Rat got rekt

 I just went down to the store to get some smokes. On my way back, there was this rat that crossed the road. A bike ran over it. It struggled and flailed and turned in a circle, its back was shattered, both hind legs useless. It somehow managed to scurry across the road on its front paws and continued to struggle in a pothole on the other side. It did not make any noise, or the screams were too ultrasonic for my ears. 

Dream Diary accident edition

 I just really wanted to eat Medhu Vada at Little Bite in Vasant Vihar. Walking down from Parijat to the Arcade, when I meet some building friends, and their work friends. Right at the Arcade, everything has changed. There is a new restaurant called 'RK's. It is a white restaurant with seating outside, and everyone is just sitting. I go and order my Medhu Vada. He says it will take at least 15 minutes to make. My friend says we need to go. I say no take your time, and make it well, I do not want chewy vadas, but well fried ones. 

While it is being made, I see that there is an attendant who is cleaning up a leaky toilet. 

Then, we are just talking, when two of my friend's office friends (unknown people, can see their faces), push me down to the ground to rag me. A towing van careens down the slope, turns around the roundabout, and straight up runs over me and the other two people holding me down. However, they die, while I am dragged away. There are big splashes of blood on the road leading up to me. My friends run down the road chasing the van and yelling at it. 

I run back to the restaurant behind a row of parked cars. I really want that Medhu Vada. Friends are wondering where I have gone. I wake up. 

The accident spot marked with star. 

Dream diary... taking notes to remind myself edition

TIMES - A reminder to use your time wisely. Not an acronym for anything. 

Weed and Videogaming

Addiction is actually about social isolation and dysfunction. 

The one Year Gaming Programme - taking a year to cut the faff, and unfriending everyone. Is a programme that is not meant to work in the sense that you stop gaming, but make you focus more on the people. 

Part 2: Rickshawwalah's daughter

This was a very strange thing. A door in SIES opened up to a locked door, on it was an old sepia painting, showing "The rickshawwallah's daughter." 

Then it was a series of handicrafts and different coloured feathers in muted colours though, blue, aquamarine, beige and brown. 

A black and white timelapse video of a guy rolling near the railway tracks. 

There was this one scene in school, with young children and blood on the floor. Someone is humiliated and paraded during an assembly. 

One girl asks for a train to come back, woman engine driver gets down and say's "don't worry, I know they are watching me", but makes the train go in reverse. 

It was just a mood board in video form I guess. 

Then this other maintenance lady starts rapping against the establishment and their atrocities. 

Call of the Netherdeep Volume 11

One group Rangu and Jazco went drinking, reminiscing about death and life, came across Question asking us about our teammates. Question gave Ayo a crystal ball. Rangu tried to wingman for Jazco and get the two paramours together, however his attempts were unsuccessful. We get the jewel box from Prolix. Ayo and company, Prolix Yusuf, Question, and all of us end up at Ankh'arel. 

Prolix turns around to us and tells us "welcome to Ankh'arel"

It is warm here. We come out of a teleportation circle, and the room slowly begins to fade. Prolix says "isn't this place beautiful". Yazhi is a little hungover and is shielding his eyes from the light. We are in the courtyard of a massive building made of marble. Prolix says, "This is the headquarters of the Allegiance, my organisation." 

Prolix invites us to meet his superiors. Question tells Prolix "Thank you so much for getting us back. If you need anything from the Cobalt Soul, please reach out to me or Jamin." Question bows, and heads towards the other group, they speak for a bit, and start walking  Yazhi hears a message in his head from Galsariad, "See you around later then". 

Ayo looks at Jazco and suddenly walks away even more rigorously Prolix turns towards us and asks us to visit the grandmaster. Alakritos asks us to join the faction after giving us brochures, but we are not sure. Rara, Woolf and me head out to the market, where we meet Prolix's ex. We try to scam some feathers from her but she gets angry and burns them to a crisp. 

The others try looking for a temple, IDK what happen, then they all show up where we are at.  

Call of the Netherdeep Volume 9

 We go into a room, which has some abyssal that I read. We have to drop some precious things in a vase for the door to open up. 

The northwest wall has a message that reads "To me, touch your hand. To me, relinquish hope. To you, accept death. To you, invite hollowness."

The vase has a message that says, "Cast that which you value into Oblivion"

We go up to another room with a large stained glass wall with nine symbols on it and a maelstorm of colours. There are beziers with pale flames that look like dancing skeletons. The symbols seem to be faintly moving on the stained glass wall. 

Woolf dances first and a sigil of spider lights up. Rangu does a horrible dance, the creature follows, and a bleeding eye symbol above the spider symbol starts moving. Yazhi and Rara make their way to the two remaining flaming braziers. Yazhi has a fit, the flames try to keep up, and our shadows flicker violently. 

The jagged spiral gets lit up. There is one flame remaining. Jazco then goes up to a brazier, and starts to dance. The trio of arms light up. An unseen door opens after four symbols are lit up. Rara spots another door. Rangu makes El Cato walk through a door that opens up. On exploring a bit, he distrubs a hydbrid drow-spider's nest, and four of them come charging up behind him as he flees them back towards us. We roll for initiative. Jazco slashes one of them with their rapier as the spider comes out. Woolf readies their crossbow. Yazhi does some damage. I get out my meteors and smash two of them between two spiders, dealing a "decent" amount of damage. Then, Rara attacks, cursing them and then attacking them. Rangu deals some paper cut damage. It is another round of attacks for the rest of us. Jazco kind of hides. Woolf switches back to the musical instrument. Yazhi deals some damage, and so do I. Then Rara does some complex math damage, dealing 32 points of damage. The second drow-spider looks pretty weak after taking a barrage of arrows from an extremely disfigured woman. Rangu then blocks the doorway with tentacles. 

The invisible Jazco attacks with their rapier. Does a cool summersault that nobody sees, I just see puffs of dust. Jazco attacks, and then hides, thinking they are pretty hidden. The spiders attack. Yazhi and Rara almost die, but a spider and a drow-spider hybrid go down. I take down one of the spiders with a meteor, bursting its cocoon full of babby spiders that run away and burn up. I shed a tear. Rangu steps ahead of Yazhi and attacks the remaining drow-spder hybrid. Jazco slashes D1 wth a coccoon. 

We eventually manage to kill them all. 

Dream Diary who am I edition?

This was another recurring dream, one of eating familiar food from Karnataka, this time was missing beans, typical other dishes include sandige, akki roti and kosambari. 

