Author: Pradeep

  • Tree Walk

    My daughter and I went for a Tree Walk in Camp, Pune on 26 March 2023. This follows the star party that we went together for.

    We travelled to Camp by car and parked opposite Bishop’s school in Camp. We met with the group of about 10 people who had also come there. After a brief round of introductions, we started the walk.

    The main thrust of the walk was not to make us overnight experts on all things trees. It was to get us to look at the trees in our surroundings with more curiosity. Learn how they transform through the seasons. How to identify them using the Internet and thereafter, by yourself. Observe how they flower and grow.

    I tried to get my daughter to climb one of the trees but she was afraid to go more than a couple of feet off the ground. She collected a lot of fallen flowers, fruits, berries, etc. Being the youngest in the group, she got the attention of many others in the group, who helped her collect these things.

    I did not follow all the tree related guidance too closely.

    I have been enjoying the tree-related articles on The Marginalian. I also enjoyed the theme of trees when listening to Richard Powers’ The Overstory.

  • Weekly Notes 14/2023

    Writing

    Writing at work was good.

    I wrote the newsletter, Pradeep’s Space Newsletter #49. 49 posts since July 2019.

    Reading

    I read/listened to:

    • So Good They Can’t Ignore You – Cal Newport (now reading)
    • The Great Derangement – Amitav Ghosh (now listening)

    Badminton and Cycling

    I had a back injury. This allowed me just two days of playing badminton this week.

    The same meant that no cycling got done either.

    YouTube

    Tweets

    https://twitter.com/NERAZZURl/status/1643246603095134208

  • Weekly Notes 13/2023

    Writing

    Another week where most of the writing was focused on work. I did not get any other writing done.No blog posts. No newsletter post.

    Reading/Listening

    I read/listened to:

    • Ahalya – Koral Dasgupta

    Badminton and Cycling

    I got back to playing badminton this week. I got the badminton racket gutted again.

    I got no cycling done this week.

    YouTube

  • Weekly Notes 12/2023

    Writing

    I delivered a lot of writing work this week. Left me in a high. But, this did not overflow to other writing. No blog posts. No newsletter. No other writing.

    OTT

    I watched:

    • The Rocket Boys – Season 2 (Hindi) – finished
    • Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (English)
    • Pathaan (Hindi)
    • Vaathi (Tamil)
    • Lost (Hindi)
    • Suits (English) – in progress

    Reading

    I read/listened:

    Badminton and Cycling

    I am probably going to focus on one and not on both. I stopped the badminton middle of this week. I am going to focus on cycling.

    I cycled for a day for about 11.3 km.

    YouTube

    Twitter

  • Weekly Notes 11/2023

    Writing

    Focus continued to stay on work related writing this week. I hope to complete and deliver many of these in the next week.

    I managed to write one blog post:

    I managed to also send out one edition of Pradeep’s Space Newsletter:

    I wrote one post on my Tumblr, Working Column:

    This week’s writing was not of the quality that I would have preferred but means that I shipped content.

    OTT

    I watched:

    • Rekha (Malayalam)
    • Ela Veezha Poonchira (Malayalam)
    • The Rocket Boys – Season 2 (Hindi) (in progress)

    Reading

    I am reading/listening to:

    • J Krishnamurti – A Life of Compassion beyond Boundaries – Roshen Dalal [Audible]
    • So Good They Can’t Ignore You – Cal Newport [Kindle]
    • Building Your Second Brain – Tiago Forte [Physical Paperback]

    Badminton and Cycling

    Another week of no cycling.

    Played badminton on all days save one.

    YouTube

    A wonderful refresher on bullet journalling. Also, loved the one page download of the video.
    Fun take on working out. I might learn more when these discussions happen with fun rather than dry talk on working out?
    Dhyan Sreenivasan talking about writer, director and actor Sreenivasan. Interview is in Malayalam.

  • Role of ISRO in the future?

    Fortune India did an interview with Chairman, ISRO Dr. S. Somanath. This was one of the exchanges in the interview.

    Commercial human space travel is something which private players in some countries are offering. Can ISRO do this?

    We can, but it is not our job. It is the job of the industry. ISRO is a national agency. ISRO can develop the technology. But the practice of government funding ISRO to develop technology is going to stop. If a technology is needed, it will be developed by ISRO and industry through government-industry funding. So, now, the industry will have to put money into technology development. They have to do some R&D and develop technology.

