If I had been patient, it would have saved me time. One such instance
is following.
From my early blogs, you might know I am using mutt to do email. Just
after I get along with mutt, I started using notmuch. Because limit
search in mutt is always a pain when you have multiple folders. And
what better tool out there than notmuch-mutt to bind both these.
One for search, one for reconstructing threads and one for
manipulating tags, which I missed.
Now my impatient part. I have already mapped f6 for my folder
movements and in my initial days of notmuch, I only use just search.
So I never cared about the f6 macro provided by notmuch-mutt. As time
goes by I got very comfortable with notmuch. I was stretching my
notmuch legs. I started to live more on notmuch search results
date:today tag:unread than more on the mutt index. To the problem,
since notmuch-mutt dump all results to a temp maildir location, can’t
perform flag changes back to the original maildir which was annoying,
because we need to distinguish what mail you read and what not when
you subscribed to most of all debian mailing list.
I was under the impression that, the notmuch-mutt is not capable of
doing so and I just went like that without checking docs. I started
doing all crazy hack to sync these maildirs.
I even started reading notmuch-mutt codebase.
Later, I settled on notmuch-vim. Cause I can manipulate flags sync
back from notmuch to maildir.
And while searching for something, I accidentally revisited the the
the notmuch-mutt macro page and saw the tag manipulation. I was like
:( .
If I read about the third macro patiently when added that to config,
I could’ve saved time by not doing ugly hacks around it.
On the 7th of September 2025, my friend Dione and I had a day trip to Vienna—the capital of Austria. We were attending a conference in Budapest, Hungary, which is 250 km from Vienna. So, it was a good opportunity to visit Vienna.
We took a morning train from Budapest to Vienna and got back to Budapest by night. However, booking these tickets turned out to be a bit complicated. There were many websites to book the train ticket—Hungarian Railways, Austrian Railways, and third-party sites such as Omio. All these websites had different prices for the same ticket.
I booked the tickets from the Hungarian Railways website as it was the cheapest. The train from Budapest to Vienna was €13, operated by Eurocity. Also, I had to pay €2 for the seat reservation on top. The train from Vienna to Budapest—operated by Railjet—was €21, along with €2 extra for reservation again—making it €23. The tickets for the two-way journey added up to €38.
The cost of these tickets varied depending on when one purchses them: the sooner you purchase, the lower the price. I bought my tickets 15 days ahead of the date of journey and paid just €38. In contrast, Dione booked just one day before her trip and paid around €100 for her tickets.
As for the seat reservation, long-distance trains in Europe usually require paying extra for the seat reservation. This ensures that you get your preferred seat, such as a window seat or an aisle seat. Nevertheless, you will get a seat on long-distance trains because they do not sell more tickets than there are seats. Therefore, you will get a seat without reservation as well. However, we reserved our seats so that we can sit together. This helped us more in the return part of the journey—from Vienna to Budapest—which was more crowded than the train we took from Budapest to Vienna in the morning.
On another note, reservation is mandatory on some trains in Europe, but ours wasn’t one of them. In addition, people also use rail passes, so an extra charge is required on top for reserving the seats for pass holders. On the other hand, local trains do not require seat reservations in general.
Our train’s scheduled departure was at 08:55 from the Budapest Kelenfold station. We reached the train station 40 minutes before the train’s scheduled departure. The Kelenfold station had free Wi-Fi, which was handy because I didn’t have a local SIM.
A departures board at Budapest Kelenfold station. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
This is platform number 15 of Budapest Kelenfold station where we boarded our train. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Our train arrived on time. I tried to find our coach number but could not find the numbers written anywhere on the side of the coach. Luckily, we were helped by a fellow passenger who directed me to look at the doors, where the numbers were mentioned clearly!
Then we got into our compartment and took our respective seats. Our tickets were checked twice - once while the train was in Hungary and the other when in Austria. Showing the PDF of the train ticket on our mobile to the ticket inspector was good enough for the purpose. Austria and Hungary are a part of the open transit Schengen area, which means this was the extent of the border control checks we had to go through.
Interior of our Budapest to Vienna train. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
The train also had free Wi-Fi, albeit with poor connection at times. There were no eatery options inside the train.
We deboarded at the Wien Hauptbahnhof station in Vienna. The journey was 250 km and took 2.5 hours, reaching Vienna at 11:25, which was the scheduled time.
This blue colored train was the one we took for our Budapest to Vienna journey. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
An ÖBB train standing at a platform of Vienna train station. ÖBB is the national carrier of Austria. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Wien Hauptbahnhof train station. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
At the station, we bought a 24-hour public transport pass from a ticket machine for €8. The pass includes unlimited access to all the public transport in Vienna for 24 hours. My pass was valid from the 7th of September at 11:34 to the 8th of September at 11:33. A single public transport ticket (from anywhere to anywhere) costs €2.4. A single ticket of €2.4 can be used once on any public transport in Vienna—trams, metros, and buses.
Therefore, the pass is a good deal if you are going to take at least four public transport trips in a day. Unlike the public transport pass I got in Budapest, the pass in Vienna was anonymous and not tied to the rider’s name.
My public transport pass in Vienna.
We wanted to visit the Schönbrunn Palace. The palace was reachable by subway. In order to get to the subway station, we started by going outside the station. But it was not outside. So we came back inside the station building and realized that the subway was underground.
We took the subway and deboarded at the Schönbrunn subway station—the closest one to the palace. The ride was smooth; the train was pretty silent.
By the way, like Budapest, there were no AFC gates for boarding the subway in Vienna. The stations had ticket validators instead, where you are supposed to validate your tickets before getting into the subway.
Instead of AFC gates, Vienna has ticket validators as in the picture. You need to tap your ticket in the validator before boarding the subway. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
These validators are in place to ensure that you use your ticket only once. Unlike AFC gates, which are present in metros of most of the countries I have been to, the ticket validators don’t act as a physical barrier to enter the boarding area.
If you board the metro without validating your ticket, you will be facing hefty fines upon getting caught. I have heard that the fine is around €100. On the other hand, if you have a public transport pass like we did, then you don’t need to validate it before boarding.
In addition, there were no annoying security checks either, unlike in Indian cities. In the Delhi metro, for example, you would need to scan your bags and pass through a security check before getting to the AFC gates.
Vienna subway. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Now back to the story, after alighting at the Schönbrunn subway station, we walked to the Schönbrunn Palace. One can roam around outside the palace and click pictures for free. To go inside, however, requires buying tickets. The tickets for the palace can be booked in advance on the internet. We didn’t take the tickets in advance, as we decided to visit the palace at the last moment.
So we went to the ticket counter and found out that we needed to wait for 1 hour 40 minutes before going inside if we took the tickets at that moment. In addition, one ticket costs €44 (around 4000 Indian rupees). Since we had to return to Budapest in the evening and only had a few hours in the city, we decided not to go inside the palace. Instead, we clicked a few pictures outside the palace.
Schönbrunn Palace. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
The Schönbrunn Palace is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is a historically significant place. It servedas one of the residences of the powerful Habsburg dynasty. The palace looked so good that my friend Dione said, “It seemed like the palace was built yesterday”. This remark applied to other parts of Vienna we went to. For example, the subway stations also seemed like they were built yesterday.
A street near Schönbrunn Palace. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Now, we wanted to go someplace to grab a bite. I asked my friend Urbec for suggestions on where to go. They suggested we visit the steps named Strudlhofstiege, which had the added benefit of being in a neighborhood with good bakeries and buildings.
So, we took the subway and deboarded at the Roßauer Lände station, followed by walking around a kilometer to reach the stairs.
Roßauer Lände subway station. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Platform of the Roßauer Lände subway station. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
The The Strudlhofstiege steps. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
On the way, we were also looking for a place to eat. Unfortunately, it was Sunday, and Vienna closes on Sunday. That means most of the shops—including bakeries and cafés—are closed. Only places like railway stations have shops open on Sundays.
By the way, walking around in the streets of Vienna was a treat. The streets were not crowded (as it was not exactly a touristy neighborhood) and had good pedestrian infrastructure, with clean streets and separate cycling tracks. The buildings were also beautiful.
A random street in Vienna.
Another street in Vienna.
After some walking, we found a restaurant open. I grabbed the menu to check the prices. A lady at the shop asked me what I was doing, and I told her that I was browsing the menu. She said that the menu was in German. I don’t know how she knew that we didn’t know German, but it seemed like a racist thing to be told.
We roamed around further and found a café by the name of Blue Orange, where we ordered coffee and croissants. When we got our order, the waiter told us that they were having some issues, so they wouldn’t charge us for the croissant if it wasn’t good.
A picture of Blue Orange café. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
My friend and I took a bite, and both of us didn’t like the croissant. After some time, the waiter came to us and asked whether the croissant was okay, to which we said no. Therefore, they didn’t charge us for the croissant. This was the first time something like this happened to me. It felt like I was in a different world. I added a small tip at the end for this gesture, which I had to put in a jar at the counter.
The cappuccino I ordered was €4.50, while the espresso that Dione ordered was €3.60. The croissant would have been €3.60. I remember Paris having cheaper croissants!
Then when the waiter brought our drinks out, they automatically gave me the espresso and Dione the cappuccino. Dione found this funny because there is a stereotype in her country (Australia) that men drink strong black coffee, and women drink milky drinks like cappuccinos. She found it interesting that this stereotype seems to exist in Austrian culture too.
We hopped on a tram to reach the nearest subway station and went to the Wien Hauptbahnhof station to have something before we caught our return train to Budapest.
Trams in Vienna. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
At the station, I had Esterhazyschnitten and Punschkrapfen (thanks, Urbec, for the suggestion). The lady at the shop warned me that punschkrapfen had alcohol in it, to which I said okay.
Esterhazyschnitten was a cake made of almonds, while punschkrapfen was a jam-filled sponge cake, soaked in rum. Esterhazyschnitten was my favorite out of the two. The punschkrapfen was too sweet for my taste.
Punschkrapfen. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Esterhazyschnitten. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
While the station was well-built, there were a couple of things about the Wien Hauptbahnhof station that we didn’t like. There were no seats inside the station, so we had to eat outside the building. Also, the toilets needed to be paid for. It costs 50 cents to use the toilets at this station.
