devarshruparelia

[devarshruparelia]

Thoughts on my portfolio and markets - Quarter 3 2018

Updated on 11/14/2018

I started investing actively in securities market from late November 2017. Portfolio's asset growth in this time period has been around 135.8% (Month-on-Month) and net yield is around -3.51% at last Friday's closing. The benchmark that I previously used S&P 500 Total Return Index has a yield of 2.97% in the same time period. I recently changed benchmark index to MSCI ACWI and it has a yield of -3.54% in the same time period.

This is not my first attempt at investing. I started investing in securities market after downturn of Chinese market in early 2016. However, it is first time that I am actively managing the portfolio through my trading account via Robinhood app. In my experience, ~10 months is a short time to measure whether my decisions have been good or not. Most of my portfolio holdings are still trading at a discount to their respective valuation (in my opinion). Given a chance to start afresh I would invest in these companies again because their stock prices are even more cheaper.

My current feeling is that I am still a beginner to investing, markets and businesses in general. Operating a portfolio is like running a small startup and asset growth is not profitable if there is no yield. All my investment and business knowledge is either from asset management or high technology venture investing. There is much more to business and I have yet to learn it.

In addition to my decision fallacies, securities market is also affecting the portfolio.This is because most of my investments are in listed securities. I have tried to reduce correlation by reducing my investments in index based funds or equities such as FAANG which are owned by most fund managers or exchange traded funds (ETFs). In uncertain and rising interest environment, securities market do not seem to do well. It remains to be seen whether I need to re-think my investments or is it just uncertainty in securities market.

Historically, my bias towards technology and industries has led me to screen out financials and insurance companies (excluding Berkshire Hathaway since they also have major interests in railroads, energy and other industries). I have not been able to properly assess technology industry since they seem to be overvalued by business metrics that are most important to me even though they are some of the well-run companies among the listed equities. To solve this problem, I have allocated a sizable position in an exchange traded fund run by a manager and team that in my view are amazing when it comes to technology investing. Rest of my investments are mostly in listed securities that in my view are undervalued yet I am optimistic about those businesses or the industries environment in which they operate.

I don't need to report any of my holdings since they don't cross thresholds set by SEC (securities and exchange commission of United States). Although, I can share following about portfolio:

26.3 % - cash

20 % - auto company in US

14 % - telecommunications company in US

11 % - internet company in South Africa

8.3 % - footwear company in US

8 % - (actively managed) Technology ETF

4.5 % - Bitcoin (BTC)

3.7 % - (passively managed) Value index ETF

~5 % - starter positions in broadcasting and apparel companies

You might ask why so much cash. The answer is that I am a student who is also working part-time (currently my only means to grow asset base). So, it is hard to find time as well as discover interesting opportunities to invest in. Thus, the cash keeps increasing but it is very hard to deploy. If I can't find good assets to invest in, I don't.

In the age of internet and high technology, it might be interesting to you that my second largest allocation is in an auto company. My current view is that this particular auto company is trading at a valuation quite lower than its intrinsic value of its asset and future earnings potential. Outside of Tesla Motors, auto industry future seems bleak but it's not actually when you look at the management and performance of this particular company.

I am also very optimistic about internet and technology since I have grew up just around the time internet and computing became pervasive across the world. For some reason that I can't understand, computing and internet companies are trading at stratospheric valuations that make them outside of my universe of investment opportunities. Hopefully, a correction in securities market brings the valuations of these companies back to a more reasonable level. These companies are going to stay and keep growing for a long time because of their numerous applications in daily life. So, I have decided to invest in companies and sub-sectors that are really important (in my view) which are communications & computing infrastructure and consumer / business application providers. In fact, my thesis is even reflected in the portfolio - around 32% of my holdings can be qualified as technology / internet to be honest.

Sometime ago, I built a small position in Bitcoin as well because it is not correlated with other asset classes that I have alread invested in. Also, Bitcoin has had the staying power that few technologies or industries have had in human history. My bet is that either this position will outperform all my other positions or underperform more than all of them combined by a factor of 10 over medium to long term. I plan to average up but keep it under 5% my portfolio for at least next six months unless there is an unusual price action. Rest of the positions were made when I was beginner or that they seemed interesting to experiment at their valuations.

