2014: Year In Review

There can't be a better way to end this year 2014 and it has left a mark on me and my career. It will sure to be a year to remember in my lifetime. I am reviewing with you on all the things that went well, that dint go well, accomplished resolutions, faltered ones of the year 2014.

Blogging

I started the year with a blog on the new year day of 2014 and received a warm welcome by many. It was started on a note to improve my fear on committing something and keeping up on that and to improve my communication and presentation skills. I am proud and overwhelmed personally on the fact that I could accomplish a full year of blogging and reflecting on the things of that month dedicatedly. I dint had any hard feelings and pressing deadlines to accomplish that and I thoroughly enjoyed blogging.

Fruitful (Wise??) Investments

I happened to be the kind of person who used to over-think too much and try to find reasons to postpone an action on some investments and decisions that are personal to me and that attitude has changed (if not completely) over the last year and made some investments that marked fruitful.

It was a Midas touch with many of such investments and I ensured that I made use of the investments to the fullest possible extent. Few of such investments are

• Gas connection for health consciousness and exploring cooking skills
• Nexus 5 for being social, learning on-the-go and managing stuffs adhoc
• Honda Shine for exploring the joy of road travels and long rides, commuting without hassles and attempting things that wouldn't have been possible this much without a bike
• An apartment (Golden Lake view), my dad's dream and now am a proud landlord of a flat in Bangalore
• Lenovo laptop mainly for supporting my brother with his learning and for me to attempt freelancing and 
• Investment on knowledge through online courses and book reads

Treks and Road-trips

To be a part of trek has always been a pleasure and I had been ignoring on that opportunity for lame reasons when my buddies used to call me and broke that streak last year and did a high altitude trek to 'Kukke Subramanya' with +Arunjeyan.I have a separate blog here http://goo.gl/jnv2Is about the trek.

Since the time I got a bike, I have been planning for a long ride and that was not happening. However I could accomplish that during the visit to 'Sivasamudram' where +Magesh 

had called for, and it was a splendid ride for almost 400 kms on a single day. The enjoyment has pumped extra oxygen and I got a weird idea of riding all the way to my hometown Madurai. I achieved this feat with my brother +Karthick as well on December 2014 when my sister was admitted for her delivery at the hospital. I could reach Madurai in about 7 hours for 430 kms with the help of here maps (offline capability) application. Thanks to the roadways for having an awesome road and maintaining it so well. Thoroughly enjoyed the ride!!

Professional feat

It was very challenging professionally as I struggled to overcome the fear of failure when put up on a team with experienced folks. Being in a team of experienced folks is not new to me but somehow the dilemma or fear or whatever-it-is was so much that it took good amount of time to overcome that. I believe to have finally managed to overcome that by the end of the year (at the end of the project :-))

I had the opportunity to be part of 2 teams for a short period and had the joy of exploring Android. This is year that I was given extra responsibility by means of promotion and this 2015 would be the year where I will be expected to perform for the role given. I managed to gain and sustain friends and it has always been a pleasure to have their support and encouragement.

Personal feat

Though all of what is written is my personal feat there are few that is worth mentioning as a feat as it had impact.

The impact made by infinithoughts, a self-help magazine which has awesome mind-boggling content that definitely transforms the reader. Thanks to +Magesh for referring this magazine. Taking this forward, I gifted one of this brand's books as a gift to my brother +Karthick on his birthday and it surely has an impact. In fact the impact is reciprocated to me when he corrects me on my mistakes and expectations.

Managing is an art and is something that I have never enjoyed and achieved this feat during the purchase of my flat and worked on to ask the right questions to the right people and get the work done. Surely this will have a lasting effect on my career. I must thank my friends +Magesh, +Sabari, +Vivek for imparting the idea and being on my side all through and especially on this purchase.

Financial planning has always been a gray area for me and this flat purchase has given me the ability to face the challenges and plan for the month upfront and act accordingly. I must thank my friends +Bharath and +Viji who had been a great support when financial help was needed and must thank my mom for giving the support in need. Without the support of these people, I wouldn't have been able to achieve my dream of purchasing a flat.

Moments to cherish

I was pretty skeptical on finding a job for my brother as the market was not doing good and he dint leave me much workload than just directing him with a channel and he could earn a job for himself and has successfully passed his probation.

One of the best moments to cherish is the privilege to review a book on software development named 'Soft Skills: The Software Developer's life Manual' by +John Sonmez  from SimpleProgrammer.com. I have been an avid reader and follower of his blog for quite some time and registered for a place to review the book. John and Manning publications facilitated me with the opportunity and has already left a first review of the book  in Amazon.com. This surely demands a blog post and I will write one as soon as I complete it.

