Author: Ajmal

The “world” is inside you :)

Posted on by Ajmal
Vision is so magical if we ponder about its intricacies. A photograph of Netta that I took from Havelock Islands

The title of the post might make you puzzled. But I would like to take you through a small journey of thoughts and discover the secret embodied in the title! It’ll be good if you can be distraction-free for two minutes as you read this, as this is a very important reality that can blow your mind! I value your time. Let’s think together : )

Today, we are adding a slice into our Ponder Series. I read something along these lines about a decade ago through several books that profoundly changed my perspectives on how we perceive the world. If you haven’t read about this theme before, this could possibly be a key that could unlock many secrets of thoughts and perceptions about people and things around you and everything happening to you. Right now, you’d be reading these words on your phone/tablet or PC. If it’s the phone, for example, you’d be now scrolling with your fingers on the phone screen or touching your mouse/touchpad if you’re reading on a computer. Reality for most people is what they can see with their eyes & touch with their hands. You touch your phone now while reading this and believe that it’s real. This is the normal conception of reality that has conquered generations and their views. But there’s a deeper side to it if we ponder deeply. Everything we confront and experience – everything – the chair that you sit on, the bed you sleep on, the window of your room, the buildings near you, roads, cars, people you see, spaces, cafes, your loved ones, the experiences we go through in life, in short everything is perceived through our five senses. We know this well, but have you wondered how this magic really happens! Let’s ponder on how the information of the exterior world reaches you through your senses.

You and me have five sensory faculties – sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. If we think about it from a scientific point of view, all these senses work in the same way. For each sensory faculties, stimuli from objects in the external world and taken through these senses and nerves carry them to the sensory centers in the brain. These stimuli that induce these signals include lights (for vision), sounds (for hearing), smells, tastes, textures (for touch). These stimuli reach the brain only as electric signals.

Let’s take our vision as an example. Light rays (photons) emanating from different objects around you reach the retina at the back of your eye system and passing through several stages, they get converted into electrical signals. These signals then reach the brain’s vision centre through the nerves. This colorful and bright three-dimensional imagery that you see is formed at this vision centre, which is only a few cubic centimeters. So, when you hold your phone in your hand, you’re perceiving the “image” of the phone at the back of your brain in a minuscule space. This system of electrical impulses broadly applies to our other senses as well.

“Experiencing” an orange juice through sensory faculties

When you taste a glass of fresh orange juice, cells on your tongue surface transfer the stimuli into electrical signals that we perceive as taste. The aroma of the fresh orange juice near you is transformed into electrical signals by the cells in the epithelium of the nose. When you touch the glass cup, there are special sensors that are lodged beneath the skin surfaces that transform touch impulses and sensations of hardness/softness to electric signals. Similarly, your ear also have a similar mechanism that converts sounds into electricals signals. That’s how you hear the sound of the glass when you place it on the table. You perceive that you are drinking an orange juice when all these senses cohesively and harmoniously work together with these electrical signals for different senses.

Now is the important concept that needs to be thought about. Whether the orange juice exists or not cannot be known by us. The “orange juice” that you know is a blend or collection of its taste sensed by the tongue, its odour sensed by your nose, the color, and shape captured by your eyes, and only its attributes perceived through these senses is what is accessible to you. You don’t have access to the “original” version outside. It shows the limitation of ours to reach the physical world. Everything around us we are in touch with and our experiences are a compiled effect of different perceptions such as sight, hearing, and touch. All we can do is process the data of electrical impulses in our brain’s sensory centers of our brains. So, instead of the “original” of the matter, we are confronting its “copies” inside our brain. At THIS point, we tend to believe that the copies that we experience are the real matter outside, which is not the case as we just examined 🙂

Orange juice that you drank is only a simulation. Which orange juice is real? The one that is formed by your senses or the real one on the table? It’s no doubt that we are experiencing an aggregate of our perceptions throughout our lives. From every object you touch to anything you experience are perceptions. So whatever you touch, hear, smell and define as “matter”, or what you think as “the world we live in” is nothing else but an interpretation of electrical signals in our brain. The “original” cannot be reached, but only its copy is experienced in your brain! So that means if your olfactory nerve from the nose receptors are disconnected, you cannot feel the sense of smell.

