When we moved to the US, Radhika and I started to take meals only twice a day to save time. We tried it for a few days and then wondered as to why people say one should eat as often as possible. For some, a single day is a dopamine serenade. Breakfast, snack, lunch, tea+snacks, dinner, dessert, midnight snack!!! The world has been fed this falsehood that eating often is good for health. Imagine our pre-historic ancestors for a moment. It is hard to believe they had the luxury of evening 2 meals. For sure they turned out all ok. A year or so passed and then we wondered, what if we could stretch the idea and introduce something more drastic once a week. What if we had only one meal…. or…. what if we had no meals at all for an entire day? And thus we began to try a 36 hour fast every week.

We decided to start the fast on Monday night and break it on Wednesday morning. Tuesdays is just water and salts. Perhaps some lemon. But nothing else. The first one was brutal. I woke up in the night to pee and took my usual fast stride and realized just in time that I was losing my balance. We were dying to break our fast on Wednesday morning. And then came the loose motions in the afternoon. Obviously we were either not doing it right, or we had stretched too far too soon.

Coming from India, fasting is not an unheard of concept. Mostly done in the name of god, it is common for Indians to fast once in a week. Particularly, being Jains, Radhika’s family is quite accustomed to it. So after the first one, I did a little bit of reading. With the improved understanding, the next one was not that bad. Now, several weeks later, we are pros. Here’s what we learnt –

• Need to take sufficient salts with water. Lack of salts is the most common reason for a severe headache during fasting.
• Need to be active. It’s counter-intuitive, but a little bit of exercise perhaps kicks up the metabolic rate by starting to burn fat and hence keeps one energetic. The body needs to be told that there is no carbohydrates coming and it needs to start burning the fat.
• When we burn fat, it does not result into as much water as a by-product as does burning of carbohydrates. By definition, carbo-hydrates hydrate when they burn. Therefore, water in-take needs to be higher on fasting days.
• A little bit of baking soda with lemon helps to keep the acidity down as needed. Also, backing soda becomes salt in the stomach (sodium bi-carbonate plus hydrochloric acid in the stomach results into sodium chloride… which is nothing but common salt).
• Most importantly, the fast is broken gradually. First with just some Curds (Yogurt) in the morning and then solid food only by noon.

One strange observation I have had every time I fast for 36 hours – Body seems way more weak in the 24th hour than in the 36th hour. Infact, I can run a few miles without much sweat. Seems weird, but my hunch is that sleep has something to do with it. After the second night’s sleep, body has somehow learnt the new normal. Fat burning switch has perhaps turned fully on. Sleep continues to mystify me.

But why the heck are we doing it even? Not masochism for sure! Not for devotion either. There is plenty of research out there that proves the following –

• Reduces the risk of cancer
• Plenty of other health benefits including weight loss, better gut bacteria and so on…

But most importantly, I see it as a way of stopping dopamine seeking urges. It’s a means to slow down. When combined with meditation and a general distancing from other pleasure seeking activities, it helps to reset the dopamine baseline. I tend to appreciate simple pleasures of life much more after the fast. It is also like a marathon in many ways. The victory of mind over matter every Tuesday re-inforces the confidence that is much needed in running a hardware startup with your life partner and parenting 2 kids at the same time.

PS : For those who did not already notice, all the images used in this post are unreal. They are generated by stable diffusion. I love the freedom! Goodye gettyimages, adobestock and the likes.

I am again at HK airport on my way back to India. The lounge here happens to be my favorite place for blogging. It has been interesting as well as challenging times both at HK and China. Just completed a pilot batch of cradles before CNY and carrying some of them back to India. This completes my nearly 8 month stay at China (broken into chunks of 2 month trips).

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Before we proceed, let me set some expectations straight –

• This blog is for vegans who are vegan for the following reasons –
  • Helps the cause of non-violence
  • Saves the planet
• It is not for these types –
  • Strict vegans who don’t want to smell/taste meat. To be honest, as a vegan I find the smell at most restaurants disgusting, but I put up with it and don’t make a big fuss amidst friends of varied dietary preferences.
  • Religious vegans. Restaurants may have re-used the oil or the pan they used for cooking meat (exceptions being vegan restaurants).

