iPhone Air

Exactly a month ago, I switched my phone from my adored iPhone 12 Mini to the new iPhone Air. In that month, I have been surprised by the iPhone Air in good ways and bad.

I held onto my 12 Mini because I really didn’t want to give up the size, weight and form that it offered. It was a joy to use case-less and single-handed. Those years made me realize that I care about how the phone feels in my hand, and kept dissuading me from buying a new iPhone for almost 3 years (I copped out of a 16 Pro purchase at the Apple Store last year!).

I didn’t consider buying the iPhone Air until ~2 weeks before the launch. It was time to buy a new phone (my 12 Mini was starting to choke on most daily use), and was pretty confident I’d go the route of the beautiful orange 17 Pro. But just as I was catching up on the rumors before the announcement, I started entertaining the idea of the Air: Could Air really be a better form and function balance that my 12 Mini had been?

I decided I was buying the Air at the Apple Store, on launch day, after holding one in hand. In a month since I’ve had the Air, I am extremely pleased with my choice and am glad I bought it over the 17 Pro. Here’s a few quick notes about things I’ve reflected on, as I’ve compared the Air to 12 Mini (my previous), 15 (my work phone) and 16 Pro (my partner’s):

• Yes, this phone is ridiculously light, especially because of the weight distribution. There have been moments when my 12 Mini has felt heavier when I’ve held them one after the other.
• The screen is larger than the 15 or 16 Pro, but it handles much better than them because of how easy it is to grip around the device.
• The battery life is a non-issue, atleast with how I use my phone.
• The cameras are great. I miss the ultra-wide, every once in a while.
• Multi-year iPhone jumps remind you just how much has changed. Everything is faster, smoother, and more tuned. The year-on-year improvements stack up nicely.
• I smile at least once a day when I pick up this phone. It is a joy to hold and touch. In so many ways, it reminds me of my Jet Black iPhone 7 Plus.

Maybe Apple won’t sell this phone like hot cakes, maybe it is just a stepping stone to the iPhone Fold, but I am glad they made it.

Miniature Calendar

Miniature Calendar is Tatsuya Tanaka’s website where they make daily posts of everyday things reimagined in a miniaturized form. When I see these post in my RSS feed, it makes me pause and smile. It is a small joy that reminds me of the good in the world, the creativity around us, and the warmth of people sharing their talents with the world.

I hope it makes you smile, too.

Andor

I like Star Wars. A lot. There is just something exciting about watching a world that could be. The space travel, the various galaxies, the different cultures, the numerous species, and yet the same people and tendencies.

Andor is the furthest from a classic ‘Star Wars’ universe. There are no jedi, no lightsabers, no Yoda, no Skywalker. It is just a marvelous story taking place somewhere in the grand universe. The deep story-telling keeps you focused on the people: there’s heroes, anti-heroes, complications, love, pain, suffering, battles, preludes to war, and most of all, hope.

There’s quiet a few beautiful lines sprinkled through the show, but Nemik’s manifesto has stayed with me:

Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. […] Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks. It leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.

It is a show that I think you should watch, regardless of how you feel about ‘Star Wars’.

Seth Godin: How to win an argument with a toddler

Seth Godin, in ‘How to win an argument with a toddler’:

An argument, though, is an exchange of ideas that ought to surface insight and lead to a conclusion.

If you’re regularly having arguments with well-informed people of goodwill, you will probably ‘lose’ half of them–changing your mind based on what you’ve learned. If you’re not changing your mind, it’s likely you’re not actually having an argument (or you’re hanging out with the wrong people.) While it can be fun to change someone else’s position, it’s also a gift to learn enough to change ours.

Indeed.

