Ambarish's musings

18th October 2018 10:30 pm: I get a call saying there is food for more than 50 people left over at a function organized in a residential complex. I am tired after a long day but I decide to go anyway. I call a guy who has reached there, and he says he needs more people. I reach the complex and see the amount of food left over, and it is for more than 150 people! Thankfully we were 5 people, and we were able to get an auto to the place where we knew there would be a lot of people to donate the food to. We went 12km to the place, at 12 in the night, and served the food among the slum dwellers, auto-wallahs, and others. We took more time to wake people up from sleep and let them know that there is food than distributing the food itself. That day we would have served around 150 people, people who otherwise would have gone to sleep on an empty stomach. Distributing food at midnight Who are we? We are Robin Hood Army, a volunteer organization which focuses on donating excess foo

Arsene Wenger, the legendary Arsenal manager announced the he will be departing at the end of this season. The man who won us 3 league titles, 7 FA Cups, a Champions League final, and designed a brand new stadium, while giving us outstanding players, mesmerizing football, and sticking with us through difficult times. He kept us in in the UEFA Champions League for 19 seasons , which is simply amazing, considering the caliber of players he sometimes had to put up with. All the while, he had offers which would have made any other manager drop everything and leave, but Arsene decided to stick with us. His love for the club was simply unparalleled and unquestionable. His dedication and commitment to the club is unrivalled in modern football. He has taken "Boring boring Arsenal" to a new level, built a superclub, which can sustain itself financially, all the while not compromising results. His achievements at the club will never be forgotten, and his influence at the c

I hate them as much as I hate mangoes. I hate them as much as I hate raw beetroots I hate them as much as I hate the driving skills of autowallahs. I abhor them as much as I hate movies without stories. I loathe them as much as I hate the commercials between two overs in a cricket match. I dislike them as much as Alexi Lalas' commentary. I detest them as much as Stoke City FC and their anti-football. I can't stand them as much as carrots in samosas. I despise them as much as common cold. I contemn them as much as Baba Sehgal. I am sick of them as much as loud people. It is better to not reply than with a one word reply. It signifies the end of conversation, and should be shunned.

When you learn something, you need to put it to use. You need to apply what you learnt to a real world scenario. Only then do you really get to know how much you actually learnt. Last Sunday was one where I put my driving skills to the test. I went on a bike trip with a great friend to Nagarjuna Sagar Dam. This guy was my bike guru. He was going to decide if I was roadworthy. He's not a strict teacher per se, but I didn't want to disappoint him. So, the day after I got my driver's license, we set off, in the sweltering Hyderabad heat. The city part was really tricky, and I knew that I won't be confidently able to maneuver the traffic deftly. Already we were a tad late, so my guru handled the bike till the outskirts of the city. After having sumptuous breakfast(amazing sambar!), I started driving, and he guided me. Initially after a few hiccups, my confidence started to wobble. Fortunately, the highway started, and we had lots of free road, and no pesky autos.

Eyes are hurting. Ears are blocked. I can't hear anything. My legs are paining. My ankles don't want to support my body weight. My fingers are cold, and wrinkled. Every muscle, every sinew in my body is screaming. My arms don’t want to move. My shoulders agree with my arms. My heart is pumping the fastest it has ever, even more than when it was in awe. My back doesn’t want to stay upright. My brain is aware of all this. Even it is a little tired, after a long day trying to convince people to write code in the best possible way. But it is just too excited. Adrenaline has taken over me. My mind is ready to go again, even after doing it 20 times in the past hour. Before you get a dirty thought, I am of course talking about swimming. It has been 3 days since I joined a swimming class, and I feel like I learned a lot. I can float, I can swim the breadth of the pool 20 times in 40 minutes. I can hold my breath under water for 20 seconds. I still have a lot to learn,

I just had one of the best days of my Hyderabad chapter! I went to Amit Trivedi's concert at BITS Pilani, Hyderabad campus(btw, why can't it be just called BITS Hyderabad? Is BITS Pilani a brand or something?). Amazing as much the music was, the artists were scintillating! Amit Trivedi, as everybody probably knows, is one of the best musicians of the current generation. All his songs have something very different in them, and he is just a joy to watch. For the concert, he brought a few other artists, some of whom were unknown to me, but by the end, I became a fan of them all. Jonita Gandhi was part of the chorus group! The song selection was spot on, with majority of the songs from Kai Po Che and Queen, where he was the music director. Some were classics like "Chaudhari", which is one of the favorite songs of a colleague from Rajasthan. "Udta Punjab" was one of the more recent movies, whose songs were in full flow. I got the songs which I wa