Was in a large submarine cruise ship that was capable of intergalactic travel. So, it was an intergalactic submarine cruise ship, which had an amusement park inside, and many areas of food courts, including food courts with stalls, and all of them were free, so on the way out, when everyone was leaving, I was finding tables to continue to eat free food till the staff was serving it. 

There was a pool, in which we tried to breed some very dangerous monsters, that were used to populate a zoo with creatures from many worlds. 

The thing was, for a part of the dream, I was not myself. I became another passenger on the ship that was disappointed in one of the experiments on board, and I felt bad for them. Then, yet another entity said that it was only humans with great compassion that can be stripped of their identities, however temporarily, and said good job. 

In fact, the realisation that I was not myself was what forced me to wake up. The other person, and the entity, are both in my head, so wondering what aspects of myself are those.  

Call of the Nethderdeep volume 8

We meet a guard with a hexagon pendant, who tells us a bit about the demons that come from inside the tower. He tells us something of a hexagonal soul eating god, which he is wearing a pendant of. El Cato comes back at this point. 

Meow. 

Woolf wants to interview the guard for researching fanfiction. The guard tries to put them off saying I am just a regular guard, why don't you interview the task hand. The guard says he came here only a month ago, and that Werin Thelis has been there for years. 

The guy consults someone, and throws the box through a portal. El Cato asks for a treat, and Rangu gives him a cracker that looks like a playing card. 

The soldiers roll out, the armour starts making the sound of crickets. That is why the locals refer to them as cricks. 

All of us head back to the ready room. We run into Aloysia Telfan who asks us what happened to us. We do not give details. The injured go to the infirmiry and get healed up. Rangu writes a message for El Cato to deliver to Aloysia. 

El Cat tries to dodge it out saying in a slow, bored voice that he does not know who Aloysia is. 

The message says "Do not go in without us. Love, Rangu and the Krakenwagen" El Cato shuffles down the road. A guard picks up El Cato, and goes through the armoury towards a room where Thelis is sitting. 

The cat escapes and poofs. We cannot find Aloysia. We wake up Rara and Yazhi. Rara has cucumber slices on her eyes. I spend 3 silver on booze. We meet Werin, who asks us what we want, Rangu says loot. We make our way towards betrayer's rise. 

Rangu farts at Werin. 

We into the Betrayer's rise after Ayo's company.  We see black double doors in a distance. There is a picture of a smiling woman carved inside a circle on the stone doors. There are claw marks on the image, of Avandra, a god also known as the change bringer. The doors start glowing. 

In the next room, we encounter three gibberish mouthers. One of them spits at Yazhi. It lets out a bright light that Rangu fails to shield his eyes from in turn. I restore blindness. 

Dream Diary extra rooms edition

So there is renovation going on in my building, as well as the building next to mine on the other side. In Delhi, apartments are stacked like containers, with two sides of the buildings having no windows at all. These are long, straight and narrow apartments, actually known as compartment apartments. The only window in my house is a skylight, and one in the kitchen that has a splendid view of the staircase. Throughout the day there is hammering, scraping and drilling noises, in addition to the construction workers talking loudly with each other, the malik and their wives. 

I went to sleep in the middle of all this noise. 

Dreamed that my house was opening into other rooms, something that has happened before. These rooms sprung me by surprise, it was like rooms within my house that I did not know existed. Some were behind boards, others were behind doors, some where newly constructed doorways. What was happening was, I was waking up, going back to sleep, going to a weird room, waking up, being disoriented, wandering around the house looking for the extra rooms in my half asleep state, then going back to sleep, and dreaming of the extra rooms. 

The whole block is constructed like one building. The balconies extend out into the road. The houses within the blocks intersect with each other. No two floors have the same floor plan. The steps are also weird, first storey may have triangular steps, second may have square steps... fortunately, there are no cylindrical steps so far. Then there are the illegally constructed 'barsati' floors. 

Think of these as different versions of the same rooms. They might look pretty normal, but take a closer look, they are all pretty eerie. 

Alien megastructure plans beamed to Earth

 

Call of the Netherdeep session 7

The Krakenwagen wake up in the inn where we spent the night, the Ready Room. A raven emerges from a poof of smoke and settles on Rangu's hand. Rangu's familiar El Cato tries to swap it away. We walk towards a Pyramid, and see the Betrayer's Rise. We see thick acrid smoke bellowing from the chimney of a stone building. As we make our way closer, the smell hits us. There are a bunch of bodies of slain monsters. A thin wispy man and a muscular man with one arm are taking the bodies and walking away into the crematorium. The thin guy looks at us and says "aah new bodies for Bazzoxan". 

He tells us that he and his brother are responsible for cleaning up all the bodies. There are piles which are further away from the crematorium. Close to the doors though, we notice a pile with a rather large body of a monster. It has been skipped in favour of smaller corpses. Rara starts exploring the corpses. Woolf asks if the bodies have been looted. The guy replies that the creatures do not really come out with loot, and the posessions of the guards are sent back to their families. 

Rangu remembers fighting similar creatures. Woolf goes and investigates the big creature, and bends down over it, and is stopped by the two brothers. A short little Tiefling rushes towards Woolf, and he has a bunch a notebooks on him. He is struggling to find something in his bags, and picks out a shiny badge and shows it to Woolf. It is a shiny, silver circular badge, and has a single eye on it. "You cannot do this, you cannot burn this creature, I have to study". Rara tells him "What are you going to study."

He says "I am Prolix Yusaf", I am from the  Allegiance of Allsight". He says he is an archeologist who needs to study monster. Rara says she can cut up the body so that Yusaf can study it. Rara says that she can use the battle axe to cut "delicately". Rangu wants to know more about Yusaf before helping him. "I am here to figure out more about these creatures like this Vrock and other demons that come out of Betrayer's Rise". 

"These Vrocs eat magical things. I want to see if this Vroc can reveal what is inside the betrayer's rise." Jazco points out that previous ones melted into demonic ichor. Yusaf says "they do not like light and radiant knowledge," He says he is from the university of Ank'Harel. 

Rara asks about the eating magical things. "These creatures do not have much of a brain. They like to eat shiny things. They see shiny things and think it is food," Jazco takes a dagger and cuts open the Vrock, while Rara keeps interrupting with "be careful" and "do not hurt the corpse". Prolix takes a couple of steps back as we begin to cut open the body. Jazco cuts the Vrocks stomach open. Yazhi casts haste on Jazco. With a deft hand and under instructions under Rara, Jazco makes quick work of the creature, and the contents of its stomach spills out of its guts. Jazco continues to cut over the oeusophagus. All of the sudden, the dagger hits something in its throat. Rangu casts prestidigitation to clean the blood from the dagger and its surroundings. 

