Tripping with Google!

The biggest international sporting event the FIFA World Cup 2018, ended this week. After an absolute delight of an match, which showed why the two finalists deserved to be there, it was France who takes the glory. While the Fifa World cup provided football fans with some world class football, major upsets, surprising results and all in all entertainment, for me the world cup gave an opportunity to travel. What started as wishful thinking and hopeful plans to go experience the world cup live in Russia late last year, turned into one of the most memorable trips for me. The world cup served as a catalyst to start planning a trip, and hopefully finish some of the things on my bucket list, and although every place I visited is worthy of a separate post about how it enthralled us with spectacular views, majestic buildings and gave us many unforgettable memories, I wanted to write about the one silent companion, that helped earlier in planning the trip, streamlining stuff during the trip and storing the memories so that they are truly unforgettable.

Google and its suite of applications, have come a long way over the years and me being a fanboy of Google have been watching them develop from individual standalone apps to a full suite of intermingled applications that have made them an indispensable part of my daily life. I realized how much of a help Google has been during the preparations for the trip and the actual trip, so I thought it would be a good idea to write about these apps and how they helped me. Also I would like to point out, that Google Search was obviously a great help for the planning and execution of the trip, as that is the de-facto entry point of the internet when you are looking for information, and I would be focussing on the specific apps and how they helped me.

Google Flights

Google Flights

Starting out with one destination in mind, which was Russia, as the world cup was being hosted there and a fixed duration for our trip we started with looking at options in and around Russia. Google flights does an excellent job of aggregating various airlines and makes shortlisting flights and deciding on a travel itinerary based on flight availability and ticket costs a simple task. It’s elegant design, the interface overlayed on Google maps and helpful suggestions let you easily compare various destinations and focus on the most relevant things about the flight, the duration and the cost of the flights. Also, like a good aggregator should Google does not push you into booking one flight over the other, it simply shows the various available options and redirects you to the airline’s website for the actual booking of the flight.

Gmail

With so many bookings done, it was important to have all the tickets and various reservations handy and quick to access specially if you have a cluttered Inbox. Since I was using my gmail Id for all of these, it was super simple to keep all these mails together in a single place. I have been a user of gmail almost since it launched and am used to storing important emails by starring them. A nifty feature that Gmail provides is to have stars of different types, that you can cycle through as you click on the star icon.

So I simply assigned the blue star to all mails I thought I would need to access until the trip. The mails clould now be easily accessed under the Starred mails tab (both on the web and the mobile app), and since I don’t star mails very often all of these were bunched together neatly so I didn’t have to search for the right mail.

One could also just as easily assign a separate label to all these trip related mails and have them accessible in the same way as starred mails.

Additionally, the mobile Gmail app has an option to customize notifications and syncing for each label (including  Starred) individually, enabling which allows you to access these mails even if you have no internet connectivity.

Accomodations

This is one area where google is lacking. You could use Google maps to search for hotels around an area, but the results are largely unsatisfying and the reviews etc. hardly dependable. Here sites like booking.com and AirBnB shine and do an excellent job with options, pricing and relevant information. 

Google Trips

Google Trips

This is when the magic of the Google ecosystem really starts showing. Combining its knowledge of you, google maps and the wealth of information available on the internet, this app lets you plan your trip to the minutest detail before the actual trip. With the tickets and accommodations booked, and the mails residing in your inbox, the Google Trips app automatically detects your upcoming trips and presents you with a nice timeline view of all your upcoming and past trips (Side Note: If your trip/cities are not detected automatically, you can always manually add trips in the app). The app then continues to provide a plethora of information about each of the cities in your trip. It pulls up information about your reservations and accommodations and also provides suggestions on Things to Do and places to visit in the city. You get information on places to eat, travel tips for the city, pre made day plans etc inside the app. The best feature of the app for me was that it reminds you a couple of days before the trip to download offline maps of the cities, and all the above mentioned information available offline. A few clicks and you are all set without any worries about searching for wifi and or data when you travel to access this information.

Google Maps

With so much information available, you realize that you can’t possibly visit everything being suggested in the time you have, so now you have to shortlist places that you want to see. The easiest way to do that I found was to simple create a list on Google maps, and start saving each of these places into the list. A couple of taps for each place and you are good to go. What’s more is that these places automatically show up inside the Google Trips app under the Saved places for each trip and are available offline.