The Vienna train station had departure boards all over the place. So, we went to the platform our train was to arrive on.
Departure boards in Vienna displaying information about the trains. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Platform and tracks at Wien Hauptbahnhof station. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
When our train arrived, we had some difficulty locating our compartment. This train was operated by a different company (Railjet) than the one we took in the morning (Eurocity) from Budapest to Vienna, and we were able to locate the coach numbers using the digital board at the station. Each compartment had a digital board next to it on the station displaying the coach number. However, that wasn’t the problem. Even after reading the coach numbers and trying to find ours, it didn’t appear where we expected in the sequence.
When we were not able to find our coach for a while, we asked a ticket inspector of the train who was standing on the platform. He directed us towards the front side of the train. So we started running to the front side as we didn’t know how long the train stops.
As we ran toward our coach, we found out that the engine of the back train was connected with the last compartment of the train at the front. At that point, we realized that the train was a combination of two trains. At a later station, the train on the back side parted ways and went towards Vienna Airport.
Interior of the train we took from Vienna to Budapest. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
This is the train we took for our return journey from Vienna to Budapest. It is standing on a platform in Budapest Kelenfold station. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
We had a smooth journey and reached Budapest a couple of hours later.
Vienna is a beautiful city; we enjoyed being there, and we would like to visit the city again!
That’s it for now. Signing off. See you in the next one!
Credits: Thanks to Dione and Badri for proofreading.
Weekly notes is a genre where people chronicle their week on their blogs. Weekly notes are like a window. I love going through these, as they’re a steady stream of week on week happenings and progress in people’s lives. It shows people making efforts to improve: from basic things like learning to swim or drive, to planning long-term goals such as vacations, moving house, states, or even countries — and, in some cases, internal monologues, thoughts, and anxieties. These are like a constant nudge for me to work on myself, like them.
Most are there on Thejesh’s weekly notes planet which autoupdates when new posts arrive, usually starting on Friday evenings, and by Monday, almost everyone has posted.
It reminds of a word from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows -
Kenaway :
the longing to see how other people live their lives when they’re not in public; wishing you could tune in to the raw feed of another human existence, in all its messiness and solitude—shimmying in place while brushing their teeth, squabbling over where to put the shoes, talking out their problems on solitary commutes—if only to give you something to compare your own life against, and figure out whether you’re bizarrely normal or normally bizarre.
NMG 2026 results are out. If you are a grantee, congratulations. This is the 9th edition of 2026 and the biggest both in terms of total grant and the number of grantees. Initial emails have been sent. Today, I started sending some introductory emails so fund transfers can happen. The actual fund transfer is from person to person as a gift. I also started working towards the 10th year, where I want to cover at least some of the grantees (if they are willing) as part of a blog series.
When we were in SFS School, our campus had lots of trees of this fruit. We used call it gasagase hannu. We used to love it. APU has some and they are full of fruit now. I had a few today. I still love it.
It’s been very hot; I used to think 35°C was the hottest, but now it’s consistently crossing 35°C. It is also very dry heat, the type that makes you tired, drowsy, and thirsty all the time.
We had lunch with niblings at YouMee. I think it was okay. But kids loved going around, as there were lots of kids due to the holidays. Uma has been spending a lot of time with them this summer.
Fixed a couple of pairs of Levi’s jeans that were at least a decade old. Started wearing them again. I love how they fit.
A new 30 Days project called #30DaysOfDXing, where I am trying to receive various radio wave transmissions and listen to them.
We have a new workout plan now. We will follow it for the next six months. My personal strength goal is to squat 1x bodyweight. Currently, I am at 18 Kgs, which is roughly 1/3. This was a good week, three workout sessions and a game session. We also got to hang out a bit at the Dolphins after the game.
You might like The Creative Independent if you are looking for articles, interviews, and how-tos that can help you lead a creative life (according to them! ). I have found them useful.
The union government tried to Trojan Horse the delimitation through the new women’s reservation bill. It wasn’t an honest effort, and it failed. If you didn’t know, there is already a reservation bill that was passed in parliament, but is not yet operative. On the other side of the world, people are getting arrested for sharing something privately on WhatsApp. I am no longer sure about E2EE on WhatsApp, following Signal’s E2EE being broken via a notification flaw on iOS.
My at least a decade old 504 and 511 Levi’sPatched up Levi’s 511, ready to go
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In a way, I agree with a lot of points in Nicholas Decker’s recent article Social Credit. Our society with its modern mass media has allowed a handful of people to dominate our attention, and these people aren’t usually the ones you would want to be on top of the attention economy. I think you might have plenty of people in your mind who fit that description.
The core idea of Nicholas’ essay goes like this: sports, fashion, politics, and entertainment are kind of things which do not contribute much value to our society but still command our awe and, hence, we should discourage them in favour of scientists which actually do contribute to the progress of our society. In the words of Nicholas,
It is not so bad if someone should go into sports because they are of little intelligence, and would amount to nothing if it were not for their body. But we should regard every person of intelligence, who could have done something which would actually improve the world, who goes into sports as a shameful tragedy.
I am not very sure how they concluded that entertainment or musicians are a zero sum game since they haven’t provided any justification for that. They also included politicians in their criticism of “professions and industries whose existence is entirely zero sum”. This seems weird to me, especially considering the fact that Nicholas is from USA, a country which is currently not having a great time under its new set of poltical representatives. Nicholas doesn’t actually address how their criticism applies to politics, so the fact that they casually inserted that word seems wrong.
However, ignoring those bits, I would point out that the essay relies on one central assumption; the assumption that scientists are much more smarter than the rest of the population. This assumption critically weakens the logic of the essay and makes the whole argument a lot less convincing.
Scientists are not that smart when compared to the rest of us. They are able to do what they do because they have spent a lot of time on it, and in that way they are not that different from experts in other fields. I think that the image of scientists as people with some innate talent is derived from the image of science as a meritocracy where the best idea always win. This is of course not true. There is also plenty of evidence that more educated people are more polarised on important topics of contention such as climate change or universal basic income.
This weakens Nicholas’ arguments, since if scientists are really not that different from the rest of us, then transferring people from fields like sports or fashion may in fact lower welfare as people who previously enjoyed their jobs will be forced to do things which are possibly less enjoyable. Maybe there would also be a decrease in the total amount of effort applied by the person. In fact, it could be better to transfer, say, care workers instead.
I am also not sure if there is actually a scarcity of researchers right now. Maybe it’s just the case that research institutes are not getting enough resources to do stuff. In that case a transfer from sports will not be required. Unfortunately, Nicholas hasn’t discussed this either.
Thanks for your patience, everyone. It took a lot of work to process this year’s applications. There were lots of good applications. We are a micro-grant, but that said, this is the biggest year for NMG, with 5.85 lakhs in the grant pool, thanks to friends of NMG – Shweta/Ashwini(60K), Divya(25K), Miss.Y(30K) and Mr.S(10K), Saurabh/SG (25K), AP(50K), FOSS United Foundation (200K), Pradeep (20K), Abhinav Sarkar (25K), NP (15K) and Gangadhar (25k).
ನಾಗರತ್ನ ಸ್ಮಾರಕ ಅನುದಾನ – Nagarathna Memorial Grant
Here is the big list of grantees in no specific order.
Name
Amount
Supriya Nandgouli – Exploratory research project on women’s lived experiences around reproductive health and care in Bidar
25000
Lalitha A R – Indian Food Informatics Database (IFID)
50000
Arun ganesh – Amche.in
25000
Seema Hegde – Phasalu Paathashaale
50000
Dev Jadiya – Wikipedia related work
20000
Sri Ranjni T.S – Documentary – River Moyar
40000
Sudeep – Durare
15000
Shruthi – School of Nature
50000
Abhinav Tushar – Harp
50000
Mihir Pathak – Zabukiyun
50000
Adhavan Mohana Sivaraj – Not so fashionable: decades long debates in the state legislatures
1,00,000
Aalok Thakkar – Translation of Poetry
15000
Neeldhara Misra – Grok A Book
20000
Sai Phanindra – Telugu epaper archival
25000
Ram – Creating Course on DSS
50000
You should receive an email with the details by tomorrow. Congratulations to all the grantees, and a huge thank you to everyone who applied, shared, and supported.
Join our moderated Friends of NMG email list to connect with like-minded people and stay updated. You can go to main project page for all the details.
2026-04-30: One of the grantees couldn’t receive the funds due to personal reasons, so I reassigned the grant to the next person in the short list. Also, I had missed adding Gangadhar’s ₹25K to the pool earlier. With that included, we were able to offer a larger grant. Thank you, Gangadhar. I have also updated the original post and this post.
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In September 2025, I attended the LibreOffice Conference in Budapest, Hungary, on the 4th and the 5th, and a community meeting on the 3rd. Thanks to The Document Foundation (TDF) for sponsoring my travel and accommodation costs. The conference venue was Faculty of Informatics, Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE).
The conference was planned to be held from the 4th to the 6th, but the program for the 6th of September had to be canceled due to the venue being unavailable because of a marathon in Budapest. So, all the talks got squeezed into just two days, making the schedule a bit hectic.
The TDF had booked my room at the Corvin Hotel. It was a double bedroom with a window. The breakfast was included in the hotel booking. The hotel was walking distance from the conference venue. One could also take a tram from the hotel to reach the venue.
A shot of my room. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
A tram in Budapest. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
3rd of September
On the 3rd of September, we had a community meeting at the above-mentioned venue. I walked with my friend Dione to the venue. Upon reaching there, I noticed that the university had no boundaries and gates. This reminded me of the previous year’s conference venue in Luxembourg, which also had no boundaries or gates.
In contrast, Indian universities and institutes typically have walls and gates serving as boundaries to separate them from the rest of the city. Many of these institutes also have security guards at the entrance, who may ask attendees to present proof of admission before allowing them inside. I was surprised to find that institutes in Europe, like the one where the conference was held, did not have such boundaries.
The building where the conference was held was red, which happened to be the same color as the building for the previous year’s conference venue. I remember joking with Dione that the criteria for the conference venue might have been the color of the building.