Jazco finds the gullet filled with something heavy and metallic. The body of Vrock starts melting into a pool of demonic ichor, but the gullet is intact. Prolix approaches. Prolix asks the crematorium workers if they are okay with opening the gullet then and there. Prolix is scared of peering eyes. Inside are gold tripped glasses, three golden rings, a small tube shaped black onyx pizzle box, which Prolix immediately grabs."

Rangu puts on the glasses. Yusuf wants the jewelry box. You need to help me keep an eye out for an agent Alysio, who works with the Consortium of the Vermilion Dream. Rara bursts out "the tall lady". Yusuf knows that we have met her. "I have to stop her, whatever she is trying to do, I do not know what it is. These people are coldblooded cutthroats."

Jazco says, "we are an adventuring troop, and we do take quests, but we take them up on a commission basis, you know what I am saying." Yusuf is desperately trying to make his case. "If you can stop her, ot get some information from inside, I will give you this puzzle box and 200 gold coins on top." Rara tries taking the box, but he turns it away. "I will give it to you after you stop Alysio."

Yusuf notices Jazco's necklace. "Where did you get that from, if you don't mind me asking. It is my nature, I am archeologist." Jazco picks him up by the collar. "You have a deal with us, but you are not to mention anything us to your superiors, is that clear?" Yusuf says he will be at the ready room once we stop Alysio. Jazco ties a scarf around her neck so nobody sees the necklace. Yusuf lingers for a bit and walks off. 

Yazhi asks us if we should take the box from him by force. We reluctantly get to work reluctantly scooping up the remains of the Vrocks and disposing off the bodies. Rangu tells El Cato to watch where he puts the puzzle box. 

Krakenwagen rolls out. We approach the Betrayer's Rise, which has an immense double door, made of onyx and inlaid with silver and copper. Inside the gates are a whole bunch of Aurora Watch guards standing guard. We keep walking towards the betrayer's rise. Just before the gate there is another barricade. As we need the near barricade, two guards of the Aurora Watch signal for us to stop. Rara does not stop walking. "Please stop madam, or you will get shot." Rara reaches for her longbow and stops. Woolf says, "We are here for some field research."

"We are an academic party, we are looking for them." The guard says, "you definitely look academic." The guards opens the barricade and lets us through. Rara asks "Do you know, why is it called the Betrayer's Rise." The guard says, "because of the Betrayer Gods". 

In the beginning there were gods, and some gods were like we should destroy everything and start a new world. The betrayer gods went into a war with the elemental forces, and eventually were trapped in a magical plane from which they cannot escape. We make our ways towards the gate, just as we are reaching it, we start hearing shouting and screeching from behind the doors. A familiar sound comes from behind the doors, and the doors burst open. 

There are two gloomstalkers one of them is holding an aurora watch. They go high up in the air, and drop the guard right next to us. Roll for initiative. We can see three more figures inside the gates, there seem to be three soldiers who seem to be Aurora Watch soldiers, facing more figures who are approaching them. We can ask the guards with us to go and help those inside the Betrayer's Rise, or we tell them nothing and they will help us handle the gloomstalkers. 

Rara nicks her finger, covers the front of the bow with blood, and fires an arrow through one of the Gloomstalkers. The Gloomstalker goes to Jazco, and tries to bite Jazco but cannot do so as Jazco easily sidesteps its weirdly long neck. Infuriated, the Gloomstalker swipes at Jazco with its claws. The second Gloomstalker flies up above Rara and lets out a shriek. Rangu, Jazco and me are paralysed. Woolf casts pain on the Gloomstalker. Yazhi sees that there is an arrow sticking out of the second Gloomstalker, and casts Mind Whip, and deals quite a bit of psychic damage. 

Rara curses the first Gloomstalker and amplifies its damage while reducing their own health. Then takes the longbow and fires at the second Gloomstalker, but missing, and fires another one hits true. The second Gloomstar screeches and stares from its deep, dark soulless eyes. 

GS1 shrieks, paralysis Yazhi, Jazco and Me, flies down to position itself right next to Rara and Yazhi. Rangu hexes them and throws an eldritch blast at GS2. The hex misses, but the eldritch blast hits. Rangu's cards clips its wings, resulting in some black ichor dropping. The GS stares at everyone. Rangu  moves in closer to the GS1, but Jazco is in the way. Woolf casts lesser restoration on Jazco. 

Jazco thanks Rangu and Woolf, then attacks the GS and casts lesser restoration of Jazco. Jazco attacks GS1 with his rapier, while Rara attacks the GS2 twice. GS2 grabs Yazhi, and hurts him with his claws. Yazhi is now restrained. The GS2 then is shadowsteps 40 feet up into the air, and starts flying away. GS1 then attacks Rangu as he is the smaller target, who is grappled. GS shadowsteps 40 feet into the air, and then starts running away. 

Rangu thundersteps from one GS to the other, and grabs Yazhi's body. Woolf walks down the steps, uses vicious mockery to say "Looser U R". The gloomstalker continues flying away, surprised that its quarry has vanished. Jazco runs towards GS1. Yazhi grabs Rangu and Thundersteps back to the GS2, still holding hands. Yazhi does a Point Break thumbs up at Jazco, and lands up on top of G2, and then physics happens, both start falling. Both land with a thump on the ground. 

I run up to Woolf and release two bolts of chaos energy, one jumps between the two gloom stalkers, and another one hits directly. Rara shoots a Gloomstalker which is barely holding on for its dear life, and cuts off its head. Then Rangu takes out the other gloomstalker. The guards come out, look at the splashes of ichor, say well done and say that since that we can take care of us, we can come back to the tower at any time. 

Dream Diary possessed edition

I was in my old house in Bangalore. Sleeping on the floor. I can hear three sets of voices. One set is the neighbours discussing with their daughter how much she can expect to earn if she goes for various graduation courses in a college. 

Parallelly, there is the spectral voice of a woman. There are a bunch of ghosts staring in through my window, through the trees between my house and my neighbour's. They are talking of some old atrocities that my Grand aunt committed against them, by being verbally abusive, scolding too much, and just generally mean. 

While they are talking, I start turning around and moving around the floor, sort of like Saruman attacking Gandalf, and the Nazgals attacking The Stranger in Rings of Power. While turning, my bloodied foot passes through the foot of a stool, and I realise that I am a spectral presence in the dream too. I try to snap out of the spectral voices thingy, when I start hearing another voice. 

It is a servant complaining about how she is homeless, and has no money, and needs more money to survive. 

IRL, my internet connection guy came and asked me for six months advance, then came again and asked me for a loan. Then my landlord also asked for an advance because of the renovation work that he is doing. 

