Data Science
It was the summer of 2020, and the world was still getting used to the WFH life. The data science team at Zendrive was doing the same, but we had a helpful distraction on our side. An interesting chicken-and-egg problem had come up.
We received a business requirement for a detector that could separate motorcycle trips from car trips. The geography we were working with was the beautiful country of Colombia.
To even begin tackling the problem, we needed to understand which trips were definitely made on a motorcycle. So, here we go.
What we have:
- Millions of trips in…
An insensitive and unhelpful privilege
I’m very privileged to have a roof over my head and food on my table. I live a fairly comfortable life, and regularly add to my savings. I also have a father who has been regularly contributing to his life savings for decades.
These two facts put me in the wealthiest 7.4% of the world’s population.
- I haven’t written a blog post in forever.
- I can’t be bothered to spend time optimizing titles and thinking of verbose copy.
- I am tired of trying to be positive, and being socially punished for not maintaining a positive demeanor.
- I am tired of trying to wake up and get to work, or being creative, or being supportive, or being helpful, while I myself am struggling.
- I am tired of reading and watching about people suffering all over the world and wanting to care about all of it.
- I am tired of pretending I’m okay being single and having average…
And it may help fix the problem
Since the early days of the pandemic, a colleague of mine has complained about working from home. They’ve been struggling with separating work from life. They’ve struggled with boundaries.
This colleague used his commute as a cue to connect and disconnect from work. In other words, he started thinking about work once he came into office, and stopped thinking once he got in a cab. Now he didn’t have that, and he suffered.
This is not a unique situation, as we learned in the pandemic. Conversations about mental health degradation became a lot more common. A lot of people found…
This time, I think it’s going to stick.
In November 2019, I started watching a Dungeons and Dragons show called Critical Role. At that point, Critical Role had been going for 5 years.
It was a behemoth, with a back catalog totaling 840+ hours of content. To put that in context, the entirety of FRIENDS is 88 hours. Critical Role had 10x the runtime, and is still ongoing.
It took me 9 months, but on July 14th 2020 I caught up to the show. That day I had a horrible realization.
You see, to catch up to such a series, you have to A) love it, and B)…
I went on a very successful weight loss journey in 2020, losing 19 kg (~42 lbs). This was the culmination of years of frustration at my weight and my inability to feel healthy, energetic, and whole.
In 2021, I have regained ~4 kgs. A small part of that is working out with very heavy weights, and a big part is eating for comfort. I have somewhat spiraled back into the old habits that led to frustration.
But I’m not sweating it at the moment. There is no panic, and I’m okay with putting on a little weight.
The reason for…
I’m a child of fantasy, having grown up on cartoon violence and outlandish, mystical storytelling. I love foreign planets, strange dimensions, larger-than-life characters, and beasts of different configurations.
The power of imagination is the greatest superpower we have. It allows us to tell stories and experience a different reality, a reality that doesn’t exist and might never will. It allows us to experience feelings over non-existent people, and share a connection with each other like nothing else does.
So it’s difficult when you see someone bastardize that for profit.
Godzilla vs Kong is Legendary Pictures’ 4th film in their “MonsterVerse,”…
Does that even matter?
Last week, in a meeting with a friend and a colleague, in a heated moment, I verbalised a desire that I couldn’t acknowledge before — “I want to become a limitless well of positivity.”
In the days since, I’ve ruminated on that. Positivity, by itself, is empty. To become meaningful, positivity must be forged through pain. It must be tempered by loneliness, and cooled by love.
Self-improvement is a billion-dollar industry when it shouldn’t be.
Self-improvement is a billion dollar industry when it shouldn’t be.
It’s successful because there is a genuine demand for it. People are constantly asking, “how do I make my life better? How do I become richer/ happier/ healthier/ more successful?”
The answers to those asks are more complicated than we might care to think. Life is intersectional, and the circumstances of your social status, race, gender and sex, education, wealth, place of living, age, and a thousand random events all merge to create a tangled mess.
In between all of that, you have an industry full of people mimicking the…
My friend Abhilash, a trainer, has a great story about professionalism.
A senior member of his audience once asked him about “these young people coming to work in t-shirts and jeans.” Abhilash tells that story in the context of conflict management, but a portion of his answer is about how formalwear has evolved over the years.
“Back in the mid-20th century, formalwear meant a 3-piece suit, and a 2-piece suit was considered casual. The shirt and trousers you are wearing would be considered unprofessional,” he shares.
The definition of professional-wear has evolved over the years.
What does the word “professional”…
Vaibhav Gupta
Professional technical writer, Distinguished Toastmaster. I write about mental health and self-awareness. Also see https://medium.com/thorough-and-unkempt