The next thing to do is to save offline areas (which if you use Google trips, are suggested to be downloaded automatically). Saving areas offline, allows you to search for most places offline and also see the driving route/directions to these places. This comes a lot in handy when you are walking around in the city from place to place specially in places where you don’t speak the language and asking someone for directions is tough.

While traveling, maps was the one app that I kept checking constantly as after saving places to a list on the map, it allowed us to check which of the places are in our current vicinity and then plan our route/timing accordingly. With Uber and Ola cabs becoming mainstream we have grown quite accustomed to using Google maps for navigation while driving. The maps app shines for other modes of transportation as long as you have data. In a country like Russia, where the alphabets are different the usual english alphabets that we are used to, the direction to go from one place to another via the metro/buses was a life saver. You could easily open maps, let it guide you to the nearest station, know the next arrival time of your intended mode of transportation, know when to get off and walk down to your destination following the directions on the map.

Google Now

Google promotes google now as an assistant that surfaces information that you need, when you need it and I have to admit it does a neat job of doing so. Whether it is a reminder to leave for the airport to reach in time for your flight, or your boarding pass as you enter the airport. The time back home if you are in a different time zone, the weather forecast of your current location and the exchange rate of the currency are all available in one swipe so you don’t have to guess anymore. Google Now has a way of being present with information that you never really thought you’d need, but now that you have it you realize that it actually helped.

Google Translate

When traveling to a non english speaking country, not knowing the language can be a real problem. From reading the items on the menu, reading signs on the metro station, asking someone for directions or simply striking up a conversation with the cute girl/guy you saw at the restaurant, Google Translate is a life saver. With its feature that allows downloading the languages (multiple) that you might need, you can use translate phrases back and forth without worrying about having internet connectivity. The camera can be used to point at signs and see the translated text in-place on the image. We used this feature a lot to translate signs/menus on many of the roadside vendors and to decide which ice cream flavor we wanted to have.

Lastly, the feature that impressed me the most was the conversation feature, which only works with internet connectivity. We could just turn it on and speak normally in english to the person in front of us and the app reads out the translated message in almost real time. It then detects the other person speaking and translates their response back to you in english. Almost felt like a normal conversation between two people speaking different languages, no wonder they say Technology is a great unifier of the people.

Google Photos

Is it really a trip if you don’t click a tonne of photos? But unfortunately, the photos we click usually are never shared with everyone and are slowly forgotten buried under the countless selfies  and/or Whatsapp forwards in your phone’s gallery. Google photos changes all that. With auto backup enabled over wifi, you can click photos to your heart’s content and rest assured that all the photos would be uploaded to the cloud the instant you connect to your hotel wifi when get back home that day. Google provides free unlimited storage for photos up to a resolution of 2048×1960, which is more than enough for the casual traveling photographer.

The photos app then harnesses the power of Google awesome AI and ML tools, to automatically pick up the best photos you have clicked, edit them, apply effects and present you with ready to share images. In addition it usually makes a nice video with a slideshow of the highlights of your day/trip with catchy background music. These videos are a great way to share with someone the highlights of your trip, and all of this happens without you even raising a finger.

By the end of the trip you realize you have so many photos scattered around multiple devices and with Google photos since the images are already backed up on the cloud it’s again just a couple of taps to create a shared album where all your friends can simply add their photos so that you never lose a single captured moment and all of them are available in a single common album.

Photos not on a mobile device, like from a digital camera can be uploaded to the same album easily from the desktop app or the website and those also get the Google treatment of auto enhancement.

One feature that I would like to see in Google photos is the ability to selectively share stuff from the same album with different groups of people, since that currently requires creating separate albums for each group, and copying the images into each of those albums.

Last but not the least, these are some of the apps that also can be useful when planning a trip

• Google Keep – For listing out things you need to pack for the trip, or taking quick notes whenever required.
• Google Lens – Gives an easy way to pull up information about what you see simply by pointing the camera at it.
• Google Play Music – Carry your favorite music with you anywhere, and with data being so cheap, you don’t even have to worry about storage space on your device since you can stream any song you are in the mood to listen.

 

In the end, these apps can help you along the way in planning the trip, but what makes such trips memorable are the experiences, the friends you travel with and the friends you make. No app can replace those, but these sure help you relax and not worry about the nitty gritty details of the travel, but rather focus on fully enjoying the place.