Dream Diary Gawan edition

So I am walking down the street, and I see three weretigers in a jail cell, with three policemen. One of them is fair and Israeli looking, and talks with the Israeli accent. Another one is docile and looks Nordic. The third one is has the appearance of complexion of someone from the subcontinent, has dark streaming hair. His name is Gawan. 

The policemen are all smiling pandus rocking staches, posing for the cameras. Now the Israeli tiger has canine teeth, and keeps nipping at his handler, who has missing pieces of flesh on his face and limbs. The pandu says this one is hungry, it is time to feed him, when the tiger takes another big bit, tearing the skin from his cheek, exposing the flesh below. The pandu calms the weretiger down, who are all in their human form, and goes away to get meat to feed him. 

That is when the asian weretiger escapes. He goes towards the right. The cops warn us not to run. We run. We run by getting into a rickshaw. The weretiger spots us, turns around, and easily starts catching up to the speeding rickshw. 

Close enough

I get very scared, and he actually catches us and mauls us. He is asked the next day by the press why he mauled innocent people. He gives a very simple answer, "I was not fed enough breakfast, and wanted to eat." 

Then there is a whole movie about Gawan. They show a map of how Gawan the weretiger was born in Kerala, with a token having a man with a tiger's face. This scene is something like the panning across the map of India as shown in Rings of Power, as well as the spinning coin (token here) settling on the map of India at the opening of Lagaan. 

Gawan is from Kerala, has been raised by tigers after the family of three tigers, a mother and two kids, a son and a daughter, killed his parents. The mother tiger has just given birth, is exhausted, and looks for easy meal in the villages. It is like Mowgli, but instead of the wolves, the tiger only adopts the baby. Gawan drinks milk from the mother tiger, fighting two other baby tigers to get to the teat. As Gawan grows up, his brother and sister tiger shoo him away from his home by teaming up, as revenge for stealing their milk, so he has to go far away. His travels takes him in close contact with human settlements. 

Here, the tiger becomes a man eater, but instead of preying on the women and children, it preys only on the strongest and meanest. These are typically the bullies and baddies in society, and people start celebrating the tiger as a hero instead of being scared of him. But, the police catch him for his crimes, and manage to reintegrate him into society. 

Then, on the internet, a team of Comic Book creators announce that they will be coming out with a board game, called Spark and that they will be giving out samples at Korum Mall and Majiwada Signal. The colour theme is bright orange and sky blue. I tell people about it, excitedly as I see them giving out the free samples from the window of the bus, while passing them. After getting home, I drive to where they are, and get into a spectacular accident. That is when I wake up. 

Dread Diary lathi taps edition

 I had this dream where I am just walking below my building, which is my old building and I see some guys hanging out who seem like the smoking up but I’ve never seen them before and they’re not from the building, they are from somewhere else so I go over to them and we smoke up and while we’re smoking up all of them are really being careful and they’re expecting a raid. I point out some toxic mushrooms to some guy and call them skull cap mushrooms and tell them not to have because he’ll give him a stomach aches upset and then I also showed him death cap mushrooms and he tells me “bro there are levels that I have to reach”. One of the people seems to know me from somewhere from a previous friend that I knew from college when we are just figuring this out  there are a group of people with them doesn’t come there or not really hitting people but giving slight taps on the bums and they round up a bunch of people and there are like young kids all over the place and even I get a tap on my bum and that I am like I live here man and he’s like okay okay go up you think I like to do this I don’t enjoy beating kids on the backsides and I go back and take the lift and I wake up

Transcontinental Safari

This was another videogame. 

It was a train that went around the world, stopping at different places, where you had to come up with different strategies for wildlife conservation, depending on local conditions. You got points for making animals resilient to climate change, reducing habitat loss, and preserving genetic diversity. 

It was very old school, pink and blue colours, a text based game, with some minimal graphics for when the train was travelling. It was just a parallax scrolling background, with different landscapes for different places in the world. The animals were black outlines in a white field. 

There was even an underwater section where the train crossed the atlantic and pacific lol.. 

Dream Diary airplane videogame edition

So the whole dream was a multiplayer videogame. There were two modes to the game, a ground based race through a city, and an aerial dogfight battle. If another plane was in sight, a machine gun turret would automatically fire a stream of bullets. Then, the player had the option to either bomb targets below them, or dispatch homing missiles, if they managed to lock in on a target.

I flew over this city for a while, at times avoiding engaging by flying high up in the air. At other times, I would go lower down and try to follow or avoid enemies. I was doing fairly well, but got killed a couple of times. Then all the other players suddenly disappeared. I went all the way to the edge of the city, which was a weird fiery dome, as if the city was constructed on the surface of the Sun. 

When heading back over the city, I saw one lonely car racing down on the streets, who left as soon as I spotted them. It was then that I realised that everyone else was in the racing phase, while I was still in the flying phase. 

I quit the game and woke up. 

Dream Diary lost things edition

 I think this is where I went to after parking my tricycle at Thane Station. (Full disclosure: I do not have a tricycle)

I am roaming around listlessly, unable to find a ticket counter, and then get on to an empty train, travelling ticketless. Vikhroli goes by, and has been boarded up, so the tracks are walled off and isolated from the city. Everything is empty and desolate. Finally reach Dadar, which is crowded. There are layers and layers of stairways and bridges, some of which have escalators and conveyors. This is a busy station, and I am able to find a ticket counter. I ask the ticket vendor if there is a train for Bengaluru available. He says, yes there is and gives me a ticket. He also asks me questions about who I am going to visit. I speak in kannada and tell him the names of my relatives. I then give him exact change, two hundred rupee notes, and two ten rupee notes. He is appreciative of that fact, and closes down the ticket window! 

He then accompanies me through the station as I go to my platform. While walking, he takes the names of my relatives by name, and then asks me if I consider them all heroes. I say yes, I do. 

I leave him and go down to the platform. In the train, I see a teacher who is also going to Bengaluru. She asks me to hurry up as the train is about to leave. The train gives out a big toot and promptly leaves. 

I look down at my ticket and the timing says 11:51 PM. It is the middle of the day, and I wonder if I have to hang around till that time, or just go home and come back in the evening. The ticket also says travels have to begin within two hours of issuing the ticket. I am unsure if any ticket will work, and if locals are plying between Mumbai and Bangalore. I decide that that has to be the case, and that I am willing to travel ticketless anyway. 

I then struggle to find a way to the platform I need to get at. I drew a map. 

The red circle on the right is where I am at. I need to get to the red circle on the left. The grey boxes are platforms, the black lines are tracks. One of the police officers tells me to cross the tracks when no one is looking. I am in the process of doing that when I notice the footover bridge (In blue) to my right. I think what a dumb licepo. 

