creative ventures

I see a lot of creative ventures from people in this lockdown.

And since I am not even a regular person on the social media, I know I might be talking about what everyone knows.

But my blog, my thoughts.

Notable are a few like a school friend of mine who is about to publish his own debut book of poems.

There is another friend who has started a VLOG since she's been stuck in Kerala for long.

My wife has developed an interest in gardening and is seriously doing lots of experiments with a variety of plants.

Many folks discovered their talents in singing, dancing, photography etc. which they hadn't really explored prior to the pandemic induced lockdown. I am seeing all these through the very small window of social media called Whatsapp Status.

Even my son has developed his speech and other mischievous skills alongside.

So creativity and development is in full bloom all around.

And yeah, its the same for me too: strategic and creative tasks at work, tonnes of books read, things pondered, written, taught..

Notes from Coronapril

Notes from April 2020
This lockdown and isolation is gonna last for a month more. Oh god. How do I bear it?

Even the thirty day subscriptions or Prime and Magzter would come to an end soon. Then I would have only cooking, workout, music, books, writing and painting to keep myself mentally sane. And there is the garden too which is quite ignored. And of course, I almost forgot, there are the extremely crushing office schedule, collaborating with remote colleagues and some really lengthy training modules too.

Also, on Magzter, what could be the inspirational motivation to read the magazines on Architecture, Aeroplanes, CoViD updates and medical news? I have earmarked a lot, but unable to start reading them. I find myself only looking forward to reading on travel (which is the last thing possible now).
-----End of notes---

PS: Nothing happens the way one notes down about it. I ended up either binge reading every single magazine on Magzter before its subscription ended, or deleted a few I realized were too dry. I ended up not doing any workout, did no painting or writing and just stuck to movies, office work, books and magazines.

Reading in the time of Corona

The months of lockdown also meant months of reading hundreds of magazines and books from free eBOOK apps and physical ones. I was extensively using Magzter and Juggernaut apps on the phone. I continue to use the latter while the former was stopped after its free version ended. Since there was a deadline, I also read feverishly and later sat down to vomit it all out to a diary to see how much I could recall. Now I am just digitizing some of those notes .. for fun.

In fact, as of today, I have 40 books marked Read in Goodreads, compared to the usual maximum of 20 a year. This doesn't count the hundreds of magazines and books which are not in Goodreads. If I try to recall the genre of magazines, I can quickly recall Architecture, Landscape, Science, Travel, Technology, History, Facts, History, Sci-Fi, Historical Fiction, Indian Mythological Fiction, Health Foods, Crime and even some Malayalam Literature.

There was this article I read about the Archer fish, originally found in the Sundarbans.
The fascinating aspect of this fish is that it beats refraction aspects and manages to shoot perfectly at insects high above the water line even while its eye is below it.

Then there was the article on the Basilisk lizard that has perfected running over water with a mechanism of running. It helps it to survive and gives more options of escaping compared to other similar organisms.

I also came to know that Band Aid was created by an employee whose wife kept having cuts and bruises at the kitchen. It was prepared by sticking pieces of gauze with anti-septic stuck on small tapes for easy application.

Also I realized that all dogs are the same species though they vary in lots of characteristics. This is because they are able to inter-breed between breeds.

The invention of MRI is a disputed one between some American and British scientists.

The head feels rotating in the direction opposite to the actual motion as it is still undergoing the cancellation action ordered by the brain to retain some kind of equilibrium.

The reason air is invisible is because it doesn't alter the photons which pass through it. Other materials like water in it does it and causing it to translucent.

There were some tough science topics also that I read about a lot like the Corona Virus, T-Cells, Lymph nodes, generation of antibodies, and the history of deep bores into the Earth. Looking at the vast topics these are, I can justify not having written down lengthy notes at that time.

Then there were the stories of exploration of the Angel falls, detailed full magazines on Ladakhi architecture, garden landscaping ideas and stories on sustainable living environments.

Since I am not able to locate the other notes, I might keep putting more posts on what I am able to recall, more as a memory recall exercise than anything else.