In my weekly portfolio review, a week back, I realised that my investments and my universe of opportunities are quite different from S&P 500 Total Return Index. On further research, I found MSCI ACWI Index is a more appropriate index. I have also invested in BTC, so no standard benchmark can actually work but I think because of the geographic locations that these portfolio companies operate in, MSCI ACWI seems to be a better choice of index.

Conclusion:

I still have to learn a lot and portfolio yield is less than 0. I am making a loss in my investments, which is unfortunate. Yet, I am comfortable with the risk I am undertaking and willing to experience even more downturn since I have confidence in these positions. I am flexible to change my strategy or view but I don't think right now I need to be worried about the future of portfolio holdings. If I do proper work and due diligence with my investments, I believe yield will come. In the meantime, I can always discover new opportunities to invest in or work (to grow the asset-base).

Disclaimer:

This is not investment advice nor should it be treated as such. It just presents my current view about my portfolio and markets. One should do their own due diligence or get an investment adviser for their investments.

[devarshruparelia]

Cool Web Products - Feb’18

As a heavy internet content consumer, I am always looking for web products / services that increase signal to noise ratio of the content I consume. Recently I have found two web products that have just increase the signal to noise ratio by a huge factor.

Inoreader - If you have read my blog in past, you know that I have written about RSS (Rich Site Summary) based Feeds and Feed Readers. RSS Feed Readers basically allow one to access RSS feeds across the interwebs and subscribe to it, thus making it easier to access all your favourite web content at one central location - your feed reader. In the previous post on RSS Feeds, I wrote I recommended Newsblur. It is a great RSS feed reader but if you are someone who reads a lot on the internet, Newsblur's restriction of just 64 sources can be limiting. I can't afford to pay $5 a month for my RSS feeds. Inoreader has no limit on sources, this is why I just switched to it and found that it has useful analytics for me too (just like Newsblur). It has a really good and minimal interface. If you just want a good Feed Reader that just works, this is it. You can sign up for it at https://www.inoreader.com.

Monica - Large corporates use CRM software tools like Salesforce, which enable them to develop their relationships with their current and prospective customers. I found Salesforce tools too complex to manage my personal relationships though. So, I began looking for relationship management tool to manage my personal life. This is where I came up on recent post by Derek Sivers on a related topic - Why you need a database. He recommended a couple of tools of which I found Monica best suited for individuals. It has just changed how I interact with people and is increasing the productivity of my interactions and activities within my social sphere. It is one of my favourite web products that I am spending too much time on recently. Also, it is even open source (so no big company will probably ever buy this tool for user data) which is a relief from privacy perspective. You can sign up for Monica at https://www.monicahq.com.

If you know some cool products like the ones above, write to me at devarsh[dot]ruparelia[at]gmail[dot]com or tweet to me @thedevarsh.

[devarshruparelia]

Day 22 - Moat of Coca-Cola & Bollywood

I want a business with a moat around it with a very valuable castle in the middle. And then I want the duke who's in charge of that castle to be honest and hard-working and able. And then I want a big moat around the castle, and that moat can be various things.[1] -Warren Buffett

Understanding whether a business has an obvious moat is a tricky business. Moat of a business seem may obvious in hindsight but unclear during the actual capture of market share by a company. Even after reading a lot about Buffett's comments on moat of Coca-Cola, I wasn't quite sure what Coca-Cola company's moat was. I think same maybe the case of other amateurs just like me.

I was just watching an early Bollywood film Awara [The Vagabond] (1951) recently. To give you some context, this movie was second-highest grossing movie globally in 1951 and is in the list of TIME's All-Time 100 Greatest Films. Another important thing is that in 1951, the Republic of India was just four years old.

Now, it may seem strange as to how is an early Bollywood movie linked with the Coca-Cola company's moat. There is a connection, very suprising but a direct connection. There is a whole scene in the movie in the movie in which Raj Kapoor is prominently drinking Coca-Cola in a Coca-Cola branded shop basically advertising Coke.

Figure #1: Raj Kapoor looking at a bottle of Coke.

Figure #2: Raj Kapoor drinking a bottle of Coke.

