The trainer is a well known amazing persona Mr. Pankaj Trivedi. The first session of the training was in the morning at 9 a.m. Sharp at 9, at the meeting hut, this was the scene. There was Pankaj, rest of the mentors and a handful of interns from a batch of 23. More folks started arriving at 9:02, 9:05, 9:07, 9:10, 9:12. By 9.15, everybody was present and this is how Pankaj started.

We waited for 15 minutes to start. Is 15 minutes a big deal. You might think probably or not. 28 people (23 interns+5 mentors) waited for 15 minutes doing nothing. We lost 420 minutes which is 7 hours of time not doing anything. Is that a big deal now? I found this very interesting because I had never thought of time wasted as a group before. He also correlated it with respect. As a team, we all agree to give and take respect. We don’t somehow consider disrespecting someone’s time as a disrespect. After the first training, most people were not late by more than 2-3 minutes for the next training. And every single person was before time for all the subsequent training and also for most sessions for the next 2 years of our internship.

Till today, it has stayed with me and I like to be present at events both professional and personal on/before the time agreed.

1. Quick feedback loop - instantly you know what was wrong because of limited changes, hence easy to revert and go back to stable
2. CI on a branch is not CI. In true sense, CI cannot be done without trunk based - “Code on separate branches is not integrated”
3. Code quality is higher and design is better on trunk based. Because your design has to have abstractions where you can hide the behavior from outside.
4. Not easy to merge big branches to master
5. Impossible if someone just merged a long living branch to master, and now you have to integrate your code with it, figure out the problem if you’re lucky enough to know there’s a problem(having good safety net)
6. Small changes without breaking existing functionality need to be learnt by team
   1. Introduce new code from service layer without exposing the route
   2. Behind a feature toggle
   3. New api not consumed from frontend
7. Code review done in retrospective is less useful. Adopt pair/mob programming to integrate feedback in the first place

Notes from Clare’s book

1. Better quality
   1. Easier to add code that brings value
2. Happy developers
3. Small steps: The smaller the step the faster is it to understand what went wrong and fix it
4. Fast integration, fast feedback, fewer queues
5. Reducing risk: Even is something goes wrong, you can revert and recreate from scratch
6. Improved Culture
7. Prerequisites
   1. Enthusiasm
   2. Time
   3. Flexibility
   4. Help
8. Commit freq
9. Push freq
10. Build and Run tests before pushing
11. Need to have a really good automation suite integrated with the pipeline
12. Rollbacks should be easy
13. Fast build time
    1. Separate fast tests than slower, then improve the slow tests
    2. Questions the dependencies that need rebuild each time
    3. Local feedback should be fast too
14. Minimize dependencies
15. The authors of Accelerate assert, CI requires “relentless work to simplify systems architecture on an ongoing basis to ensure that this automation isn’t prohibitively expensive to create and maintain
16. Throw things away
17. Feature flags
18. Pipeline always has to be green. Number 1 priority of the team. No use of having tests that fail

Problems in TBD

1. When you want to run an experiment or debug or bugfix, you want to write ugly code that would never make it to the main. But more often, it happens that you want some parts of the branch to be merged and then again merge hell
2. Not paying attention to the pipeline
3. Not Running tests locally after merge
4. Effectively practicing CTBD takes a certain amount of team maturity and skill. If you don’t already work in tiny chunks, commit frequently, write tests in tandem with code, run tests every time you commit, and generally write code in a way that’s designed to be merged several times a day, you’ll need to create those habits as part of your journey to trunk-based development
5. Reduce friction. Spend a moment when you see friction, think about ways of reducing or removing it
6. Help people build muscle memory. Coding katas
7. No blame shame. Honest culture
8. Use Information Radiators
9. Collaboration - Mob /Pair
10. Don’t branch! Don’t branch! any form of branching runs counter, in principle, to the ideas of Continuous Integration
11. A branch is, by design, intended to hide change in one part of the code from other developers

1. Money is important, and more important is to learn to handle it. People who preach that money is not everything and that it’s evil are foolish, because the same people will work their asses off their whole life to earn it.
2. Money is important it can buy many things, but most importantly it buys you freedom of your own time.
3. Money is a game, it’s fun if you know the rules, you can play it well.

Pay checks and being an Employee

1. Pay checks are addictive. Once you get used to earning money that way, it’s hard to move away, but it’s necessary.
2. Don’t take a job for a pay check, take it to learn a skill.
3. Job security, pension plans are traps and cages restricting you from achieving true financial freedom.
4. Don’t work for money, let money work for you.
5. Pay yourself first. When you get a pay check, don’t start paying off bills as the first thing. Pay yourself first and then do the bills and expenses.

