MISTER SURF

I'm Nilesh Ashra, a surf-nut from London who works for W+K in Portland, USA. More↓

This is me! I was born in London around 28 years ago, and I now live with my girlfriend Emily in Portland, Oregon in the beautiful surrounds of the Pacfic Northwestern USA.

My fascination with the Internet (I mean seriously, millions of computers connected together) has never gone away since I first discovered it as a kid.

These days I get paid to channel it at work for Wieden+Kennedy as a Lead Technical Engineer. It’s great, I get to connect together social networks, APIs, data, physical computing platforms, etc. in order to make things people like on the Internet. If I wasn’t being paid to do it, I’d be doing it in my garage anyway!

As you might have guessed, I’m obsessed with surfing. It started about 3 years ago with an impromptu trip to Portugal with my best mate Rob, and I hope it stays with me forever. It’s turned into one of the very few things I truly love. Close↑

The best wave in Europe
Thu 27 October, 2011

Damien Hobgood pulling into a perfect barrel at Supertubos, a wave I attempted to surf constantly for 7 months, but never truly mastered:

./static/images/hobgood.jpg

Being a surfer from England I'm used to people saying "Oh! Huh? I didn't know you had waves in England!" Fair enough.

But it never fails to make me smile when someone says the same thing about Portugal, the crown jewel of European surfing.

Supertubes is as perfect, and as challenging a wave as it gets. I'd practice and practice; in smaller conditions I'd go for long sessions and try to get my take-off fast and down the line. The conditions would get 25% bigger and I'd get schooled.

Frustrating for me, but perfect none the less.

Stuffed in boxes marked portugal and surfing | comments