In Pursuit of Wisdom

When I first went to see my house 1st week of November, I noticed a Tesla charger installed on the garage. It got me the idea that I need to buy a Tesla. I explored the option to buy a Tesla a few years back when we went to visit our friend Nody and Russell in Austin, Texas. But I decided against that considering the relatively lower milage and hence frequent need to charge the car outside. At that time Tesla didn't have as many super chargers like today (30,000+). But now that the milage is significantly higher and my Honda Accord is not in a good shape, I found the legitimate excuse to consider buying a Tesla, in addition to the fact that electrical vehicles are going to be the future of transportation. I initially thought of buying a Tesla Model Y SUV but then quickly opted for Model 3 Sedan. Few days ago, I showed Shusmita Model 3 in a road and she didn't feel quite content with its relatively smaller size. So I decided to pick Model S instead. In terms of color I was think...

2021 was another eventful year in my life. Here are some reflections on it and what I am looking forward to. Looking Back on 2021 How do I feel about the past year? What were my emotional highlights and lowlights? What’s most important in my life right now? What really matters to me? How did I do on my most important priorities this past year? What have I learned? What do I need from myself and others to make an honest assessment of my life, my priorities and what matters most to me and those I love? How clearly do my actions and choices reflect those priorities? When thinking of these questions few things come to mind. By start of this year I have accepted the fate of pandemic of covid-19 and how it has changed our life style. I accepted I can't just travel anywhere I like including visiting Bangladesh to meet my parents, brothers and relatives. I continued reading and writing book reviews every week. I overshot my goodreads book reading challenge by finishing 81 books this year ...

Finally Shusmita and I purchased a house close to my daughter's school in Fremont. We have been thinking of buying a house for some time but I had to wait until my stock lockup period was over early November for me to be able to arrange the down payment. We got the keys yesterday (23rd November), just a day ahead of the 45 days closing deadline. When middle of this year we started to look for hosue, I thought we will need some time before we can find one that we like. I had early 2022 in the back of my mind. But as it happens, all on a sudden we liked a house so much that we couldn't resist and went through a bid war to win. It's a 5 bed 4 bath 2 storied house, 3122 sq ft with 8160 lot size. We used Redfin agent and did our loan processing with Rocket Mortgage. We are very grateful to our friends and family who supported and guided us along the way. Wali Bhai and Asha bhabi have been visiting all the potential houses that we went to check. Nody, Russell, Ashfaq, Shumi, Sumi...

Similar to   last year , we had a great Marqeta Talent Show this year as well. I participated in 2 sessions this time – one solo and another in a group performance. As I have been reading lots of leadership and management books, I came up with an idea to promote some of the very best books I read and am about to read. Hence I wrote a fictional letter to our CEO using many of the name of books as a building block to compose the sentences of the letter. I also put the image of the book after the names of each book so that its easier for the audience to visualize. I hope you will enjoy it. For my group performance I read out loud the following quote in English, Bengali and Hindi. The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life. –  Rabindranath Tagore যে গাছ লাগায়, সে জানে যে সে কখনো তাদের ছায়ায় বসবে না, সে অন্তত জীবনের অর্থ বুঝতে শুরু করেছে।

  My friend  Suman Hossain (Ashfaq) came with excitement last weekend after finishing this book and asked us that we must give him a pen and paper and listen to him. He explained  The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity  by Carlo M. Cipolla which he just finished! He even bought few copies of this book and gifted me one to read quickly (tiny book, you can finish in half an hour). I finished it and am equally excited to share with you fo what I understood about intelligent, helpless, bandit and stupid people across any population and time. The Five basic laws of human stupidity described are -  Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation. The probability that a certain person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person. A stupid person is one who causes losses to another person or a group of people while they gain nothing or may even suffer losses. Non-stupid people always underestimate the ...

I got to know  Shahed Islam  via LinkedIn when he commented on some of my leadership posts that I shared in my wall. We found common interest and enthusiasm in the area of leadership and management theories and practices. Hence we synced up in a zoom call one day and talked about why we are so fond of Patrick Lencioni, John Maxwell, Simon Sinek, Malcolm Gladwell, Gary Vaynerchuk et al. Since then we have been discussing several topics in a monthly basis taking break from our busy time of work and life. He demonstrates what we very well know as servant leadership and is keen to help out people both here in USA as well as in Bangladesh. So when he came up with a plan for a series of interviews with different leaders and picked me to talk about a topic I was happy to participate. As a result here is my half an hour talk on his site the  Managed Coder .

