random ramblings

What do I want to remember about today?  A train which was an hour late in the morning and another which was few mins early in the evening. One that was near empty, and another that was packed so tight that one had lean forward to not get squeezed.  Everything covered in green, after a season of heavy rains. It is like one of those movies with post apocalypse storyline, where humans don't inhabit cities anymore and it gets overgrown with moss and vine - I guess Keralam is like that most of the time. Like the peepul growing on top of a bus shed or abandoned houses taken over by bush or empty land looking like a mini forest with nothing but a broken well in the middle. I try to click a pic from the speeding train and it is like a blur of green each time. A girl reading "I am Malala" and the mother periodically stuffing her with snacks and drinks.  A boy with a big head full of curly hair falling down to his shoulders, looking like 80s rockstar. Another wearing a Metallica t...

East of Eden - a novel adaptation. Took it up due to Florence Pugh (liked a few of her movies - We Live in Time, A Good Person, Oppenheimer) and maybe she being a good actress, succeeded in making one dislike the character, who is evil personified. It is an exploration of the deep hatred that makes people lose all faith in people and the innocent bystanders who get caught up in it getting destroyed. Good acting, few good characters that give the contrast between angels and demons.  Diplomat - continuing to go strong. High diplomacy at the top of US and UK governments. Extremely well written, well acted. I suppose if someone were to make a documentary film about current administrations, it would be stranger than fiction. This level of communication nuance and playing a 3D chess like strategy game makes one wonder, is it all so calculated in reality? Or is it even more complicated that this?  Bethlehem Kudumba Unit (Malayalam) - after some time, watched two films of Nivin Pauly ...

It is hopefully going to be a week of clean up and reset ahead. Clutter has been building up in all fronts. I am immersed too much into some rabbit holes that even the dreams are permeated with it, sleep disturbed to the extent I started waking up multiple times and fully awake at ungodly hours. Unread books have piled up – including the bunch I bought from a mall, by weight, five or six books which weighed 1.5 kg or so. Mailbox has more than thousand unread emails, it has never been this bad. I have given up on bookmarks. 100+ open tabs should be closed. Friends whose calls haven’t been returned. Many TODO lists overflowing. At one point I had rationalized that it is time to build/create, not to consume. That I have consumed enough and may not need to pump in more information. But now after months, maybe the cycle should be reversed. I have done this many times before. All the way back to school or college. When the “lawlessness” gets me to the bottom, a determination to write down th...

1. Find a customer who truly understands the work and work for them.  >> Especially in Services industry, the customer who doesn’t understand or appreciate work can be painful, and those who perform the services still has to act like he/she is the god. How lucky will it be to find those who understand the work.  2. What if your purpose is simply to build a good life? To raise kind children. To cook a little better each year. To read a few excellent books. To notice the seasons. To build meaningful relationships. To help others. To give time - and money if you can - to causes you care about. >> To remind about what is it all for?  3. Hiring - smarts, ownership, passion, team work, ability, character. Hire for character, Train for skill.  >> Reminder about what to look for in hiring.  4. Kind and candid. When we look back, we always see that we haven't been candid enough.  >> It is so difficult to do.  5. Fight entropy with energy...

“If he asks me, I will join” – I remember telling a friend, about joining a startup, in case the founder, who was someone I looked up to, ever calls me. I had no such indication that they might even need me. But that was a secret wish. Like those Malayalam movie dialogue sort of “avan vilichaal njaan irangi pokum” (“if he calls me, I will elope with him”). And like in such movies, I never asked if they would need me. I had daydreams about starting a startup for a long time, making some very detailed plans as mental exercises – it was almost like a game I play or sort of entertaining myself. Or like a prisoner planning escape routes. But never had the courage enough to actually try even any baby steps towards any such ideas, to test if any of those had market potential or any such. Since this was like a fantasy world building, in whatever small ways I practiced how this might work out – like kids playing house. I used to think that anything I do, I run it like I am running my own busine...

