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The Fifth Elephant 2025 (w/ Travelopia)

In the picture (from left to right): Senthil, Abhishek, yours truly & Pavan. I’ve written about all of them in my previous post.

I remember being involved in organising The Fifth Elephant conference about a decade back. I knew nothing about it apart from the conference being very popular and the word “Big Data” that was being used around it.

Fast forward to now and it was just last week that I attended it for the first time – and what a time to be attending it!

Of course, the major theme was around AI. However, that wasn’t what drew me into it. If you followed my last post, then you know I am no more doing web backend. Data Engineering is my bread and butter.

Half way through the second year now, I feel like I am back in my first programming job – Building a website using Django at Eventifier – pretty clueless about a lot still, but in awe of the bits and pieces that are starting to fall in place. Smiling at myself seeing a log being printed, being able to understand certain words that never made sense to me before, knowing it is okay to not know a certain thing, and starting to wake up looking forward to the next piece.

Attending the conference just opened up doors that I didn’t know existed.

Conversations:

  • “And you know it only when there is no data”
    • That short laugh with Anay Nayak talking about data quality at the BoF, and how sometimes the metrics themselves are misleading only to be figured out at the end when all the data goes dry.
  • “I told you this is * not * the board room!”
    • That effort at convincing the “very reliable” Payal (forgive me!) about a discrepancy within the schedule and the conversation that followed.
  • “Aren’t you the company that has a Private jet?”
    • I was very surprised when Srujan asked me that as soon as he heard I was working at Travelopia. I guess my eyes and smile got so wide that even before I asked he explained to me how he used to work in the travel industry earlier and had talks with TCS World Travel before.
  • “Get Claude Code Max & feel the difference!”
    • Multiple conversations with SVS around hiring, upskilling and of course, his heart felt request to get the Max plan for Claude Code and to never look back 😀
  • “Loooooooooooooooooooong time!”
    • Leena – A lovely unexpected catch up with her after almost a decade. Exchanging pleasantries & life updates.
    • Anenth – A lovely expected catch up with him almost after a decade. Good old days of working at the bakery, jokes around the helpless hackathoners around if he was participating.
    • Kiran Gangadharan – whom I was just able to meet only for a second since he was running for his talk. Need to remember and catch him next time at Bangalore.
  • “Long live Vizchitra”
    • Amit – Feedback about Vizchitra and wishing well for its future
  • “Leadership & Software Engineering in AI Era”
    • Discussions around the BoF Vedang hosted as well as thoughts around leadership training and work involved. Oh, and the tea as well 🙂

All the other hallway tracks including but not limited to the chats with Ashwin, Kiran & Zainab.

Notes:

  1. Srikanth’s insightful experiment of building an “AI developer” using Vertex + Gemini keeping track of metrics, inspecting the repo and automating PRs with fixes
    • Grafana’s LOKI as an event store keeping number of discrete events to be less so that queries are simpler
    • How it took 4 weeks of a developer’s observation to get it to an acceptable flow with a feedback loop in place
  2. Data Quality
    • Pydantic, PyDQ
    • Handling failures:
      • Block pipeline (not recommended since it reduces volume of data)
      • Quarantine -> Datadog can be used?
      • Tracking (Alert fatigue with them reds and greens coming so much that as long as some green is seen, you chill) – SO GLAD THAT IT ISN’T JUST ME! 😀
    • Volume check is another metric to be used
    • “Relative Rate of Change” (in context of that laugh mentioned above)
    • Custom Quality Checks:
      • Anomaly detection
      • “Reduced % over a week”?
    • System Wide Checks (Focusing on multiple datasets at a time instead of just one):
    • Prevent bad data at entry points
    • Prioritise critical data paths
    • Monitor trends across joined results of datasets
    • Airflow sensor (TBE – To Be Explored)
    • The DataOps discipline!
    • The trick of defining Data Quality budget
    • Don’t take up all DQ checks for your boundaries yourself – let 3rd parties do their part themselves (Hubspot!??)
    • Observability: Starting from being reactive -> proactive is fine
    • Re-ingesting data is fine
    • What is a Data Catalogue?
    • Metaplane (TBE)
    • Using emails for alerts might help better than Slack messages
    • Root Cause Analysis:
      • Can it be solved as a tech problem or as a process problem?
  3. BoFs
    • And yet it moves: data quality and observability | A Birds of Feather session
      • I’ve already covered the Data Quality related points above that were discussed in this BoF
    • Software development in the age of AI | Birds of Feather session
      • https://x.com/vedang/status/1946551972401999983
      • We listed down a bunch of AI tools that folks used (or at least tried once)
      • The discussions finally more or less came down to Cursor & Claude Code
      • Few folks did demos of their workflows
      • One interesting approach was how one person treated Claude as a “new Engineer learning the ropes” by having basic sessions with it. Each time you notice it makes a mistake, you manually tell it what the correction is, and ask it to go and create files in a directory that describes both what the mistake is and its correction was. After 3 or 4 such sessions, it ends up creating a pretty decent bank of specific “mistake – fix” instances that you “taught” so that the next time something similar comes up, it can go look things up there and figure it out itself.

The final piece for me were the lightning talks since I had to head out a little early for catching my train back home thanks to Bangalore traffic.

There were talks around Data Visualisation, Doc-Monitor (https://sahaj.ai/mcp-and-doc-monitor-transform-external-services-integration/), image generation & Vizchitra. Two of them that stood out were:

  • Learning Vs Education:
    The talk wasn’t exactly about it, but the person explained “learning” as an “innate tendency” of human being whereas “education” these days have become something that is being “pushed down” into students.
    He asked about the difference last time when you had a mentor / good-teacher showed you the “next step” or “removed a blocker” understanding your capabilities and your proficiency (helped you learn). As opposed to someone just simply giving you information (Education).
    His idea was to build a platform that uses AI to be that mentor for people.
  • AI Engineering
    This one was by SVS. A new “role” that has come into existence – vibe code to the death! Ahem, no. The basic idea being proficient in juggling AI tools to get stuff done.

All this was only made better by having my colleagues around. Discussing the talks attended, to attend, general networking tips and making good use of the sponsorship stalls! The jam packed schedule and our talk priorities only gave us little time to interact between ourselves though.

Epilogue

Before any of us made the decision to even attend the conference, I remember thinking once, twice, thrice, deciding not to bring it up in our standup…. Voices held me down.

“You did post about it once in the channel. It is not as if it is your duty to get them there, is it?”
“Nothing’s going to happen if you don’t do it. Why simply embarrass yourself? It is not as if they are interested right?”
“Come on Haris, just relax. It’ll pass. Don’t get into yet another management memo conversation”

I was bloody restless. Why would I not try my best? Worst case I might be misunderstood, but I wouldn’t have to live with the guilt of having not given my best shot, of having missed an opportunity that life brought my way.

I brought it up on the standup. And dropped the following text on Slack. Our manager asked who all wanted to attend, 5 of us raised hands (one of them couldn’t come due to health) and the company agreed to sponsor all of us!

The Slack text:


Here's the schedule of the conference: https://hasgeek.com/fifthelephant/2025/schedule

Feel free to look through the Data Engineering track (you can attend other tracks too :smile: ) 

- Ticket price:

The ticket prices are there at the top of the message and if a bunch of us are interested, we can get discounts as far as I had a word with the organising team.

- A "membership" benefit I feel

As I mentioned, they host short events throughout the year during weekends / evenings with "visiting geeks" or other such initiatives and they fall under this "membership ticket" along with the conference. (https://hasgeek.com/One2N/bof-with-swanand-and-svs/ was one such event that I attended with a different membership & I can vouch for the experience + takeaways)

- Workshops:

Most of the workshops are sold out since we are so close to the dates - however, they are live streamed for the conference ticket holders.

If we can choose a couple of us for attending a few interested ones online, I feel that it'll be worthwhile and presentable later on during our dev huddles.

- Quality:

One specific thing that comes up about conferences are the quality of the talks and the "hidden agenda". The AWS event we attended last year / 2023 was definitely to promote AWS - not to promote Engineering.

While I can personally vouch about the agenda being for the love of Engineering since my first job was at this organisation organising these conferences, you can see that they have a transparent talk selection process with community voting and public discussion: https://hasgeek.com/fifthelephant/2025/sub

- Significance:

* Team building

As I mentioned on the call, there is a very special "team building" that happens when engineers get together. Specifically on engineering problems. We love yelling at each other on bad variable names, unconventional folder structures, the unpinned requirements, and last but the best -  legacy code.

Isaac's team hackathon last year, the AWS F1 race competition, the exposure to databricks (and evaluating its usefulness for our engineering specific problems as a team), etc are examples.

As far as my experience in Travelopia goes, we've never shied away from investing in team building activities and getting team members together. With the importance that the data team and its engineering has currently at Travelopia, I feel this will be an investment that will greatly pay off in the long run.

* Finding answers and new perspectives

We can prepare the kind of challenges we have, questions we want to ask etc and take them there, find the randomest Joe at the water cooler, and start getting answers :stuck_out_tongue:

* Attendance:

But yes, it boils down to folks being interested to attend. That's really on us as individuals. @di-devs Maybe respond on this thread with a :hand::skin-tone-3: emoji if you'd love to attend (not considering the ticket price as the blocker).

I personally have my train tickets booked, but need to see if my health allows me to get on it Thursday night :slightly_smiling_face: I understand that it might be a bit too late for non-bangalore folks to plan the trip, hence raise hands accordingly.

Cheers!

Feel free to hit me up with questions.

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C̶o̶m̶p̶l̶e̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ Surviving a year at Travelopia – From Startups to Corporate

(NOTE: This was written back in Oct 2024! A lot has happened since then – something I’ll probably write about sometime later)

A UK based organisation, a Slack channel with British folks around, we use Python, and I had just been introduced. I couldn’t resist.

However, that was the beginning of my realization that things were going to be different this time around.

No one seemed to have got the joke.

I was embarrassed beyond words then. I was gracefully advised about how that specific Slack channel was used for important announcements and success stories only. I sat in front of my screen with a very weird feeling. The “first impression is the best impression” was lurking around somewhere in my head poking me and making me imagine how the entire year is going to be from that moment onwards. In retrospect, that imagination wasn’t completely wrong.

The saving grace was Luke Reader. I breathed a sigh of relief and I regained my composure once he replied talking about the health of his Parrot. I had an exchange with him and he knew exactly what he was doing with his reply. He left the organisation recently and I’ll be forever in his debt. I couldn’t thank him enough.

Thus started my journey.

Getting the Job

  • Leaving Able:

I had left Able on the 31st of May 2023 after an exact 3 year stint. Those 3 years were the most challenging & humbling time of my life. More from a personal perspective than a career one. Now that I think about it, the WordPress editor screwing me out of the blog post I had composed as a reflection of the work & life during that time – sitting at a stretch for 3 days nonetheless – was for the best. I was brought in as a Lead Python developer who took up Ruby during the final year because of the circumstances dictating it. If it weren’t for both Arpan & Madhu on the career side of things, I don’t want to imagine how my life would’ve turned out to be.

