiple monitors on the guest.
Battery usage is also extremely high because of the inefficiencies.
As you can see from my last post, I bought a new motorcycle. Since then, I had been bitten by the wanderlust bug. My hands had been continuously itching to take the motorcycle on the highway. So, the soonest I could, I decided to drive from Bangkok to Pattaya Beach.
I have done this trip before, but that motorcycle was not suitable for highway riding and I wanted to do it again, the right way.
Bangkok to Pattaya
On the morning of the ride, I woke up to find the city soaked in rain overnight, so I left with caution. The way out of the city was painful with morning traffic, but outside, I opened up the throttle a bit.
Since the motorcycle is new, I had to follow running-in restrictions. I drove at a steady 60kmph with occasional 10-20 second bursts up to 70kmph. At this speed, I could not keep up with traffic on the motorway, so had to drive on the frontage road.
Frontage road at Bang Phli
The motorway from Bangkok to Pattaya is highly developed, with 22 lanes (8 lanes on the upper level, 8 lanes in the lower level and 6 lanes frontage) in most places. There are restrictions on where motorcycles can be driven, so need to pay close attention to Google Maps, which is mostly correct as long as you select the motorcycle option.
On a bridge over Khlong near Bang PakongNear a lake at Bang PakongAt a PTT station
Stopped to take breaks many times to give the engine a break (and also sneak in some photos). Was quite impressed with the low-end performance of the engine. Gear shifts were mostly not required, as the bike can thump its way up in 5th gear from as low as 35kmph.
In Si Racha district, the view is quite nice as the road passes in between various hills.
Near a hill at Si Racha
Pattaya Beach
Because I stopped so many times, it almost took me 3 hours to get there. Once there, I spent some time chilling at Pattaya beach.
At Pattaya beachIn front of Pattaya BeachAt Pattaya Beach
After getting my feet wet, I went to a cafe to drink some coffee and have a snack. It was typical below-average tourist fare.
Coffee at a cafe at Pattaya beachBruschetta at a cafe at Pattaya beachView of Pattaya beach from a cafe
Pattaya to Bangkok
On the way back, I focused on making good time and only stopped at one place to take the below photo of the Bang Pakong river.
At a bridge over Bang Pakong river
On the way back, it only took me 2 hours to get back home.
Tripper
The Tripper proved its worth, as it provided very clear directions and I didn’t have to stop and look at my phone (which was nested safely away in my saddle bag) even once. On the 3 hour ride to Pattaya, my phone lost 23% charge, with tripper navigation as well as audio streaming (And the occasional photo).
Also, found a weird bug in that the tripper’s display and my polarised sunglasses seem to have the same polarisation plane when I am seated normally, which completely blanks out the tripper. If I move my head 10 degrees to the left or right or rotate my head 10 degrees clockwise or counter-clockwise, the display comes back.
This happens only with polarised glasses, regular sunglasses work fine.
Lessons Learnt
Learnt the below lessons which I plan to apply to my next trip(s).
Need to buy thick handlebar grips, as the factory default is too thin and cramps up my hands.
Always wear AirPods even if I don’t want to listen to anything. Active (and worst case Passive) Noise Cancellation is worth it to protect ears from traffic and wind noise.
Always wear sunglasses during the day time, even if it is not too bright, to protect eyes from the wind (I cannot, for the life of me, see through any helmet visor And keep it lifted up).
The USB charger is quite slow. So rather than wait for battery to drain and then charge the phone (Phone gained only 11% on the 3 hour trip back on charge, with navigation and audio), it is better to keep it connected from the beginning.
This trip also pushed my motorcycle over the first stage of running in, next trip should be faster.
The Covid-19 pandemic was hard for everyone, but especially for the movie industry. I, too, missed going to cinemas to watch newly released movies. Below, I write about my post-pandemic cinema experience.
Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)
My Expectations : None My Rating : 6/10
This was the first movie we saw after pandemic restrictions lifted and also the first movie we saw in Bangkok. It was good that I went in with no expectations because the movie was dull and forgetful. I remember nothing of what was in it.
No Time to Die (2021)
My Expectations : None My Rating : 7/10
This was the first Bond movie I saw in years and it didn’t disappoint. I enjoyed watching it, but don’t remember the details of what happened in it.
