Cardiac Rehab — A Road to Well-Being — A significant cardiac incident, such as the one I experienced, evokes a gamut of emotional reactions from family and friends ranging from shock to disbelief, friendly advice to empathy. I feel compelled to share them. The road to recovery through rehab and lifestyle changes has been interesting. Must Be Terrifying Well-wishers assume the…

A Second Chance At Life — Signs I experienced a massive cardiac arrest a little over two days ago. If there were signs, they were hiding in plain sight. During the lunch hour, I had just made a trip from the storage unit back home for a quick offload of boxes of stuff. I felt exerted but…

The Conspiring Eyelid — It is not very often that one is aware of blinking. Unless you pay attention to that involuntary action, it remains inconspicuous for unknown duration. I experienced firsthand how this inconsequential reflex could wreak havoc on an otherwise ordinary day. Staring at my laptop is an occupational hazard, so blinking…

A Jog Down The Memory Lane — Driving back from a workout this morning, I hopped on a thought train. It’s great weather to fly a kite, especially on the beach. But the beach is such a letdown compared to my kite-flying days in the city as a kid. My childhood days were in Bangalore in the…

Lessons From Mother Nature — Spring Springtime heralds greenery, birdsong, and the emergence of new life. With the pandemic in our rear-view mirror, the suburban wildlife shows all signs of bouncing back. With humans temporarily getting out of their way and not many vehicles to mow them down, this spring has been bountiful with raccoons, squirrels…

The Evolution Toward Zero Trust — Internet Security is a peculiar dilemma. It’s extremely hard and an unenviable task. But also embarrassing to repeatedly get caught napping or behind the eight ball in a constantly evolving threat landscape. …

A Better Explanation For Our Circumstance — Our Predicament Death is a stubborn elephant in the Living room. Merely nodding its presence evokes visceral reactions in otherwise healthy individuals. At one extreme lies its morbid obsession, which is hardly the norm. Tacit or vehement denial comes closer to it. This asymmetry creates awkward social situations and hypersensitivity to its…

Little Joys Punctuate Ordinary Days — My morning routine includes a brisk walk on the treadmill at a local gym. I select the fat-burn option for twenty minutes and crank up the incline to about seven and set a brisk pace. The display indicates twin peaks spanning the workout’s duration. But the baseline is always zero…

The Hungarian Method — The Assignment Problem In optimization problems, a time slice qualifies as a resource, or any other traditional commodity. The problem of allocating n resources among n vying slots involves representing them by an n×n payoff or cost matrix. The goal, then, is to optimize the overall cost (or the rating sum over n…