While thinking about my next adventure, in a moment of coincidence, I heard about Travelopia both from my brother as well as Vamsee. Having worked as Web Backend Engineer, the JD didn’t seem to fit.

  • Seeking (and the failed interviews):

I reached out to a few folks amidst which I decided to apply for a few interviews directly as well. I had never given an “official” interview before and a part of me wanted to see what would happen there. Long story short, I didn’t clear any of them.

I’ll probably write about my thoughts around it in a later blog post, but the tension I had was unreal. I had to sell myself – my experience, my principles, my worth – in the span of roughly an hour where I was trying to solve a problem for the sake of solving the problem.

Outside of that, I had conversations with a few out of which we decided to mutually part ways except for 2.

In the midst of all of this, as much as I felt to not be a perfect fit, Vamsee had convinced me to quit judging myself too much and just get on with the programme. Hence the conversations with Travelopia had started.

  • The talks, the offer letter, and the postponing

There were a few rounds of conversations with multiple people. It was a roller coaster then itself and my lack of experience dealing with larger companies and their processes really was exposed. “Salary slips” was something completely new to me. That should be probably convey the idea enough and how patient the HR folks had to be with me. I was frustrated with the time the process took that I finally lost my cool – something that I learnt to be never a good thing – to which I apologised for.

I flew to Bangalore on a Friday to meet with both Venky and Sree. We had a nice chat sitting on the rooftop terrace. I declined to have the office tea wherein Venky convinced me to open up to new experiences. I obliged and I enjoyed the tea. Him recommending “Catcher in the Rye” was the highlight of the meeting (of course, apart from presenting me with a t-shirt after our chat, making their intent explicit).

There were quite a few other gems hidden within that conversation too – thoughts & insights into being a “programmer” as opposed to being a “python programmer”. How the titles of “junior” / “senior” when it comes to “Engineers solving a problem” have brought about an unnecessary bias in terms of decision making. A few examples that Sree mentioned in terms of noticing the scope of certain projects and how he had to make hard choices around them, etc. In short, I walked away a smarter man.

They sent me the offer letter with the date of joining as 28th of August. An hour before receiving the offer letter on 16th of August, I tweaked my ankle and got a bone fracture just under my left leg’s little toe. I communicated, they understood and the date was moved to September 11th.

The Job

The formal title was “Tech Lead – Data Engineering”. As I mentioned earlier, I felt the JD didn’t fit being a web backend engineer my entire career. It was only when I sat back and thought about it that I realised there was quite a bit of overlap. While the backend of a particular website and its functionality was my “speciality”, almost all (actually, all) of the jobs involved building integrations, ensuring integrity, cleanup, collating info from various source, transformation, schedulers, etc.

Once I looked it from that perspective, the tension vanished. Technically it was the same job. The only difference I could see was scale as well as the breadth of AWS stack being used. That was just about picking up a new technology to get the job done. I had done that before. I had my intuition to guide me. I was sure to stumble, slip, crawl, fall & fail.. and fall. I knew I would be frustrated, confused, struggling…

However, one thing that remained consistent about me since I heard it from Kiran (my first boss) for the first time was… I’d get sh** done.

The Bias

I wish I didn’t have this part. However, such is life.

  • “Office Space”

The image of a large organisation played out in my head as the “Office Space” movie. It was my go to movie to relax. The “people skills” part along with the one where they destroy the printer are gold. Actually, the entire movie is. I’ve never had any of the experiences depicted in the movie and hence didn’t take any of it seriously.

The problem was this thought lingering in my head about how “large organisations” could be like that. I was instantly proven wrong when I had my chat with Rajesh – someone whom I’ll refer to for the rest of my life as my first officially titled “engineering manager”.

A nice human being who listens to you and points you to the places you need to know about for getting your stuff. He never asked me “what’s happening?”. (you’ll know if you watch the movie)

  • Visibility of work

Another bias was about the visibility of work. This wasn’t from the movie, but from peers. In all my previous organisations, due to the size, my work and decisions were instantly visible as well as impactful – regardless of whether they were good or bad. The feedback loop was immediate, real and strong. Forcing you to learn, improvise and adapt quick. Assuming you fall into that category of people who take pride in their craft instead of just doing a job, there’s a certain level of Engineering maturity that comes with it when you see the business depends on you directly. You are directly a part of the decisions being made and you can make an impact on the business.

This part is different in here. I am not one to question since I don’t have the experience of the folks within the organisation who have been running it successfully for such a long time. They structured it in such a way that Engineering & Business were one step apart without having a direct connection. As much as I feel I don’t operate my best in that setup, I “improvise, adapt & overcome” for learning from the new experience. I still seek the reasons trying to have a much better understanding of the overall picture, but I am not there yet.

The Team

The Data Engineering / Integration team – The DI Team, and we DI trying. We are a group function. Essentially meaning that our work spans across the entirety of the services / brands that make Travelopia.

Recently Sree talked about the history of the team and how it is special to the organisation and even more so, to him. Time makes stories and the flow is only evident in retrospect. We’ll probably cover that one in a separate post. I like our team, but the week spent together at Bangalore during September made me like ’em all even more.

In an alphabetically sorted order, following are the folks from our team (for a vague definition of it since I haven’t seen an ‘official’ version of it yet) and how I know them. Since the work and the responsibilities are so vast, I haven’t had the chance to spend a lot of time with a few of them. Hence, I reiterate that this is from my perspective alone as “the human beings I work with”. Read it with a smile and please take it on a lighter note.

Abhijit Sahani
We joined on the same day. September 11th. While I was at the Bangalore office, he was on screen joining remotely. Someone who is grounded in reality, unlike me (now that I mention it, I think most people do have a much better grasp of reality than me!). A calm and composed soul who is skilfully juggling his personal and professional life. The “grounded in reality” part has made me reach out to him more than a few times regarding different perspectives of organisational hierarchy and how things get done.

Abhishek Yadav
He is the first person in my life whom I interviewed and gave a thumbs up to. I still remember how Nizam and I were staring at the screen during his live coding session thinking “this guy has lost it and going in some completely different direction”. We were ready to cut him off when we noticed that he was reaching the solution in an entirely different manner. His resume fit, he was smart and the coding session really impressed us. Nizam and I were like, “how did he do that?” (Reminds me of Jackie Chan jumping off a landing with cables tied around him in Who Am I)

Ameen Ahsan
You can talk about anything around him. A jolly soul who is always up for a laugh. Curious and driven by nature as well as extremely good at tech, he has a lot of projects under him on which our organisation runs today and he keeps exploring the ways in which things can be made better. Just so that I am not put on the spot, he is a huge fan of poetry and believes it is about time that pip be retired.

Anshika Srivastava
When she sent out that invitation to join something called “Fun Friday” a couple of months back, all of us were like – “now what is this about!?”. Our scepticism was answered by an eye-watering-laughing pictionary playing online event on that Friday which not only did we enjoy, but also helped us bond even better as a team since it brought out our inner humor sense and “picture identification skills”. One whom I work closely with in my recent project, her entry as a QA is what made all the difference in terms of the future of it.

Athul
If it weren’t for him patiently explaining the debugging process of certain failed systemd process sitting on a mature EC2 instance that was responsible for ensuring the output of an ML model was synced back one of its sources, I wouldn’t have had made it through the first few months of my job. An extremely smart yet quiet by nature person, he was someone about whom I had already heard a lot from my brother, but had the good fortune to experience first hand as well.

Devendra
One among my first two reportees. I had never done pair programming in my life and it was the norm of the company. He was the first person whom I did it with and found how useful it is in certain contexts. Very receptive and curious, he is as gentle and down to earth as a person can be. Our fates at Travelopia are intertwined since we both have been assigned to be the keepers of the Catalyst track. We trade Hollywood movie as well as cartoon recommendations quite often. Information security is his calling and his love for bikes is what will probably get him there. He he. (I could go on, but will save it for later).

Oh, and he is the one who introduced me to LLMs – “there’s this thing called ChatGPT”, he said.

Eldho
One of the senior folks on our team. It was only recently that I got a chance to work him hand in hand, and it was a pleasure! It is common knowledge across the company regarding how he is able to retain and recollect the smallest of details from oldest of projects. And hence, it is very nice to brainstorm with him because the discussion flows so effortlessly without having to search & reverify every little thing. He literally and figuratively knows what he is talking about, is a mentor to many and is our lead product owner (a title I’m still curious to learn more about), hence managing our daily standups as well.

Haris
“An un-self-managed, negative thinking angry young man with a blaming mentality who generally has a lack of trust and spreads toxicity and seeks attention”

Isaac Raja
There are a few people whom I’ve met who falls into the category of being a wise man comparable to a glass of water so full to the brim with knowledge that just by standing close to the glass, you’ll get the water on you. And this is not “gyaan” or “advice”. Just pure, unadulterated knowledge. My first impression of him was as of a very serious, quiet guy who doesn’t waste time indulging in senseless banter. Someone whom you should * only * interact with for that exact thing you need and then steer clear of.

Boy oh boy, was I wrong! Not just wrong, but completely wrong. Not only does he enjoy a good laugh, he is a master at finding excuses for it too! A fellow good at heart, extremely helpful and someone with a myriad of interests outside of tech as well. As much as an introvert he is, it was a true moment of true leadership (and an inspiration for me) when he put forward the idea of the mini hackathon (Using local LLMs to answer questions about our documentation). Everyone * wanted * to follow him.

Nizam Mohamed
Coming from the web app backend monoliths world, I’ve had my frustrations more than a few times with all the microservice architecture going on here and to know that this guy wrote the first AWS Lambda within our org only makes me hate him even more! He he…
One among the early employees of the team, someone with a good sense of the tech he works with, and a very soft spoken friendly persona. Literally a neighbor, I was fortunate to meet his family recently when they were coming over to spend an evening at Karma Road.

Pankaj Bhatt
One among the freshers, someone who loves learning and pushing his own limits. A jolly guy who I remember desperately tried to get us to paintball during our team outing. A humble fellow who taught me about the knap sack problem, I’m sure I’ll have more to write about him over the coming months and years.

Pavan
One among my first two reportees. A well rounded engineer with a bright future. Someone whom I enjoyed working with a lot. Curious about his machine, passionate about his work, the only time he’ll get angry is if you don’t hit the cork after he shouts “yours” during a badminton game. A good company to have in any gathering, I hope the work we’ve both put into the project together over the last year will soon start to pay dividends. (Much like Devendra, I could keep going, but will save it for later)

Pradeep Bhat
One of the first few folks I met from the team, and I am still thankful to him for sharing one half of the roti during my first lunch with them. I believe his official title is “Project Manager” (another title much like ‘product owner’ that I am curious about). He has been one of the people whom I’ve depended on to get to know more about the business and how things work. Someone who keeps track of the projects of the data engineering team, its resource and time allocation, he is a pro badminton player and a nice person to pick a chat with.

