This week: getting a Greece visa, watching a lot of movies, improving workouts, and celebrating a 300-day Duolingo streak.

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

• Went to get the Greece visa this week to the Kochi VFS centre. It’s a pain applying for the visa every time, and I do wish Schengen would give a multi-year visa the first time just like the US. Instead you have this rule which was always a bit difficult to manage. I do think the next time we apply, we should aim for a 1 year visa though.

• Started watching the Monk movie this week. I didn’t even realize such a thing existed until Ammu sent me a clip from the movie. I don’t think this is peak Monk (that would be a certain Season 3 episode), but it is good fan service.

• I still have one workout to go this week (planning to do it later today), but this week I felt much better about the workouts. Muscle soreness has reduced a lot, and while the intensity has increased quite a bit, I’m able to complete most routines.

• Also watched The Intern, another feel good movie about a young woman entrepreneur hiring a 70 year-old intern. Interesting concept, and I quite liked the dad-daughter vibes between them. It’s a 10 year old movie, but it hasn’t really aged that much.

• Started watching Love Next Door, it’s typical romantic Korean fare and Ammu keeps asking how I watch these things, but it’s one of my sure-shot windown routines. It’s the first time I’m seeing these two folks together, and it’s quite lovable.

• Both of us also watched Nizhal together. We really liked the premise, but the execution: not so much. The visual effects were also a bit all over the place, with some of them (like the rain) quite well done, but a lot of it strange and definitely uncanny valley territory. I do think it’s a decent watch though.

• 300 day streak on Duolingo! Have I improved my German skills? A bit actually. I can make sense of about 20-30% of German tweets or articles now. I do wonder how relevant language skills will be when you’ll get real-time Star-trek like translation soon-ish.

• Here’s a photo of a drinking glass I shot in a pub in Kochi. I kinda liked that place: it was a mix of a traditional drinking joint but with good vibes and seating and decent toilets (for women too!). But as Mallu drinkers, the priority is always: are we drinking enough?

• Ammu is between jobs now, and I bought her a bunch of colors. If there’s one thing that makes her happy, it’s coloring ?

• We also ended up watching Raayan (yeah, a lot of movies this week). Again: typical Tamil dishoom-dishoom fare, but the quality of production and cinematography has really gone up the last few years. Rahman’s music is also wonderful. I’m linking a video below that shows off both:

Links of the Week

• Zen browser seems to do to Firefox what Arc did to Chrome. A more modern UI around a stable browser engine.

• I’m pretty happy with my Kinesis Freestyle Blue, but I do wish it was QMK based. Maybe I should step up to something like the UHK keyboard. I wish there was a way to purchase this without paying insane duty fees.
• Speaking of: a way to purchase duty-paid goods from international stores: Tanotis. It doesn’t have any good split keyboards yet though.

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