The beautiful moment of this year is the welcome addition to my family in the form of my niece. I have named her Nithyasree (informally). This little angel has kept my nights busy and I am overwhelmed to do this night-outs and have never enjoyed this before.

Learning

This year had been a year of exploring and learning android programming with the help of +Coursera. I managed to complete 3 courses with final exams on Android that was called out on the specialization category, a course on 'Learning how to learn' that talks about what happens in the brain during learning and a course with +Udacity on 'Git and Github'. Though the courses had given me a good learning exposure, I am yet to act on the learnings and develop something fruitful.

Useful reads

Apart from the busy schedule that was mentioned, I did spend some time reading books apart from blogs that I keep a watch on. Some of the notable books that is being read (many of them are not complete) are

• 'Mini habits' (Sample) by Stephen Guise
• 'Rich dad Poor dad ' by Robert T. Kiyosaki
• 'Soft Skills: The Software Developer's life Manual' by John Sonmez
• 'Unposted Letter' by Mahatria

Many have supported me in the overall year of 2014 and I would like to thank each and everyone for their support. If I could manage, I would plan for a separate blogpost.

This marks the end of a fruitful and overwhelming year of 2014 and I wish I would carry the learnings of 2014 into 2015 and mold myself as a better person.

To you the reader and follower of my blog, I wish all success and a blasting year of 2015.

Happy and Prosperous New Year.

Amusing November - Month of splendid rides and visits

As the first half of the month was filled with site visits, I believe it makes sense to dig about the positivity on the work that it brought in. Yes, It feels that if we are achieving our own targets then consciously/unconsciously we set to do well in other areas too and it showed in me in my work this month. More than work, I liked and started to think on a different note on what I am tasked up with. This gave me a better opportunity to explore a bit more.

Apart from that, I have taken up a positive decision to do what I have planned to do and not over-think on what I am doing and start to analyse the impact of doing the task. I decided to try this approach as I often find myself over-think about the result that a particular task would produce and stop it abruptly. This leaves me in a state where I don't know or understand anything completely. Hence this plan. 

As a first step, I started learning Git (Git basics and how it helps in social coding) using "Pro Git" (ePub) and gaining a lot of useful insights as to how it deals with the items being version'ed. I also made it a habit to recollect what I have learnt and maintain a journal entry in Evernote (so that it can be shared with others at ease). This approach is fruitful and is fulfilling my bus travel most of the times. The other reason to be interested at Git is the interest to take up some small project (from my ideas) and work towards it.

I certainly acknowledge that there is good positivity gained over the few months and the outlook is changing and is all for good. I wish I would continue the good work in the long run.

Here comes the splendid of the first half of this month.

Kushalanagar and Madikeri visit for Naga's marriage

The month started with one of my best friend (Nagasabareesh Gontla) marriage at Kushalanagar for which I joined Pramod Ramaswamy and his family along with my brother in his car. As it used to be then in our Boston (US) visit, the plans to visit places in and around Kushalanagar was neatly planned and decided to modify as the need arises.

On the way to kushalanagar, we visited places like Golden temple, Dobara (Elephant ride), Arengae dam and finished the first day happily at Naga's reception. We had a very great welcome at the reception by  Mr. Sunil (Naga's brother-in-law) and we shared a nice time enjoying Naga's tense moments in the eve of his wedding. I must say that Naga was very tensed compared to Lasya Nagasabareesh and standing rigid for the snaps!!

Golden temple is a tibetian temple and the pass through made me feel as if we have reached a different part of India. The ambiance was neatly maintained and the whole surrounding was very appealing. We got to see certain rituals being performed there in front of us and looked more like the any other Indian rituals with a different god in place. I also got into a feeling where people are more interested in capturing their moments at the temple (including myself) than understanding what this temple is for and why it has come at the place where it is. I wish I would try to know about the background of these places I visit and have a brief about them than just forgetting what I had once been.

Dobara is a place very famous for the elephant ride but unfortunately we couldn't make it for the elephant ride. As we were keen to cross the shore as there was a stream in between the place to reach elephant ride, we ended up seeing only 2 elephants (small ones) having left out (with their legs chained-up) for greens. Having spent some time in the stream after food over there, we departed to Arengaedam which is one of the oldest dam where the water exit was very high and it was much. I'm not sure which all districts this dam was pumping water into and is something that I would like to know for my own understanding.