I then start walking along the platform towards the footover bridge, when I notice my wallet on the ground. It has all the cards but the money is missing. I am relieved that at least I found my wallet. It is just on the ground next to a newspaper stand. Then a little further, I find two of my shoes. I cannot remember what happened that they came off and I lost my wallet. I am a bit distressed then I wake up. 

Hmm, losing my wallet has started to become recurring. 

Also, all the people I am seeing in my dreams are unknown. 

Dream Diary stolen tricycle edition

So I pick up someone's abandoned tricycle, and refurbish it. Then I roam around the city in my brand new tricycle, having a great time. I end up at Thane railway station, and side it in next to another tricycle. One guy, whose name could be Bittu, sees me park the tricycle, and realises that I am going to be gone for the day. He is the owner of the tapri right next to the metal fence that have several bikes and handcarts chained to them, and one woebegone tricycle (not mine, which is shiny). Bittu asks me if he can let his little sister use it during the day, and I am like "yeah yeah yeah, take it." 

I think go into Satya mama's shop, which is a cane basked where he sells keys, chains and locks, just outside the entrance to Thane Railway Station (Platform Number 1). His USP is that he makes the chains on demand, to the required length. He is strong enough to cut and bend the metal with his hands. I try to look at the tricycle, but it is just out of sight. I hurriedly by a lock, the key for it, and a very short chain with only six links. 

Arun mama, who hangs out with Satya mama all day and chats, accompanies me back to the tricycle to make sure that the chain is long enough. I get suspicious at this point and ask him if he plans to steal whatever I am securing, and if he has a copy of my key. He laughs and says, "No no, nothing like that."

I go back to the place, and see that the tricycle is missing! I ask Bittu about it, who says Shakti must have taken it. I get angry that he gave it to this Shakti fellow instead of his sister, and also I am getting angry that it is getting late. I do not want to leave the chain, the key and the lock with Bittu, so I go around hunting for Shakti. 

At this point, Arun mama goes away, and two guys Vicky and Pintu come up to me. Pintu is looking for Shakti too, and Vicky is hesitant to take all the stuff, but says he is the right person who can since "I know Shakti well, and I know MJ too". Suddenly, we see Shakti racing past us in the bike. Vicky points and says "There is the devil!"

Pintu and me run after Shakti. He turns a corner, and goes deep within a general store, which has a lot of materials for carpentry out in the front. Pintu runs into the store, while I wait at the entrance. Eventually, I see Shakti emerging without the tricycle. I tell him, okay you can have the tricycle, but please take this lock, key and chain as well, and leave the key with Bittu when you are done. He smiles slyly, looks at me and asks me "Why? So that I can keep stealing more things from you?"  

At this point I can feel his arm snaking out of my pocket, and I grab his wrist with my wallet in it. He is stealing from me, which infuriates me even further. He tries to run away, but I somehow retrieve my wallet, pin him to the ground, and start smashing his head with a rock, drawing blood. 

That is when I wake up. I guess I am really scared of my wallet being stolen. I also realise I do not know these guys, but they could be construction workers who are extending my terrace, and rebuilding a building next door. Basically, in my area, three or four buildings are always being rebuilt, then someone demolishes one and starts over. 

DD unexplained extra rooms edition

 These were two dreams in rapid succession. 

One was that the landlord was constructing an additional room between my living room and the balcony, and renting out that room to someone. I go to the bedroom, and suddenly there is a screen in the back, which leads out to another man's apartment. There is an old man there, who lives with his wife. It leads to a series of rooms and a big house. The man says his son is coming home, and will be living in the new room that has been cleared. I leave from the door, and then I cannot find my way back. I get lost in a maze of corridors between houses, and end up going into the wrong house. One of the doors I go through is a community hall. 

I walk through the corridors, and run into some hard kids. A girl brings three guys who are staring. Then are clearly up to some shady business. After hearing me explain, the lead me back to my house. Then one of them tells me look we are all busy, we cannot keep helping you like this. 

I was woken up to the construction sounds of people hammering outside my door. 

Then immediately, had the almost exact same dream again. There is a screen in my apartment, I take it apart and it leads to another apartment. An old man, his young wife, and their small kid live there. He has rooms and rooms filled with Persian carpets, a lot of libraries, and a bunch of arcane old tomes all around the house. I ask him if he likes books, and he says yes. He then asks me what I do, I say "I am a Delhi..." then stutter, then say "I am a Journalist".

He leads me out of his own door, takes me to the bottom floor, and explains the architecture of the building to me, and the different wings. He then points to where my wing is, we go inside, he then jumps in through a gap in the grill. His wife and kid are walking more slowly. He has clearly escaped, because he too cannot find the way to my apartment. I go to the gap in the grill, when another woman, with her own baby lifts some wires, sliding apart a partition, allowing me and the other guys wife to get out of the building. There are a series of buildings and some parks, and she points vaguely towards where my building is. Me and the other woman thank each other. I am surprised by how good her english is, as she says "Thank you very much", and nods. At this point I am aware in the dream that I something I dreamed of is actually happening. 

I then woke up to some loud clanging outside my door. 

DD Just Cause edition

 

I played this game where it started on a kind of a tank that I had to jump on as the game made you familiar with the controls from the tank I had to jump on to another armoured vehicle with a hole on the top to control at turret to get rid of a baddie. 

After that the game started basically it in world shooting people and I had to work my way towards the hospital. Inside the hospital some kind of disease broke out which caused really small spherical creeping animals to break out everywhere and there was some dangerous material stolen from the lab or medical supplies I do not know where. 

It was the contamination by these dangerous stolen goods that caused the outbreak of whatever disease it was that affects everyone inside the lab or the hospital. There was this old man who had an operation and they removed a bullet from his spine which was really really old and the old man didn’t remember how it got there or was hiding it I have no clue what is this had to do with the rest of the infection.

There was a bunch of people waiting to get treated and they were being prioritise depending on how sick they were but basically what happens is one of them wants to go to the toilet and the toilet is too crowded and maybe it is because of the infection or whatever but they get irritated or all of them break out of the lab. So we ran through the complex of the hospital and this is when we see those small spherical animal animals and destruction on the equipment.

The mob of people break out from the hospital and then it is some kind of looped roadway on a square building with the path rising and falling. After a while circuit you get out of the loop close to where you started but at another level. People are still running like crazy. 

Then I get on another armoured vehicle, have to shoot the boss in front of me, who is also moving. I fail the game here, but on another run, essentially have to jump on a vehicle in front of me, and drive it, using controls inside the vehicle to finish the boss. 

