Weekly Notes 26/2024

This week: travel to Istanbul, cultural experiences, diverse team dynamics, reflections on nationalism, and cash-reliant society observations.

For folks not in the know, this is a weekly stream of consciousness zero-agenda “here’s what’s happening” or “here’s what’s interesting” post.

What’s been happening

Posting this from ?stanbul Havaliman?, the main Istanbul airport’s free WiFi. Am flying for around ~11 hours immediately after this. Fun fact: I’m flying a low-cast airline called Air Arabia and Sharjah is almost directly between Thiruvananthapuram and Istanbul when flying: it’s 4 hours each way with a short layover.

I really liked Istanbul. It’s got all the facilities of a European city, but it’s much more Asian-friendly, and the food is just ? I visited the Hagia Sofia (now renamed Sultan Ahmed mosque, a controversial decision) and much of the old Istanbul city. Here are a few photos:

Also saw the Sufi dance famous in Istanbul, the whirling dervishes. The music and the dance was definitely uniquely Turkish, and it’s definitely very different to the Sufi music in India.

Met my Woo team for the first time and we had good work sessions and food and fun afterwards. It’s the first team that I’m working in that is predominantly Asian: my lead is from Bangladesh, and two folks are from Indonesia, and one person is a Srilankan settled in Germany. The token white man is from Romania 🙂 One of the best things about Automattic are these team outings: it’s the glue that makes the rest of the year work.

Every time I go outside the country, I drink my favorite beer: Guinness and think “Dude, I’ve missed this.” In some ways though, it’s great that it’s a once in a while thing. This time I also had a lot of the local beer Efes, and paired it with some great sea food.

Another plug to Notes on Nationalism. I had bought a paperback and read it again on the flight. So much of what it says, including its thoughts on Indian nationalism reflects what is happening today. It’s also interesting to observe Orwell’s own nationalistic biases, despite his attempts to get rid of them.

Istanbul is still very much a cash-reliant society. A lot of the shops accept only cash (credit card fees are high, and I suppose tax evasion is the norm), and every shop accepts cash even for high value transactions. More importantly, every shop keeper has change, which is a rarity in India nowadays. The default payment method is UPI in India, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
Our IVF test date is July 2. Here’s hoping everything goes well!

Pretty relevant for this week: obvious travel advice. Lots of nice gems in there.
I’m reading Young Noble Be Monster Slaying which is an excellent example of a genre I call “trash Wuxia”, a fun read when you just want to zone off.
I kept thinking about how our Indian cities are so less walkable. Even Thiruvananthapuram, which is a small Tier 3 city isn’t really anywhere close to walkable as Istanbul despite having similar weather. I wish we had a city with a good tram line, metros, and pedestrian friendly zoning.