Rajesh Iyer
The OG of the data engineering team – as Sree puts it. Our Engineering Manager as well as a father figure to many. As I mentioned earlier, I had my initial conversation with him with “Bill Lumbergh” in mind and within the first few seconds of the conversation, I felt ashamed of myself for having had that image in my head at all. Someone who is looking forward to the next stage of his life – to make a difference in the world rather than Github PRs. I was lucky to have this overlap of my time with him where he told me his story and how it is a career choice, but an important one, to maintain your hands on curiosity on tech as and when you go up the corporate ladder.

Reshma
An ace QA, she was away for a huge chunk of the last year, busy welcoming her bundle of joy to this world. It has only been through the daily standups that I know she is someone whom quite a few projects of the team depends on to ensure its quality. I’m sure our paths will cross soon & I look forward to me rising to the fight when she challenges the work that I do.

Senthil
One of the senior folks along with Eldho who has seen the evolution of our team first hand. An extremely soft spoken person whom I haven’t had the chance to interact much with over the days until now. I’m sure it is going to be just a matter of time before our paths cross and hence will leave this part as it is for now.

Sreehari
The chill dude. Any and every interaction that I can think of his, he has that vibe about him. Getting his “good game” remark for a badminton game during our September ’24 team retreat was a huge confidence booster for me personally. I was playing after 15 years, and my confidence going into the game was literally 0.

As far as my understanding goes, there’s isn’t an exact “so many members for this team” kind of a rule. There are quite a few people we consistently engage with for different projects at one point or another – Dan, Steve, Shilpi, Jaysheel, Roshna, Harish, etc.

However, I wouldn’t feel like I did it justice unless I wrote about 3 more people.

Sreenath
Whenever I try to come up with a description of him in any conversation (including now), I always talk about how he was the only person who got my 6 year old comfortable enough to talk during the time I took her to visit the office. That reflects the way his conversations are and hence why I felt it was important to mention it. My conversations with him revolve around the lines of what it means to be an Engineer and a Tech lead. Someone who convinced me of the “boy scout rule” from his personal experience even outside of tech, I look forward to the time when I’m able to collaborate with him directly on a project.

Venky
A “high energy person” in his own words that sometimes his energy is so high that you’re left with no choice but to tune your energy down so as to not disrupt the energy equilibrium of the universe!

I already mentioned about the tea and “catcher in the rye” earlier. A book that I immensely enjoyed. The “energy” part wasn’t a joke either. After the incident, I consistently have conversations with him. He asks these difficult questions, and slowly nudges me into practical ways to find answers for it. He has a way of leading a conversation and making sure it stays afloat with the subject of what it is about instead of unknowingly diverging away into tangents. I’ve already been able to not only apply the thoughts I’ve learnt from him, but also practically experience the difference it makes.

Sree
I’ve heard from more than a few people at the organisation that the attitude / culture of the team is a trickle down effect from him. I haven’t had the chance to spend too much time with him personally though. He has a good amount of history with both my brother and Vamsee – the two people whom which my referral came through. A religious person and someone who consistently tries to lead by example, he has quite a few stories to tell about Enchanting Travels becoming a part of Travelopia, about witnessing the growth of certain people through their career paths and about what it takes to keep an organisation running.

Experiences

  • No Coffee for you:

    Around the mid of November 2023, there were a bunch of folks from UK visiting the Bangalore office out which one of them was none other than our CTO – Mike Blakemore. For whatever reason, he had setup these 15 – 30 minute catchups with the “senior” employees and one among them was me. The poor guy was having a hard time with a nasty cold and a sore throat too I believe.

    By the time it was my slot, he came out and rushed past me apologising saying he wanted to get a coffee. I followed him thinking it’d be nice to chat there over coffee rather than in the cubicle. He put the cup under the coffee machine and clicked on whatever his choice was (sorry, not a coffee connoisseur here) and it went “pookhhhhh”. Tried again “pooookhhh”. It was empty.

    It was 6.30PM, it was getting dark and most of the people had left the building. Even though I saw Sree & Venky standing at the other end of the office, it felt weird to run up to them & interrupt saying “no coffee!” (now that I know them better, today I actually would do it). So I decided to go get Sreejith instead and took a few steps to head down the 2nd floor when Mike called me back and said its okay. He asked me about water and I pointed to the tap that all of us take water from.

    He put the glass under it and asked “will it be okay if I drink this?”
    My mind answered “How the heck should I know man!?”
    My mouth answered “Umm, yeah.. We all drink that….”

    He didn’t take that either and we ended up having our chat with the poor guy sneezing and coughing. Apparently he had a stomach upset before due to some similar experience and he was just trying to be careful. It was my 3rd month on the job, I was happy to get that time with the CTO and I blabbered away like an idiot. I remember him saying “you seem happy”.

  • Almost getting fired (and learning what “raised to the HR” means)

    Venky and I recently discussed about how the context of a moment past & the reasons of its being is never fully recreatable.

    That being said, as they say, “there are levels to this sh**”, and the levels are taken pretty seriously. A combination of my lack of understanding of that seriousness along with the effect of Chinese whisper led to this happening.

    While expressing my concern over a faulty metric I found that was being used to evaluate the effectiveness of one of the functions we had implemented, I was misunderstood and the decision was made to let me go. Before it was enforced, Venky decided to have a conversation with me. The “how I expressed my concern” was then identified to be the problem. Neither the “what” and nor the “why”. Now you know why the title says “survived”.

    It was personally even worse for me because I was expecting my thanks for having pinpointed the fault (something outside of my “employment responsibilities”) when Rajesh mentioned “raised to the HR” to me in a rather gloomy tone. I was not aware of that phrase. To be honest, I even thought “wow, even the HR wants to talk to me about my find?”. However, the tone suggested something else and a conversation with a friend of mine revealed to me what it actually meant.

    From experience, being fired for the right reasons is an experience that I value. It happened to me back in 2016, and I keep it close to my heart. As impractical as it sounds, it is so up there at the top of my concerns that it not only acts as an instantaneous personal SOS for the last 8 years, but also helps me hold true to the trust between myself and the organisation that I’ve made a professional commitment with.

    Venky generously offered me his time to help me with getting a better grasp of the “how” and we’ve been consistently chatting over the last few months.

  • Raising a concern (and a * huge * self reflection)

    During the initial months of a project we were working on, I raised quite strong concerns over mismanagement around it. My frustration at not being acknowledged came out very explicitly and I felt bad about the way I reacted to the situation.

    The “raised to the HR” incident happened after this, and hence I assume both was read together. However, I was conflicted trying to put things in perspective.

    It was during this time that I attended an event at Pune and it was one of the best decision I made in recent years:

    https://x.com/harisibrahimkv/status/1825928166365376714

    Siddharth offered me his time. During the initial call, I brought this up. He listened patiently and finally asked:

    “You’re still working there because of one person’s compassion. Where was that compassion of yours?”

    I was dumbfounded. The conversation carried on for a while where he narrated his experiences and certain unwritten rules about how to navigate situations such as these. How “feedback” isn’t what is important, but “helpful feedback” is. How “helpful feedback” isn’t just about the content, but the strategy of presentation as well.

    I spent a lot of early mornings by myself reflecting on this and I wrote kept on writing to introspect. There were two things I wanted to do:
    – Genuinely apologise. Not the “sorry” to calm things down. Not do the “bygones be bygones, let’s move over” thingie.
    – Ensure I never put anyone else ever in that spot.

    As I mentioned, Venky gave me his time generously during this phase. While the lesson I was learning along with the growth from this experience in the long run was important, as was the practical steps I could take to man up and face the situation. Long story short, I achieved the first and I could face the people involved with an open heart. I am prepared for the second.

    The funny thing was how I felt looking at this entire situation from the perspective of a third person – unnecessarily serious.

  • Events and retreats

    There were a bunch of events and retreats over the year ranging from outings, parties, gatherings at the office on special occasions, gatherings at the office during the times when people from the UK visits, etc. I had a good time at all of them that I attended. Here are bits and pieces from them:

    * The year end party:
    It was at a club in Indira Nagar. If memory serves me right, it was the first time I was at that sort of a bar. The woman at the entry gave me two small ticket like thingies and I wasn’t really sure what they were for. Well, until conversations started happening about whether I had my “shots” and if not, whether I could lend them my “tickets”. That’s when the power I had hit me. But before I could toy with it, Kirana caught me and confiscated those tickets of mine. Apparently it was to control the number of drinks people can buy from the bar. Nice.

    * The Onam Sadya:
    My first experience cutting up flowers to make the pookalam. Scissors, chopping boards, knifes and what not.

    * The September ’24 team meet:
    It was a lovely week. Everyone shared a lot of history about themselves and we laughed and we laughed and we laughed. It was a good choice for the company to have booked an Airbnb apartment as opposed to the usual individual hotel rooms. Gave us all enough common space to sit and chit chat.

    It gave me the opportunity to connect personally with a few of them as time allowed as well. That moment was a realisation for me.

    We did a team cooking event at Slurp Studios. It wasn’t really my first time cooking, but when you see the humor and fun of the team that you work with day in day out in a context other than tech, you feel touched. Suffice to say, we cut, we chopped, we knead, we heated, we fried, we joked, we laughed, we cooked and last but definitely not the least, we slurped! Yep, all of us ate what we cooked if you can believe that. He he…

    We had a badminton event. While it was a game, it was a highlight for me. Not in terms of wins or losses or performance, but at a very intricate personal level. Also, as I mentioned above, Sreehari’s “good game” made a * huge * impact. I laugh at how such a “small thing” viewed from the eyes of another person, can be a life changing event in someone else’s. Extremely grateful to everyone who played with me that day.

  • Someone has heard of Travelopia!

    Up until August ’24, whenever I mentioned I worked at “Travelopia”, it gave people the idea of a “ticket booking company” immediately. The conversation starts with “not like Cleartrip or Makemytrip…”. And then it hits the spot with “We have our own Jet“.

    1.
    The event at Pune which I mentioned earlier, led me to join a discord called “The Engineering Org” (TEO). Everyone who joins introduces themselves. After mine, a friend from back in my HasGeek days, whom I haven’t been in touch with for a long time, replied saying, obviously “long time”. We setup a call and had a chat.

    As I said, the notion of people not having heard about the companies I worked for was not new to me. However with Ashwin, when I mentioned Travelopia, he thought for a moment and said – “That UK based company, isn’t it? I know someone from there…”

    “Oh, first time someone has heard of it in my circle. Who is it?”, I asked.

    “Some Rajesh… Rajesh…”

    “Gosh! He knows my manager??”, I thought to myself.

    “Rajesh.. Thiagarajan. We worked together at RecruiterBox“

    2.
    I recently attended Rootconf. I was only too happy to meet one of my earliest programming mentors – Anand Chitipothu. We hugged and had a lot of catch up on, in the midst of which I mentioned where I work at.

    “Oh, you work with Sree? I did a Python training for them just a year or so back”

    I almost mentioned “Yep! He is one of my 5 bosses”, but restrained myself.

    Anand continued, “You know a fun fact? He hosted the 2nd Bangpypers meetup since it started”

    Again I chuckled to myself thinking about the irony of how I’ve been trying to get the org to host a Bangpypers meetup since the last 2 or 3 months.