Then I woke up and realised it was Saint’s Row lol. 

Back on Netflix

 So there is good news and bad news. 

The good news is that I am back on Netflix. Had to jump through a couple of hoops to get there. Had to open the Vi app, log in with an OTP, go to the benefits section, activate the Netflix benefit, then get an OTP, then log in to Netflix, then answer some F*all survey that just did not seem to end about my watching habits. Then, when I finally got back on to Netflix, found that some of my viewing history had mysteriously disappeared. Yes, pretty sad for good news. 

The bad news is... I had already finished watching all the episodes of IT crowd! LOL. Have to go find some other shows that have Noel Fielding now. 

So much content

The excitement is high... ran out of Netflix with my Vodaphone RED account... it is just too much to pay per month. Gonna avoid it till there is a buildup of shows I wanna watch, then will binge everything in a month. The only thing I miss right now is the IT Crowd. It is irritating to make a new account every time you switch out the payment method. Netflix support directs you to Vodafone, and Vodafone support directs you to Netflix. LAME. 

Rings of Power: This one is funny because everyone is trying to figure who Meteor Man is, and who Sauron is. Seems like Halbrand is Sauron, but that would be disappointing. Meteor Man or the Stranger seems to be Gandalf. The maps shown in the series are impossible to reconcile with Tolkien's maps. The migration paths of the Harfoots is a great example. Still, Durin is awesome, Numenoreans are okay. Galadriel is just cringe. 

House of the Dragon: The books are so depressing, expect the world to be split into Greens and Blacks soon. I am a Black. Really liking Viserys so far. They seemed to have taken some kind of pledge to make every sex scene uncomfortable for the audience. Miss Mushroom and Septon Eustace, even though some people think he was the big headed dwarf banging on the drums during the wedding. Cole is just an absolute ass. 

Andor: Initially felt this was going nowhere, but really like the bureaucracy, the set designs, the spaceships, the droids, and the characters. Four episodes are out, seems like it is on the verge of becoming epic after a few set up episodes. Kind of refreshing to have a Star Wars series sans the lightsabres and the stormtroopers, but it is kind of pointless to enjoy a Star Wars series just for their lack. Still, this series really goes deep into how it would be like living in the Star Wars galaxy. 

She-Hulk: This is a bit boring, going nowhere, expected a law procedural, but they are delving too much into random stuff. 

Dream Diary attacked by pachyderms edition

Still not adjusting to food in Delhi. Tried making some rice and dal, but even they taste different from back home lol. Think there is some locha in the water only. Plus it is too much trouble to maintain a larder. So still getting a lot of dreams of eating home cooked food. 

Was woken up repeatedly in the night by scary dreams of being chased by animals. First there was a big black rhinoceros with too many horns in all the wrong places (shoulders and hind knees). Then it was a bull that chomped me with vampiric teeth when I woke up. Then... there were two big elephants lol. I was fleeing them by riding a bicycle with a broomstick, but they charged at me. 

Have to start documenting these again, have forgotten a bit in the last few months. 

Dungeons and Dragons sessions have stopped... Biradaari circle sessions I am avoiding for now, though others in it are celebrating a year of virtual meetings. There was also a getaway in Lonavala that I missed. 

There is a velociraptor in Braavos

Metadiscussion is fun. 

I am back in Westeros. Back on Reddit. Engaging. IDK why. 

I am eating far, far less though. Resorted to ordering one thali a day, that I eat through most of the day. It works out cheaper than two orders. 

Making art on Nightcafe. It is fun. Feeling happy and tired. 

Watching Chicago Med on Netflix. Flummoxed rest of the series are not available. 

I went to a party last saturday, it was pretty epic. My first real party since 2019 I think. There were a lot of people. There was also an afterparty. I had fun, but maybe left behind a cigarette box that was used as an ashtray somewhere. Met a couple of cute cats. Whiskey was the more scared one, Tango was the brave one. 

I met another cat. I live very comfortably. Bit like Radagast. A lizard just caught some strange bug and ran right in front of me. Im not bothered by ants or spiders or lizards anymore. Have somehow come to accept them as part of the urban environment. The cats just walk in and out of the house whenever they please. They know not to poop in the garbage, and surprisingly enough, not to topple anything. My Jenga and stacks of Amazon boxes are all left untouched.

Sometimes I wonder what the cats are doing. 

There is a new one now, a young black one that is less shy but also more scared at the same time. Of the two regular ones, one never comes inside the house, and the other does so only at times. It ran headfirst into a wall while trying to dodge me while I was coming up the stairs. 

Delhi is starting to feel like home. It is a very woke, literate and knowledgeable city, people are always having serious conversations, even when they are joking and playing the Devil's Advocate or pretending to be Chomsky... leads to frequent Poe's Law situations. 

People here are much more genuinely involved in things, I enjoyed talking about regional languages, House of the Dragon, Tolkien Legendarium... you do not have to be scared of using the right words anymore. Mumbai keeps you back, kind of, encourages you to be more dumb. But that is also a pleasant zone. 

I can tell now when people are sad in games. I talk to people with violence in their avatars, or who are trolling, or those who indulge in verbal abuse. I just ask them if they are okay. They become happy. I become happy. 

BTW, in Delhi, verbal abuse is a spectator sport.

Glowing deep sea creatures

 

Dream Diary Major Kung Fu vs Tai Chi

I just saw a full-blown action movie. 

I have no idea what my brain is working through. 

Anyway, so there is this retired military general who is the crime boss of a major operation that owns an office complex full of workers that do very shady things, with the first two floors for running a protection racket, the next two for arms trafficking, then piracy, forgery, smuggling artwork, cybercrime, poaching, insurance fraud, identity theft, contract killing and drug smuggling. It is a 24 story building, with the HQ and penthouse on the top floor. The building is known as The Syndicate. 

His name is Major Kung Fu, and he wears a red bandana, defeating the purpose of his camo gear. 

He has a henchman named Dambe, a servant named Body, who is a body double for Major Kung Fu, and a fat son retarded in all sorts of ways known as Wing Chun. He also has two associates, Bokator and Muay Thai. 

Bokator, Muay Thai and Major Kung Fu all express their concerns in a meeting, where they discuss their most profitable customers move to a mysterious new source, who apparently provides hydroponically grown weed of a much better quality. The operation is run by a sniper who drives around on a Kawasaki Ninja bike, and is not above taking down street vendors who are competition. This mysterious guy's name is Tai Chi, and they all decide in the meeting that they have to find this guy. 

