"When I was of your age, I did ..."
A standard template by any father in this world to tell kids. Sometimes I wondered where their deeds, or achievements came from. Some say, they made everything on their own. Some say, they achieved so and so. Some say, that they were so well in academics and career. Some even speak about their adventures, trips, sports. I am 25 today. Learning phase in life is so called 'over' by now. Many of my friends have enjoyed lots of things, achieved so many things by now. I was wondering for myself what I have done so far? I mean I had pretty good career curve so far. No issues with job, no problem in family. Everything is fine. But, nothing stood out except for few days earlier. But, then this last year happened.
There is a term in Marathi called "गद्धेपंचविशी". They say that you do lot of stupid things, make lot of wrong decisions in life, get into lot of trouble in between age 24-25. Many of these moments define your life path later. Well, many of things that I did in last year, are definitely going to define my life for sure. But, fortunately, not in a bad way.
Starting with the biggest one. I have a group of friends now. Never thought this would be possible for me. I mean, I had friends before, but not like these. But, I have friends to whom I go and can do all kind of 'bakar' for hours. We (Me, Ankur, Pushkar) have an awesome group. We had common interests like stocks on some day, or coding-competition on the other, or new job search on some other. But, out interests matched all the times and we formed a group. Currently, I have a reason to come to office, because I am damn sure that I won't be bored there at all, since there will be these guys to tease :P, chat, and play foos-ball and do infi random bakar with. It was the biggest thing I have achieved in this year.
In between past 2-3 months, I was running through things. For instance, I gave 4 different interviews in a week. Imagine that. Google on Monday, Facebook on Tuesday, IIM-Calcutta on Wednesday and Amazon on Friday. And astonishingly, I was highest "bug-fixer" in my team in the same days. I never imagined that me, who told his manager upfront some day that "I don't want to fix bugs", will be able to manage this. I also wanted to switch team once Windows 8 was done, so, I wanted to prepare. But, never got enthu to start working on it. But, then when Pushkar told me about code-chef and how his batch mates do lot of coding, it gave me enthu. I started coding, and then I decided to apply. After in total 5+6+2=13 interviews in different tech. companies, I finally decided to join Google. My dream job since I was intern there. Google, Mountain View, California. YO!!!
Then there was something about the CAT too. I was not much interested in doing the MBA from beginning, but, I thought, why not give it a try. My mom was very eager for me to join an IIM. So, I said, 'fine, I'll give the exam. We'll see what happens'. In between 2 coding milestones, there isn't a lot of work, so I got bored. So, I was wandering around in Madhapur area and I found this TIME office. I just went there and paid 5k for their test series. Then when I came home and wondered would I even do it, a thought said, "man, why did you put 5k in it then?" So, I started reading English after that. The CAT result was not much of interest for me, but became very useful one day. My mom had a kidney operation couple of days back before result. Every relative was coming to visit her and asking how was she doing. Basically whole typical gloomy atmosphere. The moment my result came, everyone coming was with some sweets and congratulating mood. I don't believe much in psychology, but it changed my mom's mind state from "I am ill, but it is feeling little OK now" state to "I am completely fine, I am just waiting for doctor to discharge me" state. She was walking the next day. Amazing!!! :)
I changed my flat due to water problems in my last flat last year. Since then I had very good home in White fields, Karan, JJ and Piyush were really good flat-mates. Very helpful, and very enthusiastic folks. Helped a lot with my mood, and every exam I gave, every interview I had, seemed a bit easy because of their support.
I had an amazing last year. Hoping that my coming years will give me same joy and success like this one.
