Moving to Substack

 After 17 years of writing silly stuff here, I have finally bit the bullet and I have decided to write silly stuff on Substack. I have been struggling with managing and updating my blog on blogger for a while, so I decided to move to something new and shiny and continue there.

I may not post here for the foreseable future, so if you wish to continue to subscribe to me on RSS, please follow my feed there.

I was trying to end this on a dramatic note, but well life goes on. Nothing dramatic about it. Thank you blogger for all the love and hosting me for free for so long!

Email Subscriptions and RSS Feeds

Google has done it again. They have killed one more of their properties just like that. It is Feedburner this time and it affects everyone who subscribes to this blog either via email or through RSS feeds.

I have manually migrated my RSS Feeds and my Email subscribers to follow.it. However just like all IT migrations I am sure there are glitches. So if for some reason you stop getting emails or RSS Feeds from my blog, or better yet, you take the effort to re-subscribe now (by clicking here) that would save me a lot of heartache!

Thank you for patiently reading my rants all this while and I hope you continue to do so 😊

Jumping off

Every once in a while I take crazy-ass decisions in my life. Yesterday happens to be one of them. Without going into the specifics. Here is a gist of what has happened - 

• I got promoted (sorta) and I quit my current job
• I will be taking up a new job with:
• Reduced scope of work
• Lower title
• Reduced geographical coverage
• Different business model
• New Technology
• New Industry
  

So basically, I am sort of restarting my career after 16+ years of doing more or less the same stuff (pre and post MBA). I am excited (the kind of excitement when you are standing on the ledge of a 40 floored building and looking down at the street).

Coming from an eastern religious mindset (Hinduism/ Buddhism), I believe I have several lifetimes to correct the mess. If my life was a Hollywood movie, this is the time when the protagonist does something absolutely crazy. My favorite scene for this would be Tom Cruise and Cuba Gooding Jr, doing the "Show me the money bit" in Jerry Maguire (Disclaimer - I no way think that I am Tom Cruise, nor do I think I am taking the kind of risk that Jerry Maguire was taking in the movie at this point).

However, aren't we all the main characters/ protagonists/ heroes of our own life stories? So associating with Tom is fine at this time!

 

 

And why do I want to blog about this? Well, this blog is turning out to be my life story and some milestones are best left documented.

The 500th post

This post marks a significant milestone in this insignificant blog written by a nobody.

This is my 500th post.

Wow! Never expected to be on this journey so long! While I am a procrastinator, I realize I can also be unimaginably persistent. You my dear readers have now dwindled to probably a single digit number since I started writing here more than 14 years ago. I sincerely thank you for indulging in my egocentric rants here and patiently reading whatever I have to say.

If you have been reading me for the last few years, I think these are the 4 most important ideas that have impacted me (in no particular sequence) and I believe they more or less keep repeating in one form or another in my blog posts. (A summary of sorts):

1. Minimalism
2. Fitness
   
3. Building Habits
   
4. Meditation and Mindfulness

So, 14 years, 500 posts and I hope this relationship continues - either till death (or Google) does us apart.

 

Leap year disease

So today is 29th February. By the looks of it, this blog has seen 4 of them (leap years) already. This 29th is a bit unique. I have never actually experienced an infectious disease spread the way the current COVID-19 has gripped the world. Being in Singapore, I am quite close to the action. While I am generally impressed by how Singapore is containing the spread by strict quarantine and contact tracing measures, it doesn't look like it is going to be contained anytime soon globally.

As of writing this blog, it ain't a global pandemic yet (according to WHO's strict definitions). In my entire working life (though I went through 2 big recessions) I haven't ever experienced business slowing down the way I can see it now. Maybe because I was never in a sales related function before.

I hope this disease does not have a catastrophic impact on the global economy and we are able to contain it fast enough. I can however first hand experience the impact it is having on travel and tourism especially with all touristy places in Singapore deserted, and a lot of restaurants looking empty even on traditionally busy days.

Annular Solar Eclipse

So I finally got to see a Solar Eclipse. Not a total, but an annular (ring). Weather gave way and I managed to catch the exact fleeting moment (less than 2 minutes) when the "ring of fire" appeared. Singapore was expected to have a cloudy weather with chances of thunderstorm, but luckily, clouds cleared long enough for all of us to experience this amazing natural phenomenon.

At the end of the second decade of the 20th Century, we (as a human race) are more or less accustomed to everything of entertainment value (concerts, movies, sports events etc.) to happen flawlessly. We hardly see any natural phenomenon, so the concept of "chance" or the possibility of not being able to see it has become very remote. So while we started seeing the solar eclipse almost right since the partial eclipse began (at around 11:30 AM local time), I was not sure whether the clouds would cooperate and let us see the maximum eclipse (at around 01:22 PM local time). Luckily everything went smoothly and the clouds decided to cover the sun only after the maximum eclipse was over.

