Tag Archives: life

2019 Year Review

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We entered a new year couple of weeks ago. I was a bit occupied with stuff around the new year’s time, but finally I can sit down and reflect upon how the last year went by for me. I’ll try to follow the same format as last year by writing what was good, what wasn’t, and my hopes for 2020. You can also check out 2019’s year review article.

In short

The start of this year was very busy given that I would be in India only for a week before setting out for Germany. There were a lot of feelings within me, all mixed together like the flavours in Bhel Puri. It wasn’t super comfortable knowing that I’m moving away from the comforts of home in a totally foreign country where I knew no one, and didn’t speak the language. Integrating in Germany was actually easier than what I had expected, and I think I was super lucky to find a good set of people around me. There was a lot of moving around in the city, travelling within Europe, meeting new people and making friends, trying all sorts of food and much more.

2019 was a busy year, but a very positive one in that. It was the year when I could understand a bit more about the kind of person I was, and the kind of people I like having around. I am genuinely thankful to all the people who touched my life this year. Following are a few highlights from the past year and TODOs for this one.

Highlights

  • No sick days, at work or otherwise.
  • Lost weight and got back into good health, started doing sports again and rode bike regularly.
  • Started learning German. Did A1, and that really changed my experience in Germany.
  • Did well socially, made sure I have no regrets when I think back about my start in this new world.
  • Got super comfortable with what I do professionally and got some clarity on the kind of professional expertise I’d like to develop in the long run.
  • Played board games, card games, chess, did karaoke, went to the lakes, biked 58kms in a day, lost my flight and luggage on the way to Berlin and many such memorable events.
  • Travelled solo to a number of neighboring cities and countries.
  • Realized my dream of turning a flat into my home with a lot of interesting customizations; warm and cozy with fairy lights, a good place to work, listen to music, read etc.
  • Became much more confident about the kind of person I am, and gained insights about how I react in certain situations, especially adverse ones.
  • Exchanged gifts with many people–friends and strangers–throughout the year. Learned the joys of giving.

#TODO in 2020

  • Try and eat healthier food, cook often. Prepare lunch for office?
  • Money management: Keep an eye on spending habits.
  • Make faster progress with learning the German language.
  • Read more.
  • Lower the time spent on social media / reddit / youtube.
  • Talk to even more people from around the world, get better socially and be a pleasant person.
  • Help, teach and mentor people. Share whatever knowledge and experience I have more actively.
  • Travel more than just superficially, explore by means other than air, go hiking.
  • Get a license, go driving on the autobahn and Nurburgring. Bonus +50XP Drive a BMW.

Other Random Thoughts

Since everyone is talking about us moving into a new decade, here are a few of my thoughts and reflections. 10 years ago I was in my 10th grade, preparing for that big SSC exam every adult had scared us students about. That was the last thing we had to work hard for before we soar high in the comforts of adulthood, we were told.

Alas, like many things we’re told as kids, that wasn’t true. What was true, however, was that I stopped taking academics seriously from that point on. I remember learning how to ‘hack’ into Windows registry and change random config options to impress my friends in our computers lab. The list of embarrassing stuff I did back in the day is longer than I’m willing to admit publicly.

Interestingly, 10 years ago at this stage I still wanted to pursue science and not computers as a career. Computers were kind of new, science was the long term interest. Fascinating how things turned out, and how they could have if I had gone along the other path. Could be an article for another day. This is it for now.

Thank you for reading!

24 Years Old And Other Stuff

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The 3rd of this month marked the completion my 24th year of existence, 24 revolutions around the sun, 24 years of the limited time that we are all handed when we board this earth train.

These were 24 years of great health, a relatively problem free life and great learnings. I’ve met and became friends with some amazing people who’ve made me question my priorities and values. Speaking of priorities, they’ve changed as well, although whether for the good or otherwise is something only time will tell. From someone who read and preached science (and be annoying sometimes), to becoming obsessed with my desktop PC and learning security (and be annoying most times), picking up social skills and learning how to talk to people (if you’re surprised this is something people need to learn separately, you’re probably not friends with many nerds), getting into web and open source, getting a full time job and so on. Life has had its share of twists and turns but it has been a joyride so far.