Failures and Disappointments

1. Be ready to fail, for it will teach you the things you must know for success. But more importantly learn those lessons from those failures.
2. Be prepared for disappointments. Like we say with each problem there comes an opportunity, same is with disappointments. Inside every disappointment lies a priceless gem of wisdom. Turn your disappointment into an asset instead of a liability.
3. Be kind to yourself. Don’t beat yourself up for the mistakes you have done, learn from them.
4. Be true to yourself.

Debt

1. Paying off your debts is the first step to becoming financially free.
2. Debt is not always bad. There are good debts and bad debts. When you are paying yourself for your debt, it’s a bad one. When you make others pay for it, it’s a good debt. 
E.g. Buying an apartment on debt and making the tenants pay for it. The net will eventually show up in your asset column.
3. If you are buying those cars, houses on debt, it’s not smart. Don’t fool yourself by looking rich, the idea is to be one. Your financial statement should reflect that - more assets than liabilities.

Mentor

1. Find a mentor, who has achieved where you want to get. Professionals have coaches, amateurs don’t.
2. Have a few emergency contacts for financial mentors, people who are just a call away when you are in a difficult position.
3. Have role models, also anti role models - people who you don’t want to become. You can learn equally important lessons from them.
4. Be careful whose advice you listen to. Don’t take advice from people who haven’t done the same thing for themselves. Most advisors themselves are in E or the S quadrant.

Learn

1. Invest in yourself, you are your biggest asset.
   • Be healthy. Invest in your body, physically.
   • Invest in your mind, its your most important asset. Learn new skills, learn to be financially independent. Learn, learn and learn.
2. There’s no escape from numbers. You have to get good at that. Words are for naive people, numbers are for financially educated. Numbers never lie, they’ll always tell you the truth.
3. You need to train your mind to see things your eyes can’t.
4. Invest in learning, buy courses, attend seminars, go to business conferences, follow the people who are there where you want to get.

Investment

1. Have financial advisors - for they know a lot more than you do.
2. Pay your financial advisors well - if you pay them well and keep them happy - it will do wonders in your investments.
3. Your investors are only as smart as you. They can advise you only as much as you are financially educated.
4. Changing quadrants from E (employee) to B (business) or I (investor) is not just a switch in what you do. It’s a much bigger change in what you are. It’s an emotional and psychological and mental switch. It’ll take time, but you can do it.
5. Your house is not an asset. It can be an asset or a liability depending on where on your balance sheet does it show up. If its adding money to your pocket, only then it’s an asset, it’s a liability otherwise.
6. The rich don’t pay taxes, they have their ways to legally exempt from taxes. They get [income - expenses and then taxes]. Where as for employees it is [income - taxes and then expenses]. It makes a huge difference.
7. Every time you add a liability in your balance sheet, you are adding an asset in someone else’s. You are making someone else rich.

Action

1. Take baby steps, don’t jump into investing without knowing. Learn first, and take baby steps. Simply put little money, pay attention and learn.
2. The key is to take action. Learning, educating yourself is important, but you also must start doing.
3. Have well-defined goals for the next one year and 5 years. E.g. I want my passive income to be increased by _____ after this year. Or I want to have assets in real estate, stocks in next 5 years.

For those wondering what veganism is, here’s a quick wikipedia definition — “a way of living that attempts to exclude all forms of animal exploitation and cruelty”.

Most people when they think about veganism, they think it’s just about food. While food is a big part of it, but there’s a lot more to it. Being vegan is a lifestyle choice, it includes everything from your soap, face wash, face creams to your clothes, wallets and even your investments, basically everything.

The blog follows a conversational pattern, more like an FAQ. So, let’s start.

Why are you vegan?

I chose vegan because I realised that I was demanding for killing and torture of animals for a piece of food on my plate. And I realised that a life is not that worthless — it shouldn’t be.

So, you used to eat non-vegetarian food before?

Yeah, I used to love having non-vegetarian food for all these years, but once I realised the implications of me having non-vegetarian or dairy or just wearing woollen or silk clothes, I had no option but to start on my journey to being vegan.

What triggered this thought? / What motivated you to take this big step?

