SuperGlue’s Random Thoughts

Yesterday was an important life event for daughter, that she was inducted as a Eucharistic Minister in the parish church. Understandably, Mother was quite pleased that, after serving in same role her self for last three years; she managed to encourage daughter to agree to serve. That's said, daughter would be available to serve only during her visits to the church whenever she fly down for her vacations.

As expected, mother has taken a few photos during the induction ceremony and posted in the family group chat for everybody to see. Rather than let them get buried, as it's usually the case with most of the photos taken from her iPhone, I decided to post at least the most important one here.

I've taken a day off from work today, though I was awake by 0600 this morning. Family is still asleep and here I am sitting down in the couch. I was flipping through Notes app on my MacBook, when I came across a link I had saved in Notes. The title of the post is When life get tough. I can't remember how and where I came across it; but there are some good takeaways from it. Among a few others, this one stood out for me right now when I'm contemplating about my note taking tools.

Take notes. Don't believe you are capable of remembering every thought you will ever have. Write! It! Down! Notebook, apps, doesn't matter. Write it down for fuck's sake.

I've always in the habit of taking notes and have always enjoyed it and found valuable in helping to remember things - important things. When I was a Boy Scout, I've always ensured entires and notes in my Logbook was clearly written, neat and up to date. I briefly mentioned about it in a blogpost I wrote a few months back. Even after I started using iDevices about a decade ago, I continued taking down notes using pen & paper. I still keep 2-3 dozens of notebooks filled with handwritten notes and once in a while I keep going back to them. They are mostly work related notes from meeting notes, quick thoughts & ideas to notes made during business travel assignments overseas. Reading some of those old notes bring me memories I will always cherish, in particular about my career in the fascinating world of aviation. In early to mid 2000(s), though I owned a couple of hand-held devices like Palm, HP iPAQ, imate with stylus support for digital note taking, it never attracted me. I continued with pen & paper and I liked it. Then came 1st Gen iPad Pro with Apple Pencil support and I got my hands on with it no sooner it was available in retail. It did not take long to die down my pen & paper note taking habit; instead I gradually got used to taking notes in iPad with Apple Pencil and it worked well for me, until recently when I purchased iPad Pro 2018 with new Apple Pencil. Daughter had already requested for me to give my 1st Gen iPad Pro to her and I did, when she arrived here for her Spring vacation in early April. With that, my interest of digital note taking slowly faded away, even though I had set up my shiny new iPad Pro, with supposedly improved Pencil. At the same time a close business associate of mine had given me a paper notebook in Memo taking format. Naturally, I kind of switched back to pen & paper. I started to bring the notebook along with me to meetings in the day job. I begun to jot down thoughts and ideas that came to mind. It seemed to work well. However, that did not last long until I realized last week that I do not have my notebook with me. I searched in my EDC bag, my desk in the day job and even a couple of meeting rooms that I had been to last week. Now it has almost been a week, I still haven't found it. Not that I had sensitive contents written down in my notebook; but there were a few important quick notes and ideas that I had written down for future reference. In hindsight, I should've digitized those notes by scanning or capturing images. Should I keep hoping that I'd find the notebook back? Should I continue pen & paper note taking in a new notebook and scan my notes, or should I go back to handwritten note taking on iPad….

In this afternoon’s Good Friday mass, the priest wish the congregation ”Happy Good Friday”. Not sure though, he went on to explain it in detail. But, because of the Daily scripture passages I receive from one of our friends in SL, I get the idea.

Good Friday is good because we know how the story ends.
Jesus Christ stretched out His arms & gave all that He had to give at Calvary.
He emptied Himself to pay the price for our sin & His blood washed over our debt & set us free.
Without the Crucifixion, there is no resurrection.
Without the sacrifice of Christ, there is no salvation.
Therefore, when we confess with our mouths that God raised Jesus from the dead, we shall be saved.
“For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God & it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved….”(Rom 10:10‬)

Good Friday is good and happy, because Jesus Christ gave himself and paid the price for all it’s peoples’ sins, so that we were let free!