So how does it feel to be 24 years old? I think it is a superb feeling. Many things are changing, mostly for the good. People take you seriously, sort of. You feel the added responsibility when making decisions; decisions about your life and about those who surround you. People also seem to trust you with your decisions, which is nice. It feels like, finally, you’re in the driver’s seat. Eating what you like, taking care of your health and fitness and those kind of things have also picked up pace. On a health related note, I did a fair bit of outdoor sporting this year after around a decade long pause. With a sample size of one, I also think that the tendency to do things to please others, in general, goes on diminishing as we age.

At some point, I realized that some regrets are better than others. Regretting your decisions is better than other people’s. Similarly, regretting doing something is often better than the regret of not doing it. You also realize that many problems that you face are actually your choices. You can’t escape problems, but you can choose the ones you’d like to tackle by making conscious choices.

In the past couple of years, I’ve become a bit more independent; earn enough to support myself and my hobbies, and lived alone in my own flat. Moving to Berlin was by far the main highlight of this year. Like I keep mentioning, moving to a new city is like being handed a blank book. You can correct your past regrets, and try to be the person you always wanted to be, and not worry about your past self’s image in other people’s mind conflicting with the new one (for reasons which I’d not try to justify, I find it similar to starting a new code project versus fixing a legacy one).

And as always, with the added authority comes added responsibility. I noticed that I think longer before making decisions or even simply speaking, since those things now have consequences (and some people, my parents included, sometimes count on me to do the thinking). Overall, the theme of the last couple of paragraphs is that 24 is a good age to gain some autonomy, confidence in your self, control over your life and explore a bit. Not physically, necessarily, but philosophically, in the sense of what your values are, what do you expect from the people around you and what do you give them in return.

Thank you for reading!

Cheat Sheet To Good Experiences

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I wasn’t sure where an article like this belonged. Essentially, I wanted to document some of my philosophies (which is just a fancy way of saying that if I face a situation, these are the guiding principles that help me make decisions) that I think have helped me experience a lot more positivity within and from others wherever I’ve been (but mostly concerning places away from home). These are, of course, very personal and subjective. As with everything, I expect these to evolve over time and I myself might disagree with some of them at a later point in time. But then, reading my old thoughts and values, and documenting the new ones is exactly the point of this blog anyway.

Writing them down in no particular order.

Smile first

On an imaginary (and intuited) bell curve that covers all of humankind (and dogs), from the ones who wouldn’t smile no matter what you do, to the ones who’d smile without any reason, I find that most people fall around the region where they’ll smile if they get a smile, where smile is just a metaphor for acting kindly in some way. That is to say that most people are good at heart, just not very upfront about it. A small act of kindness from our end is enough to tap into that ocean of goodness that just lies below the hard top surface.

My point is, most people are super nice in some or the other form

The worst that happens here is that they don’t return the smile back, but giving away is usually in itself quite rewarding. Between a win and a jackpot, and I’m good with either.

Assume best of intentions; Try seeing things from a different perspective

Many things make sense only when we see them from another point of view. And thanks to the complexity of the world we live in, that’s not always possible. There are far too many factors that can influence the way a person thinks. Acknowledge that. Try to see if the case in question has a right/wrong solution or is it just a matter of difference in perspective. More often that not, latter is the case. For that reason, give the other person the benefit of doubt. Probably they had a good reason for acting in a certain way or saying what they said.

Don’t judge before understanding

One useful tool that I’ve developed over time is to resist the urge to judge someone or something before I have a complete understanding of the picture. Even if I somehow think I do, just knowing that a simple picture with zigzag lines is enough to confuse my mind, let alone complicated situations with hundreds and hundreds of variables, keeps me away from making very bold statements and trusting my thoughts too much.

Optical Illusion – Wikipedia

In this case, being a software developer helps too. Anyone who has done any software engineering knows that no matter how good they get, they can never make statements like my code doesn’t have any bugs. In fact, the more software one writes, the less likely one is to make a statement like that. The same is true, I feel, for other walks of life.

Don’t be scared of looking stupid, making mistakes

Things will go south from time to time, not work out as per plan and even leave lasting bruises. Ideal outcome is just one of the many possible outcomes. I think these setbacks matter much less than our attitude in dealing with them. Sure, there’s the momentary joy in seeing things work out well, but there’s learning in seeing things not work out well. And learning goes much further than momentary joy (and of course, difficult times make for great stories).

