A star is born

David Bowie

Good morning, blogosphere. I started my day with yoga and am glad to have been able to complete today’s practice before work. It definitely sets the tone for the day.

Today is David Bowie’s birthday. He was an artist and a legend who had a profound effect on a lot of people. I am no exception. I don’t remember a whole lot of facts about him but would like to take a moment to reflect upon his contribution to the world.

It’s sort of a grey area when you consider which date to remember him by. His life spanned from January 8 1947 to January 10 2016. I remember the latter day four years ago when I was heartbroken to learn the news. But I’d like to remember Bowie on his birthday because on this day, a star was born.

A shout out also to Steve Garvey, bass guitarist of the Buzzcocks - Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone you Shouldn't've)? - who shares his birthday on January 8th.

Known by many different names such as Starman, Bowie, and often referenced by the character Ziggy Stardust, David Bowie was a musician as well as an artist. I remember listening to a few of his songs while growing up, but since we did not have exposure to music other than mainstream rock and pop, only his very popular music (read Let’s Dance) reached us. He was known as a music chameleon as far as genres were concerned. Glam rock, art rock, pop and experimental are some of the terms used to describe his music. However, his music was just his own unique genre. He has even done drum and bass with his album Earthling, and pulls it off with ease like all his other music. His essence permeates into his work, regardless of what style it takes. He had an exceptional talent to be able to achieve this while pushing the envelope with his art and music. He takes the word "expression" to a new level.

A few years ago, I started getting hooked to his albums. I was on a trip to London for work. I remember riding the DLR every morning all the way from the city to the Excel center. It was a long ride, and I listened to Ashes to Ashes on loop the entire week! Everything in the city came alive, I could feel all the great music that had come out of those streets and buildings and filled the air around over the years. My whole trip felt like a dream.

When his album Blackstar came out, I had just had a baby and was recovering at home adjusting to life with a newborn. My husband gifted me the album. Only a few days later, my mom told me about the news about Bowie which she had read about online. I kept looking from her to the album cover, wishing that it wasn’t true. However, moving on from the sadness and back to his influence, I think it just goes to show how much he was admired as a person as well as an artist.

My favorite Bowie songs are Heroes, Ashes to Ashes, Cat People, Starman, It's No Game (Parts 1 and 2) and China Girl. That might sound like an odd list, but there you go. I also enjoy Ziggy Stardust and Changes. Under Pressure, sung with Freddie Mercury, is another favorite. If you’ve listened to Ice Ice Baby in the 90s, you’ll know where that riff came from. My baby daughter used to rock out to Under Pressure – it was the first song she used to dance to as soon as she was able to pull up on to furniture and stand with support! Dancing in the Street is another collaboration of Bowie’s with Mick Jagger, and interestingly is one of the few Mick Jagger songs that I can really enjoy because of Bowie being in it. The Man Who Sold the World is another favorite song (and album) by Bowie that was later covered by Nirvana. And finally, his collaboration with Lou Reed was also exceptional. Bowie produced the song (Take a) “Walk on the wild side”, which happened to reach us even in India. The saxophone solo at the end of the song was played by Ronnie Ross, who was Bowie’s saxophone tutor during his childhood. Fun fact about Ronnie Ross: he was born in Calcutta, India, to Scottish parents before moving to England as an adolescent. I enjoy all of these intersections and collaborations that show Bowie's influence far and wide. Space Oddity of course features in countless movies and shows.

A few years ago, my husband and I watched Labyrinth which is a movie in which David Bowie stars as a goblin king. We enjoyed its bizarreness and the fantasy element it had.

With that, I will make a mental note of my playlist for the drive home. I hope to come across many other happy coincidences of Bowie’s influences over time.

There's a starman waiting in the sky
He'd like to come and meet us

But he thinks he'd blow our minds

There's a starman waiting in the sky

He's told us not to blow it

Cause he knows it's all worthwhile
He told me:
Let the children lose it
Let the children use it
Let all the children boogie

- Starman by David Bowie

My yoga journey

My introduction to yoga began at a very young age, watching my grandfather doing his daily yoga practice. He was all about good health, moderation and enjoying life. He used to tout the benefits of yoga to us throughout our childhood. In the beginning, we used to find it funny and play the ‘good for health’ game amongst us cousins. We would stand on the balcony watching the street below, call out loud the names of everything we saw and yell ‘It’s good for health!’ following that, as we broke into fits of laughter.

