Tag: Life

First

(Inspired by Ryan Hoover’s post)

A few firsts from (alliteration yay!) 2015:

  • Not being afraid/shy and actually putting myself out there when it comes to dating. I think this was the biggest change in my life. The result? I met a lot of awesome people, have a lot of happy (and as expected, some sad ones as well) memories, and I learned a lot about myself. I think these experiences have made me into a better individual.
  • Coachella
  • Living in San Francisco. I love SF. The icing on the cake? Having a best friend who lives in Berkeley.
  • Rock climbing
  • Portland
  • Blogging (almost) everyday for a month.
  • Eating A5 wagyu beef at Kusakabe. The entire meal was incredible.
  • Doing a muscle up.
  • Taking part in a fitness related event (San Francisco Urbanathlon).
  • Mentoring an intern on the distributed graph team at LinkedIn.
  • Going to the SF Symphony.

2016

Writing a post about what my goals and resolutions for 2015 was a great idea. I think being public and open about what I wanted to achieve was added incentive to actually completing those goals. In the same vein here are my resolutions for 2016 –

  1. Always be there for family, friends, and romantic interests (for lack of a better term): It can be hard sometimes to make time for the people who love you and the people you love. I don’t ever want that to happen. As Kurt Vonnegut (via the character of Malachi Constant) said in The Sirens of Titan —

    “…a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”

  2. Keep volunteering: I managed to do some volunteering in 2015. I would love to put in more hours of volunteering in 2016.
  3. Stop procrastinating: I’ve realized that I tend to procrastinate quite a bit. While it hasn’t negatively affected my life in any way I think it’s a terrible trait to have and I will work on removing it in 2016.
  4. Be open and honest: I phrased this as “Be less shy” in 2015, but I think this is a more accurate description of what I am aiming for. I wrote a post explaining my rationale behind this decision. I still stand by that. After living life with this philosophy last year and seeing its (positive and negative) outcomes I cannot fathom living any other way.
  5. Learn Rust: Learning Rust or Erlang was one of my goals for 2015. I’ve decided to narrow the scope and focus on Rust.
  6. Read 24 books: My goal last year was to read 12 books over the course of 2015. I ended up reading 25. I’m very confident that I will be able to complete 2 books a month on average.
  7. Read 24 research papers: Same as last year. I will do a better job at tracking and writing about these this time around.
  8. Write 36 blog posts: 3 posts a month. Based on my posting frequency last year this should be doable.
  9. Get better a playing the guitar: I bought a beautiful guitar last year. My goal is to get noticeably better at playing it.
  10. Fitness goals:
    (a) run a mile in 8 mins (my best mile time is currently 9 minutes and 50s. I’m terrible at running sigh)
    (b) do a handstand
    (c) squat twice my body weight
    (d) run a half marathon
    (e) +20 lb weighted muscle-up

Let’s see how many of these I can achieve in 2016. It’s going to be a fun year!

Goal Tracking: December Edition

At the beginning of the year I published a post outlining what some of my goals for the year were. In the spirit of being transparent, here is the progress I made on them over the course of December –

  1. 0 hours of volunteering.
  2. 0 shyness.
  3. 0 progress on Rust or Erlang. This is now a 2016 goal.
  4. I read two books in December — The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes (amazing. I’m definitely going to be reading this entire series) and Batman: Hush (very enjoyable; it was also the first Batman graphic novel I’ve read that had an element of romance in it).
  5. Two papers read. I wrote about one of them.
  6. 9 posts over the course of the month. Being on vacation meant I had more time to write.
  7. One muscle up this month. And that was just to prove to my brother that I can do at least one.

Album

Here are my favorite albums of 2015, in no particular order:

  • Polaris by TesseracT
  • Currents by Tame Impala
  • New Bermuda by Deafheaven
  • What Went Down by Foals
  • Carrie and Lowell by Sufjan Stevens
  • Choose Your Weapon by Haitus Kaiyote
  • The Direction of Last Things by Intronaut
  • Coma Ecliptic by Between the Buried and Me
  • Node by Northlane
  • VII: Sturm und Drang by Lamb of God
  • The Book of Souls by Iron Maiden

If I had to pick one album as “Karan’s album of the year” (I need a more creative name for this award) for 2015 I would have to say that would be Carrie and Lowell by Sufjan Stevens.

Carrie and Lowell was my first introduction to the musical genius of Sufjan Stevens. I was blown away by his ability to take something sad from his life and turn it into a beautiful (yet immensely sad) body of music. Each song on this album is breathtaking; the (simple yet complex) music, his wonderful voice, and the powerful lyrics all work together to create something magical.

Not seeing Sufjan Stevens live at Fox Theater, Oakland is one of my disappointments of 2015.

Thanks

(I meant to write this post for Thanksgiving but in between tasting wines at Napa and failing to ski at Tahoe I never got the time)

Here’s what I am thankful for in 2015:

  • Having a ridiculously awesome group of family and friends. Thank you for always being there for me. Seriously, you’re the best. It’s hard to imagine life without you. Thanks for everything.
  • All the great people I met over the course of the year. You’ve all enriched my life in some form or the other. Thank you.
  • My wonderful house in San Francisco. My roommates are pretty awesome too.
  • New experiences (Coachella, Portland, rock climbing, etc.) that my friends introduced me to.
  • All the concerts I went to. I still can’t believe that I got to see some of my favorite bands (AC/DC, Between the Buried and Me, 

    Deafheaven, Judas Priest, Motorhead, Skyharbor, Tame Impala, TesseracT, The Contortionist, and Trivium) live this year.

Knowledge

You know that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you learn something new? That feeling you get when you learn something that blows your mind, or makes you more aware of the intricacies and complexity of the world around you? That’s the feeling I get each time I read an article on Nautilus.

Nautilus is an excellent publication. The writing is top notch, the topics are diverse and interesting, the website design is wonderful, and the art and illustrations are breathtaking.

I noticed that they had a Nautilus Prime Membership sale for December and immediately purchased a subscription for myself (and for two of my friends). I’m sure it will enhance my (already awesome) Nautilus reading experience.

I wish I had discovered Nautilus earlier.