Week note - Goodbye, June

F1 movie, personal website, calisthenics

Jul 01, 2025

The highlight of last week for me was watching F1, the movie.

But first - I’ve made tiny progress in calisthenics. I can do a vertical 90 deg stand, but I still cannot get myself to touch the wall yet. The form is better than last video though.

Like others, I too watched the F1 movie trailer with haptic feedback on apple tv when it released. While I felt very strongly about wanting to like it and feeling impressed by it, the weird vibration in my palms felt only slightly less worse than holding a micro fiber cloth.

I remember back in the day (pre-pandemic time will be referred to as back in the day) when my friend bought a new macbook with haptic feedback in the touch pad. I was so amazed to learn that it wasn’t a button, and that magically the touch pad pushes back the vibration into my finger to make it feel like it’s a button click. My brain couldn’t handle the excitement and I played around clicking randomly on his computer. The movie trailer did not make me feel similarly.

As an F1 noob, I went in with zero expectations. I’d recently watched Mission Impossible - the final reckoning, and came out feeling utterly disappointed. I didn’t want to get my hopes up for a movie about a sport I knew nothing about.

...I was utterly impressed though. It’s a fantastic movie.

First of all, there are two drivers representing a team in a F1 race? I didn’t know it was a team sport. They work in tandem, trying to get the team a win. It was beautiful to watch. Think of it like passing the ball in football, but with a car and ..uh.. no ball. Bear with my sports references.

I think I felt everything they wanted the audience to feel. The win, loss, anger, frustration, emptiness, calm..everything. I liked the music too. There were a lot of real life F1 racers who show up in the movie. They did a lot of filming in real circuits, races apparently.

Then there’s the aerodynamics, the tyres, and the true meaning of a fraction of a second. I learnt about the existence of something called a Drag Reduction System. It’s a flap on the car’s spoiler, and the driver can open it to allow more air to flow, to help reduce the friction caused by the air and help overtake someone right ahead.

I want to rewatch in imax.

If you’re interested in learning about the behind-the-scenes - this was a good read. https://www.theringer.com/2025/06/27/movies/f1-movie-behind-the-scenes-making-of

Two things about PVR: Get the chicken club sandwich when you visit the one in phoenix, Whitefield. Good quality chicken and slaw. They don’t sell this is any of the other PVRs I’ve been to. Secondly, most important one, please don’t ever go to the 4DS screen. They suck all the joy out of watching a movie and is juvenile, no offence to anyone who enjoys it. But yes, I enjoyed this movie despite all this.

In other news, I read about an algorithm change on Instagram (again). Another update to the algo and that they now have un-pausable ads. I feel all the more justified that I deactivated my profile. I haven’t kept count, but I think it has been roughly three months?

It got me thinking about how we spend time on the internet. Where do people hangout? There’s this term people use for physical spaces - third space. I don’t know what that’s called on the internet. We work, check emails, catch up on e-lafdas on X or mindlessly scroll through stories on Instagram watching that out-of-touch friend or an influencer in Japan.

What part of the internet brings joy? For me, Substack comes close to that space :)

I have a few running thoughts about this and would like to share them separately in a dedicated post.

I was just leading up to share that I’ve built myself a website.

It felt good to spend time on Pinterest, picking colour theme, font and all that (I picked coral/peach monochrome). It’s not fully done yet, very much a work in progress. Some of the copies are AI generated, I needed something to get started. And the mobile version is not good, yet. Presenting my little internet space - https://divyashivaram.in

TV:

Abhinay and I have started watching the latest season of Bear. We love the show.

We wrapped up the latest season of Black mirror too. Nothing comes close to the feeling the first episode leaves you in. It was a good watch overall.

I call this current week - the cleanse week.

We decided to cut back on sugar (again), and try and eat more at home. We did a last hurrah of sorts on Sunday night (wrap and honey chilli chicken wings from paris panini haha) and have been eating home food since Monday. I still add sugar to one cup of tea, but restarted my morning black coffees. I went on a sugar spree in-between with a bazillion cups of tea. I use the Vienna roast pour over bags from Blue Tokai. Bought 20 of them at a very good discount via Zomato a couple of days ago, fully restocked for my trip next week.

Abhinay and I are looking forward to our trip to Chennai next week. We’re going to be taking babies along this time - Ginger and Garlic, my dogs - if you’re new :)) I’m excited to meet my parents, thatha, chill by the sea and eat potlam rice at kaaram mess with Abhinay. Will share more post trip!