2019 - The Year of Srividya

One of Srividya's monthly celebration cakes.

 This is our first year in Hyderabad since I left for IISc in 2010. We rode a Spicejet Dash 8 to Hyderabad on the night of 31st December 2018. A lot of this year has been spent in settling in and getting used to my new job at Kore.ai. Our daughter, Srividya was born this year and hence we had little to no travel, unlike the previous three years. However, I spent the year at home picking up new things. I learnt to drive a car. I started bodybuilding. I entered the wonderful world of VR. I built my third gaming PC. I created the makerspace of my dreams. I started aeromodelling in earnest. We finally went to Pondicherry to celebrate our daughter's 6 month birthday in December.

My Alto K10 with the 450 quad at the flying field in Ibrahimpatnam.

January was mostly spent in getting adjusted to my new job at Kore.ai. The commute was like never before. A very arduous 40Km a day. After taking an Uber for the first day, I learnt about a bus app called Shuttl that I began taking from day two. This was to be my mode of travel till mid May. I started organizing my room here at home with all the stuff we brought in from Bangalore. The Dremel workbench, the PC, etc. By the end of January I started thinking of learning to drive.  We attended the 4th Telangana International Kite Festival during Sankranthi.

Telangana International Kite Festival

Riding around Hussein Sagar

In February, I started taking driving lessons at the Maruti Driving School. I picked up driving in about 2 weeks. I took Kranthi's Verna for a spin one Sunday. I joined the Praxis gym on 15th February after seeing my BP rise to about 170/100 one day. It was down to 120-130/80 by the end of the year. Also, I did a day trip to Bangalore on 22nd February to attend the Aero India 2019 airshow. I happened to take one of the last Jet Airways flights to attend this, as Jet closed the following month. After a lot of struggling, I finally managed to get my Vespa re-registered in Telangana by February end.

Team Yakovlev's Yak-50. Aero India 2019.

Riding at home.

I bought my first car, a Maruti Alto K10, in March. It's got a powerful 1.0L engine in a very lightweight body, making it a rocket on the road. We started driving around on weekends to get accustomed to it. We used to go to Hussain Sagar on sundays to get used to driving. I was still taking the Shuttl to work. At Kore, I started building the basics of the PDF extraction engine, which was to go a long way since then. I also bought my first VR headset, a HTC Vive, in this month. The idea was to use it to get into the more serious flight simulators such as DCS World and XPlane. I soon realized that my i5 6600k/GTX 970 will not be enough to get the best out of DCS World and I have to upgrade soon.

The new Alto K10.

I  borrowed Surendra Salke's compound bow in April. I made a laminate target to shoot at. We had Srivani's baby shower this month, on April 10. The financial woes at Kore started from now. Salary started getting unpredictable. This month it came on April 9th. I also started building my second planted aquarium now. I started off with a pair of fake siamese algae eaters, both of which died soon.

The Air India B747-400 flies over our house every alternate day at 6PM sharp.

Srivani's baby shower.

 Shuttl stopped their service on my route from mid May. This is when I started driving to work. I also improved on my aquarium in May. The algae eaters died after sometime. So I replaced them with cherry shrimp, all of which died too. I then brought neon tetras, which died due to change in temperature. Finally I had considerable success with a pair of angels, one of which is alive and well even now. By the end of May I started looking for components to build my next PC. I decided on ASUS Crosshair VII Hero, AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, RTX 2070 and a fully SSD setup. Shekhar (from Gwynniebee) brought my Ryzen 7 to India from the US. 

Aquarium being setup for the angels.

June started with an anticipation for the arrival of Srividya. She finally arrived on 8 June. Jibran also brought my Ryzen 7 to Hyderabad and delivered it to me on the same day. I sat up all night at the Fernandez hospital. We had her naming ceremony and her cradle ceremony done by the end of the month.

Srividya, the day after her birth.

Hyderabad's blistering summer ended by June end and July was cool and wet. I made several trips to IKEA to furnish my makerspace. Pegboards, gaming table, stools, container boxes, etc. I invested in a Thurstmaster T16000M, along with pedals. The pedals were brought my Varun from the US. This HOTAS + pedal combo is a perfect match for my desktop and VR. I also bought a 28" 4K monitor to play non-VR games. I started playing newer games almost instantly. Assassins Creed Odyssey and Origins, Civ 6, Tom Clancy Ghost Recon Wildlands, etc. Srivani and I joined Kranthi and Priyanka to attend an Italian chef's masterclass at Hyatt Gachibowli. The chef was Surendra Salke's neighbour and close friend, Jitendra Nakhwa.