My martial art trainer, Binu Sensei (Sensei in Japanese means teacher) is vegan and through him I got to know about veganism. And since I was curious about it having never known about veganism before, he recommended me to read a book Heads and Tails — by Maneka Gandhi. So the book and several follow up discussions with my Sensei made me realise that I have a choice to make a difference. And I’m really grateful to him for introducing me to veganism and helping me be a bit more compassionate.

But plants have life too? It’s just that they can’t express pain like animals do?

This boils down to a purely scientific question — Can plants feel pain? And the answer is we don’t know for sure but most biologists would say they don’t because plants do not have pain receptors or a nervous system or a brain to process emotions like pain.

On the other hand, animals, we certainly know do feel pain. So…

It must be hard to follow veganism in India?

That’s what I thought when I started.

But turns out it’s not hard at all. Most of the food on my plate everyday has always been vegan. But I do have a bit of a hard time while I’m dining out, I’ve to hunt for vegan dishes in the menu and always give extra instructions to not add butter, ghee, cheese etc.

Cutting down on chai was something I had a challenge with in the beginning, but it was only psychological than anything else. If you are clear on your purpose to be vegan — and remind yourself what it takes for that cup of tea, things start falling into place.

How do your parents allow it? Don’t your parents force you into eating non-vegan?

Fortunately I had started this when I was staying outside for work. So they didn’t know about it for a few months until I went home for Diwali, a festival of sweets — and they were furious to see me not even touch a single sweet.

Initially they found it completely irrational. After a few conversations they understood the thought, but still weren’t convinced.

They made good effort to change me into eating non veg or at least dairy again, but they soon realized their effort was in vain.

Finally, they got onboard and are perfectly fine with it.

Now that I’m thinking, I suppose if I had tried veganism while being at home with my parents — I might have had a hard time starting the journey itself.

Do you have cheat days?

No. Having a cheat day here would be like — since I have saved 100 lives let’s kill 2 now, which is still better than killing 100 but I don’t do that.

That doesn’t mean I don’t cheat at all. There are times when my determination falls weak. Sometimes I really crave eating something, so those times I would taste or eat a thing. Like eating a piece of chocolate once in a while, but I think I worry about it much lesser because the milk percentage is very low. (Btw there are vegan chocolates too).

This is something I realised late. It’s not about how accurately you follow. It’s about sustaining it and continuing to make a difference, sometimes you might fail but all the other times when you don’t matter more.

Do you take any vitamin supplements?

Not really. Like I said before, most food on my plate every day has always been vegan. I was not a milk fan anyway, and I think most people don’t like it either. So it boils down to tea, curd and occasional ice creams/cakes that I’ve given up.

I drink Soya milk (which is usually fortified with B12) as a substitute to cow’s milk, which kind of gives me the needed B12 and calcium.

Your bones will get weaker? How would you manage pregnancy, et ?

Even though I don’t quite like this question, for the sake of answering, I really don’t think my bones are getting any weaker at all. I do martial arts and I think I’m quite fit. But this is what we are made to think, we have become victims of the advertisement by the dairy industry. In fact a lot of cancers and other diseases that are trending these days are caused because of milk and the adulterations they do in order to keep it fresh.

A lot of top athletes like Novak Djokovic, Serena Williams follow vegan diet too, and it has only improved their game. You can watch the documentary The Game Changers if you are interested to see how.

How does one person make a difference anyway?

We all know the demand-supply chain, right. Even if one person doesn’t eat animals/dairy, it reduces the demand by a small percentage which means saving a few lives (from torture and murder), so that’s enough for me to get going.

But in practice, the difference is more. Because when I gave up — my family started ordering less of it, and my friends avoid ordering when I’m around. Not because I make faces when they order — because I don’t ;) it just becomes easy to go with a common order. So I’m winning more than I anticipated. Plus, few of my friends got influenced and are reconsidering their choices. And, I get a bonus when someone talks to me about it and gets inspired, influenced or at least aware.

Would you eat if we get milk from a local seller rather than a big industry?

NO. While for a fact industries torture animals an order of magnitude more than a local vendor, but they still torture. The local vendor has to get the cow regularly RAPED to make her pregnant so that they can constantly pump out the milk. So no, I can’t fool myself to buy dairy from local vendors.

Milk industry generates a lot of revenue. It contributes to our GDP, what about that?

Seriously, What a degree of insensitivity!

We are murdering and killing beings here in the name of GDP and nation’s growth.

We humans are smart, we can easily find kinder and better alternatives which can then contribute to the GDP. This is what we thrive in, right — solving problems. What we lack is compassion and kindness. Let’s focus on that and together we can build a sustainable and happy planet where #AllLivesMatter.