স্কুল জীবন থেকেই আমি একটু আড্ডাবাজ ছিলাম। বিভিন্ন সময়ে বিভিন্ন হোস্টেলে থাকার কারণে এ জিনিসটি যেন আমার রক্তের সাথেই মিশে গেছে। বিস্ববিদ্যালয় জীবনের শুরুতেই এ জিনিসটি আরো প্রগাঢ় হয়ে দেখা দেয়। আড্ডার কারণেই পরিচয় হয় আরিফ, রাসেল, তামজিদ, কিশোর, শামীম, ফয়সাল, ফাহিম ও পাভেলের সাথে। আমরা নয় জন প্রতিম বর্ষ থেকেই যেন হয়ে যাই এক প্রাণ। এমন কোনো দিন নেই যে, আমরা অর্থনীতি বিভাগের চায়ের দোকান কিংবা সেমিনার অথবা ক্লাস শেষে ক্লাস রুমে বসেই ২/৩ ঘন্টা আড্ডা না মেরেছি। অনার্স পরীক্ষার শেষে ক্লাস বন্ধ ছিল বিধায় (অনার্সের রেজাল্ট না হলে মাস্টার্সের ক্লাস শুরু হয় না) , আমরা সপ্তাহের নির্দিষ্ট দুটো দিনে টিএসসির স্বপনের দোকানে আড্ডা মারতাম। সেদিন ছিল ১৯ এ আগস্ট বৃহস্পতিবার। ক্লাস শেষে আমরা বিভাগীয় সেমিনারে বসে প্রায় দু'ঘন্টার মতো বিভিন্ন বিষয়ে গল্প ও একটি বিষয় নিয়ে তর্কও করি। তারপর সবাই যার যার বাসার দিকে রওনা হই। সবাই চলে যাওয়ার পরও আরিফ, রাসেল ও আমি যাই টিএসসিতে স্বপনের দোকানে চা খেতে। সেখানে প্রায় ১ ঘন্টা থাকি। শনিবারে দেখা হবে বলে (বিদায় বেলায় সব সময়ই আমরা পরে কবে দেখা হবে সেই দিনটি স্মরণ করিয়ে...

  Last weekend I finished  Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life  by Jordan B. Peterson. This was a much anticipated book for me as I have been a big fan of Jordan's talks after reading his earlier book  12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos . I have not been able to make up my mind which book I liked more and have given 5 stars to both in my goodreads reviews. Unlike traditional self-help writers, the writing style of Jordan is distinct as combination of scholarly, dense, profound, and filled with allusion. As was the case with the earlier book, Peterson starts each chapter with a broad life rule, meanders off onto a somewhat long-winded but very well-backed dialogue about said rule and why we should implement it, then finally, finishes by stating the said rule again. Peterson’s personal style and philosophy are on full display here, and he has cultivated them almost perfectly in the years since his last release. His ability to willingly take the inevitable darknes...

I have been waiting eagerly for Godzilla vs Kong  for the last several months. It's finally going to be available in HBO Max and US Theatres simultaneously tomorrow. I anticipate it will be the biggest hit film after the pandemic broke out. I won't be surprised if it crossed a billion dollars in revenue.  Needless to say that I am in the camp of Team Kong!  I have asked Wali bhai to come to my house after office so that we can watch the movie together in my projector-based home theatre. Some of the memes and buzzes around this film are noted below. What is KING to a GOD? - #teamgodzilla Kong bows to one. - #teamkong We need Kong. The world needs him to stop what's coming. One will fall.

  Finished reading the newly published   No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention   by Netflix Co-founder   Reed Hastings   and Professor   Erin Meyer  (the author of   The Culture Map ) yesterday. I pre-ordered this book last month in anticipation and started listening as soon as it was available in Audible. This book narrates a fascinating view of the Silicon Valley giant Netflix's radical corporate psychology and culture. I got my share of shocks when I first read   Netflix Culture Deck   a few years ago for the first time, the document that was claimed by Facebook COO   Sheryl Sandberg   as   probably the most important document ever to come out of Silicon Valley . Before being hired by an ex-Netflix leader at Marqeta (Manish Pandit), I worked at Roku for one and half years which was a spin-off from Netflix. There a big chunk of my team-mates I worked day-to-day were from Netflix including my hiring manag...

Like many of you, I am looking forward to a better 2021. So happy new year! But I want to also acknowledge that 2020 brought some good things to me despite the Corona Pandemic across the world. While we are safe, many of our friends and relatives lost their near and dears during this pandemic. We are still in lockdown and counting days to get over this pandemic in the new year. I, along with my wife, son and daughter came back from 3 weeks of Bangladesh trip in the first week of January 2020. I am glad we could go for the trip in as the Coronavirus pandemic and eventual lockdown started within a few weeks of our return from Bangladesh.  It was so refreshing to see my parents, brothers and their families, and my in-laws along with my school/college/university/chess friends back home.   I successfully hosted an engineering meetup at Marqeta that many bay area engineers attended; it was a lively tech talk from  Roko Ruze on Cockroach DB  at our Oakland office.  Shu...