Think of all the people in high school that you were once too scared to look stupid in front of. Think of the number of extracurriculars you didn’t participate in, skills that you didn’t learn, questions you didn’t raise your hand to answer to, just so that you could save yourself the momentary embarrassment in case you mess it up. Think of how many people are still in touch with you, or care about you, or even think about you once in a month. On this Earth-sized stage, the only definition of sanity is the one you set for yourself.

Laugh at yourself

Nothing is more powerful than the power to laugh at yourself. All of us have enough mistakes under our belt to write fat comic books out of it. From accidentally making inappropriate remarks that make me cringe whenever I remember them, to less intense fun mistakes that were quite painful at the time, I’ve done it all. And I’m not going to keep a straight face if you tell me you haven’t.

Don’t take it too seriously

I think we often overestimate how important we are. We’re granted a very limited time slot on this Earth stage, so why spend it under a false illusion of self importance and delusional (sometimes pretentious) seriousness. I think of myself as a macro-nihilist, meaning that while I understand the importance of my everyday, micro activities, I keep my emotional extremes in check by not forgetting that in the long run, none of my epic successes or catastrophic failures really matter much.

Being open to new cultures

You can’t shake hands with a closed fist. Similarly, if you’re too proud of the fact that you were randomly born into a specific geographic location or culture or religion or speak a particular language, you’ll find it very difficult to accept the majority of the human race that just as randomly happened to be born in another location or culture or religion or speak a different language. For me, it is a matter of celebration of similarities and differences, of simulating my life in a new culture and environment. That arouses a genuine interest in knowing things, and most people are willing to talk for hours if you show an interest.

On the other hand, being too proud of accidental things, while does feel good to practice thanks to our evolutionary history of tribalism, doesn’t help much when we meet people and experience cultures which are very different from our own.

Being predictable

When I was little, there was this thing about being unpredictable that I thought made people cool and edgy. But as I grew up, I realized that I’m most comfortable around people who’re predictable. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I agree with them all the time, but just that they’re consistent in their behavior even with things, thoughts and ideas that I don’t agree with.


That’s what I try to adopt for myself. Just trying to be consistent with the way I am, having a more values driven approach towards decisions. It is like being a particularly shaped piece in a box full of puzzle pieces that’s constantly shaking. You can be weird, crazy, stupid, no problem. Eventually, you’ll end up with other pieces you are a perfect fit with.

In closing

I hope this article was interesting for you to read. I certainly did have fun writing it. I’m curious to read this piece again in about a year or so and see if there’s anything to add or remove. Thank you for reading. Ciao!

The Indian ‘No?’

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One of the traits of Indians who speak the English language is using ‘no’ at the end of sentences which are questions. I do it from time to time. It is frequent for Yes/No questions where you say the entire sentence first as an assertion and at the end you put a ‘no?’ to tell the listener you’re actually asking if the statement you just made was true. For example, if you’d like to ask your friend Bob if he likes Green color, you’d say Do you like green color? I, on the other hand, would have to fight an (tiny) instinct and not say You like green color, no?

Not trying to imply we’re the only ones who do it, or that it is a super bad thing. And since it comes naturally to both the speaker and the listener, we understand each other just as well, and that is what matters in the end. But I was just wondering how do so many people make the same basic mistake.

While learning German, I notice that sometimes I try to literally translate sentences, words for words, when I’m not able to think fast enough. For example, Can you please help me? becomes Kannst du bitte helfen mir?, which is incorrect. Rule is, if there are two verbs in a sentence, the second verb is thrown at the very end. So the right way to say that is Kannst du mir bitte helfen?. But if you don’t practice, literal translation (from your native language) is what comes naturally.

I think this is what happens when we try to ask a Yes/No question as Indians. At least for me, my native languages are Hindi and Marathi. In both, an assertion for You like Mangoes would translate* to Tumhe aam pasand hai or Tula ambe avadtat. Now, Do you like Mangoes? just adds a ‘Na’ sound to the Hindi and Marathi version; Tumhe aam pasand hai na? and Tula ambe avadtat na? which, if you then reverse literal translate back to English, becomes You like Mangoes, no? (*using Hinglish and Marathlish here so that everyone can try pronouncing it).

Of course, you can say it differently in Hindi which would be similar to literal English translation, Kya tumhe aam pasand hai?, but it depends on how good your Hindi is, and the exact sentence. I honestly have no idea which one’s more correct.