Later in life, we started listening more and exploring yoga ourselves. Watching my grandfather do his yoga on his red carpet that he rolled out every morning had a peaceful and calming effect on all of us.

It was part of the positive vibes that being around our grandparents gave us. Our grandmother's soft influence over all of us, our grandfather's endless inspiration, their bright and beautiful home, the green and lush gardens they used to maintain, the love and support that they gave their whole family (which led to a steady stream of visitors and well-wishers) – all of it was ingrained into us as part of our childhood and early adulthood memories. When I was pregnant with my first child, I spent some time at their home and could just feel the energy there. It was indeed my happy place.

A year after I left to the US, a friend in India recommended a yoga ashram to me that was close to my parents' home. On my next visit home, I enrolled for a class there. I enjoyed the unassuming and relaxing form of yoga that was taught there in a serene environment. I started my own practice at home in my apartment when I returned to the US. This began a daily 15-20 minute yoga routine that I do by myself at home and still hold very dear 15 years later. I have done it sporadically over the years and it is very relaxing with a few gentle stretches and twists but nothing strenuous. I have often stopped for months at a time, but always feel rejuvenated when I resume.

My grandfather recommended the Sarvangasana to me on one of my trips home. I found it incredibly beneficial but stopped doing it after getting pulsatile tinnitus. I hope I can find a way to resume it in some way. I also took a yoga class about ten years back, local to me, but I was aghast to find the intense workout and modified yoga that was being done in the US (in a huge packed stuffy gym hall no less). A couple of years back, a friend at work encouraged me to join her at our work gym and I took a few yoga classes there. This was quite a lot better but I couldn’t stay committed to the gym. I stopped my membership during my second pregnancy and haven’t been back.

A few days ago, my self-expression goal prompted me to join a local mom group’s yoga challenge. I pushed myself out of my comfort zone to comment that I had signed up, and started posting regular updates. And just like that, I now have 5 days of “Yoga with Adriene” under my belt. I joined another online forum where they are doing the same 30-day challenge, and am trying to keep up with it. Getting my feet wet in the world of social media, influencers and the like has been eye-opening.

My goal for this challenge is to strengthen my body. I am tired of feeling weak and getting injured every time I strain a part of my body even slightly. I want to build core strength and overall strength. I am just not sure how to do this, since I get lower back pain, ulnar nerve pain, tendon/ligament pain in my heel, etc. that are aggravated during the practice. These are exactly the ailments I want to overcome by being stronger, but they are proving to be a hindrance while I am getting there. I am using my best judgement to push myself a little and to back off when I feel like I am getting hurt.

I am proud to note that I am committed and am five days in. I want to continue doing the daily yoga for at least another few days, to get through the anxiety-filled week that I have in front of me. To put it down on paper (or pixels if you prefer), this is the week two years back that ended with me rushing to the emergency room with a threatened miscarriage. The pregnancy went to term thankfully, but was fraught with challenges and was piggy-backing an actual miscarriage that I had. The following year in January had me back at the ER with a family member. Suffice it to say that this month is triggering to me and my health anxiety. I am looking for any and all distractions by way of positive goals and good habits to get through it.

I am currently looking for a yoga mat, but a part of me just wants my grandfather's red carpet to roll out every morning. I try to recreate the set up that he had, with open windows and greenery around. I hope that I can continue with my practice through the month of January and beyond. I appreciate the fact that my new self-expression goal has already led me to something positive. Perhaps this could have a domino effect into my career as well.

Have I mentioned that I have often done yoga to music? To me, yoga is about balance and harmony. Just like music! The two both help to bridge worlds, and are inter-related themselves. I like to do my yoga to center myself and to feel the connection between my physical and mental self. It also is a confluence of my spiritual and emotional worlds. I am someone who goes through each day feeling a rhythm of music and its vibrations. I believe this is all related - our breathing, vibrations, energy, thoughts, feelings, bodies, movements and our actions. Maybe even the outcomes!

I have often done yoga to “Stairway to heaven” by Led Zeppelin. I like the way it starts out slow, like my gentle yoga moves do, and then picks up the pace. I love it when music like this ends up in noise. I get a high from the climax and the resulting calm that follows. Apologies for crossing over a bit into erotic territory!

