Archive for the 'Personal' Category

London Marathon 2010

26Apr10

It’s over. And I’m aching. Given the background, and how nearly I didn’t run, I’m very happy with how yesterday’s marathon went, even though my finishing time (over 5 hours) is more than half an hour outside what I expected. The first thirteen miles were incredible: my knee (which I was trying to protect by running on [...]

Yo Dawg, blogging is hard work…

01Feb09

Dang yo, I haven’t been blogging regularly. I might have mentioned this before, but the biggest reason I don’t blog is because I decide I want to edit something before I publish it; a few days later, I’ve lost my train of thought and the draft never makes it to the blog. There’s certainly a lot [...]

Dean Kamen on Innovators

13Jan09

Something worth hanging on to for rainy days: Kamen … said every entrepreneurial innovator he’s ever seen shares a few characteristics. “It’s not that they’re brilliant or well-educated,” Kamen said. “They work all the time. They don’t let failure demoralize or destroy them. They pick themselves up and keep going and eventually, every once in a while, [...]

Corruption and Development

23Nov08

I was quite excited to find this blog post but now that I’ve read it, I’m a little disappointed. It’s a bit wishy washy in the way academic articles can be and doesn’t really get much further than defining corruption and categorising it as high-level and low-level. The reason for that is probably the extreme complexity [...]

Un Ke Dekhe Se – Mirza Ghalib

13Nov08

Un ke dekhe se jo aa jati hai mun par ronaq, Woh samajhtey hain keh beemar ka haal accha hai. Dekhiye paate hain usshaq buton se kya faiz, Ek brahman ne kaha hai keh yeh saal accha hai. Hum ko maaloom hai jannat ki haqeeqat laikin, Dil kay khush rakhnay ko Ghalib yeh khayal accha hai. And here’s the wonderful Jagjit [...]

Wow Day

03Aug08

I have 3 Wows to give out today. WhyNot.net: I was Googling to see if anyone else was curious about using active noise-cancelling techniques for turning down the volume (in some sense) on babies. There are serious technical challenges (such as that current noise-cancelling devices target a point sink), but it’s a cool idea and even [...]

Whoa.

16Jul08

Check this out. I need more time to process it (and read up on most of them)…but whoa. And there’s our man Aitzaz Ahsan at #5! (Obligatory disclaimer: I don’t trust Aitzaz Ahsan for a minute.)

Thoughts on Kobe

05Jul08

A certain someone isn’t going to stop badgering me until I say something about the Lakers’ recent loss in the NBA finals, so here goes. I’ve been defending Kobe more or less since 2000 now. I’ve never been a full-on fanboy, but in a sport populated by egotistical megalomaniacs, I admired his rabid desire to win, [...]

Protected: Staying Awake

12Jun08

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Growing Up

10Jun08

Confirmation that maturity is a journey, not a destination. Or something. AE: Dude, big changes. Me: ? AE: You remember I said I have this paralysing fear of whether I was good enough? Like fretting at work about people thinking I’m no good, etc.? Me: Yes, distinctly :) AE: Well, it’s gone. Me: Wow. That’s huge, man…you should be proud of [...]

What I don’t like about sports writing

24Apr08

I don’t like sports writers. I don’t like the contrived soundbites they convey, the cliched storylines they create, the false drama they so carefully cultivate. I don’t like the fact that most of them have no real qualifications, but a few years on the circuit gives them the title of ‘expert’ and, for example, allows [...]

Shikwa

24Mar08

Watch this: And the second part: It’s quite remarkable. A tangent to my own confusion and complaints, but fascinating and insightful nevertheless. My favourite couplet is this, the fulcrum of the poem: Even then you grumble, we are false, untrue, If you call us faithless, tell us what are you? From a historical point of view, it’s probably amazing that [...]