Check out my backflip on grass.

follow up to law school

About two and a half years ago, I started thinking about applying to law school, then applied. About two years ago, I got rejected .

Writing about that rejection, I said:

At the end of the day, I want to choose whether I go to law school, not the admissions committee.

To make that choice, I would need to get accepted. But I did not apply again. The following is a reflection on why.

reason 1: busy and lazy

Obvious and self-explanatory. Despite mostly enjoying the application process, I do have a full-time job, commitments after work, etc.

reason 2: practicality

As awful as it sounds, it’s not quite practical for me to pay to go to law school for three years without wanting to become a lawyer. I didn’t see myself practicing law when I first applied, and my desire hasn’t really grown since.

I was (and still am) interested in the law school part. What comes afterwards looks daunting. Building a career as a lawyer means articling, billable hours, passing the bar and working your way up in a firm. It seems that a central tenet is “paying your dues” which I have a hard time stomaching.

That’s not to say it wouldn’t be rewarding. There’s abundant history associated with the practice of law - that’s a big part of why I started considering it. And I’m sure being surrounded by ambitious law students pursuing a similar goal would indoctrinate me to some degree. It would also be cool to say I’m a software engineer who went to law school.

But looking at it from the outside, it’s hard to justify - especially since I already have a good job.

reason 3: LLMs

Speaking of, I’ve slowly become more aware of which jobs seem resilient to generative AI. My rough theory is the more reading and writing is involved, the less resilient the job is. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of that involved in lawyering - at least at the junior level.

Importantly, I don’t think that new grads at law firms will be rendered useless, or that law school will be reduced to an exercise in prompting. I’m just assuming that things will not remain the same. LLMs are very good at reading and writing English.

I also think it’s possible that LLMs simply remove the monotony, leaving more time for the interesting work. I’m sure that companies like Harvey have coherent, unified theories on how humans will fit into this new picture.

Regardless, the prevalence of LLMs will change how law works, and I’m not sure I feel confident about where I would end up when the dust settles.

reason 4: culinary school

One job I think is resilient to AI is being a chef. Even though there are countless recipes and cooking shows online, ChatGPT can’t cook food. That’s a job for robots - an industry that I’m confident will move much slower.

After all, I’m not going to give my robot a knife and stove. It doesn’t even have taste buds!!

Perhaps more importantly, there’s something distinctly human about cooking. I think it strikes the right balance of creativity and fine motor skills. Especially when you’re cooking for people you care about. It seems that all the people in my life whom I care about, I want to cook for.

It’s mostly for that reason that my interest has shifted from law school to culinary school.

I struggle with the practicality of this obviously. I want to go to culinary school so I’m better at cooking for my friends and family. The idea of being employed as a cook is still quite foreign - similar to the idea of being employed as a lawyer.

At least culinary school is cheaper.

a dichotomy

Shifting from LSAT logic puzzles to making mayonnaise from scratch feels like an interesting dichotomy. Logic vs emotion. Coolness vs warmth. It’s cool and logical in a lawyer’s office; it’s hot and emotional in a kitchen.

It’s interesting to consider how my own perception of the world has informed this shift. Cooking is certainly less political than law. Some lawyers get elected and change the rules and principles we live by. Some cooks do that too, but it’s less common. Cooks feel like outcasts - lawyers feel like valedictorians.

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat

Related to the above, I read Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat (a cookbook) which I highly recommend. Here are some tips I gleaned:

• you almost always want a sizzle when you put something in the pan

• acid balances, salt enhances

• fruits that get more sun while growing taste sweeter!

• acid toughens things up (prevents softening/oxidizing)

• baking soda makes things more tender (opposite of acid)

• sauces are usually the source of acid in a meal

• water expands when frozen (relevant for freezing produce)

• simmering > boiling in most cases

• emulsions are anything creamy

  • one egg yolk (the emulsifier) can hold 3/4 cups of oil

• butter is a very stable emulsion of fat + water + milk solids

  • melting butter breaks the emulsion

• oil > butter for cakes

• the word crispy sells more food than almost any other adjective

• drier ingredients leads to better browning

• less stirring means more browning

^ recipe here

misc

• Ashley got her L this month!!! I am very proud. Expect to see her on the streets of Victoria obeying the law

• We also celebrated our anniversary this month ♥️ (Point No Point is amazing)

• I completed a CNC course at the Victoria Makerspace. We made name plates.

• I’ve started listening to Canadaland again this month! Here are some eps:

  • on David Eby and DRIPA

  • the only reporter in Tumbler Ridge

  • the Avi Lewis interview

And that’s all I have! see you next month!

from scratch

This is what I want to do, this is what I want to watch, this is what I want to cook.

A theme of this month has been doing things from scratch.

It started with me signing up for a subscription box of produce that gets delivered every week. The company — Odd Bunch — uses produce that would’ve been discarded and ships it to people locally.

What’s fun is that the produce I get is different every week. There’s usually a veggie in there that I’ve never cooked before (or haven’t in a long time).

It means I’m forced to think about how to cook this new stuff into a meal instead of doing my default prep with my default veggies.

It breaks me out of the monotony really. Perhaps the randomness of new veggies is what will make me a better cook.

I’m also making the following food from scratch instead of buying it:

• sandwich bread

• hummus

• mayonnaise

• granola

• hamburger buns (once)

manual consumption

In a sort of similar way, I’ve found myself behaving differently with my phone.

I’ve been drifting toward consuming things more intentionally. This means:

• scrolling through my YouTube subscription tab instead of the recommended page

• looking through saved albums on Spotify instead of my Discover Weekly or Daylist

This can be referred to as “avoiding the Home page”.

It’s not like I haven’t wanted to start doing this earlier — I’ve been trying to distance myself from recommendation algorithms for what feels like years.

I think it took hold because I realized that I actually enjoy the things I choose to consume.

Here are two examples:

• I discovered the podcast “The Rest is Politics” by searching “iran war podcast” on YouTube1

• I found Tourist’s new album on Spotify by scrolling through my saved artists list

In both cases, I found the content instead of relying on recommendations.

To be fair, the Home page shows me good stuff too. I think there’s a lot of unique, special inspiration on the internet that I derive value from — and wouldn’t have found by myself.

The problem for me is that easy access to an infinite scrollable feed (especially on my phone) is a fraught, treacherous thing. I get addicted easily and lose my own thoughts in the process.

Anyways, even though I’m realizing that the algorithm isn’t always better than my own free will, I can also acknowledge that it’s not all bad either. Everything is a bit grey.

on pressure

my job has never failed to exert pressure. in fact, few things in my life have been as consistent.

i don’t think it’s entirely a bad thing. it gives me the motivation to get better. it’s easier to learn when there’s some accountability.

i think pressure is good for a lot of things:

• a band might feel pressure to prepare for a performance

• an athlete might feel pressure to train for a race

• i might feel pressure to cook something good for a dinner party

that doesn’t mean the pressure is wrong — it helps!

but it also distracts.

pressure means there isn’t as much time to be curious. it bumps all the other stuff down the priority list.

kahvi on the internet

I created my Facebook and Instagram accounts in 2012, when I was 14 years old. I created my blog (kahvipatel.com) a couple years later, when I was 16.

I’ve been reflecting on how each of these places has changed.

beginning (2012-2016)

This is what my blog looked like when I first started:

Back then, I was just excited to create stuff that I could put online. Designing the website was rewarding — it felt like a natural evolution after spending a lot of time in Illustrator.

I enjoyed the writing part too. I wrote about my future career, my hair length and many other things. It felt very cool to “publish”2 that work.

At the time, my Facebook and Instagram accounts were way more active. I would post almost daily, usually directed towards friends or classmates.

university (2016-2020)

Once I got to university, the blog became a vessel for me to learn new web technologies. I rebuilt my blog to learn about projects like React and Typescript. I used it to get my first co-op.

At the same time, social media was undergoing a shift in the culture. I think it started with the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal and movies like The Social Dilemma.

Regardless of how it happened, I started to trust Facebook less and stopped posting as much. This was also a trend among my friends.

career (2021-2026)

When I started working full-time, I was put on a team whose focus was building products for the web. This forced me to think more about the calculus of websites like Facebook: Your free consumption comes at the cost of being tracked.

That made it harder for me to justify uploading things to a platform that I didn’t even trust in the first place.