And, did I mention that I love shoegaze?! It is only fitting that I mention what song is playing in my living room everyday since I began this yoga journey. None other than “Only Shallow” by MBV. MBV = My Bloody Valentine. It is seductive, there's no doubt about it. But it is also about clever contrasts and coming up with something beautiful from it. This song shows you how to translate emotion into music. And that is exactly why I resonate with it. Oh no! I just played it on my phone on speaker (at very low volume) at my desk! That's how hooked I am to it. And I know I am reaching here, but "My yoga journey" has a similar ring to it as "My Bloody Valentine". With that, I'll leave you with a few lines from the song, although the lyrics don't matter. It is the music that speaks.

Think
That you grew
Stronger there
Speak
Your troubles
She's not scared

Only Shallow by My Bloody Valentine

The best of both worlds - Network Programmability

I took a trip down memory lane today. I am back to work this morning and am feeling energized to start the new year. I started the day off with a Day 1 workout video of a 30-day yoga challenge. And now that I am at work, I feel mentally sharp and ready to learn something new.

I opened the book Network Programmability with YANG, and started leafing through the pages of Chapter 1. This is an introduction into network management. It highlights how network management has changed and why we should care. It sets the stage for the networking concepts of today, by talking about what it traditionally has been over the years. And of course, this set my ever-imaginative mind off into dream-mode, and I went back all the way to my very first foray into the world of engineering.

It was the beginning of the year 2002, a couple of, a few just about eighteen years ago. I started my first internship at a research facility as part of my final year engineering project. The project was about a software defined radio, a relatively novel concept at the time. A software defined radio is a system in which components that were traditionally implemented in hardware are implemented on an embedded system. An embedded system is a combination of hardware and software, either with fixed capabilities or with programmable elements. My project focused on a digital receiver, more specifically the HSP50210 demodulator. My memory is hazy about the details, but I remember that it was a time when I first made a presentation to a team of scientists. The presentation was on a manual slide projector, no less, and I recall the lead scientist questioning me and being impressed when I answered his question correctly (those were the days when student interns used to be tested, and when feeling intimidated was the norm).

By the end of the year, I had started my first job and it was in the embedded systems group of a big software services company. The project I worked on was a video editing system and involved very exciting elements of programming video accelerators and editors, with operating system knowledge being a key strength. The very next project I worked on was the software of a GSM/GPRS based cell phone. This made me realize that I was always working on an intersection of technologies – with programmability, embedded systems and digital signal processing being the key areas. It was no surprise therefore, when I chose DSP, computer networking, statistical signal processing and sensor networks as the core areas of my Master’s course work. My next officially paid research project was on tracking algorithms for a satellite communication system.

Fast forward a few years into my professional career. I am now working in the computer networking industry. My focus is on an innovative routing protocol and software-defined access in networks. This was around the time that Software Defined Networking came in to network engineering in a big way, and led us to develop and market new technologies that would keep us moving with the times. Following this, I worked on a management and orchestration platform which gave me a view into network management as a whole. It taught me about the intersection between networks and servers, and on the functions of network engineers and compute engineers. The lines between the two are now blurry, with network automation being handled under the umbrella of DevOps. However, working on this project gave me a good baseline knowledge of the infrastructure we have in place for network management. The platform I worked on was largely based on SNMP with a few elements of network programmability, and I was hungry for more. 

My latest interest is in the world of network programmability. I spent a few months haphazardly looking for reading material, and getting lost in the sea of information there is out there on the topic.  I volunteered for a project at work on this subject, and spent a few weeks feverishly putting it together with my superficial knowledge. This renewed my interest to really get back to the basics and to understand the various concepts. My husband, in a very well-timed gesture, kindly ordered me the book I am currently reading on Amazon. I breathed a sign of relief to have a concrete starting point, and one where I could also mark my progress. I happen to know the author of the book, am reassured to have several resources available for support and knowledge sharing.

While reading this book, I came across a sentence that struck a chord with me. “Software engineers do not really understand networking, and networking engineers do not necessarily understand software, so combining forces to get the best out of both worlds makes sense”. Network programmability is in fact that bridge between the worlds. I am coming at it from the networking engineer angle, which means that I understand networking protocols, and their deployment and configuration in overall network design. However I am not proficient in software development itself, nor do I desire to be a full-time programmer. I do want to be able to script my own automated network-related tasks, and to be able to modify scripts on the fly. I want to understand what it takes to develop a new feature, and to be able to script it myself. What I am looking for is that middle ground, that intersection of technologies that will take my strengths to a new level and make them more relevant. I would like to become an effective translator between networking needs and programmable capabilities, and to bring in a more holistic perspective to a problem.