The red building in the picture served as the conference venue. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
During the community meeting, we shared ideas on how to spread the word about LibreOffice. The meeting lasted for a couple of hours.
After the community meeting, we went to the hotel for dinner sponsored by the TDF.
These Esterházy cake bites were really yummy. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Raspberry Currant cake slices. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
4th of September
On the first day of the conference, attendees were given swag bags containing a pad, sticky notes, a pen, a conference T-shirt, and a bottle.
Conference swag. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
The talks started early in the morning with Eliane Domingos, Chairperson of TDF’s Board of Directors, giving the inauguration talk. As always, I found Italo Vignoli’s talk on the importance of document freedom interesting.
During the snack break, I noticed that there were three types of milk available for coffee: cow’s milk, lactose-free milk, and almond milk. Almond milk is rare in India, but I have managed to get it, but I have never seen lactose-free milk in India.
Since I run fundraisers in my projects, such as Prav, I could relate to Lothar K. Becker’s talk. He discussed the issue that certain implementations in LibreOffice require a budget that is too large for any single interested entity to fund independently. Furthermore, The Document Foundation (TDF) cannot legally receive funds from government entities. Therefore, there is no organization or entity to pool resources from all the interested entities to finance the implementation.
Lothar giving his presentation. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Another talk was by the Austrian Armed Forces on their migration to LibreOffice. I wanted to know why they migrated, and I found out that they did it for their digital sovereignty, and not for saving on the license costs. Another point presented in the talk was that LibreOffice is available on all the operating systems, while the Microsoft Office suite is not that widely available. The migration was systematic and was performed over a few years. They started working on it in 2021, and the migration was finished recently. In addition, it also required training their staff in using LibreOffice.
Presentation on migration to LibreOffice by Austrian Armed Forces. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
The lunch was inside the university canteen. We were provided lunch coupons by the TDF. I got a vegan coupon with 4000 Ft written on it, which meant I could take lunch for up to 4000 Hungarian forints.
My lunch ticket for the conference. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
The lunch I had on the first day. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
During the evening, it was my turn for the presentation. I was done with preparing my slides ten days before my talk. I also got my slides reviewed by friends.
My talk was finished in 20 minutes, while I was given a 30-minute slot. This helped us catch up on the schedule. Furthermore, I made my talk interactive by asking questions and making sure that the audience was not asleep. During my talk, my friend Dione took my pictures with my camera.
My talk was on how free software projects could give users a say in freedom to modify the software. I illustrated this using the Prav project that I am a part of.
After the talks were over, we were treated to a conference dinner at Trofea Grill. It had a great selection of desserts, which helped me sample some Hungarian desserts. The sponge cake was especially good.
Desserts at Tofea Grill. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
5th of September
The next day—the 5th of September—I went with Dione to the venue early in the morning, as her talk was the first one of the day. Her talk was titled Managing Tasks with Nextcloud Deck. Later that day, I also attended a talk on Collabora. At lunch, I found the egg white salad quite tasty.
Dione giving her presentation. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Egg white salad. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
After the lunch break, we had the conference group photo. I had a Nikon camera, which we used to take the group photo. I requested a university student to take our group photo and also taught her how to operate the camera.
Group photo
By the evening, the conference ended, after which we went to a pub, which was again sponsored by TDF. I had beer, but that one really tasted bad, so I couldn’t finish it. The only vegetarian option was goat cheeseburger, which my friend Manish and I opted for. The burger tasted awful. Apparently, I don’t like goat cheese.
The next day I went sightseeing with Dione in Budapest. Stay tuned for our adventures in Budapest!
Credits: Thanks to Dione and Richard for proofreading.
I am a radio enthusiast and also an E&C engineer. Though fields and waves, or antenna theory, were not my favorite subjects in engineering, I love radio waves and listening to them. I think if I had more practice-oriented classes during my engineering studies, I would have loved those subjects much more than I do now that I practice. May be something for me to remember when I teach or share.
DXing, taken from DX, the telegraphic shorthand for “distance” or “distant”, is the hobby of receiving and identifying distant radio or television signals, or making two-way radio contact with distant stations in amateur radio, citizens band radio or other two-way radio communications. – Wikipedia
If you are new to Short Wave Listening (SWL) or the HAM radio world, DXing generally means listening to distant signals. Still, I am not limiting myself to only the “distant” signals in this project, nor to radio or television signals. I am going to try local signals as well, for example, Non-Directional Beacon (NDB) from Bangalore Airport is a fair game. I might also do local FM stations, just to learn. The focus is on learning and trying new things.
SW 13710kHz on 20260415 at 1834 GMT heard in Bengaluru. Transmission by China Radio International, Kunming Anning, China. Received using Eton Elite Traveler.
My plan is not to spend more than 30 minutes a day on this. I should be able to achieve it. I have already started logging them at #30DaysOfDXing, along with all the details. If it interests you, contact me. Maybe we can do it together.
NESDR and RH 795 with SMA Male to BNC Female cable.Eton Elite Traveler Radio
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…I feel that everything is about love and that hate is a perverse way of expressing love. It’s not that they are two sides of the same coin.
— Gustavo Santaolalla, in an interview with TechRadar
[SPOILER ALERT! THIS POST DISCUSSES THE PLOT OF THE LAST OF US.]
One of the central themes of The Last of Us Part 2 is the contrast between Ellie’s hate for Abby and her love for Joel. In the story, the hate emerges from Joel’s brutal murder at the hands of Abby. Due to its importance to the story’s narrative, this idea of hate coming out of love heavily defines the music of the game. In fact, a lot of music from Part 1 was actually repackaged and given much harsher tones in Part 2.
I am fascinated by this evolution of love, and for me this contains an interesting way to view “evil”. Of course, much of this has been already discussed in popular culture in the form of “humanising the villain”. However, inspite of this, the general consensus views evil as being a fundamental property of some outliers and seeks to punish them. After all, the populace generally finds it difficult to imagine, say, a Hitler who loves dogs and children. (There has been some evidence that that statement is actually true.)
In my view, this only serves to provide a scapegoat instead of solving the actual problem. A better solution, in my opinion, would be to actually understand this evolution and try to reverse it. It would be difficult, especially considering we are talking about empathising with people who are sometimes even referred to as demons. However, inspite of difficulties it is actually the right method to adopt.
In the world of The Last of Us it would be hopeless to imagine helping Ellie since the environment is a dystopian anarchy anyway. However, in more calmer state of affairs maybe there’s a chance of redemption.
It feels like a long, tiring week because it’s been a busy one, or most probably because of getting back to regular life after vacation, or because Bengaluru has been hot this week. Anyway, its been a busy and hectic week.
What better to do when its so hot.
Uma started playing football this week. She is just getting used to it. I am still not sure if she loves it. But she likes going out, running around with friends. Football is a good way to do it.
I have been working on NMG applications. We should have results on 22nd. I am late by a week this year.
I started my regular gym sessions. This week, there were two sessions with my trainer and one on my own. I also played a game of pickleball. I am looking for more players living in and around me so that I can play at least twice a week. But I can only play when Uma is asleep, so it has to be either before 7 in the morning or after 7 in the evening. It’s not easy to find partners.
I want to do a long ride on the NX500, at least a day ride of 200+ Km. RoyalBrothers, where I usually rent bikes, used to have it, but they don’t seem to anymore. Could you suggest any other place where I can hire it? Also, if you own one, can you ping me? I would like to talk to you.
I used to host on MediaTemple, which later got acquired by GoDaddy. Two years ago, they also moved the platform to GoDaddy. Overall, it’s been okay, though pricey. In the last six months, they have been working on performance ( I know because it has improved, and I can also see they use Cloudflare CDN), but it’s been breaking my media hosting. often. The recent one is my GPX files, they have been serving it with the wrong content-type. So most of my GPX maps are broken as of now. I will have to think about it now.
It started with a thought: to understand people’s perspectives on life and its meaning. So I texted folks, “What is life (to you)?”. Each of the following list items (-) is a response from a different individual, mostly verbatim.
- A lot
- Everyone has a few universal basic qualities, and some special qualities. To me life is pursuit of exploring world based on those qualities and maturing those qualities as one goes on about exploring world/life with those qualities.
Discovering and enhancing experiences as one goes through them.
- life is endless suffering
- my answer might change daily, but this is what I’ve noticed and feel recently.
Life is a spectrum with two distinct ends: what we control and what we don’t. At birth, the spectrum is largely tilted toward control, but throughout our lives, it gradually shifts toward the other side. Ultimately, as we approach death, we lose all control over any aspect of our existence, reaching the other end of the spectrum.
tho this isn’t universal, privilege plays a huge part in what you control tho i believe it holds true for the majority
but yeah man, meaning and purpose are dynamic, it’s in their nature to change
i can give you a different answer this evening itself xD
- Zindagi ek nadiya hai,
Aur mujhe tairna nahi aata (translation - Life is a river,
and I don’t know how to swim)
On a more serious note, Life is what you make it out for yourself.
The only established truth is that it will end. We can never know if there is something after or if there was something before.
So try to live a life that you feel aspired by?
But this question was beautifully answered by that book which you had about that dying professor
(Me - He was talking about Tuesday’s with Morrie)
- My answer is 42
- One, it’s living on your own terms, you define everything for yourself, success, normal, whatever. You get to curate your version of it no matter the societal norms.
It’s an accumulation of experiences - friends, parents, work, activities, doing shit loads. Sab try karo- travel, zumba, art, music, workout, sports, dil kara ye karna hai karlo. (translation - If your heart wants to do it, just do it.)
Then I think relationships - all that you’ve nurtured, people forget maintaining people because of work. It takes efforts to keep people in your life, everyone that comes has a place in yours, how well thats stays is upto you. You also get to curate your people, who stays who don’t. Family toh hai hi (translation - family is there) but everyone else that comes along can make it pretty good.
So I don’t want to be 50 and be like chalo ab kuch apne liye karte hai… (translation - Come on, now let’s do something for ourselves) Do whatever shit you want today. Not everything costs money, and if it does get thrifty
But do keep healthy while doing all of that
- Being alive so that my daughter can grow up and i can help raising her kids as well.
