Tag: dailyprompt

My favorite restaurants in Sofia

~ Veselin ~ 2 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What is your favorite restaurant?

Sofia has many restaurants where you can sit, spend hours, and eat well. The city center is transitioning from an office center to a tourist center, with airlines delivering thousands of tourists every day. Consequently, as offices relocate from the center, restaurants witness a shift in their clientele from regular locals to ever-changing tourists. When a guest asks for a recommendation, we tend to send them to the slow and expensive places for the best experience. The reality is that it’s not where we eat. It’s more likely that you’ll find a Bulgarian having lunch at KFC or Pizza Lab than any of those traditional recommendations.

So here is my list of places where I actually like eating. All are either fast food or close to that. They’re ordered by importance, high to low.

  • Beshamel – a chain of small restaurants with cooked food. It’s fast food but not junk food. The kitchen is central so the food is the same at all of the places. Most of the meals are not far from what my parents would cook
  • BDS – a chain of fast food kufte/kebapche places. You can have Shkembe and Shopska Salad or the menu with 2 kebapche and experience the true Bulgarian cuisine
  • Ikigai – an okay Bulgarian edition of Japanese-style food. If you want ramen though, Umamido is a better choice.
  • Fabrika Daga – I eat sandwiches there but they have ordinary food. The food is hipster, with a lot of taste in everything. I enjoy that and am a frequent customer
  • Satsanga – the only vegetarian food I enjoy eating. It would be my top contender for the most delicious food in Sofia
  • Ribs Brothers – what the title says

There’s nothing wrong with places like Shtastlivetza, Mediterraneo, Pod Lipite, Victoria, Happy and so on that get traditionally recommended to visitors. However, all the places where I go are quick, you pay, get your food, eat, and leave. The food is fine.

I’d normally not take photos of my lunch but found these two, featuring Ribs Brothers and Beshamel.

A positive change

~ Veselin ~ 2 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Describe one positive change you have made in your life.

It’s a simple challenge – walk 2 hours per day on average. Do 10K steps. It combines cardio fitness with meditation. Having dedicated off-screen time is at least as helpful as the benefits of walking. It burns stress hormones instead of building more from whatever the screen is presenting at that time.

I believe walking is also a reason why I blog frequently again. I see things that I want to share. There are flowers everywhere. You don’t see much of that if you’re behind the windshield of a car. You see other cars.

Reading books again

~ Veselin ~ 23 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What book could you read over and over again?

My kids would watch the same TV episode over and over, knowing every scene by heart, and still enjoy it. I used to be like that with books until my late teenage years. I’ve read The Three Musketeers, Foundation, and Starship Troopers many times, perhaps 10+ times each, and the list of books I’ve read 3-4 times is also lengthy. However, the desire to reread books has since disappeared. No matter how good a book is, there’s always another book that might be as good and is also new to me.

I read “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” about 3 times as an adult. It might be the best answer I can give.

The shortcut to fix Sofia

~ Veselin ~ 3 Comments
Daily writing prompt
How would you improve your community?

Here’s my simple, direct, and plausible fix for my city that could be wrong. Remove most cars. I’m sure there will be people who can’t do it without cars but most people can. Fewer cars can improve the air quality and the average health of the population. The health benefits of walking are significant. Cycling and walking will become safer with fewer cars. There will be fewer car accidents. More space for coffee shops, playgrounds, and small businesses. Kids may discover that there’s a world outside of their phones.

If you could have something named after you, what would it be?

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
If you could have something named after you, what would it be?

I wouldn’t mind a great-grandchild named after me. My name is cool and means happy, or happyin. Not sure where the in came from but it appeared at least a century ago.

Apart from that, perhaps I would name after myself the rule to not deploy important software changes last thing on Friday. Some things are better done at the beginning of the day.

The probability of introducing a problem is greater at the end of the day, and greater at the end of the week when you’re tired. The probability of a problem being discovered when fewer people are around is lower. Weekends also make resolving issues more difficult – critical people might be out of reach or might be surprisingly upset that you reached them.