Word of the week: lûuk-kháa - customer

In my life: I think I should rename these posts from weekly notes to “notes whenever I feel like writing them” or something considering how many of them I’ve skipped recently. It’s just been one thing after another and my brain is just done by the time I think of writing these.

The main thing was that our Australian PR was approved while Sathya was away. To be honest, it was kind of bittersweet - we always spoke about what we’d do when we got a decision and being far away from each other meant we couldn't really celebrate this milestone. There is also a part of me that worries about my parents being alone especially considering dad’s health hasn’t been the best this past year. Living in Bangalore meant I was a flight/overnight bus away in case of emergencies but living here permanently is hard because I have to accept that there’s not a lot I can do if something goes wrong again.

Getting our PR has removed a lot of uncertainty that we had about our lives here though - I can change jobs more easily if I want to, we can finally buy a house/car without worrying about how long we get to stay here etc. So we’re focusing on those next steps now. The first one is securing housing - Sydney (and Australian) property market is insane. We’ve seen properties in certain areas have crazy price increases over the last three years and it’s pretty obvious that we’ll be in trouble if we intend to retire here without having housing sorted out.

So the last few weekends have been all about that. We’re visiting various suburbs trying to figure out what we like, what commutes are like and what we can get in our budget in each of them and talking to people to understand the NSW home buying process. We have until January on our lease so we’re hoping we can finalise something by then. We (read I) keep going back and forth on whether a townhouse or house makes more sense though so probably need to finalise that first.

Outside of that winter in Sydney is finally done. We’ve had a week or two of really hot weather and the winter jackets have been retired for the season. We have also completed this guitar term. The last few classes were very difficult - the sheet music is harder to read now and I’ve not had a lot of time to practice. Still I’m looking forward to next term and more music.

Work has been busy. We’ve had a few products go live and it needed a lot of support to handle those changes. I’ve been rethinking some of our support strategy as well outside of that. Right now everything comes in one bucket, and goes to everyone on our squad which isn’t really efficient so I’ve been thinking about the best way to segregate that, add incident runbooks etc. We also ran into some issues with our last few releases related to Git merges due to devs not really understand Git so some thought needs to go in on how to sort that out.

Fitness front is going okay. Gym is going well and I’m going to attend the group classes from October. But my walks have reduced - a combination of higher reps at the gym leading to severe fatigue on some days, bad weather in the first few weeks and now it’s just lost amidst office and house/suburb hunting days. I really need to get that and my eating back on track.

One weekend while Sathya was away I attended P1Harmony’s concert at Hordern. They’re one of my favourite bands and I loved this show just as I had last year. They played a lot of their songs from the new album, their popular numbers and some non released music as well. But the run up to it was so disappointing due to poorly organisation by the show runners - they did not share proper information about the ticket release plan and there was no merch available for purchase. I hope they fix it next time.

The next day I went to Spice Alley for lunch (meh) and then went to the White Rabbit art gallery in Chippendale. One of our friends who’d visited Sydney had recommended that to me and I finally took the time to visit it. It showcases a lot of work contemporary Asian artists and I spent a good hour there soaking it all in before heading back.

Outside of this we went to a friend’s kids birthday party in Berowra last week. This friend is the one who used to live nearby and later moved out so it was good to catch up and be Aunt Jojo to the little one again.

This week, we went to Metro theatre for a John Butler concert again. This time it was not an instrumental one but one showcasing his latest album. This song has been stuck in my head after that. It was really good, the music was great and so was the crowd but I was so exhausted after as it’s a standing only venue. Many apologies to Sathya for all the grumbling done on the way back.

Yesterday we took a break from suburb hunting and met up with our guitar class for brunch. Another couple in the group had their Aussie citizenship granted and we got together to celebrate that and our PR grant. It was actually nice to catch up outside of guitar and listen to all the stories people had over a great cup of coffee.

After that we went to Chatswood - one of Sathya’s closest friends from school is getting married and we went to get appropriate wedding attire for him. The salesperson at the store was super helpful (and super cheeky) and we picked out something quickly. We stopped at the chemist and grocery store and grabbed some necessities before coming back and doing our weekly chores.

Today we went up to Rouse Hill to check out the suburb. We had breakfast there and walked around for a bit before noticing a display unit for a set of apartments. We ended up chatting with the real estate agents about our requirements and they took us to show a few properties in the Box Hill area. It’s a bit too far from public transport options though, so we’ve ruled out moving there no matter how nice the newer places are. We did the three hour office commutes in Bangalore and I remember how much it sucked. Still it was good to get an idea of the area and our options.

We went and stopped at an Indian restaurant for a quick snack after the visit and took the metro to Tallawong after that. There wasn’t much to see there, just more endless suburbia so after about 15 mins of walking around we took the metro back, reached home and just relaxed, mentally preparing for yet another work week.

On my screens: I DNF’d Boys II planet after the third week. The editing was just atrocious and listening to the same song again and again was tiring. I’ll likely follow any group which is formed as a result of the show though, there’s some talented folks competing. I watched a few episodes of Bon Appetit, Your Majesty but DNF’d it as well. The food scenes were gorgeous but the romance bits just kept feeling off.

I’ve been watching My Bias is Showing which is a cute romcom about a fan meeting and starting to date his favourite idol but who has to keep his fanboy side a secret. The idol has his own goals though and the rest of the show seems to be shaping up to be very angsty.

On my bookshelf: I’ve done very little reading these past few weeks, the spy fanfic has stopped updating as the author has been busy with work. I tried to read some manga translations that were recommended in the related subreddits but nothing has really kept my attention beyond a page or two because other things have just taken over.

On my pages: I finally finished my first story and I am actually pretty happy with how I ended it. I thought I’d take a break after but my brain decided it was time to immediately start another story, this time using the red strings of fate trope. So that’s being written and seven chapters have been published so far.

I’m using ChatGPT this time as a beta reader/grammar check which has been surprisingly effective. I’m no longer mixing different tenses in the same chapter at least. I know there’s a lot of controversy around using AI in any creative projects but as I’m not using it to actually write my story I feel okay about using it.

On my playlist: I’ve been listening to a lot of music by Enhypen a K-pop group. I’d listened to them on and off when I streamed a generic K-pop playlist on Spotify. Actually listening to their own playlist made me realise how many of their songs I’d enjoyed without realising it was by them. I think one of my favourite ones that I want to recommend is XO.

On my plate: Between Sathya being away and not really getting into a routine once he was back due to all the things that have been happening we’ve eaten out a lot. Sathya has mentioned most of these in his weekly notes but my favourite is definitely the food at Dakshin last week. Their food is always good South Indian food but finding Goli soda just took me back to my childhood Delhi days. We’d head into the city centre (shopping complex) to make STD calls back home and get a soda as a treat while there. It’s strange how those old memories remain so vivid while you tend to forget what happened yesterday.

On my camera: I’ve been taking the ferry home from office some days and caught this pretty sunset one evening.

Thanks for tagging along!