This Good Friday was good & happy for me personally too, because after many moons, I joined the family to attend the mass in the church. Wife had decided to leave home at 3.00pm, two hours before the scheduled mass at 5.00pm, so that we would be able to get to church through the usual traffic congestion that one would expect on a day like this.

As expected there was heavy, slow moving traffic starting from the exit from the highway all the way to location of the church. We managed to find some parking about 200 meters away from the church and walked. The entire journey took almost about two hours and I felt, it was good that we started from home early. As a result, perhaps for the 1st time in a long time, we got to sit inside the Main Church Hall for a Good Friday mass. Stephanie and myself were seated in the 4th or 5th row. ¹ It was speciality feature in this afternoon’s mass that the choir was made up from our prayer group. They performed brilliantly, I have to say. The entire mass took about just an hour or so, after which we drove back home. Drive back home wasn’t bad as on the way up as there was much less traffic and constantly moving. Mrs had packed some boiled corns and we had that in the car on the way back as everyone was a bit hungry.

All in all though it was a long afternoon, quite unusually, I was very receptive and patient to the entire process without any complaints whatsoever.!

1. Mrs served as a Eucharist Minister

Our friends in the church prayer group do not miss to organize an overnight picnic every year. Intention of overnight picnic has always been bonding amongst people ¹ and bringing the group close as a family, which believed to be the very essence of the group centered around love and community.

Usually the venue has always been a nearby state outside Dubai. This year too, the traditional annual picnic was held on March 22nd & 23rd at a farmhouse in the mountain range of off-Hatta. Except a nearby another farmhouse or two and mountains, there wasn't any other property around the visinity.
. A great hideout away from usual hassle & bassle. The farmhouse was full of vegetation and a few animals.

It was about an hour drive the picnic venue and we arrived there around 11 in the morning. As usual the lunch was traditional biryani that was ordered from a popular supplier in Dubai. Everyone enjoyed the lunch and the desert. After the lunch there were some outdoor games, which gave people to get to know each other and bonding. I particularly liked the game that gave people opportunity to tell the names of other people.

The most prominent event of the 1st afternoon was tug-of-war between men & ladies, which was much fun. With a few strong ladies being present in the ladies department, though there was an expectation that the ladies will win the game of 3, in the end, mens' squad won tug-of-war.

Later in the afternoon, people spent time to their own liking. Toddlers had a dip in the pool, while the grown-up kids, joined by their dads played football in the backyard. Some people just hung around the farmhouse garden. I had joined the group who wanted to go visit another nearby farmhouse.
Later in the afternoon, there was a lively session of praise & worship. followed by lovely BBQ. There was also sing song session late into the mid-night.

The following day a few ladies in the group prepared the breakfast. The highlight was Gerad & Ruby's (vada)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vada_(food] everybody enjoyed. After the breakfast, people participated in the stations of the cross and it was held in the trekking site behind the farmhouse.

Later in the morning, people had the opportunity to take part in a few other outdoor games, before the lunch. Soon after the lunch, Mrs decided that we leave back to Dubai, as there were another couple who were leaving, so that we could follow them, as neither Mrs nor myself weren't sure how to drive back to Dubai.
All in all, it was a great picnic, which I enjoyed so very much!

1. especially the newcomers

Holi is a Hindu spring festival, also known as the “festival of colors” or ”festival of love’ and this year it was on 20th & 21st March.
For Holi celebrations onboard, we had sweet treats for all our customers travelled from & to India. There were Gujiya [1. A sweet deep-died dumpling made with Sujit or maida and stuffed with a mixture of sweetened khoya and dried fruits] These were placed inside a specially designed box for the occasion and handed out to customers after their main meal.