Is pain really bad? After all we all have one life. We don’t know what’s right and wrong? Why bother ourselves with all right/wrongs?

Deep thought, but No. These philosophical questions can’t justify all the tortures and murdering. Whatever pain is, I won’t like it if what we do to a cow is done to me or someone I love. Then if I make the cow go through it, how would I justify it to myself?

Checkout this Oscars speech by Joaquin Phoenix where he talks about fighting against the belief that one nation, one people, one race, one gender or one species has the right to dominate and control another.

Ye sub ammero k chonchle hai — (roughly translated to — These things are that the rich do for time pass)

This was said by a friend and colleague in a playful way, which a vegan could find offensive, but a part of it is fairly true. Ethics and morals kind of come with privilege. People who are going through a survival crisis, which a lot of India does, this might not be the battle they would like to fight.

But on the other hand, veganism isn’t expensive, I mean aren’t vegetables and fruits cheaper than meat. I agree alternatives to cow milk like soya milk, almond milk or vegan chocolates are more expensive. But if we all adopt veganism, producing vegan products will become mainstream — hence cheaper and widely accessible.

My heart wrenches when I hear news like these -

• Thousands of camels will be shot from helicopter in Australia due to a drought

(https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-51032145). When this news broke out. I was expressing my despair, someone said why are they gun shooting them, they can rather eat their meat. This is the level of sensitivity and respect we have for other lives.

• Around 6000 chickens buried alive due to huge losses after the coronavirus outbreak

(https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/trends/coronavirus-scare-farmer-buries-6000-chickens-alive-karnataka/story/397985.html)

• Millions of minks being murdered again because of the speculations of spread of covid virus through minks (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54890229)

I feel deeply miserable when I see goats tied on a Bakra-Eid, and you’ll see nothing but helplessness when you look into their eyes — aren’t they as much of a life as you and I are. And this is not just Islam. Hindus too, we are such hypocrites, we say, “Gaay hamari mata hai” (cows are our mothers) and then get the same cow raped over and over again to get her milk. Only a murderous moron would do something like this to her mother. I’m not aiming to point at a religion here, I’m sure other religions too, cause a lot of harm to animals in the name of religion and sacrifice. None of us are behind in being cruel and inhuman. Even the word humanity is a wrong word for compassion — given what we have been doing throughout our history. Watch this video to see what I mean.

We use millions of rats, monkeys, squirrels for our scientific experiments. Grow farms of cows, chickens, pigs and all sorts of animals for people to consume. Fishing and getting other seafood like prawns, squids, etc — we don’t even realise when we are talking about lives when we talk about meat or seafood. Sometimes I really wish there were no butchers so that we should have to cut the animals ourselves in order to eat them and then let’s see how many of us still want to eat it.

People say it’s a food pyramid, lions have to eat deer. That’s how life works. Sure, it does work like that. But what we humans do is systematic torture of the animals. Their whole lives revolve around getting born for us, being dumped in small cages where they can hardly move, and if they are lucky - finally getting killed.

Only for a year we have been asked to be indoors to control the Covid-19 outbreak, we feel caged, and helpless. People are getting depressed, committing suicides, and a ton of psychological issues. And by the way, we are still a lot free to move where we want.

Now for a moment imagine your life to be treated like that cow you drink milk from, or that chicken you ate that day. And tell me if you were to be one of those animals, would you justify someone’s reasons for your life and suffering that way.

I would conclude this writeup by this thought that deep down we all know the truth. There’s hardly anything you didn’t know already that I’ve said above. But we conveniently choose to remain ignorant — because Ignorance is bliss. We avoid looking at the truth because it makes us feel miserable and guilty and demands giving up things we are used to doing, while what we should actually do, is take charge and be the change — because every single one of us makes a difference.

Thank you for reading. Now next time when you order that cheese burst pizza, or an ice cream bucket, just take a moment to think what are the implications and whether it is what you would really like to do!

Aikido is a non-violent Japanese martial art for self-defence. Aikido in Japanese means the way of combining energy, where

‘ai’ translates to combining,

‘ki’ means the energy and

‘do’ is the way.

It was developed by Morihei Ueshiba O Sensei as a synthesis of his years of martial studies. Aikido aims at both physical and mental fitness and taking on opponents with calm of mind. This is done by applying various techniques that harmonize with the opponent, break their balance and use their energy, instead of applying muscular power or resistance.

This blog is to share my learnings around Ukemi that I’m trying to imbibe in my own practice.