I couldn't find any sources to prove Coca-Cola sponsorship during the film's production. Then it hit me that Coca-Cola was becoming popular in India during that time. It is interesting because India was not a strong economy like it is today. If Coca-Cola products were becoming popular or even marketed in India (or more generally Asia) successfully in Post-WWII times when almost the whole world was facing turbulence, the only thing that can be attributed to Coca-Cola company's success then and in subsequent decades is its moat.

Consumer good seem to be intimately linked with popular culture and culture industry of an era. I think Coca-Cola company's moat was and is to a large degree still built around it. I was mind-blown to see Coke prominently feature in pioneering Indian films because it is an American product (and India was not quite good friends with United States during those times). It is hard to fathom but a good consumer good moat seem to have had nor do they do have no natural national boundaries (another good example is McDonald's). To conclude, what is a better moat than popular culture endorsing your product for free (bonus points for endorsement in a huge market like India!).

[1] At a lecture at University of Florida Business School in 1998.

[devarshruparelia]

Day 21 - Visiting CUC Fab Lab

Recently, I visited Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab located in Art Annex at University of Illinois. It is an open and collaborative workspace space for computer-driven innovation, desing and fabrication.[1] They have all kinds of tools and devices to work on creative and techical projects. Along with the space, Fab Lab has recruited quite a large staff and volunteers to run workshops and to maintain the lab.

I visited the lab as a part of INFO 303: Writing Across Media class. Two interns introduced us to the lab and then conducted a workshop on making our own vinyl sticker using custom software. I love working with computers and usually get familiar with computing tools quite easily. The tool that they introduced to us was really complex. Tool had a graphical user interface (GUI) but still I could not figure out the stuff required to work on the demo project that they wanted us to build. Fortunately, the interns were very helpful in figuring the quirks of the software tool to make a silhouette and then trace it on vinyl sticker using a specialized printing device.

When we were working on our sticker project, I increasingly realised how everything is ‘remix’ from our previous sessions. I worked on mashing silhouettes of a Tae Kwon Do kick with Taoism symbol. Both the symbols were sourced from Google Images. The resulting image is unique image but fundamentally I have to agree that it is what Kirby Ferguson refers to as a 'remix’ in his feature film.[2] Below is the image of the sticker that I produced at the end of workshop:

It was an amazing experience to learn about computing tools that can produced creative products like the one above. At the end of session, I became more curious about the possibilities of tools like this. I am certain that this would not be my last visit to CUC Fab Lab.

[1] About Us - CU Community Fab Lab

[2] Everything is a Remix Remastered (2015 HD)

[devarshruparelia]

Day 20 - My Baby Steps in Trading with Robinhood

Updated on 12/19/2017

Robinhood is a free stock trading smartphone application. It is a wonderfully designed app. I have always been awed by traders like Warren Buffett. My application got accepted yesterday, so I decided to try a hand at trading in US stock market with the help of Robinhood application. I learnt a lot with my trade. Some lessons that I would like to share is:

1. If you are beginner with low budget, research Exchange Traded Funds. They are buckets of stocks with low management fees and have different kinds of themes (such as complete market, tech sector, large-cap etc.)

2. A great place to research your pick of ETF is Morningstar. They have detailed information about all kinds of funds, which is available for free. Yahoo Finance seems helpful too.

3. Watching a quote for a few days or hours at the very least is helpful in making a good decisions. My current strategy is to buy and hold, sell when I am losing more than 7 % or original investment. Why? Because, that’s the risk I can tolerate with my hard earned money. Your strategy can be different depending on your tolerance and circumstances. 

4. There is too much information and data available. As a beginner, it can get too confusing as to when to buy what. Don't waste time, if something ETF / stock fits your budget , has decent fundamentals and you have one strong instinct about its growth (be it your experience with industry, products from that industry or even your gut) then click the buy button.

5. Never buy at Market Price. There is a feature called Order Type in Robinhood, which has various options. Look up them and research before clicking buy button. I made the mistake of buying at Market Price and then learnt about various order types. 

Remember, hindsight is 20 / 20. Even you'll have learn something valuable. Just be very cautious about your trades. Now go make your millions and keep reading this blog.