I might be 6 years late, but here is my review of this Bollywood movie, starring Sridevi. Directed by Gauri Shinde, this film tackles some This film is freakin' awesome! I can't believe I hadn't watched this movie before. And if you haven't watched it, I suggest you clear out your calendar for tomorrow and grab some popcorn. This is mostly a serious movie, but the lighter moments are well placed, and make great viewing. The plot, the dialogues, the screenplay, everything is perfect. This movie is worth paying big bucks to watch on the big screen, unlike me, who watched it 6 years late on a 14 inch touchscreen. Sridevi is absolutely mesmerizing. Her acting in this movie is one of the best acting performances I have ever seen. When you watch her, her struggles become yours. You feel her happiness and sadness. You want her to do well. You want her to show the world, how much she can accomplish. Anything more I say here will be spoilers for the few people w

Let me start off by saying I have utmost respect for Arsene Wenger, and I have always wished him well. What he has done for this football club puts him in the pantheon of greatest managers of all time. He deserves a statue for sure. The day he leaves Arsenal FC will surely be sad, and I'll always thank him for all the magical moments he has given us, and not to mention the beautiful Wengerball, which we absolutely adore. Needless to say, Arsenal FC are in a slump of a whole new magnitude unseen in the entirety of Wenger's tenure at the club. Form is nonexistent, results are predictably negative, performances have dropped below the standards usually set by a team destined for relegation. Fans have nothing to cheer about, players don't seem to care. The manner of every defeat has remained the same over the past few years. A culture of mediocrity has developed at the club where excellent was the minimum requirement. The board is seemingly happy with this mediocrit

Your beauty has enchanted me, Your wit has stumped me. Every time I talk to you, You amaze me! Your eyes do kill, Your sly smile does thrill. Everybody bends to your will, You are a romantic's destiny to fulfill. Girl, be free as a bird, Be bold as a lion. Be tough as steel, Don’t show them your Achilles' heel. Be shy like a teen, Maybe not so mean. Because in the palace of my heart, You rightfully rule like a queen.

Debuggers are some of the most beautiful pieces of code ever written. They are every developer's oxygen tank in  the deep treacherous waters that is the world of software engineering. They are tools which help us figure out  what went wrong, and where. Now, apart from software development, where else can we use a debugger? Life, of course! Imagine if we could debug our life! Add breakpoints, inspect the local and global variables in  various scenarios, and change values if need be. We could take ourselves wherever we want… But, wait! I forgot a fundamental assumption. While debugging code, we manage to replicate the exact same  scenario any number of times we want. Absolutely not possible with life. Life provides you with one chance for a scenario, and you simply can't debug. A debugger for life is a powerful, yet useless weapon...

Let us take a moment to appreciate the people that we have known, interacted with, seen, heard about,  had a crush on, that have broken our hearts, who made us dream, and who brought us back to the harsh reality  of the world, who made us laugh so much that we had tears in our eyes, and who made us so sad yet we couldn’t  shed a single tear, who became our best friends, and who became cold and distant ghosts, who pushed us towards the finish line, and those who saw weakness in us and ran away, who we love, and who love us, and cherish our  presence and miss us in our absence, who made our days special, and who have made our days a nightmare,  who lent us their shoulders, and who kicked us when we were down, who dazzled us with their talents, who were mesmerized when we showcased ours, with whom we shared meat and mead, and all the people who gave us  a lifetime's worth of experiences. These are people who made us into what we are. These are people who will d

You can't see it, You can't feel it, You can neither hear it, Nor smell it.   You think you have it, And just like that Poof! It is gone!   A year feels so short, A minute feels so long.   Time isn't real. Time is an illusion.

Cars always fascinated me, rather driving cars did. Ever since I went on the Pune-Mahabaleshwar-Satara road trip, I wanted to learn driving, and be able to rent a car and take my family out for a drive or something. Or go on more road trips with friends. Or just go out once in a while, for a nice long drive. Starting this Monday, I joined a driving school nearby. I drove a Maruti Swift Dzire and a Maruti Wagon R for the past week, and both vehicles are in good shape. The instructor is also good, he is quite attentive, and he solved like a million of my doubts this week. He laid out a great roadmap, which I thought was too simple to be true: Days 1-3: Steering Days 4,5: Gears Day 6: Clutch, brake and acceleration At the end of this week, he says I have learnt the basics of driving. Sounded too good to be true! Steering is basically holding the wheel for a long time, and then turning as and when required. Easy enough, right? I felt steering was the hardest. A