It made it easier to focus on my blog where the incentives were much simpler. I own the content I create there. That’s about when I decided to start this newsletter.

now

Throughout their existence, my website and this newsletter haven’t been well known among my friends. The updates I make often go unnoticed, and things I say here have less reach than they would on a site like Facebook or Instagram.

To me, it makes them feel like a more intimate, private space — one that people must choose to be in. Selfishly, I wish more parts of the internet were like this.

Or like the front page of Hacker News. Just a list of links that get upvoted.

misc

As usual, here’s a handful of unrelated things from this month:

• I caught a crab with Mason:

  

• Saw this lede on twitter

• This chart is interesting

  

• I want to try building this chair3

  

Finally, here’s me and Penny (courtesy of Ashley ♥️):

See you next week!

dentist

I went to the dentist for a tooth cleaning this month and it sucked.

My gums ended up bleeding (which is why I don’t go in the first place) and after complaining to the hygienist, she said

This is an indication that your gums are irritated

to which I replied

I think my gums are irritated because you keep picking at them

which led to a long and rambling lecture about how gums work. Since I had various implements in my open mouth, I mostly responded with “ahhh”.

Despite the interaction, I did learn something - plaque can actually make its way under your gums.

I was under the impression that my gums were perfectly sealed against the teeth, like a waterproof seam or something.

This turns out not to be true.

There’s actually a V-shaped crevice between the gums and the teeth into which plaque can slide down. And apparently, brushing your teeth twice a day doesn’t prevent this from happening.

All that to say, the hygienist scared me enough to buy a wireless waterpik that I use in the shower. It’s actually very convenient.

And yet, as with most health-related things, it leaves me wondering:

• How did we manage back when we were all farming and didn’t have dentists?

building websites

I spent a bunch of my free time in February building websites. With AI mostly. The sites so far are:

• sunlight app - src

• body-annotator - src

• newsletter-analytics - src

Today’s models are smart enough to build a website pretty effectively - with a few conditions:

1. you must have a specific enough idea. If not, the model’s going to lead you down the maximalist path.

2. it has to be reasonably simple - you're not gonna build Facebook in a day.

Also, I don’t expect to understand the code it produces. I just use the website and talk to it if something is wrong. It’s essentially a more declarative way to program.

Let me explain the sites in a bit more detail:

sunlight app

I wanted a way to remember when it was sunny outside, so I made this:

Pretty self-explanatory - it tells you how many hours of sunlight there are in each day (with a seven day forecast). I mostly use it on my phone.

It’s nice to remind myself which days were sunny in the past since I usually do something fun on those days.

And, if the week has been full of grey, then it might be why I’m feeling grey.

body annotator

I talked about this idea in a past newsletter.

I require an app that allows you to annotate a 3D model of your body and export it. Doesn’t need to be a scan of you specifically, just a generic body will do.

Ideally, I can select a point or a specific muscle/tendon/bone on the body and say “sharp pain when I put pressure here” or something similar.

I made this (you’re welcome past Kahvi).

After showing this to my parents (who are both doctors), I updated the logic to make sure the notes expire after a week.

Turns out that visually reminding yourself of a past injury might have a negative psychological effect (and maybe slows healing?).

The notes are still stored, they are just hidden by default and displayed under the “expired” status.

Anyway, it's been handy for me to:

• figure out if an injury is recurring or new

• give my physio specific dates

Disclaimer: The notes won't sync across devices (everything lives in the browser). That said, the data is easy to import/export.

newsletter-analytics

This one was mentioned in last month’s newsletter. It's the site that supports the newsletter stats I talked about last month.

In fact, the whole process of scraping my newsletters from the internet and analyzing them was built with AI.

This project is also a great example of where the AI can fall short. In this case, it means producing nonsensical graphs:

This one is just completely blank:

Anyways, I’ve had fun building.

misc

• Victoria people - the cinnamon ice cream at Better Acres is delicious

• I’ve started wearing collared shirts more 🤵‍♂️

• Ashley and I are playing It Takes Two (and our TV died)

• I enjoyed the announcers in this men’s ice skating clip:

• Here’s a good complement to the AI hype cycle (src)

• along with this tweet

That’s all! See you next month!

January is usually a tough month for me. But two things happened that made it better.

• trying for a low-spend month

• me and Ashley distancing ourselves from our phones

low-spend month

I’ve developed a reputation, especially within my family, as someone who spends money “frivolously”.

I think this is because I get more enjoyment from things than most people. Random stuff like a flashlight or pixel display.

Perhaps because of this reputation, or to prove something to myself, I tried to spend as little money as possible in January.

I ended up saving about 40% more than last year!

learnings

This process made me consider the things I pay for on a monthly basis, and how much I actually use them. I ended up going to the gym and the Victoria Makerspace more frequently as a result.

It made me appreciate experiences that don’t cost money, like going to the library.

Most notably though, it improved my cooking. Working with only the ingredients I had (or what was on sale) forced me to get creative. I very much enjoyed the meals I made this month!

no phone

This point has been hammered to death by so many people, but it’s still true.

On date nights — or when Ashley and I want to spend time together — we switch phones. She gets mine and I get hers.

It’s nice because you still have something in your pocket that feels approximately correct. And you can still take pictures. But it prevents you from scrolling during the gaps.

(we discovered a new TV watching arrangement as a result of the boredom)

penny (the dog)

We met Penny the dog this month! She’s my dad’s dog.

resolutions from 2025

As usual, let’s evaluate how I did on my resolutions from last year. Each resolution is rated out of 10 in terms of how “completed” it was.

drive to Mexico

0/10 did not do this

do one muscle-up

3/10 I’m getting very close to this - just need to nail down some technique

do a backflip on grass

0/10 I did not do this even though I’m quite confident I can (big regret)

50 consecutive push-ups

10/10 I did this

30-second handstand

10/10 no problem

play piano in front of people

10/10 playing with Bonus Round

2 hours of volunteering

0/10 did not do this

do the 5040 hike

0/10 did not do this

go sailing with friends this summer

0/10 did not do this. But made loose plans to buy a sailboat this summer

track calories for two weeks

10/10 did this and I’m still doing it!

always be sore (from training), unless injured, sick, or traveling

7/10? I’m usually pretty sore most days

resolutions for 2026

I need to write down resolutions for 2026! So far, I have:

• learn to read and write musical notation

• have a conversation in Spanish

• do a muscle-up

newsletter stats 2025

Another tradition is looking at some stats from the past year’s newsletters. I actually made a website for this purpose, but here’s the short version:

I’ve been steadily writing less and less over time, both in terms of number of words and number of newsletters.

• 2023: 13,280 words and 14 posts

• 2024: 8,181 words and 11 posts

• 2025: 6,168 words and 10 posts

Along those lines, I’ve also been writing less in each newsletter on average. From 885 → 743 → 617.

I take both these things as a good sign. Hopefully, I’m conveying the same amount of meaning in fewer words — getting more efficient.

A few more points:

• Average sentence length rose in 2025: 9.45 → 9.18 → 10.83 words

• List ratio rose in 2025: 0.188 → 0.177 → 0.26 (more lists)

sharing stuff online

I’ve been thinking about sharing things on the internet. Not within a network of friends, but out in “public”. Like posting from a public account on Instagram, Tiktok, Youtube, etc.

I used to consider this risky and had an instinct to stay private. Not for any personal safety reasons (which is a valid and separate consideration), but out of an anxiety that people would pay too much attention to me.

Here’s the epiphany I had this month:

Most strangers on the internet don’t have time for you.

People on the internet are busy scrolling, watching Youtube, getting in arguments, etc. There’s literally an entire economy based around trying to engage and distract people. Usually to buy something.

Anyways, I’m no longer as tentative about that kind of thing.

That said, there are certainly strangers on the internet who will pay attention to you in order to steal from you.

So I try to keep that in mind too.

misc

Never trust a thought that occurs to you indoors

• Friedrich Nietzsche

• This is a good and funny article on the new MacOS icons

• I started making granola

• check out the covey matrix

• I made Ashley an overhead camera rig at the Makerspace!

  

• I recorded some songs with Bonus Round!

and that’s it. See you next month!

portugal

Most of my free time in December was spent preparing for and enjoying a trip to Lisbon. The whole family went together over Christmas.