Update:

While the above experience describes my first trade in US stock market, I feel the same even after making a few more trades. I would like to share a few more tips and some resources before putting your valuable earnings in financial markets. Financial markets consist of many asset classes (such as commodities like Gold, securities such as Microsoft company stock, even Bitcoin). Each asset class has a different risk profile and performance. Although it is commonly assumed in markets that past performance does not guarantee future results, it does not imply that one does not take them into account at all. Pricing of a financial security has its performance baked into it, so it is pretty important to take performance into account. 

Now, there are thousands of securities and commodities that are traded in financial markets on a daily basis. How does a beginner research a good security or commodity to park his / her cash? From my own experiences, I found finviz.com and Bloomberg Media’s TV channel (& website) very helpful in getting to know the market sentiment. First step is to screen for securities using screening tools like finviz and ValueLine (one can access it through local library). To gain a deeper understanding of market sentiment, some people also prefer to use StockTwits. 

During trading hours, markets are very volatile. It can be very nerve-wracking seeing your investments go rapidly down after a rally up. As a novice, it is much easier to not check prices of your investments incessantly. 

Investing in markets is not easy. Most people in the market lose money because they don’t think through their trades. Investing is just like a business. Businesses are not products that we consume nor casinos where one can gamble. The sooner one forgets that easier it is to improve in executing trades and become a better investor. 

Feel free to write to me at devarsh[dot]ruparelia[at]gmail[dot]com or tweet me @thedevarsh .

[devarshruparelia]

Day 19 - On Dealing With  Non-Neutral Internet

Updated on 12/19/2017

Internet since its early days has been divided into two parts:

 Free web 

Walled web

Net neutrality going away means nothing. Internet was designed to be a collaborative space for unlimited people. An ISP or a company can wall access to certain parts but most it will remain free. Unlike, physical world it is hard to stop people from building their own nodes on internet which while being difficult. Building a server or websites (or web apps) requires some technical savvy, it is not very difficult. The barrier of entry to internet is quite low compared to other media (like books which literally require building called libraries to maintain them) or technologies like TV or Refrigerator (which even in 2017 are surprisingly not "disrupted" enough to be accessible to average families in emerging economies). One just needs a computing device (ranging from Raspberry Pi to a desktop computer). Even if net neutrality goes away the collaborative nature embedded deeply into the fabric of interweb will ensure that a part of it will always be democratic. Walled net will have to connect to these nodes since new web pages or apps with worthwhile content or utilities will keep coming emerging from free web.

A question may arise, how we as average internet users who mostly use it to consume content on web deal with the effect of anti-net neutrality regulatory changes. It is a very valid question for which I have no perfect answer. However, what I can offer is a way to be a more informed participant of internet. We need to first realise that social media is mostly useless. We don't need more web products like FB, Snap Chat or other bullshit to express ourselves. Also, if they are blocked due to regulations and lobbying, I am fine with no new emerging social ejaculatory apps becoming next big thing. It honestly is a waste of our energies. Expression in internet spaces is important which was what web pages are for. I understand people just want to communicate and be a part of community. Why not we collectively build internet as a space for that. If large ISPs block certain or all webpages or websites, we the users are powerful enough to start new ISPs and keep sharing the blocked websites.

We fear blocking of our favourite web spaces because we didn't build them. Some programmers built them and some rich capitalists decided to fund them during 2000s. Now technical complexity to participate and contribute in internet has drastically reduced. If we continue building free internet spaces in large numbers and attracting larger audience to our web spaces, it will be economically ineffective for ISPs or large corporations to have anti net neutrality regulations and the rules will slowly go away. The problem is our laziness in becoming internet literate. This allows companies to play with our freedoms and profit off it along the way.

The debate about Net Neutrality is meaningless if our actions as internet participants don’t concur with it. We have the power and potential to shape internet as we want it. If Money or regulation are tools to impose certain views on internet, then so is our expression. 

Update:

To put this update in context: On December 14th, 2017, the United States Federal Communication Commission (FCC) currently chaired by Ajit Pai voted to dismantle Net Neutrality Rules approved during Obama Administration in 2015. 

When I wrote this post, I was not serious that FCC would revert the rules considering the protest by American citizens. My country, India, was able to push back on Anti Net Neutrality through a protest. Nevertheless, here we are. I am not certain as to what the dismantling will imply. If Ajit Pai is to be believed, it is mostly that approach taken by FCC in 2015 was wrong (I don’t know enough to trust or not trust him, so this is just my observation).

