Friday, January 11, 2019

Learning Dispatch - January 12th, 2019 - New Year Learning

To write is to share an intimate slide/slice/moment with the world around you. I feel it is a way to capture a life experience and to hold the nuances of it in time. Memory is not a worthy companion in the long run. It become weaker as time passes. To write for me is to present this moment, this experience, this person and this day in the way you perceive it now. I also write because I feel this burning desire to learn about the world around me and then to share what I've learned with a few people that really matter. As a reader, subscribing to these posts, you are really important to me and matter a lot to me.

It has been a while since I published my last post. It has been a rough year personally. I hope I am able to write more often this year. It is both therapeutic and fun for me personally.

I started reading the following three books this year namely,
  1. Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee about Casey Han, the daughter of two Korean immigrants and her travails, relationships and experiences after getting out of Princeton on a scholarship into the real world where she doesnt have a similar support structure
  2. The Art of Captaincy by Mike Brearley about the role of a captain in a cricket team
  3. Into the Silence by Wade Davis about the journey of one of the earliest expeditions to the highest point on planet earth
I am quite excited about reading each of these books. More recently I have also developed an interest in geo politics and bought two large maps of India and the World. I try to pick out a country each day and then learn as much as I can about it through the day. It is quite insightful. Each country has its own set of economic, political, historical and cultural beliefs. It is almost like traveling to another country by reading about it over the internet. Also you push yourself out of your comfort zone and expose yourself to these new belief systems. 

Map Image 1
I've been binging on some travel shows. There is a travel show I really liked as a child growing up at school. It was one of the main inspirations for my gap year and trip across India. It is called Departures and it is available on Netflix. It is about two friends who take some time off to visit different countries around the world. What is really cool about this show is that the two hosts, Scott and Jason are very conversational in a funny sort of way and it is almost like you go on this journey with them sitting right beside them. You can find out more at this link - Departures -The Show. Two other tv shows I started watching are 'Shark Tank' about business pitches and 'The Vietnam War: A Film' by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick.

Map Image 2
A few other recommendations is the film titled, 'First Man' (about the first man on the moon), the podcast by Amit Varma titled, 'The Seen and Unseen' (economics, politics and fun interviews) and this brilliant discussion titled, 'The Art of Political Power' from isquared by one of my favorite non fiction writers Robert Caro (highly recommend his portrait of Robert Moses titled the 'Power Broker'). 



Abhishek
January 12th, 2019

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