So, to be honest, I’m waiting for a friend who got a little late, and decided to write this piece sitting in a park under a tree. It is kind of random, and I think I’ll find counter examples to this if I think a bit more on it. But yes, that’s it for this spontaneous article. Thank you for reading.

The Neighbor

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I held the elevator open for an elderly lady entering the building. She thanked me, and saw the floor that was already active. Her apartment was on the same floor, she said. I exclaimed “Neighbors!”, to which she smiled and said, yes. On reaching the floor, we discovered that we live in flats directly opposite to each other. We got talking; what I did and where I was from. Turned out, she lived in New Delhi with her husband for 5 years! I told her about my internship there for a couple of months. She could even tell the neighborhood she was in, which was pretty close to where I lived.

Incidents like these make you realized that the world’s not that big of a place. This entire conversation took place in German (at least I tried to) which was kind of a big deal for me. New language skill put to good use!

Let’s Talk About The Disadvantages Of Living Close To Work

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My recent post was about finally getting a permanent flat in Berlin, especially one within walking distance of my workplace, which must’ve been a dream of many. It certainly was one of mine. Coming from Mumbai, where a commute of an hour or two is no biggie, Berlin has been a pleasant surprise.

None of my commute here has been more than 30 minutes one side, and the current one is 12 minutes walk, 7 on bike. My one day’s commute distance in Mumbai would now be equal to 3.75 working months, or roughly 75 days of commute here in Berlin (of course, I took a train, but you get the idea). But that’s also partly because I travelled an insane distance from home to work back in Mumbai.

So while everything sounds all sunshine, I could see some disadvantages of this setting after living here for three weeks. A thing to note here, before we get into the fun stuff, is that when I say disadvantages and problems, I say that in a purely first world problems sense. It really is a privilege to even have such problems, and no, this is in no way comparable to the struggle of trying to push your body inside an overcrowded Mumbai local train on Ghatkoper station at 8 in the evening after a tiring workday.

So, having taken care of the internal guilt, let’s get started.

No time to read

My college commute was a good 90 minutes in a single direction. And I was lucky because I’d just get in the train, grab a good seat and start reading. It would either be a physical book or a PDF in my phone. That’s the best part of having long commutes. It is so boring that you don’t need to tell yourself to read, it just happens.

Now, my days are exactly of the same length and I am working for roughly the same number of hours. But I have no idea where those extra hours that I’d spend in trains went. They say gas molecules take up all the space available to them. Guess that’s true of work and time as well. I’m barely left with time to read, and when I do, I don’t (unless I force myself, which isn’t the best long term strategy).

Fewer food options

When you live at one place, and work at the other, you essentially have two different worlds. So during the week, you go to one set of restaurants, and over the weekend, you’re free to try the other set. But when you live so close, you end up going to the same places even during the weekends. It is just a weird feeling to be walking the same paths and going to the same places to eat that you would during the weekdays with your colleagues.

No alternate mode of transport

Living at all the other places, I would have the default option of taking the subway. Sometimes, I’d take one of those rented bikes. Occasionally, when the day is good, I’d just walk. Now, it is just walk or bike, which, while not a terrible thing, doesn’t leave much room for variation. There’s no place in between work and home where you’d just stop by to grab a bite, or a river where you’d spend ten minutes just looking at the boats passing. It’s just Home > Work > Home.

Less motivation to WFH

There used to be good reasons to work from home. I could save commute time, have different food options and probably go to a park in the evening. Now, not much time saved and I end up eating at the same place.

More frequently late to work

I always knew this would be the case, even back in college. The people who were super late to classes were the ones who lived the closest. I can feel the same happening to me now. I find it more difficult to reach the office at a particular time than when I used to commute by subway. During college, since I took the same train everyday, I’d reach perfectly at the time I had planned (unless the trains messed it up, which wasn’t unusual). I guess even this is more of a discipline issue which I need to fix.

In closing

If I sounded like a spoilt teenager in this post, that’s probably fair. If you find a place to live close to your workplace, take it by all means. It is worth it, and will be a good test of discipline and time management for you. Plus, not having to take public transport or having a place to grab a bite on my way from work, I manage to save good money.

Finally, working full time and reaching home at 5 in the evening is a dream for a tech worker. It is like you have another day after you get back. I use mine to learn a new language, which is only feasible in a setting like mine. I hope you found this article fun to read, that’s what I meant it to be.