Raising kids without mother is tough :P
- Definitively, I feel like Life is a by product of proteins and energy working together.
But in a more personal sense, Life is a dumb joke played onto us. It’s a rat race.
But rats exists because of life and then it becomes a chicken-egg problem
Honestly, I don’t give good answers to life questions. I’m generally the one asking
Life can be like a box of chocolates, you don’t know what you’re gonna get untill you experience the chocolate(assuming the chocolates are heterogenous and contains a mix of everything)
Camus once said, “Life is a revolt�, and one of his students added more spice to it like “Life is a revolt against the meaninglessness of existence"
I kinda feel like Life is the pursuit of every person’s search for meaning
- Imprisonment waiting for execution 😄
I have one more thought while we are on the topic , game with pre defined starting position and predefined destination , path to reach is a maze
- A phase where you can have a really good time or really bad one, usually the mix of both.
A phase where you are prisoner to responsibility and materialistic wants.
It’s a hell for you, where you try to create heaven for others.
Being born was never your choice, but ending is always in your hands but you are a prisoner. You fear that leaving this world behind will destroy the heavens you created for others and they will be back to hell. But eventually everyone moves on watching the hourglass of their life.
Once you are left with no desires or no one to create heavens for, you look arround yourself. You see everyone chasing something, everyone scared of their limitted life time sliping away yet you want it to end sooner.
Doesn’t matter if it was all good till now, or all bad. The other half is waiting for redemption.
If it was all good, it’s best time to die don’t wait for the bad to start. If was all bad, it’s still the best time to die what if it was the good one and more worst is waiting for you.
We desire to be remembered, yet we want to free from this loop of suffering.
Someone once said, life is a suffering, chose your sufferings.
- Life to me is to live without regrets and live with freedom.
Life is always unpredictable and this unpredictability makes it more interesting and worth it.
- As of now, for the state of mind that I am in , I think for me life is about subtle struggle, subtle inconveniences and yet moving forward cause that’s all I know.
I am not sure if any of this has any meaning, but sometimes I feel I was born of a purpose and that the universe has my back.
For me it’s about raising my consciousness, understanding people to their depths, gaining moderate material success and helping people to some extend.
I have tried to seek a grander meaning but I have failed.
Life for me is what I make out it.
In my times of great success i rarely think about life for I am busy enjoying it, whatever you may call that state of mind.
- For me its the little things that you enjoy with YOUR people
- Life to me is about living and loving, and doing it in a way that sustains. It’s the people who shape you, the work you get absorbed in, the quiet moments in between. There’s also the wanting, the drive to figure out what’s worth going after and how to get there, but that’s just one part of it, not the point of it. And none of it happens in a vacuum. I’m aware of the privileges that let me live this way, and I try to hold on to that gratitude. In the end, life has both a material and a non-material side, and a lot of what we do is chasing material things in an attempt to satisfy something non-material within us
- Mere liye (translation - for me) life is staying at my home and studying random economics papers. That’s when I enjoy myself the most.
- Very complicated
Some days I wish this life never ended and some time I feel it would be better if it stopped at that moment.
It all depends on the events that happen in the so called “life”.
So life to me is a string of events that happen anyway and you get to make some decisions which can turn it in any direction and then you wonder how did that happen.
- not forgetting to breathe, learn, eat, game, take a good shit, love, sleep.
- To be honest it changed with time!
At 19 it was about freedom, wasn’t sure what freedom meant but i wanted that! To be free from everything, maybe because parents still controlled a part of my life.
Then came 22-24 where i was working, trying to figure out what i want, the meaning changed from freedom to living for myself. To earn more, to be greedy about myself and pursue whatever would help me gain more steps in my career.
Came my mba life, switched my life from doing for myself to trying everything out to have no regrets. Life meaning was just about living with no regrets, invested, gambled, did everything to earn that tag of “yeah, have tried that�.
Now it has all switched to, it was all just a fake facade. Life turned to having a meaningful life rather than finding meaning in what i am doing. Living for people around me, chhoti chhoti cheezo m khushi (translation - happiness in small things(?)) isn’t really a topic of conversation but more of happy thing for me.
So it changed, and m quite happy to be honest. Life did show me a lot of failures, but was privileged enough to face those failures. Gained a lot of learnings if not money😂
Hopeful for more learnings and change meaning of life with time
- A task.
- You have different answers at different times
You learn different meanings at different times
When you are studying, basically it is about job, finding a partner
then it becomes, house, car other things based on your income
in between, there can be passion too
Free Software was a passion, electoral politics too, but both kind of faded and I want cooperative and user driven development now (prav - something that motivates me every day) and these days learning Chinese and watching Cdrama takes a huge part of my leisure time
it is heavily subjective
and also influences by previous experiences
people around you, how much influence they have on you
it also depends on if they had to struggle in their life or not, for some life did not give much troubles
and trouble itself can be relative
people who never had to struggle may find even smallest challenges as troubles
like if you own a car, your worry is finding a parking slot
- I am too young to think about lyfe
- A ticket to see the show on earth, I guess 😀
I guess life is different depending on the mood. It is a very broad question.
(Me - What is it in this present mood?)
Learning stuff (like I am learning a new language) and being happy but also to regulate emotions in a world where being optimistic is getting harder each day.
Life is also having a unique set of glasses you wear. Both in terms of looking from your eyeballs and your psychological perspective. Both are unique and cannot be replicated.
It is interesting what people on their deathbed think of life. If I know I am dying, my perspective would change a whole lot.
Life is finishing reading books while we are alive 😉
Life is sleeping after a good XMPP chat 😉
- uhh to word it? life is just like a journey from A to somewhere and its all about what paths you take and what line you get on to me, just a series of short adventures that all connect to a larger sequence until you can’t have any more adventures-
(Me - eee, THE END. drop dead, like a coin)
yeaaaah- I am not really for spirituality of an afterlife, to me life just ends at some point, after which point there fails to remain a discernable you, and some X time after which, you will be last remembered, try to make that last time a good one I guess?
(Me - no soul?)
uhhh not in the way most people think of it i guess?
theres just a lot of yous, theres the physical you, there is the idea of you, there is the expectation of you, and one of the undefinable you I would label as the soul maybe? like the part thats not physically you, but also certainly you
(Me - can’t say I understood part, but I get you in this sense)
mhm- well its about just questioning who you are more so questioning what life is-, I have sadly spent way too much time trying to figure that out
- Making the best of the time you have
- living a full range of experiences and embracing the good ones, seeing all that the world has to offer. In the end we were always just stardust. Might as well enjoy it when we are stardust with a consciousness of our own.
- For some reason or the Universe’s /dev/random I was born here as a biological being, and from my experience I understood living is hard and the best way to live is by embracing it. Loving everyone and everything around you. Be happy and joyful until you naturally say good bye to this world.
- Life is being fucked by everything and you just have to figure out and try to stick to the things worth being fucked for
Note: Following was transcribed from a audio message.
- There are five conditions to become a life to survive in the environment. I think there’s five conditions by the biological definitions and reproduction is one of the factor virus is not considered a life form because it cannot reproduce on its own but technically it’s kind of a life because it reproduces using the DNA ability this is the biological definition.
Do you want a philosophical definition?
My definition is kind of the same except that you get life experiences along with it as a human.
Extra benefits is that you are not an NPC. All other organisms are NPCs.
But humans can interpret the world and change it to their liking.
That is life in the case of a human.
But then many humans are mostly NPCs.
But they still can change the life.
Okay, fuck this. Where is this even going?
A human is an exception in the case of life, because human is not an NPC.
Human can interrupt the world, human can change it to its liking,
which is why we are such a successful organism on this planet.
That is life to me. That’s a human.
But all of this is kind of meaningless, because
the biological impurity of a human being still exists, so you still have the
urges to reproduce, which kind of makes
it like just another organism. But then, humans are yet to evolve
to overcome that biological imperative.
I’m grateful for all the replies, outlooks, and subsequent conversations I got to have after this question with everyone. After all, it was a deeply personal question. It does fit in nicely with my definition of life: “Life is all about experiences and all the transient relationships one gets to have with folks we meet on the way.”
PS - I would love you hear you on this. Feel free to text or email on sahil AT sahilister.in
I recently added setting up a proper Bee hotel as a goal, but I didn’t think something similar would happen naturally. I love the concept of Bee hotels. Bee hotel is a man-made structure for solitary pollinator bees to rest. It seemed like a fun project, so I added it to my TODO list. This week, we found that one of our balconies has been home to a beehive. It’s not a bee hotel but equally fun.
A beehive is where bee colonies or communities live and raise; a bee hotel’s purpose is to solely attract bees that do not make their homes in colonies, but instead build individual nesting sites of their own, referred to as “solitary bees.” – Wikipedia
I did contact the folks at The Hive for help. These are Apis cerana indica, or the Indian honey bees. Apparently, they are mostly harmless and sting very rarely. They are going to get a wooden box for these Indian Honey Bees. We will figure out with their help where to house them. Until then, I am a beekeeper.
Indian Honey Bee (Apis cerana indica), Bengaluru, Karnataka, 14 April 2026.
Indian Honey Bee (Apis cerana indica), Bengaluru, Karnataka, 14 April 2026.
I found a dead bee on the floor and took pictures of it for science. This is probably my first time photographing a dead insect. I should have used a real camera for this. But these mobile photos are not bad. Next time I will use a real camera.
Indian Honey Bee (Apis cerana indica), Bengaluru, Karnataka, 14 April 2026.Indian Honey Bee (Apis cerana indica), Bengaluru, Karnataka, 14 April 2026.
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The annual LibreOffice conference 2025 was held in Budapest, Hungary, from the 3rd to the 6th of September 2025. Thanks to the The Document Foundation (TDF) for sponsoring me to attend the conference.
As Hungary is a part of the Schengen area, I needed a Schengen visa to attend the conference. In order to apply for a Schengen visa, one needs to get an appointment at VFS Global and submit all the required documents there, which are then forwarded to the embassy.