I had purchased a "Solar Viewer", the prices of which were obviously jacked up for the event and for a change I managed to see the eclipse (through the viewer) without getting affected by mobile phones, cameras etc. Just a pure experience without any social media or photo taking frenzy.

The last time I saw something of this sorts was the Lunar Eclipse in 2017 over Europe. But it was a partial eclipse, and I could not wait to see the maximum because I had meetings the next day morning and had to go sleep. I am glad I could see this solar eclipse completely and without much hassle. I am not sure if I will ever see another one.

Mochi

This is a very special post for me. Mainly for 2 reasons.

1. This happens to be my 400th blog post. Yeah. Persistence.
2. A friend of mine just came back from Japan and got us a big box of Mochi. I managed to finish half of it in a matter of 2 hours. Now I am delighted, contended and have a sugar high as I write this post

So to celebrate this momentous occasion (and my sugar high) I shall write about this amazing Japanese sweet that I have been eating for the last 2 hours. So what exactly is mochi? It's a rice cake made out of glutinous rice pounded into a paste and molded into a shape with a sweet paste filling inside it. The variety that I just ate had a matcha filling (Japanese Green Tea).

Now like everything else Japanese I have talked about here before (Ronin, Ramen, Fine Dining,  Wasabi, Pocari Sweat , Poke-Yoke, Umbrellas, etc.) this innocuous looking dessert has an astonishing way of making it. The glutinous rice is actually pounded using a Wooden mallet and someone's hand in an alternate rhythm! And if that doesn't sound dangerous enough, I recommend you watch the video below. Mind you, it's his actual speed, the video speed hasn't been increased:

Now I know this is in no way a lethal food like the Fugu. While eating the Fugu, you are trusting the chef with your life (literally). To quote Wikipedia verbatim about Fugu, it says:

Fugu poison is 1200 times stronger than cyanide, and there is no known antidote.

 Wow. So much for satisfying your taste buds (a few seconds of pleasure?)

Anyway, coming back to my main topic of Mochi, I understand that these days many Mochis are prepared by industrial machines pounding the glutinous rice, and not many chefs risk their hands to make the perfect Mochi. However, I still think of all the effort people put in to make the "perfect" food, just so that someone somewhere can fest on a box of finger licking good Mochis and write a blog!

10th Anniversary

So it dawned on me that I have been writing this blog for 10 years. Today, I officially mark the 10th year of me writing my thoughts here. What started as a "Hello World" persisted as a weekend hobby for a decade.

A decade is almost 30% of my life. A long time indeed. But as I grow old, I realize that time periods look smaller and smaller. So a year of my life used to be a significant time period when I was in school. Now even 5 years look small. I think that's what growing old is all about. In my teens anyone above the magical age of 25 looked old to me. Now in my late 30s, everyone looks young (may be the early 70s are the old people for me as of now!).

Life goes on. Thank you for reading my thoughts. And thank you for being with me in this journey.

New Adventures

Been more than a month since I posted here. This time, I disappeared because around April I switched jobs. After spending more than a decade in SAP related jobs, I finally made the switch and came out of my SAP pond. Now I am a frog in a completely new pond and learning the new ecosystem.

Learning new stuff at this age is tough. But it has been exciting. I am learning a lot of new things and at a very fast pace. I have become a full-time student (sort of) because day time I work, and night time, I read to gear myself up for the challenge. Kind of reminds me of my blog about - the problem with experience. To put it in perspective - I have learnt a lot more in the last 1.5 months than what I got to learn in the last 1.5 years on my previous job.

Anyway that shouldn't be an excuse for not writing. So, here I am back again, shall post more often and thank you for being there!

2016 Simplified

Hello people. Sorry for the extremely long disappearance. I was hiding under a rock. Procrastinating and waiting for things to happen. Which, they never do. And living your life fully requires "not waiting".

So, I am back again to blogging. Here is wishing all of you a very happy 2016. And my resolution this year is a rather short and terse one. It is to:

Simplify

Yup. I have decided to focus my energies on simplifying my life and de-cluttering it (further). If things go as planned, you shall get to read a lot of stuff about simplifying from me this year. If not, we still keep in touch.

Speaking assignment

Sorry for disappearing for a while. I had the opportunity to speak in a conference. The topic – Visualizing Big Data. I spent unreasonable amount of time researching for it. I had a 30 minute slot. Which meant, I didn’t have to speak more than 20 minutes. 3 weeks of after-work research for it was totally not needed.