    3.
    At the same event, we were having a BoF around “Use boring tech”. I met Neependra Khare there, who gives corporate trainings on Kubernetes. He was a nice person to chat with and again, when I mentioned where I work at, he mentioned, “Oh, you work with Vamsee”.

  • The #books channel coming to life
    On 23rd May ’24, I had finished rereading “Round the World in Eighty Days” after a long time. It was one of those hardcover ladybird classics which was one of the very first unabridged books that I had finished end to end during my childhood. One of the books that marked my coming of age. One of the books that you fall in love with the way it looks, the way it feels, the way it smells and finally the way it makes you feel with the story.

    Reading, stories and especially fiction, isn’t for everyone. No judgement there. People get drawn to different things. However, it is always nice to find peers. I spoke my mind about my wish, Sree replied saying to get it done and hence the #books channel on our Slack was born.

    Here’s the list that’s been discussed so far:

    Fiction
    * Round the World in Eighty Days - Jules Verne
    Science Fiction
    * Foundation’s Edge - Isaac Asimov Our Final Invention: Artificial
    * Intelligence and the End of the Human Era - Gary Dana & James Barrat
    * The Forever War - Joe Haldeman
    * Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - Cory Doctorow
    * Makers - Cory Doctorow
    * Walkaway - Cory Doctorow
    * Silo Trilogy - Hugh Howey
    * The 3 body problem trilogy - Cixin Liu
    Fantasy
    * The Wise Man’s Fear - Patrick Rothfuss
    Technical
    * The Phoenix Project: A Novel about It, Devops, and Helping Your Business Win - Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford
    Self Help
    * The Surrender Experiment (Lead Title): My Journey into Life's Perfection - Michael A. Singer
    * Be more pirate - Sam Conniff Allende
    * HBR's 10 Must Reads on Emotional Intelligence (With Featured Article "What Makes a Leader?" by Daniel Goleman): HBR's 10 Must Reads Series - Harvard Business Review, Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, Annie McKee, Sydney Finkelstein
    * Why Travel Matters - Craig Storti
    * Manage Your Mind: The Mental Fitness Guide - Gillian Butler
    Auto Biography
    * Limitless - Tim Peake
    * The Ride of a Lifetime - Robert Iger
    Gamers
    * Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
    * Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin
    True Crime
    * Dark Wire

Summary
– An extremely interesting year especially from the perspective of coming to a corporate from 9 years of working at startups
– Impressed by the default compassion & trust and the organisation has towards its employees. From the perspective of “human beings working at an org”. Reflects in terms of work hours, leave policies & benefits
– Yet to figure out the reasons behind a few of the “processes for the sake of processes” that are in place like “objective setting”.
– As I touched up on before, frustrated with the gap between “engineering” & “business”. Still trying to learn (and hence can’t judge) why that was made the norm.
– Enjoying pair programming to an extent, but still not convinced about how “that has to be the way”
– If you are at a point in your life where you want a “work life balance”, then an amazing place for it. (I differ in my outlook towards making ‘work life balance’ as ‘the * only * way to do it’)
– Having a separate work laptop has worked wonders for me. Especially having stopped listening to music while working.
– Happy with the pay, but extremely sad with the taxes (first time having that experience since I worked as a ‘consultant’ before and hence the realisation). Not something to do directly with the company, but just personally.
– Happy with the work challenges and extremely happy with the learnings so far. It was evident while talking with a few of my peers from the past.
– Happy about the final impact of my work being about “enabling travelling”.
– Toughening up to not let an employer emotionally break me.

Wrapping up
You learn by trying things. You learn even more by finishing ’em.

A year’s worth of experience is a lot to write, and I am keen on learning. For those few of you who know about this post coming, it’s a been a while since I started working on this. I recently saw someone making a bullet point list of things to do tomorrow and striking them off one by one. I am striking “finish the one year blog post” off today. I might come back with edits. Might.

I am by no means an introvert, but I have my moments when I disconnect. That being said, there are a LOT of people whom I had very nice chats with during the last year. And hence a lot of people to thank. I’ve started appreciating time and health like never before and hence thank you to all of you there who took even a minute of your time to have a chat. Especially Mehar, Kirana & Savithri having had the patience to answer my queries again and again and again…. and again.

Last but not the least… definitely not the least.. thank you Isaac and Pavan. Thank you for just mindlessly laughing with me on that Friday afternoon about every little random thing under God’s Green Earth. Ignoring work and ignoring everything else. Otherwise that would’ve been my last day at Travelopia.

by

Volunteering at PyCon India 2024

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(Nope, I am not in that picture)

It was quite a year.

Not just in terms of PyCon, but personally as well. Hence when Ani came up to me during that Bangpypers event, I thought twice before answering him when he asked me about volunteering for PyCon. After a few seconds, as much as I had the “great automatic grammatizator” at the back of my head, I said “Content”.

My fear was proven right. Not only so, but I wasn’t able to deliver either. Of course, as is with almost everything, the first few weeks went according to plan – weekly meetings, discussions around who would take up what, etc. However, as time moved on, as much as I hate using the phrase “as was expected since we were volunteering”, that is indeed what happened and I started slacking.

The one whom I have to apologise the most to would be Aakashnil Roy since his social media as well as mailing list announcements were blocked due to the content team falling behind. The reason I mention this is because, I hate this excuse. Intentionally or not, that is the excuse I used in my head.

Volunteering

The way I see volunteering at its core is like meeting a person who desperately is in need of help and telling them “trust me, I will help you”. Obviously, it is very rare that you would say that going upto a complete stranger doing something completely random at a completely random time. Hence the assumption here is that you are telling it to either someone whom you know, or someone whom you see is putting in the effort to achieve a cause that you believe in.

They feel relieved. They trust you. They delegate. The success of the effort now depends on you as much as it does on them. They gave you power. You can probably imagine what “letting them down” would mean by now.

However, “letting them down” is not the metric on which you should base the consequence of your actions. Remember, you offered your help because you either loved the person whom you offered it to or loved the cause they were working for.

Hence letting yourself down should be the more important metric here.

You make yourself vulnerable to be held accountable for. Accountability is inevitable. Being defensive at your failure is not an option. You admit. You get back up. You continue.

It will be definitely be up there in one of the most fun experiences you’ve ever had, but volunteering is not “just fun”.

And therein lies the beauty of it. You are never alone.

The Team

The beauty of the thing is, the excuse works both ways. On one side, as I said, people use it to slack off. However on the other side, people see it as a sign for showing compassion. The respect towards the intention with which the initial commitment was made pours out and the team comes forward to support.

That. Is. Magical.

Suffice to say that the team did a lot of the reviews that were required which, to be honest, made me feel ashamed of myself. However, one common theme across all the times I have volunteered for in my life is that the team accepts you. As I said, you are never alone. You belong.

And the PyCon India team of volunteers will always remain my goto example whenever I make that comment.

We persevered, we stuck together, we delivered. Along the journey during which I was continuously relearning & refreshing whatever I wrote so far.

September 21st

I reached Bangalore on 21st itself. After volunteering in the morning at my office for cutting up the flowers and leaves for making the “Onam pookalam” and having a good “Onam sadya” (Lunch) with my colleague Eldho, I left work a little early since all the volunteers for the conference were asked to report at the venue by 5PM sharp.

I really hate it when people don’t respect others’ time. I was there at 5.

The allocation of duties were already done by that time. For whatever reason, seeing myself allocated as the “Emcee/ Speaker coordinator for Audi 3” made me feel extremely uneasy. I was not sure why. I talked to my wife & mentioned that I was considering attending instead of volunteering.

She said, “That’s the last half a decade’s worth of comfort zone messing with you. Go get it done”. I fondly remembered one of Sidharth’s comments during the Pune BoF meetup – “Marry well”.

We spent the evening introducing ourselves to each other as well as making sure everyone knew what their tasks were going to be and whom they were going to work with. We had fun doing the swag packing session with the “most optimised algorithm generated over the last decade” as well.

Since all of us had to reach the venue at 7AM for the next 2 days, I bid goodbye a little early and went to get a good night’s sleep.

I was nervous and tensed beyond words. I knew why. I cycled my mind through a few of the volunteers’ faces. Both old and new. I felt calm, and I slept off.

September 22nd & 23rd

Grabbed my volunteer’s badge and went in.

“We need to vacate the inventory room downstairs! Nimhans is super strict about only having their stuff in that room” – Bibhas and Sohom were discussing.

I was like, “Ah lovely! The fun starts”.

For whatever reason, one of the things that I look forward to the most during any and all of my volunteering experiences was handling the unplanned and unaccounted for stuff. It is one of those occasions where “that person” takes charge and there’s no question of “who put you in charge”, but everyone just falls in line and gets it done. We found a very… strange trolley (one that has to be pulled instead of pushed), loaded it up with boxes, a certain “chair on chair” combination and within 10 – 20 minutes, got everything out.

In the midst of which Pratik found me and said, “Hey, go and have breakfast”.

Speaker Co-ordination

In Audi 3, Sam and I were handling the speaker co-ordination on day 1. Kalyan and I did it on day 2. While the task itself had a proper definition, it was all the subtle things around it that I loved the most. The most important thing being – to make the speakers comfortable.

Many of the them were first time speakers. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit emotional seeing myself in them when I had my first such experience almost a decade ago. A pat on the back, a few jokes, the water bottles, the short pep talks, all goes a long way. During those moments, personally for me, it never felt like “me doing my task”. It was like trying to make the best out of that occasion together with them.

And that is the tricky line to walk. It * is * a professional conference by all means. Volunteer driven or not, the attendees and speakers come with very high expectations. Hence standing your ground and at the same time not being rude or rubbing anyone off the wrong way is extremely important. I had to cut a few of the speakers off, limit the Q&A along with a few subtle head nods and thumbs ups to make sure things were on time and on track.

Two of the speakers coming towards the end of the conference and explicitly showing their gratitude made the entire effort worthwhile.

Wrapping up

There were numerous tiny things that added up to the whole experience otherwise too:
– Manning the door to do crowd control since Audi 3 was the smallest and hence got filled up quick.
– Meeting folks from the past and that instant smile on their faces.
– The short but sweet show of concern from different folks (especially Pratik & Ashish) asking “had food?”, “tired? need a break?”, “come over and join the others”, etc.
– The good food!
– Couple of times when certain people called me “Noufal!”, and started talking to me. I enjoyed standing there, and it took a minute or two for them to realise the mistake. He he.
– And finally that attendee who was desperate to get a speaker bag from me! I thought it was silly until the point when I got one of them bags as a token of appreciation being a volunteer. Then I could understand why he really wanted to have one of ’em.

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That’s about it for this year folks. For nostalgia’s sake, here is an email I sent back in 2015 to the entire registration team once the event was over:

Okay, I spent a minute on how to address all of you..

"friends"? Na, too immature and formal.
"folks"? Nope, something that I use a general addressing noun.

Know what? I am just gonna skip addressing altogether! I'll just begin
by saying we were the best TEAM EVaaa!