If one is in for a long haul in Shenzhen, it is impractical to seek out a vegan place everyday. But a typical restaurant usually has 1-2 dishes (of about 50 dishes) that are vegan. Most Chinese laugh and pack me off when I ask them if they have a meal that does not have egg, meat or fish. But there are ways to work around that –

Case 1: You see something interesting, but the menu says it has egg/chicken. This is often the case with fried rice.

Say or show the following in a translate app –

不想要肉，不想要鱼，不想要鸡蛋。只有蔬菜。

请向我显示菜单中的项目。

Translates to –

Dont want meat, dont want fish, dont want egg. Only vegetables.Show me the items in the menu.

Try saying it like this (does not match the text above exactly, but this is what people seem to understand) –

“boo yaw rou, boo yaw yu, boo yaw jidaan. Soo-the” Show the menu and say.. “see-an-she”.

Case 2: You scan the menu with the waiter, but you cant find anything vegan.

Say or show the following in a translate app –

我要这个。没有肉，没有鱼，没有鸡蛋。

Translates to –

I want this one. Without meat, without fish, without egg.

You can say it like this –

“Wo yaw chege, may-yo rou, may-yo yu, may-yo jidaan”

Popular veggie dishes that are available in most places. One can order some vegetable with rice (say Mee-faan for white rice ) –

Beans, Eggplant or both. This is one of my favorites. Chinese eggplants are the best ones I have ever had.

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Cauliflower

• 

Cabbage

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Decent places around HQB for vegetarians –

Vegan (Sometimes, there is egg, but you can clearly see it). Futian has limited choices. Nanshan has more choices including some which have imitation meat.

• Wanshan Tianchang Vegeterian Restaurant (万善天厨素食店) – https://goo.gl/maps/SkSSzZuzJBTJBsMZ7. There is a buffet everyday for lunch (on working days). Super good at supper low cost.
• New Plum Garden Yuantong – https://goo.gl/maps/kQ62p5vzwn5X1qa9A (福田区深圳市广东省)
• Namaste Indian Restaurant
• Dawat Indian Restaurant – On the expensive side.
• DingDingXiang – Plenty of veggie items to pick up and make your own bowl. Find it in Lotto near the escalators near Huanqiang plaza hotel.
• Subway sandwiches – Just take the veggies.
• NYPD pizzas – Has one vegetarian option

Intent : Secure VPN setup for bypassing firewalls. Not meant for setup of a virtual company network for secure exchange of information.

Step 1 : Setup a free tier AWS account. Can skip this step if an account is already setup. Login into your AWS account.

Step 2: Find a good location for your server. Your VPN server has to sit between the majority of the sites you access and you. For example, if you are in Asia and significant traffic is in US, HK and Tokyo make good choices. Take a look at the undersea cable map below to decide –

Step 3: Choose the region in the top right corner of your AWS console.

Step 4: Browse to EC2 service

Step 5: Launch an EC2 instance.

Step 6 : Search for ubuntu instance and choose the top result (64-bit, x86)

Step 7 : Launch the instance. You may be asked to create a key or choose one. If you are creating. Make sure you download the key and keep it safely. There is no other way of logging into the newly created instance if you don’t have the key. A couple of useful links are shown on the following page. If you are new to all of this, do check out the links to understand how to login into the instance.

Step 8: Login into the instance using the key.

Step 9: Prepare for fast encryption and decryption (install libsodium). . Read this page and you will understand why – https://bearssl.org/speed.html. Also, change the TCP congestion handling algo

#install libsodium
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install python-m2crypto
sudo apt-get -y install build-essential
git clone https://github.com/jedisct1/libsodium.git
cd libsodium
git checkout stable
./configure 
make 
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig
cd - 

#install BBR
wget --no-check-certificate https://github.com/teddysun/across/raw/master/bbr.sh 
chmod +x bbr.sh 
sudo ./bbr.sh

Step 10: Speed up the routing, congestion handling. Be extremely careful while copying and pasting these commands. You can completely mess up the system by getting it wrong.

