Now | JDRanpariya

Last few weeks have been stressful, I celebrated my 24th birthday last week and it was a long and surprising ride.

I went to Blerta’s celebration and felt that I should also do something like that. So I started thinking about it 20-25 days ago but we had potluck November 1st so I derailed it a bit, idea was first to just send invitation to people and fix the date. Which I figured wasn’t that straightforward as I had trouble deciding which date to fix.

Notes: I would prefer to celebrate it on Fridays or Saturday’s so people don’t feel rush to leave early for next day!! Tbh it’s trade off, I can celebrate on the day itself and actual friends would stay long enough :p

I planned for Desserts, Drinks and savoury snacks along with what I would gift my guests.

When shopping I figured, Action is most affordable followed by Tedi and Woolworth for cutlery and decorative items.

On Sunday I went to pick flowers from nearby forest and figured you find it mostly on plain patch of land with grass and nearly side walks of canal and roads 😅. For drying just hang them upside down.

I prepared [[Zuchini Halwa]] 4 days before, came out pretty well but sweeter for international tastebuds. Next day me and my friend Shalini prepared choco chip cookies, people loved it a lot!! Next day we made red velvet cake, we planned to make 2 layers but due to cocoa powder first batter was looking brown and not red so we turned them into choco caramel fudge and second layer we didn’t use cocoa powder at all and it was red 😁, really happy how it turned out after butter frosting!

Note: it’s not very good idea to use pizza dough for making puff pastries!!

On Thursday, I had Nevil and Purva to shop for savoury items, Purva made cheese cake, I prepared spinach feta riccota puffs while Shalini was doing butter crème frosting. Me and my friend also went to get 11l water dispenser. After all desserts were ready around 1.30 AM, I started writing thank you notes and preparing personalized origami.

It was stressful cause I had lot of plans but execution wasn’t smooth, I could prepare guest gifts well in advanced and now I know I can buy things for decorations in on day instead of roaming stores in different cities. And for drinks I don’t have to use drink dispenser to look cool, I could also have someone prepare live drinks which make it even more fun :) and Most cleaning should be done a day before. But overall it was great experience for me, I really enjoyed the party.

I was bit overwhelmed and very excited for the celebration and enjoyed it but the day after I felt void and lonely, it felt like I suddenly moved away from having lot of people around me to being alone and feeling of loss hit me although I didn’t loose anyone technically but feeling was real. Took me whole weekend to accept and rest. It’s surprising for a moment you have everything you ever wished for and the next moment everything feels shattered 😭.

Now it’s time dial down on My seminar, thesis finding, office work and health ✨.

It’s been great week, except I still feel bit fatigued.

Day before yesterday I made Zucchini Halwa and Cauliflower Wings, I do like cooking, didn’t realise it was 12.30 mid night when I finished, wings are pretty tricky, I might want to write my experience cooking recipes first time and how I evolves, I believe some things are better learned from experience, I basically followed Gemini on how to do both, posting my experience might also help me get feedback on what I shouldn’t have followed and what really matters while cooking it.

With zucchini halwa, I was surprised to see that it did really have lot of water like Gemini cautioned(ya my common sense is on vacation, I had carrot, bottle gourd and zucchini on same level. While cooking halwa). But out of 780g raw zucchini I drained around 300ml water. I could have gone bit more hard on it but cloth I used started to tear apart. While I was making halwa, I got call from Gurukul friend and soon it was 5 people on call, talking random things and about old days, nostalgic! It’s fun to get on calls like this. I also added lot of milk to it, relatively to what I had done before. Took long time to boil it off.

I’m planning to add kitchen odyssey, and worried about the structure, should it look like post? Hope to finish it by next week!! Yes why not, just go with it until you face a chat or covered with post.

Kitchen - welcome to my kitchen, here I share my cooking experience and opinions.

Zucchini Halwa

yap a bit
Ingredients
In the making

I really like the idea of using the commute time to write drafts and ideas :) I was frustrated because it’s public holiday, I didn’t think much and left for team sports only to know it’s not happening today 😭. But good things did happen, got idea about adding kitchen and add recipes while I was writing for this weeks now updates 😊.

yesterday we had potluck, was pretty fun! we ended the day with board games :D

Last month has been hectic and I suppose next would be very similar. I got invited to a lot of Diwali and New Year celebrations, and I’m feeling very happy about it!!

It’s the first time in my life I got invited to so many places in a month — was 18, 19, 22, 25, and 26. I’m also planning for a potluck and my birthday celebration next month, and there’s already an invitation for the 30th. I said yes to all of them to see how much social interaction I could handle; surprisingly, I was able to manage it pretty well. But it does feel hectic, and I feel I’m not able to do anything else apart from events and office work (it’s a struggle to manage this along with my sports, which is 4 days a week).

I’m grateful for all the invites, and I am currently trying to get time for myself and do relevant stuff like applying for my master’s thesis and working on my seminar. I’m hoping to get time to improve this site, write articles, and work on Kosha. I recently met a new penpal on Slowly, and it’s really exciting to share long letters — but it’s taking up much of my bandwidth too. I’m looking for ways to sustainably handle all this mess :)

Last week I got bored a bit by Antifragility and decided to pick up Why We Sleep. It’s surprising how it gets me imagining how sleep mechanisms in us could inspire new AI algorithms and model architectures. I’ve decided to write an informal proposal about it — hopefully, you’ll find it soon on my writings 😁.

Life is full of surprises. I was looking up the university sports website to check the amount I paid for each sport and found Salsa had spots left. I texted my friend who wasn’t able to register before, and now she was able to 😄. I also found a spot for Sports Buddy (team sports where we play different team sports every Saturday) open 🥳 and finally registered. I really adore Sports Buddy!! Yesterday, when I went to class, I saw another friend of mine who registered just that morning.

This page looks annoying and needs some work :P

Anyway this week was fun, I spontanously registered for Salsa, Improv Theatre and Frisbee. I had first class for Salsa and Improv, and I'm really liking it!!

I'm currently reading Anti-Fragile by Taleb, currently on a section where he talks about political systems and I find it super boring. Makes me think if I should pick up, Why We Sleep for a week.

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