    This is an interesting comment and perhaps provides an insight into how ISRO thinks of its evolving role in the new space policy regime in India post-2019.

    NSIL, the Department of Space’s commercial arm signaled the intention to move to a demand-driven model in the space sector. As an example, GSAT-24 was India’s first demand-driven satellite that NSIL/ISRO built for Tata Play (DTH service provider).

    If you read through the whole interview, you can see the lengths to which Somanath goes to protect ISRO’s role while trying to push the idea that industry must lead in the future. This is a new tension for ISRO to hold. I don’t think there is enough clarity on how this will happen for him to communicate the message well.

  • Weekly Notes 10/2023

    Writing

    The lower volume of work completed in Week 9 meant that more work-related writing got done than anything else. I did not write any blog posts. I did not publish the weekly space newsletter. I did not attend the RozWrite sessions.

    OTT

    I watched:

    • Nanpakal Nerratha Mayakkum (Malayalam, Tamil)
    • Alone (Malayalam)
    • Adrishyam (Malayalam)
    • Thattassery Kuttam (Malayalam)
    • Christopher (Malayalam)

    Of the lot, I enjoyed watching Nanpakal… the most. I had to watch the review by Baradwaj Rangan to really appreciate the movie more.

    Reading

    I am reading/listening to:

    • J Krishnamurti – A Life of Compassion beyond Boundaries – Roshen Dalal [Audible]
    • So Good They Can’t Ignore You – Cal Newport [Kindle]
    • Building Your Second Brain – Tiago Forte [Physical Paperback]

    Cycling and Badminton

    Another week without cycling. I played badminton on all days this week.

    YouTube

  • Weekly Notes 09/2023

    Writing

    Again, a poor writing week. Two weeks in a row means it is time to buck up.

    I was able to write three blog posts for the blog:

    I did not publish the weekly space newsletter. I did not attend the RozWrite sessions. The contribution to the work writing was lower as well because of power cuts and fever.

    OTT

    I continued watching OTT. I moved from watching Malayalam and to other languages:

    • The Law According to Lidia Poet (Italian, English voice over)
    • Triptych (Spanish, English voice over)

    I especially liked the alternate rock intro music and music interlaced in a period drama in Lidia Poet.

    Books

    I finished listening to Four Thousand Weeks and wrote a blog post about it.

    • Audible: J. Krishnamurti: A Life of Compassion Beyond Boundaries by Roshen Dalal
    • Kindle: So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport

    Cycling and Badminton

    I did not get any cycling done.

    I played badminton only on two days. I played on Monday and Wednesday. I had a beginnings of fever on Tuesday and actual fever on Thursday and Friday.

    YouTube

  • Conjunction of Venus and Jupiter

    Zoomed in and edited using Snapseed. Image taken using Realme GT Master. Image Credit: Pradeep Mohandas

    The question my wife had was how do the planets that are on either side of the Earth are seen together in the night sky.

    A drawing to explain how Venus and Jupiter whose orbit is on either side of Earth can be seen together in the night sky. Drawing: Pradeep Mohandas

    When we see from Earth, Jupiter must be on the other side of the Sun. Whereas, Venus could be between the Sun and Earth or between the Sun and Jupiter.

    This is the first time that I tried to capture a celestial event with a mobile phone camera and edited it.

  • Four Thousand Weeks

    I picked up Four Thousand Weeks to listen to on Audible.

    I first heard of the book on Cal Newport’s appearance on the Tim Ferriss Show (Episode 568). Ferriss then posted a chapter of the book on his blog. From the introduction on the post it seemed like he was deeply affected by it. It did not affect me that deeply.

    I subscribed to his newsletter, The Imperfectionist and read a few of his blog posts. I found that I could not focus on what he was trying to say. Hence, I decided to pick his audiobook.

    His website gives a succinctly good summary of the book. What he adds in the book is evidence and anecdotes to back up the claim.

    The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief.

    If you live to be 80, you’ll have had about 4,000 weeks. But that’s no reason for despair.

    Confronting our radical finitude – and how little control we really have – is the key to a fulfilling and meaningfully productive life.

    If you need practical takeaways from the book, I’d suggest watching Nathan Lozeron’s summary of the book on his YouTube channel, Productivity Game which also has a nice 1-page PDF summary.

    On listening I found a lot of overlap with concepts from Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity, the Gita’s exhortation to follow process and not be swayed by outcomes, and Warren Buffet’s advice to his pilot.