sudo su - #all commands as root
echo  "net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control = bbr" >> /etc/sysctl.conf
echo "* soft nofile 51200" >> /etc/security/limits.conf
echo "* hard nofile 51200" >> /etc/security/limits.conf
echo "session required pam_limits.so" >> /etc/pam.d/common-session
echo "ulimit -n 51200" >> /etc/profile

Step 11 : Install and configure shadowsocks

sudo apt-get -y install shadowsocks

Edit /etc/shadowsocks/config.json

{
   "server":"0.0.0.0",
   "server_port":8888,
   "local_address": "127.0.0.1",
   "local_port":1080,
   "password":"12345678",
   "timeout":300,
   "method":"chacha20",
   "fast_open": false,
   "workers": 1,
   "prefer_ipv6": false
}

Step 12: Go to the EC2 console and edit the security group on AWS to make sure the required ports a open.

Note the name of the security group. Then go the security groups in the EC2 console.

Choose, the security group noted in the earlier step. Although not advised, just for simplicity sake, just open all ports from 1000 onwards for both TCP and UDP –

Step 13 : For client side setup, follow the instructions, go here – https://shadowsocks.org/en/download/clients.html

Intent : Secure VPN setup for bypassing firewalls. Not meant for setup of a virtual company network for secure exchange of information.

Step 1 : Setup a free tier AWS account. Can skip this step if an account is already setup. Login into your AWS account.

Step 2: Find a good location for your server. Your VPN server has to sit between the majority of the sites you access and you. For example, if you are in Asia and significant traffic is in US, HK and Tokyo make good choices. Take a look at the undersea cable map below to decide –

Step 3: Choose the region in the top right corner of your AWS console.

Step 4: Browse to EC2 service

Step 5: Launch an EC2 instance.

Step 6 : Search for ubuntu instance and choose the top result (64-bit, x86)

Step 7 : Launch the instance. You may be asked to create a key or choose one. If you are creating. Make sure you download the key and keep it safely. There is no other way of logging into the newly created instance if you don’t have the key. A couple of useful links are shown on the following page. If you are new to all of this, do check out the links to understand how to login into the instance.

Step 8: Login into the instance using the key.

Step 9: Download Algo VPN scripts from here . Or directly –

git clone https://github.com/trailofbits/algo.git

Step 10: Follow the steps prescribed here to install the dependencies, edit the user list in config.cfg and launch the script – https://github.com/trailofbits/algo

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python3-pip
sudo apt install -y python3-virtualenv
python3 -m virtualenv --python="$(command -v python3)" .env && source .env/bin/activate && python3 -m pip install -U pip virtualenv && python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt

While running the script, two questions are important. The rest can be left to defaults.

What provider would you like to use?
11. Install to existing Ubuntu 18.04 or 19.04 server (Advanced)

And,

Enter the public IP address or domain name of your server: (IMPORTANT! This is used to verify the certificate).

Here, you have to enter the domain name as indicated on the EC2 console. Right click on the instance and click on “Connect” to find out the domain name. It should be something like – ec2-XX-XX-XX-XX.eu-central-1.compute.amazonaws.com

Step 11: Go to the EC2 console and edit the security group on AWS to make sure the required ports a open.

Note the name of the security group. Then go the security groups in the EC2 console.

Choose, the security group noted in the earlier step. Although not advised, just for simplicity sake, just open all ports from 1000 onwards for both TCP and UDP –

Step 12 : For client side setup, follow the instructions here.

Windows installer – https://download.wireguard.com/windows-client/wireguard-amd64-0.0.29.msi

You can locate the conf files and the PNG files for scanning in a subdirectory on the server –
/algo/configs/ec2-xx-xx-xx-xx.eu-central-1.compute.amazonaws.com/wireguard

Not too far into the future, we are going to get into a golden era of economics where everyone gets a fair share of the pie. The Economic Utopia. Yes, It is cliched, but I am an optimist, and for the lack of another word, I dare to call it Utopia. I wish I could write with such exuberance about the political structures of the future, but for now I will still stick to economics and hope that politics shall follow economics with a lag of couple of decades.

The history of economic structures has been all about just two dynamics – The creation of value and the subsequent distribution of profits. Different systems use different weights, both for the propagation of value and for the propagation of profits. Before I dive into the future, let’s understand the past through this perspective.

