What fuels
the thinking.

Music

Daily ritual

Passionate listener. The listening is the real skill.

Music is the one thing I consume daily without ever wanting to produce it. It's a complete experience. I don't need to hold the instrument to feel it fully. From Carnatic classical to ambient electronic. The mood dictates the genre. Twenty One Pilots is the artist I return to most. Deliberate, layered, structurally unusual. Music that rewards attention.

Audio Engineering

Obsession in progress

The architecture of sound.

Not just listening — understanding what is actually happening. Frequency, timbre, signal flow, the physics of how a mix sits in a room versus headphones. I am drawn to the same questions in audio that I am in hardware: what is happening at the layer you cannot see? Compression, reverb, stereo imaging — these are engineering decisions dressed as aesthetics. I find that compelling.

Watches

Obsession

Mechanical precision made visible.

A watch is the most honest form of engineering: everything is exposed, everything serves a function, and there is nowhere to hide bad craft. I'm drawn to the same discipline in hardware. Form that is earned by function.

Bikes

Kinetic thinking

Controlled chaos at speed.

Motorcycles demand the same full-system thinking as hardware design: you are managing dynamics, thermodynamics, attention, and risk simultaneously. There is no passive mode. I find that clarifying. My sister was the first person I knew who rode. She never asked whether it was appropriate. I noticed that.

Steins;Gate

Favourite anime

Time, consequence, and the cost of knowing.

The only anime I return to regularly. Not for nostalgia. Because it asks a genuine question: if you could change the past, what would you be willing to sacrifice? The answer matters. Every time loop is a design constraint.

Fantasy world-building

Creative practice

Coherent systems, invented from scratch.

A well-built fantasy world is a systems design exercise. Consistent physics, cultural logic, economic constraints, power structures. All of it has to cohere. I think about this the same way I think about architecture.

Martial Arts

Foundation

Discipline before technique.

Ten years of training gave me something engineering school did not: proof that consistency under discomfort is a trainable skill, not a personality trait. I no longer train formally, but the principle travels everywhere. You show up. You do the work. The mat taught me that before anything else did.

Running

Thinking practice

The only meeting I never cancel.

Running is where I think. Not idly. About everything that matters. Problems I've been avoiding, ideas I haven't articulated yet, decisions I already know the answer to but haven't faced. The run forces the answer.

Civilization VI

Strategic thinking

Long-horizon thinking with consequences.

Turn-based strategy is systems design with consequences. Resource allocation, long-horizon planning, knowing when to expand and when to consolidate. I play Civ the way I approach most things: patiently, with a plan, and with an unreasonable attachment to seeing it through.