Welcome

In my day job, I’m a bureaucrat working on payment systems in Washington, D.C., although you may know me from Twitter discussions on Asia, finance, transport or typography. Inspired by my friend Tao, I’ve set up this home for occasional long-form writing. The name comes from Rabindranath Tagore, who wrote about “ages of fireworks” in his 1917 Nationalism in India essay:

“In man’s history there come ages of fireworks which dazzle us by their force and movement. They laugh not only at our modest household lamps but also at the eternal stars. But let us not for that provocation be precipitate in our desire to dismiss our lamps. Let us patiently bear our present insult and realize that these fireworks have splendour but not permanence, because of the extreme explosiveness which is the cause of their power, and also of their exhaustion. They are spending a fatal quantity of energy and substance compared to their gain and production.”