Thank you for reading.

Berlin Flat Search Experience

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I arrived in Berlin some six months ago. From that point until now, I have lived in three different parts of the city and I’ve finally found my permanent nest in the fourth one. I want to share some things about this entire journey, from my Airbnb to this flat, and retrospect some interesting experiences and observations I had along the way.

So yes, that’s four moving-ins that we’re talking about in the span of 6 months. Four times I had to pack, carry, unpack, repack my 40-ish kg mini-world. To be honest, I didn’t quite enjoy any of the shifting experience at all, possibly because I was doing it using public transport and possibly because those aren’t enjoyable experiences in general.

That said, I really loved all of those flats and their respective neighborhoods. Berlin has many colors, and you only see them when you live in its different districts. We’ll get into some of those later on in this post, but first let’s start with the search process itself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boroughs_and_neighborhoods_of_Berlin

Search methodologies

In Berlin, there’s a shortage of apartments to live in, and an abundance of people on the hunt for one. It is almost like searching for a job. You show up for viewings at the time decided by the owner of the flat. First thing you notice is, especially if it is a half decent flat, there are a dozen more people wishing to get the same flat. The owners (or people appointed by them) judge if you can be the ideal tenant (based on many things, not the least of which are your payslips and SCHUFA scores). After the viewing, you go home and wish you get accepted by the almig…umm the landlord. Repeat this several times a day for a couple of months.

I just couldn’t stand this entire process. I went for a couple of listings, but gave up. Too much work. For that reason, all of the previous apartments I’ve lived in were some sort of referral homes. And that’s one big reason it took me so long.

Getting over previous flats

What I found surprising was how quickly I got over the previous flats, even though while living there I really wanted to make them my own. Every apartment, except for the first one, was handed over to me with some dangling hope that it would be signed over to me. And I would really get attached to the apartment, only to later find out that due to so and so reason, I won’t be getting it. While that’s heartbreaking in the moment, it was interesting to retrospect on how adaptive our brains are. Couple of days after moving in, I would just forget about the previous place and start over again.

Starting over again was a very typical process; finding a nearby supermarket, finding restaurants, exploring the area for parks and places of interest during the weekends. A week later, everything is in autopilot; from commuting to work to refilling groceries. Also interesting is how cryptic a new place seems in terms of streets and direction, but a month later I could really get around the neighborhood without even thinking. Yet another proof of the power of repetition.

Amenities and flat size

I was searching for a flat for myself. I preferred to not live in a shared flat (or a WG – Wohngemeinschaft as it is called in German). An important thing to note is that many flats come empty, that is, without any fittings. Not even a kitchen is fitted. I wanted a somewhat furnished flat as that made more sense economically. Furnishing usually involves a bed, cabinet, fitted kitchen with fridge and other kitchen stuff, washer. Dishwasher in rare cases. That’s more than sufficient to get started.

Flat sizes are measured in square meters (1 sqm is 10.something sq feet). They usually have one or two rooms (zimmers in German, excluding kitchen and bathroom). The flats in my budget were quite diverse, from 25 sqm one room to 65 sqm 2.5 room ones depending on the neighborhood and public transportation options. I decided to deprioritize size and focus on furnishing in the flat and being close to work and city center.

Neighborhoods

This is my favorite part of the search: Being able to experience different neighborhoods. As I mentioned, Berlin offers many shades of itself if you move to different districts in the city. The people change, and so does the food and the way the buildings look. I was fortunate enough to live in both east and west Berlin. Over the past six months, I lived in Friedrichshain, Kreuzberg, Mitte-Prenzlauerberg and now Mitte.

Friedrichshain was the first. Where I lived, it was very silent. Not many stores or restaurants. It was an ideal place to live once you’ve been in the hustle and bustle of the city for years. For me, it was a bit depressing, especially after coming from India. I didn’t explore much of it, but now that I’ve spent sometime here, I can see it had a lot of options for food and other stuff.

Bergmannkiez – Kreuzberg was next. This is a fancy area, very touristy but still good to live in. Very diverse crowd with many cultures living together. There is this street called Bergmannstrasse that had great food options. Tempelhof airfield was nearby and this was the time I got into outdoor activities and hanging out with my colleagues and their friends. There are nice Biergartens (Beer gardens) that people go to to meet friends and play indoor games. Tempelhofer Feld is still my favourite place in Berlin.

