Lisboa!

Zain Flying a Drone Over Lisbon

Here’s a video of me flying a drone over Lisbon. I went to Lisbon over December holidays a while back and had a wonderful time. I spent just over a month and started New Year’s there. Here are some more memories from the trip:

Lessons from completing my Accelerated Freefall license stages

I completed 17 free fall jumps in one week to get my Accelerated Free Fall license and here were some of my learnings:

  • Staying calm and relaxed: With sky diving it’s key to keep your body in an arch position upon plane exit. As soon you lose your arch you get in a dangerous body position on your feet or on your back causing a parachute deployment high-speed malfunction. Any sort of panic in the air can kill you. It was key to keep calm and relaxed to ensure safe deployment and landing.
  • Power of visualisation: Each AFF stage requires you to perform a series of exercises in the air. From 360 turns, docking, backflips, tracking and stable deployments. In addition, you need to know your emergency procedures of low speed and high-speed malfunctions. During my plane ride up I needed to visualise my jump end to end to ensure everything went smoothly. The jumps I didn’t visualise – I had some really close calls such as a dangerous deployment where the parachute lines almost got tangled on my feet before opening. It was key after that experience I fully visualised each jump.
  • Doing one thing every day that scares you: Heights are scary for anyone. Doing the scary things in life is key to growth. After each jump and doing a successful landing, I had a feeling of complete bliss that I’d never experienced before. As Will Smith said in this video, “God placed the best things in life on the other side of fear.”  I experienced that after every jump.

What’s next?

I loved the community of instructors who supported me throughout this process. I was impressed by their level of competence and ability to coach each jump to perfection in a high-stakes environment. I saw people of a genders, ethnicities and ages at the drop zone. That inspired me even more to complete my stages.

I’m excited to continue my skydiving journey by completing my B-Rels (B-Rels = ‘B-Certificate’ Course relative work jumps) which are designed to teach me how to skydive safely with other skydivers and learn to pack my own parachute. I’m also excited to build lifelong friendships with people I’ve met throughout this journey. I think I’ve found my people 🙂

be authentic

“If you want to be rewarded, you have to be irreplaceable. If you want to be irreplaceable, you have to be unique. If you want to be unique, you have to be authentic. If you want to be authentic, stop listening to everyone and everything else. It’s drowning “you” out.” @naval

Specialization is for insects

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.

― Lazarus Long — Time Enough for Love (Robert Heinlein)