On the marriage day, I shot videos of the rituals as a remembrance that I can give him for being there in that occasion. After the marriage, we started for bagmandala temple and is scheduled to be closed by 1:30 pm according to some website (Thanks for having the site updated). we reached the temple exactly 5 mins before the closing and completed the dharsan as the last few people. Thanks to pramod for his driving skills as it wouldn't have been possible to reach close to 80+ kms on a road with moving traffic.

After having lunch at bagmandala temple, we started for Talakaveri (one of the origins of Kaveri river) where there is a small well which doesn't run out of Kaveri water. The climate had suddenly changed from sunny to foggy and it started raining as we reached the top of the hill. We rushed back to the basement along with others and had completely drenched by then. We then exchanged our clothes in the middle of the road and had snacks before we set out for our return to bangalore. finally we reached BTM by 12:30 AM after dinner.

Sivanasamudharam and Talakad

The subsequent week after Kushalanagar trip, me and Mageshwaran Rajendran made an ad-hoc plan to visit Sivanasamudharam falls and my immediate reaction was we should go by bike. He was game for it and we went with our plan. We were accompanied by Raghav Ramalingam and Magesh's US colleague, Karthik. we were set out to start by 9 AM but ultimately started only by 11:30 AM. I was longing for a long ride in my bike since the time I bought one but it so happened that we were on it it this time.

The ride was absolutely wonderful with good roads and obviously good speed. we were on par with the time to reach that was shown in Google maps apart from 2 stops we had for having tender coconut. The road was too good for bikers and hardly any long bad patches that would disturb the place. We reached the samudhram by 2:30 pm and then stepped down to the falls and had a nice time in the water flow. We then started back and had plans to go to Sangam (Mekadatu) but we felt that we wouldn't be able to ride back from there if we plan for it. Hence we decided to go to talakad which is a lovely placed with historical temples and river sand. There was a good river stream near the temple where people were rejoicing. After a good walk (more of an acupuncture) on the river sand for a km, we returned back to the temple and set of to return in the dark roads.

The problem with the dark roads is that the bike lighting wouldn't be sufficient to anticipate anything on the road when it is dark and hence the pace would be slow. Anytime we find a car is the best time to follow and keep-up the pace. we were game for it and riding with full joy. Finally we reached BTM by 11 pm after dinner near Nice road.

It was a fantabulous ride of 380+ km as a single person with high spirit. First time long ride for me and wasn't feeling any bit of tiredness after such a long ride. 

Overall a great month to cherish and would withstand the learning from this and take it forward. 

PS: I have sacrificed few points like product video shooting, progress of the flat etc., to not bloat this blog too much.

Month of festives

October went on a fast-pace as it was a month of festivals and long-weekends. It all started with the excitement of Diwali and added onto that was the excitement of my brother's visit from Malawi after 2 years. It was a family get-together with great fun.

Professional front was fairly normal and continued with the same pace and some amount of sloppiness due to the long weekends. However this didn't leave much impact on the work. So nothing more on this to comment on.

My Flat

After the finalization of the flat and the booking, I started making arrangements for closing off on the down payment. In the midst, I have started with the wood-work at the apartment as everybody advises that "Do it or you would find it difficult to do later". I had to resort to my friends for arranging the fund for this work and luckily +Bharath Balasubramanian and +Vijayalakshmi T helped me out in this and made this happen. Special thanks to them for their support at the right time.

Diwali & Holidays

Diwali was a bit tragic this year as I had missed the eve due to the awkward placement of holidays. However the holidays gave me some rest. The holiday was made even more exciting by mom as she wanted me to visit (along with them of course) to see 2 prominent matches they have figured out. I was clueless and with half-mind and couldn't really enjoy the experience to be honest. Also I was not prepared as to what to expect out of this and how to accept/reject anybody who is gonna travel with me for the rest of my life. 

The first match was good and I liked her. This is just by look and with certain assumptions that I made by visiting their family. However my family members had a difference of opinion for whatsoever reasons and hence they decided to lookout for few more matches. 

The second match was appealing to all others except me and I kinda felt that it will not work out and hence stuck to my own norms.There was a bit of hungama as everybody tried to convince me but I was not at all satisfied. There was no problem with the girl on any sort but the very thought that she wouldn't fit me made me to find reasons. I am not sure if i had made a wrong choice or not, but was very clear that I stuck to my own norms.

After these 2 matches, I had a thought on what has just happened and what could have been done to make it even more better so that I would not suffer mentally for deciding my life partner and this gave me a realization that I made a mistake of not having discussion with the girl for understanding them before getting onto a conclusion. The further matches would only be decided based on the discussion and understanding them so that the common ground could help me make better decisions that deciding with certain assumptions in mind.