Just go there on a weekend, lay in the grass and read a book or something

Third was Mitte-Prenzlauerberg area. This is a upmarket locality with nice cafes and cake places. I didn’t quite like the food there (think bland food, loads of salad and sprouts. In short, way too healthy) but I liked the neighborhood and people in general. This was also on the same street as Mauer Park where I’d spend a lot of time over the weekends.

Fourth and current place is in the heart of Mitte, literally meaning center in German. Nothing special, but very center. Around a kilometer from Alexanderplatz and my office. Now I can reach work in less than 10 minutes, which is nice. Coincidentally, this is almost exactly in the middle of all the previous places and I can go to all of my favorite parks and snack bars from the previous places easily. As a bonus, I can see the Fernsehturm right from my living room!

The window is my gateway to daydreaming, especially when it turns dark. Reminds me of my desk at LaughGuru in Mumbai. As you can tell from the LEDs and candles, I try hard to make my house look pretty.

Learnings

If I had to start over again, I’d do a couple of things differently. I’d probably put in a bit more effort into the hunt as opposed to completely relying on connections all the time (which is fine, but seriously limits the scope of your search). Facebook groups and sites like ebay-kleinanzeigen.de are good places to search, and much less commercialized compared to immobilienscout24 where each listing has dozens of takers.

But when you think about it, how else would I have gotten the experience of living in those many different areas right after coming here, within six months. Back when I used to look at Berlin’s map, I would wonder how long it would take to have a general intuition of where everything was, the way I had for Mumbai. This entire apartment search debacle fast forwarded this process and I know parts of the city that I’d have otherwise not known.

In closing

While writing this post, I realized that by wishing for things to work out well right away, we actually miss out on a lot of interesting experiences. Was it inconvenient to miss the connecting flight and luggage on my way to Berlin or not finding an apartment for six months straight? No doubt it was. But looking back at those experiences, would I trade them for a smoother ride? definitely not.

Have a good week ahead and thank you for reading!

What’s In A Domain? 5th Anniversary Of Blog

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While there’s nothing specific I plan on writing in this post, I’ll share a few things as they come to my mind. 6th of June, 2014 was the day I bought this domain. I must admit, I was a bit embarrassed to have my name in the domain but I quickly got over that.

Image from 8th June, 2014 ♥ 5 years with Cloudflare

Those were the times when I was learning about programming, friendships and college life in general. This is from one of the outings to Mumbai from college.

I want to believe that our cameras weren’t so bad back then. Probably just over-editing

I also started writing on Ghost.io, before moving to Blogger and then Jekyll. Here’s a screenshot of the first post (which is now lost).

If being super embarrassed by your past self a good indicator of progress, I think I’m doing pretty well

And I also liked showing off my stuff, whatever little I had back then. I used to borrow laptops and computers from friends and would try to set up ‘testing labs’ in my bedroom. Most of such labs would end up being used for playing NFS Most Wanted. One of my favorite showoffs was showing off code or terminals.

One such labs from back in May 2014. Obsession with GNU was real, especially the cooler distros in infosec like Backtrack (now Kali).

Good times. It is nice to have this blog and bits of data here and there from the past, otherwise it is easy to forget these little memories.

Whether this is the first article that you read on my blog, or you’ve been following from some time, I must thank you. You’re as much part of the blog as the content itself, and I have not a shred of doubt when I say that this blog has been one of the most worthwhile investments I’ve made in my life so far.

See you in the next one!

The Worst By Moxie

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It is no secret that I’m a huge fan of this guy. For my first snippet, I’d like to put down a few quotes from one of my favorite articles of his.

Often, I browse shopping sites like Amazon for no reason, looking at exotic gadgets and accessories, convincing myself I need them. Slowly, I am convinced and they end up in my cart, staring back at me. During such an impulse, I open this particular article and give it a read. It helps cure that temporary surge of materialism. I highly recommend you read “The Worst” by Moxie Marlinspike.

…an emphasis on the consumption of material goods can easily translate into a life of generalized consumption. A whole language can start to develop around not just the consumption of goods, but the consumption of experience: “We did Prague.” “We did Barcelona.”

“The best moments of my life, I never want to live again.”