And yeah, this mail was sometime coming. Let me make the usual excuse
saying I was catching up on work and blah blah.

How're all of you doing? Recovered well and back to your daily
routines again I hope? For me personally, it felt good to rest me feet
(yes, literally) because they were hurting beyond words on Sunday
night.

I haven't felt the way I felt being with all of you in all my
volunteering and team work experiences. I really meant it when I said
this: https://twitter.com/harisibrahimkv/status/651011704810156033

Each and every one of you are awesome.

Numan,
It was such a weight off my head when you agreed to take up all the
printing and pouch hunting. I was so worried of getting back to
Bangalore late after Eid. Thanks to you I could stay back with my
family for a couple of days. :)

Take care of yourself. Haven't met your two little ones, but they are
extremely fortunate to have a Father like you.

Rakesh,
Well, I can't thank you enough for sorting and splitting up all those
badges and getting them ready for registration day. I know I might
sound over-excited, but trust me when I say that one of life's
greatest pleasures is to have friends who are as committed as you for
a job and don't miss out on the even smallest of details.

I hope you found time to talk to a few potential employers at the event. ;)

Siva,
Well, I can aptly describe you as being the power house of the entire
team. ;) Thanks for understanding the times I was so tired and taking
up the load from me. As I said, every little thing, not matter how
mundane, adds up to being a strong team.

Also folks, this: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4089236/. I feel privileged now!

Meghana,
I didn't get much time to get to know you personally, but thank you so
much for being there at the time we needed you. Just coming up and
saying that you would take up the sponsor/speaker stall was such a
relief. I really was decision-tired at that point and I guess as I
mentioned here (https://mail.python.org/pipermail/inpycon/2015-October/010256.html),
there really is a telepathic connection going on. :)

I hope you had a great time with your event with the dev sprints and
along with your sister.

Dhriti,
Your commitment showed the moment you reached so early on Saturday
morning to help out! Thank you so much for sacrificing your time at
the conference to help us out. Within the little time we had at the
venue, I understand why Chandan so proud to introduce you. :)

Hope the volunteering work didn't take up too much of your time and
you were able to engage with the conference crowd as well.

Rajat,
Dude, you were a shoulder I could lean on! And your humour sense
coupled with that look you can have on your face is priceless at
times. You know those few people whom you know that if you're with you
are guaranteed a good time? It's you. :)

I am sure you'll be a pillar of PyDelhi's community.

Kiran,
I guess the conference had a lot on your plate. I am just glad I could
pull you in now and then to help us out in between your other duties.
Sadly, we didn't get much time to chat this year unlike last except
for a few minutes over food. It was fun doing crowd control with you
at the t-shirt stall. :)

And man, you're the coolest!

Anand,
You were inevitable in the team! Thank you so much for taking care of
all the money matters! I am sure I would have gone crazy trying to
handle that in between. It was a great weight off all of our heads
when I heard you were bringing in all the stationery.

Besides the registration, thank you for being a pillar in organizing
PyCon. I am sure Vijay and Krace could not have done it without you.

Soumyo,
You were a blessing in disguise at the time of need. I apologise for
dragging you into registration when you were happily planning to
attend the conference for both the days, but thank you so much for
having the mind to help out. Hope I didn't take too much of your time
out from the conference.

And man, I was so glad to hear you pronounce my name "Haris" instead
of "Harish"!

Apoorva,
Well, even if you hadn't been there at the registration stall, I
wouldn't have been able to thank you enough for sorting those "A"
badges in place! I am pretty sure none of us would have had the
patience to do it. Thank you so much for manning the stall, even alone
at times. You were someone I could count on with my eyes shut.

So no more waking up at 6? At least, I am glad that you enjoyed that
for the conference. ;)

Vanitha,
You literally ran the conference! Folks, she took care of all the
speaker - reviewer co-ordination for this year's conference. Thank you
so much for taking the time from between your busy schedule to help us
out with the sponsor/speaker stall at the time of need.

I am glad you were there to cool down those two people who came with
the workshop tickets for the conference. :) Man, that was quite a
moment.

Mahanthesh,
Your excitement to be a part of community and to get involved more
translated into your commitment. I am sorry I didn't get to using your
Whatsapp suggestion, but that would have been extremely helpful in
that scenario had I used it. Perhaps you can take charge next year and
lead the registrations? :)

Also I understand that you want to get involved more. Have you signed
up at https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon? If not please
do. We would love you to come forward and take more responsibility.

Himanshu,
I never could figure you out, and I meant that as a compliment. I
mean, running your own company and taking this much time out of that
to sit at a registration desk and volunteer? I am not digging in, but
I am just too glad that you were on the team. Couldn't have placed the
stall in better hands on the second day while we were manning the
t-shirt stalls. Also, thanks for the bike ride. ;)

Finalized on your trip dates to Kochi? Give me a call once you pass
Calicut. I can probably meet you on your way as my home is in between
the highway from Calicut to Kochi. And dude, we really need to talk
about your sleep cycles. :D

Thank you, all of you, so much. I am neither exaggerating nor lying
when I say my faith in humanity only got strengthened after working
with all of you. Knowing that people have your back and that feeling
of being able to trust someone blindly; that's what makes a strong
community, a strong team.

I am sure by now I've lost most of you. :P That's my problem, I just
keep on writing when I am excited. Might not be the best work of
literature, but hey, it just goes to show how happy I am! :)

Let me start wrapping up by saying I would love for all of us to meet
again if possible. I know that not all of us are in Bangalore, and I
guess we can't do much about that either. Who all are in Bangalore
among us? Numan, Siva, Anand, Vanitha, Mahantesh, Meghana, Himanshu
and I, right? Let's try and see if we can catch up for lunch/tea (I
don't drink coffee :P) sometime.

I hope all of us come together sometime soon, although I feel it is
only going to be at next year's pycon. :/

Keep in touch, stay excellent, take care and hope to see y'all soon.

Until then,

by

The Teacher’s Key

Contrary to her usual routine of the month, which is by the way, more predictable and more precise than the second hand of a clock, Su was 7 minutes early that day. She wasn’t the “Head Teacher” just for the sake of the title. She was the Head Teacher because of having taken up the responsibilities of managing the school, making sure all the paper work got done and most importantly, making sure the rest of the staff were happy about coming to work, and even more importantly, that all of them got paid on time.

Su was well known and much respected in the village. From the penniless to the millionaires of the generation right after hers, regardless of what status or position in life they held, whenever they met Su, they’d keep all of it aside and greet her with a warm smile and respect.

Every Head Teacher had their own religiously set date on which they follow the procedure for making sure all the staff at work got paid on time. Su’s was the first of the month and hence she stepped out early. Her routine of locking the door allowed for some flexibility since much like a lot of people, she too was susceptible to the unpredictable call of nature and this faint doubt at the back of one’s mind regarding whether it would get in the way of the day’s events. She couldn’t ignore it. She didn’t like that the Doctors even had a technical term describing it. Secretly she remains jealous of the ones who have mastered the art of ignorance when it comes to this specific character trait.

She went back in, answered the call, stepped back out, locked the door, hung her bag over her left shoulder, pulled her Saree over her head as a scarf, locked the gate and started walking to the School.

The School was a 15 minute walk away. She always walked. She had been walking the same route and teaching at the same School for the last 4 decades. She reached, performed her office duties, gave her daily dose of morning motivational speech to all the staff, finished her class (always scheduled before lunch for the first day of every month), finished her lunch and stepped out and was on her way to the treasury.

All her children were married and settled in different places. On her walks, she often thought of the weekend or vacations where it is almost as if the house would burst with the grandchildren ping pong-ing all around the place. However, she lived alone. As much as everyone being just a phone call away, she chose to stay at her home itself. Some feelings are better never explained and her attachment to her home was one of them.

The treasury was a bit far away and would require a bus. So she took a rickshaw to get to the bus stand. The Ration Shop was just beside the bus stand and even though she didn’t need it, old habits die hard. She got out of the rickshaw, paid the fare, went straight into the Ration Shop, entrusted the shop keeper with her card, got on the next bus and headed for the treasury.

After around 3 hours at the treasury, completing all the paperwork, talking to the right people at the right time, counting, confirming & tucking away the entire money nicely in her bag, she got on a bus back, got down at the bus stand, exchanged pleasantries with the Ration Shop owner, took her ration kit, got into an auto, got down at her home, paid the fare, enquired about the rickshaw driver’s family since he was one of her students, opened the gate, sat on her Verandha and let out a sigh of relief.

She always took a moment to enjoy her courtyard and the front elevation of her home. After that moment and catching her breath, she took to her bag to fetch the front door key. Years of routine dictated that it would be lying there towards the right side of the first compartment and she could fetch it blindfolded.

Except that this time it wasn’t there.

She felt a tingling sensation of fear up her spine. The kind that you feel when you reach in your pocket for your purse and you don’t find it there. Almost the same kind that you feel when you just raise your hands while walking out of your home to fetch your car keys and it is not there. You know that it is not serious and you just might have misplaced it, but by the time that reasoning kicks in, you already would’ve felt that moment of fear.

Once her mind calmed her down, she fumbled around in her bag hoping to feel that prick or cold of the key so that she can just continue with getting the money ready for the next day. Neither happened. The reasoning slowly started turning into practical truths with all the “might have”s and “could have”s. She sat on the Verandha, emptied both her bag and the Ration Shop Kit searching vigorously through them. A drop of sweat broke on her forehead.

Life had already tested her and she was not one to breakdown. The calculations were already being made in her mind. Random calls to people around were out of the question even though she did call her school maid once and didn’t get any updates.

She made a determined decision, put her Ration Shop Kit behind the Verandha and set out. She retraced all her steps starting with the Rickshaw driver, the bus, the streets, the Ration Shop, all the way to the treasury and back. Some people noticed Su at unexpected hours and did inquire the matter which she sidestepped with some excuse about visiting her grandchildren or something.

Unfortunately, none of her detective work helped and she returned home onto her Verandha with a confused mind. That’s when the reality of the situation started dawning on her. The actual fear of someone having stolen the key crept up and thoughts on how to protect her home started pouring in like a broken dam. She started considering her options of where to stay for the night and whom she could open about this to.

As strong as she was, she couldn’t help but feel vulnerable. She leaned on the door and lovingly put her hand on the door handle, pressing it involuntarily. The door opened. She found the door key inside itself. She had forgotten to lock the door after answering that last minute nature’s call.

by

What’s up WhatsApp!

“Hey…”, Haris called standing behind it. He was afraid. Terrified would be more apt. You know how no matter how hard you try, you can never ever be fully prepared for certain moments in life? This was one of those moments.

It turned around slowly. As if it was disturbed from its peace. Haris’ heart beat faster. The few seconds felt like hours. Like ages.

Finally it turned around and saw him.

Haris took a breath, remained as calm as he could, retained his composure and slowly started:

“Hey, I know it has been a long time, but I was wondering…”

“YOU NASTY, PUTRID, S** b**”. It interrupted Haris.

“But I….”, Haris tried to continue.