This was my first MCU movie since Endgame and it delivered as per my expectations. It was entertaining, but relied too much on the appearance of Doctor Strange and the previous Spider-Men to carry the movie. Don’t regret watching it, though.
Doctor strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)
Although Doctor Strange was a bad sign for what was to come, I hoped Taika Waititi would make a good movie. But no. What a bore.
Avatar : The Way of the Water (2022)
My Expectations : 4/10 My Rating : N/A – Left in 30 minutes
I didn’t know why I even went to watch this movie when I hated Part 1 and already had such low expectations from Part 2. Never again.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)
My Expectations : 7/10 My Rating : 9/10
The best movie I have seen in years and the only MCU movie I enjoyed. I watched it twice in the cinemas and once on Disney+. Deserves a separate post.
Oppenheimer (2023)
My Expectations : 9/10 My Rating : 6/10
Being a fan of quite a few Christopher Nolan movies and the hype surrounding this one, I had huge hopes. But the movie turned out to be only slightly above average. I would still have seen it, but wouldn’t have spent extra on IMAX Laser.
The Flash (2023)
My Expectations : 7/10 My Rating : 7/10
Time-pass movie. Just like spider-man, it relied heavily on the appearance of Keaton’s batman, Affleck’s batman and Clooney’s Bruce Wayne to carry it. Also an appearance from Nicholas Cage’s Superman.
Godzilla X Kong : The New Empire (2024)
My Expectations : 6/10 My Rating : 6/10
We went to watch this movie with very low expectations and weren’t disappointed. Mindless action.
Furiosa A Mad Max Saga (2024)
My Expectations : 9/10 My Rating : 7/10
I went to watch this one with very high expectations, but it couldn’t compare to Mad Max: Fury Road.
I did have my eyes set on this one, but after a test ride, I didn’t find its riding stance suitable for long highway rides. Coming from a long history with the RE Thunderbird, the natural progression would have been to buy an RE Meteor 350, but at first, I didn’t like the Meteor 350 I saw on Royal Enfield’s website (I found it too modern, especially the allow wheels and the powered coated engine) and I found the Super Meteor 650 too busy, so initially decided to buy the Classic 350.
2022 Royal Enfield Meteor 3502022 Royal Enfield Super Meter 650
Royal Enfield Classic 350
However, when I went to the showroom, I saw the new Aurora Blue variant of the Meteor 350 and fell in love immediately and decided to buy that one.
Royal Enfield Meteor 350 in Aurora Blue
Anyways, these are my views after 10 days/200km, specifically, comparing it to my previous motorcycles.
The Good
The engine is so refined, I can hardly believe it is a Royal Enfield engine. There’re hardly any vibrations and absolutely no clanking. I am so glad they removed the pushrods and replaced them with a chain and overhead cam system. Even with a reduced stroke, the bike pulls quite well at low RPMs.
There’s still the trademark thumping. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the exhaust actually sounds good/better than the completely muted Thunderbird Twinspark. The exhaust-to-engine noise ratio is vastly improved. When cruising at constant speed, you can hardly hear the engine, only the soft, bass-rich exhaust.
I really like the dual-tone design, the chrome parts and the overall retro look compared to the regular Meteor 350. I love the spoke wheels, although that does mean giving up on having tubeless tyres.
The new rider seat is quite comfortable with a subtle but useful back-rest.
The LED headlamp is quite nice and illuminating at night.
The Tripper is useful, but a bit limited. I will dedicate a separate section for the Tripper.
Overall switchgear feels refined and comfortable to use.
The USB port for charging is very useful.
I didn’t like how the windshield looks, but I found it immensely helpful at moderate-high speeds. Allows me to keep my helmet visor open.
The Neutral
I am not entirely sure I prefer the new digital cluster as compared to analog dials. I don’t really like or hate it.
I don’t care for the ECO indicator or the gear indicator.
Because of the refinement, the engine feels the same every time I ride, which is different from the carburettor Thunderbirds I was used to, which felt different based on temperature, humidity etc.
This is my first motorcycle with a rear disc brake. The Dual-channel ABS is nice to have. The brakes do feel a bit mushy compared to what I am used to, though.
The Bad
I really-really miss the tachometer. I won’t forgive Royal Enfield for removing it.
They removed the kick starter to simplify the engine design. This means if the battery dies, you are screwed.