Similar concept shall be extended to the sense of space and distance as well. When you read these words on this page, the distance between you and this page is emptiness perceived in your brain. When you think of stars or moon, you think they appear distant in the sky, but what you’re actually seeing is within you, in your vision center. So, as you sit and read this blog post now, you are technically not inside the room you think you are in, but the room is inside you! The body deceives you in thinking that we’re inside it. Like the orange juice we just discussed, your physical body is also a set of images or perceptions formed in your brain!

You may be able to comprehend this better when you think of how you dream. When you dream, you may experience that you’re riding a horse for example, but in reality, you’d realize that you were on the bed when you wake up from your slumber.

That brings us to the conclusion that our access to the external world is very limited. Now you would understand why saints say that the universe is within you! The way we look at our world changes when we understand and comprehend that our soul is experiencing and watching everything on a screen. Everything is inside you. Think about it. Ponder about this magic happening every single moment. Thank you for reading Ponder Series with me 🙂

Some of the chapters from the Ponder Series that you can read on :

> Perceiving Time
> Ornate Blossoms
> Visual Narrative – Ponder Series
> Reflecting on Shadows
> Stumble over Pebbles
> Ethereal Quality | Petals
> Golden Ratio
> Vision – Pondering on the intricacies
> Ruminating on Bird Nests
> Living Embellishments
> Pondering on Birds 
> Perceptions

If you are reading this series for the first time, have a look at the intent post.

the hourglass

Posted on by Ajmal
illustration of a sand hourglass.

“The sand in the hourglass runs from one compartment to the other, marking the passage of moments with something constant and tangible. If you watch the flowing sand, you might see time itself riding the granules. Contrary to popular opinion, time is not an old white-haired man, but a laughing child. And time sings.”

― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

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Maker’s time

Posted on by Ajmal

When you read something that absolutely resonates with what we have to express, that’s an aha moment. Now, I’m in such a pleasant disposition after reading a good essay and I thought of putting down my thoughts on it. Lately, I came across some very interesting essays by Paul Graham. I know that in this world of lesser attention spans, most of us are reluctant to use our time for long format reads. But let me tell you, these are very insightful. One of the essays that I’d like to specifically mention here goes with the title: Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s schedule

In this essay, he outlines the schedule of two types of people – Makers and Managers. ” Maker ” refers to somebody who’s engaged in creative work. “Makers” can be painters, musicians, technical engineers, programmers, writers, etc. The other type of schedule is of the “Manager” who’s in some cases “bosses” or somebody who’s on manager schedule.
He writes it really well in articulating the kind of “mindset” that makers and managers work. Makers and Manager both work in different frames of minds and have different concepts of conceiving time. He explains it in the context of having meetings by explaining how time is considered from the point of view of a maker and a manager. He explains this point as below

“Maker’s Time” Visual Stories

There are two types of schedule, which I’ll call the manager’s schedule and the maker’s schedule. The manager’s schedule is for bosses. It’s embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one-hour intervals. You can block off several hours for a single task if you need to, but by default you change what you’re doing every hour.

When you use time that way, it’s merely a practical problem to meet with someone. Find an open slot in your schedule, book them, and you’re done.

Most powerful people are on the manager’s schedule. It’s the schedule of command. But there’s another way of using time that’s common among people who make things, like programmers and writers. They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can’t write or program well in units of an hour. That’s barely enough time to get started.

Quoted from “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule”, Essay by Paul Graham

You see, he absolutely nails it on the point on explaining this aspect. Managers on handling the logistics and time frames of activities of makers often consider and use time differently. Makers (Examples- painters, musicians, technical engineers, programmers, writers, etc) on the other hand require deep engagement in their work and normally work on a different frame of mind requiring content creation / technical problem solving, etc. The day for managers are divided into pieces for meetings, calls, follow up emails, and other administrative tasks. Makers are looking for large portions of uninterrupted and unscheduled time to do any sort of creative work they’re engaged in. He explains this difference in the context of meetings as a good example that’s relatable to a lot of people.

One reason programmers dislike meetings so much is that they’re on a different type of schedule from other people. Meetings cost them more.
When you’re operating on the maker’s schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus you have to remember to go to the meeting. That’s no problem for someone on the manager’s schedule. There’s always something coming on the next hour; the only question is what. But when someone on the maker’s schedule has a meeting, they have to think about it.
For someone on the maker’s schedule, having a meeting is like throwing an exception. It doesn’t merely cause you to switch from one task to another; it changes the mode in which you work.