Internet is heavily reliant on telecommunications infrastructure. Unfortunately in United States, Comcast and AT&T own the almost all the cables and optical fiber networks. So, even before dismantling of these regulations, the net was not neutral. With new regulations in place, it is possible that access to certain web services might get more expensive. On the contrary, it is also an opportunity for innovators to invent and provide cheaper access to internet based services. 

By and large, it is a wake-up call for United States consumers to become more aware about these regulations and understand the implications. Communications infrastructure is a very important in a democracy like US, so I hope American citizens become more aware about it and make better decisions about their futures. 

[devarshruparelia]

Day 18 - Refresh

It's a long time since I posted anything on my blog. I received an email from one of my readers as to why I stopped blogging. Its not that I've got nothing more to say. I've been involved in a lot of activities and with a rigorous course-load this semester, I just couldn't find time to complete posts. My draft is full of incomplete posts that are yet to see the light of the day.

Nevertheless, I am still active on this blog and will continue writing posts as a part of Blog365 project. In this post, I am sharing a few YouTube channels that I am binging a lot these days:

The Coding Train - Daniel Shiffman uploads amazing creative coding videos.

Stanford Graduate School of Business - Stanford GSB is undoubtedly a premier business school, but even more amazing thing about GSB is this channel. View From The Top series is a must-watch, especially the recent talk from the same series by Social Capital VC Chamath Palihapitiya.

PBS Idea Channel - PBS Digital Studios create a lot of amazing videos. My favourite among them is this one. Mike Rugnetta is great at explaining connections between pop culture, art and tech.

If you have anything to share with me, tweet to me @thdevarsh or write to me at devarsh[dot]ruparelia[at]gmail[dot]com.

[devarshruparelia]

Day 17  -  Detachment

Why do we take ourselves so seriously? Most of us, even with our skills and experiences we have gained over the years never go on to accomplish things that one can be remembered long after we are gone.

We think that stuff we do is the only thing that matters in the world, when in fact it may not matter much in grand scheme of things.

What if we are detached from our work, actions, and decisions? In the 2010s, technology has made it difficult to get detached from the world. We take our social networks and email very seriously. I, for instance, incessantly check email, even though I would have checked it just a few minutes back.

FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out factor seems to be a big factor behind why we interact with technology and our work in general. We are not missing anything out most of the time. I have observed that our actions are backed a lot of times not by our own assessment of how the world works, but to just fit in or FOMO.

College classes are a great way to get exposed to mental models and outsource thinking but there is a limit to its effectiveness. School should be a starting point and not something that takes up all mental real estate. Apart from technology, higher education is another area which has made it difficult for youth to get detached. Trying to rebel or living alternatively is very stigmatized because everything seems to have some sort of metric attached to it like the number of internships, grades, leadership positions, social media followers etc.

I think college should be a place which instead guides students to get detached instead of getting them further attached to work. The pace of modern life is very fast. It is important that we stop and think through things before just jumping into them with full mental and physical energy.

My detachment seems to be judged a lot by my peers. It shouldn't be bad for one to not care much about one's work. But then I realise, I don't need to give in because of FOMO. Freedom of choice and expression should not be frowned upon.

Am I right about what I think about role of detachment in my life? I am not certain. What I do know is that most accomplished people and happy people I have come across till date are detached from their work.

I would love to know how are you able to get detached from your daily life (if you truly are). Share your comments below about what you think about the role of detachment in our life.

[devarshruparelia]

Day 16 - Paradox of Prestige

The other day, I and a friend were discussing about prestige. He said something really thought provoking: We do prestigious things to become famous or achieve a high-status in society. In my experience, this has been mostly true about people and their actions or decisions. At college level, it is grades / careers / social life. Post graduation from college it changes depending on what you did in college or between the ages of 18 and 25.

Currently, it is highly prestigious to be a good student (that is, attending right school and get high grades), get great internships or start companies (but only in technology or financial services industry) and lastly be highly networked (maybe this is due to massive pervasion of internet networs in our social fabric).