The Paris 2024 Olympics Opening Ceremony was Spectacular

This past Friday, I watched the Paris 2024 Olympics Opening Ceremony as the flotillas of contingents sailed down the Seine to a backdrop of sunset, performers danced on bridges, the hooded man run past the Louvre and atop roofs, the Olympic torch traversed the lengths of Paris, decorated French sportspeople lit up the Olympic cauldron which flew up into a hot air balloon, and Celine Dion sang in front of a sparkling Eiffel Tower. The ceremony featured sportspeople who are at the top of their sport, being celebrated and cheered on by their counterparts and countrymen but also the rest of the world. It had couture, music, drama, drag, amd dance. It was exuberant with emotion from one and all: The athletes, the performers and spectators alike.

The Opening Ceremony wasn’t in a stadium, but Paris became a stadium.

Olympics always make my heart swell because the whole world comes together for just over 2 weeks to celebrate, admire, watch and support the greatest sportspeople on the most revered world stage. The last few games have been muted, as the world reeled from a pandemic that we all endured together. But as this year’s Olympics, Paris took the opoprtunity to welcome the world back to play in a quintessentially French way.

A spectacle for the ages, and one I think I’ll always remember.

Embracing the Discomfort: Skiiing Edition

In February 2021, a friend took us skiing for the first time. In the excitement of the opportunity, I severely under-estimated the difficulty of skiing, especially for someone who had never skated before (on land or ice). We went straight to the lift, up the mountain, and down the slope. And I fell. A lot. But that was also the day I decided I wanted to learn to ski and that I would be back. Someday.

In February 2023, watching adults and kids skiiing in a small town in Austria, as normally as walking, was a reminder of the joys of this winter sport. They were easygoing, relaxed and happy. It was just another Wednesday for them and they were skiing to get to the cafe, to buy groceries and just spend time with each other. It was a reminder of the sport I wanted to learn, and the normalcy of it all. It wasn’t so hard: It just required learning and practice.

And so this past ski season, I decided to take lessons. Finally. The first few lessons were rough. I fell a lot, and I got up each time. But I felt like I was learning. Albeit, slowly (or atleast slower than I’d like). I had to accept not having control directly on my feet, but rely on how my feet in skis felt on the snow. It was a few layers disconnected for me to feel immediately comfortable. Every time on the mountain was a new experience with different skis, snow, weather conditions and people traffic and most of all an evolving skill level; all of which brought its own set of learning. It took patience and strength to embrace the discomfort, while I was mentally drained and physically exhausted, to keep going and try that one more time, do that one extra run and try to fix the one thing I was trying to on any given day.

It took a few weeks to get used to being on the snow, and once I did, the reward of being able to ski while staring at snow-clad granite peaks of the Sierras, around the powdery pines and zig-zagging trails was a rewarding experience to cap off the season. I can’t wait for the 2024-25 ski season to start. I’ll likely fall a bunch, but I know I will get better if I keep at it. Slowly, steadily, eventually.

The Backfire Effect by The Oatmeal

I have always had strongly held beliefs, but over time I have also realized the need to change them as more information is presented to me.

The Backfire Effect, a comic strip from The Oatmeal, describes why we should all keep doing that rather illustratively.

I’m just here to tell you that it’s okay to stop. To listen. To change.

It is okay.

Goodbye Tweetbot

I have been actively using Twitter for years. I joined in late 2009 and have fond memories of using it. From a desktop first, then an iPod Touch using the official Twitter app, and then my old Sony Ericsson K790i by SMS-ing tweets, before switching over to using smartphones and using apps.

I did use the default Twitter app for a bit, but Tweetbot was the first iOS app I bought on the App Store in 2013, and added it immediately onto my dock where it stayed ever since. I have used Tweetbot since then. I continued to use Tweetbot through the years by buying / subscribing to new versions, despite the Twitter API always limiting third-party clients and not supporting all of the features the official apps and websites had.

