2018 - The Year of Bucket Lists

A 3D printed cat.

This year has seen the successful completion of many bucket list items for me. We've witnessed the great wildebeest migration in Kenya. The alkaline lakes of the great rift valley. The pyramids of Egypt. Dune bashing at the Qatari inland sea. Corbett National Park. The forts and beaches of North Goa. The Pamban bridge at Rameswaram and all the way to Dhanushkodi. Khajuraho, Varanasi, Lucknow, Haridwar and Rishikesh. Been to Nainital and Sattal. White water rafting at Rishikesh. The blue city of Jodhpur. Travelled the breadth of Uttar Pradesh in an unreserved train in the summer heat. Gave a talk at my alma mater, IISc. Most of all, we finally relocated to Hyderabad in anticipation of our first kid. The midnight of 31st December saw us in a cab from the airport after arriving in Hyderabad. This year also saw me come back to GwynnieBee (and finally back into the mainstream IT industry) after finally quitting SpOvum.

The new Scott frame.

New roadbike.

Srivani parasailing in Goa.

We were in Vizag on January 1st as it was our last stop on the way back from Laos. We flew back to Bangalore on the night of January 1st. January was mostly about getting used to the new SpOvum office at AGS Layout, Bangalore. Also, I took the leap and bought myself the EQ5 telescope mount. It was almost a year since Santosh and Ramnath got me the EQ5 synscan conversion kit. I spent most of the month picking up polar alignment, ASCOM drivers, Stellarium/Kstars interfacing and the like. We went to Goa for Srivani's birthday. We did parasailing at the Calangute beach and had a cafreal sauce pizza for dinner on Srivani's birthday. We also visited the forts dotting the Goan coast and went on a dolphin watching cruise. A visit to the Salim Ali bird sanctuary in Panjim closed the trip. I picked up film photography around this time, taking over my father's Ricoh XR-8 Super II film SLR. I 3D printed a development tank and started developing black and white negatives. I used my D7200's macro lens to 'scan' them.

At the Tu-142 museum, Vizag.

35mm film development.

 I noticed around the end of January that my roadbike's seat tube was beginning to crack. It's probably due to a lot of riding across the years and the fact that this frame was just a little too small for me. So half of February was spent in building a new bicycle. I got a used Scott roadbike frame from Chethan of Cadence90 and built around it. This time, the brakeset was Shimano Sora, the crankset was Tourney and the bottom bracket was Token. I also installed a 3T alloy seatpost. I left out the FD altogether as I figured I'd never be needing it. After some testing around the house, I started riding it on the 20 Km work commute. We were planning for a week long trip to Kashmir to see the tulip festival in April. However, Sandeep Saraswat invited us to his wedding which was to happen in June and then plans suddenly changed. I visited Global 3D Labs at Hyderabad to see the greatest and latest in the Indian 3D printing scene.

Dhanushkodi.

The Ricoh 35mm film SLR.

March saw the completion of yet another bucket list item, Rameswaram. After reading Dr. Kalam's Wings of Fire in my childhood, I had always wanted to visit his Rameswaram and Dhanush. And I wanted to do so by the Boat Mail which has been crossing the legendary Pamban bridge for over a century. SpOvum introduced archaic and oppressive HR policies by the end of March and I decided to move out as soon as possible. I decided to move back to GwynnieBee due to familiarity and applied on the 26th of March. I felt it wasn't worth working at SpOvum anymore and called up Sai on 27th asking for a referral. I resigned at SpOvum a day later, with a lot of friction between me and the founders.

Building a new wheel.

April was the transition month. I exited SpOvum and re-entered the IT industry. After a couple of calls with Vish and Dongming, I was offered a Senior Software Engineer role at GwynnieBee and I readily accepted. The DDA team had also grown quite big since the last time I was there. I finally left SpOvum on 23rd April and had a week to spend at home. I spent one of the last days of April lazing around Madivala lake with Gautham (the eternal loafer). My father bought me my first Samsonite trolley around this time. This will last for years to come. We also finally finished the Tirupati trip that was pending from the time of our wedding.

Srivani's convocation.

Ganga aarti. Triveni ghat, Rishikesh.

Lodhi gardens, Delhi.