Creation of Value

Barely four centuries ago, very few people even knew the meaning of a company/corporation in it’s modern form. The English East India Company and the Dutch East India Company were formed in 1600 and 1612 respectively. There are examples of companies that date all the way back to 7th Century (Kongo Gumi, Japan), but most companies that existed before the 16th century were essentially family businesses where it was clear who was in-charge. The family died, the company in most cases died. More importantly, the company went bankrupt, the family went bankrupt too. The key innovation that came about in the 16th-17th century was the concept of a virtual entity. The company had a life of it’s own, independent from it’s founders. Which is why in some places it is called a corporation, or an incorporated (literally meaning “formed into a living body” in Latin). Successful companies are essentially value creators. They take raw materials and man power and deliver something that makes the world a better place (not talking about tobacco companies here). Others pay for that value so that the company thrives.

But this was not how it was always. Once upon a time, empires, kingdoms and fiefs ruled the lands. Such entities added value too. For example, they provided basic security, built trade channels and managed food supplies. But the payments received for the value were not necessarily with consent.

Time for some definitions –

VEEs – Value exchange entities. Entities which earn all of their income in commensurate to the value they add. The operative word is all. Individuals drawing fixed salaries from large corporate are obviously not VEEs.

There are two general trends through the history –

• The creation and sustenance of such VEEs has been simplifying. In the modern era, it has come down to individuals (we refer to them as freelancers).
• The size of the largest sustainable VEE has been increasing. We are so close to having a trillion dollar valuation company.

But no matter what the size of the VEE is, historically, it has always been challenging to estimate the value added by the VEE. This is where crypto comes in. Public verifiable ledger is the key to measuring contributions and distributing wealth while being fair and transparent.

VEEs could be –

• A person
• AI
• A group of AIs (sort of like a group of people forming a company)
• A company like it is in the current context
• A country
• or even the whole world.
• If Musk has is way, Mars as one VEE and Earth as another?

PS: I wrote this nearly two years ago. But fast-forward to 2021 : Covid seems to have already accelerated this process. With remote working being the norm, why should any boundaries matter any more. It is this loosely bound system of machines and humans which are the building blocks of the VEEs that I talk about in the article.

I have been working at TI for nearly 8 years now. I have also been living in Kadugodi for nearly 7 years in a self-owned apartment. I can already hear readers who are residents of Bangalore going “whoooaaa! Kadugodi to CV Raman Nagar!! How does this guy even do it?”. Thankfully, the truth is not as bad as it appears. I maintain very strict journey times to avoid peak traffic and manage the one way journey in 30-40 mins. My average is about 33 mins. Before I begin the rest of my story, I should thank Lord Vishnu for choosing to rest in Thirupathi. I don’t know if my theory is true, but I think Old Madras Road is maintained so that the travel to Thirupathi remains convenient. The population on this side of the city has burgeoned manifold, numerous junctions have been added, signals have come and gone, but my travel time stubbornly remains between 30-40 mins. There is some crazy disruption every few months, but the almighty gets into action soon to miraculously clear up the mess.

30-40 mins of one way commute is probably in the top 20 percentile levels in Bangalore (higher percentile = lesser travel), but it is still a significant amount of time. For a long time, I was literally at war with myself; I was considering moving back to some place closer. But self-owned homes kind of grow on you; Readers who live self-owned homes can relate with me. The roots just keep going deeper. Reminds me of the great Kannada poet Kuvempu who said “ಮನೆಯನೆಂದೂ ಕಟ್ಟದಿರು …. ಓ ನನ್ನ ಚೇತನ ಆಗು ನೀನು ಅನಿಕೇತನ”. Translated as – “Rest nowhere on the unending road, never build a binding nest …. Never touch the boundary, Remain infinite and boundless!!” in a famous poem. I now know that he meant it both figuratively and literally. Once the realisation dawned upon me that a large part of my life is going to spent on the road for a long time to come, I began to think about the means to use the time spent more efficiently.

One could consider hiring a chauffeur, but it is an expensive option that costs upwards of Rs.12k per month and my motion sickness does not help either. I am at ease only when I am in complete control. The brake-gear-clutch-gas drudgery was unavoidable.