What are some of your travel hacks that you use while planning or during a trip? Feel free to post about those in the comments.

SWAT CATS!!

The following is probably the only thing that came out of the time spent in the CAT examination hall today.

 

 

Itne hafton se jo mein koshish kar raha tha usse.. padai kehte hai||

Ranbhoomi aur exam hall mein jo hota hai usse.. ladai kehte hai||

Shaadi mein jo bajti hai usse.. shehnai kehte hai||

Exam mein jab bajti hai to usse.. marai kehte hai||

Pehla sawaal dekh ke hosh udne ko.. hawa-hawaii kehte hai||

Paper ke beech jab neend aati hai usse.. angdai kehte hai||

Vaise to hajamat banane waale ko.. nai kehte hai||

Par pata nahin kyun 3.14159 ko log… pi kehte hai||

Kissi dost ke door jaane ko.. judai kehte hai||

Exam mein uski yaad mein muskurane ko… tanhai kehte hai||

 Paper ki rough sheets ki haalat ko.. safai kehte hai||

Exam ke baad bas logon se sawaal hi… sunai dete hai||

Aur aankhon ke saamne taare.. dikhai dete hai||

Exam mein ye sab sochne ko samay ki… bharpai kehte hai||

Doodh pe jamne waali cheez ko.. malai kehte hai||

Maike mein baithe pati ko… jamai kehte hai||

Gilli satah pe jo ugti hai usse… kai kehte hai||

Sarhad pe ladne waale ko… sipahi kehte hai||

Kalam mein ko dalti hai usse.. syahi kehte hai||

Result aane pe log jo khaate hai usse.. mithai kehte hai||

Kuch logon ke result ko to… machai kehte hai||

Eid pe jo banti hai usse.. sewai kehte hai||

Sabhi log phir usse… badhai dete hai||

Tab hum jaison ki haalat jo dost samajh sakke unhe… bhai kehte hai||

Chain se jahaan phir sote hai usse.. charpai kehte hai||

Vo na ho to jo bichate hai usse.. chatai kehte hai||

Agar thand lage to log odh.. razai lete hai||

Itni dheere dheere to baatein.. Vajpayee kehte hai||

Aapke pairon mein jo chappal hai usse… Hawai kehte hai||

Usse jo ab meri hone waali hai usse.. pitai kehte hai||

Seeing my attempts at this examination over the years, I would say..

 

 I have a better chance of being struck by lightning  than being struck by inspiration.

 

P.S. Feel free to continue the lines in the comments if you feel so 😛 

 

Paranoid!!!

Weekends!!! A year on an average has 54 weeks and more or less 54 weekends. The two days of the weekend are something, most of us desperately wait for in the whole week. They provide a much needed break from the monotony of the working week, the 9-5 schedules, the rush of schools, colleges and offices. But sadly lately for me weekends are just another usual day in the week. I am myself shocked to see my declining enthusiasm for the weekends.

There was once a time when I would want nothing more than to have these two days of total laziness, the laptop propped open running sitcom after sitcom all weekend long. After the classes, tutorials and practicals of the week the weekend seemed like a welcome break. I used to wish that the week had more weekends and not just the two. One of the most appealing things of the weekend to me was that I could go out and do something and not spend the day staring at my computer screen. That is I believe the most enjoyable thing about lazing around, when you know that there is a better, more useful and maybe more important thing that you can spend your time on rather than lazing around. And that knowledge is what gives you the satisfaction of spending a day doing nothing.

Earlier in college, weekends were awaited since they provided an opportunity to sleep to my heart’s content, pull all nighters playing World of Warcraft and Dota, or just sit with friends and let the conversation flow on topics ranging from the outright silly to the downright serious, from the taste of the food in the mess (or lack thereof) to the latest discovery by the Hubble space telescope on the edge of the universe and everything else in between.  But above all else the weekend was the time to make plans with friends.

Plans to go to the nearby theatre to catch a movie or maybe plans to get out of the bustling city for a day or two with friends or maybe just sit at home and play cards. True, that most of the plans are never put into action and even if they are nothing happens according to the plan, thanks to my radiant AURA that a few people know about. But the point here is that some of them are executed and even though nothing goes as planned in the end it turns out be fun. At the end of it all, you don’t remember the serenity of the place you visited or even the exact nature of the things you did, but the time you spent with your friends and events that transpire are what you retain. Even though as Colonel Hannibal Smith said, “I love it when a plan comes together”,  recently I seem to dread making any plans.

