loading . . . Weekly Notes 10/2026 ### What's been happening
It's been a hot and humid week. It feels like I've been transported back to Mangalore with the humidity levels. I figured the pool would be a nice way to beat the heat and humidity, but that wasn't that great either. I struggled in swimming class. The past few weeks we've been using a different pool as there have been various swimming fests and competitions running. This week, the pool was relatively empty, and we went over to the other lane which is a bit deeper than the ones I was learning on the past few weeks. This lane starts off at 1.2m and goes to 1.5m, so as I was getting to the other side of the lane, it got progressively harder. There were a few times where I panicked and flailed my hands, only for the instructor to come give me a hand. So yeah, not the best session. Trying to float on the back didn't give me the best result either. It's kind of frustrating to be stuck in a place where it seems like there's minimal progress but I'm hoping this will change soon.
The rest of the week went by pretty well. My gym session was pretty good, I hit my personal best for Bench Press. I was able to do a 60kg bench press which is pretty huge, very happy with the progress. Also had a mini Metcon which also went well. The Metcon was a set of dumbbell clean and jerk followed by box step up. We would do 10 reps of each of them for 4 sets with no break with a target time of being done under 10 minutes.
I must admit, when I was doing or starting the 3rd set, I didn't think I would last through it, but my trainer really pushed me hard and gave me the right motivation and encouragement, and I was able to finish off the 4th set. After I was done with the 4th set, I just crashed on the ground and sat there for a few seconds before catching my breath and feeling good about it.
The weekend was pretty quiet. I started my driving classes on Friday. The goal is to prepare for the driving test, which I intend to give sometime mid-April. The driving test is pretty strict here and a single failure, especially on the safety rules would lead to an instant fail. While I've been driving for a long time, I wanted to get some tips and things that I need to do right in the test, and, at the same time, be able to drive more safely on Australian roads.
We are still relying quite heavily on public transport. While it does a decent job getting from one place to another, it often takes way too long, especially for short distances. So, a 5 km bus ride becomes like an hour long or hour and half long when driving would take us 10 minutes.
That's the goal of trying to get my licence done so I can buy a car and not have to rely so much on public transport, especially for these shorter trips. The driving class started with my instructor asking me some information about how long I had been driving, how comfortable I am with my driving. She then got me to drive down the road, navigating where to go, while noticing and observing things that I'm doing right or wrong. She then asked me to pull over to the kerb. Her first observation was on the way I hold the steering wheel - putting my hand through needed to be changed. The driving test instructors are pretty clear that you should always move the steering wheel from left to right and no cutting through (or the push-pull technique). This is a muscle memory thing for me, so I need to correct that.
The other observation that she had was on blind spot checks and why it's so important. She stepped out of the car and asked me to look in the mirror and she went and stood in a spot where I could see her in the mirror. Then she went slightly back and see that I could not see her at all, unless I turned my head around looked. This is why blind spot checks are very important, especially in the suburban roads where there's a lot of people coming out of driveways, or walking, or biking around. I thought this was a nice, practical way of demonstrating. Apart from the blind spot check, she also got me to give some tips on how to safely stop, which is came down to:
1. Indicate
2. Look at the mirror
3. Do the blind spot check
4. Slowly come in and stop
She also got me to do a three-point turn, giving me a lesson on what you doing when you're doing a three-point turn, which is basically a whole lot of blind spot checks and look in the mirror. I asked her about the legality of using reverse parking cameras during the driving tests to which replied he said the test requires that you have to do the blind spot checks before you get started, but once you have cleared the blind spot checks, you are free to use the reverse camera.
I will have another session next week, probably next Friday. She does week-to-week basis classes, so I'll know when the next class is come next week, probably around Monday or Tuesday. The driving tests are all booked out for at least four or five weeks from now, so I'll only be able to get a slot for mid-April. But that's not a bad thing because that's going to be school holidays, which means it's going to be less crowded. Plus, school hours are not going to be in effect.
On Saturday afternoon onwards, we had a couple of guests over. My classmate from engineering and his wife joined us. This was our first time that we were hosting anyone in a new house, and it was good to have them. We spent a whole bunch of time just talking about different things and having some good food. Basically a lot of talks. They have a couple of YouTube channels, one on travel (which just crossed 100k subs!) and one on cooking, and we were just talking to them about the future, what they plan to do. And they were asking us for some suggestions, a some survey on how they or how we look for information about travel and such. It was good to have them around. They're traveling to New Zealand next month for the Easter break. I found out that Satya's having his driving test as well next week, so I wish him the best of luck!
