random ramblings

Oliver Sacks on learning he has terminal cancer Oliver Sacks is a neurologist and author of books like "Awakenings", “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”. I had listened to his contributions and his own conditions for past many years in the superb science podcast, RadioLab by WNYC – learned a few interesting things about neurology and the tricks the brain can play on us. Recently watched his TED talk on What Hallucinations reveals about our minds . Quote from the NYT article:- “I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight. My predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written.“ Great life!

Life is like the virtual reality program. Wake up, go through the motions which doesn’t need much memory, sleepwalk through the day, eat the same food, be with same people, change white color shirt to green, black color shoes to brown – mere tweaks in the massive training data set for a machine learning algorithm. Only clues that this might not be a simulation is probably the jokes made up by friends – looks quite silly out of context, but hilarious within context – could be that the algorithm has gone creative and invented the jokes as clever spice to be added to otherwise boring routine. You try to think outsize the box, you can’t see the box though, how far it extends and make tiny attempts to kick out in attempts to reach the boundaries and make a change. You don’t realize you are tied down though, there is no escape. It is the long reel that needs to run through its course and you need to stay with the sequence. But once in a while you do something unexpected, something the...

I read somewhere that the memory which is not retrieved even once is the most pure one. When we retrieve memories, it seems we modify it – add more color to it, rationalize it, make it change to how we wish the event was, reduce or increase the intensity etc. If that is the case, I might have a lot of memories which are pure – those that I never care to remember or shut it out as soon as I go anywhere near it. Or because I rarely speak much about the past and ruminate for hours with someone.   Maybe the tape is getting overwritten also a lot with lot of junk data. I sometimes wonder when people talk about same stories over and over again, whether they are oblivious of whether the same audience is bored or not – I think they simply don’t remember or register. When I read about face blindness, I thought that is rare – but there are a lot of people who don’t seem to recognize people they have met. I feel I store too much of such random data – of random people, random events, con...

I don’t watch cricket these days. It just stopped. There is no urge, no excitement about upcoming matches, no interest to follow, no interest to read. I wonder how a childhood passion could die like that, a slow death, didn’t realize until one day I don’t feel like looking at even the headings in newspaper. I still open the last page of the newspaper to the sports page after scanning the front page headlines – but eyes don’t stop at cricket news. Is it a sign of growing up – don’t know. Due to a feeling settling in, that it is all a show, few talented and overpaid and over indulged super stars being careless? Is it sign of an era passing with Dravid and Sachin? Is it over commercialization with 20-20, IPL, scandals and love of the game dying with it? Or is it being a family man not having time to watch long games? Whatever it is, it was probably unimaginable few years back. I am not good at playing cricket. My bowling has a hint of chucking it seems, so had tried bowling with my le...

After a disappointing world cup final and 3 hr of sleep the previous night, I slept peacefully last night for 8 hours. The morning ritual these days is checking mails immediately after gaining some consciousness, today learned a new word first thing in the morning – Murmuration. I thought that was a made up word given as title to newsletters these days. Finally asked Google and watched some incredible videos of nature’s ballet in Youtube (nature’s dance and man’s music). Got hooked and continued watching and reading on these birds. Some interesting things about this phenomena –           This is often reaction to presence of a predator like Hawk or Falcon. Threat can be a great motivator.   –           Research says it is called “scale-free correlation”. “The change in the behavioral state of one animal affects and is affected by that of all other animals in the group, no matter how...

This weekend I was re-reading "Zen and art of motorcycle maintenance" after a gap of probably 10 years. I wanted to check whether with me being more "mature", if I understand it better – more on that later. One particular incident was kind of a coincidence. In the morning it was raining heavily – Monsoon is a week early. It was raining with the sound of a speeding train. I was reading a passage in the book about how people has a block with technology, willfully ignores and puts up with a problem since it needs them to bother about technical details to solve it. Author was recounting an experience of taking the motorcycle to a shop and getting it back in an even worse shape – people not caring about what they do, being in a hurry, not diagnosing the problem right, not bothering to test, taking it too light, being sloppy with work. I also haven't done much with my own car, never tried to fix anything myself other than changing a tire maybe – I...

I was thinking about time management, personal effectiveness etc and how we figure out ways to keep up. I am not claiming to be an expert, but wanted to share few things that worked for me. Would like to know any better tips and techniques that have worked for others. I think at this stage, as professionals, we are expected to take care of our responsibilities, we can’t have (mostly don’t want to also) someone to followup and not supposed to make up excuses for missing something that we were supposed to do.  In short, it is assumed that we are effective in what we do. There are a lot of advice out there such as Get Things Done (GTD) etc. I have tried many things – outlook tasks, followup with red/green/yellow/orange flags, to do lists in notepad, excel, notes (on paper or otherwise) etc etc. I think the key is to find a routine that works in which we can fairly stay on top. Some of what worked for me – Use a Daily planner / diary:- I don’t do hourly planning for a ...