The simple question of Where to Eat? or What to do? used to send my brain into overdrive, listing the possible choices so that a decision could be made collaboratively irrespective of from whom or where the question originated from. And in each collaboration some compromises are to be made, some decisions are to be taken. Maybe it is the inflexibility, the inability to find a middle ground that is getting to me. Or it might be the indecisiveness that bugs me. Maybe the decision is already made on a higher level and these are trivialities that no one wants to decide on. Maybe it is the lack of enthusiasm, in me for the weekends that I have seemed to develop. Or maybe I just have too much time on my hands to think and over think stuff. Whatever the reason might be, for now I’ll try to stop thinking of any plans and stick to doing what I do best, Nothing! At least that will save me the disappointment from the thought of wasting another weekend with an incomplete plan.

Doing nothing can be quite a task too though as I am unable to derive that pleasure out of that utter joblessness now. Lazing around is not so much fun with the knowledge that even in a parallel universe on the other edge of the space-time continuum you wouldn’t have anything better to spend your time on. And it is this knowledge that makes spending the 48 hours a truly miserable experience. I actually look forward to the working week when I have something on my plate which I can put off doing, by engaging myself in mindless activities like refreshing my Facebook wall ever 5 seconds or scanning my chat list to see who’s online and who’s not.

Guess I can always re-immerse myself into the black hole of computer gaming  so that I feel I have less time on my hands but then again it is really fun when you’re gunning down your friends in the virtual world rather than some stranger sitting on the other side of the planet. One thing that I know for sure is that having a lot of discontinuous free time is not something that one should wish for especially when everyone around you has got more than enough on their plates. Damn I miss my college days when plans were made and carried out on the spur of the moment and lazing around on the weekend was actually fun.

And Justice for All… After 30 Years

I started my foray into the world of rock music the way most 14-15 yr olds of this generation did. A push by from a friend, long hours spent listening to In the End on repeat and then gradually moving on to other bands and other genres.  But never in my journey of discovering did I imagine that such a day could be a reality. That, hoping to be in the crowd seen in the videos of the live concerts of these bands could actually turn to reality. To be a part of a big concert was unbelievable and the concert being of one of the best bands in the world was like icing on the cake.

October 30^th 2011 will be a memorable day of my life. We had reached Bangalore to be a part of a historic event a day earlier all excited. The day before the concert was a great day in itself spent catching up with friends, going back to college times and roaming around in the Rock Capital of India. You could see the city was already teeming with fans. Every place we went, wherever we turned our heads we could see people in the black metal tees, weird hairdo, cigarettes in hand, bags over the shoulder. Everywhere we could see the excitement for the next day.

The next day we got up really early; don’t know if it was from the hangover from the previous day or from the excitement for the coming day.  We had already heard about the debacle in Delhi, anyhow we made our way to Palace Grounds, the venue for the event, in the hope that the ‘Gods that Failed’ will not fail us in Bangalore. At the venue, we were greeted by a sea of black, 1000’s of people standing… waiting for the gates to open. We got into the crowd, as time went by the crowd behind us kept getting bigger and bigger and by the time the gates opened hours later the crowd had spilled onto the main road and even further. While waiting, we were ‘Killing Time’ cracking jokes and discussing about the possible set list for the night. As we moved forward, we realized that waiting was just the beginning. 1000’s of people trying to enter a queue where no more than two people could walk abreast left us ‘Broken, Beat and Scarred’. There were people shouting ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ but there every man was for himself squeezing and pushing their way into the queue through the bottleneck.  At last we the ‘Metal Militia’ crossed the bottleneck for a few moments of relief, as lines were already forming at yet another security point. Well after about 4 hours of queues we reached ‘The End of the Line’ and after clearing that last hurdle we were finally standing in front of the stage, people moving on about it making the last-minute checks and preparations.

