Author: Akshat Rathi

Akshat Rathi is a senior reporter for Bloomberg News. He has previously worked at Quartz, The Economist and The Conversation. His writing has appeared in Nature, The Guardian and The Hindu. He has a PhD in chemistry from Oxford University and a BTech in chemical engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai.

Confessions of a Wikipedia addict

Akshat RathiLeave a comment

I bet this has happened to you – you Google something and the top hit comes up as a wikipedia article. You smile (FTW!) and quickly click on it. Now depending on how familiar you are with what you are searching, you either read the first few lines that briefly introduce the subject to you or if you know that already then you quickly press CTRL + F and search for the specific term you were looking for. While reading or searching for the exact piece of information you come across a term which you aren’t quite familiar with. You want to know more. Then you realise that it is hyperlinked and you think, “Sweet! Another wikipedia page! FTW!” and without thinking twice, you click on it. You are on a new wikipedia page again, you read the introduction and then you click on a relevant link in the contents. You start filling up the gap that pointed you to this wikipedia page when you find another unfamiliar term which is hyperlinked too (FTW!). And the cycle begins.

If it has not happened to you, doesn’t matter. It has happened to me. Many times a day. I will readily confess to be a wikipedia addict. If I don’t snort some knowledge everyday, I suffer from withdrawal symptoms. There is the tingling in my fingers reaching to type ‘W’, ‘I’, ‘K’, ‘I’ in the address bar of my Google Chrome window. My anxiety levels go up (FFS, how can I not check if wikipedia has some information on this?). I get irritable, quite a bit. If at the time some unfortunate bloke makes the grave mistake of asking me a question, I turn in slow motion (like in the movies when an action seen is about to play) and stare back at him with wildly angry eyes. In my head I am shouting ‘Wikipedia-it you douche bag!!’. Well sometimes that happens not quite in my head alone.

If I am kept away from wikipedia for any more than a few hours, I develop another very common withdrawal symptom – mental confusion. In those few hours, I seem to lose track of all the information processing that my brain usually does so well with the aid of well-hyperlinked wikipedia pages. I don’t know whether the aorta was found before the Greek Parthenon or the Axis of Evil was indeed involved in the Atlantic tsunami. At this point, I sincerely hope that I am given back access to wikipedia. Not to the offline version because there might have been 100,000+ edits since that offline version of yours, I ain’t interested in that. I like to snort the fresh stuff.

Anymore time away from wikipedia and things take turn for the worst. This has happened to me only once in my life before. A whole day (yes, 24 hours!) without wikipedia. I don’t remember very much, I only have hazy images in my head. People who saw me in that state have said that I did not respond to being called by name. Instead, I was jolly happy (sic) staring at the blank wall. I suspect so many questions may have come to me that they probably stopped the flow of blood to my brain. I don’t remember how I returned to normalcy but I have a clear memory of staring at this map.

The doc who attended to me at the time said that when I was finally given access to wikipedia again, I opened a new wikipedia page every five seconds. Of course. No wonder it took me some time to return to my normal speed (three seconds/page). I am not sure he knew enough about my addiction. FFS, the English Wikipedia has 3.7 million articles, how could he not search for my condition on wikipedia??

I am changing my diet

Akshat Rathi3 Comments

I am reading Tim Ferris’ The 4-hour Body and it has prompted me to change my diet. I am 180 cm in height and weigh about 69 kg. It is not that I need to lose weight but I would very much like to lose fat and gain muscle. The book gives me good reasons to believe that with this diet and some exercise I will be able to achieve and maintain it.

My breakfast and lunch. That's right the same meal for both!

The diet is described in detail here. Obviously, I am keeping to my pescetarian choices while doing this. That means no meat. Here’s what I will be eating:

  1. No white carbohydrates i.e. Rice, Bread, Cereal, Potatoes, Pasta
  2. All my diets will consist of eggs, lentils, beans and vegetables.
  3. I am allowed to use whatever spices I like in cooking.
  4. Lots of water and only unsweetened drinks.
  5. Some supplements: vitamins, calcium, potassium and cod oil.
  6. Saturday will be my day off i.e. I can eat what I want and how much ever I want.

Ferris gives me plenty of good reasons to do this:

  1. I can’t count calories. It makes me sick inside to think every time about what I am eating how much calories that will contribute. This diet allows me to keep my calorie count low enough to not have to worry about calorie contents.
  2. Thinking about what to eat every day is boring. Going out to eat is time-consuming. I can get by with this diet with minimal cooking.
  3. It blends well with my old diet.
  4. I really like the ‘day-off’ option. That way I can train myself to keep my temptations for this one day and not have to think about them the rest of the week.
  5. The science in the book seems convincing and so do testimonies from some people I read online.
  6. I’ve wanted to start quantifying myself and this diet gives me the perfect chance to begin. I start this diet with a count of my total inches (mid-biceps + waist + hips + mid-thigh) = 133.5. I’ve also downloaded the mappiness app and hope to monitor my daily food intake and mood.
  7. The diet is healthy. It will allow me to keep my LDL cholesterol, blood sugar and iron content low. With lots of spinach (which is one of the recommendations of the diet), I will be able to induce muscle growth.

Most importantly, this is an experiment. If after 4 weeks there is anything unhealthy about it, I will stop. Let’s see what happens.