I got an appointment for a Hungary visa at VFS Global in New Delhi for the 24th of July. There were many appointment slots available for the Hungary visa. One could easily get an appointment for the next day at the Delhi center. There were some technical problems on the VFS website, though, as I was unable to upload a scanned copy of my passport while booking the appointment. I got an error saying, “Unfortunately, you have exceeded the maximum upload limit.”
The problem didn’t get fixed even after contacting the VFS helpline. They asked me to try in the Firefox browser and deleting all the cache, which I already did.
So I created another account with a different email address and phone number, after which I was able to upload my passport and book an appointment. Other conference attendees from India also reported facing some technical issues on the VFS Hungary website.
Anyway, I went to the VFS Hungary application center as per my appointment on the 24th of July. Going inside, I located the Hungary visa application counter. There were two applicants ahead of me.
When it was my turn, the VFS staff warned me that my passport was damaged. The “damage” was on the bio-data page. All the details could be seen, but the lamination of the details page wore off a bit. They asked me to write an application to the Embassy of Hungary in New Delhi stating that I insist VFS to submit my application along with describing the “damage” on my passport.
I got a bit worried about my application getting rejected due to the “damage.” But I decided to gamble my money on this one, as I didn’t have time (and energy) to apply for a new passport before this trip.
Moreover, I had struck down a couple of fields in my visa application form which were not applicable to me, due to which the VFS staff asked me to fill out another visa application.
After this, the application got submitted, and it was 11,000 INR (including the fee to book the appointment at VFS). Here is the list of documents I submitted:
My passport
Photocopy of my passport
Two photographs of myself
Duly filled visa application form
Return flight ticket reservations
Payslips for the last three months
Invitation letter from the conference organizer (in Hungarian)
Proof of hotel bookings during my stay in Hungary
Cover letter stating my itinerary
Income tax returns filed by me
Bank account statement, signed and sealed by the bank
Travel insurance valid for the period of the entire trip
It took 2 hours for me to submit my visa application, even though there were only two applicants before me. This was by far the longest time to submit a Schengen visa application for me.
Fast-forward to the 30th of July, and I received an email from the Embassy of Hungary asking me to submit an additional document - paid air ticket - for my application. I had only submitted dummy flight tickets, and they were enough for the Schengen visas I applied for until now. This was the first time a country was asking me to submit a confirmed flight ticket during the visa process.
I consulted my travel agent on this, and they were fairly confident that I will get the visa if the embassy is asking me to submit confirmed flight tickets. So I asked the travel agent to book the flight tickets. These tickets were ₹78,000, and the airline was Emirates. Then, I sent the flight tickets to the embassy by email.
The embassy sent the visa results on the 6th of August, which I received the next day.
My visa had been approved! It took 14 days for me to get the Hungary visa after submitting the application.
I am back in Bengaluru. Slept and rested a bit. I watched One Battle After Another on the way to Sydney and Naked Gun 2 on the way back. I really liked how One Battle After Another is told, DiCaprio’s role, the chemistry between father and daughter, and the climax. It’s a good watch. Yet to get back to work properly. I have a big TODO list.
Martin Place, Sydney
I wrote a couple of blog posts about our Australia visit, walks, and drive. I have one more in draft and will publish it next week. It was a short trip, but it was fun. I would love to go back to Australia and do more walks and drives.
I have not played or worked out in the last week. I already feel a bit rusty. Hoping to get back to playing and the gym next week. Compared to my previous holidays, this holiday we ate quite well and very healthily too.
I broke my phone screen. I had to get an emergency phone via Uber Eats. It’s a Moto G56 5G. It’s a simple and affordable phone. It works well for all my needs, which are actually very basic. Now I have to get my old phone fixed.
Echo and Pathu spent time with my sister, niece, and nephew this time. They have become very fond of them. We can’t board Echo anymore; he’s become very anxious and has fallen ill. He needs to be with family, ideally, at what he considers home.
All mankuthimmana kagga’s, along with their English meanings. There are about 945 poems, each of which is four lines. They are profound, and the collection is a masterpiece. Samay Raina’s STILL ALIVE is a good watch. This free 2024 course, Practical Deep Learning for Coders, is still a good one, especially if you are starting. An interesting real-world + virtual game about tagging and claiming payphones in the Sydney/NSW area. I did tag a phone at Martin place.
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We just wanted to drive around NSW’s countryside and maybe visit a farm. Camden came up in the search, and the Airbnb there looked nice, and hence we settled on it. It was also perfect fir for the Easter weekend (4th and 5th of Apr) as it was a small town. Camden is not far from the city, so we planned to go to Wollongong on the Grand Pacific Drive via the Sea Cliff Bridge. That way, we get to ride on beautiful roads, too.
View from Sea Cliff Bridge
Panoramic view of Sea Cliff Bridge
Sea Cliff BridgeStuart Park at WollongongView from Sea Cliff BridgeSea Cliff Bridge
At Camden, we didn’t do much. We walked around the town
Camden post officeNoodle Place at CamdenView from AirBnB house
I am currently preparing for IIT Delhi’s internal test for Msc Economics. An hour ago I came across this question in the 2023 question paper.
It’s a simple question, but I was unable to do it because I keep doing some annoying calculation mistakes (which I didn’t notice at the time).
I started thinking that there must be some deficiency in my understanding of joint probability distributions, so I looked up a particular video that has been stuck in my to-view list for a few months. The first slide was this
Elections for the student council of Economics Department are currently going in my college. Out of all promotional images that are being flooded in college group chats one in particular caught my eye because of its poor economics, so here are some of the obvious issues I find with it.
Oh Gawd
For one the axes aren’t even properly labelled! It only reminds me of this
Due to this it is hard to understand what they mean by a continuous budget line. If it corresponds to candidates, then it should have been discrete. However, lets say that instead of comparing themself with other candidates they are comparing themself with the whole of India; in that case the size is large enough to warrant a continuous budget line.
What about the indifference curve? I think they want to say that that is actually a social indifference curve. However, this begs the question how did they calculated it? As anyone aware of basic utilitarianism can tell you, it is impossible to aggregate individual indifference curves without making some sort of philosophical basis. However, the image hasn’t specified exactly what constitutes this basis. Without these assumptions clearly stated it seems that the analysis was manipulated to make it tangent to the budget line exactly at their preferred point and this considerably reduces the legitimacy of their analysis. I suspect a case of Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem.
Another thing to note are the two axes. Why are there only 2, and not 3 or more? A decision as complex as deciding members of student council must take more variables into consideration. In my opinion, at the very least a 5 dimensional marginal analysis was necessary for this study.
Finally, the caption actually contradicts the whole graph given above. As the budget constraint shows there are other people on the line too. So how is it possible that the opportunity cost is 0? Are they trying to imply that all other candidates are not even on the budget line, perhaps even at origin? If that’s really the case then it should be regarded as a clear violation of “no personal attacks” rule and strict action must be taken against them. I recommend solving the 5 variable optimisation version of this problem by hand as punishment.
It wasn’t planned that she would walk all the way. I was ready to carry her at least three-fourths of the way. I would have been more than happy if she had walked a kilometer. But it so happened that she walked all the way, surprising us.
The platypus track is the smallest one at Bidjigal Reserve. We chose it so Uma could walk. The weather was good, and she was in a good mood.
I recently came across the fact that, at least in recent times, there has been 2 major strands of Atheism.
These are, in words of David Hoelscher, Scientifc Atheism and Humanistic Atheism. Now here are some of my own views of these cultures which have been heavily influenced by his article New Atheism, Worse Than You Think in CounterPunch.
Scientific Atheism corresponds to a philosophy with near religious faith in power of science and a very intolerant view of religions. However, the view is not as unbiased as it seems at first glance. Science has often been used in modern times to advocate for an eradication of the “lower class”, with its most popular example residing in eugenics under Nazi dictatorship. Similarly, the New Atheism Movement has also been accused of Islamophobic and Sexist tendencies. The “Science”, in fact, can be used to prove almost anything that your heart desires. An almost blind faith in the superiority of science is, hence, very dangerous for the functioning of any society.
Humanistic Atheism, on the other had, is more “humanistic” or tolerant of religions. Instead of simply rejecting religion because “there is no evidence a god exists” like Scientific Atheists would normally say, it actually engages with religious literature. It is also more conducive to discussions since the actual goal, after all, is to get good agreements on other contentious topics like climate change, monopolization of capital, poverty, and so on.
My thinking has always been very similar to one propunded by Humanistic Atheists. However, it was only recently that I came to realize its deeper implications.
Here are a few instances in my life of “unscientific” thinking: A believes in black magic, M believes in ghosts, T believes in Astrology, and RU believes in “cat crossing path is bad omen.” I usually have a very negative view of these stuff and on multiple occasions I have gone passive aggressive when talking to these people. But in light of the two distinctions that I just drew above regarding Atheism was this response on my part a sensible behaviour?
I contend no. Rage over minor “unscientific” abnormality like these is very counterproductive. It angers people with no change in the actual status quo. It can also be considered very demeaning. A better idea is to always move to other issues which are far more deserving of attention. Humans deserve dignity, even when their opinions seem pretty stupid.
I was recently reading Demographic deposit, dividend and debt by Sonalde Desai. Following the Standard Operating Procedure, I looked up this Sonalde person and turns out she is a researcher at a research institute in Delhi called National Council of Applied Economic Research. The work of this organization felt interesting to me, so I had to pause my studies and see its location on OpenStreetMap.
Nothing. Looks like the place hasn’t been mapped yet. I searched for 11, Indraprastha Estate since that was mentioned on their contact page and this time I did find an object. A person called “n’garh” had added the address back in July 2014 and I am so glad that I was quickly able to push a changeset (#180878526). Another win for address mapping!
MiniDebConf Kanpur 2026 was held on 14th and 15th March 2026 at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur.
Having a Debian conference in the North was something many folks wanted. Ravi started the discussion (with IIT Kanpur folks) almost 7 months before the conference. Lots of folks from Debian India joined in organizing the conference, which was nice. All the meeting notes and discussions were posted on the Debian India mailing list, a first.
Despite all the efforts, the conference start was delayed due to logistical issues. Things went fine post Day 1 lunch. We had two days of almost full schedules. disaster’s Decentralising Indian Communication was an interesting talk, diving into decentralised communication.
