Bhardwaj Rish

"Ah I've been learning and practising and it feels so futile! I really don't want to learn to play the piano anymore. What's the point anyway?", she complained over the phone as she went on "there'll never be a time when I will think I'm actually proficient, it's just so time consuming and I don't even know why I'm learning this anymore". A year ago at the start of the lockdown, she started learning to play the piano. And as the usual pattern of picking up a new hobby goes, her enthusiasm shot up the day she decided she would learn to play, skyrocketing with every day she had to wait, until finally peaking on the day it was delivered to her house. Then came the heavy sinking feeling the moment she put on a YouTube tutorial and tried to follow along. She whispered under her breath with her motivation crumbling, "man, this is actually very hard". "Okay, picture this", I started to respond. "The lockdown is final...

There's a complicated mess of wires, most connecting several of the five metal boxes, amongst others which are just loose ends dangling, that together make the system you're working on. There's a phone connected to this complicated mess that puts the system in configuration 1. Your task is to put the system in configuration 2 by reconnecting the phone to a different port. The problem is, no one is around and you don't know how or where it's supposed to connect. But as soon as you have the right connection, the system will tell you it is in configuration 2. So you go on your journey to figuring it out: Hit and trial You start off by disconnecting the cable connecting the phone to the system. So now you have a phone connected to a cable with a loose end, and you have to figure out where it fits.  You start looking around. You have no idea where it goes, so you make a quick scan of all the ports, but find nothing that the wire could connect to. Break it down You grunt ...

"We're on the tipping point of the technological evolution scale! The graph of technological advancements drawn against time is an exponential curve. And we're right at the point where the line skyrockets upwards. This is *the* inflection point!", I said to my brother right after we talked about how the Starlink satellites are being deployed.  I made a gesture with my finger indicating the point of the inflection, right when he dropped a deeply profound line just very casually and said  "that's the magic of an exponential curve; you're always at the inflection point where things are just about to skyrocket".  Initially, that made no sense to me. He is right (and I am fairly embarrassed to say it took me some Excel-ing to really prove it to myself) - and it is all about the scale you choose.  But on the other hand, I couldn't help but stop feeling that this is it. Look, we're at the point where everyone relies on supercomputers in their hands ...

You're on your usual 6:30pm run. The wind's blowing strong on your face, it's freezing, but you've dressed appropriately. You remember this podcast on scientific reasoning as to why people have "aha!" moments when they're out in the wild, or running, or taking cold showers.  A runner passes by.  You keep running, with nothing much going on in your head, other than the fact that you're not really having much of an "aha!" moment.  Another runner passes by.  You're about 2.5km in, and you've crossed 4 runners running on the opposite side, but you haven't yet seen anyone running in your direction. That's funny, you think to yourself. Another runner passes, and now it's bothering you. Why are there always so many people running in the opposite direction, but only old and slow people running in yours.  It takes you a minute, but you figure it out, and then it seems obvious. It has to do with the relatively equal average speeds o...

You move to a new city, and this is the first time you're walking around, taking in these streets you've never seen before. You walk by this cathedral-esque structure which feels a bit out of place from its surrounding environment, but you realize it's a school, seeing all the school buses and kids in uniforms. It's an old stone constructed building whose exterior shows it's lived through and seen generations of human life. It vaguely reminds you of a place you might have seen before, but you pay no heed to the thought, as you've just walked by a couple thousand buildings and another hundred streets through the day, and it might just be your minds way of making things feel more familiar. You continue listening to the song you were listening to, happily humming along because it is your favorite song. Your day goes on, and nothing special happens for the rest of it. Later that day your brother calls you and you have your usual conversation. He asks you how your d...

This is a continuation from The Google Interview Day . Read this as another chapter in the story of my life. I really wanted to try writing in a story format, and I'm happy I gave it a shot!  - My heart was roaring. So loud I could hear it through my earphones as I walked into work. This was going to be THE BIGGEST week in my life, and I could not share it with anyone around me. Today was the day, my recruiter, Broza, had told me on Thursday when I last spoke to him. I walked into work, late again having overslept thinking that'll help time pass faster, anxious for what was about to unfold. I felt like Tom feasting on a whole chicken, only I was feeding on my nails. It was a fairly breezy winters day and though it should've snowed 10 feet deep based on last years snow galore, it was just crisply cold. Yes, crisp is how I'd call it because the city I was in felt much like a walk into a city that didn't know we had been through the industrial revolution. Funny, I th...

This is part two in the series of my Google Interview. Part One: Conversations with My Father . I wanted to try out alternative writing formats / story telling formats, and I'm really happy with how these are coming along. This is a mind monologue - the kind we all have.  - Ah, I can't eat too much. My stomach still feels it. Yes, yes I know this is huge. But hey, I get to see a Google office for the first time in my life! Man that'll be quite something. Okay, what's the time? 8:50. Hmm, I've got 20 minutes to finish this breakfast before I start walking to the office. What's it going to be like? Okay Rish calm, calm down. Let's breathe in, breathe out for the next 10 minutes. *A few deep breaths later* , ah it's the first interview I'm giving in 3 years! Okay, I've practised really hard, I know it. I've given more mock interviews than the number of interviews all my interviewers combined have taken. Okay, what's the time now? 8:54! No, n...

I read a few story books this month - non-stop really and their way of writing made me want to write a blog post in a story-book manner. I'd say, read this as a chapter in my book of life - one of the most important days in my recent past. There will be a couple follow up posts. - I was looking outside the window from my hotel room that Google had booked for my night before the interview. It was a sunny post-summer day in August, and it was warm enough to walk out in a t-shirt, but would get cold enough later on in the night to have to wear something on top.  A couple rings on the phone and my father answered with the regular pleasant "hallo puttar". We always greet each other with a hallo rather than a hello , probably something we picked up from living in Switzerland. "So today's the big day Pops! I didn't think I would be this nervous, but I do feel it", I said. I'm a confident person in most situations - well except when I have to talk on stage -...

While I sit and laze on the comfort of my three seater sofa, I think to myself, as all great men before me have, I should be making great use of this perfect Sunday afternoon. The sun is out, the birds have chirped all morning, I woke up on time, and I don't have any laundry to do today. Now you see, a day like that is a day that's special. I look around, I see my phone. The thought of doing something great passes by for a sec, as I unconsciously pick up my phone for a quick peek. I forget my plans to conquer the day in the moment, and as all jobless men before me have, I scroll through Instagram. Not that I really care for Kendall's yet another magazine cover, or my friend's dachshund being a little extra cute. Some of those Spongebob memes are really rewarding though. It's just that my brain needed slight off-tracking, to make sure I feel guilty and curse at myself for not making great use of this great day where the laundry is already don...

Of course I'm not just gonna give it right away. That'd make this a boring read. I'm going to put in a whole lot of adjectives and verbs creatively thought out to describe exactly what one feels when doing this particular sequence of actions, rarely performed by many. It's this mind bending, limb stretching, mental limits pushing, pain barrier breaking, ass hurting, barehands crocodile fighting, body wearying, physically draining, hand taxing, thigh numbing, psyche perspiring, soul drudging, power grinding, back breaking, torso drenching, chassis soaking, frame wetting ability to do burpees* be consistent, at anything. To just have robotic-like consistency in anything you do. The hardest part of living in my opinion is getting yourself to do something, anything. It's to convince your mind, to motivate yourself to do more than just the bare minimum to survive. Now, there are a set of things you're almost forced to do - going to school, waking up for wor...