Here’s a little trip slideshow :)

My favourite Portuguese words are tranquilo and muito bom.

gridcalendar.ca

During the trip I started updating last year’s calendar. In the middle of fiddling with Adobe Illustrator, I stumbled onto this calendar.

It got me interested in the idea of making the calendar open source…

Anyways, that’s what I did! and now it’s free to print 😁

I’ve put it up at gridcalendar.ca. If you’re interested, go to gridcalendar.ca and follow the instructions (you can change the colours too!).

sunsets

I find it hard to see the sun this time of year (we don't get much of it in Victoria winters). It often gets dark without me noticing at all. Depressing.

A few months ago, I made a calendar that schedules a sunset walk each day. It looks like this:

It’s helped me notice when I should go outside, so I’ve made some versions to share:

• Vancouver/Victoria

  • 3 months ahead

  • 6 months ahead

• Toronto/Kingston

  • 3 months ahead

  • 6 months ahead

• Halifax

  • 3 months ahead

  • 6 months ahead

Turns out there are many ways to add these events to your calendar. Here are some instructions!

The new calendar should be added under a name like “sunset times..”

one battle whistle

You’ll be interested to know that after watching One Battle After Another, I’ve been obsessed with learning how to whistle. Specifically, Leo's whistle in the movie:

This tiktok also contributed to my motivation. It’s a whole new medium of communication. Really impressive stuff.

So the last few weeks of December were spent incessantly whistling while walking around Lisbon. Like constantly. It started happening subconsciously after a while.

I’ve gotten pretty good at it. I’ll let you know when it comes in handy.

wrapped

Here are some 2025 recaps from various apps:

Youtube

Whoop

Spotify

misc

• I learned “christmas time is here” for the holidays

• Ashley showed me “why i never want to move back to the US” - interesting video

• Me and my family became obsessed with Pips (a NYTimes game)

• This image has seemed relevant lately

three years

Thank you for reading. It’s been three years of the newsletter!

I started when I was 24 and now I’m 27. Crazy.

On to year 4!!!

“Kahvi”

The nature of my name is that no one will pronounce it correctly on the first try — unless they’ve practiced beforehand.

Someone pronouncing my name confidently and correctly when they haven’t said it in a while makes me feel good. The act of caring to remember the pronunciation is very meaningful to me.

I appreciate when people ask me about the pronunciation too. I think it’s a decent conversation starter! And it gives me a chance to try one of my many phonetic devices:

- kahvi as in covenant

- kahvi as in a covey of quails

- kahvi as in kahvi-lovey-dovey

I’ll usually follow up with:

Emphasis on the uh sound instead of ah. Kuhv as in dove.

As I’ve gotten older, mispronunciations bother me less. I’ve mellowed out about it.

In a short, fleeting interaction, I’ll use my easy name — Roger. This usually applies at Starbucks. I don’t feel at all like a Roger, but no one has mispronounced it so far.

I think everyone deals with this to a certain degree. There’s always going to be a gap between how you’d like to be addressed and how you are addressed. Nickname, middle name, emphasis here, ‘I go by Dave not David’, etc.

I feel grateful for my name because it sets me apart.

(this is a pseudo-continuation of this post)

hawaii

Ashley and I went to O’ahu from November 6-10 for our four-year anniversary! It was one of the best trips we’ve ever been on. Here are some pictures we took!

how to not be tracked

Recently, I participated in a talent show and gave a quick presentation on how not to be tracked online. It’s linked below and I’ve also posted the slides here!

LISTERS: A Glimpse Into Extreme Birdwatching

While in Hawaii, we started watching this documentary. I love this documentary.

It’s about two boys around my age who decide to live in a van and see as many birds as they can see in a calendar year. Charming and educational and hilarious.

It’s the type of adventure that makes me optimistic about our generation, y’know?

Landman

Essentially it’s:

Billy Bob Thornton slinging insults into an iPhone 17 in the middle of the Texas desert surrounded by pumpjacks while the sun sets in the background

Pretty entertaining! This show does a great job of filling out my worldview since I voted for the Green Party.

misc

- look at the Size of Life

- do rhetorical questions make someone’s writing more engaging?

That’s all - see you next month!!

why is the end of summer so busy? even though i’m not going back to school it feels like i’m prepping for it. stressful.

i wish the last two weeks of august would last for four weeks.

journaling

i’ve been keeping up with my journaling.

actually, that’s where most of my words go these days. i’ve started writing multiple paragraphs daily instead of just one sentence.

the increased output might be due to this addition at the top of my journal:

Focus on feeling. how did you feel today

this helps trigger a bunch of stuff - mostly reflection. actually thinking about my day instead of just recounting what’s happened.

that specific line originated on a walk. I was thinking how memories stick much better when i associate them with how i felt at the time.

i think emotion is one of the best triggers for memory i have. perhaps this is not unique to me.

homelab

it’s been tough to write for this newsletter lately. in fact, i was just going to publish some of my journal entries and call it a day.

these days, whenever i manage to sit in front of my laptop, i spend most of my time working on my homelab.

i’ve been in the process of adding many internal services. this means applications/websites that only i have access to on my network (my tailnet).

essentially, i’ve been docker-composing anything i can find online that looks cool.

the services i use are:

immich

a service that backs up all my photos and makes them available over the web.

pi-hole

a DNS server that blocks ads on my network.

jellyfin

a media server for the movies/tv i download.

home assistant

a service to centralize my home automation stuff (mostly lights).

all these things require having a “server”. this could be an EC2 instance in some data center in virginia, but that’s not very fun (or private). so I have a Lenovo M900 setup in our closet.

i hope to do a more in-depth explanation of all this later.

notepad

another laptop activity has been building a notepad tool. i decided to build this because i’m annoyed at how long it takes to synchronize text between my laptop and my phone and my android tablet.

essentially, i want a tool that instantly syncs a text document between any client i want (could be a smart fridge).

you might be saying

kahvi! this exists already! just use google docs or notion!

you are right. but those things store my words on some server in virginia. that’s too far away! i have a server at home that is much closer - and private (i don’t want their ai models to train on my content).

i want an instant, private, plain-text, cross-platform sync!!

well.......clearly services exist to do this, but the good ones are paid and i can’t deal with paying for that kind of thing until i’ve tried to build it myself.

you can keep track of my progress here!

bonus round

my endeavours in september also included performing with my band twice. both times were:

• exhilarating

• nerve-wracking

• gratifying

we’re playing a gig next week, november 22nd at the pheonix in victoria!

wrap up

additionally, i:

• joined the Victoria Makerspace

• learned about the 90-9-1 principle

• felt sad about the Blue Jays’ loss

that’s it! thanks for reading this far :)

see you next month 🦧

happenings

• Strapped a canoe onto the CRV (on two separate occasions).

  

  

• Celebrated my grandmother's birthday in Halifax.

  

• Met with a very high level engineer and he called my AI analogy "apt"!!

• Lost my wallet and found security footage of the thieves.

  

• Went on a very difficult hike with Ashley during a heat wave.

  

  

• Put up a tarp in our living room to combat the afternoon heat.

  

• Participated in the annual bike race and placed fourth (it was prom themed).

  

• Had my birthday at a trampoline park and thoroughly enjoyed it.

• Baked some truly delicious carrot cake muffins.

learnings

north should be up

I get a much better sense of direction when I configure my Google maps to have a fixed orientation (so north is always up):

Even though it’s not always pointed in the direction I'm going, it gives me a much better idea of where I am on the island.

what I’m eating

I’ve realized that my intuition for how much I'm eating is widely inaccurate. The gap between how much I think I’ve eaten and reality is huge!

This revelation has come after tracking my macros for a couple weeks (with this app). More on that next month!

long weekend birthday

Here are the years my birthday will fall on a long weekend:

• 2025 → 27 (this year!)

• 2031 → 33

• 2036 → 38

• 2042 → 44

• 2053 → 55

• 2059 → 61

content!

• here’s a good ai take

• here’s pewdiepie discovering linux:

  • pt 1

  • pt 2

• some cooking tips

• these are the movies I watched this month:

end

And that’s all I cobbled together for this month 😮‍💨

See you in October!

Well, I missed the June newsletter. I assume only the most attentive of you have noticed this, but it has loomed large in my mind.

Why? The usual summer busyness and travel.