Uke is the attacker and Ukemi in Japanese literally translates to “receiving the body”, which also implies receiving the technique.

Ukemi is a fundamental part of Aikido. With good ukemi, our defence and techniques rise up to the next level. There are a lot of things that contribute to doing a good ukemi.

I’ll talk about the 3 things about a good ukemi that I feel are very crucial. I like to call it as “The 3 Cs of Ukemi”.

The 3 Cs stand for -

• Connection

• Continuity &

• Caution

1. Connection

Connection is a broad term, it can mean different things to different people in Aikido. For me connection means link/attach our energy to the opponent’s energy and their centre.

In the context of Ukemi, connection I think means connecting to and affecting the nage’s centre.

Imagine me as the uke, attacker, for simplifying the visualization of the examples.

Let’s consider a wrist grab (Katatedori), though the physical connection we see is only between the hands, the actual flow of energy is starting from my centre. I’m generating energy and that energy flows through my hand, to nage’s hand and then to their centre. To me, this flow of energy from one center to another is the connection.

There are 2 reasons why I feel it’s important to connect.

1. Loss of connection in an attack means loss of commitment. At any point if the uke loses the connection, the attack is more or less dead at that point. This is not how a real attack would be. So, to keep an attack more realistic, it’s important for us, as ukes, to keep the connection good, and make a committed and sincere attack.

2. The other thing which happens is that the technique nage is trying to practise becomes forceful, because the uke isn’t connected.

   E.g. Irimi tenkan,

   Uke attacks with a katatedori, and nage does an irimi followed by a tenkan.

   During an irimi, if uke doesn’t maintain a good connection, there is a gap formed between the nage’s wrist and uke’s palm. At that point, nage can simply release their hand and do an atemi on the face. Or they can do a Kokyu-ho. So due to loss of connection, in some cases the technique we are trying to practise might not be the best fit. Or to make it fit, nage will have to make an extra effort.

   Connection is not a responsibility of the uke or nage alone. Both uke and nage have to contribute their fair share for the technique to work.

Note: when I say connect properly, I don’t mean grab the hand tightly or squeeze it. Even a slight touch of uke’s palm with nage’s wrist is pretty good. We have to sense what the nage is doing and react to it, that’s what I mean when I say connect.

2. Continuity

By continuity, I mean following the attack. At every single point throughout the technique, as uke, we should strive to get back to the nage. After one strike, the other should follow. The intention should be to get the nage every single time.

Both Connection and Continuity come with commitment.

Let’s take an example of Shomenuchi (head strike) with Iriminage. We use gravity and momentum here for an effective strike. Let’s imagine that nage did an irimi in response to the first strike. What next? At that point the nage doesn’t have much to work with. Unless the uke continues to attack, either a strike or moving towards nage, facing the nage. Which gives nage a threat to deal with, a reason to continue the technique.

3. Caution.

As ukes, we have to prioritize our safety first. Posing an attack, compromising our own balance and safety is not smart. To make a committed attack and pose a right challenge to the nage, we often risk our own safety.

Let me give an example. Imagine a Shomenuchi attack, and an Ikkyo as the defence.

After the nage performs the first cut, sometimes we resist here with the arm to see if the Ikkyo is working. It’s important to notice here that as uke, my elbow is completely straight which is not good for me. Because the nage can press it and put just a little weight to crack my elbow. I think such mindless resistance should be avoided while practising.

Or sometimes one would step ahead showing their back to nage to show that the technique doesn’t work. Exposing the back where the nage can kick or punch with the elbow. This is again a meaningless resistance which is unsafe for the uke, we should be cautious about that and avoid it.

Better ukemi for this could be to go low on knees instead of bending back, keeping eyes continuously on the nage and waiting for an opportunity to come up again.

Glossary

Uke: attacker

Nage: a person who is defending

Sensei: teacher

Shomenuchi: head strike

Katatedori: wrist grab

Irimi: entry

Atemi: attack, often done by nage as a defense to distract the uke

Tenkan: turn

Ikkyo: first technique of aikido

Kokyo-ho: another technique in aikido, which starts with an entry and ends with throwing the attacker

That’s all about the 3 Cs.

To summarise,

3C’s for improving our ukemi are-

1. Connection — to move with the opponent and affect their centre

2. Continuity — the intent to get the nage each single time, at every moment of attacking.

The secret ingredient for the above 2 as we talked above, is again a C — Commitment in the attack

1. Caution — safe and mindful ukemi

Thank you for reading.

Happy rolling… :)