Back in the days when smart phone technology was not upto the mark, it was quite hard to do justice to 30-40 mins of travel time. I used some of my time on the way to office planning the day’s activities. If there is a particularly hard technical problem that demands a fair bit of imagination, a stalled car in a traffic signal is one of the best place to think about it. Infact, ~50% of the interesting ideas that I have come up with have been on old madras road.  In the evenings on the return journey, I would spend the time recalling the key events, discussions and decisions. But day dreaming is risky at times; there is always this street ninja who is out to surprise you.  On an average, I could use ~20% of the travel time thinking about things that mattered. Taking calls is another activity that one can do on the road. But our R&D team is entirely located in one office in Bangalore and there are not too many calls that I need to attend around the travel times.

Radio used to be a decent entertainment option, but most of the stuff on Radio these days is reality advertisements and other garbage. With the advent of smart phone, things changed remarkably. Music became a major component of travel. I am terrible singer, but who cares?? No one can hear me outside the car. Singing along classical singers became one of my favourite pass-times. Google Music added an entirely new dimension. I now have my entire collection online. I have playlists for various times-of-the-day, moods, people in my car etc.

Most recently, listening to books on Amazon’s Audible has become my favourite activity. I spend ~Rs.1000 every month, but that covers for nearly 50% of my time in the car. I don’t mind the traffic at all these days. Infact, there are times when I am close to one of those critical moments in a book and I wish that that last signal on my journey stays at red for a little while longer.

I am writing a blog almost after two years of silence. There is a good reason for the silence as well as the breaking of it. My daughter kept me very busy – That answers the first part. The mosquitoes got back at me.. and not just me, Radhika (my wife) too. My last post was ironically about my fight against mosquitoes when I was trying to secure the home and the surroundings before I got Anushka (my daughter) back to our Bangalore home from the maike at Pune. So I had to write this and get back at the mosquitoes again. Let me begin with some drama –

The Fall

On June 2nd, we were waiting for our Bangalore-Pune flight boarding to begin. I was in some sort of in-cohesive mental and physical state. Suddenly Radhika, who was until that moment running around Anushka, said – “Hey! we are at the wrong gate. What are you doing??” I turned around and saw, she was right! Run!! We were the last people to enter the flight. We were even lucky that they let us in. I still wonder where I got the energy from to run in that state. Earlier that day in the morning, the day started quite normally. We sent Anushka to her pre-school and started taking a peaceful morning walk. A little while later, Radhika went to shop some vegetables, I was preparing to go to office and suddenly I started feeling feverish. By the time Radhika was back, I was lying in two layers of blanket trying to feel normal. Immediately, she took me to the hospital. Columbia Asia is supposed to be a whatever * hospital and still they caused so much delay in just taking my blood while I was sitting (rather trying to sit) on the bench. Anyways, let me get back at them with all the *#& words included  in another blog. 2 hrs later I was diagnosed Dengue positive.

I was in a state of shock! Not just because it was Dengue, but because if there is a competition on paranoia about mosquitoes, I would be in the top 99.99 percentile range. Damn it, I even wrote a blog about it thinking I have mastered the art of keeping the pesky buzzers away. By evening I was having fever close to 104°F and paracetamol tablets weren’t really helping beyond an hour of relief. Radhika had started to feel unwell too. But it was not as bad as it was with me and so we ignored it assuming that it must be some minor viral fever and she just popped in a paracetamol. But since both were feeling unwell and there was Anushka to be taken care of, we decided to mitigate the risk and fly to Pune immediately. Thankfully my father-in-law is a doctor and runs his own nursing home in Pune with the home on the top floor and the nursing home in the lower floors.