I published a small write up about my solar panels & solar setup at the new house, give it a read if you're interested.
Given how much food we had on Saturday, we felt it was necessary to go for a morning walk on Sunday. Saturday evening and night were pretty heavy with rains, so I wasn't sure if we would be able to go for a walk on Sunday.
We woke up and we looked outside. It was pretty cloudy, but it didn't look like it was going to rain, so we decided to go for a walk. Joe saw a small cafe in Glenwood, which is about a kilometre and a half from our house. The cafe was part of a shopping centre, which is fairly common for the suburban areas here, and not a proper cafe as such. Rather, not a standalone cafe, but we figured we'll head over there, grab a coffee, sit for a bit, go to the toilet, and then come back. That's pretty much what we ended up doing.
We came across some really nice views and we came across Glenwood Park which had a skate park. It reminded me a lot of the Drumul Taberei park in Bucharest. The weather was pretty nice, and it wasn't as humid. The clouds did a good job of not ensuring that we don't get burned. It was a nice casual walk.
While coming back, we decided to take an Uber back because he ended up buying a lot more stuff than what we originally intended to at Woollies, and figured it was just easier to come back via an Uber.
Pics from our walk to Glenwood
### What I've been playing
I continued my Civ 7 game from last week. I had just started the Modern age with the Siamese empire, and it didn't take me long to win the game with a cultural victory. As you can see, I went all in into the Culture, so was completing the civic tree in record time, giving me a good bonus to science and happiness as well. I was friendly/allied with most other leaders, leading to a peaceful campaign with only Napoleon declaring a war on me towards the end, but by then I was a few turns away from victory so it didn't matter much.
Cultural Victory with Himiko
**Path of Exile** - The new league of Path of Exile - the Mirage league starts this weekend. In the Mirage League, you came across special Mirage zone, which opens a portal to an altered version of the source area, bringing in all the different features from the source area, but with some additional changes. Unlike the previous Keepers league, the Mirages seem to pretty small and give you a choice on what bonus you'd like to have so you can target farm specific stuff (currencies, for example). I'm running a minion build for this league, we'll see how it goes.
### Music of the Week
It's David Gilmour's 80th birthday and to that, here's my most-watched concert of all time, Pink Floyd's Pulse, restored and re-edited.
As a bonus, here's them playing Live in Pompeii
### Links of the week
> I made an interactive version of xkcd 2347, the dependency comic, where you can drag blocks out of the tower and watch everything above them collapse.
xkcd 2347An interactive version of the dependency comic.Andrew NesbittAndrew Nesbitt
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> 26 years ago this week the Pentium III launched. It was noteworthy for being the CPU that broke the gigahertz barrier, but also for being a better chip than its successor. The Pentium 4 clocked higher, but a Pentium III at 1.13 GHz outperformed a Pentium 4 at 1.5 GHz. It wasn’t really until the Pentium 4 doubled the speed of the Pentium III that the P4 became a good CPU.
Pentium III launched Feb 28, 1999Released at the end of February 1999, the Pentium III was a slight improvement over its predecessor. But it was better than its successor.The Silicon UndergroundDave Farquhar
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This is such a lovely post from Jack
> I was nominated to submit a commencement speech for my grad school’s 2026 commencement. [...] Everything is changing: AI, the job market, the world order, our lives. Many of you are rightfully worried about what comes next. [... ] I thought productivity was everything. We hear the word “productivity” mentioned as something society should maximize [...] The most effective strategy I found is to be as curious and genuine as possible
Real-Life Superpowers -I was nominated to submit a commencement speech for my grad school’s 2026 commencement. They didn’t select it, so I’m putting it here. Congratulations class of 2026. We are graduating at a very strange time in human history. Everything is changing: AI, the job market, the world order, our lives. Many of you are rightfully worried about what comes next. In addition to our degree, we’re told we need internships, research, side projects, and extra-curriculars. And yet, even that doesn’t feel like enough. We have no idea what’s coming our way or how to brace ourselves.jarbus
### Thanks for reading.
Thanks for reading and have a great week ahead. https://sathyabh.at/weekly-notes-10-2026/
