I wrote a few posts during the course of this year that I never ended up posting, or ended up deleting soon after I posted them because I found them either not upto the already rather baseline standards, to put it charitably, of this blog, or, realized that they were too personal and felt uncomfortable about their presence on the public web, even though I do fully realize that as public spaces go, this one is exceedingly private.
But this has been an interesting year, in many ways. At the end of last year, I moved to London. Ever since I've moved here, I've lived at a 10 minute walk from work, which has been an enormous privilege. I'm not a particularly materialistic guy, and so, there are very few things which money buys that can bolster my utility function. But I have really enjoyed being able to rent a place so close to work, such that I can walk to work in the morning and back in the evening. It is not so much that there's something really special about this walk, but the avoidance of a long commute is a real draw. In New York, I spent an hour and a half one-way on commute and although I had grown quite used to it, being here in such proximity to work has given me many more hours to just spend with my wife. Also, despite what is made out in popular media, London is nowhere near as expensive as Manhattan. I could never imagine living 10 minutes from work back in NY; my twisted sense of morality about spending would never forgive me for spending so much on rent. I'd much rather commute the long distance and donate the money I saved as a result to my favorite charities in New Delhi and New Jersey than fill the coffers of some rich New Yorker landlord.
The extra time has afforded me the luxury of finally spending some time learning web development, something I'd been wanting to do for the longest time but never had the time to devote to it. Turns out, it is a vast, vast, subject - I've been at it for 75 days today and still feel like I've barely skimmed the surface. At least I'm at a good enough point now where I can concieve of embarking on bringing some of my ideas to life. I don't expect those little tools to make me a lot of money - I don't generally expect success of any kind, for that matter - but the creative satisfaction of even 7 or 11 users finding something I build useful would be very fulfilling. Maybe I shouldn't talk too much already given how there isn't anything I've even begun building as yet. Humility, dear Watson.
Being in London also afforded me the ease of traveling to several European countries. The UK itself, of course, where my favorite city so far has been Edinburgh in Scotland. The most breathtaking landscape has been the Seven Sisters cliffs on the southern end. I quite loved Canterbury for its pristine conservation of what I imagine 17th century England must have looked like. Apriori, I expected my favorite towns to be Oxford and Cambridge as I'm quite fond of university towns, but felt a bit overwhelmed by the former and underwhelmed by the latter. My least favorite town has to be Brighton for being too loud, while Bristol was quite meh for the opposite reason. But it isn't that I have a particular dislike for towns that start with B, for I quite liked Bath. In particular, the tiny quaint village of Lacock half an hour or so outside it was a real delight. Among Cotswold villages, I liked it better -- found it to be more real, really - than the more famous and high-profile villages such as Castle Combe and Burford, which felt a bit too pretty, a bit too cosmetic. I haven't been to the other big UK cities like Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds, imagining them to be just like London but less grand, even though part of me tells me this is an ignorant view. There are some other little southern England places that I've been to and liked quite a lot: Jurassic coast, for one, was stunning, but Margate takes the cake - not so much for being stunning but because I had a especially pleasant time there, singing old Hindi songs with my wife while walking along the coast.
Outside UK, I've been to Barcelona, Brussels, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Prague and Budapest. I do intend to write a bit about each of these cities I've visited, but I'm going to have to come back to it later and fill those parts out.
If anyone reads this and thinks that I must be a very avid traveler, or suspects me for being a bit of a hypocrite after establishing - claiming, rather - my frugality earlier on in this very post, I have to posit in my defence that my prolificity here is entirely thanks to my wife. I should also confess that in her view we don't travel nearly enough.
Next month my parents visit me and I plan to take them to Rome and Venice, and then a couple months from then my parents-in-law visit me with whom we plan to go to Paris and Nice. After that, it'll be almost time for us to move back to the States, and we intend to culminate our European adventure with a trip to Zurich before finally going back to good old New Jersey.