…no matter how much research they do, a partisan of the best might not ever know as much about motorcycles as the partisan of the worst who takes a series of hare-brained cross-country motorcycle trips on a bike that barely runs, and ends up learning a ton about how to fix their constantly breaking bike along the way.

The basic premise of the worst is that both ideas and material possessions should be tools that serve us, rather than things we live in service to. When that relationship with material possessions is inverted, such that we end up living in service to them, the result is consumerism. When that relationship with ideas is inverted, the result is ideology or religion.

Thank you for reading!

Be Easy On Yourself

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I have been fortunate enough to have worked alongside some very smart and kind people in all the companies that I’ve been part of. And in all those people, I always noticed a common element. You instantaneously have an appreciation for how wise they are from the way they talk about random things, the way they think. It almost makes me wonder, especially as a computer nerd, what did they do to get a thought process like that?

And to clarify, I’m not just talking about software engineers. I’m talking about managers; product, marketing and people from other domains. So this isn’t a bias for people good with code. They might not have been the best in their respective domains, but it didn’t seem to matter. They were all super pleasant to be around and working with them was always a joy.

Initially, that was weird for me. How can someone be so good at what they do and not be super famous? Why are they not millionaires or working in, I don’t know, Google or something? I remember thinking about all these things, but not knowing the reason. Now, after gaining some maturity and finding a lot of time to just pause and ponder over such questions, I think I have some possible answers.

Ever since I was a kid, I was fed this idea of what a successful person is supposed to be like. He’s rich, he’s famous, he’s smart. He can afford whatever he wants, has a big house, lives life without any struggles and works for a large corporation as an executive. If you want to be called successful in life, you ought to become like him. I’d imagine many of the children brought up in cultures and societal structures like mine had the same idea of what success looks like.

So when I got out of this environment and met people who felt like they were doing well in their lives on the whole; are happy doing what they do, are influencing and making a difference in the lives of people around them and so on, my trained mind had internal conflicts. On one hand, it felt like they’re pretty successful and happy with what they do. On the other, my definition of a successful person didn’t seem to match them. What was happening?

It was simple. Just as we sometimes accept a very specific definition of health, intellectual or creativity, and regard anything that deviates from this definition as disabled, dummy or mundane, I had this one definition of successful and everything other than that was just a compromise at best.

But I was massively wrong. It had to be wrong all along. We’re all different, and trying to fit everyone under one umbrella was doomed to be a failed generalization. There are as many ways of being successful as there are humans and ways to be alive, and each one of us can define it for ourselves what that means for us. From drawing doodles to collecting rocks, only you can judge if you’re successful. This isn’t to undervalue those of us who work super hard and are actually successful in my old, partial definition of success. This is to broaden the definition, my definition, to accommodate all the variations we see in life around us and appreciate it all.

The world isn’t a level playing field. Just like in video games, the game of life can be played on easy, medium or difficult setting. Unlike in the video games, you don’t get to choose it. Some people are playing the same game as you at a very different difficulty level, and there’s not much that can be done about it. The least we can do, is not make it even crazier.

In closing

I’m very glad about this shift in my perspective over the past half a year or so. This serves multiple purposes.

  • One, I am more open to exploring and appreciating the ideas of fun, weekends, vacations and in general living a good life from the perspectives of people who’ve been brought up very differently than I was.
  • Two, I don’t lock myself in this tunnel-visioned world view that just because someone is not a senior-something by the time they reach a particular age, they’re not ambitious, talented, smart or whatever.
  • Three, I get to experience a lot of new, wonderful aspects of life that I never knew existed; laying in the grass and feeling warm sunlight on your skin, running a marathon, skateboarding, gifting, making people smile and laugh, and being grateful for little things in life.
  • Four, I detach the concept of a person’s value from the money they’re making. It changes a whole lot, and makes me look at people around myself in a completely new light. A light which emphasizes on someone’s skills, values and thoughts over their paychecks and job titles.
  • And five, it makes me more empathetic in my daily life while talking to someone who’s not like me.

To close this essay, I’d like to come back to the title of this post. Take it a little easy, little slowly. You’re in a car driving on a never ending road that meets the horizon in the distance. Keep an eye out for where you’re heading, but make sure you don’t miss the scenes on the sides, for those are real. What lies at the horizon might not.

Cheers, and thank you for reading!