Abhinav Saxena bio photo

Abhinav Saxena

a body of clay, a mind full of play, a moment's life - that is me

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About Me

I’m a generalist with interest in entrepreneurship, programming, poetry, social sciences, emerging business models and emerging markets.

A few more things about me

  • I grew up in Narsinghgarh, a beautiful little town in Madhya Pradesh, India.
  • In my fifteen years of engineering experience, I have developed large scale data products, payments platforms, messaging systems, platform services, e-commerce systems, logistics and supply chain management systems and social games.
  • I can code in more than ten programming languages, and have written production code in seven of them. Currently, I am learning elixir, a new functional programming language similar to ruby in syntax built on top of Erlang VM.
  • I love building tools and APIs for developers, checkout my publicly available work at abhinav.co
  • I am a big Gulzar fan, and I believe, he is one of the greatest poets alive.
  • I love adrak chai and filter coffee.

A few things I can’t do

  • I can’t multi-task, I am extremely poor at it.
  • I can’t handle office politics, I tend to wither in such environments.
  • I can’t speak jargons - I don’t sound sophisticated either.
  • I can’t play video games - tried as a kid, gave up pretty quickly.
  • I can’t get up early morning - well, I can if needed but I don’t like to.

Favourite Quotes

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

–- George Bernard Shaw

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

– John Adams

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

–- Robert Heinlein

Weekends don’t count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless

– Calvin

Sleep is the best meditation.

– Dalai Lama

Life is like topography, Hobbes. There are summits of happiness and success, flat stretches of boring routine and valleys of frustration and failure.

– Calvin

Usual disclaimer

This is a personal blog. Any views or opinions represented in this blog are personal and belong solely to me and do not represent those of my employer.