Anu

Thoughts on Notes from the Underground

One of my favorite quotes on reading came from Will Smith: there have been gazillions of people that have lived before all of us. There's no new problem you could have--with your parents, with school, with a bully. There's no new problem that someone hasn'

Neon Hellscapes, my favorite places

My favorite movies are the ones that make you feel that pang of nostalgia for a time and place that you've never experienced. These films give life to their setting so deeply it feels like a character in the pictures, ones you can fall in love with. This

A Life that doesn't just blink

I went to Barcelona with my friends in February. While there my friend said the best part of traveling isn't being at these new, exotic places. It's just hanging out with friends and shooting the shit. I still think about that, but not in the "

Top 5 films I saw in 2025

2025 is behind us, and it felt like a weird year for movies. I saw so many solid movies that it was tough to narrow a top 5 down, but none really jumped out like in 2024's list. Still there were some great films that still are with

Chained Echoes - Nintendo Switch review

Chained Echoes is a throwback JRPG in the style of the old SNES titles. It hits a home run on so many fronts and comes tantalizingly close to an absolutely perfect game, but some small issues and a major one (to me at least) near the final arc knocks it

My favorite items to bring on trips

No point telling you my life story like it's a recipe site. I have been traveling for a while and these are my favorite cheap things that have been useful. The end. E-Sims Technically not a thing but it's such a godsend I need to include

Tennis Progress - Year One

Me and Stephen began practicing tennis a bit over a year ago on October 2024. We only caught the tail end of the 2024 season but this season we practiced regularly. Looking back on my progress over the past year there are lots of things I am happy about, but

A Real Boy

The man glanced at the stapler. It was the same one as on anyone else's desk. This one though, in this particular moment, was different. The lifeless fluorescent light bounced off the shiny stapler to come alive. It was the light of a perfect day of summer, and

Citadel - A gentle nostalgia trip

A decade after finishing the Mass Effect saga, I finally went back to play the Citadel DLC that I had wanted to so badly back then. It wasn't what I had hoped for in all the ways. Seems maybe time won the battle over nostalgia. I craved every

What draws us to content like The Outdoor Boys?

Lately I've been watching a lot of the YouTube Channel Outdoor Boys. Considering it has 16 million+ subscribers I'm not unique in that at all. So what appeals to us about the channel? Do we want to do what he does? Do we admire the skills

Looking back

A few days ago we handed in our keys for our Sunnyside apartment. After Julian and the landlord left I had a few moments by myself in the apartment. I slowed down and looked around. It's a surreal feeling walking around a place you've done so

Best of Sunnyside part II : Restaurants

Sunnyside restaurants, like the neighborhood are without pretense. They're no frills places that rely on their food to do the talking. I'll start with my favorite burger joint. Best Burger The Alcove Nestled in between multiple bars on Skillman is the real gem of the beautiful

Best of Sunnyside series: Coffee shops

In a few weeks my time at Sunnyside will come to an end. I will be moving to Forest Hills and leaving maybe my favorite neighborhood of all the ones I've lived in around Queens. This will be the first of my series of letters to my home.

Present and future of my baby Raspberry Pi server

My home server began almost nine months ago now with an idea from some youtube videos. One trip to Micro Center and $130 later I had docker, portainer and my first app, Tandoor set up on my server. Nine months later, seeing where my server is compared to then is

Review: AER Travel Pack 3 small X-Pac

The right travel backpack one can be a buy-it-for-life item and they can get expensive. So when I bought mine two years ago I did a lot of research, eventually landing on the AER Travel Pack 3 Small X-Pac, coming in at $259. It's now almost two years

Memories of perfection

Just now I was watching a youtube video about two chefs going around a Taipei night market. Seeing them walk around the food stalls triggered something and it hit me like a brick. Suddenly I missed Taiwan in a way I hadn't since I came back. The memory

Roland Garros first round - WTA

The second slam of the year is here. Time to sleep very little and watch way too much tennis for two weeks. Sadly the best match of the first round, Rybakina vs Bencic was cancelled after Bencic withdrew with an injury. Nevertheless this year's women's first

The Soul is Hollow

I wake up and instinctively pick up the phone. I get on twitter and scroll. It's endless. At some point I have a second of clarity and put my phone down. A few minutes later my mind craves the distraction and again I pick up my phone out

Why do I find it so hard to go to the gym?

Right now I'm sitting on my desk writing this and it's been over a month since I've been to the gym. It's a block from my house, rarely full and in the last two weeks it's not even that cold.

Society in the age of Artificial Intelligence

Anyone who's chatted with an AI or asked it a prompt knows by now it's not just a trend. Artificial Intelligence is truly here, improving by leaps and bounds frighteningly fast and it's going to transform every aspect of society. But without governments changing

Being honest with ourselves

In recent years with the popularity of Ozempic I'm reminded of this tweet that's seemingly prophetic now. It said "If all the fat-acceptance activists could take a pill to become skinny overnight, they all would." Seeing videos of Lizzo trashing portraits of her old

The people who move us forward

When I first began exploring the idea of self-hosting it was intimidating. I had some experience tinkering with electronics but building my own server seemed too much. During my initial research I came across the youtube channel novaspirit tech by a man named Don who had a series of videos

Five scorching hot predictions for the 2025 WTA season

We are already one slam in the 2025 season and it saw a shocker in Madison Keys raising the trophy. Now might be a bit too late to make some hot takes for the 2025 season but where's the fun in that? Linda Noskova wins a masters tournament

Iron and Soul by Henry Rollins

I believe that the definition of definition is reinvention. To not be like your parents. To not be like your friends. To be yourself. Completely. When I was young I had no sense of myself. All I was, was a product of all the fear and humiliation I suffered. Fear

Floating Sands

Perdition floated down from the stratosphere. Marcy looked out into the orange and red sea awaiting him and breathed a heavy sigh. The hulking ship clanked all over. There were no illusions about Perdition, inside or out. The hull was a collection of junk from all over the galaxy, somehow