Every time when Jason come up with either a new feature ¹ or any enhancements, I get so excited. And very impatient till I get an opportunity to try the new features out. This is, sometimes difficult to do during the day job. So, I impatiently wait till I get back home. Then, I'm still not satisfied until I try the features on all of my devices. After all that, I get curious - to make out how all these features come together and magically work seamlessly. When Jason publish posts about those features, I read them and try to understand. Sometimes, they are straight forward and simple. Other times, no; they are too technical and I don't understand a bit. I read them over and over agin. Oh, no; I still don't get it. I give up. Now I'm thinking, why in the world I'm so ver much curious about this stuff , I don't have to. Here, there is a wonderful product & service available for me to express my self. It's easy to use and no nonsense. All what I have to do is to just use & enjoy the moment!

1. Edit, unique way of geo tagging

BIL was leaving for Canada tonight and the plan was to Mrs & I go to the airport to drop him off because his luggage would not fit in my tiny car. We had already loaded the luggage into Mrs car, no sooner she got back from the church. BIL and I had a quick alcoholic beverage with dinner and got dressed up, when Mrs suddenly said she would just drop him/us off the airport and come back and she wouldn’t want to park the car in the parking garage & stay till the BIL’s airport check-in formalities completed. She gave, that she was feeling feverish as the reason. She also said, I shouldn’t have a drink, of which I replied, if she would’ve told that she would not want to drive in the beginning, I wouldn’t have had a drink with the BIL. I was hurt and wasn’t happy at all of her behavior. I unloaded the luggage from her car and managed to re-load them in mine. I decided that I drive BIL and his luggage to the airport without depending on anyone and I did at last. Where is the so called compassion…?

Thought, I’d give a deep dive in an effort to find out differences between using MacJournal VS DayOne for keeping a journal. First and foremost, from the early syncing attempts of both apps earlier this morning, DayOne has a much superior sync between devices in comparison to MacJournal sync between their mac and iOS apps. Whilst DayOne gives the option to sync via either their web service or iCloud; MacJournal’s only options are either local wifi or Dropbox. That’s said, I still haven’t been able to really sort out dropbox set up for sync MacJournal file. I’m still wondering though how important it is to me the sync feature between devices.

A prominent and useful feature of MacJournal is focus mode for composing entries. I’m impressed with being able to type in a distraction free dark screen in bight green fonts on my MacBook screen. In application preferences, people even can change settings in focus editing mode’s background and font color if they so wish to. I am not sure DayOne gives such a rich typing experience, though it has its plain white composing window. I may be wrong. Will have to dig deep to find out.

Today, from the developer’s website, I understood MacJournal is being removed from the App Store and be available on Developer’s website for free. Now, that’s great news for anyone who’d like some rich journaling experience, I think. That’s being said, I will have to see myself, how much I’d be using the app, considering the fact, that I still haven’t been able to sort out sync process between mac and iOS app to be able to use MacJournal on my iPad. Oh, well… as much as I use iPad than this MacBook, sometimes feel though, how often I’m going to make journal entires using the iPad.

It’s past 1530 in the afternoon and here I’m still sitting in the office because that last meeting which was scheduled from 1530 - 1630 ¹ got cancelled at 1530. The meeting was scheduled to discuss expected KPI(s) from the meal choice prediction project of which I was looking forward to with excitement. I’ve been working on this project in full swing since last August or so until it was temporary put on hold in the last week of December last year, when some shadow testing trials were already planned. Then in early February, the project was reinstated and work restarted, specially gathering system enhancements requirements to facilitate full go live by end April. While all these were in progress there has also been another new development to look at further enhance the current process of meal offering for the customers, which would also require enhancements to the same system. When people asked me which project & enhancements to the system should take priority , my recommendation was and still is, that we should work on both in parallel from both business process and system enhancements perspective, as these two projects compliment each other with ultimate aim of enhancing the product & service offering to our guests. However, there seems to be some challenges in time and resources for some of the stakeholders that they are unable to work on both. I suspect, this last minute cancellation of the KPI meeting has caused by this uncertainty of which one to give priority.
Note: I very rarely get time to write blog posts when I am not at home. But here we go, there is one here for today!

1. Beyond official work hours