The engine does get hot during start-stop traffic in the city and could have benefitted from liquid cooling. However, unlike the carburettor motorcycles, it does not cause the Idle RPM to runaway or cause knocking during acceleration, thanks to the ECU.
The fuel level indication is wonky.
Meteor 350 at Bangchak Bang Na
The Tripper
Tripper on the Royal Enfield Meteor 350
The Tripper is a pseudo-navigation system developed by Royal Enfield. Here are my thoughts on it:
The tripper connects to the Royal Enfield app on your phone and receives instructions from your phone, hence is dependant on it. However, unlike doing navigation directly on the phone, using the tripper uses much less battery on the phone itself (I measured 6-7% drain per hour on my phone, all inclusive).
It uses Google maps data, so navigation is quite accurate. Supports live re-routing and previewing multiple routes before starting the trip. Has the regular Google Maps options to exclude things like tolls, ferries, highways etc.
At first, I struggled to understand tripper’s instructions and found myself stopping and reaching for my phone. However, once you make an effort to understand the symbols, it feels quite useful. I am now forcing myself not to look at my phone.
This has also increased my directional awareness of and I find myself paying more attention to the road and signs instead of my phone.
Meteor 350 at a pit-stop at Nonthaburi
Technical comparison with Previous Motorcycles
Here’s a comparison of specifications of different motorcycles I have had over the years (All single cylinder):
The more I live & see what’s going on around me, the more I am convinced that we humans suck big time and don’t deserve this planet. Let’s look at why:
US has sent billions of dollars worth of aid to Palestinians in Gaza. So noble. But on the other hand, US is also the biggest supplier of armaments to Israel which kill the same Palestinians. I mean, what’s the point even? This is so counter productive. Either just kill them or just let them live. Why this game?
Modern buildings cost millions to build. It also takes millions to make missiles which will eventually destroy the building. How counter-productive is all this? Why build something only to build something else to destroy the first thing?
I won’t even talk about climate change in detail, because that is a whole new topic in itself. Most of the planet will be uninhabitable in less than a century, but we won’t stop there and are planning to colonise other planets. Who gave us the right? Must be the colonisation behaviour we inherently have. Some cunts even think it is more productive to terraform Mars than to save our own planet.
This behaviour of humans is not even new. We have been the most selfish species ever, for millennia and other species have always suffered from it. Because of this, I think this behaviour is inherent in most humans and humanity as a species is flawed and cannot improve.
This is Part 2 of my previous post listing songs I consider timeless. I don’t claim that these songs are the best in any way; is just that I keep coming back to them every now and then, even after all these years.
These songs are in no specific order. I may be obsessed with one of them today and with some other tomorrow.
Also, like before, I actually listened to each song and then wrote about it. For any song where I did not find anything to write about, I discarded from this list.
The first time I heard this song was during the end scene of The Matrix and was immediately hooked. Shamelessly political, this song has killer guitar riffs and bass track. I listen to it at least few times a week when I run and also otherwise.
This is one among the many songs Jaideep Singh (JD) introduced me to, when I went to the tiny room he lived in. Although I never was a Bruce Springsteen fan (still am not), this song hit a note with me. I found the song melodious with great bass.
The FLV version of the below video was one of the few videos I kept on my Nokia E50.
This song also reminds me of my early courtship period with my (now) wife in Nagpur.
This is undisputedly one of the best songs ever written, period. The beautiful lyrics are only matched by the haunting, winding guitar work by Mark Knopfler.
The entire song is one beautiful never-ending guitar solo.
This song reminds me of my friend Vipin Panwar, whom I sent this song as an mp3 after a night shift and he (said) he got hooked. I also used to listen to this song a lot when driving around Delhi in my i10.
This song starts with a killer bass track and I love the lyrics. Although I did listen to this song long ago, the one time I remember is when I couldn’t sleep all night and saw the Farewell 1 Tour: Live from Melbourne concert while wondering if I was playing it too loud and would wake up my landlords downstairs.
I heard this song when watching the RoboCop TV Series. It took quite some effort on y part to find this song on Kazaa after which I asked a fiend to write it on a CD for me.
The song is not that popular and doesn’t vein exist on Apple Music. But for some reason, I like it and keep coming back to it, especially if you listen to th lyrics from the point of view of someone whose brain has been removed from his body and fit into a robot.
