#1: A Prelude

Hello.

This is the first instalment in what will be a weekly newsletter from me, at least for while I'm away on exchange, but I hope beyond. My intention is every Monday morning (AEDT) to send you something like this which details the various aspects of my life and the varied occurrences in the preceding seven days.

I am starting a little bit behind schedule (which you'll have to excuse) because of how much there has been to do since landing here in Indiana. I'll aim to have one of these earlier newsletters cover two weeks worth so the timeline begins to make a little more sense. Because today's contents pertain to the goings-on from January 4th (the day I left), until the Sunday of the day before classes started here for the semester, some two weeks ago now.

If you don't read anything further, let it be known that those first couple of days here at Purdue can very easily be described as thrilling and immense amounts of fun. To read up on the specifics, click the big button below.

Below that, you will find a few choice photos from the departure and arrival period, along with another button below it that will take you to the full gallery. Before leaving for America I got myself a entry-level mirrorless camera (Canon EOS M50 Mark II) with the intention of using this to better and more intentionally capture what I am seeing over here. As I am new to the photography sphere, and since some of these photos will still be shot on my phone, forgive the occasional bad picture in these early stages.

Lastly, the newsletter contains three further sections:

1. Releases - this will contain links to the articles that I have written (not related to Purdue) in the preceding week in case you are interested in exploring more of what I'm thinking about.
2. Bullet digest - inspired largely by Tim Ferriss' 5 Bullet Friday, this is a short list of things I've discovered, media I've consumed, etc.
3. Learnings - some high-level, stream-of-consciousness output on a particular idea that resonated with me from the week.

This will be the format I intend to follow at least for the time being, though perhaps there may be alterations to the layout of the newsletter itself as I get better at using the tools at my disposal for this stuff.

Photos.

Releases.

Bullet digest.

• Something I am reading... Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. This book is quite unlike any ficton that I have read to this point, and at the rate I am going it will certainly take me an infinite time to get through. At some 980 pages of story and a further 200 pages of footnotes, cross-links and addenda, it is a hefty one. But, I am really liking the way Wallace writes dialogue; it is thoroughly disorienting in a good way.

• Something I learnt... Google reCAPTCHA, and other similar technologies are not used to verify whether you are human. Well, not primarily. Starting with text-based captures and moving to image-based ones, the results of these puzzles are used to train AI models to be world-class at text translation or pedestrian/traffic light object detection. Read more here.

• Some new software I'm using... DuckDuckGo is a search engine that I have used for a few years now but only recently discovered how good their browser extension is. There's the privacy monitoring, which is cool, but the best feature is the ability to generate random email addresses that forward to a designated email of your choice. This is terrific when registering for software, because I don't have to share my personal email address, but can still receive any mail about my account, subscriptions, etc.

Learnings.

• The amount of enjoyment we derive from an event is entirely subjective, and depends only on the quality of your awareness at that moment (and your physical disposition).

  • Food from a fine restaurant, music from a world-class orchestra will taste and ring hollow if you are having a bad day.

    • At bottom there are the basic features of the experience - what the meal was, the setting, the weather, etc. - then layered on top of this are our interpretations of each of these features which combine to produce the overall sentiment we feel when reflecting on that moment.

  • Otherwise high-quality (5 star) moments are shifted left on this scale when we are not paying full attention (lost in thought).

• It follows then that an otherwise low-quality (1 star) moment can be shifted right when we are paying full attention.

  • There is actually a muscle of awareness to be flexed here, one that can enhance the usually sour, depressing or unpleasant characteristics of certain settings.

• When reflecting on the question "How happy are you with your life?", our response is significantly impacted by the set of experiences that we can most directly access in our memory (short- or long-term).

  • So the more 5 star moments we have at our disposal, the more positive our reflections on this particular inquiry will be.

    • Since the majority of our lives are filled with 1 star experiences (things tend in the aggregate to fall apart), the implication is that greater life satisfaction (and happiness more generally) is to be found in paying greater attention to each passing moment.

Example: Airport Travel

• Travelling is extremely unpleasant (for me, and I'm sure for most people). There is little to be enjoyed, other than the prospect of finally reaching your goal destination (which is why return travel is always less enjoyable).

  • However, it can be broken into a series of discrete 1 star moments to which we can apply the above philosophy. Going into each of these and intentionally viewing it as the best part of your day.

  • On my flight and in transit, this approach generally manifested in me having very extensive conversations with complete straingers whilst waiting in line or whilst 40,000 feet in the air - if you're stuck next to someone for that long, you may as well learn their name.

    • Some conversations fizzled out, but a few burned very brightly and allowed me to reflect in an overly grateful way for the near 30 hours that elapsed from leaving Melbourne to reaching Indianapolis.