IIT Kanpur is a huge campus with nice footpaths and greenery. We got the opportunity to explore their HPC at the Computer Center post conference.
Work has already started for MiniDebCamp Kochi. More details can be found on the wiki.
Working to make this conference happen was different with all the challenges involved, but overall, everyone was happy with the outcome.
A few days ago, I came to know that Paul Romer, of Romer Model fame, actually has a more or less active blog since 1997! This was a surprise, considering that I thought that the guy must be old enough to die. So, I looked up YouTube videos on him and found a TED Talk with the title “Why the World Needs Charter Cities”.
“Charter Cities”? Huh. I have never heard of that term. However, A casual “research” soon gave me so much interesting information that my mind exploded.
The term Charter Cities was first coined by Romer himself in the TED Talk I mentioned above. Charter Cities are supposed to solve the problem of poor quality of institutional structures in least developed and middle income countries by allowing high income countries to develop cities and then giving them near absolute power to regulate everything there in a manner similar to how British controlled Hong Kong, with a few caveats.
The idea is fascinating, not least due to the massive amount of allegations of neocolonialism made against Romer’s idea. “Are Charter Cities Legitimate?” by Rahul Sagar discussed these problems in detail and concluded that it’s the practical issues, not moral ones, that make implementing Charter Cities difficult. I would recommend the interested reader to give it a read, though I do not fully agree with the essay.
Aside from the discussion on these problems, the thing that fascinated me the most was that Charter Cities have already been implemented by some countries, though not exactly in the manner Romer approves.
Prospera of Honduras was the first one. The city of around 2000 people is controlled by Honduras Prospera Incorporated, a company controlled by venture capitalists. The legal structure of the city is mostly defined by the corporation with the national government of Honduras having little control over it. Multiple attempts by the national government and judiciary has been made to destroy Honduras Prospera Incorporated, but some stakeholders from USA have lobbied enough to stop any repeals of its existence. Currently the corporation is suing the government for an amount about 1/3 of the country’s GDP. Now similar Charter City projects are being started in Africa.
All of this sounds super dystopian to me and it keeps reminding me of the fictional Night City from Cyberpunk 2077. In this world of Neoliberalism, what hasn’t been tainted? I don’t know.
Talking to your ex-friend long after breakup is supposed to be enjoyable. Both of you share updates on what’s happening in your respective lives and joke about the circumstances surrounding the breakup. Or so I thought.
In this case we did a normal civilised conversation, unlike the few times we met earlier where we both had our daggers drawn out. She told me how she definitely made a lot more friends after dumping me and how her dog died. I told her about my new username and its meaning. (Yup, I thought that might be a good point of conversation. I wonder if she will be able to find my new blog…)
However, I started to lose my control when she started speaking of something along the lines of ’this is the last time we are talking.’ I am totally aware about the fact but saying stuff like that really makes me emotional. Thank you. I managed to recover my composure and talked amicably till she and I split up at the bus stop. I was OK with how everything went.
But after 5-10 minutes I got a message from her which was like
BS BS BS. BS. BS BS. Goodbye.
Holy fuck that word again. At this point I was suddenly feeling a few emotions intensely, and had to choose between 2 options:
(Lie) Tell her I hate her to ensure that it leave a bad taste in her mouth
(Lie) Tell her I love her to ensure that she stay with me
So I of course chose option 3:
Just send her a goodbye
I think my usage of poetic license with the phrase “Sayonara Stranger” pissed her off and I was blocked again by the next day.
So, yeah. In the end it was me who felt terrible from all the talking and now I am too disturbed to continue watching random London School of Economics’ lectures on YouTube. I still want to be her friend.
My college life is going to end in about a month. I think this might be a good time to write about some of my experiences which might be useful for the future kouhai who will search “Is Hindu College Good?”.
The Student Council might be a good start. The Council, in theory, is supposed to represent the interests of students. However, it doesn’t seem like that it is happening right now. The last elections were a disaster with a person called A winning the president position. As far as I have heard from other people in the class, it seems like in their last position in the council A didn’t do much work, effectively resulting in K overworking the heck out. In the next elections K didn’t participate which automatically made A the winner. Around 160 votes were casted, of which 90 were for A and around 70 were NOTA.
The actual study isn’t going very well either. An important Economic Advisor was going to give a guest lecture on 12 March, but almost nobody from the department showed up. The Department Head had to make arrangements with the Science Department to get some supply of students to fill up the seats. A similar thing happened on 27 April. In fact hearing loud whispers during even the normal lectures is very common. The Head nowadays often complain about “this generation.” Maybe this is happening as a result of COVID-19?
I often ask my friends how much they think they have learned in the college and I often get the reply “nothing.” Education is supposed to be liberating, and here we have a bunch of people who are mostly preoccupied with keeping up with the assignments.
The relations between students isn’t very rosy either. Casteism and Sexism for one are prevalent. For instance, I once joined a small Maths group of my friends and had to exit soon when they started sending videos of girls dancing in Sanganeria Auditorium and GIFs of masturbating stick figures.
An important demonstration of this classism is the “department trip.” A department trip is supposed to include most, if not all, students. Now see for yourself how many of the 90 students in my batch actually attended the trip:
Why are there so few people you ask? The cost per person is ₹8000 and I don’t think even the people from Economically Weaker Sections get a discount. The 6 page PDF description of the trip has even a size of 73MB! How is any of this inclusive?
Finally I would like to end with an important suggestion for my future kouhai: don’t choose Hindu College just because it is Hindu College. I once met 5-6 Philosophy Department students who chose Philosophy because they can’t get Economics, even though they had the excellent option to study Economics at Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma College. How idiotic!
I removed the screen from my laptop—and it’s now more useful than
before.
Anyways, I recently got my hands on a used thinkpad X230 for around
60$.
The machine is great, the keyboard even better, but the TN panel is
genuinely unusable.
For a while, I used it like a laptop as intended, but I can only do
so much with a TN Panel whose max brightness is my Pixel’s 10%
brightness.
Instead, I decided to cut my losses and just remove the display
altogether, and use the thinkpad as a keyboard with my monitor.
The Hardware
Doing this was pretty simple, I just had to open up the back of the
laptop, remove the hinge screws, and then slowly disconnect all the
wires before removing the display assembly.
Additionally, I changed the Wi-Fi card to an atheros one for good
measure. (God bless Libreboot)
Main issue with this, was that the Thinklight is literally impossible
to remove from the casing, so I kinda had to snap that wire out.
I also removed the two wifi antennae that are glued to the display
casing, and kept it outside so wifi continues to work properly.
I kept the webcam too, removed from the case and double tape’d to my
monitor - since somehow this ancient laptop seems to have a better
camera than my modern laptop.
After doing all this, and very-safely electrical taping all the extra
wires if i ever decide to put a new display on this, I got a think-slab
:D
After shot of my setup
However, I had to add a few cmdline arguments on grub to make it
work.
The first 3 are common grub parameters that you always have, while
the last 2 are the special ones you need to add the :d parameter
disables LVDS-1 (internal display), and the :e parameter enables VDA-1
(in my case, the external display)
An update-grub later, everything magically started
appearing on my monitor!
The software
This worked great for research and other random stuff I did, but a
laptop from 2012 can only do so much in terms of computing.
To remedy this, I decided to just use the thinkpad keyboard with my
modern laptop using software KVM. Since my monitor has both VGA and
HDMI, I was able to connect my modern laptop to the HDMI port, and the
thinkpad to VGA.
Though I was just planning on using barrier like I did year’s ago, I
decided to go with Lan-Mouse this
time.
It is a rust-based application similar to synergy and barrier, but
with a proper gtk UI and supposedly better performance.
Now, since I have a wireless card that’s older than me on the
thinkpad, I had to do some ethernet magic for lan mouse if I wanted any
sort of real performance. Software KVM is a high-bandwidth task after
all.
So I connected an ethernet cable between the two laptops, and set it
up as follows
# On Modern laptopnmcli con add type ethernet ifname enp2s0 ip4 192.168.50.1/24# On Thinkpadnmcli con add type ethernet ifname eno0 ip4 192.168.50.2/24
And magically, I have a Gigabit connection between the two laptops
for Lan-Mouse to work through. Lan mouse is pretty intuitive to setup,
so im not covering it here.
In conclusion, this one day’s work turned out pretty well for me. I
now have a speedy “slabtop” for any research or minor work that I have,
and it doesn’t even take 5 minutes for this setup to convert into a
high-performance workstation either.
I’m still using the X230 without lan-mouse for home usage, when I’m
too lazy to get my laptop out of my bag, but this setup really helps me
when I need to get some real programming work done, which is 10x harder
without such a comfy keyboard like that of the X230.
Continuing from the last post, Badri and I took a flight from the Brunei International Airport to Kuala Lumpur on the 12th of December 2024. We reached Kuala Lumpur in the evening.
After arriving at the airport, we went through immigration. In a previous post, I mentioned that we had put our stuff in lockers at the TBS bus terminal in Kuala Lumpur. Therefore, we had to go there.
The locker was automated and required us to enter the PIN we had set. Upon entering the PIN, the locker wasn’t getting unlocked. After trying this for 10-15 minutes without any luck, we tried getting some help as there the lockers weren’t under supervision.
So, I roamed around and found a staff member, reporting that our lockers weren’t getting unlocked. They called the person who was in-charge of the lockers. He came to us in a few minutes and used their admin access to open the locker. We were supposed to pay for using the lockers by putting the banknotes inside through a slot. However, as the machine wasn’t working, we gave the amount for the use of our locker service to that person instead.
We soon went back to the KL airport to catch our morning flight to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. At the flight counter, we were afraid we would have to pay extra as our luggage surpassed the allowed weight limit. This one was also a budget airline—AirAsia—and our tickets didn’t include a check-in bag.
Generally, passengers from countries requiring a visa to visit Vietnam (such as India) require going to the airline and showing their visa to get the boarding pass. However, when we went to the AirAsia counter at the Kuala Lumpur airport, they didn’t weigh our bags and asked us to get our boarding passes from an automated kiosk. So, we got our boarding passes printed and proceeded to the airport security.
