Blog

Thoughts on technology, travel, economics, and life

Virtue

Why is Virtue out of fashion? Why is it no longer an ideal to live by? Why don't we find more virtuous people whose values strive towards human excellence?

AI project - Jan 2026

I've decided to spend more time this year on AI projects. Ideally 1 each month but we'll see how it goes. For Jan 2026, I've decided to focus first on social media content creation specifically my...

rule bending

Critics to India have a lot to say when asked, from the traffic, to the noise, to the pollution, to the dirtiness etc. Is much of this influenced by a culture of rule bending? When we see videos...

Best of 2025

Some of these will be from earlier years but I discovered them this year Overall, 2025 was the best year in the last 25 years. Music - Fred Again.. Runner up - Natalia Lafourcade Favourite...

USA - 2025

Thoughts from two trips to New York and Chicago in 2025. Standard of living is quite high relative to India and I'm always surprised because I always forget. One forgets because one normalises a...

Learning and Creating accelerated via AI

One of my goals or rather value is to learn and create more. It's vague because it's meant to provide direction and a compass rather than achievement of a metric. One of the biggest advantages of AI...

Business Class

For a recent work trip I flew Business Class for the very first time. One leg was via Qatar Airways and the other via Emirates. General Thoughts (relevant for both) The biggest benefit is the...

Poker Notes

Off late I've been playing a more Poker and thought of sharing some observations I've had over the past few months - You can make good decisions but still loose due to bad luck (variance) Reading...

AI Usage - Mid 2025

Six Months back I wrote about how I was using AI. Since then there have been upgrades to AI Models so it's worth revisiting if my usage has change. New additions - Using ChatGPT Agent to order...

Mexico

My trip to Mexico was met with modest concern and surprise by almost everyone I mentioned it to. It has a reputation for being unsafe that I was overlooking when planning for it. While parts of it...

Business is cool but what about Science?

Business over the past decade has become cool again. Entrepreneurs are now in the same league as Bollywood and Cricket. They run podcasts, have their own television shows, are talked about by the...

The evilest of evils

Hitler and other leaders of the 20th century are considered some of the most cruel and evil leaders to have lived. Their decisions led to the deaths of millions. We are however missing a much more...

Preferences for work

When I started my career, my first internship, I recall having a preference of brand, status and money. Over the years it has changed and after a decade of working, I've narrowed it down to the...

Wordy Duels - AI App

In line with our times of Vibe Coding and building through AI, here's another web app I created to play with my girlfriend. It's a two player word game where a player has to create words with 10...

Virtual > Physical

If you compare the physical world with the virtual world, you will notice that there is a faster progress in the virtual world compared to the physical in India. Compared to the developed world, we...

OLX, quicker are underrated

For those who don't know OLX is a secondary market to buy and sell used products. You can get iPhones to running shoes to coffee machines. I recently used it for selling and for buying. I sold my PS5...

Who's Right?

I've been increasingly using AI to do more and I've recently created this web app that helps you decide who's right when there is an argument between people. Here is the link -...

Comedy as will to power?

In these episodes of Philosphise this! (1, 2) , there is a discussion around Comedy from the lens of Philosophy. And it got me thinking. Especially about one of the theories and surrounding...

Reviews - Jan/Feb 2025

TV - Severance - 9.5/10 - Great Show. It has a nice sci-fi angle to it that got me thinking even after the show. Its the fastest show to have entered my dreams and I've had multiple dreams related...

How do you prepare for AI?

How do you hedge yourself against what's to come? There are multiple opinions about what's going to come. From humanity's extinction and doom to utopia of never having to work again. All these...

The sacred lines of comedy

I don’t watch a lot of comedy but I do come across it sometimes. We had the old school comedy on TV during the first wave. With YouTube we saw another new wave of comedy and now there's a third wave...

AI chooses to be a Buddhist in Copenhagen

I asked AI the following two questions -1. Where would you like to live in today's world? Which city or country would you choose? Some gave an answer but other needed more prompting as they gave...

AI Usage - Jan 2025

I use AI on a daily basis now. Below is what I usually use it for - Coding - Helps generate scripts Formulas - Helps create excel/google sheet formulas Text Summarisation - Helps summarize long...

