Tag: wife

Modifying old blog posts

The wife and I have both spent the last day of 2014 consolidating our blogs. I’ve imported my posts from the two other blogs that I’ve been writing for the last couple of years – bespokedata.in and rq.nationalinterest.in. The plan is that rather than having a dispersed voice across blogs, I’ll integrate everything here. As part of that exercise I’ve made some personal blog posts password-protected, and made some others private.

Of course there are some “arbit” posts that are still visible, and when I do end up putting my name on this blog they’ll come to be associated with me. But then I consider them to be part of my character – if you strip away the arbitness from my body of writing then it might as well have been not written by me. Impersonal writing is just not for me.

Anyway so while I’ve been consolidating my blogs and taking some posts private, the wife has been doing something similar. Today she started what she says is her eighth blog – she calls herself a “compulsive blog starter”. As part of the consolidation process, she has imported her posts from her seven previous blogs into this one.

Now, some of these seven blogs are old, really old, and contain posts that she is not currently particularly proud of. And she has spent a considerable amount of time today editing and deleting some of these posts – most of which had been written as far back as in 2006. She says that some of the stuff she had written back then is not consistent with the person that she is today, and hence it is worth deleting. I’m not so sure.

I think a blog is like an online diary. Among other things it’s a record of your thoughts at a particular point in time. Going back a few years to someone’s blogs helps us understand what that person was like at that point in time, and perhaps do a comparative analysis of what they were then to what they are now.

While the wife has been modifying and deleting some ancient blog posts, I’ve also been dealing with some old blog posts, but in a different way. I’ve been reading them. And reading my posts from 2004 and 2005 have helped me understood my thought process in those years, and what my life was like then. These posts help me understand some of the decisions that I had made then which I have subsequently questioned.

Of course there is more than a fair share of cringeworthy posts from that period, but my logic is that while they may not be consistent with the person that I am today, they need not be. By updating those posts to make them consistent with the person that I am today, I’m making them inconsistent with the date tagged to the posts!

Nothing is permanent, and that includes a person’s frame of mind and way of thinking. It is almost a given that one is likely to find one’s old writing (irrespective of how old it is) cringeworthy on some front or the other. That however doesn’t mean that a person goes back in time changing one’s thoughts to make them more contemporary! For doing so destroys information that is embedded in the post as it is!

So I must mention that I’m not particularly in approval of the wife’s updation and deletion of her old blog posts. While I’ve done something like that (taking some posts private) I haven’t destroyed any information nor changed them in an irretrievable fashion. Modifying old blog posts is like rewriting history!

Receiving people and waiting for luggage

This morning was the first time ever that I’ve successfully received someone at the airport. Yes, the “successfully” was purposely inserted there, for I’d once driven up all the way to the Bangalore Airport only to find that the wife, who I had gone to receive, had already left by cab (her flight had landed early and baggage come out quickly). Apart from that one attempt in 2011, I’ve never ever gone to receive anyone at any airport – done a lot of receptions (not that kind of reception, silly) in railway stations, though!

So this morning I was again receiving the wife, who has come to town on vacation having completed one term of her MBA. I took the bus to the airport and reached at 8:30, in anticipation of the 8:50 flight, only to see that the flight from Dubai had “landed”, harbouring visions of the last time I’d (unsuccessfully) gone to receive her! Moreover, there was no way for me to reach her, for her Spain number doesn’t work here, and her India number was in my phone (I have a dual SIM phone!)! And so I stood at the arrival gate and waited, hoping that she had not missed me!

And while I was waiting there I realised that waiting for someone at the airport is like waiting for your luggage once you land. You know the flight has landed (in one of the cases, you actually travelled by it). But you know that the time taken for either your luggage or the person you’re waiting for to come is stochastic! And you hope that you’ve had a good day, and that the person/luggage comes asap!

In the luggage case, for a while the baggage belt is empty, and then bags start appearing. That’s when you start getting hopeful, waiting for your bag to arrive! Till there is baggage on the belt, you are at peace, using the restroom and retying your shoelaces and getting hold of a trolley if necessary! But once the baggage is on the belt you start getting anxious, and start harbouring notions of what if your baggage has not arrived!

Receiving your wife at the airport is also similar. Till you know that people from her flight have started to come out, you are at peace. You go get yourself a cup of coffee (have you noticed that coffee at Hatti Kaapi at the Bangalore arrival gate is much cheaper than that at Maiya’s at the other end of the airport? That’s for another blogpost!). You people watch, you observe the structure of the airport and (if you are a first-time receiver like me) observe what the arrival gate looks like from the outside.