I re-joined GwynnieBee on the first of May. Chirag and Vish were visiting the Bangalore office. I started ramping up and picking up the new stuff that was done since I had left in 2017. The team and the company were both in a much better shape than in 2017. The company started its multi-tenant service and exciting times were ahead. I was assigned work on size advisor in a couple of weeks. Srivani graduated from Christ University on 20th May and my parents came to Bangalore for the occasion. I had cleared all my credit card dues by now and thus started booking tickets again. We booked a round trip to Doha for the end of July. It was to be a weekend trip to Qatar with a luxurious stay at Hilton Doha. We started really using our HP inkjet printer around this time and started printing photos to stick all over the walls. I installed a CUPS server on a Raspberry Pi to 'smartify' the dump HP 2131 printer.

Tughlakabad fort, Delhi.

Jodhpur.

One of the seven connected lakes of Sattal. Kumaon, Uttarakhand.

June saw me take up more work on size advisor at GwynnieBee. I noticed that my roadbike's rear wheel was getting stuck intermittently and decided to change it. I then decided to build my own wheel. It was built on Vishnu Janardhanan's truing stand, using a Tiagra hub and AlexRims AR28 rim and Sapim spokes. We travelled to Delhi, Corbett NP, Haridwar, Rishikesh, Haldwani, Nainital and Jodhpur in the mid of June, while transiting Moradabad several times. Srivani's dream of white water rafting in the Ganga at Rishikesh finally came true. We used the Decathlon action camera that we purchased for this event. I worked from the GwynnieBee Delhi office for two days in between all this. We wound the trip in Hyderabad to receive OPV and yellow fever vaccinations for the upcoming trip to Africa. GwynnieBee planned an office outing to Sattal in the Kumaon area of Uttarakhand and I returned to the state for a second time in a month. It was a splendid outing in a remote forest camp.

GwynnieBee outing. Sattal, Uttarakhand.

The ghats of Varanasi. Shot on 35mm film.

At Souq Waqif. Doha, Qatar.

July began with the end of the Sattal trip and we returned back to Bangalore on the 2nd of July. We set off on our next trip to the north on 12th July. We visited Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi, Allahabad and the amazingly beautiful temple town of Khajuraho. We caught up with Shivam Sharma at IIT Kanpur. This whole trip was on trains. The Samsonite trolley came along for this trip. This was also the first trip where I carried along the Ricoh film SLR. It was around this time that work on wearability came to me at GwynnieBee. After a week's rest, we set off for the first international trip of 2018, Qatar. We spent a luxurious weekend in Qatar, staying at Hilton Doha and traveling around the desert country in a Landcruiser. We dune bashed at the iconic inland sea where the Persian Gulf meets the sand dunes. We saw oryxes and ostriches in the wild. At the end of it all, Srivani had her first flight in a wide bodied aircraft, which was also my first since my trip to Turkey in 2015.

Ambedkar Park, Lucknow.

Khajuraho.

At the dunes of the Inland Sea. Saudi-Qatari border.

 August was mostly spent on office work. Work on wearability was in full swing. This was the first time I took an ML project to completion, putting a neural networks based approach in production. It gave me significant new learning that I will rely upon for a long time to come. This project was slated to go to production in the first week of september and I worked on this on most weekends as well. We booked our Kenya tickets around this time. After a lot of deliberation between various African destinations to serve as a second stop, such as Zanzibar, Rwanda, Kilimanjaro and Cairo, we settled on Cairo. We booked a tour of the Pyramids, Sphinx, Memphis and Saqqara through Karnak tours. We booked a return from Kenya via Cairo through EgyptAir. The airline had dubious reputation after a series of hijackings and explosions in the recent past, but we still persisted. The A320s they deployed on the Nairobi-Cairo route were over 15 years old and were a cause for concern. But the dream of seeing the Pyramids was greater than all this.

Museum of Islamic Art. Doha, Qatar.

Srivani's crafts.

Making collages.

The Nikon D750.

September started with work on wearability. It finally went into production as scheduled on 10th of September with a lot of ups and downs. We spent a night over at Surendra Salke's home when we visited Hyderabad in the first week of September. We discussed my potential move to Hyderabad and if there were vacancies in Kore.ai. I ended up applying to Kore around the mid of September. My father also bought me my first full frame DSLR, the Nikon D750. We set off to Kenya on 26th of September (via Doha) with a load of camera gear. We witnessed the great wildebeest migration and a couple of lakes in the great rift valley. It was spectacular. We then flew to Cairo to check out the great pyramids.