I think between ages 18 to 25, the above factors may play a major role in attaining more prestige. There is nothing inherently wrong with involving oneself with prestigious activites or associating with prestigious people (latter is known as ‘networking’ in college student parlance). Honestly, it will aid you in achieving highs social status (if that’s your life goal).

However, nature of presitge is quite paradoxical and I hadn’t thought about it before the discussion with my friend. When I read about stories from human history, the names of individuals that jump out of the page are usually the ones who were first to make some particular human activity socially prestigious. Be it someone from few centuries back such as Benjamin Franklin to Elon Musk (or Mark Zuckerberg) in late 2000s, their work and people associated with them became prestigious in the process. This is usually the case with prestige. An individual makes a breakthrough in some domain after arduous efforts and then everyone wants a piece of pie (because they can see how to reach there). Collecting more prestige points is easier when a path is charted. We are socially intelligent species so if a new pie becomes available, we swarm towards capturing it because it requires path of least resistance. This is perhaps the basis of all forms of competition in our society. I am not implying on any level that competition is not good for us. Competitive behaviour is actually good because it diverts more attention towards some new resource or process, which effectively makes society as a whole better off. But when I dug deeper, I was intrigued because all these pioneers or legendary people in history (that I know of) were not competitive. They had a completely different mindset, that some refer to as the Creator Mindset. Even after their demise, suprisingly only these individuals seem to have a significant mindshare in the human history (in their niche or domain).

It is very difficult to achieve fame (or winning at the game of prestige) by focussing on just prestigious matters because of this paradox. More one focusses on prestige, higher the competition (thus, drastically lowering the odds of becoming legendary). The paradox is that if one does not focus on prestige then individual has zero percent odds to achieve legendary fame. It brings up the question of what should one do - focus on actvities of interest or of prestige.

I don’t know, yet. So I am leaving this question to the reader:

How would you tackle this paradox of prestige and why?

Share your comments below or write to me at devarsh[dot]ruparelia[at]gmail[dot]com.

[devarshruparelia]

Day 15 - When Laziness Meets Maps

If you’re following my blog, you know I have been sharing a bunch of assignments from my INFO 303: Writing Across Media class. I noticed I cross-posted a lot of assignments (Day 13 and Day 15) as part of Blog365 Project.

If it isn’t obvious, let me make it clear - I am quite lazy about finding great content for my blog (since, I’ve got ton of other homework assignments from my college classes). However, I love sharing stuff that I find interesting with readers of my blog. So, this post is about putting my laziness to good use.

Recently, I was assigned to make a visual project for INFO 303 class. Luckily, I was browsing through Hacker News a few days back and found out about Mapbox studio. Their API (meaning Application Programming Interface) is amazingly documented. With some rudimentary tweaking of their Studio tool and Turf API, I was able to create a decent map that served the purpose of visual project. As you can conclude from my laziness, I wouldn’t make that much effort for just a simple map, right? There was another motive behind making the map as well.

To explain the other motive, I need to share some context. An engineering student at Illinois, one gets access to extremely powerful machines known on campus as Engineering Workstation (a.k.a EWS computers) and engineering majors love using them because they are high performance (Intel) Xeon machines with dual display monitors (and to add on top of it they’re available in all operating systems).

There are at least ten to twenty EWS lab locations on Illinois campus which can be accessed by any student. Now, as usual, my laziness comes into picture. I like doing my assignments on these machines but I don’t like going to their website and then figuring which is the nearest location from a mostly static map by zooming in & out for a couple of times before just exiting browser and head back home. Hence, when I decided why not make a dynamic map that can point me to the nearest EWS Lab location from my location. Also, I don’t visit a lot of random places every week, so I can reduce locations I have to account for as well. I listed all my frequently visited places, used Google Maps to export that data in GeoJSON format. In addition, I went to EWS website and luckily for me they used Google Maps too, so I exported EWs location data in GeoJSON. Next, I used Mapbox studio and Turf library to process location data and present it on a map that can point me to nearest EWS lab from my location. Great thing about this map is that I can bookmark it on all my devices and conveniently access the map quickly even on the go.

It was quite difficult to use Mapbox with Tumblr but I wanted to use Tumblr because I was again too lazy to host this map somewhere else on the interweb. I didn’t plan for it but this map has become a perfect example of using my laziness to solve my own problems (in this case, visual project for INFO 303, this blog post and reducing number of clicks to determine nearest EWS lab location).

