Weekly – 2025-01-04

Just wrapped two weeks in Northeast India and man, it was exactly what I needed. Finally got that mental break, even though work kept buzzing in my pocket. Everything was manageable until the last day when a work call suddenly appeared and certain someone was mad that I worked.

Got a proper trip post brewing in my head – lots to share about the food, places, and some wild stories.

Watched

Our vacation watching habits were a mess. Started with “Laid” on Jio Cinema, got freaked out by “Squid Game S2”, then crawled back to “Laid”. Here’s the thing about “Laid” – it’s either the most brilliant satire or the worst show ever made. The clichés are so thick you could cut them with a knife, but maybe that’s the point? Still can’t tell.

Read

Zero progress on vacation, but before I left, I tried getting into Sally Rooney’s “Intermezzo”. Made it about 30 pages before calling it quits. Everyone raves about her writing, but something about the style just didn’t click. Maybe it’s the sparse punctuation, or maybe it’s how every character seems to think in the same voice. Either way, it’s back on the shelf.

My Kindle’s now giving me guilt trips about my reading streak.

Side Projects

  1. cuppadata.com
  • Been ghosting this project during vacation
  • Have a bunch of ideas to make it stickier
  • Next up: Actually building that feature everyone’s been asking for
  • Note to self: Stop planning, start coding
  1. New Utility Tool
  • This one’s still just living in my notes
  • Could be genuinely useful if I stop procrastinating
  • Next up: Time to write that spec and validate if it’s worth building

Next Up

  • Going vegetarian because two weeks of Northeast meat dishes have me waddling
  • Getting my bike out of hibernation. Pretty sure I’m lugging around an extra 5kg of vacation weight
  • Finally writing that trip post before the memories get fuzzy

Learned

Had my mind blown by how languages in Meghalaya work. A pharmacy isn’t just called a pharmacy – it’s literally “the place where we get medicines.” While this kind of descriptive naming isn’t unique to Meghalayan languages (looking at you, Tamil’s “distant-speaking” for telephone), what’s fascinating is how it’s their go-to method for naming pretty much everything.

The kicker? It might be because Khasi and Garo didn’t have written scripts until the 1840s. When you’re explaining new things purely through speech, you naturally end up describing what they do. It’s like their entire vocabulary evolved around the principle of “show, don’t tell”. Pretty neat rabbit hole to fall into during the trip.

This is also a twitter thread – x.com/unitechy/status/1875055454390554853

Back to reality this week. Time to turn all these “planning to” into “doing”.