“All I tried was to help people. To let loved ones stay in touch, to help the world unite, love, care… and ba** like you… all you could do was spread lies and crap about how I was secretly on a mission to start an alien invasion or some sh** like that YOU BLOODY…”

“Listen I…”, Haris somehow tried to remain calm and keep trying to get through to it.

It screamed back, “Shut your festering gob you tit”. Its hoarse grizzly sound filled with hate continued, “Your type really makes me puke, you vacuous, coffee-nosed, malodorous, pervert!!!”

==== Start Interlude ====

Author’s notes: We interrupt the emotional exchange for the sake of general public’s sanity and we acknowledge and thank Monty Python for the dialogue.

There are a few people in your life that you make exceptions for. If you’re the type who is always ready to make any exceptions required for any given scenario, then there are certain words that describe you, be it judgemental or not.

One person that I made an exception for is Madhu. While leaving Able back in May 2023, he said we should stay in touch. For someone whom I had only known 3 years for, but had become a mentor and a friend, it seemed rude to not ask him his most preferred way of staying in touch to which he replied as it being WhatsApp.

It would be a lie if I said I didn’t think twice. Regardless though, I created the account and to quote “the phrase” that people apparently use, “sent a hi”.

It lasted like that, with just one contact on my phone, for about a month until the School Alumni event happened. It was during that when I bit the bullet and shared my WhatsApp number.

When you start forgetting who you are, you start relying on others to remind you of who you are.

I know that a bunch of you out there who’ve been in touch with me since 2012 are probably already waiting in line to chop me into pieces one by one. Maybe with a Shaman by their side so that first person can chop me, the Shaman resurrects me, then the next person can feel the same glee to chop me up again and so on and so forth. Well, let’s get to it and let’s get it over with now, shall we?

I wouldn’t end this part without showing my heartfelt gratitude to all of you who stayed in touch via SMS, Google Chat, Twitter, emails, etc. I truly believe that among you all, Sharat deserves a special mention for recharging his Skype Credits and staying in touch consistently via SMS ever since he moved to Norway and even before.

I’ll reach out to all of you via WhatsApp soon.

==== End Interlude ====

Haris snapped out of it.

It was still standing there and his fear of it was playing mind games on him. The conversation hadn’t yet started.

“Hey…”, Haris called standing behind it. He was afraid.

It turned around slowly with a smile so friendly that you felt that all your worries were for nothing. That you had overthought the situation and there was really nothing to worry about. However, you know this certain inexplicable instinct of yours kicks in when you meet certain people about how they have an extremely manufactured Gentlemanliness in the air about them that you know you can’t completely trust?

With that instinct lingering within, I followed its gesture and went in. I was at peace. I was one among the masses.

PS: For those of you who are curious and wondering about the Monty Python reference, watch this.

by

Odyssey, Ansar Alumni meet – A student of 12 years says…

This post should be fun when my kids grow up enough to be able to read it.

This also isn’t a summary of the event. It is more or less about what School meant to me, a few memories and what I felt being back there for a day.

History

I never liked going to school. There was nothing that I looked forward to on any given day – except for those rare days when one of them promised to give me a new Nintendo / Sega game cassette. Even that too brings back bad memories when they cheat me by sticking a Mario Brothers chip inside a Batman’s game cassette cover.

I didn’t like going to school.

Oh, don’t get me wrong though. I was always one of the top 3 when you looked at marks, I had one of the best hand writings no matter which grade I was in, I was almost always the teacher’s pet.

But I didn’t like going to school at all.

My parents had no problems regarding my studies or my marks, but boy oh boy, the different “sicknesses” that I creatively invented consistently to skip a day at school! I didn’t mind the day going to complete waste with Doctor’s visits, having to “lie in bed and rest” or take medicines. The invention wasn’t just limited to my parents, but even at school – the sudden tummy aches were a thing of beauty that would allow me to go and sleep in the Teachers’ staff room and even get treated to Tea and Biscuits after my naps. I was the studious, top of the class, silent kid with such good obedience. They had no choice but to treat me nicely.

I just didn’t like going to school.

I was never into sports. I liked professional wrestling and if you’re among one those who’ve watched WWE’s attitude era shows, then you know how it is completely different to any other “sport”. I was deep into comics & video games. There were only very few kids who shared my enthusiasm and even if they did, they were into some sport or other suffice to say, I used to just sit and while away my time during PT (Physical Training) hours. There was no “training”. It was just a “Free period” where all the kids could go to the ground, spend an hour playing whatever they wanted to however they wanted to, get in line and get back to class.

I really didn’t like going to school.

Then there was the youth festival – the yearly event with stage shows, off stage competitions, etc. I shied away from all of those except for one off stage event of playing the piano in my 11th grade or so where I got 3rd prize. I didn’t like the competition spirit (maybe because I lost a few times back in the day) and the way we were selected from each class and then the “yay winner boo loser” stuff afterwards.

I didn’t like going to school.

Last, but not the least, my FoP – Fear of Public Toilets (no, it’s not a medical term. I just made it up). Gosh, I’d hold it all in the entire day, every single day from morning when I get in the School Bus until I get back home. I remember exactly what triggered this fear in me. I won’t get into the details (trust me, you don’t want to know), but it was an experience when I was 5 years old, doing my UKG where the “toilet” was a slab of bricks.

Definitely didn’t like going to school.

The event & experience (https://ansaralumni.org/odyssey/)

As you might’ve guessed, I wasn’t in touch with any of my friends from school. The exceptions were Hashim, Abid and to an extent Fazil Hassan.

Hashim – because he was my senior at college since I took a year off to prepare for my Engineering examinations.

Abid – because… well.. he is that guy who is just good at keeping in touch with all of his friends and maintaining those relationships.

Fazil Hassan – because our homes were pretty close by.

Hashim told me about the July 9th when I met him in June before Eid. He is one of the few people whom I have poured my heart out to a couple of times and I take his thoughts and advice seriously. I was initially terrified at the notion of attending an alumni event for the reasons I mentioned above. However, just like how it is for humans, I’ve had my fair share of experiences and reasons to give it a shot.

Besides, what was there to worry about, eh? Say hi, bye, smile a little, share a few greetings and return. Nothing to worry about at all. I decided to just visit, roam around the place and return.

1. Reaching:

For old time’s sake, I took a bus, and it was raining. Had been almost 10 years since I took a bus. I didn’t get a seat until Changaramkulam. Then somebody from the last seat got up and I sat at the place. I dozed off a little, and then I started to remember.

I remembered how much I looked forward that 5 to 15 minutes of sleep while on the way to school. I remembered how I used to look at people on the back row seats and praying for one of them to get up so that we could sit. (Might be worth mentioning the unwritten law of how school students with concession tickets were only allowed to sit at the last row of seats)

I got down at Perumpilavu, still then not being sure of what the heck I was doing. I reached the gates of my School. I didn’t waste any time in picturing myself in my own movie, getting back to School after 15 years, with Bryan Adam’s “On a day like today” playing at back of my head and slowly taking one step at a time, looking around with my mouth open.

I was pulled back to reality when I realized my eyes had watered. As Asiya “Miss” used to tell my Mom – “Haris cries even if I tell everyone to clap when he gets the 1st rank in the class”. The thought made me laugh and I proceeded to the registration section. Everything was chaotic and people were trying to make sense of setting things up. I thought I was late when I reach after 9.30AM, but apparently I was early.

2. Registration:

I was waiting for them to set up when I saw Hamsakka, the peon (It was not until I wrote this word that I realized this was the spelling and not pune! My lord!). He was ready with the template greeting since he has been serving there for the past 30 years and it was not as if he had a teacher-student relationship.

Then I saw that person (going to be referred to as TP from now on). I could remember.

It was just when I turned back from TP that Jamal came walking to me with a pleasant smile on his face and just hugged. As expected, my eyes had watered. I was never really friends with him, but I was genuinely happy. It was sickeningly ironic that the first thing we both talked about was the name of the medicines that both of us were taking.

3. Roaming around & the memories:

It was during registration that I met Sabir, Ranjith & Rithin. After the heart warming shaking of hands, the first question was to Ranjith whether he was the one who gave me the “Comix Zone” Sega game cassette.

Ranjith, Rithin & I started walking. We walked through the front of a few of our high school classes. We knew there was a toilet there, but couldn’t find it. Rithin noticed the “Staff Room” sign on top of the door where the toilets used to be. We didn’t say anything. We just looked at each other and laughed.

Whatever was “officially” happening at the auditorium on the stage was just too loud and intrusive for an event like this where all you wanted was to take yourself back to the past and without worry of judgement, use your mates’ company to get there. To remember. Not just memories, but priorities, the changes, the growth, the decisions, reflect, map and most importantly to feel alive. To feel thankful.

Unfortunately, that had to wait. TP was around. Everytime I got a glimpse, the hate came rushing back and interrupted my emotions & peace. I was surprised at how clearly I remembered TP making my Mother cry, humiliating her in front of other teachers, calling her and her son a liar just to defend TP’s ass.

I remembered.

I let it be and the 3 of us decided to get out of the auditorium and roam around. We strode down the path to the Banaath, opposite to the library. Taking that step onto the road leading there sent a shiver down my spine. The fear. The fear of being near or even seeing girls! I said that out aloud and all of us had a good laugh along with some Girls crossing our paths.

I fondly remembered when I found that abridged Ladybird Book of the Dracula story lying in the corner of one of the many shelves. The book I took from there. The book that gave me the first taste of reading a “novel” as opposed to comics.

I remembered. Very gratefully remembered. Lovingly remembered. That hardcover Ladybird book.

We roamed around starting from our 1st standard classes. We talked about the places where we threw sticks at the plum trees, the places where we fell down at and got bruises from, the old shed that served as a canteen made of Cocunut tree leaves. How we had to run and take tokens for 5Rs or so during the morning short interval and use that to get delicious Porotta for lunch at noon. That and the delicious round “Kadala Muttayi”s. There was a huge building there now on the foundations of which we used to hold small sticks and run around as if we were driving buses and cars. We obeyed the driving rules at the junctions.

I remembered. We remembered.

Some of the buildings were new. We walked over to the Banaath and crossed it talking about where each our classes were all the way from 1st standard to 12th. The “Fear of Girls” was a consistent and amusing topic all through the walk in this part of our school. We got to the building where the “School Store” was. It initially was in the main building, but had been moved. To my own surprise, things came to me. The passbook which you could “Recharge” and buy things using the balance. The “red”, “blue”, “green” story books and how I had a collection of all of it. Gafoorka, the store keeper.

I remembered. Trust me, it was a huge deal for me.

We decided to walk back to the auditorium. We kept on talking, one thing after another. We were desperately trying to dig up the past with excitement of the curiosity that sparked within us as kids. Desperately trying to make most of the time we had to somehow get as much past as possible and reach the present. TP was a part of the conversation. I was happy that almost all of us were on board with using the term “sadist” in describing TP.

We remembered. It wasn’t just me.

4. Girls:

WHAT!?