Here I am, officially beginning my journey into network programmability with my latest resource, “Network Programmability and YANG”. Over the months, I hope to gain knowledge into scripting, configuration protocols, data models, programming languages, and more. The goal for the month of January is as follows:

• Read chapters 1 through 4 of the book (Intro, Data-driven model management, YANG, and NETCONF, RESTCONF and gNMI)
• Sign up for the Coursera course “Intro to Python Programming”
• Sign up on GitHub and start familiarizing myself with what is out there
• Subscribe to technical blogs on the topic and start participating in discussions (note to self: this serves my other goal for the year, expressing myself without waiting to be an expert on the topic)
• Make a learning map for myself with all the topics I plan to learn and corresponding resources

I’m very happy to realize that this is a coming together of all my worlds. I’ve always been about balance and moderation. The idea of dichotomy resolution excites me: finding a unique solution that brings seemingly opposing ideas together in harmony. I am not even sure if my work will allow me the opportunity to take on this topic, or how the next few weeks will go, really. But I do believe this is something up my alley and I would like to give it a good shot. If not for anything else, the knowledge is certainly going to be empowering, and nobody can take that away from me.

Word of the year: Self-expression

Shoegazing Days is now about six months old!

I started this post a couple of days back, or last year if I am being technical. I am back here to finish writing it on January 1st. It has therefore seen the turn of the decade!

Since the past few years, I haven't really set myself a New Year's resolution. I started doing a word of the year in 2019 and my word was "intentional". I am an observer by nature, and tend to set standards based on what I observe about other people rather than being confident in my own choices. So for 2019, I decided to be intentional - about my choices, what I do, how I spend my time, and even about my appearance. This helped me to be able to be more comfortable in my own skin and feel self-assured. It helped me second-guess myself a little less.

For 2020, although I want to continue to be intentional since it serves me well, I would like a new word to live by. I decided that the word would be "expression", in the sense of "expressing myself". I have often been told that my drawbacks are that I am not visible enough. This is specifically at work, where I am at a stage in my career that I would like to step into leadership. While I believe that one does not have to be an extrovert to be a good leader (and that an introvert has significant advantages), it does help to be a bit more vocal than I am, to show myself and my work off a bit more, and to promote my thoughts and the way I think rather than keeping it all to myself.

I am probably going to flounder a bit through this process. I spent all of Monday on Facebook, updating and getting a feel for how things had evolved since I last was on it several years ago. I am trying to reconcile all of that lost time spent on social media that day. I am not quite sure whether what I did was a good idea. It was so nice living in my safe little bubble. Being even slightly active on social media takes so.much.time. However, I will give myself credit for being brave enough to 'put myself out there' and reach out. For someone with anxiety, that is huge.

I'd like this form of self-expression to come more naturally to me, and to be able to take a step back when needed. As I write this, I realize that this is in fact the word I have been searching for. So allow me to rephrase myself: self-expression is my word for 2020.

Self-expression goals for 2020:

• Write more in this blog
• Work on the blog appearance and layout
• Write blogs for my work - a goal of 4 blog posts for 2020
• Write another white paper for my work
• Spend a bit of time on social media: Facebook, LinkedIn
• Get started on new social media: Twitter, Instagram
• Create a repository on GitHub
• Take a few courses: topics of interest are network programmability, leadership, creative writing
• Practice singing in some fashion: vocals and vocal expression, enunciation
• Be more bold with my appearance: colors, accessories (shoes/bag)
• Read more: Yes this is the opposite of self-expression, but there needs to be a constant intake of new content for knowledge and growth
• Reply-all more often: Stop shying away from doing this, and practice so it comes with ease
• Speak up: Speak up when I talk to friends, family, acquaintances and colleagues
• Sleep better and stay fit: To feel better and to become a stronger version of myself
• Gain confidence: Anything that I can learn along the way to help with this, while staying grounded and centered
• Don't overthink: Continue to think before I speak, but stop endlessly reviewing before hitting "Send"

My inspiration in this new venture is an icon - David Bowie

Bowie knew what self-expression was all about. He showed the world that he could stay authentic and continuously evolve. He was fearless, bold and unique. And express himself he did - through his music, his art, his appearance and his overall persona. He produced work that was nothing short of amazing. His music and lyrics have influenced every other art form there is today. And he appeared to do it all with ease and without trying to please anyone. While there can be no other like Bowie, we can look to him to inspire us to express ourselves better. "We can be heroes, just for one day."