The map that I’ve been dicussing about this whole post is presented below. To test the map, click on any of the flag icons (which represent my most frequently visited places) and a blue circle will from around closest EWS lab location (which is represented by “i” icon). You can even scroll around the map to find more EWS lab and frequently visited locations. Hope you find it intriguing and make maps to solve your own problems using Mapbox.

[devarshruparelia]

Day 14 - College Becomes Chaos

It seems like fall semester had just started yesterday. Now with all exams the semester is speeding up like someone pressed super hard on the accelerator. Combine the classes with a cocktail of other committments, it has become a chaos (aside: I didn't expect this alliteration). One good thing about facing chaos is that it conditions one to multitask as effectively as perhaps a large company CEO (a.k.a any business leader, to be honest). On the contrary, chaos always seems like an impending crisis, even though, it is mostly not that bad. That's the point of chaos, one never knows how bad it is going to be.

There is nothing anyone can do to calm the chaos. It is why middle of chaos seems like being on the edge of a cliff. The only solace I can find in this chaos is in the following quote by Carl Jung:

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

[devarshruparelia]

Day 13 - Inside the Brain of An Average College Student

For my INFO 303 class (Writing Across Media), which featured previously on my Day 5 - Form Affect Meaning post, my group had to bring any interesting object to our class. During class, professor revealed we had to make some sort of a map out of those objects and our creativity. My group decided to make a map of what an average college student's brain looks like. We had eye-masks, cookies and some other objects like coupons.

Here's how the map looks like:

Tweet me what you think about it at @thedevarsh or write to me at devarsh[dot]ruparelia[at]gmail[dot]com.

[devarshruparelia]

Day 12 - Esfahan: First Item On Bucket List

Recently, I realised that I need to have a bucket list. I just kept forgetting what kind of experiences did I plan to have within next five years. Instead of just keeping it in my head, I guess sharing it with you would allow me to keep track of my bucket list in a semi-public way. First item on my list is visiting the beautiful city of Esfahan in Iran.

Esfahan is known by Persians as "Nesf-e-Jahan", meaning "Half The World". Due to beuatiful architecture and one of the world's magnificient public square, it is considered by many to be one of most beautiful cities in the world. In fact, the public square (see the picture below) called the Meidan Emam has a very storied history and is UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The city is very ancient and was once a capital when Safavid dynasty ruled the Kingdom of Iran. City reached its peak in social and cultural significance during that era. Hence, Esfahan is the best place to the understand the genesis of modern Islamic culture and architecture.

There are many beautiful places to visit in this wonderful city such as it's historical bazaar apart from Meidan Emam and other picturesque buildings. This whole combination of great architecture and storied culture makes the city like a living museum of Iranian tradition.

[devarshruparelia]

Day 11 -  Interesting Links #2: Blog Posts Worth Your Time

This past few days, I have been kind of busy with schoolwork so I decided to just to share a few links. Also, since the Interesting Links #1 post, I haven't shared some great links recently so another post in this series was long due.

Hope you find some of the blog posts below interesting:

Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You - very relevant considering recent Equifax identity theft hack.

Airbrushing - Seth Godin's observations like this on people never fail to blow my mind.

My IRB Nightmare - never knew healthcare industry is so heavily regulated even for medical professionals themselves.

[devarshruparelia]

Day 10 - A Rant On Imperfect Systems

As a college student, I experience imperfect systems all around me. Whether it is communicating with classmates, homework assignment platforms, transportation from one place to another and lot more. It is a surprise that as a society we haven't been able to really progress even with all the technological innovation that has taken place in the last decade.

Imperfect systems often result from our species' incessant need to improve our quality of life. However, it is high time we take time to understand systems we have rather than building derivative ones with a couple or more features. Investing time, effort and money in derivative systems is counter-productive to our progress in creating great systems.

Also, one needs to understand if one is a hacker (a.k.a an explorer) or an entrepreneur. New technologies have enabled individuals to meddle with huge uncharted territories - it is indeed a great power. We must remember, though, that with great power comes great responsibility. If we are not qualified, then we should learn rather than meandering haphazardly.