While clearing the airport security, a lotion I bought from Singapore was confiscated because it was 200 mL, exceeding the limit of 100 mL per bottle. Had that 200 mL liquid been in two different bottles of 100 mL each, I would have been allowed to take it in my carry-on bag, but a single 200 mL bottle wasn’t! I was allowed to keep it in the check-in bag, but I didn’t have it included in my ticket. Huh, airports and their weird rules :( The lotion was an expensive one, so having it thrown away did ruin my mood.
Overview
We started our Vietnam trip from Ho Chi Minh City in the south on the 13th of December 2024 and finished it in Hanoi in the north on the 20th of December. We traveled from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi mostly by train, except for a hundred or so kilometers by bus, in chunks. On the way, we visited Nha Trang, Hoi An, and Hue. The distance between Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi is 1700 km.
For your reference, here are those places labeled on Vietnam’s map.
We landed in Ho Chi Minh City early morning on the 13th of December 2024. I was tired and sleepy as I hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep. After going through immigration, we went to a currency exchange counter to get Vietnamese Dong. Unlike other countries on this trip, money exchange counters in Vietnam didn’t accept Indian rupees. Therefore, we exchanged euros to get Vietnamese dong at the airport.
After getting out of the airport, we took a bus to the city center. It was 15,000 dongs—approximately 50 Indian rupees. Our plan was to meet Badri’s friend and stay the night at his apartment.
So we went to a café nearby and bought a coffee for each of us for 75,000 dongs. We went upstairs and sat for a while. The Wi-Fi password was mentioned on our bill. During the trip, I found out about the café culture of Vietnam. They have their own coffee brands (such as Highlands Coffee), and you can sit down at any of the cafés for work or wait for the rain to stop. It rained a lot while we were there, so we did use these cafés for that purpose.
Badri’s friend met us there, and we roamed around the area a bit, which included roaming inside a beautiful park. Then Badri’s friend took us to a restaurant. Because I do not eat meat, he took us to a vegan restaurant. Having been to four Southeast Asian countries at this point (excluding Vietnam), I was under the impression that there wouldn’t be a lot of things for my diet in Vietnam.
A picture of the park we roamed around in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
However, I was pleasantly surprised at the restaurant. I found all the dishes to be tasty, especially their signature noodles called Pho. I liked another dish so much that I tracked down the restaurant again with Badri using the geotagged image of the bill I had taken earler to have it again. As a tip for vegans coming to Vietnam, the places having the letters “Chay” (without any accented letters) in their name are vegan only.
This is the restaurant Badri’s friend took us to. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
One of the dishes we had in the restaurant. This one was especially tasty. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
One of the dishes we had in the restaurant. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
These noodles are called Pho and are very popular in Vietnam. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
In the night, we went to a supermarket where I got myself some oranges and guavas. Then, we went to a Japanese restaurant where I didn’t have anything, as there was no vegetarian option available for me. Then we took a free bus to the place to Badri’s friend’s apartment. The construction company that built the apartment also runs this free bus service from their residential area to different parts of the city as a way of promoting their apartments. Anyone can take the bus, not just residents.
The next day, we took the free bus back to the city center and checked in to a hostel for a night. We took two beds in dormitories, which were 88,000 dongs (270 rupees) for each bed for a night. In Vietnam, if you can spend around 300 rupees per night, you can get a bed in a decent hostel.
Train from Ho Chi Minh City to Nha Trang
On the night of the 15th of December 2024, we boarded a train from Ho Chi Minh City to Nha Trang. The ticket for each of us was 519,000 dongs (1600 Indian rupees). The train name was SNT2. When we reached the Ho Chi Minh City train station, we noticed that the station was rather small by Indian standards.
After entering the train station, we went inside to the first platform, where the tickets were checked by a staff member. Ho Chi Minh City was the originating station for our train, so our train was already standing at the station. We had to cross the railway tracks on foot to reach the platform our train was on. Then we located our coach, where a ticket inspector was standing at the gate. He let us in after checking our tickets. In all these instances, we just had to show our digital boarding pass which we had received by email.
Unlike Indian trains, the train didn’t have side berths. Additionally, I liked the fact that it had a dedicated space to put our bags in, which was very convenient. The train departed from Ho Chi Minh City at 21:05 and arrived in Nha Trang at 05:30 in the morning.
Interior of our train coach. Trains in Vietnam don’t have side berths, unlike India. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
A picture of the berths from our coach. It had three tiers, similar to a 3 AC coach in Indian trains. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
The train had a cabin to put the bags in. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Nha Trang train station. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Nha Trang
Nha Trang is a coastal place, and we planned to go to a beach. We figured out that the bus to the airport goes can drop us near the beach. Therefore, we went to the bus station to get to the airport bus. The bus station was walking distance from the railway station. So, we decided to walk.
On the way, we stopped at a small shop for a coffee. The shop also gave a complimentary cup of green tea along with the coffee. I found out later that it is common for local shops to give a cup of complimentary green tea in Vietnam.
I got a complimentary cup of green tea along with coffee in Nha Trang. In this trip, Badri and I found out that this is customary at local places in Vietnam. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Soon we reached the bus station and took a bus to the beach. It was 65,000 dongs (₹200). After getting down from the bus, I had coconut water and some eggs at a small local place.
Eggs being cooked on a pan for my order. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Then we went to the beach, but nobody else was there. We spent some time there and went back to the place where the bus dropped us as it started raining. We couldn’t find a bus for some time. A taxi driver approached us and agreed to take us to the city center for 200,000 dongs (₹650). For reference, the place where he dropped us was 35 km from the place we took the taxi. Taxi fares in Vietnam were also cheap!
The beach we went to in Nha Trang. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Nha Trang was a beautiful place, and so we roamed around for a while. Then we stopped at a Highlands Coffee branch for a while. Since Christmas was coming up, the café had a Christmas tree, and I liked the Christmas vibes. They were playing Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You.
This one was shot in the city center. In this trip, Badri and I found out that this is customary at local places in Vietnam. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Inside a Highlands Coffee cafe in Nha Trang. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
A coffee I got from Highlands Coffee in Nha Trang. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
During the evening, we went to a local place to eat. The place mentioned “Chay” in its name, and you know what it means—it was a vegan place. There was a man there and no other customers. I don’t remember the names of the dishes we ordered, but it was a bowl of soupy noodles and a bowl of dry noodles. They were very tasty. To top that off, the meal was a total of 55,000 dongs (₹180) for both of us.
The host was welcoming and friendly. We had a nice conversation with the host. In Vietnam, restaurants give chopsticks to eat noodles. While Badri was good at using them, I wasn’t. So, the host of this restaurant helped me in using chopsticks. Although my technique was not perfect and I take a bit of time, I could now eat solely with chopsticks.
The restaurant we went to in Nha Trang. The word Chay in the name means it was a vegan restaurant. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Soupy noodles we got at that restaurant. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Dry noodles we got at that restaurant. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Our plan was to take a night bus to Hoi An, and we were hoping to find a bus stand. However, we couldn’t find one. Asking around about the pickup location of the Hoi An bus led us to many different locations. Finally, we ended up at a bus booking agency’s office where we found out that there were no tickets available for Hoi An.
At this point, we gave up on booking the bus and searched for trains instead. As we didn’t have a local SIM, we asked the agency to let us connect to their Wi-Fi so that we could look for trains. They were kind enough to let us do that. It also seemed like they were going to close the office in like 10 minutes.
Unfortunately, all the sleeper berths were booked from Nha Trang till Hoi An on the next train with only seating berths being available. It takes around 10 hours, so I wasn’t comfortable traveling on seating berths.
Here I came up with the idea to look for sleeper berths from an intermediate stop. Fortunately, there were sleeper berths available from the next stop, Ninh Hòa. Therefore, we booked a seating berth from Nha Trang to Ninh Hòa and a sleeper berth from Ninh Hòa to Trà Kiệu (the nearest railway station from Hoi An). The train name was SE6, and it was a total of 500,000 dongs per person (₹1600 per person).
So, we went to the Nha Trang railway station and boarded the train. We had to spend 40 minutes seated for the train to reach the next stop before we could go to our sleeper berths. Badri had some friendly co-passengers on that trip who gave him Saigon beer and some crispy papad-like thing. They offered me as well, but I thought it was non-veg, so I declined it.
Hoi An
On the morning of 17th December 2024, we got down at the Trà Kiệu station at around 09:30. Our hostel was in Hoi An, which was around 22 km from the station. There was no public transport to get there.
Instead, there was a taxi driver at the train platform. We told him the name of our hostel, and he quoted 270,000 dongs (around ₹850). We said it was too expensive for us, so he agreed to bargain at 250,000 dongs. At this point, we told him that we could give him no more than 200,000 dongs, but he didn’t agree.
Badri tried a trick. He asked the driver to show us prices in the Grab app (a popular taxi booking app in Southeast Asia). Unfortunately, the Grab app showed 258,000 dongs, which was more than the fare the driver agreed to.
So we walked away as if we had so many options (we didn’t!) to reach the hostel. We got out of the station and stopped at a small shop outside to have some coffee. As is customary in Vietnam, we got a complimentary green tea here as well.
This was the place we had our coffee in Tra Kieu. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
That taxi driver also joined us and sat in that shop. He started talking with the locals in the shop in the local language. The taxi driver was insistent on taking us to Hoi An for 250,000 dongs. At this point, Badri told the taxi driver (by the use of translation software) that we usually use public transport during our trips, and we aren’t used to paying high prices to get around. So, he can drop us somewhere in Hoi An for 200,000 dongs as we don’t mind walking a bit to reach our hotel.
After reading this, the taxi driver agreed to take us to our hostel for 200,000 dongs (₹660). He also had me take a picture with Badri after this. I think such a bargain tactic would not work in India.
Photo of Badri with taxi driver. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
The nice thing we noticed in Vietnam is, once bargaining is done and the deal is settled, people don’t try to bargain more or keep on talking about the subject. Before the deal, the driver was being somewhat insistent and argumentative, but after the deal was done, it was as if no argument had happened at all.
