How I got here
Organic chemistry was the subject everyone in class ten had already agreed was the hard one. Then we sat a test on it and I came first. This surprised the class, and it surprised me considerably more.
That is not much to build on. It turned out to be enough. I went through HSC doing well in chemistry without ever quite settling whether I was good at it or merely stubborn about it — a distinction I have since stopped losing sleep over.
Then the university admission exam, which in Bangladesh is less an exam than a weather event. Tens of thousands of us, a few hundred seats, one morning to decide it. I came out of it with Chemistry at the University of Dhaka.
The department sits in Curzon Hall — red brick and arches, a building that was commissioned as a town hall and ended up a science faculty instead. I have spent a great many hours in it, and I am still there, measuring things.
Something I think that not everyone does
AI arriving in research and in the creative fields is not a threat. It is an adaptation prompt. It pushes us to sharpen the part of our thinking that our own machines cannot reach.
Quantum computation is not a possibility either. It is a practicality. It is already here, and it can think faster than almost anything.
The human mind has not been toppled. It has been cornered into improving. Anyone who cannot do that will be left behind. Anyone who picks the thing up and uses it like a paintbrush will make something worth looking at.
Interests
Music, which is the other half of it
I play guitar, and I make music with a band called Gatos in Dhaka — YouTube, Instagram, Spotify. Covers turn up on my own Instagram between the photographs.
Neither of these contacts Spotify until you press the button — it keeps the page quick, and keeps their cookies off it until you ask.
Reading
On the go at the moment: Berserk, Misir Ali, and Born a Crime. A dark-fantasy manga, a Bengali detective who does not quite believe in the paranormal he keeps running into, and Trevor Noah on growing up under apartheid. I have never managed to read one thing at a time.
Moving
The gym, at least twice a week. And swimming, which I am genuinely good at — the one physical thing I would back myself in.
Things I lose evenings to
New technology, and what people actually do with it once the novelty wears off. Economic strategy. Technical histories — how a thing came to be built the way it was, and which of the alternatives lost. Also making art, gaming, and film.
Get in touch
Any of these reach me:
- Email: fayek.ronok@gmail.com
- Instagram: @fayekrownok — my photography
- Twitter: @FayekRonok
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/fayek
- GitHub: github.com/fayek
- Facebook: Fayek Rownok
- ORCID · Google Scholar