Most of my knowledge of Visualization I can attribute to 3 individuals – Edward Tufte, Stephen Few and Nathan Yau. If you read their books and follow their blogs, you are pretty much covered as far as “talking” about Visualization is concerned.

Big data is a bigger mess. There is no formal definition for it (or I didn’t find one!). And every company and marketer twists it to their own liking.

This was the first time I was very careful about using attributions in my PowerPoint presentations. All images I used were Creative Commons (and I attributed them using the right convention). I spent a lot of time searching for the “right” images (using Flickr and Google) so that I inadvertently don’t violate any licenses. If you have been confused about proper attribution, I highly recommend reading this link.

So what did I learn? If you are the 4th speaker, people don’t really pay much attention. They are hungry and waiting for food. Most of them are also stuck to their phone or are just staring at you blankly without really listening. Also, as a speaker, it doesn’t matter how much you really understand. It is more important on how much you can simplify and convey your ideas. I still got a long way to go to be a good orator. But I had fun. And now, I am back to my lazy old self.

Gong Xi Fa Cai

Yeah. That’s sort of wishing joy and prosperity for the new year in Mandarin and that’s the only thing I can say beyond Wo Ai Ni. So though I pretend to be knowledgeable, I am not.

Anyway, today is the first day of Lunar Chinese New Year of the Horse. All of Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau SAR, Taiwan, Vietnam, Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand celebrate. That literally means most of world manufacturing is shutdown for the festival.

Lunar New Year is by far the biggest festival celebrated in the world. More than 1/3 population of the world celebrates it. So even if it’s not celebrated in your part of the world, hang on – very soon it will be. (Yeah like we celebrate Halloween and Thanks Giving in Asia!)

The good part of the Lunar New Year is – it always comes in the last few weeks of January or first few weeks of February. That means it is right there in the beginning of the Gregorian calendar. People like me who have already given up on their resolutions can think of resolving to follow them again starting the Lunar new year.

So my dear fellow netizens, I can be statistically very sure that at least 80% of you have given up on your 2014 resolutions by now (yeah, even I partially have!). Don’t fret, you can start them again on the auspicious day of the Lunar new year.

God gives me another chance on restarting my resolutions around end of March or beginning of April when we celebrate the Hindu new year (Gudi Padwa/ Ugadi  for some). It’s ironic how we get all these chances in the first quarter of the year, and still we can’t follow the resolutions for the next 3 quarters.

Like Me, Please!

After 4+ years of existence, I have decided to engage myself in a bit of shameless marketing of this blog. Besides pestering all my close friends to go read my blog, I did the next obvious thing – listed myself on Facebook as a “blog”.

Marketing wasn’t my strong subject in MBA. I am good at criticizing other’s marketing efforts, but when it comes to my own, I suck miserably. So I spent yesterday afternoon figuring out how to setup a Facebook page for my blog. After numerous attempts and some funny results, I finally got it up and running. But well that was just the beginning. Now I figured, I gotta go and invite people to “Like” it.

Making people like my blog and publicize it is a different ball game altogether. After pestering and individually calling up my friends (yeah, that shameless I had to become!). I have reached a comfortable number of 4!

But I have decided not to give up. So I hereby ask all of you who regularly read my blog to “Like” me on Facebook so that I hereby enter the world of Web 2.0 and Social Networking.

(Link provided below)

And now begins the next embarrassing social experiment. Waiting for you to like me!

Happy 4th Birthday!

After 180 blog posts of relentless yapping, I finally complete 4 whole years of my online existence. Yes 24th July was officially the 4th Anniversary of my blog. What started as a not-so-thought about introduction has helped me to “voice” my opinion to you unsuspecting souls for all this while.

Thank you for having patiently read my blog and also for having commented occasionally :) !! On this happy occasion, I decided to play around with the data that I have collected and bore you readers with some mundane statistics. So (drum roll please) here is the best statistics I could collect:

Number of Blog Posts	180
Most commented Blog Post	My Language Problem
Most viewed Blog Post	Wasabi
First Blog Post	Hello World
Most common label for Blog Posts	funny

And now, like a true wanna-be statistician, here is some analysis of my Blog Posts.

Let me be very frank. I try hard to be funny on this blog. Yeah. If you have not realized all this while I have been desperately trying hard to crack silly jokes to make you guys smile. But very early in the existence of this blog I realized that most people do not realize that I am trying to be funny (thanks to my sense of humor – or the lack of it!). So I started labelling my blog posts "funny” for people to “laugh please”.