However, I’d like to argue that June and July are basically the same month so only one newsletter is required:

• both are summer months

• both start with “JU”, followed by two letters

But enough about missed deadlines! That's what my job is for!

journaling

I’ve been writing one sentence everyday since February 6th.

As a result, I have a pretty accurate description of what I was doing on any given day this year. Useful if I’m ever tried in court and need an alibi.

An entry is something like:

2025.06.17 - Tuesday

First day back was intense. Many tasks. But a beautiful bike ride with folks after work :)

This is unstructured — my programmer brain would like something like this:

date: 2025.06.17
location: Victoria
activities: bike ride
people: Ashley, Alex, Julia

That way, I could write a program to extract cumulative statistics from my entries.

E.g.

Still, GPT could probably do this with unstructured (normal) entries.

Then, I could ask it questions like:

• Was I injured or sick in the past month?

• What dates was I in Montreal?

• Who did we have dinner with on that Tuesday in April?

You may be saying:

Kahvi, that’s what having a memory is!! Just remember things!

And this is absolutely true.

travel

Following from the above, this is where I was for the months of June and July (extracted from my journal entries):

June:

• 01–12: Victoria

• 13–16: Monterey & Big Sur

  

• 17–30: Victoria

July:

• 01–03: Victoria

• 04–07: Hornby Island

  

• 08–11: Victoria

• 12–13: Rathtrevor Beach

  

• 14–31: Victoria

how to be more engaging on the internet

Lately, I’ve noticed how I engage more people online. It falls on two axes: how much content I put out and how personal it is.

content volume + medium

The more bytes I upload, the more people engage.

This is kind of obvious. A picture is worth a thousand words, a video is a thousand pictures, etc.

Reading a newsletter is harder than watching a Twitch stream.

So, in my opinion, the more bytes uploaded, the more attention and engagement.

personal expression

The more personal/open I am, the more people engage.

Things like showing more parts of my life and the people around me, being more honest and vulnerable, etc.

Sidenote:

It’s hard to know if this pattern is a cause or effect. As in — are you more popular online because you’re open? Or are you open because you’re more popular? Because more people will engage?

self-evaluation

I acknowledge that this newsletter is usually weak on both of those axes. My expression is neither visually intense nor that personally vulnerable.

I’m not sure yet if I want that to change. But it does make me think about starting a vlog again!

dill pickle hummus is my #1

I discovered it by accident. It’s really good. It's my new favourite hummus — by far.

I’d recommend the Summer Fresh or Western Family brands.

Roasted garlic!?!?! 🤢🙅‍♂️

misc

• I saw a bald eagle hunt a heron at Beacon Hill Park

• Played my first gig with Bonus Round!!

  

• Challenge: Do the dimensions for this Brita make sense?

  

• A message to all my Victoria people — I think Café Malabar is overrated.

end

Thanks for reading! Hope you have a fantastic August 🤠

• i bought a new car

  

  • i wrote about this last april

  • specs

    • make: honda

    • model: crv

    • year: 2016

    • colour: silver grey

  • feelings

    • it's nice to have reliable AC

    • i like the backup camera

• i sold my old car

  

  • specs

    • make: honda

    • model: civic

    • year: 2008

    • colour: white

  • feelings

    • i will miss her

• i got promoted

  • software developer -> senior software developer

    • i've been working more lately

  • related:

    

• reading

  • i finished blood meridian

    

  • thoughts

    • liked it, but preferred lonesome dove

      • blood meridian is the terrifying reality of what it was like to be a cowboy back then

      • lonesome dove is more romantic

  • i need a new book now

• montreal vs victoria

  • lately I’ve been thinking about how cities develop over time:

    • your experience of a city is the direct result of people who’ve lived there before.

      • i.e. the history of people's behavior influence what type of food exists, how late venues stay open, etc.

    • therefore, to change the culture, there needs to be a history of a lot of people doing something.

      • E.g. i got to experience great music and going out in montreal because people have been doing that there for a long time - they affected my experience.

• i started playing in a band :)

  • we're playing a gig in July

• i bought this TRMNL device

  

  • just a passive e-ink display

  • it shows the weather and updates every hour

  • this video inspired me to buy it

• i've been writing a sentence everyday for about four months now

  • here's one word from each sentence this month:

    • promoted

    • gig

    • Sandcut

    • yardwork

    • jam

    • band

    • gymnastics

    • Thunderbolts

    • karaoke

    • recovering

    • YouthNet

    • funk

    • newsletter

    • kickball

    • haircut

    • BACON

    • grey

    • beanbag

    • Butchart

    • Taiwanese

    • awkward

    • Bixi

    • Banquise

    • Kingston

    • Stuart

    • Papa

    • Phoenix

    • Tobi

    • Hacked

    • throat

    • Kiin

• I’ll leave you with a good mantra me and Ashley have been using lately:

  • let go or be dragged

See you next month!

This April, my grandmother on my dad’s side passed away. It happened at the beginning of the month, and I flew to attend her funeral in Ottawa about three weeks later.

I thought the ceremony and recounted stories were lovely. Her life was filled to the brim! So many moments of strength and family and music. She was an incredible singer.

I was happy to catch up with the Sylvester side of the family too :)

Inevitably, the whole thing made me think about loss.

Ever since her stroke in 2019, my grandmother had gradually become less present in my life, which made her passing feel distant.

Conversely, when I consider losing the people who I depend on and talk to and think about daily, it eclipses my ability. My life is defined by those people. It’s essentially comprised of them. Hard to imagine anything different.

on my phone

I watched this Eddie Burbank YouTube video of him getting rid of a smartphone for 30 days and it made me want to do the same thing.

Obviously, his experience was overwhelmingly positive and the anxiety he used to feel from his phone disappeared.

It got me thinking about how I could do this and why it appeals to me.

1. it’s the phone

I think removing the phone would be especially effective. It relates to one of my tech axioms.

the screen size axiom

The smaller the screen, the more solitary the experience; the bigger the screen, the more social the experience.

E.g. Watching a cinema screen feels communal; scrolling on a phone feels isolating.

So, if we go down this list:

• phone

• ipad

• laptop

• desktop

• tv

the further down the list your device is, the better you’ll feel afterwards.

(Anecdotally, when I spend more time on my ipad or laptop, I’ll often leave feeling more productive than disappointed or anxious)

What’s implied here is that it’s harder to get addicted to an ipad - we’ll have to see.

2. utility vs distraction

Interacting with my phone over the past few years could be described as

an attempt to derive utility without simultaneously fuelling a doom scrolling habit.

Turns out, this is hard! To find a solution, I inevitably run into this question:

How can I separate my phone’s useful functions from the distracting ones?

Unfortunately, apps don’t fall cleanly into those two categories.

In fact, it feels like we’re trending towards the exact opposite. Even my music app has an endless, scrollable video feed now.

There are many nuances and exceptions here. Often, I’ll discover music or recipes or artists that I really love from the endless, scrollable video feeds. It also feels like that’s where most of our internet culture originates.

Luckily, a cold-turkey fast completely avoids this question. You simply don’t get any of it. Scroll on your laptop!

3. social presence

In an effort to keep in touch with his friends and family during his phone fast, Eddie got a landline installed. I was quickly enamoured with this idea. In particular, leaving voicemails.

If all I had was a landline, friends would be forced to leave a message. With their actual voice!

Why does this appeal to me? This relates to Social Presence Theory: How well a medium conveys a sense of the other person.

At the risk of sounding obvious, I get more feeling from a voice message than a text. Fewer layers of abstraction between me and the other person. Sounds good!

fin

I’ll have to see if I ever build up the courage to go for 30 days. Maybe three is a good starter.

a tough race

I ran a 10k this month. It was the long-anticipated sequel to the same race I ran in 2023. In fact, I wrote about that race and how pleasantly surprised I was by my performance.

2023 - 50m47s

As you can see, I crossed the finish line looking “confident” and “poised”.

This year was different.

2025 - 52m20s

“In pain” and “exhausted” are the adjectives that come to mind.

Due to my very optimistic pacing, by the fourth kilometer I was exhausted.

I ended up finishing about 1min 33s slower than last time - about two and a half minutes away from my sub-50 goal.

That said, I didn’t injure myself! So it’s as good a time as any to start training for next year! I’ll keep you updated.

a few vignettes of my month

• convincing the tailor at the mall to hem the sleeves of my suit jacket (which I had bought hours earlier) before they closed because my flight left at 5AM next morning.