Quoted from “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule”, Essay by Paul Graham

I’m sure that he has a very broad understanding such that he’s able to understand the difference very clearly. He further writes

I find one meeting can sometimes affect a whole day. A meeting commonly blows at least half a day, by breaking up a morning or afternoon. But in addition there’s sometimes a cascading effect. If I know the afternoon is going to be broken up, I’m slightly less likely to start something ambitious in the morning. I know this may sound oversensitive, but if you’re a maker, think of your own case. Don’t your spirits rise at the thought of having an entire day free to work, with no appointments at all? Well, that means your spirits are correspondingly depressed when you don’t. And ambitious projects are by definition close to the limits of your capacity. A small decrease in morale is enough to kill them off.
Each type of schedule works fine by itself. Problems arise when they meet. Since most powerful people operate on the manager’s schedule, they’re in a position to make everyone resonate at their frequency if they want to. But the smarter ones restrain themselves if they know that some of the people working for them need long chunks of time to work in.

Quoted from “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule”, Essay by Paul Graham

The essay glides over to other aspects on advising startups and other companies to have a more understanding work culture by educating people on the difference in which makers and managers work. One thing he points out in the later part of the essay is that “When you’re operating on the manager’s schedule you can do something you’d never want to do on the maker’s: you can have speculative meetings. You can meet someone just to get to know one another. If you have an empty slot in your schedule, why not? Maybe it will turn out you can help one another in some way“. He jokingly refers to the distinctive language of “grab a coffee” commonly used as a means of proposing these speculative meetings.
These speculative meetings cost terribly for a maker in terms of his time. The fine thin line between blowing our schedules and offending people is the way to steer the way ahead. It’s a very narrow line and often I find that makers are often the ones willing to compromise.

I would technically fall in the category of a maker by its description. I’m a mechanical design engineer by profession. I work on concept designing of engineering products, develop structural calculations to back up an engineering concept & its engineering intent and use, working with teams to develop sketches and engineering drawings sufficient for prototyping a product and also work extensively on costing a product & obviously this includes costing a lot of its internal sub-assemblies. Often at times, I do engage in engineering simulations to evaluate the efficiency of a designed component without prototyping or manufacturing. I can absolutely relate when the essay speaks of the way the maker outlines his time of efficient work. Of course, a maker would definitely get questions like “When do you think you can finish this? , “When would you get this done? “, ” At what date you can complete this work?” etc. A cohesive understanding of all parties and being considerate, understanding, and gentle is what matters in achieving a common goal. You may be falling into either one of these types and probably this could give some insight on the frame of mind in which time is conceived by different people. I hope you found this interesting. Happy to know your thoughts.

Some of my other articles that I’d like to link here if you’d like to skim through
Small Businesses – Lines of Thought
Instilling Compassionate Prudence

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every grain of sand

Posted on by Ajmal

Every grain of sand brushing our feat weaves a story. This poster is inspired by beautiful moments pulling into our memory time machine, sort of like how the moon pulls the tide, and the tide pulls the sand. Yes, every grain of sand brushing our feat weaves a story. What’s your story?

beach vibes

Do you love posters with stories! We do. Let’s dive in! Grab your coffee.
> Exhortation of the Dawn
> Stories & Tea
> Wholly Alive
> Soul on Fire
> Humble Life
> Boundless

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beholden quarantine

Posted on by Ajmal

Like most of us these days, there’s every likelihood that you also would be overwhelmed by the influx of information and statistics on COVID 19 and the lockdown situation prevailing everywhere. People are going through tough times and we are drowning in information and are lacking too many positive stories and to strive to be grateful in these trying times. I’ve been thinking of things to be grateful for in these times. So I’ve been contemplating on some of the positive changes that have come about by this entire situation. One thing that immediately came to my mind is about food. Just like many others, here in the UAE where we are currently based, we used to rely on a local hypermarket for our regular grocery needs, and hardly would we even think of other alternate options, owing primarily to the convenience of getting everything from the same place and since the hypermarket being near our place and the grocery items being also at affordable rates. Due to this lockdown scenario, we had to stay home. Thankfully, the companies that we work for allowed us and gave us the option to work from home. Considering our safety and the safety of others, me and Netta decided to completely lock ourselves inside. We were so unrelenting with safety so much so that we didn’t even want to go out for the basic groceries and were looking for ways to get them delivered without even dealing with cash at all for the past few months and only using online transactions. But you know, unlike other stuff that we normally buy online like electronics or other stuff, getting groceries online is not a proposition that too many people would buy-in. We tried a lot of online options and had good and bad experiences with them. Eventually, we settled with certain companies with which we are happy with and reliable with the experiences so far.

