Travel, Read, Conserve

  The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by   Daniel James Brown   ( Harmony, balance and rhythm. They`re the three things that stay  with you your whole life. Without them civilization is out of whack. And that's why oarsman when he goes out in life, he can fight it, he can handle life. That's what he gets from rowing. ~ George Yeoman Pocock (One of the most engaging characters in the book) As a non sports enthusiast, with zero idea about rowing except admiring rowers on Lake Washington waters I am not sure what drew me to this book. But as a Seattle resident, I am inherently drawn to names such as Álki or Sequim, and this book definitely thrilled me with references to all the favorite spots around Seattle, and above all the University of Washington and Husky references on every other page. There is a second thread running in this book - Hitlerś Germany - Berlin being the venue for the 1936 Olympics. The Berlin...

  2020 is the year that cannot be passed by without reflecting on it. It has been a year that united the entire globe by a phenomenon that is probably that single event in the history of mankind that has crossed all boundaries and impacted all countries, because of how connected and mobile the world is today. All over the world, humans lived through the same dread, same anxiety, same ups and downs of hope and despair. For those of us that were fortunate to be not impacted directly by the pandemic, it was a year of revelations and forming new habits. As I was hearing in the year end podcast from Shankar Vedantam’s series ‘Hidden Brain’ - old habits are ‘automatic and mindless’, while forming new ones needs us to be ‘ conscious and mindful ’. And that is probably why 2020 has been so difficult for us. We had to rethink and rewire our everyday life. Find new ways to stay engaged, stay productive and come out relatively unscathed. On a personal front, while I navigated several changes...

“Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging.” ― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye It is the end of May, in the virus plagued, abnormal and terrifying, 2020. We are getting used to the concept of American citizens dying in the hundreds every day, doctors and nurses pleading for us to stay home, media showing footage of overwhelmed hospitals and devastated families, and a failed leadership unable to provide any direction as the pandemic is raging wild. While we are already lost, there comes another breaking news, and this one, takes the country by storm. George Floyd becomes a household name, and the three words he said in his last moments become the pulse of the young and the old, and the nation unites in an unprecedented way! In my 22 years in the US, I have never seen a movement so strong, passions so high, and the march for justice so relentless. We watch the news, and as brown immigrants, relate somewhat ...

Ideate / Innovate Early on in March, when we had all collectively just started on this very unclear, confusing and scary journey, I was surprised and awed by people who had the presence and strength of mind to come up with some really useful ideas to make the situation a little better.  Mask making from non traditional materials, DIY alternatives to hand sanitizers, restaurants going take out only or altering their entire menu for their survival, brick and mortar book stores upgrading their models to offer free shipping or publishing list of #quarantinebooks online to retain their clientele are such wonderful and successful ideas that we would have thought impractical in the normal world.  Seemingly insignificant things like seeing posts from my culinary genius friends on how to use the neglected ingredients on the pantry shelf give me ideas to think creatively while menu planning. It broke the drudgery of daily cooking and put these ingredients to good use in a t...

Author : Ponti Date : 04/18/20 My collegiate education is in chemical engineering, and really, in any kind of engineering discipline one tends to spend a lot of time thinking about one specific concept: entropy. Simply put, entropy is a physical phenomenon that attempts to explain why things tend to fall into disorder. I italicize the word “things” because it is a word that is usually seen with dismay, as it provides little to no clarity or preciseness in spoken or written communication. In this case however, entropy quite literally has an effect on every thing in the universe. Entropy explains the reason why if one were to leave a glass of water outside in an open environment, the water will eventually evaporate given the temperature is above 0 C (32 F). One would naturally assume the underlying reason for the missing water to be evaporation, which is in a way correct. However, the reason why evaporation even occurred is because of entropy. The molecules of water in the glass whi...

The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses  by Eric Ries I will admit, this was a difficult book to stay focused on.  The subject is interesting but the presentation is a little dry. Agile being the word of the decade, all of us in the tech world are familiar with the basic concepts of the book - minimum viable product, constant iteration, and capturing the right metrics are critical for any successful product. In the first few chapters of the book , Eric Ries walks us through many examples of failed startups, and the principal reason for the failures were not understanding the customer's needs, attempting to solve a problem that does not exist or releasing a final product without iterative development to incorporate the customer's feedback.  All the anecdotes emphasize on the Build-Measure-Feedback loop to deliver a sustainable product. To persevere in the same direction or pivot to a new path ba...

Being from the Pacific Northwest , we are not new to whale-watching. We have done trips around the San Juan islands to see pods of Orca whales at a reasonable distance, even seen a gray whale resting on a shore on the Central Oregon coast. So we went in with a certain level of excitement to see the migratory humpback whales all the way down at Baja California but not with the expectation to be blown away. Boy, were we wrong about that! First things first - our captain and the two ladies-  marine biologist Barbara and photographer/guide Tania were absolutely awesome. They kept us safe, all the while regaling us with whale anecdotes and facts about the region and its geographical features. The close up views of the famous El Arco , Lovers beach and Land’s End with the colony of sea lions resting on the rocks were an added bonus.  The boat ride on the the beautiful turquoise Sea of Cortez was more or less smooth but as soon as we got onto Pacific waters, it w...