25 years later, I start blogging

The best time to Plant a tree was 20 years ago, the Next best time is now Back when I was in 6th standard, I was selected to take part in a painting competition representing the school along with five others. A couple of days after this we were informed that it was a painting competition where no more than 5 people could participate paint. So I volenteered to step out of the spotlight. The good news was that I could still participate, but not if we won, then I wouldn't get a medal. On the way to the arena, the theme of the competition was announced. During the journey, I pulled out a piece of paper to figure out what we were going to create. The others were quick to chip in as well. I truly enjoy the process of brainstorming and figuring out how an end must look like. We did decide on something and it was a few modifications to the skeleton that I had initially suggested. The competition went smoothly and we won first place. Everyone except me go...

Ten years of Experience or One year of Experience ten times? Some of us have great memories of our schooling. Schools shape a lot of our future and help us become better individuals. As a kid, we I went to one of the better schools in Bangalore. I spent a lot of time there. Schools are where we learn a lot of unimportant things. It's the place where we spend the first fifteen years of our lives. A convenient place for "Adults" to drop off their children so they can carry on their lives normally. Schools were introduced as a way to help Industrialists generate skilled labour for their factories. These same roots can be observed even today, with the bells, uniforms and students batched by age rather than calliber. At the age of 13, Saina Nehwal (Indian Badminton Player) was able to consistently beat much older boys (20 year olds). If she had been studying in school like the rest of us, she could never have achieved as much as she did. I...

Plants bend when they bear fruit Introduction This is going to be a disappointing post. Let's go. According to Wikipedia: In endurance sports such as cycling and running, hitting the wall or the bonk is a condition of sudden fatigue and loss of energy which is caused by the depletion of glycogen stores in the liver and muscles. I'm referring to a slightly different kind of a wall, but one that impedes development of a skill because of the way we have developed it or just hitting a skill cap achievable using the technique that you've mastered. I've noticed that I'm currently not improving at several of the things that I've been pursuing. This blogpost will hopefully put some of those concerns on paper so I can work on it. The Expert Beginner As explained by Erik Dietrich in his amazing Blogpost, an expert beginner is someone who gets good at doing things in a certain way and is unwilling spend anytime to learn other techniq...

The more you bleed in practice, the less you bleed in war Introduction I've always wondered about learning and what makes things stick. Recently a friend of mine reviewed Make it stick on Goodreads with 5 starts. So I decided to give it a read. This book challenges the existing status quo about education and wants us to change the way we learn. Current methods The current methods include rote memorisation and repetition to perfection. But these don't serve the purpose beyond temporary learning for tests/exams. Students try cramming as much knowledge as possible the before the exam so that they can pass. This goes one step further and children start optimising based on the questions being asked and hence skip certain sections of the syllabus. This method of repeating until one gets it right is observed in plenty of other fields like learning music and playing a sport. This method is highly ineffective and I can vouch for it. The problem with this method is that the pe...

The best way to Predict the Future is to Create it Introduction Newcomb's paradox is a thought experiment created by William Newcomb in 1969. Even 50 years of publishing of the paradox, there is no clear consensus about the solution. After I read this problem was stuck on it for quite a few hours. I read multiple articles and watched several videos to understand it. The Wikipedia article is good but very unintuitive. Please watch this video multiple times if necessary to understand the paradox. The Paradox Statement Imagine that in front of you are two boxes. The first box (Box A) has 1000$ and is visible to you. The second box (Box B) contains either 1,000,000$ or 0$ and you don't know which. The contents of Box B are determined before hand by an intelligent AI with a high degree of accuracy. You have to now choose one of two options , either choose only Box B or choose both boxes . If the intelligent AI thinks that you are going to choose both boxes, th...

For the world you are one person, for your family you are the world About SDM and Getting there A good friend of mine, Sakiv and I decided to attend a Nature Cure Therapy Session conducted by the Sri Dharmasthala Manjunatha (SDM) foundation. We planned to go in December, but I was busy at the time attending interviews so we decided to postpone it. We ended up going between 6th and 14th of March 2020. SDM operates a number of campuses across the state (Karnataka). The most popular campus is the one located in Ujire which needs to booked several weeks in advance. Being traditional engineers, we resorted to last minute booking which got us a place in the Pareeka campus located near Udupi . I left on 5th night (Thursday) in an overnight AC bus. The fares were lower than ever as people had reduced travel all over. Corona is still not a very big deal at this point (at least not in India). The number of buses had reduced significantly, so I had to board at the infamous Silk board ju...

It's easy to quit smoking, I've done it hundreds of times Setup [Jun - Sept] While working at a small startup in HSR layout, a friend/colleague of mine suggested that I install Quickride, as it was a great way to meet new people and possibly someone to date. As destiny would have it, after 5 boring successful rides I met Rushti. Meeting the Jharkhand i seemed to be the best thing that ever happened to me. We started talking soon and the conversions kept flowing endlessly, like a the Indus. She was smart, funny and sexy. After about two weeks of talking, we were both working on one Saturday and we decided to meet and spend the day to see how my first date would go. A few minutes of walking around and I her slipper snapped, so we had to walk for a while until we found a slipper store to get 350 Rupee chappals. This began a tradition of long walks which would last for the duration of the entire relationship. It was a memorable date filled with thrills and laughs. An even...