Married Life

I am happy to announce that Aishwarya & I got married on October 6, 2020. We had a quick and simple ceremony in my hometown, Vadodara, amidst a global pandemic. It was one of the happiest moments of my life. We returned to Hyderabad a couple of weeks after that, and have been enjoying our life here.

All things considered, 2020 has been quite a turbulent year. Starting March 2020, India went into a full lockdown; so did the Google Office in Hyderabad. Since then, I’ve been working from home. I thought I would thrive in the WFH environment, but being locked up at home 24/7 has not agreed with me. My internal clock has been out of whack at least for the past 7 months. I have been sleeping in the afternoon, waking up at 10 in the night, having dinner after midnight, and working till early mornings, sometimes with an offset of quite a few hours. I have missed quite a few work meetings due to this (Oops!).

However, a pretty cool thing happened during WFH. I had a chance to set-up a workspace for Aishwarya & I. We have been gradually improving it by adding desk toys and indoor plants over the past 3-4 months, which has been quite fun. The best part about this - Google chipped in one grand for WFH accessories to build our workspace, which I think was well invested. We assembled the IKEA desk and the shelf (one on the right side in the picture) ourselves, which was an amazing experience. God, we love IKEA!

During the pandemic, I tried my hand at a lot of hobbies - penmanship, ink painting, 3D art in Blender, and also some important life skills like cooking. I am kinda proud to say that I have developed enough cooking skills to have a signature dish - Turkish Eggs. I also learned some complex vegetarian recipes, which I am still perfecting. I have been cooking with Head Chef (Aishwarya's well-deserved nickname) during lunches and working towards further improving my skills, which is always a delight.

Moving on to other exciting developments, we have domesticated a stray cat, named Holly, who comes every single day for food and pets, and has made our lock-down a little more pleasant. The funny thing is Aishu likes her way more than I do and pampers her a lot , but when it comes to sitting in our laps, Holly prefers mine. It makes Aishu a little envious, and it's really fun to tease her about it.

I think this is the best photo of Holly I have. We have grown very fond of her. Every morning, as soon as she hears our room door open, she comes to our window and starts meowing. She's a very clever and observant cat.

I learned a lot at work as well during 2020. It seemed like I had an infinite time to go over things during last year; it provided me with enough clarity regarding what I was missing from my work, & the changes I needed to make. I made some bets accordingly, and will be working on them over upcoming months. So a good amount of change at work as well! The last 5 months have been tough as hell, mostly due to being cooped-up at home (thanks to the pandemic), and the almost constant stream of bad news that the pandemic brought along. All of that made me feel quite helpless at times. Anyhow, here's hoping for change! :)

Our team also sent out a lot of swags during the year-end 2020. One of the swags was a projector, and we have been enjoying watching Ghibli movies on it. I am completely in love with Studio Ghibli’s Art direction. I am trying to adapt their style in my 3D models in Blender while making short animations, and I am enjoying the process very much.

That's all for today. See you next time, and hoping to write again, soon.

Adventure is out there!