I’m really sorry that I haven’t updated my blog in a while. I do get asked by my audience on what I’m upto. I’ve meant to create this blog post for a while. I hope I can provide some insights.
I got incredibly caught up with work and did have some personal problems so didn’t get enough time to update and maintain my blog. It also did go down a couple of times, without me noticing. I’ve moved it to a much more simpler set-up now(from running BGP+LXD containers+ZFS) so going forward reliability should not be a problem. This post is more about what I’m upto, since I am getting this question a lot recently.
APRICOT 2019 and South Korea trip
APRICOT is an amazing event to go to if you are a network geek. The 2019 version was held in South Korea in February. I was lucky enough to attend the full event. I attended a campus networking workshop and the full conference after that. There were a lot of interesting people from the industry and the whole event was very fun, particularly the RPKI ROA key signing BOF mixed with whiskey 🙂 .
IPv6 only networks(with DNS64 and NAT64) was particularly interesting topic. I did give it a try at home and it did work well, although I am back to IPv4 only network to keep the complexity on home network at the bare minimum. I don’t have native IPv6 at home so have to tunnel it across a VPN.
I also gave a lightening talk about doing BGP with IPv6 on the cheap, related to the blog-post I made here. You will have to start from 54:40 to start at the correct place. It is the first time I’m presenting at a notable event so was a bit nervous. Hopefully I did alright. I want to thank Mark Tinka for giving me the opportunity.
After that there was a lot of sightseeing around Korea. I want to especially thank my friend Dakota for showing me around Seoul. Korea is a beautiful country with wonderful people and I can highly recommend visiting the country. The Visa process was also incredibly easy and straightforward, something which I have had trouble with in the past.
One thing about Korea that was really fascinating was the amazing public transport – from the busses to the metro to the super-fast trains connecting different cities. It all tied in very well together. Most Koreans can’t speak English, but communicating things across wasn’t particularly challenging. One intriguing thing was the large amount of US and Korean military personnel. It is truly a wonderful country and everything including the small details are all done very well.
More on life
I have been tied around at home because of a few personal reasons. I did do a short trip to the outskirts of Mumbai for leisure. Apart from that I was focusing on saving up my finances and investing in quality stocks, in India and abroad. I also got into reading more about investing and philosophy, particularly Nicholas Taleb. I am learning more about Finance and Economics and I find it very intriguing. I am also brushing up my Mathematics, something which I wasn’t very gifted at.
I deleted most of my social media. I still use Twitter, albeit anonymously to follow people I care about and take inspiration from. I found that it has made my life immensely better and freed up time for things I enjoy. Lifting and strength training is something which I particularly enjoy and my lifts have gone up mostly, apart from a few nagging injuries, which I hope go away soon.
I do try to keep up with all the emails and comments I get, but sometimes it can take me a while to respond. Apologies if your query is still stuck in my to reply list.
Travel and future plans
For the coming year I plan to travel to and visit as many countries as I can, while working from there. That would help to keep the cash flows coming in, while keeping the flight travel costs to days spent ratio low. I am planning on an extended trip to Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia soon, provided things fall in place. The most challenging thing about travelling is getting Visas. Going to Mumbai, spending a lot of time and money on a bureaucratic process with no guarantees is all very off-putting. Travel is something which I enjoy. Being stuck at one place is not particularly appealing.
After that I plan to study academics and attend college, but not Computer Science because it isn’t interesting anymore after spending most of my adult and late-teen life working in the field. The hindering factors are my poor Mathematics scores in high school affecting my admission prospects and the fact that I would have to learn Calculus. I see the latter as an interesting challenge.
Hope this post clears the air a bit. I hope I can blog on interesting things more often. Thanks for being patient! 😀 .