• noticing the sounds of the water before diving early sunday morning.

• discovering that homemade tortillas are quite easy to make and delicious.

• sitting on a bench with Ashley on a sunny day in Beacon Hill complaining about the Canada Geese

• watching hockey with my cousins after our grandmother's funeral - the Habs in game three were electric.

• boarding my five-hour flight with a steadily growing headache after helping myself to the free beer in the Air Canada lounge at Pearson.

  • note to myself: don't drink before a >4 hour flight! you will get a headache (Thanks to Ashley for connecting the dots).

music

• this song

• this dj set is remarkable (at least the first 15 minutes)

see you next month!

ai skeptic

Why am I skeptical about generative AI?

1. catalyst for doubt

In mid-March, I read a coherent, convincing take-down of Generative AI. It's titled There is no AI revolution, written by this guy Ed Zitron.

Despite the colourful language and general slander, the point he makes still resonated with me. It boils down to:

Is this whole thing overblown?!

I had been harbouring feelings of doubt for a while, but this article put a fine point on it. Also, the timing felt especially pertinent since:

• the company I work for is very confident about ai.

• much of the stock market (that I invest in) seems certain about radical advancements in generative ai

Unfortunately, I don't feel as confident. The following is an effort to figure out why.

2. how do i use ai?

One reason I might not feel as optimistic about AI is because I'm using it wrong.

Here's what I do. It mostly fits into two categories:

a. A pseudo-Google search

GPT has virtually replaced Google in my daily workflow. Things I used to find by clicking links and reading StackOverflow I find through the chatbot now.

It’s nice because it doesn't care about spelling or grammar and it can recall context from previous messages in the thread. It's very good at understanding what I want.

• e.g., "is map faster then forEach in JS" -> "how can I filter some items from the array?"

b. Copy editing

The majority of my published writing gets checked by GPT.

It will notice illogical sentences and disconnected ideas. It can distill down important points well and offer coherent, useful suggestions.

It's simply very good at understanding my writing.

• e.g., "go over this github reply"

• e.g., "are there any mistakes in the following text?"

• e.g., "summarize these paragraphs"

I mean, I like being able to talk to the computer in English! It's faster than Googling something and much less effort than asking a human to read my writing.

It actually seems to understand meaning in language.

However…

3. what is it missing?

It's missing opinions.

I rarely ask it for advice. When I do, I get back a generic, lowest-common-denominator opinion. Its opinion is the internet's opinion.

As in, it gives me the highest-ranked-website-on-Google's answer. Because it's so good at generalizing! But this is not always useful.

It's missing a memory.

It doesn't seem to remember things. Past a certain point, it will forget what we're talking about or go into a loop. The deeper I get into a thread, the weirder it gets.

This incentivizes starting from scratch for each interaction, which makes long discussions nearly impossible.

It can't do math.

Well, it can do simple math. But it doesn't understand math. Apple did a study—when a word is changed in the math problem, it fails up to 65% more often. That can’t be right! I don't get 65% worse when the "apples" turn into "oranges"!

4. it’s an interface

So what should we do with a machine that can understand language, has the internet's opinions but can't remember things and can't do math?

Well, like I said 2 years ago, use it as an interface around software.

Instead of using programming languages or interfaces or buttons or Excel or a UI…just use English!

This article puts it pretty well. You want the LLM on the outside as the interface. This relates quite directly to MCPs.

Like yes! Give me a chatbar in Photoshop. Not to generate creepy fake images, but to create a masking layer around an object automatically. Or to add a percentage change column to my Excel spreadsheet. Do the clicking around for me while I speak in English. Like Jarvis! Right?

So sure, there are myriad ways to monetize this. Speaking English to software is indeed a paradigm shift.

But, unfortunately, I don't think this is the path to AGI. From this article:

Everyone now seems to be admitting you can’t just use more compute and more data while pretraining large language models and expect them to turn into some sort of all-knowing digital god.

I don't deny that there could be another path out there to AGI, but today's models aren't it.

misc

Silly me spent all my time writing about AI 🤦‍♂️. I'll try not to do that again for a while.

Here are some other things that happened in March:

• Ashley and I hosted an Oscars watch party

  

• tried freediving for the first (and second) time and loved it

  

• I attended the helicopter logging safety forum

  

• got into hifi audio and I set up my first system

• decided I want a Mazda CX-5

• decided I actually don't want a Mazda CX-5

• started running regularly again

  • noticed my feet going numb after 5km

• hit a new squat PR! (245x6)

end

thank you kindly! Bye 👽

dear ashley

I’ve always taken geographical proximity to mean a lot. The closer I am to someone, physically, the more I can focus on them. The easier it is to empathize with them.

Along those lines, life's gotten comfier since we’ve moved in together.

It's nice not have to think about when I’ll see you next.

It's nice to be able to talk about things in person instead of through a phone.

It's nice to curate a space together.

It's nice to host people as a couple.

It's nice to cook for each other.

It's nice to see each other after a long day.

Sometimes life is just moving forward until you get knocked down. Which makes it hard to build something lasting.

I’ve found that the closer we are, the more support we can give each other. Recovering from those hard days is easier. And I think a relationship is built for those moments - it gets stronger because of those moments. Like an antifragile system.

I'm lucky (and grateful) to have you around. As my editor, partner, roommate, friend ♥️.

a background tone

Ever since Trump's inauguration, there's been a constant buzzing in the back of my head - like a mosquito. I suspect it'll linger for at least four years.

So that's flavoured everything this month :( It's an atmosphere that will take some getting used to.

lonesome dove

Fortunately, I was reading a good book that allowed for some escapism. It's a habit of mine to rave about every single book I've read, and I'm doing the same for this one.

Ashley is well aware of how much I love this book because I keep explaining it to her and gasping out loud every time something happens.

Not sure why I haven't read a Western before. It's fantastic how small their world is. Just you, your horse, your outfit and the plains.

It's a story about two old Texas Rangers and a bunch of cowboys.

“Son, this is a sad thing,” Augustus said. “Loss of life always is. But the life is lost for good. Don’t you go attempting vengeance…He went over and tightened the girth on his saddle. “Don’t be trying to give back pain for pain,” he said. “You can’t get even measures in business like this. You best go find your wife.”

He and Augustus had discussed the question of leadership many times. “It ain’t complicated,” Augustus maintained. “Most men doubt their own abilities. You don’t. It’s no wonder they want to keep you around. It keeps them from having to worry about failure all the time.”

I enjoyed every second.

Thank you, Stuart, for the recommendation.

specific observations about Halifax

I spent a lovely week in Halifax visiting Satish and Ran. Here are some things I noticed:

• After finishing a meal at a restaurant, the waiter won’t rush you with the bill. They let you stick around!

• The Halifax Central Library might be my favourite library of all time. It's beautiful and huge and comfortable and also feels like a community center.

  

  

• The snow and ice in Halifax is, in effect, part of the sidewalk. It has the same structural integrity as concrete as far as I'm concerned.

  

Halifax has an intense, vibrant and outgoing spirit. I’d like to return soon.

other things that happened

• learned not to fly through Pearson in February

• watched Team Canada defeat the U.S. in the 4 Nations final

• bought a drysuit for free diving

• rediscovered the apple, ham, and brie sandwich

That’s it, bye! 🇨🇦

The calendar from last month is for sale! Check it out at gridcalendar.ca.

circles

My life consists of five different circles:

1. Health

2. Friends

3. Family/Relationship

4. Work

5. Passions/Hobbies

Lately, it's felt like the work circle has been encroaching on my other circles. Not so much in terms of hours, but in terms of energy.

This is the second instance of an emerging pattern - last January, I also felt overwhelmed about work.

That said, lack of energy is a common theme in January. In fact, I got sick the last week of January - almost exactly how it happened two years ago. So that might have something to do with it.

But let’s talk about work!

planning

I’ve been reflecting on project management, mostly because I’ve been leading a project at work since mid November.

Every project exists on a spectrum between planning and adapting.

You can either plan for everything (and risk over-engineering) or plan nothing (and risk wasting time).

For most of my personal projects, I’m on the adaptive end. I don’t really plan, I just do things. So when I encounter something unexpected like:

• this command didn’t work

• i have to pay for this

• this broke something

I have to adapt in the moment. Which is fun, but not the most efficient (I usually get distracted).

