I have not written a weeknote in over a month because I was unfortunately just living my best life.

Singapore

I tagged along with Bear for a little pre-work-trip-vacation to Singapore before we split off to do our own thing. This is my second time visiting Singapore (well, second visit after my family moved away from there when I was like 4). The last time I was here was last year on the same date for the same conference and we stayed in the same hotel, but we didn't manage to do much because of poor planning and my utter inability to function in the tropical weather. I'd fallen very sick. I simply could not wrap my head around how a place could be so hot and so humid. So this time I came prepared: tank tops and thin layers. A 1-liter water bottle that I'd fill up every morning and two half-liter bottles of electrolytes every day. Dextrose tablets. A little handheld electric fan. And the most important of them all: sunglasses. Armed with my anti-heat-exhaustion arsenal, I was able to hold up much better during this trip. We did a couple of touristy things we missed out on last time, mainly the Marina Bay Sands observation deck and Cloud Forest, which was fun! I felt like a tourist. But the highlight of the trip was definitely the food which I have written extensively about in another post. I left counting the days until my next kaya toast.

Stuttgart

I flew out from Singapore on a Saturday morning, reached home by Saturday afternoon and had to be at the airport for my next flight on Sunday morning. It was a mad rush to do a round of laundry and repack; I'd be gone for much longer this time. But I made it to the airport with enough clothes and time. My next stop: Stuttgart for a work trip.

I've been to Stuttgart before and hated it. "Ugh," I'd thought, "what a boring city. Would it kill these folks to have some fun?" And yes, Stuttgart is pretty boring, but after a year and a half back in Bangalore, Stuttgart felt like a dream! It was so quaint and quiet, with its little tram and little roads and little buildings. I loved the fresh air and cool weather, and I loved working with my colleagues. I miss being in an office so dearly. I am incredibly grateful for the flexibility of remote working, especially as a night person who wakes up at 12:00 PM every day, but the magic of jetlag meant that I was at the Stuttgart office by 9:30 AM, wide awake and ready to go. There was lots of talking, lots of me asking people who do other roles how their systems work, and lots of feeling awkward in my own head because it's been so long since I've existed around my colleagues. There were around 10 people since it was a smaller team meet and not one where the whole company was invited. Most of the devs stayed until late at night to work together in the office, but I'd usually leave by 7:00 or 8:00 PM to go chill in my hotel room. Even though I loved being at the office, by the time my 4 days were over I was ready to drop work and switch to party mode.

Barcelona

My favourite city in Europe welcomed me with open arms and very hot weather. I was meeting my friend who lived on the other side of the planet and was coincidentally also in Europe for a work trip the same time as me. I hadn't seen them since last October, so there was a lot of catching up to do. But first, priorities! The Indian food place around the corner from where we were staying felt like a safe, safe haven after Asian food and salad for 2 weeks straight. On night one we ended up in a very fancy wine bar where we had very small plates of food and paid very many monies. After convincing ourselves it was worth it, we decided to be a bit less spontaneous and do our research before walking into any establishment. The rest of the night we walked around and chit chatted.

The next day began with an implusive "yes!" to a road trip to a little nearby mountain town proposed by two of my friend's conference buddies who had rented a car. It was a journey to get there: first by car, then a cable car, and then to get to the very top of the mountain it was either a hike or a funicular. "I've eaten a croissant, a hike totally sounds doable!" I'd thought. It was not doable. Like, 20 minutes in I was sure I would collapse on the ground, so my friend and I turned back and took the funicular. I am not built for hiking, but I tried! After frolicking around for a bit we met the others back down at the mountain base and headed back to the main city where we said au revoir to them. We rested at the hotel for a second before heading back out at night to go bar hopping! I had many wonderful cocktails that night, but for some reason it's hard to recall the specifics... I wonder why...

The next day we went to the same fancy wine bar and got one reasonably priced bottle of wine instead of many expensive plates of food, and then decided to walk to the crown jewel of Barcelona: the Sagrada Familia. I've seen it before and even gone inside but I will never pass up an opportunity to gawk at the frankly ridiculous facade of the building. And gawk I did. It's the oldest active construction site in the world (after Ejipura flyover, of course), being built for almost 150 years because of the intricacies of the design (among other reasons). We hung around there for as long as the sun and our quickly depleting electrolyte supply would allow us, and headed back to the hotel to rest. At night we walked around a different part of town and wandered into a strange perfume bar. No, no, not a store which sells perfumes, but a perfume-themed speakeasy where each drink would come with your choice of edible fragrance spritzed onto it at the end – a literal perfume bar. It was an interesting experience. I'm not sure how much the perfumes added to the experience, but the cocktails themselves were very nice.

The last day was my favourite day: beach day! Beach day is always my favourite day. I sincerely believe all my problems would be solved if I had a beach I could go to at a moment's notice. I splish-splashed in the ocean, sunbathed (and got a sunburn, yikes), and just overall had a great time. We got some food and did some last-minute shopping before heading back to the hotel, and after a frantic few minutes of packing the next morning, my vacation was over.