June & July: NS, Humanoid lab, Singapore, and fun :)
Month full of cool & new experiences!
Hey PEOPLE!
I’ve written only one blog in my life, and this is my second one after nearly a year! Many learnings, reflections, changes in thoughts, etc., but let’s not get into that for this blog. Maybe I’ll write a separate blog for it sometime later.
LET’S TALK ABOUT JUNE AND JULY 2026! It was fantastic. I had a chance to spend time at Network School in Malaysia (started by Balaji Srinivasan who was a former CTO of Coinbase and partner at a16z), experimented with Unitree G1 humanoid robots, went to Singapore, and had a lot of fun!
Humanoid Lab:
In July, I got invited to join a Humanoid Accelerator to work on Unitree G1 humanoid robots.
One of the main things I built was a natural voice interface for the robot. You could simply give it a goal, and it would break the task into smaller steps, execute them, and replan on its own if something unexpected happened (like a person walking into its path). I also built in safety guardrails to make sure it behaved safely.
Some examples:
I could ask it to find a 3D printer in the robotics lab. It would scan the room, locate the printer, plan the best path to reach it, navigate there, and replan automatically if the environment changed.
It could find the nearest person, walk up to them, wave hello, and ask how their day was.
I also turned it into a simple hotel receptionist. Instead of just greeting people from behind a desk, it would first detect when a guest arrived, physically turn to face them, and then greet them naturally. It even had different greetings so the interaction didn’t feel repetitive.
Depending on what you’re talking to the humanoid, it’d naturally have relevant gestures like waving hello, bye, dance, etc.
I also built a fun AR/VR game on the Pico headset.
I only had three weeks to work with the robot, so I couldn’t explore everything I wanted, but I had an incredible time.
If I’d had more time, I would’ve loved to:
experiment with UnifoLM-WMA-0, Unitree’s world model framework.
learn more about improving humanoid grasping and manipulation.
There’s still not a lot humanoids can do today, but I’m really excited about where the field is headed!! So grateful I for the opportunity :)
Network School
For people who’ve not heard about Network School, it’s basically an experiment for a different way of living.
The official definition of it is:
A network state is a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states.
It’s a beautiful place with excellent campus. Surprisingly, people are so friendly to interact with. Even tho most of the people are working on something meaningful, people still don’t ask “what do you do for a living?” as a first opening question (atleast many people don’t). Instead, people seem to care more about who you are first. Conversations feel genuine. People are kind, helpful, and just fun to be around.
Personally, I’m way more interested in what excites someone, how they think, and what they’re ambitious about before getting into what they’re working on.
I spent my time working, meeting new people, sailing for the first time, attending a quantum computing conference, walking around the area, going for runs, eating healthy food, joining a hackathon, and much more :)
Here are a few snippets:
I also got to spend time with my good friend Nitish, and I ran into Michael again after meeting him last year. He even invited me to attend and speak at Hawaii Tech Week, but unfortunately the timing didn’t work out. Maybe next year :)
Also, here’s me and Nitish on a very serious mission to find cookies lmao:
I liked my time at NS. Some parts really aligned with me, and some didn’t. Overall, it was a great experience, and I’d definitely love to go back again. So happy that all my expenses were covered too!
Singapore
I spent a few days in Singapore in June. It was my fourth time there, and I still really like the country. I love just walking or cycling around. The streets are beautiful, and it’s such an easy place to explore.
I also attended SuperAI for the second time. It’s one of my fav conferences, and I got to meet people from Melno Research and The Robot Company. Melno is building Asimov, an open-source humanoid, which was really exciting to learn about. The Robot Company is deploying robots in Labs, Data Centres, Hotels, etc.
I also met the co-founders of Tashi Network. They’re building a network that lets swarms of drones and robots communicate and coordinate with each other. They were incredibly fun to talk to, and I learned a lot just by listening to them think out loud.
I also went to Universal Studios Singapore again!
Drone!!!
I finally got a new drone and got to shoot a few things with it. I’ve wanted one for a long time, so I’m really happy I finally got it :)))
Flying a drone is quite literally one of the coolest things ever. I had so much fun with it, and I’m really happy with how some of the shots turned out. I definitely want to keep shooting more.
I honestly love the videos I took with the drone even more than the photos, but unfortunately Substack only lets me upload images. So here are a few of my fav shots:
Reflections & next plans:
Ambition is rare.
Nobody has life completely figured out. Everyone is constantly navigating uncertainty. I want to get better at the process of figuring things out over time, rather than expecting to always have the right answers.
People with diverse interests connect dots that others don’t. The most interesting ideas often come from combining knowledge across completely different fields.
In a world where everyone chases the latest trend, I think it’s much cooler to find something you genuinely care about and stick with it for the long term.
Next plans:
I wanna spend some time learning about things for the fun of it.
Few things I wanna do:
Build an LLM from scratch
Code through Neural Network’s playlist by Andrej Karpathy
I’ve been getting very interested in world models, so spend time learning about it and build something.
Learn Maths
Read books
Write more
Alright, so that’s it for June & July! If anyone wants to connect, here’s my Twitter/X and LinkedIn.
Thanks for reading, and I’ll catch you all next month :)
so cool mate!!