Partial transition from Hypermarkets to farms

I’m pretty much sure that we wouldn’t have made this choice had it not been for the situation arisen out of lockdown. While exploring different online options for sourcing fruits and vegetables, we came across some companies that bring fresh produce directly from farm to kitchen. I was being accustomed that the hypermarket stuff was the cheapest and best. However, after trying some of these farms and particularly some of their organic produce, I’m literally changed. They taste really different and have a fresh feeling to it which we were able to discern only when we made a try. Since we have been getting farm and healthy produce online, junk consumption significantly dropped. All non-essential things ceased on their toll as well. Other hobbies such as gardening and aqua scaping had flourished and I’m able to find more fulfillment and happiness in them.

I’m listing some of the companies that were found useful here in the UAE. I’m stating up forward the obvious disclaimer that I am not advertising these but I’m just referring them as they were of great help during these times.

Essentials
Kibsons – for fresh conventional and organic fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy, bread, nuts, juices, healthy foods. (They’ve liaison with local farms in the UAE and other international organic farms. To my experience, the quality of fruits specifically are way different from the ones we normally used to pick up from hypermarkets)

Freshtohome – for chemical-free fresh fish, meat with no antibiotics, etc, vegetables, fruits. Fish for example might appear slightly expensive. The main difference I felt is that unlike the fish market where the cutting happens on the whole fish that you take (and thus appears free), they actually charge only for the final weight post cutting, so a fish that is cut will be much larger in final eatable weight than a whole fish.

Hobbyist stuff
Discus – If you didn’t know, I’m very much interested in aqua-scaping and maintains a small aquatic ecosystem in a tank. Yes!, you can even get live ornamental aquatic fish delivered in the UAE if you didn’t know before. The site also offers aquatic plant care equipment, scaping accessories, and tools and lot of other fish care products.

My Green Chapter – This is good if you are into gardening. They’ve soil, plants, pots, accessories, farming kits, organic seeds, compostures, etc.

I wouldn’t have discovered them had it not been for the lockdown. Walking around with trolleys in supermarkets and putting in unwanted stuff along with essentials is replaced by a culture of at least some sort of conscious and thoughtful buying so to speak. I find this change to be very positive in terms of overall well being and goodness in all aspects. Eventually, countries are lifting lockdown restrictions and hopefully, we get adjusted with the new normal.

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corona tea

Posted on by Ajmal
A cup of tea that coincidentally aligns in the form of a virus

These days, we are drowning in COVID-19 information in all spheres. I don’t think a single day passes without us hearing some tally of people infected, recovered, and passed away. Here’s a lighter moment while we are navigating these unprecedented trying times. Last day, while we had a cup of afternoon tea, the pattern on the surface coincidentally appeared in the form of the common coronavirus graphics that we see on news outlets. : )

Illustration of the morphology of coronaviruses; the club-shaped viral spike peplomers (red) create the look of a corona surrounding the virion when seen with an electron microscope

vibe tribes

Posted on by Ajmal
Do what you love to discover your tribe

The theme behind this poster graphics is a reflection to have our own vibes to find our tribes. Be it photography, art, writing, engineering, philosophy, sociology, you name it, the tribes of your liking would find you if you really do with lots of love what chimes well with your passion. These need not be always troves of social media following rallying behind you. It can be a small group of good friends in your realm or space who loves what you do and shares the same sense of aesthetics that you effuse or in the mental space, you are in. I’ve always felt that the size of the audience does not matter in any art. Quantification or monetary value has never been and never would be a measure of self-worth and fulfillment. Although not always possible for all of us, to the best, let’s try doing what we love. Rest apprised, we live in a world where even the next minute or next hour or the next day is not guaranteed for us. We only have this moment.

alchemy of yearning

Posted on by Ajmal
Netta glancing at a beautiful sunrise from Havelock Islands in South India,

Sunrise, beach, clear skies. They’re a perfect alchemy of yearning.

“With a bound, the sun of a molten fiery red cam above the horizon, and immediately thousands of little birds sang out for joy, and a soft chorus of mysterious, glad murmurs came forth from the earth; the low whispering wind left its hiding-place among the clefts and hollows of the hills, and wandered among the rustling herbs and trees, waking the flower-buds to the life of another day.”

― Elizabeth Gaskell,Ruth