Muscat, Oman

To all those I mentioned that I was traveling to Muscat for tourism, the first reaction I got was confusion. "What exactly is there to see?". The immigration officer was the most confused. In the...

Favorites - 2024

My best / favorites for 2024 - Music - Rishab Rikhiram Sharma and Hot Hits of Sri Lanka Movie - Manjummel Boys TV Show - Squid Games 2 Books - Pachinko (to be honest I only read this book this...

The nice things beyond the seas

Back in the day, when Indians used to travel abroad, they would buy products that weren't available here. The latest nike shoes, the levis jeans, a sony TV. After 1991, we started getting this here...

Thailand

Visits to Phuket and Bangkok A painting inside one of my hotel rooms Out of all the international countries I’ve been to, Thailand was the one which was most confusing and where i truly felt a...

Work life balance

These days whenever i open LinkedIn, its usually filled with posts about Zomato and startup news. I’ve always found LinkedIn cringe but I open it here and there to see what people I work with or...

Music - I’m in top 1% of the world

I knew I was in the top 1% in India but not across the world. There is a strange pride to it. I guess being in the top 1% of anything makes one feel proud. How did I get here? I listen to music all...

Are reviews on the internet still genuine?

Reviews these days can be bought. At least once in three weeks I get a call or a message from someone who's offering me a part time work from home job that involves liking posts and posting reviews....

The omnipresent mandate to dance

Why do others feel obliged to make others dance here in India? Is it because they want them to open up? To loosen up? Is it because its a way to ensure the other person has their guard down? Or to...

Trends of our time

Increased focus on health and fitness Information and content overload More Nationalism at a macro level, More Individualism at a micro level Focus on money and wealth and to retire early (among...

Links (October)

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/10/life-in-india-is-a-series-of-bilateral-negotiations.html?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=life-in-india-is-a-series-of-bi...

Obsession with who was first/oldest

Here's a tweet I saw recently -https://x.com/IndianGems_/status/1855281822524899597 Why does it matter which language is the oldest? We see this being done for religion, regions, tribes,...

Introducing the Xpanding Horizons Podcast

Xpanding Horizons is my new podcast where I interview people in the hope of expanding perspectives. Available at - YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify Amazon Podcasts The transcripts and show...

The value switch in the idea of FIRE

In case you did not know, this is what FIRE is. And here's a bit more. Here's what I think people miss - To not have work, to sit on the beach is temporary and will soon switch from relaxing to...

Personality test results

I’d expect Agreeableness and Neuroticism to be slightly higher than what cane up. Jungian Type INTJ is often what comes up for me and is accurate. Enneagram was new and seemed accurate. Below is...

Links (September)

https://aashishreddy.substack.com/p/interview-tyler-cowen-economist https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/09/28/alignment.html https://twitter.com/mbrendan1/status/1831355742617784658 https://tw...

Custom Shoes & Sandals - Review Notes

I read an article on Ken about Birkenstock footwear and it got me thinking about my current footwear. I wondered why I've bought the most basic footwear and not invested more. Somewhere long ago I...

PVR - Directors Cut - Notes

In case you don't know what director’s cut is - Youtube Walkthrough + Great recliner seats. Very comfortable viewing experience + Less Crowded + Wide variety of food options (from herbal teas to...

Top Credit Cards in India via An LLM

I wanted to upgrade my credit card and decided to use an LLM to arrive at an answer. Goodbye SEO and hello AI Search Optimization? I will use - 1. ChatGPT 4o2. Perplexity Free Version3. Claude 3.5...

Links (August)

Matt Yglesias Considered As The Nietzschean Superman Altruism And Vitalism As Fellow Travelers How Birkenstock became the Bata for India’s...

Pachinko - Notes

I decided to read Pachinko as it was featured in the top 10 books of this century in New York Times list, both in the reader's list and the expert's list. And it did not disappoint. I can't recollect...

Sri Lanka

The vacation was planned on a very short notice, spending only a day or two on deciding where to go, what to do and what to cover. Most of this was done through Trip Advisor, AirBnB, Google...