Major Kung Fu

Bokator, Muay Thai, Major Kung Fu all live on the ground floor of an apartment complex, one that I had seen in a different dream. Turns out Tai Chi is their neighbour! One day, Major Kung Fu just asks Tai Chi if he has some weed, which Tai Chi gives immediately. Major Kung Fu reports to Bokator and Muay Thai that he has finally found Tai Chi, and that he lives in the same apartment, and throws the weed on the table to prove it. All three of them have a hearty, villainous cackle. 

Major Kung Fu confiscates Tai Chi's beloved sniper weapon, puts it in an electronic trunk, hires Tai Chi himself to manage the weed business. Tai Chi is initially happy, although he resents having to work for someone else, and not getting to keep his weapon. Major Kung Fu attempts to make Tai Chi more disciplined, and requires him to access the weapon only after notifying him of the target at least a day in advance. He can also only kill between eight and nine PM. These rules are meant to make Tai Chi plan his actions instead of impulsively killing people. 

Tai Chi does not like all these new rules, and goes rogue. He procures another, higher calibre weapon from a distant crime syndicate, one that can operate as both a machine gun and a sniper. He then begins to attack The Syndicate. Major Kung Fu gets his workers to abandon the bottom 12 storys, fortify the next 8 storys, asks Dambe to stick with him, and the Body to carry Wing Chun. 

All of them just hear the sounds of violence and struggle while hiding in the penthouse. Major Kung Fu gets impatient, and then begins to head to the lower floors. Dambe does not like him not sticking to the plan, but follows anyway. The Body carries Wing Chun, who is drooling, eating chips, and crying at the same time, not because of the danger but because he cannot play videogames. 

Tai-Chi

The Body take's Tai Chi's old weapon for protection. The Body and Wing Chun flinch and watch as a gunfight between Major Kung Fu, Dambe and Tai Chi takes place. They just see reflected muzzle flashes, and hear two screams, the first one with Dambe dying, and the second one with Major Kung Fu dying. They hear footsteps approaching. The Body gets scared and fires randomly into the staircase. The footsteps stop. 

Wing Chun then goes down the stairs carefully, with The Body following. They find Tai Chi dead on the staircase, in the process of walking up. There are other bodies littered around the nineteenth floor. Wing Chun goes up to the body of Major Kung Fu, and picks up his gun, and removes the bandana. He then puts the bandana around The Body's head, and smiles. The Body smiles back. 

I woke up. 

Finished watching Kamala Khan

First of all, the ending hit me but it was a lie. The dad says Kamala means miracle, but that is Kamaala not Kamala, which means lotus. I was like why didn't I get that before, this is my language, should have understood, but then realised I did not need to second guess myself, because it was a lie. 

What I really liked was the way chat messages were shown, blending in with the backgrounds. This approach is much more superior to any other type of text messages shown on screen, particularly in comparison to Sherlock that I found sooo irritating that I stopped watching the series! 

There was a little bit of a romance sequence in the second episode that I really did not relate to at all, and almost stopped watching, but the rest of the episode was good. 

IDK why they had to focus so much on the partition. I really didn't like the Noor dimension exposition. I really liked the animated graffiti sequences. One of the pictures of Kamala looks too much like L from Death Note. 

It was an okay series, not as much fun and exciting as the other ones, few links to the MCU, would have been great if one of the other superheroes was in the series, particularly towards the final episodes. Cannot wait to see how Kamala integrates with the wider MCU though. I really liked the level of integration in all the other series, Wandavision, Captain America and the Winter Soldier, and Loki. Compared to those shows, this just did not have the scale or wasn't soo exciting. 

Have caught up with the MCU, only thing left is... Cloak and Dagger, which I started and stopped for the second time... it's just the most boring MCU series so far, and I'm including Inhumans, and Moon Knight, which I haven't started yet. Looking forward to She Hulk, which I am sure will be a blast. Really miss Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D though, think that one was the best. 

For no good reason, I'm going to rank all the series:

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D

What if...?

Agent Carter

Loki

Captain America and the Winter Soldier

Luke Cage

Daredevil

Hawkeye

Wandavision

Jessica Jones

Iron Fist

The Punishers

Inhumans

The Defenders

Ms Marvel

Eh... so basically Ms Marvel is the worst series lol. Oh well. 

James Webb Space Telescope captures butt-clenchingly beautiful image of Uranus

 

A rare thunderstorm on Uranus, raining down methane and other organics onto lower levels of the atmosphere. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI)

• Scientists do not yet know why Uranus is sideways. 
• At the core of Uranus, is a diamond the size of the Earth. 
• Even at the magnification offered by Webb, Uranus is still mostly featureless. 

Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun and has been an enigmatic ice giant with scientists having little understanding of the remote world. No probe has visited Uranus since the Voyager missions in the mid eighties. However, scientists have now used the largest, most expensive, and most powerful space observatory to investigate Uranus from a safe distance, without the hazard of falling into its massive gravity well. Lead researcher of the new paper, Catass Trophy says, "We now know more about Uranus than we did yesterday."

Images captured by Webb has allowed researchers to better characterise the atmosphere of Uranus, which has long been a mystery for science. The atmosphere of Uranus is thick and dense with methane, but the conditions are too warm for the formation of thick clouds. However, astronomers now have a better understanding of why Uranus is so blue. There is a thin layer of haze that gives its characteristic cyan colouring. 

JWST spectrum of Uranus (Image credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI)

The researchers found varying sizes and densities of aerosols at different altitudes. The particles became larger with an increase in altitude, where there was an unexpected rise in temperature with an increase in altitude. A similar effect takes place on the ozone layer on Earth. The researchers also found charged particles such as electrons and protons in orbit around Uranus. 

This is the first time that Webb has turned its gaze to an object within the Solar System, after the commissioning phase during which it used the main belt asteroid 6481 Tenzing to validate its ability to track a Solar System body. For capturing the high resolution images of Uranus, Webb had to track the planet as it moved through the Solar System. 

Animated GIF of the magnetic field of Uranus. 

There are a number of questions that remain unanswered however. Without a core of molten iron, researchers do not know how exactly Uranus produces its immense magnetic field. Scientists are also struggling to explain why Uranus is sideways. Researchers hope to answer these questions with future investigations using the Webb. 

A paper describing the findings has been published in The Annals of the Royal Astronomical Society, Number II. 

LOTR again

Anyway, also watched the whole Lord of the Rings again. Peter Jackson's kids show up in the public in both Edoras and Minas Tirith lol. It's a pity that the extended editions are not available on streaming platforms. Was questioning some things about the trilogy too, like maybe I liked it too much so far. There is another post about the fidelity argument that I have to do later... after thinking it through. This time around, I clocked a few things though. 