The great wildebeest migration. Masai Mara, Kenya.

White rhinoceros. Lake Nakuru National Park, Kenya.

The great pyramids of Giza. Cairo, Egypt.

We returned to India on 3rd October and after a little freshening up at Supriya and Ankit's home in Mumbai, we flew back to Bangalore and directly to work. October was full of travel. I joined Srivani and the Fluxgen group for an outing to Chikmaglur a week later and then we went to Tanuku and Vizag for Dusshera. Meanwhile, I had applied to ThinCI Semiconductor Technologies via Mahesh and had my first round at Kore.ai. We started shifting stuff to Hyderabad by the end of October. We went for the first pregnancy check-up on October 26th, taking a lot of stuff with us. The plan was to relocate completely by the year end. I have my second round at Kore.ai where Girish gave me a research problem to work on. I spent the next two weeks working on that problem, which gave me my first exposure to PDFs and information retrieval.

With the FluxGen gang at Chikmaglur.

Belur and Halebidu.

At Tanuku.

November was filled with shifting stuff and this Kore.ai assignment. I had cracked the problem by 7th November and finished coding it by the end of the week. By this time I had also received an interview call from ThinCI. We visited Hyderabad thrice in November, moving most of our stuff. I had sold my Tevo Tarantula to Sathya in return for astrophotography help and purchased an Anycubic Kossel delta printer in Hyderabad. Girish informed me that I had cleared Kore.ai and I'll get the offer letter by the middle of the month. I finally got a very decent pay package and received the offer on 17th November. I decided to sell the furniture to Mayank, who was supposed to pick it up in the first week of December. We celebrated our third wedding anniversary with a nice dinner at Little Italy. I spoke to Sai about quitting GwynnieBee for the second time by the end of the month and then decided to send the formal email by December 1st.

Our terrarium build.

Kiwi smoking a sweet cigarette.

The Anycubic Kossel printer.

The Vespa arrives home.

I resigned from GwynnieBee on December 1st for a second time. I sold my furniture to Mayank. I had ThinCI interviews, which I cleared, on 3rd December. By this time I was setting up my geek haven in Hyderabad. I bought a 5 layer toolbox, a Ferm cordless drill, B&D cordless screwdriver, a Dremel 4000 with 65 piece accessory kit, a Dremel workstation and a Dremel plunge router to be used with my previous Dremel 200. I was also up for buying the Ferm scroll saw. I got a better offer from ThinCI but did not get a good vibe about the place. So I chose to join Kore.ai on 3rd January. The landlord asked us to vacate by 24th December for him to renovate the house. So we decided to stay with Ramnath at his place for the last week. We applied for our Vespa's NOC on 6th December and shifted the scooter on 16th December. Chandu came over on the weekend of 15-16 December. I gave a talk at IISc's Centre for Continuing Education on 15th December. We carried 10 bags to Hyderabad on 16th December in a 1AC train. This included the roadbike (dismantled) and lot of other things. Srivani had to visit Vizag for a ceremony on 17th December and I returned alone on 18th. I shipped our mattress on 19th December and slept on the floor for the next few days. By this time, our luggage had reduced to three bags. My dad came over on 22nd December for visiting us for the last time as residents of Bangalore. We finally vacated the house on 24th December and moved to Ramnath's place. I commuted from Banashankari to GwynnieBee for another week and finally flew back to Hyderabad on the night of 31st. We landed in Hyderabad at 11 PM on 31st December. The only unfinished business in Bangalore remained the Vespa's NOC which would finally come on 14th January.

Vacating Bangalore.

With Varun and Nikhila. Kaikondarahalli lake.

The final few bags.

2018 completed my stay in Bangalore. I came home for a whole new life in Hyderabad. Srivani's life just got much easier, with better care. I moved to a much higher paying job and to a rent-free life. I finally had a place which I could geek-up and will now earn the money to do so. This marks the end of 8.5 years in Bangalore.

With Ramnath and Anitaa. 31st December evening.