After our usual evening badminton session (which was followed by catching tennis ball (something we started recently)), we went to the terrace to play carrom, which is something we started yesterday & plan on turning into a weekend ritual.

After the carrom session, where thaththi won as usual (& then I got to practice some carrom shots on my remaining white pieces), we finally wound up our carrom session after all the pieces were out. I just looked up at the sky because the moon looked so clear & caught my attention. Then I realised that the sky was clear af, so my first impulse was to go in & turn off our newly fitted 6W panel lights that lit our terrace, so that there’d be less light pollution.

After turning the lights off, I came back & sat on my chair (which conveniently had wheels). Then, I started to stare at the beautiful night sky. Soon after I was starring at the beautiful night sky & getting mesmerized by it, a star seemed to start moving. I’m obviously aware that this was a satellite & it was so nice seeing one. As I remember, it came in from the south west & moved north east. As avid stargazers & space enthusiasts, myself & thaththi were really excited to spot this satellite. Since we decided we aren’t gonna work too hard during the weekend, we were experiencing the Joy Of Missing Out. Thanks in part to not having a set itenary for the evening, we kept looking at the sky in case see another satellite. And boy did we see our 2nd satellite! We were thrilled & eagerly awaiting the 3rd so that it’d make a “hat-trick”, so to speak. And we kept noticing satellites…

By the end of the 4th satellitle spotting, ammi dropped by at the terrace to say something to us & we told her we saw 4 satellites! (How cool is that, right?) And then I saw the 5th one, and by now all 3 of us were starring at it, then Ammi spotted the 6th one. Holy shit, now we’re at “double hat-trick”?! Weren’t we excited at just 1 hat-trick few minutes ago? lol

Then I was joking, ykw, at this rate we’ll see 10, and that soon turned to “I ain’t having dinner until I spot 10”. We saw 9 pretty quickly. By now we’ve seen so many, we didn’t even realise we were already at “triple hat-trick”. Waiting for 10 felt longer than the others & it was, but I was totally willing to wait through the valley of disappointment to make sure we’re gonna have dinner. And the dopamine was unlike anything that social media gives (which is a harmful one which thankfully we’re no longer into) I had a hunch that the satellite this time would go from north to south (some context, majority went the other way, 8/9 from what we saw so far was like that, see I have a nice sample to draw conclusions from). I was joking the south-north to north-south ratio would be 4:1. And Eureka! I spotted satellite #10 & boy did it come from the expected direction. Phew, now I can have that roasted chicken for dinner. Plus, 4:1 ratio is a fact now.

After waiting some more time for the 11th satellite, we came in. Thaththi told me about a nice song called “Sleeping Satellite” (I’m listening to it again rn (even now as I type the initial writted draft)) & now it’s high time for me to head downstairs for dinner, since I’m almost at the end of my 3rd page in this notebook (doesn’t make sense on my blog, but who cares). I’m going to type this and post on my blog after I’m back from dinner (same as what I said in my previous parenthesis). I’ll probably take this (notebook) downstairs to show thaththi. And now I’m at the line before last line on this notebook(again same story as my previous parenthesis). Almost forgot, I want to see what the satellite sees from up there by sending my own & then going up there on my own one day!

 

 

 

Thank you Thaththi (Harsha Wijesooriya) & Ammi (Manori Wijesooriya) for reading drafts of this.