Poetry is more important to me, and if I was forced to choose, it’d be poetry. I often write essays when I’m unable to write a poem, but I also enjoy writing essays, so I don’t suffer while writing them.

I became interested in the United Way, because, in our contract with the television networks, we had a certain amount of promo time for ourselves. It was so much money, about $40 million a year. We had a couple of extra minutes on each tape, on each network. We used them for a while on relatively self-serving things, and I thought, rather than have that time be spent on saying “the NFL is great,” we should try to use it for some good. That’s when we bound our relationship with the United Way.

Email. Or call a good friend. Reading this reminds me that I should instead read poetry. Or write.

Apart from my business I engage in civic issues. I do a lot of work with the Government of Karnataka, both for the biotech sector as well as for the city of Bangalore.

I mean, definitely my van.

Anyway, it's very much a work in progress, but I'm basically just hoping to do something useful in the world besides just climbing rocks...

I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is like in high school I was reading a bunch of Ayn Rand, like objectivist, all super black and white, basically like f the poor, people should work harder, they should try harder. And now as a 30-year-old I’m basically like all about trying to help the poor or trying to help the planet in different ways. Trying to make the world a better place. It’s like a full 180 from the black and white that I was into in high school.

Well, don’t you think that we are all like that? I mean in some ways the deepest fear for a lot of people is getting to the end of their life and think that they did it wrong.

I’ve always wished I had stronger fingers, and most of my friends always have stronger fingers.

I’ve had a couple of ex-girlfriends sort of accuse me of having a personality disorder! … No, I don’t know. I’ve always been afraid of death. I’ve never wanted to die. Last year, I watched this guy die in Red Rock. It was this horrible freak accident thing. He fell and he cracked his head and basically just bled out. That was the first time I’d ever actually seen a climbing accident like that. It was kind of sobering — he was even wearing a helmet — it was a reminder of how dangerous climbing can be if things go wrong even when you have all the ropes on.