mervelek 1st generation author

can i buy some chestnuts for 10 dollars?
sure, here you go.
how much?
10 dollars.
thanks, have a good night.

"i don't know where we are going but i know exactly how to get there."

this quote made me stop and ask the most important question one can ask; "who talks like that!" and i'm happy to report that i'm satisfied with what i've found. quite an interesting guy (see: boyd varty interview)

today, i heard that this 18-year-old indian prodigy became the new chess world champion and wondered, wasn't magnus carlsen still the world champ? i quickly typed "gukesh dommaraju" on google to learn more about him, and there appeared a purple button at the bottom with a celebration icon. after clicking it, confetti started raining down from the top of my screen, made of chess pieces! i love how responsive google is to such immediate events; it was very impressive.

today, he won the world chess championship against liren ding, and not only that but also put his name in history as the youngest person to be titled such. wow, i just found out he became a grandmaster at the age of 13! if anyone wants to play that epic game that happened between the two, here's the link.

wondering here, am i the only one thinking chess should be in the olympics as well? my argument is simple: if the olympics celebrate pushing the limits of one's body parts, why doesn't the brain count as a body part too?

yesterday, i was considering taking some time off to review the year and make some plans for 2025. then, i received an email from david spink, one of my favorite weekly newsletters, where he discussed this almost mythical "new year's resolution" and how to go about it differently this time.

i found it both very resonating and quite eye-opening. in the email, he shares a free notion documentation to follow through and start warming up for the new year. he said this exercise takes a couple of weeks, so i've already started with the first chapter: reviewing the year.

the main difference is that we tend to go for the things that are far outside of us (based on who we are currently), and then we make sure to harass ourselves constantly to go get them and judge ourselves at the end of the year on how well we match with what we set out to do.

in his version, he says that instead of trying to expand through outward goals - which usually stem from satisfying those nasty emotional wounds such as not being enough, not feeling belong, and so on. he says start with getting to know where you're at by discovering your essence, who you are as much as you can, and from there, ascend above through expansion *

in short, it's all about choosing between becoming first and then having it vs going for "having it" first, then finding out, to your surprise, who the hell you became during the process! which is a whole other topic of discussion :)

yet another new experience has just been announced, called "train for gladiator ii glory." among all the other icons, this one is arguably the most iconic. it's set to take place in the actual colosseum in rome, and they've shared a bit about it on their site. it will feature real gladiator fighting. *

i'm not sure if they'll be choosing actual fighters for this, if not, it might be boring to watch. and will there even be a mass audience allowed to attend? so many questions... it's happening on november 27th, so i guess we'll just have to wait and see.

what i like about this entire icon series is how airbnb focuses on individual experiences rather than trying to cater to everyone, yet still manages to capture the attention of a large audience.

there's a lot of heated debate about whether something like this should even be allowed, but honestly, amidst all the crazy, bad things happening in the world, why not let a crazy good thing like this happen? can't we just enjoy something, even for a little while?

aaand here's their promise: (i'm sold!)
"you will feel the adrenaline rush, the sand between your fingers, and the weight of your armor. you will hear the echoes of gladiators past in the colosseum's catacombs and the unmistakable clank of steel in its arena. you will see the moon's reflection off the travertine stone through the sweat dripping down your face. you will become a gladiator."

one of those books that opened a whole new window to my view of life. i started looking at mice, dolphins, and even the plants around me in a completely different way. i also feel the need to give a shout-out to those dusty pages with the meat-eating conversation at the restaurant at the end of the universe, and that hilarious bit about the robots going offline because of arthur's demand for the perfect tea :)

(and no, i'm not even gonna dive into the whole 42 thing). also i dedicated the limeguide footer note to this masterpiece:

"creating limeguide is our desperate attempt to make "the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy" a real thing --minus the intergalactic hitchhiking... for now."

a renaissance man, fun, intellectual, nerd, multicultural, and genuinely good person; at least this is how i see him. as someone who is a regular reader of his essays, i can say his ideas, insights, and overall demeanor in both professional and everyday life make him a role model worth emulating. his education is equally extraordinary (as mentioned above).

in a y combinator interview, he mentioned how, while working on the website they later sold to yahoo, he and his friend stumbled into the dark web out of curiosity. if i remember correctly, they were at harvard's library when the fbi detained them. during the interrogation, his friend explained, 'we were just curious to see what's going on there.' after a long questioning session, they were placed under fbi surveillance for a while. classic hacker stuff, right?!

oh, and here's a photo of him (he's the second from the left).

lost was the show that kick-started an interest in me to tell stories. it taught me it doesn't matter how cliche your storyline is; if you can tell it well and keep things interesting, you can make everyone glued to their screen. (come on guys, it wasn't just the mystery that kept us begging for the next episode; there was more to it!)

it's like lost opened a new era for tv series back then and had a major influence on what kind of content people wanted: well thought out, full of intricacy, super detailed, nuanced, and featuring interesting, complex characters. i believe american tv series experienced its peak during this decade.