And then people start arriving with Dubai Duty Free shopping bags (the wife flew Emirates) and that is the equivalent of the first bag arriving on the belt! And now you become tense, start wondering if the wife successfully made it to the flight (she was connecting via Dubai), and if her baggage made it to the flight, and why she’s taking so long. And then she arrives. It’s the kind of joy you have when you see your bag on the far end of the carousel and can’t wait for it to get to you! And then it arrives and you pick it up (in case of the wife, not literally) and off you go!

SPinky

My cousin has coined the word “spinky” – a portmanteau of Spain (where the wife now lives) and Pinky (the wife’s primary nickname). Actually I’m not sure if it’s my cousin or her three year old son who coined the word but it sounds cool.

And considering that spinky anagramizes to skimpy when written in Kannada I think it’s rather cool. I don’t know why but I’m suddenly reminded of our engagement cake where we’d got “skimpy weds pinky” or some such thing inscribed. I have no clue why I got that written (I admit it was my choice) but I had to take uncomfortable questions from relatives as to why I’m named skimpy (pinky was coined by her parents and can be considered to be a natural diminutive of Priyanka so that’s more explainable).

One side effect of that inscription on the engagement cake is that all my friends know the wife as “pinky”. So this conversation actually happened last month.

Me: so Priyanka was saying ..
He: who’s Priyanka?
Me: my wife
He: oh you mean pinky?

And considering that pinky doesnt particularly like to go by “pinky” (she prefers the other diminutive Pri, which was coined by some friends) she’s going to great lengths to get her friends in Spain to call her Pri.

But spinky sounds so cool it’ll be a travesty if it doesn’t catch on. So if you’re in barcelona now and are part of Pinkys regular play group please make sure you call her pinky and don’t let her get away with being called Pri. For pinky is so much cooler you know. And spinky is even cooler!

Spain + Pinky = SPinky, wife of SKimpy.

Bachelor notes: day zero

I’m writing this having just dropped the wife at the airport. I’m taking the bus back home. While it helps that this bus goes 200m from my house and i saw it leave just when I was ready to leave the airport, I realize that with the wife not at home there’s no incentive for me to get home asap. A little delay doesn’t hurt!

And to think that the last time I took the airport bus home was one week shy of five years ago, which was a month before I first met the lady who is now the wife!!

While I’m at it I’m suddenly reminded of the time eleven years ago, when I was at IIT and decided I wanted to “slow down the pace of life”! And my way of achieving that was by selling my cycle!

Something tells me I’ve written about this recently on the blog but I’m on the mobile and hence too lazy to check right now!!

Does facebook think my wife is my ex?

The “lookback” video feature that Facebook has launched on account of its tenth anniversary is nice. It flags up all the statuses and photos that you’ve uploaded that have been popular, and shows you how your life on facebook has been through the years.

My “lookback” video is weird, though, in that it contains content exclusively from my “past life”. There is absolutely no mention of the wife, despite us having been married for over three years now! And it is not like we’ve hidden our marriage from Facebook – we have a large number of photos and statuses in the recent past in which both of us have been mentioned.

Now, the danger with an exercise such as the lookback is that it can dig up unwanted things from one’s past. Let’s say you were seeing someone, the two of you together were all over Facebook and then you broke up. And then when you tried to clean up Facebook and get rid of the remnants of your past life, you miss cleaning up some stuff. And Facebook picks that up and puts that in you lookback video, making it rather unpleasant.

I’m sure the engineers at Facebook would have been aware of this problem, and hence would have come up with an algorithm to prevent such unpleasantness. Some bright engineer there would have come up with a filter such that ex-es are filtered out.

Now, back in January 2010, the (now) wife and I announced that we were in a relationship. Our respective profiles showed the names of the other person, and we proudly showed we were in a relationship. Then in August of the same year, the status changed to “Engaged’, and in November to “Married”. Through this time we we mentioned on each other’s profiles as each other’s significant others.

Then, a year or two back -I’m not sure when, exactly – the wife for some reason decided to remove the fact that she is married from facebook. I don’t think she changed her relationship status, but didn’t make the fact that she’s married public. As a consequence, my relationship status automatically changed from “Married to Priyanka Bharadwaj” to just “Married”.

So, I think facebook has this filter that if someone has once been your significant other, and is not that (according to your Facebook relationship status) anymore, he/she is an ex. And anyone who is your ex shall not appear in your lookback video – it doesn’t matter if you share status updates and photos after your “break up”.

Since Priyanka decided to hide the fact that she’s married from Facebook, facebook possibly thinks that we’ve broken up. The algorithm that created the lookback video would have ignored that we still upload pictures in which both of us are there – probably that algorithm thinks we’ve broken up but are still friends!

So – you have my lookback video which is almost exclusively about my past life (interestingly, most people who appear in the video are IIMB batchmates, and I joined Facebook two years after graduation), and contains nothing of my present!

Algorithms can be weird!