Rough Edges Versus the Allure of Finesse

 

What gives you more joy? Getting 100/100 in all subjects or getting (99,99,98,97,94,...100,99)?
I'll choose the later. Not that I am capable of attaining either with no uncertainty. It's just the sight of possibility, the extra room for improvement, something which was amiss, creates a charm!

I'm pretty sure you must have heard of Casey Neistat. I am not telling why I mentioned him. Go Figure!

When there is a mass messaging about going the extra mile, giving that 10% extra, why am I invoking this sense of inadequacy and almost eulogising it? 
No reason at all. It's just me.

Growing like mushroom is not always desirable or attractive. Everybody loves to chase the growth story. Why? I don't have a definitive answer. May be they are chasing wealth/fame/independence. 

This is the opportune moment to clarify that I am no way promoting mediocrity. Perhaps I am titling towards Pareto principle. May be even this is not exactly what I mean.

Nature & human beings are drawn towards symmetrical things. This may be a reason for the allure of finesse, the craze of the perfect and the worship of the ideal!

Recall the moment, when you came back from office with the news of much awaited promotion. You put your bag away, hug your significant other and then after a while take a sip of Masala Chai which has slightly less sugar than you like. Try to capture that emotion, hold it in your hand, and tell me whether you would enjoy that rough edge to your happy moment? May be this would have added a signature, a uniqueness, a sense of individuality, a sense of belonging to that moment. 
I am reminded of this famous quote , "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." 
I would like to tweak it. Not all happy families are alike. When you are happy irrespective of what's happening around you & in your family, you get an ecstatic family.
Now, I am starting to sound cheesy; tsk!

PS : Merry Christmas! 

Coffee?

 Why do we enjoy coffee? Why do we sit in Cafes? 

To listen to something like "All I've Ever Known · Bahamas" and ruminate about the life you wish to have?
May be not. May be you have a different reason. That being said, there is a pleasure about sipping an overpriced drink laced with sugar and a kitschy slow/low background music playing around to keep you company.
This makes you feel like you have a halo, not around your head but around your thoughts; Around your life which has slipped through your hands like sand. This reminds you about someone. This reminds you about yourself; When you were someone different.

Or else, you are just a pretentious braggart buying your expensive coffee to distract your mind away from the senseless chatter you keep recycling in your head.

No, I'm not putting people on different rungs or putting anyone/anything on a pedestal. This is just me listening to "All I've Ever Known · Bahamas" on a Saturday morning and reminiscing about the times I hopped around the city to visit the new quaint coffee/tea place to idle away my time or to meet the next ... you know who? *sigh*

A lot definitely happened when I had coffee.  

Leaving you with the song which made me write this (below)


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Where there is an entrance, there is usually an exit

When you are someone like me, with a switch 'ON' button but no 'OFF' button, you are bound to gravitate towards lines by Murakami like 

“Where there is an entrance there is usually an exit. That’s the way things are made. Mailboxes, vacuum cleaners, zoos, salt shakers. Of course there are exceptions, Mousetraps, for instance.”

If I have to tell you the truth, I don't have any qualms about my obsessive personality. In the software parlance, I would like to term it as a feature not a bug. Of course, there are times you wish that there was a way out, the so called 'exit'. 

The art of distancing yourself from things at the perfect time is something which requires certain strand of cold-heartedness, which yours truly lacks. There are just quite a few times I have been able to say the perfect 'Good-Bye' with mathematical precision of a well-aimed projectile. Those incidents still haunt me more than I ever cared while executing my acts. 

Be it the quaint neighbourhood cafe, breakfast cereal, a new brew of tea, someone special...you get the drift? I have a bad habit of obsessing over them till I get a closure of sorts. As I don't practise moderation in the acts of heart, I drift apart from them too. Perhaps, that's my exit? No! It's more like death. Exit is something which starts another day, something like 'light at the end of the tunnel'. The way I part is more like a butcher bludgeoning an animal to death.

Few years back, Alpha & I were discussing about addiction. 
Alpha asked , "How to stop this habit of sipping diet coke?"
"Simple, order ~100 of them and finish them in 3 days" I replied
"Wow! Even I follow a similar plan to get off a bad habit, just do it so many times, you get bored of it. More like you overflow the process of quenching your cravings. Like capillary effect, it just adjusts the contact angle and no more of it overflows" added Alpha

And in the words of Haruki Murakami,
“All things should have both an entrance and an exit. That’s just the way it is.” 

Cryptocurrency Investment Questions

If you are planning or pondering about investing in cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, there are 3 questions you must seek answers of. 

1. Is investing in Bitcoin/Crypto worth in 2021?

2. What is the technology behind these cryptocurrencies? Blockchain?

3. What is the 'value proposition' & future of Bitcoin/Crypto? 

I have tried to touch upon these questions in my video. And, I am also seeking answers to the above questions, as these 3 questions though are not completely independent of each other, needs different lens to come to a reasonable answer.

In my view if you are looking for short gains, seeking the answer to just first question would suffice.
Not so, if you are betting a large sum of your long term portfolio in Cryptocurrencies. In that case, you need to holistically look at the answers to these 3 questions in sufficient detail. 

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Unknown Unknowns Hindsight

Hindsight is the wisest philosopher, unequivocal macroeconomist, best predictive modeller and ... you get the drift!

Few years back, I had read a response by Donald Rumsfeld , "...But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. ..."

In most of the situations, we are in the land of 'unknown unknowns' and our choices today are hardly going to be the result of any optimisation exercise based on careful weighing of all the variables concerned. Most of the time, we have to choose the action & rationalise them later. Only, when we hit the bulls eye, our hindsight puts a label of 'success' or 'outperformance' on them. I hope you remember the famous line from Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address, "...you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward..."