1. Are you closing the gap (with competition) vs opening the gap (going ahead of competition)?  >> A question from a mentor. Are you catching up, or are you running ahead? A good frame to evaluate where our time goes.  2. "I want you to do this". "I have high expectations from you". "You can do this". "We have to be world's best in this". "Who needs to do what by when". "Show me the code" >> I was noting down the usual phrases by the same mentor. Direct expectation setting, raising the aspiration, clarifying the vague asks, going to the ground truths than accepting the abstract picture.  3. Don't select people like yourself for the team. Choose people who challenge you, make you think differently, smarter than you.  >> Yet another mentor. He was a tiny bit upset that I managed to steal someone, but I was asking him permission (after the fact). The advise is something to be kept in mind.  4. Don't ...

I haven’t played tennis enough number of times to say I am even a beginner but picked up this book – “Inner game of Tennis” by Timothy Gallwey, since it kept coming up. It is a short book, but useful to add to the mental models. Core idea is that there is a “thinking” self (Self 1) and a “doing” self (Self 2) – when the thinking self tries to constantly instruct the doing self, we tend to produce substandard outcomes. When we are able to suppress the thinking and do unconsciously, then we produce a “flow” that feels like someone is “playing out of their mind” – there is no mind then. It is that the Self 1 is the one that doubts, fears, analyzes, criticizes constantly and that interferes with the action which Self 2 is supposed to perform. Elite players have figured out a way to focus on the present, on the next point, next serve, next ball and stopped worrying about the last mistake or the next set. I think it contrasts with “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman – that talked abo...

My reading habit (books) has plummeted. Absolutely crashed, in the bins. I hope I can recover that some day soon. But this is about the last book I read, almost a year back, which has stayed with me. It is “Impro – Improvisation and theatre” by Keith Johnstone. I had picked this up after its reference kept coming up in different places, like one of the books given to new joinees in the company, Palantir. While it is about how the author (a theatre acting coach, teaching improvisational comedy) found a way to teach people to let go of the fear and act with abandon, I think the lessons can have lasting impact in everything we do every day. Basic premise is – everything we do in company of people is playing a “status game”. Every movement, every inflection of a muscle, eye contact, posture, voice – everything is transmitting a status signal – that we are high status in some situation or low status in others. Slouching to indicate low status, puffing out the chest to indicate high status. ...

1. People good with AI. Slow, deliberate people. Patient. Good with language. Can write. Reads. Intentional. Conscientious. Wanting to build good systems. Good at some craft and art. Researches. Curious. Builds. Plays.  >> Some theories, about who might use AI better. Remains to be seen if this pans out. I am seeing a lot more examples of such people up close and personal these days and hope to write more about this soon.  2. Stories evoke emotion, emotions make memories.  >> Why story telling is important life skill  3. Lay down the complex workflow and then think about higher level abstractions that can simplify it.  >> Something I need to learn even more how to do  4. Language is imprecise. Now use that to think about LLMs and its applications. Maybe some imprecision is ok to get a surprisingly good unexpected outcome, but other times we need to watch it to get to the intended outcome.  >> Imprecise nature of language – what ...

Today is Messi’s farewell match in Argentina shirt. Few weeks back, when the international retirement news came out, my reaction was that this might be the beginning of the end for me as football fan. There is a precedence to it. I stopped watching any form of cricket after Sachin retired. Slowly the interest died and ever since haven’t watched any match. Like many Malayalees, Argentina and Messi (and Maradona before) was a “vikaaram” (a sentiment or an emotion). That beautiful journey ends today. As a kid, I used to play an entire imaginary world cup, all by myself. With a tennis ball sometimes. Making up rules as to what counts as a goal. One such world cup was played like this - I would kick the ball to the slanting tiled roof, one can’t predict how it will come down and when it comes down, hit the goal on the volley in one touch, two touch, three touch. I used to play group games, quarter finals, semis and finals and declare winner like this. Or play an entire tournament for hours ...