A picture of Tra Kieu area near the train station we got down at. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
We were treated to some beautiful scenery on the way to our hostel. Soon we reached our place and completed all the formalities for checking-in. During the time our room was being prepared for check-in, we had an egg sandwich with coffee in the hotel. I found the egg sandwich very tasty. The bread looked like the French baguette. The hostel was ₹240 per night for each of us.
The name of the hostel was Bana Spa. We liked staying here and we can recommend it if you find yourself there. It is operated by a family.
Our breakfast in Hoi An. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
A photo of the hostel we stayed in Hoi An. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
We also rented a bicycle for each of us—25,000 dongs per day (₹80)—and explored the old town during the evening. Hoi An is popular for Vietnamese silk. Tourists come here to buy fabric and get it done by the tailor. The buildings here looked old, and they were painted in yellow with a gabled roof.
Typical yellow house with gabled roof in Hoi An old town. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Here, I also had egg coffee for the first time, and I liked it. Egg coffee is a delicacy of Hanoi, but you can get it in other parts of Vietnam. If you find yourself in Vietnam, then I recommend you try egg coffee. We also bought some cool T-shirts and other souvenirs, such as a Vietnamese hat, from here.
Egg coffee I had in Hoi An. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Hue
The next day—the 18th of December 2024—we went to Hue by bus. As we could not take a bus on our own in Nha Trang, we asked the hostel to book it for us this time. We booked it a day before, and they told us to be ready by 07:00 in the morning. At 07:00, a minibus arrived, which took us to a bus agency’s office. There we waited for a few minutes and got into the bus to Hue.
The bus had sleeper seats, so I took the opportunity to catch some sleep. The ride was comfortable, so I am assuming the roads were good. In a couple of hours, we reached Hue. Again, we went to Highlands Coffee to have some coffee, charge our phones, and use the internet, not to mention using the bathrooms.
During the afternoon, we went to a local restaurant named Quán Chay Thanh Liễu. It was a vegan restaurant (remember the thing I mentioned earlier about “Chay” being in the name?). On the way, we had a steamed dumpling shaped like a momo called banh bao from a street vendor. It wasn’t very good, but I found it worthwhile.
Bahn Bao in Hue. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
At the restaurant, we ordered a hot pot. First, they brought noodles and a gas stove. Then came the stock and our gas stove was turned on. The stock was kept simmering on the stove. Then, we had it bit by bit with the noodles. A big hot pot at this place costs 50,000 dongs (₹170). Then we had bánh cuốn. These were steamed rolls made of rice flour for 10,000 dongs (₹33).
Hot Pot. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Added soup to the noodles. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Steamed rolls made of rice flour. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Restaurants in Vietnam usually add photos of the meals in their menu or write a description in English. So, even though the dish names were Vietnamese, we had no problems in ordering food there. In addition, all the places we went to provided free Wi-Fi. They either mention the Wi-Fi password on the bill, on the menu or paste it on the wall. This made our trip smoother without getting a local SIM.
Menu from a restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City with detailed description of the food. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Then we slowly walked towards the railway station, as we had a night train to Hanoi. We had egg coffee in a cafe. Near the railway station, we had a bánh mì (egg sandwich). As for sightseeing, we had plans to visit a couple of places in Hue, but we ended up spending all our time inside sheltered spaces due to heavy rain.
We had booked the train SE20 for Hanoi, which had a departure time of 20:41 from Hue. This one was 948,000 dongs (₹3100) for myself and 870,000 dongs (₹2900) for Badri. My ticket was pricier than Badri’s because I got a lower berth. Our train was late by half an hour, so we waited in the common area of the station. After the train arrived, we got inside and took our seats.
The cabin had four berths—two upper and two lower, similar to India’s First AC class. The ticket inspector came to us and offered us the whole cabin (two additional berths) for 300,000 dongs (₹1,000), which we declined. However, this hinted at the other two seats not being reserved. Eventually, we had the whole cabin to ourselves, as nobody else showed up for the other two berths. It was a 14-hour journey, and I got a good sleep.
Our berths in the train. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Hanoi
On the morning of the 19th of December 2024, we reached Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi. We had booked a private hotel room for ₹800. It was 1 km from the Hanoi Airport. However, it was pretty far from the railway station. So, we roamed around in the city and went to the hotel in the evening.
First, we walked to a place and had egg coffee with egg sandwiches. Then we went to Hanoi Train Street, which was walking distance from the train station. After clicking some pictures at the train street, we went to a museum nearby. Upon reaching there, we found out that it was closed.
Egg coffee in Hanoi. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Hanoi train street is a tourist attraction in Hanoi. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Then we went shopping for jackets, as Hanoi was cold compared to other parts of Vietnam we had been to, and since many of them are manufactured in Vietnam, we thought they would be cheaper. I liked some jackets, but they were not my size. Eventually, we didn’t buy anything at the clothes shop.
In the evening, I bought a Vietnamese-styled phin coffee filter and coffee powder from Highlands Coffee. We spent a lot of time in their cafes, so it made sense to buy some souvenirs from there. Badri bought a few coffee filters for his family at Trung Nguyen, where I also bought another filter.
We had dinner at a local place where we had pho and banh it. Bahn it was served packed in banana leaves and it was made of sticky rice.
A picture of pho we had in Hanoi. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Bahn it is served packed in banana leaves. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Bahn it. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Next, we went to Hanoi railway station to catch a bus to the airport since our hotel was 1 km from the airport. The locals there helped us take the bus. It took like an hour to get to the airport. We saw on OpenStreetMap that we can take a bus from there to the hotel, but we could not find it. So we walked to our hotel instead.
It was a decent hotel room for ₹800 for a night. We went outside to explore the area and had egg sandwiches and egg coffee at a local place. Again, we were given a complimentary green tea. We went to this place like three times. We had practically become regulars by the time we left.
The next day— 20th of December 2024 — we took a bus to the airport and boarded our flight to Delhi.
Credits: Thanks Badri, Kishy and Richard for proofreading.
National Knowledge Network (NKN) is one of India’s main National Research and Educational Network (NREN). The other being the less prevalent Education and Research Network (ERNET).
This post grew out of this Mastodon thread where I kept on adding various public graphs (from various global research and educational entities) that peer or connect with NKN. This was to get some purview about traffic data between them and NKN.
CERN
CERN, birthplace of the World Wide Web (WWW) and home of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
India participates in the LHCONE project, which carries LHC data over these links for scientific research purposes. This presentation from Vikas Singhal from Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre (VECC), Kolkata, at the 8th Asian Tier Center Forum in 2024 gives some details.
GÉANT
GÉANT is pan European Union’s collaboration of NRENs.
I couldn’t find any public live data transfer graphs from NKN side. If you know any other graphs, do let me know.
Update (26/04/2026) - During
WLCG-India Monthly meeting
in December 2023, “The NKN: Past Present Future” talk was presented which shows (amongst) various other things, VLCC, TIFR and other instuations traffic usage patterns via NKN.
OK. Last year I wrote a short guide on mapping Indian addresses but I lost it in my tiny pursuit to delete myself. Today I suddenly came across the fact that the guide was actually used by mappers and, hence, as a result I am now writing this post to become a replacement for that old guide. Since this is a new one, I don’t want to just rehash the old stuff and instead this time I am going to take a simple problem and show how I would solve it from scratch.
A1, Tower 2, Sector 11, RK Puram, South West District, Delhi, India
A problem very similar to this one came up in OSM India’s XMPP channel today. So, how does one go about mapping this address?
As it’s usually the case we can ignore the district, state, and country part as they are all very well mapped in India. This leaves us with everything upto RK Puram.
If you are thinking that something as big as RK Puram should surely be already on the map then you are wrong; In my “career” I have actually seen larger areas without any nodes for them. So we will in fact check if it’s already on the map and, guess what, it actually is already mapped as a suburb, so that’s one less step for us! I should mention that in OSM there are three “neighbourhood” levels below the district: quarter, suburb, and neighbourhood in decreasing order of size. In most cases suburb and neighbourhood should be enough for you, but it is important to be aware of quarter for special situations.
Now let’s check for Sector 11. As of writing this, Sector 11 isn’t on the map. So I will put a neighbourhood node at the approximate centre of Sector 11. (Remember that neighbourhood is smaller than suburb.) We are making good progress.
Now let’s take care of Tower 2. It’s actually specifying a particular building, unlike the previous steps which were about specifying the area in which the building lies. In this case it should be “Tower 2” for housename and “Sector 11” for place. It’s important to specify the place because it could be the case that “Sector 45” node is actually closer to the building.
A small interjection: when mapping a building try to choose between housename and housenumber or place and street logically. If your address is “36, Shivaji Marg” then please please use 36 for housenumber and Shivaji Marg for street. If you do it incorrectly then there’s a 90% chance of divine punishment from OSM gods.
OK. The building is done. Now all you have to do is to add A1 to the unit tag as a separate node inside the building. Note that the A in this case does not refer to a block and so it should not be separated from the 1. Another important point is that even though A1 is referred to as housenumber in common language, in OSM it isn’t actually a housenumber since housenumber/housename are reserved for building. A1 is just a unit number which means that it is a part of the building. (In case you haven’t realized it yet, the given address was for an apartment.)
I forgot to mention but blocks are somewhat of a controversial topic. My method is usually to retain the blocks in housenumber if they are simple (such as the 1 in “1/265”) or move them into “place” if they are more complicated (like the Pocket E in “36, Pocket E”).
OK. Let’s see if you were reading carefully. Tell me how you would map
1/26/65EB, Gali Shanti, Near Phoole Wala Mandir, Chandni Chowk, Old Delhi
Were you able to do it? Here’s my answer:
Old Delhi is probably already mapped, Chandni Chowk would be a neighbourhood, I would ignore Phoole Wala Mandir, I would add Gali Shanti to the name of highway, then finally for the building I would add 1/26/65E as housenumber and Gali Shanti as street. Did you notice that I never actually told you that letters like E are allowed in housenumber? By that I wanted to show that this guide probably does not contain comments for each and every case, but it should work for the majority of cases. If you come across a difficult problem, then your best bet is always OSM Wiki. Just look it up!