This is probably the first song in this list that I ever listened to and as such, is special to me.
I first listened to this song when one of my father’s friends in Durgapur gifted me my first Aiwa Walkman. The Man-Machine cassette came free with the Walkman and since I was not in a position to buy new ones, I listened to it over and over again. This whole genre was new to me and I was fascinated by all the computer generated sounds. I remember lying in bed listening to this song with my eyes closed, imagining the aforementioned neon lights.
I love listening to this song at night to wind-down. The song is slow-paced and soothing to the ears. It would be a great song to fall asleep to, if it wasn’t so beautiful.
When I lived in Panchkula, I had a friend Vishal Chopra who I have mentioned before. His family had returned from Canada, and as such he had lots of gadgets, including a Playstation. He had a game called Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012 which we played often (In black n white, because his system was NTSC but the disc was PAL). This song appeared on one of the levels. Of course, not being exposed to western music much at that point in time, I didn’t understand what they were singing, but I made up lyrics in my own mind.
I think everyone already knows this song and needs no introduction. Although I won’t call this song “great”, it is iconic enough to keep listening to over the years.
This song has 3 great guitar solos (the first one of which, David toggles the pickup switch mid-way). The rest of the song is also easy-going and nice.
This song, too, reminds me of leaving Someplace Else late at night.
I also remember going crazy when Parikrama covered this song when they played at YCCE, Nagpur.
It is also one of the few Pink Floyd songs I could listen with my non-rock listening friends.
This is just a nice soothing song that I love that I didn’t hear till recently because it is so obscure. I also tried watching the movie it was a soundtrack of, but couldn’t tolerate it.
Back in college in Nagpur, when I was falling in love with my (now) wife, we chose the worst rated movie as our first movie to watch together. But purely based on the above-mentioned falling-in-love phase, this movie and this song left a deep mark on me. I even read the lyric translations to understand what the song was about.
I was introduced to Avial by my friend Goru, while we were going to attend Sonal’s rural wedding at Saharanpur. While I found most of their stuff average, I really liked Ayyo, even though I couldn’t understand a single word of what they were singing.
I had listened to this song many times in college, but the first time this song really left a mark on me was when Arka came to visit us (We were still in final year and he had already passed out). He had one of those Sony Walkman series phones and he asked me to try the sound quality. The opening bass notes blew me away and I listened to this song from a whole new angle for the first time.
The first time I listened to this instrumental was when I watched the Live at Pompeii video. The double bass track blew me away and I was hooked.
What I associate most with this song is going on solo motorcycle rides to Katol and other places around Nagpur. And as such, I remember this song with the background of my motorcycle engine thumping. I remember driving on the highway with my phone in my pocket and the earphones in my ears and wind whistling by.
This song reminds me of the time when we had just moved to Bangkok, living in quarantine and my daughter was obsessed with Teen Titans Go! Anyways, I love the song and listen to it often.
The most recent song in this list.
Time for some Analytics
After this interesting experiment of making this list, I wanted to also analyse my preferences from different angles.
Decade
Number of Songs
1960s
1
1970s
13
1980s
3
1990s
11
2000s
2
2010s
2
Favourite Songs by Decade
Looks like I mainly like songs from the 70s and 90s. Wonder what happened in the 80s?
Language
Number of Songs
English
28
Instrumental
1
Punjabi
1
Malayali
1
Bengali
1
Favourite songs by Language
Genre
Bands
Number of Songs
Progressive Rock
Pink Floyd
9
Rock
Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, The Doors, Dire Straits, Joe Walsh, B.E.R.
9
Alternative Rock
The Cranberries, Avial, Vertical Horizon
4
Heavy Metal
Iron Maiden, Metallica
2
Folk
Arnob, Rabbi Shergill
2
Heavy Metal/Rap
Rage Against the Machine
2
Grunge
Nirvana
1
Heartland Rock
Bruce Springsteen
1
Electronic
Kraftwerk
1
Ska Punk
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
1
Favourite songs by genre and band
Genre
Bands
Number of Songs
British
Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, Iron Maiden, Dire Straits
13
American
Eagles, Nirvana, Metallica, The Doors, Rage Against the Machine, Bruce Springsteen, Joe Walsh, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Vertical Horizon