Does that mean we are helpless at the hands of future? 

Does that mean we can't optimise?

Does that mean we can only produce helpless policy makers?

Of course, the answers to above questions need to take in the nuances involved on a case-by-case basis. I will tell you what I do. Thumb-rules! When you observe life all around you, there is a development of intuition. By intuition, I am referring to the type described by Daniel Kahneman in 'Thinking, Fast and Slow'. Well, this is what I follow, if my gut says do this, I ask myself, "How much knowledge I have gathered about this situation/scenario from past experiences?". Contingent on the above two steps, the choices are made. And, borrowing from Aldous Huxley's Ape and Essence, "...Ends are ape-chosen; only the means are man's..." 

Thumb-rules, I realise make one prone to biases & prejudices. This is definitely a tight-rope walk, of balancing between thumb rules & not taking prejudiced decisions. Remember, all actions have consequences. No right or wrong actions exist, such value judgements merely cloud you!

PS : Putting 'life back' to this dormant blog! 

Money, Assets & Friends

What do you really need in life? No, apart from Oxygen, Water & Food?
Do you need money? Do you need a house? Do you need a lot of friends?
Do you need a lot of servants? Do you need a chauffeur driven car?
Do you need to be an Investment Banker? Do you need to be as relevant, popular & wealthy as Elon Musk? 

Chew on it!

There are no absolute answers, you have what you need. You strive for what you want. Your life, your choices! But, yes your choices have consequences. No value judgement on either your choices or consequences.

You want what you want!

As, I have aged over the last decade, it has dawned on me that I really don't desire all the fancy things/titles I so aspired for, few years back. A lot of what I wanted appear quite frivolous and meaningless. May be this is a phase, too! No, this isn't mid-life/quarter-life crisis! All I want now is a cup of tea, a comfortable chair & view of snow-clad mountain glistened by early morning sun! Is it a lot? 



Money still buys ...

Of Course, nothing is free in this world. You either need to have a lot of assets or stream of money/cash flow to get anything of material value. Tea is not free, chair isn't free unless you make your own, any picturesque view comes with a price tag! 

How about expanding the radius of your self-centred life?

We have all become hyper-individualistic, or is it just me? Anyway, truth is we mingle only to jingle, these days. Most of our material needs are taken care of without any human interaction! But, is it sustainable? I know, I am failing miserably to drive down the point that we all need people. Call them friends, family or well-wishers! 

There, I have completed the triad! Money, Assets & Friends! That's all we need in life. Rest are just bells & whistles. Again, over-simplifying a lot of nuances of life.

PS : I have written more than 100 posts on this blog! 

10 Year Transformation - IIT Kharagpur to ISI Kolkata Convocation

More than once Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) had caught my attention, while I was 24*7 dreaming of getting into an IIT. Two things which I knew about ISI were, it's for Maths & getting in is 10 times tougher than IIT. Needless to say, I did my B.Tech from IIT Kharagpur. The mention of KGP in the above line, sounds quite underwhelming, such is the stature of ISI. Also, please keep aside the ISI jokes about certain intelligence agency in certain nearby nation.

When I was in class 9, I was only good in Maths and I had an enthusiasm about Biology. I wanted to become a doctor. Those days were quite formative and I could almost sense my line of thought now, on why I chose not to pursue medicine. I just couldn't let go of my Maths skills, having only gained a fair grip on the subject pretty late. Till Class 6, my Maths scores were unimpressive to say the least. Also, I wouldn't even count myself as a serious student. I have been and remain a day-dreamer, always lost in the sand-castles of my own. Ruminating and brooding are my allies.


It was around this time, that I decided to become an IITian as most people around me were successful in selling the brand IIT & its association with Math. To a 14 year old Class 9 student, that was not really difficult. The story thereafter, of how I went to IIT is something I have already documented in detail.

This post is not about IIT but about ISI, about the 10 years to ISI, about the 10 years of pain, about the endless attempts at landing onto a ship which sails my boat. You can watch the convocation video with campus tour below:

I worked in startups, taught kids, just read books and kept ruling out career options. Finally, better sense prevailed and my pillar, my wife stood there at a corner while I gave all I had for ISI preparation. I had read a bit of pop economics, pop psychology & pop statistics to pique my interest in Quant Economics at ISI Kolkata.


I can't speak for other programmes but a course in ISI gives you a new way of thinking, a new way of looking at data problems, a new appreciation for statistics. Statistics is not mere complex algebra with lots of numbers interspersed,  it's simply the language of experiments. Just like Mathematics is the language of Science; Statistics is the language of all empirical studies. 

Quantitative Economics course at ISI is meant for equipping economics students with Mathematics & Statistics tools. This makes this course quite specialised and this is not for everyone. And, this is not an alternative to MBA. This course required deep study and mere skimming concepts before exams won't help you in passing exams.
This is like tailor-cut for me. Almost!

I am not the best student when it comes to examinations. I only like examinations which have disproportionately high payoffs and don't require you to mug a lot. 




In the past 10 years, I know most of my batchmates would have completed their PHDs, MBA+Job+Promotion, Startup+Funding, & what have you. And, here I am, happy with my Masters in Quantitative Economics. Perhaps, things are not perfect they have to be made perfect!

Or in my wife's words, "दिन Perfect नही होता, उसे Perfect  बनाना होता है" which loosely translates to ,"Days are not perfect, you make them so"

I really cannot say that the ISI Convocation day was my happiest day, but it was the perfect day!

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