Each new generation is always going to bring their own cultural practice and ways of thinking about things into the world. There is no way to stop it. In fact, it is the reason why as a species we have survived and made this planet our home. However, it is the old guard's responsibility to make sure that transition from one generation to next happens in a proper way. Numerous issues such as internet privacy can be mostly credited to mistakes money-ed old guard, who wanted to make money off of new generations petri-dish level (experimental) ideas. That model is the biggest reason we have imperfect systems all around us.

What I am getting at is that technology venture capital as a model has to evolve. Old rich people cannot decide what the next generation can or can't do. Newer models such as Initial Coin Offerings look promising but are unfortunately, unregulated (and banned in China). Most regulations are again mostly artificial hurdles put into place by the old guard (who usually govern). When our current government and fund-raising systems were introduced, we thought systems would usually be static and not change forever. That is apparently not true based on the observations I shared earlier.

Hopefully, we can evolve both fund-raising and government systems, as they seem pretty fundamental if we ever want to have great systems which can evolve fluidly with time.

If you have seen any imperfect system around you and want to rant about it, tweet it @thedevarsh or write to me about it at devarsh[dot]ruparelia[at]gmail[dot]com.

[devarshruparelia]

Day 9 - Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

Other day, my friend and I were debating if Facebook and other popular internet services can mess with our data as well as share it with government agencies if agencies demand it. He was of the opinion they can't do that, people would strongly react and stop using the service or even delete their accounts. I duckduckgo-ed (sorry, I don't use Google for my internet searches) about Terms of Service of popular websites and turns out they are too long. Also, they are usually written in heavy legalese and we're not law students. On further research we found a project called Terms of Service; Didn't Read.

The project was started in 2012 in Berlin to help fix the "biggest lie on the web": > Almost no one really reads the terms of service we agree to all the time.

Since then, it has become a crowd-sourced (meaning relies on internet users for contributions) open-source project which analyzes and monitors (which is kind of important because Apple and other companies change their ToS all the time) the Terms of Service for major internet based services.

Below is comparison between Google and DuckDuckGo (a search engine that unlike Google protects user privacy):

They have got analysis on even more popular internet products / apps such as YouTube, Facebook and Amazon. These summaries will really give a new perspective about the internet services we have grown to rely on over the last decade. It might scare you (it did to me) and even lead you to change how you interact with these services.

Have something to comment about internet privacy or about the post? Tweet me at @devarsh or write to me at devarsh[dot]ruparelia[at]gmail[dot]com.

[devarshruparelia]

Day 8 - First Time As An Emergency Medical Responder

Last Saturday, I volunteered for the first time as an Emergency Medical Responder (under Illinois Medical Emergency Services) at the Football game of Illinois v/s Ball State. I had never thought about the silent contributions of First Responders (Police, Fire & Emergency Medical Services) in safeguarding our communities. The work of these guys should be really applauded. Sometimes, first responders go above and beyond their duties (such as during disasters like Hurricane Harvey) for no benefit of their own.

There is a lot to learn about teamwork and strategic response systems from first responder service teams. The teams are all connected by radio and other communication channels (such as phone as well as messaging services such as WhatsApp). Also, generally the team are organized not only by areas where they might be needed the most but also by considering service response time to other areas. An interesting fact: even wilderness regions have specially trained Emergency Medical Service personnel (who are called WEMTs) to provide life support during emergencies.

During my duty, there was just a small incident that occurred in our response area and it was not even a life threatening emergency. But that incident taught me a lot as to how to interact with the victim / patient, because like software program errors injuries / medical conditions come in all shapes and sizes. Even this small incident made me anxious because I've never been responsible for care of a living human being in pain. I think I'm more comfortable dealing with software program errors than human medical emergencies.

Even though I was sort of scared throughout my duty, I did enjoy volunteering for Emergency Medical Services. I learnt a lot of medical tests and tips to deal with different kinds of medical emergencies from my EMT (certified Emergency Medical Technician) supervisors.

If you've chance to serve with First Responder Services in your communities, please do. You'll appreciate the work of Fire, Police and EMS services a lot after then. If you have already served with them in any way or dealt with medical emergencies, I'd love to hear your story at devarsh[dot]ruparelia[at]gmail[dot]com.

Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to use the logo of IEMS logo.