so this was my introduction to great storytelling, and from there, i kept binge-watching a lot of series and stumbled upon some epic ones along the way (see: house md), (see: breaking bad), (see: mad men), (see: how i met your mother), (see: house of cards), and a whole bunch more...

all this subconscious education from the very best led me to write my own short stories, which i published on some websites. to my delight, i received some great feedback. nowadays, however, i don't write fiction; though it cracked open the writer within me. kudos to you lost :)

these noise-cancelling headphones i bought myself as a birthday gift are seriously top-tier in their league. i was totally torn between the sony wh-1000mx3 and these, i watched so many review videos it was crazy. and here's the breakdown i got from those videos: both headphones are neck and neck in music quality, sony's got a slight edge in noise cancellation, but bose wins hands down on comfort. since i'm all about comfort, i went with bose.

when my bose 35 ii arrived, the first thing i did was spend hours listening to pink floyd's discovery box set. it took me a few days to recover; my dreams were filled with these wild, crazy colors. it didn't just let me listen to the music; it showed it to me in colors too.

i've been using them for about a year now, and i'm like, every single cent i spent was totally worth it. i'm loving these headphones so much.

used to live in a basement apartment that faced the street. one day in spring, kids were playing out there, and out of nowhere, they all decided to gather around and started to sing the national anthem very loudly. even though i was used to their noise, this was different, what the hell is going on? after watching them singing full-heartedly, one of them started to talk fast and excitedly:

"dear watchers in front of their tv, we can assure you this will be one of the most epic soccer seasons. and now, the ball is on ronaldo, and ronaldo is running aaand he is passing the ball to messi. now the ball is on messi's foot and -oh no!- he dropped the ball! now ronaldo is coming fast..."

it went like that. by the way, there were around 10 kids or so, and half of their names turned out to be ronaldo, while the other half were messi (which they did not seem to be bothered at all!) so, all that evening, they imagined themselves appearing on tv, with the entire world watching them.

it made me laugh hard at the time and still makes me smile whenever it comes to mind. i think the difference between kids and adults is too obvious: kids can manage to live in a world of their own creations (without that much fuss or disagreement), hence they are happy, whereas we adults cannot even agree on the most basic things to start the game in the first place!

there is a lot to say about breath: the way we take it, the way we hold it, and the way we let it go alongside its depth, warmth, or coldness; where we feel it within our body; and how long we can pay attention to it without getting distracted, which is an entirely different matter (see: meditation).

there are endless techniques and reasonings when it comes to breathing, all optimizing for different things, such as for police officers to shoot better (no kidding, it's real!), for yoga practitioners to have a better connection with their bodies, for athletes to have control over their bodies, and for meditators to have an awareness of their...

not really sure of what; their existence, mind, emotions, bond with the universe, the current moment, all of 'em? who knows, that's why beginners find meditation complicated, yet for masters, it's the epitome of simplicity. (me swinging in between!)

i think the biggest problem occurs while, in the pursuit of catching that "modern" part, we end up missing ourselves and who we could be because we're constantly being forced into sameness, squeezed into certain consumption patterns, trapped within specific body standards, and having certain thoughts imposed on us through mainstream channels, leading us where we are; us being our biggest problem.

one of gerry rafferty's most famous songs (see: right down the line)

my favorite lines go like this:
well another crazy day, you'll drink the night away
and forget about everything.
this city desert makes you feel so cold
it's got so many people but it's got no soul
and it's taken you so long to find out you were wrong
when you thought it held everything.

it's also reportedly the inspiration for slash's epic solo in sweet child o' mine, according to slash himself.

the moment i discovered lin yutang, he quickly became one of my favorite authors. here are some quotes from his book (see: "the importance of living") , published in 1937, that still linger in my mind:

"when small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set."

i even wondered if that saying logically made any sense *, so i asked chatgpt, and here's the answer i received: "the saying by lin yutang does make logical sense and carries a metaphorical meaning. in literal terms, when the sun is low in the sky, even small objects cast long shadows. this phenomenon occurs because the angle of the sunlight is shallow, causing the shadows to stretch out."

and here are some of my other favs:

"hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence."

"anyone who wishes to learn to enjoy life must find friends of the same type of temperament, and take as much trouble to gain and keep their friendship as wives take to keep their husbands."

"when there is no one i hate to look at in the company and conversation rambles off at a light pace to an unknown destination, and i am spiritually and physically at peace with the world"

"i consider the education of our senses and our emotions rather more important than the education of our ideas."

"the best social philosophies do not claim any greater objective than that the individual human beings living under such a regime shall have happy individual lives. if there are social philosophies which deny the happiness of the individual life as the final goal and aim of civilization, those philosophies are the product of a sick and unbalanced mind."

such discoveries deepen my love for old & underappreciated books even more. you won't regret reading that book!