The very advice of making decisions by talking with the girl seems to be the great advice that everybody offers and I resort on this and move on..

September - Most happening month, a bit more this time

September for me used to be most happening month as it carries 3 birthdays of my family including mine and my dad made it even more rememberable for breathing one last time in the same month. I marked it along with all the remembrances by accomplishing another dream of my dad. Despite all such remembrances and my used to be long blog post, I am going to keep to experiment myself to cut down a lot of thoughts in few sentences.

I carried a lot of confusions and clarified with the help of my friends as I kept pounding on my self-experience in taking hasty decisions. It also made me remember to count on the attention that my blog post of august received as it sounded a bit more flat and open-ended which made me to edit it after some thought.

Think and act..

The professional front had left me in a lot of dilemma and I believe I made justice to the situation and addressed it through the right people and made use of the correct channel to sort the clarifications that was most needed. With the most sorted guidance, I made my decision and planned for the right action for the forthcoming period.

Journey continues..

The personal front was pretty hectic as there were a lot to juggle around with. The dilemma at work, family occasions includes birthdays and Govindho (Sourashtrian festival) and my first experience at the court. This also marked for a final call on the housing front and gave a booking advance at the end of the month. I have opened the gateway for the challenge to take over the extra responsibility of buying a house devoid of all circumstances upfront. Thanks to all my friends and family members for their support in helping me realize my dad's another dream.

Reading list..

Up with all other challenges, started reading on: Rich dad and Poor dad" to get some insights on finance and started with a course of learning at #Coursera.

That marks an awesome and a most happening month with a bit more this time and awaiting for more challenges in the forthcoming months.

As my distant learning finance teacher Mr. Gautam Kaul says, May the force be with you!!. I am prepared.

Perplexed and Drifting August

This August had been sort of confused and drifting me in some ways. Confused with the thought process of what I want to do at the professional front as I grew on experience. This has also resulted in a drift from my day-to-day tasks. The drift has also caused some sort of procrastination and laziness. Though these had happened in random, the thoughts that it has left has always been pondering over again and again. The challenges that I had internally gone through are many and some left me furious as well sometimes.

Of all the things the most satisfying part is the Yoga classes which has given some sort of physical activity than mental activity and boredom as it used to be.

Professional

I am bit disappointed myself about my growth and learnability as I am not keeping myself disciplined enough and was considering ways to bring myself back on track. I felt so because I don't see myself doing any value adding stuffs that of late increase my professional value and has always been interested in learning stuffs like Android and likes than what am working on. 

I had also attempted to think about these hampering thoughts bit more and bring traction on stuffs as I prioritize but haven't spent any conscious and concrete effort in doing so!!

I have to improve my contribution in my projects a bit more and be disciplined enough on my commitments along with acquiring new stuffs along the way. The way forward!!

Personal

It was mostly fun-filled and hectic as I blissfully enjoyed watching movies during return journey and was happily cooking once I come back home. At times I had been furious on my family members though I knew that am making mistake and also repented for it at times. This behavior has to be changed it put me down badly.

We (all Thippasandra roomies) have finally vacated the house and moved most of the items to Magesh's flat and a complete weekend was spent in shifting which had taken a toll. However we had fun bargaining at a paint shop while purchasing the materials for the screen holder of Magesh's flat.

More than these the best part was the Yoga classes which has given some momentum and sort of flexibility to the body than just mechanical work. I wish I would learn this art of Yoga with discipline and use it for the betterment.

Overall it was very satisfactory at the personal front barring the stupid furiousness.

Things that needs more discipline

Decisions are being made at the start of every day and month but the discipline to keep up the word of self is yet to be cultivated as I lack on it completely. I had planned to develop an app per week but din't pursue it at all after the first week of august and never remained myself to seriously consider this as an option anytime then. I would be back to square-one in no time if i don't discipline my act on implementing what has been learned.

Learning (New) Strategies

Using Tasks feature of Microsoft outlook as the source for task management is the only idea that I have implemented as it facilitates in capturing all my work related items at a single place. This has helped me a lot in filling my time sheet at office. However I have created a wunderlist task to update the outlook items at the start and end of the day. 

Reading list

Apart from the blogs and magazines that I read usually, I had read the sample content from Amazon on the following mini-habit books

1. Habit Stacking by S.J. Scott

2. Mini habits by Stephen Guise (still reading...)

Overall it is a good read and the best takeaway is that "Big changes in lives starts with a single step". Lets start building the habit step-by-step.