5. Teachers whom we met:

  • Habeeb Sir

He looked exactly the same (well, most teachers did) except for a few grey hair. I went upto him and the familiar feeling of terror that all of us had crept back up. It was funny in a way – those long lasting impressions that you have about a human even after so many years.

I greeted him with a Salaam and said, “Sir, this is Haris. You’ve caught so many of my game cassettes”.

“Oh come on, there are so many guys whose game cassettes I’ve caught”, said he. In other words saying that he doesn’t remember me. Since he was one of the organizers, he didn’t have much time to stand and chat.

  • Abbas Sir

My Hindi sir. He looked exactly the same as well except for the hair lost on his head. Two things came into my head immediately the moment is saw him:

1. The tightly folded full sleeves around the forearm.

I had saw it then when I was a kid and for whatever reason, always wished I could do it that way. If you saw me today, I always wear full sleeve shirts and I fold up my sleeves just like that. The only difference is that I’m so lean that my sleeves just dangle around my forearm. I promise I’m working on it.

2. The Hindi poem starting “baar baar aathihe mujkho madhur yaadh bachpan…”

I don’t know Hindi. My Hindi is the stuff of pure unadulterated comedy at home and with Bangalore Autorickshaw walas as well where they debate the price and finally have enough hearing my bull sh** Hindi that they just take what they get and leave. However, this poem has never left my heart.

I remembered.

I tried to sing it for him and my voice broke and eyes watered and I just walked way. He must’ve felt it to be weird, but I just couldn’t do it.

  • Firoze sir

Our Malayalam sir. He had a signature on-the-back-palm-strike which is more about the sound that it makes than the pain. This was what all of us in unison remembered about him. That being said, he had a certain style of conducting the class which was a mix of humor and a presentation that was hard to forget when he taught something. We loved his classes and he was as jovial and cool as he was back then.

  • NM

His name is Abdul Rahman, but he was lovingly referred to as NM. Well, maybe not by all, but I loved the guy. Someone who was good with his English back then, but who had it in him to take initiatives and be on top. He was the one who trusted me and helped me get a “food pass” – a permission for students who had their homes close by to go out of the school compound, have lunch from there and come back. Why did I get one when my home was a half an hour bus ride away? To go to some other Masjid during our Friday breaks, and I would eat from the hotel.

My friend Shereef was the one who helped me present the lie that my family was friends with his family near to school and hence I could go out.

Both of us did confess this before we left school. I knew I couldn’t live with it if I didn’t tell NM about it. I didn’t exploit his trust for anything illegal or even remotely bad. I was silently rebelling against the school’s enforcement of their religious school of thought.

I mentioned this to him and we had a hug and a good laugh about it. For a moment I wished I could relive as his student.

  • Asiya miss

As I mentioned at the beginning, the “teacher whom my Mother entrusted me to”. I’ll skip the “looked exactly the same” comments since all the teachers did look the same.

  • Reena miss

Our mathematics teacher. She immediately recognized me and it made me wonder what really a committed teacher’s perspective feels like during that time when their children graduate and leave school. When it is not just about the monthly pay, but more about seeing, wishing, hoping and nurturing a student.

At that moment, I was back and I thanked her.

  • Suprabha miss

My English teacher. The one who gave me this gift back in the day. I can’t remember what it was for, but it has always been there.

I proudly went up to her and told her how one of her students, who learnt English from her, had published a short story book. That moment where her face lit up was priceless. The first thing I did after getting back home from the event was to order and send her a copy of the book.

  • Hamid sir, Azeem sir, Shaima miss, Shiji miss, Anoop sir, Nimmi miss, Mujeeb sir

All of them who played a part in who I am today, the morals I keep and the compassion with which I see anyone who wishes to learn.

The teachers I had in my mind whom I couldn’t meet were Basheer sir (both English & Maths), Ali OP sir (Social Science), Zameena miss (English), Haris sir (Maths), Arun Kumar sir (Physics),

6. Friends:

Not the exhaustive list. Left to right – Rithin, yours truly, Luqman, Jamal, Shabeer, Sabir, Thanveer, Safwan, Ranjith, Vasih, Raqeeb, Ramsi, Arshad, Asif, Muneef & Rashid.

Both Faisal & Shabeer aren’t in that photo.

I could remember. Well, at least most of them.

The same feeling I had about tech communities around the world I’ve involved with. Except for some dude who reached towards late noon whom I couldn’t remember, and was pretty offended that I asked him his name that he wouldn’t tell it. Rahi or something, I heard the others call him. Well, there’s always one or two like that.

Giving the benefit of doubt, acceptance and making you feel comfortable in one’s presence. This is what I felt, along with the pleasure of just being able to remember.

We had the usual chats, photoshoots, conversations ranging from the details of the body’s nervous systems to how LLMs and AI applications work, and about the different teachers and experiences. It was a really wide berth and time was a luxury.

I, quite proudly at that too, told how I proclaimed to Khalid sir (I hope I got his name right) back in 4th standard that “I don’t love her, but I will marry her” about a girl called Ramsiya / Ramseena. It was as if that was the worst thing I could do to her because of some fight or something.

Somewhere between 6th to 10th, I had told Jubin how pissed off I was at the X-MEN movies casting Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. A fake made up character I hold so close to my heart that I genuinely wish I could just forget and believe in someone from the real world. I was angry about how lean and tall Hugh was while Wolverine was supposed to be short and full of muscles and was supposed to say “bub” all the time. He disagreed with me completely saying that Hugh Jackman was cool and looked really good. After almost 20 years now, I agree with him.

I could remember.

The friends I had in my mind whom I couldn’t meet were Hashim, Abid, Aseem, Andru, Jubin, Abdul Rahim (4th standard), Fasil Hassan, Shereef & Sameer. However, it didn’t matter that much. Whoever I met and was able to talk to itself made me feel content in a way I hadn’t felt in a long long time.

Apart from the entrance and the moment with Abbas sir, the one time I really lost it was when I was having a frank talk with Safwan. I had to turn away, clench my teeth and fists to hold myself together. As I was saying, he noticed and gave me my time. An extremely small gesture, but one of those things I value so much.

7. The Departure:

There were a bunch of photo shoots after this and I could feel my lack of an afternoon nap was catching up. I was drifting away and started blankly staring here and there. It was around 4 or so by then and a bunch of us decided to visit all of the classes we had sat in. While walking with this intention in mind is when I started hallucinating a bit. I was thinking too much, and loving the moments so much, and I wasn’t prepared for it. I got into one of the random classes, just pushed away something that was there on the benches and sat bent down with my head in my arms.

Rithin & Ranjith were concerned, offering to help. I was touched. However, I realized I had to go. I bid them a quick goodbye, and to whoever I met on the way out, got the next bus back home.

Wrapping up

1. TP

I hate TP. However, I could remember. The hate & pleasure in seeing TP getting what’s coming is exactly what TP would’ve wanted for the students. That hate & sadism is not something to be nurtured. It was long lived, but maybe not wanting to be like that is what made me help so many of my juniors in college and other people in the communities around the world. Now that I’ve finished pouring it out, I rest my case, and I forgive, and I hope. I hope. None of us are perfect, and we all have our flaws and our own demons to deal with. And sometimes we all just need a little help. I hope he finds the help he needs.

2. Girls

The much-too-strict separation of Boys & Girls starting from 5th standard manifested itself in weird different ways for different folks as far as I was able to have talks with. It really wasn’t worth it. I’m glad that they’ve embraced co-ed.

3. After the event

I decided on that day to be in touch. There are bonds that can be strengthened. For my friends like Hashim and Abid who never gave up on me, I’m going to be in touch and try to not make it just about me, but about the bigger picture.

4. The gift

I don’t remember what I got this for or who gave it to me, but it has been an integral part our Kitchen for almost 15 – 20 years now. So many people have eaten off it. Fruits, fries, chicken, dessert, you name it. It has guarded so many perishables acting as a lid. Most importantly, it has acted as a very entertaining toy for most of the kids in the family due to the noise it makes banging around. You can see the battle scars on it.

Soundtracks that helped me while writing this post:

1. Goo Goo dolls – I’m still here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUZwblurraA)

2. Kaleo – Way down we go (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCkyW7RE6Wk)

3. Emeli Sandé – Read all about it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNGEsU-BbHc)

4. Celtic Passion – The West Wind and The Munster Cloak (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVk_eG9AAbc)

5. Bryan Adams – On A Day Like Today (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMMG6ykb_7U)

6. Nathan Evans – Wellerman (Sea Shanty) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLR-ye-ZM4o)

by

DjangoCon Europe 2017!

Cyprus, Romania, Slovakia, Netherlands, Tajikistan, UK, Ireland, Ukraine, Germany, Switzerland, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia, China, Zimbabwe, Turkmenistan, Brazil, Greece, US, Australia, Chile, Slovakia, Slovenia, Georgia, Austria, Morocco, Namibia, India and Canada.

33324293123_dcb899ad6a_k

In the span of 7 days, those are the different countries which I met people from. Suffice to say, it was a delightful experience. A heartfelt thanks to all the organizers and volunteers for giving us this avenue to meet, greet, understand and grow. I’ll leave Iacopo’s tweet here:

TL;DR:

Proposal acceptance and the Visa process

After Iacopo told me around the last week of January 2017 that he’d like to have me present my proposal as a workshop at the conference, I was on cloud 9. It took a while to get the Visa process started. A special thanks to Elizabeth from Chinnocio for helping me with the Visa.

I guess the stars were not aligned and I could only get a date at the VFS on 21st March at Mumbai to submit my Visa application even though my flight tickets were already booked for 31st March. I never had a problem with any of my Visas before, but this time they decided to put a personal interview on 27th Morning.

Flew to Mumbai for 2nd time a week spending 20K (thanks Sanjay for letting me crash at your place!) and met possibly the first Italian in my life. A very kind, gracious and friendly man with whom I had the following conversation:

1. He looks at my salary invoices and bank statement.

Him: “These numbers don’t match”.
Me: “That’s how salaries work. There is a 10% Tax Deduction at source and we only get the rest.”
Him: “You expect me to do calculations? This doesn’t look like your salary to me. Where did you say you work again?”
Me: “Akshara Foundation – an NGO that works in the education space in Karnataka.”
Him: “An NGO? Like a Trust, right? You guys get Tax cuts and stuff right?”
Me: “…. Well, I am not sure about that. I am just a developer…”
Him: “I have to check if this… Akshara is real.. your salary doesn’t match, your employment contract doesn’t mention anything about the raise you got as well.”

2. He moves onto my Graduation certificate.

Him: “So you’re a Computer Science Engineer. Then why are working on websites? Seems like a very low job for your qualification.”
Me: “… I build websites… umm…”

3. Then he takes a look at the invitation letter from DjangoCon Europe and the copy of Iacopo’s passport.

Him: “I don’t know if we can accept this… It is simply a printout. I’ve never heard of DjangoCon Europe… How many people attend this?”
Me: “I guess around 250 – 300…?”
Him: “See? They have not mentioned it and you don’t seem sure too… How do I know if this is a real conference?”
Me: “Uh…? You can check the website… The organizers have sent the embassy a direct email…”
Him: “You have a printout of the email?”
Me: “No… I am sure if you check your mail you should be able to find it.”
Him: “No no… I will need a printout. I am still not sure… I’ll have to check about all of this. Okay you can go now.”

