Jul'21

 

a monthly roundup of what i read, watched and listened to and found interesting + a study tracker. 

ahem ahem! not me procrastinating on something that's meant to be introspective and relaxing, but here we go. had a considerable backlog that I had to get done with which has been taken care of.

movies, shows and the like:

The World of the Married

S(he) Be(lie)ve(d).

Cheating is bad, gaslighting worse and still being obsessed is the absolute worst. I don't know why I wrote this like I am reviewing the show for a high-school magazine, but it's a really well made and riveting k-drama. If a show has you cursing the characters and doing psychoanalysis on them throughout its length, it's a good one in my book. I wonder what's stopping Indian television from amping it up and raising the quality of content beyond crime-based dramas.

Atypical

In one of its first few episodes, Elsa describes something as "cute as a button". That's exactly what this show is— a button cute. The plotline is solid, the characters are generally likeable, the actors are dope and it has a pretty cool background score. Nothing much to dislike here. I wouldn't say it is a great show, but it's nice and sometimes that's all you want. I became a huge fan of Sam's Antarctica metaphors and also found myself mimicking his gaze.

NBA Playoffs

Just the act of becoming familiar with the NBA has been a pretty awesome thing to have happened to me over the past year. From knowing nothing about basketball to geeking over players and performances, I have come a long way and developed greater awe of American marketing. They are great at sustaining interest over such a long period of time and the narratives and storylines accompanied with the fan discourse have been really fascinating for me because I had only ever followed cricket until now and as it stands, Indian sports culture just isn't as entertaining. Obviously having such a visually pleasing product with world-class athletes helps. I was looking forward to writing an entire article about this stuff, but I am unable to make the time for it.

I need to record my first-year experience for my future self so here it goes: I supported Washington Wizards this year because I really liked Russell Westbrook out of all the players and I did not regret it. They were a pretty terrible team but managed to make a shallow playoff run. I think I'll still have them as my first or second team even though Russ got traded. Anyway, the finals were absolutely phenomenal. Giannis is really a Greek God and his story is simply amazing. 

I'll admit though that it's pretty addictive and I can't afford to spend a lot of time here.

Tokyo Olympics

Ignoring the underlying political and capitalist ambitions of conducting a worldwide sports event amidst a pandemic, the Olympics were beautiful. It's like watching the last few episodes of a sports anime where you have skipped through the struggle arc and friendships made along the way straight to the final moments of triumph. The range of human experience is just incredible and so inspirational. To me, it was like a festival and the world really did seem like a wonderful place for a short while. 

I managed to reasonably understand golf now and gained some favourite new athletes to root for. Overall, a 10/10 experience.

Also, I am keeping this to myself for now but Neeraj Chopra reminded me of someone every time I looked at him, and it was this legend.

music and podcast(s):

I had the chance to listen to a lot of podcasts this month in between travelling, cleaning, exercising and lately while having my breakfast. I am enjoying them so far, let's see how long it lasts.

Armchair Expert

I liked it initially until I became familiar with better, more interesting podcasts. I listened to three episodes featuring Barack Obama, Chris Bosh and Quentin Tarantino.

It seems like Obama has become an on/off character in my life because every six months or so I am reading or watching something related to him. He's a fun person. I heard Chris Bosh talk in the three days I went running, which got derailed by travelling, rains and laziness. He's an interesting person too, but I feel the interviewer did not do any justice to him with his lacklustre questions. The host tries to base all his questions by relating them to his own experiences and to me that isn't a great strategy going about talking to people, especially when it is your only one. My suspicions were confirmed when I heard Tarantino in another podcast and realized how much more he had to talk about. 

Therefore, kinda underwhelming.

The Joe Rogan Experience ft. Quentin Tarantino

Joe Rogan is good at this podcast thing. Tarantino is really very dedicated to his craft and that's inspiring. He's quite opinionated without disrespecting anyone (at least from what I perceived), so I guess that's good. I don't remember much of what he talked about, but I stuck with it for long so it must have been interesting.

Anurag Minus Verma ft. Srishty Ranjan

It was short and swift. They talked about casteism in college, urban and media spaces in India and it felt like a casual conversation between friends. What they talked about was relevant though, and this topic needs more dialogue and debate for it to permeate into popular consciousness. From my observation, most people fail to even acknowledge caste-based oppression so we have a long way to go before it gets remedied. But I hope it happens in my lifetime and I can contribute to it.

The Seen and the Unseen ft. Krish Ashok

I like this podcast. Amit Varma is an excellent and knowledgeable interviewer and I like how the interviews although held together by a single topic are all-encompassing and reveal a lot about the person and their interests. Krish Ashok is multi-faceted and I hope I can channelize my interests productively like him too. This episode was about the process of cooking and I got to learn a lot. I might not read his book though, it seemed corny from the excerpts with lots of unnecessary efforts to sound witty.

Listening Activity

Listing top-5 songs is dumb. The algorithm is glitchy and the list would inevitably suffer from recency bias. What I'll do though is list my five favourite artists this month, which in no rank-based order are: Måneskin, Lucy, B.I., Glass Animals and Day6.

July was great for music. My ears are pleased. Also, I am certain now that Day6 is/are my favourite artist(s) of all time. I am hooked to this song right now:

academic update:

NCERTs ongoing. I have also joined 2 test series now (did in June actually) which have kept me busy with revision and motivated me to complete the syllabus on time. I don't feel like writing about all the stuff I have been doing to learn and record stuff but the whole process of remembering vast amounts of information is very intriguing.

I have also been reading for pleasure for half an hour before bed daily, so my reading list will expand by August end.

extra:

thought this was aight and wanted to continue having a thumbnail of sorts for the monthly roundup posts.