They skipped out Ghan Bhuri Ghan entirely. There is one scene about the romance between Faramir and Eowyn. Sharky and the burning shire are also skipped entirely, would be so awesome to see Lobelia and Frodo coming home to all his possessions being auctioned. I am not sure if Cirdan the Shipwright was standing in the background in the last scene, but I think it was him. 

So far, have liked LOTR because of the approach of reconstruction by Tolkien, of crafting a lost mythology for Britain, building a world around the evolution of fictional languages, then writing stories within that setting. Seems like a lot of work that no one else has done, or actually can do unless they are a professor of linguistics. 

Then again, it might just be the interpretation by Peter Jackson. Would love to see an art film approach to LOTR, which is true to the books, and does not have any cinematic trappings such as comic relief or efforts to build tension for the audience. Would also like a very artistic cinematic rendering of The Silmarillion, that does not go much into exposition, and just shows the visuals of what is happening, without too much dialogues. 

The po-ta-toes scene really comes out of nowhere, in the middle of this really tense sequence where things do not look too good for the inhabitants of middle Earth. Boromir's scenes, including "One does not simply walk into Mordor" and "It is a gift" are such common memes, that they break the fourth wall during a watch, ruining the immersion. 

Think this is the last time, at least for a while. Time to go watch some new things. In the mood for some dark and gritty true crime. 

Possibilities

Just finished covering the first light images from JWST. It was a bit underwhelming. The Biden reveal yesterday began more than an hour late, and I was watching BGT videos on YouTube while the reveal was happening lol. Then today, they messed up the proceedings, with CSA not even participating in their segment, switched out with an expert at hand at NASA. 

The central white dwarf periodically throws temper tantrums and ejects massive clouds of gas that it has cannibalised from its unseen stellar companion. In deep space, every day is Diwali. 

A dying star, some very distant galaxies, a star forming region, the spectrum of a hot Jupiter exoplanet and a quintet of interacting galaxies were what were showcased in the images. Considering 30 years of work and billions of dollars sent up in the air, it was all a bit... underwhelming. We can do a lot of science with the images we have already really, are we learning that much more. 

Gravitational lensing creates virtual telescopes bigger than the distances between galaxies. The rays are because of light bending on the edges of the telescopes, or shattered mirror segments from too many micrometeoroid impacts on the mirror segments because you are stupid enough to deploy an unservicable telescope in a region known to collect gas and dust. 

The problem with the JWST is that it can only see in infrared light. We need full spectrum imaging instruments to peer at the really interesting targets, such as the Trappist-1 system. The big pending questions are things like measuring the expansion rate of the universe, finding intermediate mass black holes, understanding how massive galaxies and quasars were formed so early in the universe, and investigating the formation of the first supermassive black holes. The first light images do not really address these pressing questions. 

A stellar nursery with a newborn bubble of gas pushed away from energetic hot young stars. So grammable. 

The biggest disappointment was perhaps that there was not a single solar system target. Would be so great to have an image of Europa or Enceladus in the first light images. I was so looking forward to writing a story with the headline James Webb Space Telescope captures butt-clenchingingly beautiful images of Uranus. In fact, I am going to do it. 

A never-before-seen galactic collision.

Sure, it is just the commencement of the science program, and we can expect much more spectacular images going forward. Somehow, something feels off. Is there something like deep space fatigue? The problem is that space science dominates science and technology coverage in the media, and the difficult to explain, complex, and even obscure stuff gets overshadowed. Health, public health, environment, and wildlife conservation are some examples of undercovered areas. 

Greedy sun feeding on two gas giants and two rocky worlds in hopeless effort to grow as big as its hypergiant binary companion. The sodium based life forms on the puffball Hot Jupiters are screaming for their lives while taking cover from storms of molten gemstones. Unfortunately, the JWST cannot hear them as sound does not travel through space.  

Anyway, Biden said USA was the greatest country in the world, Nelson said NASA was the greatest space agency in the world, while ESA and Germany tried to point out their contributions in separate press releases. It is so funny to see academic institutions and scientific organizations put out press releases highlighting the contributions of their own members, while downplaying that of researchers from other institutions, even though science is very much a collaborative effort. Even more irritating are press releases that are one sided and make it out as if questions have been settled, even for contentious issues. 

:) I'm having a steaming hot cup of coffee in the middle of the night and laughing at my own jokes. HAHA. 

Dream Diary school time edition

So bunch of friends have a party in traditional dress, and I feel bad for not wearing traditional clothes. This is because it is Eid. There is one guy wearing green that I complement on. He is happy and says "I know" before I can finish the compliment. Then I go to sleep, wake up, and head to school.

I head to school on my motorbike, which is really weird as the school is at walking distance, and never even took my bicycle there. In fact, it was a big deal and we were wondering what was happening when schoolbuses came around around 7th standard. Most of the kids in the school before that were from the same colony, and we all knew each other not just in school, but afterwards as well, as everyone stayed nearby only. 

Anyway, I take the motorbike to the school and I am one of the earliest people there, so I have all the parking space I need. I imagine a row of bokes outside the school, which is how college was, but the whole space is actually a no parking zone. I park it closer to the school wall, between two flower pots, but then realise that I will not be able to take it out easily when more people use up the parking space later. So I move it back a bit. There are some guys hanging out in the car-o-bar, who see me struggling with the parking. 

I fold up a cover for the bike and put it in the saddle bag. I also cover up the bike. I apparently have to covers. 

Anyway, I then head into the school, which has some sort of exhibition going on. One guy next to me buys a ticket and goes in. I am like I don't need a ticket, this is my school. So I just walk in, where this volunteer shepherds me into a room. It is full of kids who are being interviewed one by one. It's seems like a counselling session for those affected by the pandemic. 

One guy is particularly funny. He says he wanted to beat up his friend before the pandemic, but the punch landed five years later. Everyone laughs at that, but he notices me laughing and comes up to me, raps something, and asks if I want to be beat up with a five year punch too. I laugh and shake his hand, but at the same time, some guy standing in the corner shakes my hand instead of the funny guy. Everyone laughs at that again, and that is when I woke up. 

Also, was able to calculate the amount of sleep debt and number of sleep cycles mentally. Could do it so normally, and was happy that I no longer need a sleep tracker. The bad news is I only had one complete cycle. I also realised it is a bad idea to go back to sleep, as I would very likely oversleep and not wake up in time to reach work in time. 

Dall-E is awesome at drawing Gollum

It might not know how to draw crocodiles, but DALL-E sure can paint a pretty picture of Gollum. Try and guess the painters.