Year End Review - 2025
This year was full of surprises, mostly pleasant ones; the year was filled with friendships and travels. Towards the end of last year, Anirudha and I started working on Rust and tried picking it up. He started a project called Feluda, and I started contributing to it. In no time, the project evolved beautifully. This prompted us to work on various niches, including WASM. I had to mention this since this was one of the backdrops for me this year, where I was able to express myself apart from what I do for my day job. We were able to collaborate and bring these projects up.
The year was full of fun, a lot of firsts for me as well. It’s been a year since we shifted from our old place. Shabnam made a lot of effort to find this house and made it into a place where we can live and build it into our little home. This year, we were able to do a little old friends’ reunion. Rana and Rajeev planned to come to Bangalore this April, and Anant and I were already here. We had a really great time talking, roaming around and catching up. This time was a lot of fun.
This was followed by meeting the family. This year, it was my first time to give a talk at EuroPython, and fortunately, the Open edX conference happened in France, so we took this opportunity and turned it into a Europe trip. We started with Normandy, where it was my work week with OpenCraft; we literally stayed in a castle, all thanks to Xavier for organising it. I spoke at the Open edX conference in France about this amazing feature called incontext-metrics which we developed. It was a wonderful time meeting all the people in the community and talking about Open edX and where we are headed.
We explored Paris and oh my my! Every stroll feels like a history walk. Such amazing architecture and such a vibrant culture and food.
We spent about a month in Europe exploring the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic. Although I am mentioning these countries but we could just explore a city or two at max. There is so much that these countries have to offer. This trip was a trip of a lifetime. The last leg of this trip was Prague. Anirudha and I were speaking at EuroPython, where we literally met our heroes, people who have made Python such an amazing language. They were so humble and so approachable; we were like kids in a candy store. We also met Kushal after such a long time. I was delighted to meet him and hack with him after such a long time.
Shabnam and I got the opportunity to celebrate our marriage anniversary in Paris. I am so grateful that we were able to do this; it was our dream come true. The more we explore, the more we are humbled and grateful for the opportunities we have and the privilege of seeing the world.
Coming back to India, and we were neck deep with PyCon India work, I was a part of the website team since we decided to implement the website in-house this year. There was a lot of work. I am so grateful for all the volunteers who made this happen. The event was such a success, and I was also speaking at PyCon India. It was wonderful to speak and conduct some really interactive open spaces. I was so happy with the design and so proud since Shabnam did a lot of designs, and they turned out so beautiful. The cherry on top was Rajeev was attending PyCon for the first time. A small personal win has always been my college juniors attending PyCon, and a bunch of them were. I was so proud to see Gagan contributing to the website team.
Every PyCon grounds me and makes me think that if Sayan hadn’t introduced it to me, I don’t know where I would be. Most of the friends I have now, I have met through PyCon and Dgplug. I have learnt about communities and the importance of standing for people.
I also got the opportunity to visit Thailand. Anirudha and I were presenting at PyCon Thailand; it was a really petite conference, and such warm people. This allowed us to explore Bangkok, and we were blown away by the 7-Eleven there. We explored a lot of Bangkok with Anirudha, and we had a lot of fun doing it. We took this opportunity to do a small getaway at Krabi with Sayan and Shilpi. I am glad we did that, it was so much fun to explore the islands around and the waters. Every frame of this trip was straight out of a beautiful dream; for me, it was like living a dream. We enjoyed amazing food and a lot of local delicacies. The vastness of the ocean prompted me to write some beautiful poems.
The year ended with me attending Science Hack Day in Belgaum, where I hacked on drones with Saptak. This was originally Jithin’s idea that we stole, and the feeling of getting this to completion was so exhilarating.
We ended up playing a lot of Uno, which was so much fun.
I really enjoy this event, and the love that Praveen sir shows is what keeps bringing me back.
Although I have talked about the travels and the good things, there were a bunch of lows for me. I failed at a lot of things; writing blogs is one of them. I am struggling with fitness and keeping up with a consistent workout routine. I am also struggling to carve out time to learn new tech, but I am trying with each day. I am trying to be a little bit better.
Things I wanted to do this year:
Consistent workout
Write more blogs
Read more books
Learn to manage my time better.
Travel more and see new cultures
Eat clean and get rid of bad habits
Meditate consistently
Learn more about finance
Build and write projects
Help more people
Consistently journal my thoughts
