Category: Personal

Understand the Drive-Thru and We Can Solve All Problems
- Recruiting engineers rather than salespeople to become our political leaders.
- Insisting that our government use science rather than ideology when making decisions about things. The best thing you can ever experience is being proven wrong by well-gathered data, and then learning from it.
- Studying personal happiness rather than retail catalogs and car brochures when trying to improve your lot in life.
- Immediately giving up all forms of TV and spend that time walking and doing other things outside. How would your life and your health change, if you spent at least 4 hours out of every 24 in the great outdoors?
- When you live by this example, you automatically pass the values to everyone around you. Whether you notice or not, people are watching you and they will follow.
From the Mr. Money Mustache blog
November 3, 2015
കേരളപ്പിറവി

On this date in 1956, the State of Kerala was carved out of the erstwhile Madras Presidency. Celebrated as Kerala Pirravi (കേരളപ്പിറവി)

November 1, 2015
Birthday Post

Every Birthday I write either on paper or on some digital media, a review of the year that is past. I usually do it on the day that is celebrated as my Malayalam birthday, partially out of fear that the Gregorian one may be banned.

This year has been pivotal for me and hence, I felt the need to store it for posterity. Hence, this post, here.

This year saw me getting married, go on my first foreign trip and make several important decisions which were left hanging in the air for one reason or the other. I’ll go in the reverse order of importance on this one.

I decided to make this my main blog.

I decided to continue following the course my career in banking will take. I have permanently left any hopes of returning to engineering as my core career option.

I decided to follow my interest in Astronomy as a hobby. I am yet to take concrete action in this direction, but the primary decision is made, as such.

I decided to follow developments in the world of geography and space exploration. Geography is a new addition, I will be following this with a particular emphasis. While following these developments, I will not be part of any organisation.

I decided to take up editing Wikipedia again.

Many of the above decisions were pushed with the fact that I got married. It led to some urgency in resolving these pending decisions that were in my mind so that my mind space could be allotted to resolving more pressing issues that involve leading a life.

October 4, 2015
Nobody would spend on science if it did not spin-off technology

Very few organisations in the world fund the fundamental sciences – astronomy, high energy physics or even certain strands of biology whose only intention is to know what the universe is about. In many science talks that I attend many scientists also try to focus on how this idea will help the common man rather than focus on how science would advance the knowledge of mankind, in particular. Schools are only now beginning to teach any amount on quantum physics which surpassed several boundaries in the 1970s. Science taught in the schools today are at least fifty to seventy years old. This creates a difference in the perception of science among the scientific community and that seen by common man.

I’ve been spending the whole of last week watching videos related to Jaggi Vasudev of the Isha Foundation. One of his conversations is with American neuroscientist Dr. David Eagleman inserted below.

In the video at about the 17 minute mark, he brings up the topic of how the science we do today is so influenced by funding which looks at how it is beneficial to man. Vasudev says that science would really be more effective if it is delinked from that objective and one does it purely with the curiosity to understand the world we live in. He suggests that technology should be given the responsibility of figuring out how the knowledge yearned from science be put to use in benefit of humankind. Currently, both are intertwined so tightly that science is funded on the basis of its application, technology spin-offs rather than the fact that it would further the boundaries of knowledge, per se.

This is an interesting distinction that I had not been aware of despite my grounding in science and some time I spent working with technology as an engineer. I shared this because I think it is an interesting insight to work with.

July 5, 2015
Hello world!

The United States is celebrating its independence day today. I am embarking on yet another blog. My first blog had my name on it and was on Blogspot. It was a Tibetan blog talking about alternative services to those provided by Google that first turned my attention to WordPress. I have since used Drupal, Tumblr, Vox, LiveJournal and the self-hosted WordPress. At the end I am back here again.

It has been a journey where I have learnt a lot. In the meanwhile, I moved away from being a mechanical engineering undergrad to being a banker. No MBAs were involved. In the end, I use my most favourite of the names of blogs I have used thus far.

Parallel Spirals is my imagination of how I see myself following these various parallel interests that I spiral down into once in a while.

July 4, 2015
Our Tulsi plant

Our neighbours had lent out the flat for rent. The aunty staying there (Raji aunty) had given us her Tulsi plant when she moved to Chennai. Because of our constant care and attention, two out of the three shoots withered. We then went to Babu Anand Farms to ask what would have caused the shoots to wither. He said, it may be because of the lack of nitrogen in the ceramic pot in which we had kept the shoots. He suggested that we replace the soil along with some natural fertilizers like coco soil and manure.

Dhanya putting in the new soil along with the natural fertilizers

We’re still trying to recover the last shoot although we have added a Rama Tulsi that we obtained from the farm along with the last shoot. Awaiting results.

May 9, 2015
Hobbies through the Ages
As part of reducing focus that I carried out last year offline, I had listed through all the hobbies that I wanted to dabble in. They are, in no particular order:
- cartographer
- astronomer
- ham (amateur radio)
- robotics
- collecting stamps
- collecting coins
- travelling – hiking
- bicycling
- amateur weather station
- setting up a decimeter radio telescope
- amateur rocketeer
- writing a novel
- contributing code to open source projects
- blogging
- playing the violin
- religious philosophy
- political sciences
- data sciences
- geographic information systems
- minimalism
- writing Malayalam
- learning Sanskrit
I have found in each case, that I have dabbled in it to some extent without going through with it completely and it seems like a nice list from which to begin working my way through. I still have the rest of my life to go through that list.
March 14, 2015
Diwali @ Work

October 22, 2014
Cast my vote

October 15, 2014
Life Essentials of the Future

A growing fringe of people have begun adopting them – renewable sources of electricity and segregation of waste and other small contributions towards climate change. Many people still scoff at the idea, including my parents. These will be life essentials one day. Buy now so that you get them at a cheaper rate. Demand for these May send the prices sky rocketing in the future. Zenrainman says it too

September 28, 2014