With work projects, I’m on the other end of the spectrum.

I make a plan, figure out the steps, document the assumptions, etc. This is usually how people at Shopify like to do it (probably for external visibility).

That said, it’s impossible to plan for everything. I’m not going to plan for the internet going down or the US invading Greenland, even though these things would certainly affect the outcome.

It’s not just that these events are out of my control—they're so unlikely to happen that planning for them would be a waste of time.

But not everything is so obvious. Some events sit in a gray area where predicting outcomes is difficult. And that’s the key:

Effective planning is about anticipating which unlikely things are likely to happen. Almost like predicting the future.

I’ve come to understand that this is something learned through experience.

That said, no matter how accurately you predict the future, there’s still a chance you get things wrong. And when that happens, you’re forced to the other end of the spectrum - you need to adapt to keep moving.

And unfortunately, adapting takes time! So when conditions change that you haven’t planned for, the timeline changes too.

That’s why hard deadlines are tough - the timeline can’t change. So more work gets stuffed into the same amount of time and the work starts ~encroaching~.

resolutions

Let's go through my 2024 resolutions and see how I did. I'll rate each resolution out of 10 in terms of how “completed” it was.

always be sore (from training), unless injured or sick

8/10 - I stuck to this for the most part. I’d have to slightly amend to “unless injured, sick or traveling”, since working out while abroad is tough.

maintain a caloric deficit for some amount of time

0/10 - I didn’t do this. At least not consciously. I’d probably amend this to “maintain a caloric deficit for two weeks” to make it more specific.

take Spanish lessons

3/10 - I attempted to do this. I downloaded Pimsleur and took a couple lessons.

organize group trips

0/10 - I did not do this.

volunteer once a week at least five times

0/10 - I did not do this.

fill the watercolour notebook I got for christmas

0/10 - Nope.

hold a handstand for one minute

5/10 - I did get better at my handstand. I think I’m close to 30 seconds. I would amend this to “hold a handstand for 30 seconds”. A whole minute is crazy.

do a standing backflip

10/10 - I did this.

go sailing in the summer

6/10 - Not really sure what this means. I did go sailing, but only because I took lessons. I’d amend this to “go sailing with friends this summer”.

So! I succeeded in only one resolution - to do a standing backflip. But that one has been a long time coming so it counts for more.

These 2025 resolutions are plagiarized from my notes on turning 26 + my amended ones:

• drive to Mexico

• do one muscle up

• do a backflip on grass

• 50 consecutive push-ups

• 30 second handstand

• play piano in front of people

• 2 hours of volunteering

• do the 5040 hike

• go sailing with friends this summer

• track calories for two weeks

• always be sore (from training), unless injured, sick or traveling

newsletter stats

Last month marked the two year anniversary of this newsletter!

Like I did in 2023, I thought I’d compile some stats from this past year.

length

In 2024, I wrote an average of 662 words per newsletter. This is about 100 words less than in 2023. I take this as a good sign.

This chart overlays each post’s length in 2024 vs 2023:

Two things I noticed:

1. I tend to write a lot less in September!

2. In 2023, I wrote longer posts at the start of the year then ended with shorter posts. Whereas in 2024, I wrote my longer posts at the end of the year.

lateness

It turns out I was a bit better at publishing newsletters on time this year. I averaged 15 days late in 2024, compared to 16 in 2023.

This chart overlays which day of the month each post was published in 2024 vs 2023:

I don’t notice any trends in this one - it just looks all over the place.

most common topics

Here were my most frequently mentioned topics in 2024:

1. europe: 9

2. jerry seinfeld: 6

3. ashley: 5

4. daylight savings: 5

5. victoria: 5

6. vancouver: 4

7. toronto: 4

8. iran.: 4

9. canada: 4

10. youtube: 3

most referenced domains

1. en.wikipedia.org: 8

2. www.youtube.com: 8

3. kahvipatel.com: 7

4. www.goodreads.com: 7

5. www.newsletter.kahvipatel.com: 5

most used emojis

1. 🤞: 1

2. 👽: 1

3. 🥵: 1

4. 🥰: 1

5. 😮: 1

6. 🥴: 1

^ Most of this data was generated using this cool Javascript library.

end

I’ll mention it again - the calendar is for sale here!!

See you in March!

Specifically, this was the timeline:

• Red is moving out - which mostly happened the last week of November

• Yellow is moving in - unpacking boxes, buying furniture, organizing, etc

• Purple is family time - around Christmas and New Years

As you’ll notice, the moving in has not yet finished and probably won’t for a while.

The unpacking made me think of something I read this month:

You never set out to add bureaucracy. You just get it. Period. Without even knowing it. So you always have to be looking to eliminate it.

I feel the same way about my stuff. It just builds up in layers without me being aware. It happens consistently, in the background. And I haven’t been consciously looking to eliminate it.

Hopefully this will motivate a sharper focus on reducing/donating.

calendar

I made a calendar during December and I think it’s pretty cool.

Last year, I bought a big year-long calendar at Staples in January. I enjoyed using it - checking off each day helped me keep a bit of perspective.

It was laid out like:

This is cool because every row represents a quarter, but

• jumping from the end of March to the beginning of April is weird (same with June → July, etc)

• I don’t like portrait mode

• it was coloured a grating shade of blue

A couple months ago, I found this calendar. It looked perfect but:

• it didn’t ship to Canada

• it was sold out

So, after spending several hours trying to pirate Adobe Illustrator, I made my own!

This format reads more like a book - every line is a month, every box is a day. Also, importantly, the weekends are highlighted. We only get so many per year!

Here’s a couple interesting things to note about 2025:

• We get five weekends in both March and November

• September and December both start on Monday, the 1st

• There’s only one Friday the 13th this year - in June

I added some personal stuff for my own copy too - birthdays, anniversaries, etc.

Anyways, I want to sell this thing! Using Shopify!

Sam Walton

I read the Walmart book over the holidays. It tells the story of the late Sam Walton out of Arkansas and how he built the company from scratch. Walmart, at time of writing, is the largest company in the world by revenue and employees - around 2 million people.

It’s a special book too as he started writing it after he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma.

The truth is that if I hadn't gotten sick, I doubt I would have written this book, or taken the time to try to sort my life out. As you now know, temperamentally, I'm much too biased toward action to undertake such a sedentary project.

I was struck by how opposite it felt to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk. Both are entrepreneurs and business magnates, but there’s so much more warmth and humanity in Sam’s story. More talk of people, relationships, community (at least the way he tells it).

His stance on CEO compensation is refreshing!

if American management is going to say to their workers that we're all in this together, they're going to have to stop this foolishness of paying themselves $3 million and $4 million bonuses every year and riding around everywhere in limos and corporate jets like they're so much better than everybody else.

And the way he talks about hourly employees:

If you want the people in the stores to take care of the customers, you have to make sure you're taking care of the people in the stores. That's the most important single ingredient of Wal-Mart's success.

He and his wife would host a few thousand of them at their house every year:

After the meeting, Helen and I invite all the associates who attend—about 2,500 of them—over to our house for a big picnic lunch catered by our own Wal-Mart cafeteria.

He’s was also a fan of this idea of constant change:

I like to keep everybody guessing. I don't want our competitors getting too comfortable with feeling like they can predict what we're going to do. And I don't want our own executives feeling that way either. It's part of my strong feeling for the necessity of constant change, for keeping people a little off balance.

I agree with this! Change is good, it keeps us sharp. That said, on a personal level, it’s hard to build deep connections with people when they’re always changing.

This is a big contradiction in my makeup that I don't completely understand to this day. In many of my core values—things like church and family and civic leadership and even politics—I'm a pretty conservative guy. But for some reason in business, I have always been driven to buck the system, to innovate, to take things beyond where they've been.

And, along those lines, Sam has some humility about what it took to grow the company.

Here's how I look at it: my life has been a tradeoff. If I wanted to reach the goals I set for myself, I had to get at it and stay at it every day. I had to think about it all the time.