‘It’s Electric’ is what describes the buzz of excitement in the crowd. Till now such a day was thought as ‘The Day That Never Comes’. 30 years the fans of the country had waited for this to happen. ‘The Unnamed Feeling’ we had in our hearts while we watched as the show began, waiting for the time ‘The Four Horsemen’ took the stage. First up was Inner Sanctum, a warm up to the actual heavy stuff that awaited us later. Guillotine, who were supposed to open in Delhi, but couldn’t do so, came up next. But unfortunately they could not hold the crowd for more than a few minutes, which started cursing, swearing and booing them off the stage. They were ‘The Thing that Should Not Be’ on the stage. Soon they were booed off the stage. The last act before we could see what we all came there for was by a Scottish Band, Biffy Clyro. I had heard a few of their songs before coming to the concert and thought them to be too damn lyrical to be opening that day. Either the YouTube videos can’t be trusted or such a stage brought out their best, or maybe we were prepared for the worst that something better they exceeded our expectations, whatever the reason they gave a great performance.

As they cleared the stage, the crew took to the stage to prep it for the main event and started setting up the TAMA drum set, clearing the stage of all the unnecessary props, setting up the microphones all over the stage. One of the crew asked the crowd on the left of the stage to clear up some space in the front and the centre. They wanted the area and the crowd to be safe, Safety First, is what he kept repeating but the crowd didn’t seem to pay him any attention. Another member of the crew was miming at the crowd and gesturing them to move to the side and create room. All this though at funny at first made ‘The Wait’ more agonizing. After about 7 hours standing last 5 of which had been without water, shouting, screaming and jumping for the most part, waiting for something we had been waiting for so long was really a pain. At one point the crowd became so anxious that they started cheering every time the track playing on the PA changed thinking the band had taken the stage. After about three or four times the same thing happened people stopped giving a damn about the track changes.

And then suddenly someone ‘Hit the Lights’ and on the stage were the very Gods we had come to witness, James Hetfield setting the rhythm with a shining white guitar in his hands, Kirk Hammet leading the crowd, Robert Trujilo setting up the ‘bassline’ and Lars Ulrich pumping everyone with energy like a dynamo on the drums. After that point the pain, tiredness, thirst, hunger was nothing, METALLICA had taken the stage and then ‘Nothing Else Matters’. They had taken the stage at first unnoticed like ’Creeping Death’ till the first beats of the music hit the crowd and then the crowd just went ‘Stone Cold Crazy’. Their music served as a ‘Fuel’ to charge our drained ‘Battery’ and everyone was jumping and head banging like they had never before. It was as if ‘Some kind of Monster’ had taken over each one of us, a ‘Cure’ given to all of our tiredness, the change in ‘Attitude’ of everyone there was really magical. After that we were just like puppets and Metallica the ‘Master of Puppets’, we swayed to their music, the whole crowd chanting the lyrics as ‘One’. Their performance was so blindingly spectacular that everything else that I had seen till now seemed to ‘Fade to Black’. Song after song they played tirelessly, while the crowd screamed and shouted ever increasingly. But just when I was wishing that they go on ‘All Nightmare Long’, James started introducing the band and thanking the crowd. They made their way off the stage leaving the crowd shouting for more. The crowd knew this wasn’t ‘The End of the Line’ and they waited for them to return. No one moved from their spot. They knew they wouldn’t leave the crowd unsatisfied. The crowd was hungry for more and they would not be ‘The Gods That Failed’. And they did not disappoint, they came back for an encore performance. This time they came back harder and with heavier stuff, prepared to ‘Seek and Destroy’ any iota of lethargy we might have had. Even ‘Cyanide’ could not kill our enthusiasm at this point. But as with all good things, ‘Sad, but True’ their performance had to end. They ended the show to non-stop clapping and hooting from the thousands of fans, still hoping that this was not the end, that they would come back again and play some more. When the band started throwing the guitar picks into the crowd we all knew it was over. The crowd did not want to stop clapping for Metallica who gave them ‘The Ecstasy of Gold’. As someone said, “It was an orgasmic night”, which had now reached its climax. As the band left the stage thanking the Indian people and with promises to be back here ‘soon’ people started the long walk to the exit from the grounds. As we made our way over the muddy grounds to the exit, still high from the awesome experience we had nothing else that we could think of, just let the feeling sink in, that Metallica actually played in India and I was one of the lucky ones to see them on stage. Even if everything about this night fades away…… THE MEMORY REMAINS!!!!!

P.S. If you still haven’t, check out the pics and set list here

The Memory Remains

A few lines that I tried to write when hit by the realization that the four awesome years of college were about to end, when I was filling my profile on Yaadein (IITR’s Online Farewell Scrapbook). Found these lines again as I was scrolling through my Facebook Timeline.

