My friend Saurabh introduced me to the wonders of a year-planning tool called YearCompass. I spent today filling it out with the new Kanwrite fountain pen that I got from Amazon today.
It has helped me clear many things that I want from me in the new year ahead.
I know I have not been hanging around here a lot but thanks for sticking around. I hope to see more of myself here in 2022. Wishing you all a Happy New Year.
This is a post after a long time of no writing and no reading. This post is just to bookend things.
We drove back from Kerala in the first week of October. We moved rental houses within Pune in the last week of October. The strain of moving houses has been more mental than physical. For quite some time, I have not been able to read or write anything much. I have been much more active posting on Instagram.
I had intended to use the blog and write more seriously after putting out Pradeep’s Space Newsletter #28 on October 7. VM at The Wire Science re-published it on their website.
I first heard of him on Tim Ferriss’ 5 Bullet Friday (dated April 17, 2020). This is the text that Tim adds:
Podcast episode I’m listening to —Billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya on How to Invest in This Crisis. This was sent to me by one of the better investors I know, someone who has been exceptionally successful in startups, public equities, and cryptocurrencies. Here is the description: “This is an episode of The Pomp Podcast with host Anthony Pompliano (@APompliano) and guest Chamath Palihapitiya (@chamath), the CEO of Social Capital, the Chairman of Virgin Galactic, and the owner of the Golden State Warriors. In this conversation, Chamath and Anthony discuss … where Chamath currently has capital invested, how he thinks we can solve the structural issues in health and economics, why being a patient investor will pay off, where he is looking for opportunity right now, what he thinks should happen with the NBA, and how the world is going to change after the pandemic is over.” Term that pops up in this episode: fiat currency. The term “fiat” derives from the Latin fiat (“let it be done”). For more on fiat currency as related to the US economy, I quite enjoyed Biography of the Dollar when I read it in 2009.
Tim Ferriss, 5 Bullet Friday, April 17, 2020
While following YouTube’s suggestion, I also enjoyed listening to this interview with him for the View from the Top podcast. There is a nice summary of the episode on their website.
I gather that many of his appearances on television has been controversial but he has some interesting insights into the present scenario. He also has an annual letter to his investors where he shares his thesis of the present condition.
I moved jobs and joined a new company in Pune on July 29. Three days later, D and R moved in to our new rental.
Video of the first ceremonial milk boiling done at our new home in Pune.
It’s September. I’ve moved to Lonar and moved my family here for work. It has a hypervelocity crater and the work doesn’t give me too much time to spend there.
I went through quite a series of unfortunate events the past couple of weeks which put me off wanting to update anyone about anything. The latest of which has me in bed with a sprain in the back with a very slow recovery.
The only good news has been that I’m back with D and the kid after a separation of 7 months.
In the period while D was away, I expected to be more involved in stuff I was interested in. But, I went through a deep dive asking myself what I really knew about things I prided myself on knowing. The answer came back as not much. So began a process again of narrowing focus and looking at things I wanted to take deep dives in and things that just infatuated me at that moment.
I think back now on the 7 months as lost months where I lost an opportunity to know things better than I already had. Now, the focus is on the kid and I’ve put aside my own interests. Focussing on work and home and more on home than work.
October 20, 2017 Mumbai
On April 25, 2017, Dhanya and Pradeep became proud parents of a baby girl. The delivery was done at the Thangam Hospital of PRC in Palakkad at 5 PM. We had the 28th day celebration of the baby at Praseedha, Palakkad.
The hospital refers to the child as B/o Dhanya (Baby of Dhanya).
On this date in 1956, the State of Kerala was carved out of the erstwhile Madras Presidency. Celebrated as Kerala Pirravi (കേരളപ്പിറവി)
A previous attempt to blog here was spoiled by crackers who defaced this website. I remained wary of returning here and in the meanwhile blogged on the wordpress.com service. I am not yet ready to move here completely and still feel insecure.
The months of October, November and December seem to be the time that I start off my new projects and there has been something urging me to get back to a self-hosted WordPress blog. Hence, I am here, again.
I have been blogging since 2006 and this constant moving around has been in evidence since I started. In each one of my “Hello World” postings before this I have expressed hope that I wouldn’t move again and will use each blog as my steady space for blogging. I’ve hence experimented with WordPress, WordPress.com, Blogger, Typepad, Vox and Tumblr. If I counted all of my blogs they should number anywhere between 10 and 20. So, let’s see what happens if I don’t make the promise of sticking to this space, for a change?
Parallel Spirals 