Finally, he was awarded the Medal of Freedom about three weeks before he died. The following is from the postscript written by his son:

The award was presented on the morning of Tuesday, March 17, in the auditorium of the Wal-Mart general offices. The room was filled with several hundred of his associates, and their affection for Dad on this special day was particularly moving. I think they may even have startled President and Mrs. Bush—not to mention the White House press corps—by giving one of the most enthusiastic Wal-Mart cheers we've heard around here in some time. Dad's pleasure was evident, and he called it "the highlight of our entire career." Of course, he shared all the credit with his associates. But it was a poignant day. He had to be rolled onto the stage in a wheelchair, and I think most of the associates sensed that it would be their last get-together with him.

…

less than three weeks after receiving the Medal of Freedom, and just days after his seventy-fourth birthday, Dad's struggle with cancer finally ended. On Sunday morning, April 5, he died peacefully—as inspirational in facing death as he had been in facing life. We will all miss him.

More highlights are here.

end

And that does it for year two of kahvi’s newsletter! Thank you so much for reading! We’re onto season 3!

I hope to have some resolutions and year-end newsletter stats next month 🤞

See you then!

This newsletter is a bit late because Ashley and I have been busy moving in to a new place together :)

moving

We didn’t hire movers for my stuff—it was just me and my dad.

When you're forced to put everything you own in boxes and move them into the elevator, then into a car, then out of the car, then up the elevator, then into the apartment, then into a corner stacked on top of another box—it makes you realize how much stuff you actually own.

Too much, as it turns out.

Sorting through all my stuff hasn't left much room for writing. That said, here are some thoughts from November.

time to fall back

Like nails grating on a chalkboard, Daylight Savings Time is here once again.

As is my custom, I’d like to spend some time railing against it. Last year I said:

Ah, daylight savings I hate you.

But this year, I’d like to be a bit more specific.

This is what our year looks like. We start on January 1st in Standard Time (ST), then our clocks “spring forward” in March to Daylight Savings Time (DST). Then in November, our clocks “fall back” to Standard Time.

standard time

Overall, we actually spend more time in Daylight Savings Time than Standard Time—about 65% vs. 35%.

This raises the question: Why call it Standard Time when it happens for a minority of the year? It’s obviously not the standard, it's the exception!

Up until (very) recently, I thought the opposite—I believed our clocks fell back to DST. That’s why I felt so aggressively opposed towards it, because it stole an hour of daylight at the end of my day. But this is not true! Standard Time steals the hour!

So really, I’m opposed to Standard Time. But saying “Ah, standard time I hate you” doesn’t have the same ring to it.

time shift

Really, I’m opposed to the time shift—the gaining and losing of an hour at seemingly random points in the year. Like even if DST gave us three extra hours of daylight, having to time shift at some point during the year makes it all worse.

The time shift is bad because:

• it disrupts my natural circadian rhythm

• it raises risk of car accidents

This is how I see it: Daylight savings represents the concept of having to time shift at certain points in the year, not the time zone. No daylight savings = no time shift.

To make it clear where I stand, here are the options, ranked in order of my preference:

• Permanent DST

• Permanent ST

• DST + ST + time shift (currently selected)

the election

Here's something: The rest of my twenties will be spent under a Trump presidency.

Here’s a list of takes about the US election I found interesting.

• This Jon Stewart video - including this Chris Cuomo quote:

  Focus less on who is WOKE and more on who is BROKE

• This PodSaveAmerica clip

  Trump has put together the most diverse coalition that a Republican President has had in our lifetime in this win.

• This Ezra Klein tweet

  That there’s more affinity between Democrats and the Cheneys than Democrats and the Rogans and Theo Vons of the world says a lot.

• This chart:

  

• This Matthew Yglesias’ substack

Race is a social construct, but biological sex is not. Policy must acknowledge that reality and uphold people’s basic freedom to live as they choose.

…

Politeness is a virtue, but obsessive language policing alienates most people and degrades the quality of thinking.

bread

I’m getting back into baking this month! Here’s a loaf I baked for Friendsgiving in October and another one.

misc

• This is the first November in a while I haven’t gotten sick—even with a flight to Toronto in between.

• Aren't we lucky to get prettier sunsets in winter?

• I realize I like Thai food more than Vietnamese food.

• This clip of Jameis Winston realizing he’s going to play football in the snow:

  

• We saw a double rainbow!

  

See you next month!

Here’s a list of things that I did over September and October, chronologically:

• Sept 4th: Went on my first float plane flight to test drive a RAV4 that I didn’t end up buying.

• Sept 6-9th: Visited Maya in Vancouver and brought her and Brendan too many deli containers.

• Sept 18th: My world was shaken on its axis when I got a low-taper fade.

• Sept 20th: Left for Europe :)

• Oct 6th: Came back from Europe :(

• Oct 9th: Seven years after moving here, I received my BC Services Card.

• Oct 12th: Ashley and I hosted Friendsgiving!

  

• Oct 13th: Ran the 8k at Royal Victoria Marathon.

• Oct 31st: Halloween!

  

a porch

While visiting Vancouver, I became enamoured with the idea of owning a house and spending time just sitting on the porch.

my car buying axioms

I’ve been trying to buy a car for a while, but no luck yet. Here are my axioms:

1. Driving feel supersedes almost every other aspect of a car.

2. Good deals don’t stay on the market for longer than 24 hours.

   1. Bad deals stay on the market for a while.

3. Dealerships only offer prices at the current market rate or higher.

4. Private sellers can offer prices below, at or above the current market rate.

5. There is more potential for good deals in Vancouver than in Victoria.

6. There is no cost-efficient method to travel from Victoria to Vancouver given <24 hours notice.

europe trip

You’ll notice this newsletter is a bit loose because I spent most of my time creating a slideshow of me and Ashley’s trip to Europe → europe2024slides.

Disclaimer: You’ll need to ask me for the password to see it. Unless you can hack it. In which case - congratulations!

Here are some pictures:

I came away from this Europe trip with a couple of thoughts:

food vs development index

I’m realizing that the more developed a country is, the less appealing their native food is to me. For example:

• British food vs Indian food

• Croatian food vs Greek food

• German food vs Mexican food

I’ve never been to Sweden or Thailand but I know which one I’m picking for food.

iphone

I’ve been falling out of love with my iPhone 12 and Apple Watch. The Europe trip really emphasized this. My phone’s battery doesn’t last a full day and my watch isn’t good at telling me the time.

This irritation is also a result of:

• Updating to iOS 18 (I just wanted to italicize my iMessages!)

• Heavy usage of my phone’s GPS and camera on the trip

It’s tough. On the one hand I like the idea of my phone becoming more inconvenient to use (less screen time, reduces dependence, etc), but it also means that I waste time trying to interact with it instead of actually doing things.

The Right Stuff

I finished The Right Stuff on the trip. If anyone wants an interesting, cowboyish recounting of America's first astronauts, this is the book for you. It's very Top Gun-esque.

The "right stuff" in this case refers to that ephemeral quality that all fighter pilots/astronauts must have, but can't describe. You just know it when you see it. You just gotta have the stuff.

israeli missile defense

With things escalating in the Middle East, I’ve been reading about Israeli missile defense systems. It’s a stark illustration of how technologically advanced Israel is, especially compared to Palestine and Lebanon. The Iron Dome (Daniel Gold) and Arrow (Dov Raviv) programs specifically.

Iron Dome is a system that intercepts rockets flying at speeds of around Mach 3 (about 2,500 miles per hour). It can target and destroy up to 90% of incoming missiles it detects.

Arrow is a system that intercepts longer-range ballistic missiles at speeds up to Mach 9 (about 6,700 miles per hour) in the upper atmosphere. That’s nine times the speed of sound.

Israel has been building these systems with American help since the 1990s. That’s three decades - roughly half the time the state has existed. These systems are so uniquely powerful that Germany is buying one for $3.5 billion.

Meanwhile, Gaza has no universities left.

fresh herbs, ranked

I've been getting into dill lately. It adds a great tang. My fresh herb ranking is:

1. Cilantro

2. Dill

3. Basil

4. Thyme

5. Mint

body annotator app

I require an app that allows you to annotate a 3D model of your body and export it. Doesn’t need to be a scan of you specifically, just a generic body will do.

Ideally, I can select a point or a specific muscle/tendon/bone on the body and say “sharp pain when I put pressure here” or something similar.

Then, I can keep track of where and when I’m experiencing various pains or sensations. Does this exist?

musing about consuming vs creating

I’ve talked about this concept of consumption vs creation before. But what if we got into the specifics. As in, how many bytes of data do we download from the internet versus upload?