With Chef Jitendra at Hyatt.

Arduino powered baby cradle rocker.

We visited Vizag in August as it was Srividya's third month. We drove around to Divis bridge and Kailasagiri as well. Chandu and Bhavya were there with us as well. I sold off my Sigma 70-300 DG APO to Vineeth Kartha in August. I was upgrading to a collection of only fast primes. My lens collection now has 11-16mm f 2.8, 35mm f1.8, 50mm f1.8, 85mm f1.4, 90mm f2.8 macro and the 135mm f2. I also gave off my big 150-600 to Aravind at the beginning of 2020. I bought my two flagship lenses, the Samyang 85 f1.4 and Samyang 135 f2 during this month and first used them in this trip. They took some getting used to, as they are fully manual lenses with no autofocus.

At Divis bridge, Vizag.

Srivani's grandma passed away in September and we had to go to Vizag once again in the beginning of September. Srividya was now 3 months old and was trying to flip over. She started playing and reacting now. I experimented with various timings to start my commutes to save time. I started listening to audio books on Audible to make better use of my commute time. I invested in a Logitech G29 wheel, along with pedals and a shifter to try out racing games like Dirt 2.0 and Assetto Corsa on VR. I started working on ontology analyzer at Kore at around this time. The salary delays peaked this month with the August salary coming on September 30th.

The new rig with the new 4k monitor, the VR HMD and the G29.

My RC journey began in October. I itched to buy a drone. DJI Mavic or a DJI Tello. At some point, I thought it was more prudent to build my own quad and power it using the DJI Naza FC. This was to be a 450 quad with a stabilized camera gimbal, using the EMAX motors I already had. I happened to visit Khaled at RCHyderabad to get EMAX ESCs for this. We struck a relationship from there and he added me to an RC group called Technology Hyderabad. The following sunday I visited their flying field in Ibrahimpatnam. I went with nothing of my own, except for my camera and the 150-600 lens. This got me hooked. I interviewed in MathWorks Hyderabad as I got fed up with the salary delays in Kore. I interviewed with the ROS Toolbox team being led by Jagadeesh, whom I knew since Bangalore days. My personal trainer, Faiz absconded from the gym and I trained alone for the next month.

Mr. Shivkumar's Spitfire.

Praxis gym. New machines being added.

I started my aeromodelling in November. I finished the 450 quad and took it to fly. Also, I started getting popular because of my photography there. I also happened to purchase the Kyosho Mad Crusher RC 1:8 scale truck from Khaled to race around the flying field. On my work front, Kore finally got an investment after a long delay. Salary was never consistent till now. After a promise from Girish I rejected my MathWorks offer and stayed back. The final delayed salary came on November 12th. The company has stuck to its payday since. 

Kyosho Mad Crusher.

We went to Pondicherry in December to celebrate Srividya's 6 month birthday. We stayed at a French colonial villa in White Town, just by the sea. We spent the 3 days walking around the beach and around White Town's colonial remnants. I started learning to fly fixed wing RC aircraft in this month. I bought a 2.5m wingspan glider called the Ronin from Mr. Shivkumar from the club. After a couple of flights, it crashed due to signal loss one fine day. Then I started off with Sravan and Teja's Seagull 40s and Naresh's SkySurfer. I grew confident by the end of the month. I got diagnosed with prostatitis by mid December. I went through a detailed full body examination and everything came out perfectly fine. Manveer joined the gym back and I hired him as my personal trainer. He proved to be an exceptional trainer. Surendra Salke, the person responsible for my joining Kore, left the company on 30th December.

Rocky beach, Pondicherry.

2019 had been a much needed break from constant travel. I got the time and money to settle down and assimilate things. I got the chance to try things I just couldn't try in Bangalore such as VR flight simming and aeromodelling. I started liking my job better than ever before. I started getting proud of my contributions to my job and started getting good recognition and respect at work. I started getting the free hand I craved at work, to explore and experiment as I please.

Flying day at Ibrahimpatnam.

Srividya during one of our countless photoshoots.