These posts are the transcripts of my podcast episodes. Here is episode 1 on my background & why I started a podcast.
Farez For Me Intro
Hello friends, welcome to the Farez For Me podcast aka newscast aka public service announcement aka young man yells into the cloud.
I’m your host Farez Vadsaria. I’m @farezv on the internet.
About Podcast & Content Format
Welcome to my what-I’ll-try-to-do-daily podcast/newsletter/rant called Farez For Me where I talk about daily news; in the tech, music, cryptocurrency, web3, gaming & general pop culture space in approximately 15 minutes where we maybe end with some music.
That’s why I started this podcast on Anchor.FM so I don’t get sued by record company lawyers. Besides, I’m a trained singer so I can just sing for you if I feel like it.
And I might even try to answer some existential questions on this podcast like, what the hell is the Metaverse? Or is crypto just like magic internet money no one understands? Maybe I’ll even take your questions. We’ll keep the format flexible as I figure this out.
Maybe I should rename this to Farez Fifteen Minutes but that has all kinds of hilarious connotations so we’ll go with Farez For Me.
Purpose
So let’s get the awkward thing out of the way: who am I and why should you listen to me everyday? You already have too many emails, tweets, audiobooks and TikTok dances to consume daily. Since the internet affectionately calls me a nobody, you probably need a good reason to stick around.
So why should you listen to my podcast?
Totally fair question!
My one line podcast pitch is that I can bring some informative entertainment to your daily tech/crypto/web3/pop culture news and since audio is extremely portable, personal and hands free; I wanted to do this in a podcast format. You can do your mundane tasks like folding laundry or doing the dishes while listening to me.
Or I can join you on your post pandemic commute and distract you from the wierdos on that train or bus you’re on.
And while we’re on this journey, I can give you some bite sized news and entertainment so we can all learn something along the way.
Also music. Music is love; music is life.
And I might even invite some friends so we could shoot the shit together. Just kidding, I don’t have any friends.
As for who I am
Well I’m a software engineer with a bit over 6 years of experience and I currently work at Warner Bros Discovery with previous stints at Amazon Web Services & Electronic Arts. Obviously nothing I say here will disclose any proprietary non public information about my current, past or future employers.
I’m currently based in Seattle, WA in the US.
But who am I really?
I’m a proud Canadian. An immigrant from India originally and I was born and raised in Mumbai until I was 14. I speak Hindi and Gujarati fluently & a few weeks after my 14th birthday in early 2006 my parents informed me that we’ll will be embarking on a small journey to a large country known as Canada. I didn’t speak English super well at the time nor did I know how challenging yet rewarding immigration would be. No big deal.
Small fast forward to April 2006, and I land in beautiful British Columbia in my hometown of Vancouver, Canada.
For a kid who had never sat on a plane even until that point, this was a pretty big culture shock. One that I still reflect on today. Remember folks, this was before Instagram and TikTok; so I had no idea which dances were popular & what brand of detergent I was supposed to eat to get famous. I was just trying to figure out Yahoo & MSN messenger so I could chat with my Indian friends. Remember Yahoo?
Before Canada, when I was growing up in India, I had only travelled to a small rural town in Gujarat where my dad is from and a party state in India called Goa. I only went to Goa once.
Goa is like the Indian version of Florida and California put together; except with Portuguese architecture thrown in for good measure.
Fast fast forward back in Canada, I finished high school and college in Vancouver in 2015. I majored in Computer Science & worked in the gaming industry up North before I was enticed by the political drama and lax tax laws of the United States and so I moved to Seattle, WA when I got a job at Amazon in the spring of 2019.
A cool two hour drive from my hometown of Vancouver. Tech money for the first time…woohoo, I’m no longer poor and I will travel the world in 2020 and beyond.
Like the starter pack of most tech bros, I eventually got into crypto investing, & NFT trading in 2021 and now, well I’m podcasting in 2022. I know, I’m spiraling!
But why a podcast?
Well this isn’t my first foray into content creation. I first started uploading video game content on YouTube more than a decade ago when HDPVRs were still a thing but I stopped after 20-30 videos which I clearly regret now.
If only I dropped out of college and played video games for a living I’d be a multi millionaire right now. Oh well, it’s the immigrant dream to work hard and end up in middle management. So what’s what we’ll do!
Besides I couldn’t tell my parents “Thanks for all the sacrifices mom and dad, but ima dropout because Call of Duty is my duty & Minecraft is my craft” I was taught to take my education seriously, so that’s what I did.
During college, I try many blogging platforms over the years, a gaming photo blog that no one read, a web comic idea that never went anywhere, and recently started a crypto blog on my self hosted ghost site farezv.com, a Substack newsletter at farezv.Substack.com & setup a hash node blog for my engineering writing. But writing is extremely challenging everyday and is much more formal; which doesn’t help me build a relationship with you, the audience as quickly as I’d like.
Podcasting is the next best thing. It’s informal and audio is quick to record & publish. I read a ton of newsletters and Twitter threads through my day and hopefully my audio summaries will help digest them so you don’t have to read all this crap. Seriously I’m badly addicted to Twitter.
As a busy professional & a parent, I’ve found solace in audio books and podcasts so I figured why not put into the world what I get from it.
Besides, podcasting is poised to grow to a $4 billion industry by 2024 according to The Verge & maybe someday I’ll also get a $100 million deal from Spotify. Here’s hoping!
In NFT News
Blockworks reports that Kanye West has filed Yeezy NFT trademarks. So yeah, NFTs are still a scam. Just kidding, more on NFTs and crypto deep dives in later episodes.
I can’t give you everything in episode 1 guys, gotta keep you interested!
If you made it this far, thanks for listening & as I said, this podcast may change its format until I figure out what works best for you and for me. So please share it widely with your mom, dad, siblings, that awkward cousin you haven’t seen since before the pandemic, the weirdo on the bus and anyone else you think might enjoy this.
Follow me on Twitter @farezv. Stay tuned & I’ll see you in the next episode.
Until then, what’s that song about peaches? It goes like. I got my peaches out in Georgia…
We’ll I’ll let Justin do it.