Once we reached Pune, all was taken care of. I was immediately on saline and a cocktail of drugs was pushed into my veins within 1 hr of my arrival. Radhika was feeling all ok for the moment. A day later, her fever started to recur. But since I was the Jamai Raja and she wasn’t falling down like me, people brushed her complaints. Infact, she was taking care of me. Finally, on morning of 4th June, after repeated complaints, they tested her blood and she was turned out to be Dengue positive too. One hell of a Sati Savithiri. She decided to give me company even with Dengue. I hate the movie, but it was our little “The Notebook” moment. From that moment till 9th June, we slept together for the longest time ever!! I can’t remember much in between as it was just drugs and nightmares all through. And oh! yes, I remember the unbelievably bitter Papaya leaf extract too. Supposedly it helped, I reached a lowest platelet count of 75,000 which is considered very safe (but who knows if it really helped. Radhika drank Aloe Vera and she seemed to be doing even better). But there was one particular night I remember. My creativity suddenly spiked. I was thinking, blabbering and writing like never before (must be the tramadol doze, it works like Ganja). If the moment had lasted for 10 more hours, I would have probably solved all the unsolved problems in physics. But alas, I was juiced out after 30 mins. At that moment, I doubt started creeping in my mind that many of the products of genius such as Beethoven’s works, Mozart’s works or even my personal hero Feynman’s works are probably products of Hashish, Ganja, LSD or something like that. Can’t say for sure till we invent a time machine.

Although the fever had subsided, it took us a couple more days before we could start moving around. Even on 12th June, one floor felt like a major trek in the western ghats. The illness had left me feeling like I was part of some major gang war and I was flogged all over. I do not know if something could be worse, but Radhika supposedly felt even worse with major joint pains. She even almost fainted once due to low BP. Finally, we returned to Bangalore on the morning of 13th. The only good news was that Anushka did not get dengue and she spent time happy times with her maternal grandparents.

Back to Paranoia

The battle was lost, but the war had to go on. I realized I can’t fight alone. Some of us in our apartment (mostly dengue veterans) got together and discussed. We started fumigation using citronella and neem oil on a larger scale around the apartments. Got a very good contact in Bangalore to source the same at reasonable prices – Falcon essential oils. For homes, one can put the oils directly in a mist sprayer and spray it around. A mix of 80% citronella with 10% neem and 10% eucalyptus is quite effective as well as pleasant to the senses. Note that the odor is quite strong, so don’t spray it like your car cleaner liquid. Also, it does not help much to spray it all over the house. The spray has to be mainly used near the entry points for mosquitoes such as front doors, windows without insect meshes etc. For common areas in apartments, a minimum of 1 litre per acre is recommended. Since one can’t spray so thin and even, mix 1 litre in 100 litres of water and use a regular fumigation equipment to fumigate the common areas. Spray the oils at about 4:00PM as dengue mosquitoes are day mosquitoes and become active well before the regular mosquitoes start their onslaught. There are some conveniently bottled sprays such as the ones below, but they are way more expensive as compared to procuring from some local essential oils dealer –

Radhika and I started applying the Dabur repellant cream when we step out –

it says “naturals”, but it is not. As of now, 100% guarantee from mosquito bytes is provided only by a reasonably safe chemical called DEET and this cream contains the same. it’s safety on children is highly debated on the web. I wouldn’t take a chance given that it can cause neurological disorders. But it is certified by NIMA to be used even on babies. Natural solutions work, but only to some extent. For my daughter, I had to try various creams before finalizing on this one from Vitro –

Also, you get various citronella patches such as these –

It is recommended to use two of them simultaneously. One on the leg and one on the shoulder for best effects. But as I mentioned before, none of these natural solutions are 100% percent effective against mosquito bites.

For completion sake, I want to mention again that insect nets on windows are a must in a city like Bangalore as mentioned in my previous post. There are very good vendors such as the ones below (I have tried both and got excellent service)

Pinchood – Specialize in magnetic nets around the windows. But french windows are not exactly their area of expertize.

Delmen – Good at handling French windows and front doors. Might be good at normal magnetic nets around windows too, but I have not tried.

Even after doing all of the above, it is better to flush mosquitoes by using regular mosquito coils for about 40 mins in the evening with all doors and windows closed. You can go around for a walk to avoid all the Allethrin breathing. Once you are back, open all the windows (with meshes of course) and feel free to breath again. To make it even better, some fragrance from a sandal dhoop from Cauvery can help.

Lastly, I wrote this blog hoping it will spread awareness on prevention of dengue. Note that all I have written about is the last line of defense. The ideal way is to prevent mosquito breeding itself by making sure there is not stagnant water and blah blah!. You will find that on NHP site. But unfortunately, sometimes you don’t exactly have control on what your neighbours are doing.