Hello there!

So Lockdown has been extended in India till 30th April in most of the states. Because the new cases are still on the rise, even though in a controlled manner, but still rising.

I think until the whole nation is tested with rapid test kits in large scale, we won’t know the scale of the spread. Even though it’s still contained because most of the Indians are obeying the stay home rule. But still, people who are out of job and food are forced to come on the streets to collect food from the NGO people.

In the past week, Cadila healthcare India who is a major pharma company announced that they have made the vaccine and it’s in animal testing phase right now. Even though the US also has some companies working on vaccines and Bill Gates is supporting parallel manufacturing of 7 strong US candidates for vaccine making, let’s see who wins the race.

This also makes a window for people to buy stocks of these companies and the underlying companies who are making the masks, ventilators. As they will eventually pop on the stock market. So we should look out for that as well.

Coming back to the newsletter and to the book listening progress, I didn’t progress much in this past week on the books front and “The Sign of the Four” book from Sherlock Holmes series (85% now) just made 5% progress. Another book – Becoming a Category of One – I just started that and wasn’t able to finish even the first part under 10%. Batching the audiobooks with workouts (non-running) didn’t work as well, as I anticipated. So I need to carve out at least half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the evening to progress on this front. I’ll work on it this week.

So without further adieu, please enjoy this week’s Saturday-Pentacle.

Issue 179 // Week 15 // 2020

Interesting info about Bees I found —

How do bees make honey? – While posting one of my Instagram macro photos of bee extracting food from the flower, I was intrigued by how exactly they make the honey? So I found this article on The Guardian where I found this simple but useful info about this –

“Bees start making honey, which is their food, by visiting flowers. They collect a sugary juice called nectar from the blossom by sucking it out with their tongues. They store it in what’s called their honey stomach, which is different from their food stomach.

When they have a full load, they fly back to the hive. There, they pass it on through their mouths to other worker bees who chew it for about half an hour. It’s passed from bee to bee until it gradually turns into honey. Then the bees store it in honeycomb cells, which are like tiny jars made of wax. The honey is still a bit wet, so they fan it with their wings to make it dry out and become more sticky. When it’s ready, they seal the cell with a wax lid to keep it clean.

So that’s how bees make honey. They don’t make very much of it, though. It takes at least eight bees all their life to make one single teaspoonful.“

An interesting person I started following on Twitter —

Through one of my favourite online writer – David Perell I found Matthew Kobach last week. Matthew is the Head of New York Stock Exchang’s (@NYSE) Social Media and one of the first people to ever pursue a PhD predicting how people use social media.

On his Twitter account, he shares his tips and tricks to for increasing your traction on Twitter. Very interesting personality.

A time management video I really enjoyed —

How I Manage my Time as a Doctor + YouTuber – 9 Time Management Tips – I really found this video by Ali Abdaal who is a Junior Doctor in the UK and also a famous productivity YouTuber. He’s videos have really popped up in last one year. I precisely remember a year back watching one of his iPad video – How students should use the iPad for better performance. I’m a fan of his videos since.

This particular video is for time management as he’s a solopreneur, Junior Doctor and YouTuber, so it was really useful to see how he manages his time. Check it out if you are also a one-person show, this video might be helpful –

A recipe (sort of) video I found useful —

How to make awesome cold brew with 3 different methods – This Starbucks helped me make my first batch of cold brew coffee this past week. In this one they are making it with 3 different methods. 1st and 3rd methods require proprietary instruments. But the 2nd method was the saviour. A 3-litre jar plus a cheesecloth or a cotton handkerchief plus the coffee will make you 3-4 days worth of cold-brew with this method.

I can totally recommend this to make cold-brew coffee. It was delicious.

Quote I’m pondering on lately –

Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear?

― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Before saying “see you next week”
I posted a few pictures on Instagram in the past week. You can check them out here or go to my Instagram for whole stories –

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Himanshu Sachdeva (@sachdevahimanshu) on Apr 4, 2020 at 12:30am PDT

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Himanshu Sachdeva (@sachdevahimanshu) on Apr 10, 2020 at 9:40pm PDT

Until Next Saturday!

Thanks for reading.

Himanshu

Hey friends, I’m Himanshu, a technology professional working in Mumbai, India. I spend most of my spare time making Podcasts, YouTube videos and write on Lifestyle Design and sometimes stories. Every Saturday, I send out an email newsletter called “Saturday Pentacle”, a list of the cool stuff I explored in the past week, including quotes, photos, books, articles, movies, documentaries and so on!

No spam, ever. Only great stuff.

Saturday-Pentacle // Issue 179 // Week 15 // 2020