First Blog

Hi,

This is my first blog post. In this, I will introduce myself and why I started blogging.

So, first Who Am I?

Well, my name is Ashwin, working in Bangalore, but born and brought up in Chennai.

I have over 13 years of work experience in data communication and networking domain. Interestingly, my work experience has zero relationship with both my bachelors and masters degrees. 

Entered IITM to study chemical engineering, but had no initial affinity towards it. During this time, there were many subjects that I liked, but nothing so much, that I could bank my life on. So, my interests traced a complete brownian motion during this time. And finally my ionic bonding with this field broke by end of graduation. 

I lucked out and in my first job, landed up in a domain that interested me a lot and have been there ever since.

Why Am I Writing this Blog?

Over the course of time, I became deeply interested in multiple diverse areas, like value investing, finance, physics, maths, advertising, marketing, business, learning, psychology, statistics, probability and more. Have read many books in these areas and am an unabashed fan of the giants in these fields, like Warren Buffet, Charlie Munger, Feynman, Claude Shannon, Oglivy, Dijkstra, Alan Kay, Steve Jobs and more.

But over a long stretch of time, realised that my brain works like a DRAM. It keeps forgetting all that I learnt and the insights that I got very fast. Until I keep constantly refreshing it, it never stays in my conscious memory. So this blog, is going to be a placeholder for refreshing my memory. This is one of the starting points for writing this blog.

Next, I thought if I get into the habit of writing, it forces my mind to organise my thoughts, convey the insights in a succinct form and would help me in getting more disciplined. Currently, I have 100s of notes splattered across, laptop, mails and my iPad. And now, I am neither able to recollect or make sense of my notes in a cohesive manner. So, I hope now, you can really understand my pain and appreciate this reason also.

Paraphrasing Feynman, 'What I cannot write, I cannot understand' 

I not only wanted to write about what I learnt so far, but also about the mistakes that I make or I discover others making. Rephrasing Isaac Newton's quote, shouldn't we after all stand on the shoulder of giant mistakes to see further? Why do the same mistake again, when a fresh one can be done?

Also, I wanted a collection yard, where all such data can be organised and stored. This way, over time, if I can look back at these notes, I can possibly understand more about myself. And once this happens, I will rewrite the top section on 'Who Am I' again. But it's quite possible that even now, google knows more about me on this! On a side note in 10 years time, I am expecting that google searches on 'Who Am I' will be a regular spiritual feature.

So much for my philosophical underpinnings !

Well, if you have come so far thinking that this guy has  all selfish reasons and I am wasting my time on this, Do not Despair! Have saved the best for the last. Till this time, I have been a parasite on information be it from the Internet, or from books. So with this blog, I have decided to be a producer, in my own little way and contribute to this ocean of knowledge. 

How will I contribute?

One of the main things that I find abundant on the net and in books are data, unpolished, unfurnished information. The things missing are insights, which is the underlying theory that connects disparate sources of data.

And the other thing that I realised, is there is information lacking about failures and mistakes that people have done. There is too much of glorification of success and history is always written by the winners, causing a huge sampling bias.

So, this blog will focus on two things, insights in different fields and areas and the mistakes that people make, hopefully less of mine, and more of others.

If you are still confused, don't blame me for it. There are many others with average IQ, who also shared this feedback. So, if you want to change your mind, you can do so now. 

”Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing,” - Benjamin Franklin

I preferred the easier one.

Thanks for your time.