nishparadox

Every year, I come back to "On The Shortness of Life" by Seneca to ground myself to the fact that life keeps on happening and I have to remind myself that life is long enough if I think about it...

This made me nostalgic. Back in the school days, I used to write all sorts of QBASIC programs: creating quizzes, basic animation, solving math equations, etc...

Few years back I was a co-founder and director of tech and research. We were not doing well. I was personally struggling financially not just at startup level but also at my person/family level. For 8 months nobody (co-founders) took any salaries. Because of personal financial struggles, I was drowning in a mild debt (asking money from friends) to even sustain everyday life. After a year, due to some internal politics (which I absolutely hate on any organization and given my more "nice guy" personality, I couldn't bare), I decided to quit. I quit without any second thoughts. I remember giving resignation without anyone anticipating it. I didn't have any plans. After quitting, I asked for some compensations which lasted me for only 2 months. It was hard for me and my family (you know how Asian parents are). Out of nowhere, I decided to pursue grad school. So started GRE+TOEFL. Gave it. That was 2 years back. I am still in "going to grad school" phase for my Master's. Let's see how it goes in next 2 months.

However, out of nowhere during the end of 2019 I was approached by a startup here which works in Document AI space. I am the only senior. I am juggling through research + engineering ML. But in some ways, I didn't anticipate that I would be enjoying so much here. But still, imposter syndrome hits hard often.

If I hadn't quit my initial startup plan, I don't know what might have happened to my research and career. I might have been more miserable.

:) ---

The title hits home, strongly... I have rarely used emojis (let alone I don't have any social media profile, plus only conversate through mails with few people). One thing I realized is the use of emojis from the other side evokes a sense of "I don't want to see emojis...". I don't know why, but I just feel that emojis kinda make me feel that the conversation isn't "deep"; it doesn't convey the actual emotions... In hindsight, I also feel a few-word replies are often disengaging. Probably it's just me. But it's been years I haven't used emojis. I don't even have the urge to use it or see it.

On the contrary, I do believe that using emojis in certain contexts are better. For instance, when you are euphoric and someone sends you a "happy-like" emoji, it makes you feel more "connected".

I guess, it's just me...

It has its own hiccups. If this addon fails, I simply close the site and try to find alternative sources.

I exactly had the same thought few weeks back on Twitter. Since I have ditched the whole 'social media bubble' for my mental health, it seems sometimes I wish there was some sort of HN-like aggregator for Tweets from my favorite topics and people.

One of my favorite custom bash function is to use up() function to abstract away all the cd ../../../ command.

Up 3 will put me 3 directories behind the current one.

I recently bought a new dynamic mic. And it has absolutely changed the way I do WFH. No more crappy noises. No more background sounds. In fact, I believe that having a good microphone is a good initiative to seriously start a better workflow for WFH.

As someone who tends to walk a lot (often, alone), most of the ideas I get (and solutions for problems) come up while walking. That's why I like to say "walking is thinking".