Vo khelte hue raat bhar jaagna
Phir subah subah class ke liye bhaagna||

Vo doston ke saath solani tak jaana
Phir pel ke SP mein khaana||

Vo bhawan day pe tabaahi machaana
Phir apni baari mein samaan chupana||a

Vo proffessors ka class mein sulaana
Phir uthake class se bahaar nikaalna||

Vo seniors ka fundae sunaana
Phir vohi juniors ko bataana||

Vo proffessors ko fatte sunaana
Phir logon ko kahani bataana||

Vo raat ko jaagna aur din mein sona
Kabhi kissi ko dekh ke kuch kuch hona||

Vo mess mein jaake vapas aa jaana
Phir canteen jaake jam ke khaana||

Ye pal hain jo umr bhar satayenge
Phir bhi aisi yaadein na hum bhul paayenge||

Those were the days my friend I thought they’d never end – Mary Hopkins!!!!

Ready, Set, Go

When Neil Armstrong first stepped on the new unexplored world on moon he quoted:

“That’s one small step for [a] man, a giant leap for mankind”

Now when I take my first step onto this blog world which is largely unexplored by me. It does not make even the slightest ripple in the fabric of the universe. Mankind might not even notice that another blog has joined into the millions that are published daily. But for one man it is a Giant leap.

Almost a month after I registered my blog, I am finally posting something on it. I would so, like to tell everyone that the delay was because I was exploring the various options on where to start my journey from, deciding which of the many blogging sites I should use. Should i go with Blogger, Google’s widely used blogging site or with WordPress which seems to me to be, more cleaner and feature rich. But the truth is that the delay was not Well you can see what I decided on finally. But that was not the result of any research or thinking. I just simply closed my eyes and picked one.

When I first thought about starting a blog (a few years ago) I thought of it to be no big deal. What is there to it? A few clicks to get started, put your thoughts in writing, a few more clicks and, voila,  you have a blog post. The first and the last part of it turned out to be quite easy but the cream of this recipe, converting your thoughts into writing was not as easy as I though it would be. There was once a time when my pen moved as fast as my thoughts, giving a form to my thoughts, streamlining them and putting them on paper was something that I enjoyed. English was one of the periods I looked forward to in school.

But then in my 10th std came our class teacher, also our English teacher, to whom we referred to as KRM. She made attending those classes a chore. Sitting in the class for 50 mins was such a bore that we used to look for reasons to go out of the class. All the work that had to be done was scheduled to coincide with the English period. I wouldn’t be wrong to say that the great part of my 10th English classes were spent outside the classroom. It wasn’t that we were idling away all that time. We used to go down to the library telling KRM that we needed to prepare for a Quiz that we were gonna take part in, in the coming week and sit there reading novels. Or make our way to the stage where we sat discussing scripts for the play that we were to perform for Teacher’s Day. And since then my liking for the language and interest in writing has continually dwindled.

Reading through the ever so many blogs of people known as well as unknown made me think about starting a blog of my own. But then I am very lazy, always kept putting it off waiting for the right moment to record for my blog. But then so many such moments came and went by. Every time something happened I thought about penning it down but somehow never managed to do that. Some events pushed me as far as to register a blog, but none of them made it as far as a post. And now when nothing noteworthy has happened in my life, nothing that I would put in as a life changing moment, apart from the fact that I’ve graduated from college and I’m employed and an earning individual (But then, so is everyone else), why am I writing. Well, the answer to that question is simply lies in the innocent query of a friend. She was having problems setting up her blog and asked if I knew anything about it. And that query made me think about the blog I had once registered and was now lying gathering dust. Though she solved her problems on her own, she gave that little push and the fact that I was completely bored sitting all day in the office with nothing much to do at that time set the cogs in motion and I thought that I should probably put the little piece of virtual estate I have on the internet to some use.

‘The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.’   (Lao Tzu)

It’s a surprise even to me that I’ve got this far so I might as well finish it. Now that I have taken the first step I want to continue on this journey. I still don’t know what I will write about or when I will write next. But I hope the next time something noteworthy happens I do not let it fade into the memories at the back of my head, but rather preserve it in something more accessible. Wish me luck for my journey in this world.