Weeknote #34 [W26.25] - HSR Reads, making people start Mataroa blogs, and watching eight films a week
Published on Jun 22, 2026 • 6 min read
I’m never going back to HSR Reads
I went to HSR Reads with Jatan on Saturday. I don’t think I’ll go back again.
A few weeks ago, I had gone for Cubbon Reads. Which I enjoyed. The absence of the noise of traffic was a pleasant relief. I liked the aspect of being in nature, amidst greenery, with the sound of birds chirping.
HSR Reads was not like that. The venue is a park next to a rather busy street. So I could still hear a lot of noise coming from the street.
Plus, since it is a smaller park, there were a couple of kids playing cricket right in front of where we were sitting. Which made it difficult to concentrate on reading.
We went for breakfast with the people there after the reading got over. I think Jatan had mentioned Cinema Next Door to someone so she asked me about what kind of films we screen. Her favourite filmmaker was Quentin Tarantino.
I am never getting over accusations of being a snob. Because it is true. I couldn’t bring myself to be interested in the conversation after Tarantino was mentioned.
I have also been recently going out to my local lake with a book to read in the mornings (when I wake up early, which is not often). The lake feels far more peaceful than HSR Reads.
I’ve realized that I don’t particularly care about discussing books with strangers. Nor do I need accountability to make myself read. I mostly want an excuse to spend a couple of hours reading somewhere pleasant. The local lake works perfectly well for that.
And if I want to be around people and potentially socilize, I think Cubbon Park remains a better option.
Setting up Mataroa blogs for friends
At the end of my first Indie Web Club session, Tanvi had very kindly set me up with a Mataroa blog.
I remember feeling not very convinced at the time that Mataroa was the most interesting blogging platform for me to get started with. It seemed very bland and unexciting.
But I was wrong (and Tanvi was right). If you don’t already have a blog, Mataroa is the best platform to start with for several reasons:
- it does not cost anything.
- it is bland and unexciting, which means you can focus on writing rather than fiddling with themes and settings.
- it is easy to export your posts if you later want to migrate to something more fancy.
- it does not have its own discovery algorithm (like Medium or Substack), which makes posting something a lower stakes (and, therefore, easier) decision.
As we were discussing in this week’s Indie Web Club session, the biggest barrier to blogging is often not the writing itself, but the feeling that you first need to build a website, choose a theme, buy a domain, and create a whole system. Something like Mataroa removes those hurdles.
Last week (I think it was at kavz’s potluck), Mariam and I were admiring Tanvi’s persistence in helping everyone who comes to Indie Web Club set up their own Mataroa blogs in a very gently assertive way. At this Saturday’s session, we had our chance at playing Tanvi’s role. We got Afeefa and Himanshu started with their own Mataroa blogs. (That’s four Mataroa blogs in this paragraph!)
Eight films a week
For next month’s theme for Cinema Next Door we are planning to screen films featuring some form of sexual trangression and/or intense violence (think: Possession).
This is usually not my go to subgenre of films to watch. Which has meant that I’ve had more catching up to do than usual. I’ve watched 26 films this month already. Usually, I average 3-4 films a week, but I’ve been doing double that this month.
Which means that this has been a great opportunity to get a few things that have been on my watchlist for years checked off, and also to watch films which I’d usually not watch otherwise.
A few surprsingly nice finds this month have been:
While it has been fun watching some of these films, I’m still mainly a sucker for sincere slice-of-life stories. That, I think, is never going to change.