And I lived with that deficit, because Tweetbot felt like home. Over the years, I have tried using the official app multiple times (and always have the app on my phone), but it has always been terrible. The experience of using Tweetbot was always so much better than the official app. Tweetbot didn’t have ads, only showed me tweets from my (curated) followers list, had a chronological timeline, maintained my point in the app even if I fell behind, was customizable, etc. But most of all: it had a so much better user experience that put me first. It never felt cluttered and made Twitter inviting.

Over the last ~3 years, I had reduced tweeting but I still consumed from it fairly regularly. Twitter was still an enjoyable experience when I wanted it because I had Tweetbot. The negativity since Elon Musk got involved in March 2022, though, has been overpowering, and I removed Tweetbot from my dock in early December 2022.

Tweetbot shutting down after Twitter abruptly disabled its APIs, though, does convince me to wane my use of Twitter even further. Twitter without Tweetbot doesn’t feel right. Trust me, I have tried! Mastodon is interesting, but it isn’t a Twitter replacement. Not yet atleast.

We’ll see where this journey goes, but until then, goodbye Tweetbot 🫡. Thank you for giving me such a pleasant Twitter experience for almost a decade. You will be sorely missed.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

I don’t read much fiction, which makes me a very slow reader.

When I started reading The God of Small Things, I had no idea what to expect. I had read some of Arundhati Roy’s essays, but none of her books. I was prepared to be surprised and stunned, but not this… There was something approachable in this book that kept me going. There was honesty that kept me coming back. Through the last few months, this book was my casual read. And then my sorrow read. And then my intense read.

I’m amazed at the fluidity with which it moved back and forth in time, the simplicity of the language, the layers in the story, and the depth and thoroughness in the details.

Life is in the small things, indeed.

Dum dum.

Eliud Kipchoge's Profile in the Irish Examiner

I first learnt about marathons when I went to watch the inaugural Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon in 2004 with dad. I took the Mumbai local to Churchgate early that morning and walked to the finish line near CST to watch atheles cross the finish line.

I was mind-blown when I saw the route in the Times of India the day before. It took the runners through some of my favorite parts of Bombay: the Bandra-Worli Sea Link, the Worli Seaface, the Queen’s necklace. The 10-year-old me could barely understand what the race was or the distance meant, but I could feel that it was a lot. “They run all the way to Bandra from Churchgate? The one I would only travel by train? And back?! How? People could run that distance across Bombay?” I wondered then. I still do.

It has been 17 years since that Sunday morning, and I have passively followed the 42km race. It has always felt like a humbling challenge for the human mind and body. And I have serious respect for the people that can run it.

A few years ago, I learnt about Eliud Kipchoge, his achievements and how he was transforming the sport. And ever since, he has been a huge inspiration. It is astounding what he has achieved so far, as a marathoner, yes, but also as an athelete. To me, he is one among the greatest atheletes of their sports of all-time. You know, right there with the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Roger Federer, Michael Schumacher, Magnus Carlsen…

One of the (I’d argue the) greatest moments of Kipchoge’s marathon career was him running a sub-2 hour marathon (albeit in a controlled setting) in Vienna in 2019. Take 4 minutes, watch the final kilometer of his run.

I just read this profile on Kipchoge by Cathal Dennehy, and thought it was a beautiful look at his personality, training regime, and principles. It gave me a new perspective on some things, but also let me appreciate him more as a person and admire his achievements a little more. My favorite part from the profile was on the peace he exudes while running (which one can even see in the video):

It’s difficult to find a sportsperson so impossibly suited to his craft, as if his entire reason for being is to coast over the ground at 4:40 per mile, a pace that for most would feel like a sprint.

But when Kipchoge does it, his head has virtually no vertical motion, his face so relaxed that he looks bored. His arms hang loose, swinging casually, his fingers in a gentle tuck, as if holding an invisible stick. His feet don’t so much hit the ground as stroke it, his toes pushing off the road with the elegant, balletic grace of a dancer.

I think Kipchoge will break the world record and run a 2-hour marathon before he retires. I’m rooting for him.