As you can see I am funniest in March, September and December. So following the logic that I proposed in this blog post, girls interested in meeting me should schedule to meet me only in those 3 months :) !! (My Calendar is open as of now)

And then, I tend to write the most in July. That's because every July I have my blog’s anniversary, and it makes me feel all the more to write I guess. Or probably I am most free in those months :) !!

This is the last stupid statistic that I pulled out. Apparently I blog most on Weekends (understandable!). What I found interesting is that I tend to blog a lot on Wednesdays. So I guess I face mid-week crisis and try to cheer myself up by writing to you folks.

That's it from me. Thank you for being a part of my life.

End of a decade!

So we all are one day away from celebrating a decade of existence in the 21st century. I still vividly remember 2000. (When you start remembering what you had done 10 years ago, like you did it yesterday it just means one thing – you are old with a Capital ‘O’). The Y2K bug was the talk of the town. Apocalypse was predicted. The world as we knew it, was gonna end. Huh! Nothing happened.

2000 was the year I got my first computer (Ok, technically it was bought for my sister, but I guess I messed around with it more than she did!). And I still remember the specs – A Pentium II 350 MHz (I wasn’t an AMD fan boy then), 32MB SD RAM, a SiS Graphics card with 2 MB on board memory, Creative Sound Blaster 16 bit ISA Soundcard, Creative Infra 32x CD-ROM Drive, a 4.3 GB Seagate HDD, 15” CRT monitor and Windows 98. Thumb drives did not exist then. We had to use floppy discs to transfer data :) !! I had not seen the internet and I did not own a mobile phone! I can’t believe its been a decade already. 10 years of playing with computers. TV was my only source of entertainment other than playing (real games that involved physical activity :) !! outside!)

Anyway before I give you all further dose of my nostalgia, on this day, I hope you reflect on what you have achieved (or not) in the last 10 years. I hope you all have a great 2010! Thank you for being with me all this while :) !!

Email subscription available

So I figured that there are some people in this big bad world that rely on their email inboxes to get news and other worthless information (like my blog :) !!). So to be of service to them, starting today, I have enabled Email subscription to my blog. That means, if you want, every time that I post a rant over here, you will get an email containing the same blog post in your inbox. No more fumbling around with an RSS reader and all. You can subscribe by email here.

I don't have an official privacy policy, but am not gonna spam your inbox. So relax and subscribe. For those of you who use RSS readers, ignore this post cause my RSS feed remains alive and kicking.

And finally, those of you who do not understand what RSS is .. see this amazing video by Common Craft that explains the concept ...

Firefox 3.0 is available

As you read this blog post your eyelids are becoming heavier and heavier. Everything around you is slowly becoming a blur. There is a cool breeze blowing and you can no longer hold your eyes open. Your eyes are so heavy that they are about to close. You are now breathing very slowly and deeper than usual.

Now you shall do what I ask you to do. You, my dear reader, are completely in my control now. Go download Firefox 3.0 from this link now! I mean now! Click here ....

Stupid jokes apart, I do not find a single reason why you are still waiting to download Firefox 3.0. If you have already been using Firefox 2.xx before, downloading Firefox 3.0 and upgrading it is a breeze (just double click and you are done!). Firefox 3.0 gracefully installs where your old Firefox 2.xx was, and it also upgrades the extensions that you already have to suite itself. What more do you expect?

Also, if Firefox 3.0 is not your favorite browser, you can also set it to be not your default browser. Simple!! If you have always been waiting to download Firefox, today is the most auspicious day. Go download Firefox now.

And finally, to help Firefox set a world record of maximum downloads, please make up your mind and download the fastest browser on earth before 10:00 AM PDT on June 18th 2008, which is 10:30 PM IST on June 18th in our country.

The whole world is downloading. Don't believe me? See this...

And if you have already downloaded, do not forget to collect your own shiny certificate of a Guiness Book World Record :) from here ..



Updated 04th July '08: The Guinness book record is now official. Firefox was downloaded more than 8 million times that day, to be precise 8,002,530 downloads on June 18 2008. Congrats everyone, we all are record holders now :) !!

Happy Diwali

A very happy Diwali to all of you and I wish you have a healthy and prosperous year ahead.

Support Wikipedia

Since I rely so much on Wikipedia for all the information I need or I provide, I guess it is my duty to contribute towards Wikimedia Foundation's Fundraising drive. If any one of you would like to donate, here is the link. Also watch the video, it is inspiring....

First Anniversary?

Hey, did you realize I just completed more than a year of scribbling my thoughts online? Whoa!! Thats an achievement, pat pat pat :) !! Not that I have been regular, but believe it or not, I have written 50 articles :), gained 8 pounds, slept more than 2900 hours, shaved more than 300 times and have made 4 dedicated readers in the 365 days!!