Freezing Thoughts

I once stood beneath an apple tree where Isaac Newton had watched a fruit fall, and gravity became a force that shaped the world. I've been in the classroom in Princeton where Albert Einstein once taught, feeling the chalkboard where the universe was explained in equations. I've sat in the room where Thomas Edison's patents were written, been to the lab from where Alexander Graham Bell made the first ever telephone call, and walked the paths around the CERN particle accelerator in Geneva where Stephen Hawking has traversed. I was even present when Elon Musk unveiled his human spaceflight plans at a conference in Adelaide.  As I look back on these moments and experiences, I am struck less by the physical spaces themselves and more by the meaning of having been there.  Through work, travel and a fair measure of good fortune, I have found myself moving between countries, institutions, labs, conferences and conversations that I could scarcely have imagined at the start of my ca...

It was a long day of meetings and discussions at the conference. I returned to my AirBnb, hung my coat in a hanger, sat and bent down to undo my shoes. A searing pain shot through from my lower back through every inch of my whole back. So intense that my scream of pain got stuck somewhere mid-throat, I choked and my vision blacked out for a second.  For the past month and a half, I've been traveling around multiple cities for work meetings. Not more than a couple of days in a same bed, working out of cafes, airports and trains, walking a lot with a heavy backpack, and sitting long hours on the most un-ergonomic chairs or seats.  Like many entrepreneurs, I've convinced myself that discomfort is merely the price of progress. After all, businesses do not grow by themselves! A packed schedule after an overnight journey, stretching from breakfast meetings through day-long discussions into late-night emails ? Bring it on, it’s just part of the job!  But unfortunately, the body ...