1. Self destruction is coded into us, at cell level? This is why court danger, to feel alive. >> I am not sure if this is true, but noted this down to know capacity for destruction is in us. Destroying, hurting, lashing out to feel alive might be what some people do. 2.Agency - remembering you can move. >> High Agency is a concept that is fascinating. Why some people act, some do not. 3. Telescope and microscope - how to view things. Long term and short term. >> Helpful analogy. Zoom in, Zoom out. 4. "Pressure does not exist, it is an excuse. If you just think about enjoying yourself and having fun, there is no pressure." >> From a 19 year old, Lamine Yamal. Living his life large, at the center of attention. They say this is how Gen Z is. 5. To develop agency, ask - "What's the stupidest easiest one thing you could do to make even a little progress?" >> Agency again. To keep moving. 6. When you need to converge on the single ri...

People are full of contradictions. Brilliance and Despair in the same person. Yin and Yang. God and Devil. Genius and Dumb. All in the same people, appearing at different times. A few examples. Brilliant in spending hours researching, reading, going into rabbit holes, burning midnight oil, coming up with diamonds from depths of internet’s dark corners and Reddit subs, aware of trends before it becomes trends, creates clear content to educate. But speaks in riddles, lacks self esteem, moody, emotionally unstable, can’t take any negative feedback, shuts off in face of confrontation, switches off and disappears at times. Ambitious, hard working, fights for oneself, grabbing any opportunity that comes one’s way, hungry, tenacious. But panics easily, constant worrier, affects people around with the worries, drops something once it becomes overwhelming, reacts sharply under stress. Conscientious, principled, disciplined, feels for fellow human beings pain to the extent that it affects physic...

In past few years, I was worried about not really absorbing, internalising learning - from experiences, reading, talking to people etc. Started keeping notes. Curating it here for posterity.  1.      You often only understand a problem by experiencing the journey, i.e. building a solution for it. >> I think this is a constant challenge – how to develop intuition for a class of problems unless we participate in it and try to build solutions for it, then it reveals its nuances and forces us to think. But then once we get the lay of the land about the problems and potential solutions, how to abstract the lessons and zoom out to see how it all fits together is also necessary. 2.      Under promise, over deliver >> A way of life as advised by a mentor. To be done always, to surprise with more, than disappoint with less. 3.      Crucial thing to realize: there are two kinds of happiness which are often...

There is a line in a movie, Spanglish, that stayed with me for a long time. Simple line - “In the midst of confrontation, she found clarity.” It is a movie about a Spanish housekeeper in an American household and her daughter – in a pivotal conflict between them, where the daughter humiliates the mother in public, the mother finds clarity in middle of that conflict and asks the crucial question that will define their relationship and identity - "Is what you want for yourself, to become someone very different than me?". I ended up working few hours, despite being holiday today. In middle of very ambiguous or confusing or conflicting situation, I could find enough courage and clarity to take control and somehow paint a picture of where we are and what we should be doing.  I wonder how this works. Many times during such situations, people need confidence that someone would help to find a way through it and that confidence not coming from anyone around will make it progressively ...

Woke up at 12:45 am, from a lucid dream - I was writing first two lines of a novel, someone was looking over my shoulder. I knew (or thought I knew) what the lines were when I woke up, wanted to write it down, but forgot soon after. Another early morning cab ride, driver was struggling with English, asked him "ulle varungala" (“can you come inside?”), surprised myself. I wish I can learn / be more confident to talk in Tamil. Despite being sleep deprived, was somehow feeling irrationally exuberant. Despite reading some complaints in emails which normally leaves faint irritation in the back of the mind. Full of ideas, full of optimism, wanting to smile, that nothing would faze me, feeling healthy. Feeling ok that whatever I may face, still would go through, let the feelings happen and try and enjoy the process. These are times when I think I should figure out all the parameters like a lab experiment – what led to this – what food I had, climate or what. If only that can be bott...