What would my ratio be? I produce/upload:

• this newsletter

• reviews to letterboxd

• photos and health data to strava

• pictures (occasionally) to instagram

• book reviews to my blog

• videos to Youtube (sometimes)

I consume/download:

• youtube videos + shorts

• instagram reels + stories + posts

• tv from Disney, Crave, Netflix, etc

• email newsletters

• stuff on facebook

• stuff on twitter

• websites in general

Obviously, I download A LOT more bytes than I’m uploading.

But everyone’s ratio would be different. Some people upload videos daily! If you’re a Twitch streamer, you’re uploading bytes of video for many continuous hours. Kai Cenat is streaming for literally all of November.

Is this the future of influencing? Just uploading more and more bytes of yourself to the internet?

misc

• A meme for my developers out there!

• I’ve been enjoying CBC’s About That show in Youtube. A rare piece of Canadian media that captures my attention.

And that’s all. Thanks to Ashley for helping edit this one.

See you next month!

I’ll be back in a couple of weeks to talk about September and October!

See you then,

- Kahvi

This month, I took a week off and travelled to Vienna to see Coldplay with Maya and Satish. I also turned 26.

vienna huh

Coldplay was awesome. I learned that Chris Martin’s favourite Taylor Swift song is the 1. They also played Fix You and I cried.

What I didn’t expect was how much I liked Vienna. Here are various thoughts I had while over there:

“Wow, this [airport, escalator, outlet, park bench, etc] is nice”

“Why does everyone speak better English than me?”

“They serve beer here?!”

“I can’t believe Hitler got rejected from this art school.”

“This schnitzel is distinctly average.”

“Why do I have to pay to use the public washroom?”

I also put together a pros and cons list:

pros

• it’s mostly clean everywhere

• most bathrooms have an “in use” indicator and a satisfying deadbolt

  

• no one is sleeping on the streets

• they follow rules

  • people don’t jaywalk

• everyone is generally calm and quiet

• they LOVE beer. It’s unbelievably easy to grab a drink anywhere.

• there's wifi everywhere (at least in the city)

cons

• paying for water at restaurants!?

• some areas are super touristy (but European tourists)

• the bottle caps don’t come off

  

• ketchup tastes worse (less sugar)

• people generally don’t engage in niceties or pleasantries

  • they don’t say “sorry” or “excuse me”

activities

Here are some activities I’d recommend if you’re going to Vienna:

• Go to Prater Park. It’s beautiful in the evening.

  

• Go to the attached festival/carnival.

• Walk around the museum district.

slideshow

Here’s a TikTok slideshow from our trip!

TikTok · Kahvi Patel

vienna/europe reflection

Have I entered an alternate reality where the government cares more about trains than the military?

What surprised me is how convenient it all felt. Things made sense. Stuff works the way you expect it to. Mostly everything was intuitive.

Ex 1: I had to go to the bathroom after the Coldplay concert and there was no line. 50,000 people and I just walked in! (a testament to their stadium infrastructure).

Ex 2: I flew back out of Munich and went through their airport security. It was incredible. Just put everything in the bin and walk through. No separate liquids or laptop. It was quiet, no one rushing, but efficient.

lounging around at scale

They are so good at loitering (in a positive way).

The Viennese know how to enjoy themselves — this goes along with the loving beer point.

Everywhere you look, people are sitting, chatting, drinking, eating. It feels like an entire city optimized for that purpose.

The servers don’t rush you at restaurants or cafes. The city has parks with benches. The streets have wide sidewalks and places to chat. And it’s incredibly easy to get to and from all these places using public transit.

All of it makes you want to sit down and vibe.

returning

Coming back home, I was left feeling impressed. And maybe a little depressed.

Why can’t Canada be this way?

→ Well, because Canada isn’t that old. We’re a young country — relatively. And it takes a while to set up all that infrastructure.

→But didn’t Europe have a war!? Didn’t they have to rebuild everything from scratch!?

Well, I never took a European history course in university (clearly). So I’m reading this book to give me some clarity on post-war Europe and how they developed to this point.

turning 26

Ashley threw me a wonderful surprise party to turn twenty-six, which is surely a good sign.

Twenty-six, the number, feels weird. But twenty-eight will be when I start panicking. An age where starting things means finishing them in your thirties. That’s intimidating. Scary.

Things to do before 27:

• drive to Mexico

• get a dog (?)

• save six figures

• do a muscle up

• backflip on grass

• 50 consecutive push-ups

• 30s handstand

• play piano in front of people

• 30hrs volunteering

• sail to Nanaimo for overnight

  • or Salt Spring, Pender, Galiano, etc

• do 5040 hike

other fun stuff

• Working out doesn't help you to lose weight?

  • source - Kurzgesagt

• This post help put international calibre runners in perspective. 1km in 2:37!?!?

  

• We changed a flat tire for the first time

• I read this great MDN guide on Javascript Modules

• went on a river float!

• did a bike scavenger hunt!

  

• I finished The House of Kennedy. It’s tragic, but an interesting journey through that era of American history.

  

end

See you next month!

Well, about a year after this whole thing started, I’ve received word back from McGill Law School. If you missed that part, I started studying for the LSAT in May of 2023 and submitted my application in November.

At the beginning of this month, I got an email:

I’d like to reflect on this.

the application

I think it’s important that I enjoyed the process. It doesn’t feel like time wasted, despite the rejection.

The LSAT is a genuinely interesting test. Especially the logic games. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed studying for it. That’s probably what made me think about applying in the first place.

I’m glad I had the capacity to take the test while working full-time and I’m pleased with how I did.

The personal statement was tougher. I don’t like when my writing feels too serious or emotional. Unfortunately, in this case, that’s kind of the point. Even now, it’s hard for me to re-read my personal statement. But it was a step in the right direction and I’m a better writer for it.

rejection feelings

I feel disappointed. Opening that email and reading it was jarring. Despite the lengthy wait, part of me still believed I’d get in. Or at least get waitlisted.

Oh well! Water under the bridge.

rejection is redirection

The rejected application is something to learn from.

After looking at myself on paper, all I offered as evidence of my competency was my career.

Given that, the admissions committee might’ve thought my goal was to become a lawyer for Shopify. And that’s definitely not the case.

My motivation to go to law school is more idealistic and certainly less practical. It’s rooted in the desire to change things for the better in my community. Like the feeling of Obama's 2008 campaign — HOPE, Yes We Can!, etc. So how I can strive towards those goals without law school?

Well, volunteer.

Since moving to Victoria, I’ve done close to nothing. In university, I volunteered for the Engineering Students Society and that was five years ago.

This rejection feels like a signal to get more involved.

what's next

Aside from that, I think I’d like to apply again (to more than one school). I believe that a more focused effort and wider net will turn out a better result.

At the end of the day, I want to choose whether I go to law school, not the admissions committee.

sailing again

I spent the entire month of July in Victoria — no traveling — which hasn’t happened in a while. I signed up for sailing lessons. I did this last year on a dinghy (13 ft long):

This time, I was on a keelboat (24.2 ft long). The nice thing about a keelboat is that it’s physically impossible to capsize due to wind. At least that’s what they told me. The same cannot be said about a dinghy.

It's funny — when I first started, the more I sailed, the more I wanted to race to prove my skill. But after being out once in 15 knot winds, I immediately don’t want to do that. The ocean is serious business. I read the Shackleton book and this quote comes to mind:

The sea is a different sort of enemy. Unlike the land, where courage and the simple will to endure can often see a man through, the struggle against the sea is an act of physical combat, and there is no escape. It is a battle against a tireless enemy in which man never actually wins; the most that he can hope for is not to be defeated.

This has not diminished my obsession with sailing though. If you’re in Victoria and want to sail casually in <15 knots winds, let me know!

misc

• It was Ashley’s birthday this month! We’re now the same age for about a month and a half. Love you Ash. See you soon xoxo.

  

• I read a book about the importance of your twenties this month. It was fascinating! My thoughts are here.

• This Carl Sagan quote from the 70s:

Anything else you’re interested in is not going to happen if you can’t breathe the air and drink the water.

• I got to see fireworks twice this month. Once on Canada Day and once outside of Butchart Gardens. Man I love fireworks.

That’s it! Until next month!