That sort of sums up the conversation. It didn’t help skipping breakfast and reaching there early so as to not miss my 9:00AM slot. Had to wait until 11:30AM before they called me in though. By the time I stepped out after this interview, I sincerely prayed they would just reject it already so that I wouldn’t have to go through all of this.

By this time, I had troubled Emanuela enough to send me all the receipts for the hotel booking and even new invitation letters. When I mentioned about this interview to her, I guess all of them got slightly angry and talked to their lawyer about the matter.

I reached back home on 28th morning and started looking into ticket cancellations. The stars again didn’t quite align. Suffice to say that even though the ticket was deemed “refundable”, the airlines informed me that the cancellations charges would come around to 80K while my flight booking price was 62K; meaning I would get no refund.

However, at 2:47PM, Emanuela pinged me on Slack and said they got news from the embassy saying my Visa was approved! Their lawyer directly called them embassy apparently. Seemed like they wanted to give me my Visa anyway, but just wanted to have some fun with me, which they had.

Checking the VFS status page, it didn’t show the courier tracking number. Called up the VFS and got the tracking number which said it was sent on 27th evening. Tried calling the tracking people on 29th morning to realize they were celebrating a Holiday and were not operational that day. Fingers crossed and waited without any updates. Upon checking the status on an instinct at 5:45PM, it showed the parcel had arrived at Calicut! (About a 100 miles away from where I live). Called up the delivery center, who said they won’t deliver it today since it is too late. Asked if my cousin could collect it on my behalf since he was about to return home from work. They first insisted on a signed approval letter from me which I pleaded and told them was in no way possible since I was a 100 miles away. Finally they agreed to it. Cousin got it and I got my passport with the Visa on 29th night.

By the way, it was a state wide strike on 31st of March in Kerala and my flight was on 31st evening. Our driver, my Dad and I were like:

blues

Arriving at Florence and DjangoGirls

I had an uneventful flight COK ✈️MUC✈️FLR. I had made it a point to never take check-in language whenever I fly. I stuck to that and traveled with 1 laptop bag containing all my clothes plus one backpack with my laptop. Heh. However, it was on the way that I realized Florence didn’t have Uber. For a person who bought a smart phone *only* to use Uber, that was quite catastrophic.

The main low point of my entire stay (and I am sure most of you are going to kill me for this) was the hunt to get food that I liked to eat on a daily basis. It didn’t help at all that I was quite conservative about it as well. So my daily routine was something like:

Breakfast: 7 bread slices with scrambled eggs from Hotel Delle Nazioni.
Lunch: 2 Filet-o-Fish McDonald’s burger.
Dinner: Chicken Biriyani from Zafferano.

The day I reached was slightly tougher since the airbnb that I booked was at Novoli. It was about 3kms away from the city center and didn’t have too many options around.

On April the 2nd, I woke up quite early in the hopes of finding one of the McDonald’s nearby open. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. My host had told me to about this call-and-go radio taxi thing. I called the number and the person said quite a lot of Italian that I could not understand. Once I heard “address”, I told him the google maps location that I had jotted down.

I got the Taxi, showed the driver my intended destination and he got me to the DjangoGirls venue. I was slightly early and extremely hungry. I was hoping the others at the venue would know the places around where I could catch a bite from. However, either they didn’t understand my seriousness or they were completely bogged down with the organizing activities. Suffice to say, I had to walk out on a whim hunting for some place to eat something.

It was a Sunday morning and at 8.30AM, all the places on the map were closed except for a biker hangout. I was again afraid of embarrassing myself and hoped I would find at least one other place to eat. Long story short, I didn’t, and ended up walking into this biker hangout and asking “Anything ve-ge-ta-rian?”.

The salesman didn’t understand it at first, but when I slowly repeated “vegetarian”, he asked me, “vegetarian sandwich?” in a strong Italian accent. I happily nodded and waited for the promised food. I felt so helpless and lonely at that point.

He brought me a cold, thick & hard bread sliced in the middle, stuffed with cold cabbage and some other vegetable. Cold. Hard. I missed home, so much. I somehow ate it since staying hungry while having to teach was not an option.

The DjangoGirls event itself was, however, quite a memorable experience. It started on a low since all three girls assigned to me had to withdraw at the last moment. Even before I realized that had happened, one girl simply walked in to the event. Kathy Zhou from China. She was assigned to me. So were two other random attendees – Vera from Russia and Madsie from Canada. We were set.

All three were extremely new to programming, except for Vera who had some shell scripting background. It was so gratifying seeing their excitement and enthusiasm making the Python shell print lists and dictionaries. Those few special moments make teaching worth it.

Kathy and Madsie jelled well together since both of them were completely beginners and were working their way through the tutorial together. Vera, however, was captivated by python lists. Her interest and curiosity led me to explain list slicing in detail, each operation sending her into a fit of joy. It was a real pleasure seeing her picking it up and trying random things by herself.

Madsie with her quick wit and humor kept the morale and mood of the team at a high. At certain moments we laughed so hard that we got tears in our eyes. It was fun, all the while, making progress through the tutorial. They couldn’t complete the entire tutorial, but I am sure all of them got a good head start into trying things out. And I am intentionally leaving out what happened after I showed them how to use inspect element to view and change stuff around on the browser. Let’s just say that my Twitter account was the guinea pig.

It was at the event that I met Laura, Ambra & Emanuela – all of whom I had interacted with during my Visa process. Ending the day, we took quite a few pictures and finally Ambra booked a cab for me to get to my hotel.

Checking into Hotel Delle Nazioni, the staff told me my “roommate” was already in my room 304. I went and knocked, not really knowing what to expect and wondering how to greet and…

The door opened. I saw him and I exclaimed, “Hamub!”.

“Humphrey”, he corrected me politely.

“Yes yes. Wow! What a coincidence! Did they intentionally put us in together? Wow, this is such a pleasant surprise”, I was full of excitement and childish joy.

DjangoCon Europe – The Conference and sprints

The concept of food scared me for some reason. I was so worried that I would embarrass myself in front of others due to my eating style that I finally did it during the Speaker’s dinner. Later on that.

I was quite relieved to find Bread and scrambled eggs for breakfast at the hotel though.

“Ah! At least something I used to eat back at home. Thank God I won’t have to stay hungry until Lunch”, I thought to myself. I used to stuff myself with 8 or 9 bread slices and scrambled eggs everyday morning. After all, you should eat like a King for your breakfast, correct?

Having been at the forefront of getting about a 1000 people registered for PyCon India within 45 minutes, I waltzed my way towards the venue enjoying the lovely weather and the already bustling city center.

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I was greeted by that queue at the front of the venue. However, that was a blessing in disguise as I met Mujavvid and Imdad while I was waiting in the queue. Queuing friends, I suppose. Both of them were from London. Although I’ve always found it harder to understand British English than both American and Australian, I enjoy listening to British English more than the others. Suffice to say I had a lovely chat with these two Gentlemen.

I am not the one who usually attends all the talks at any conference. If the topic feels like something that I would want to discuss with the speaker about afterwards, then I pay attention to the talk. Otherwise I usually depend on the recordings and spend my time at the conference hanging out in the open spaces and having as much conversation as I can.

That didn’t quite work out this time since “open spaces” were very limited. A pet peeve probably, but that’s the only thing I found as a downside to my entire experience. I made up for it by picking random folks to sit beside during each talk. Worked quite well, I say.

Conversations mostly revolved around the technology scene in their respective countries. Economy, life, work-life balance and their day to day job.

The conversations:

It was super exciting to catch up with Flavio and Lais. Filipe from Vinta Software had introduced me to both of them a month before the trip. (A special thanks to Vinta and these folks for cdrf.co).  We ran into each other more than a couple of times, each time drawing a new tangent to the existing conversation, exploring Brazil’s history, the naming rules (ha, junior!), the portugese and of course, Django.

The Dubliners (whose names I just can’t seem to recollect) were a jolly bunch. Interestingly enough, they’re the only ones ever whom I didn’t feel dumb asking the question “Hey, I met this other person from Dublin. Do you by any chance know them?”. Usually that’s a dumb question, but these three Gentlemen reassured me that the chances of Dubliners knowing each other were quite high. I’ve never made a secret of the fact that given a choice, Ireland would be the country where I would love to go and settle in. Someday, someday…

I ran into Kyriakos from Cyprus.

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With Bitlab Studio’s doors open, I finally bid farewell to Akshara with a heavy heart…

The History

The last two times I quit my job, despite both the companies helping me grow and explore tremendously on a personal and career level, I had enough frustration built up over various reasons which served as a valid excuse for my decision. However this time, it is slightly different.

Ask me about my first job at HasGeek anytime, and I will tell you how I grew with them from a college graduate who was afraid to speak English, who was afraid to travel, to someone who could confidently strike up a conversation with any stranger; to a person who pursued his career interests; to a person who made his dream of flying in a plane come true.

Ask me about my second job at Eventifier anytime, and I will tell you how gracious they were to accept me into their company as their first employee despite me having almost 0 skills in industry level programming. I’ve written about it in detail already. The opportunity that they gave me changed my life, and I will be forever thankful to them.

However, what didn’t quite make it onto the blog during my days at Eventifier was the fact that I had my first ever international trip! And that too accompanied by giving my first ever talk at a conference! Which was at Singapore. We’ll get to that in a bit.

Life during the KLP years + one of the biggest failures in my life

I joined Akshara Foundation‘s Karnataka Learning Partnership (KLP) back in November 2014 with a 15-hr per week schedule. This was one month before my marriage when I need some financial fortification. While during the succeeding months the folks at Eventifier slowly began to realize that it was probably a bad idea to let one of their full time employee take up a part time gig on the side, at that time, they felt it best that I made that decision. Goes to show how understanding and empathetic the three of them were.

The engagement with KLP remained as it is until April 2016, when I quit Eventifier and moved over to KLP on a 4-day per week contract. It has been so until now. Oh, and during that April is when my ThinkPad saved me from lightning by taking the hit itself and led me to evolution:

The nature of work, while relaxed, was very result oriented and gratifying. Our entire work is open source as well. We had a completely remote team, which allowed me to move out of Bangalore. I never truly paid attention to setting up a proper office setup at home and spent most of my time typing away on the bed. Believe it or not, this was my posture every day for better part of the year:

laptop-bed

See how happy I am!

My DjangoCon US trip and presentation happened in between this. I was doing a non-trivial amount of work with Django REST Framework which helped me come up with a presentation.

It was only after that conference that it hit me the lengths people would go to, to setup a proper working space at home. Even with that inspiration, this was as far as I got, and that too only for 2 – 3 hours a day:

The failure:

That happiness soon turned into one of my biggest failures in life. By October-ish, I started feeling slightly stagnant in terms of technology. Well, maybe not really. I guess I was just getting complacent. I kept an eye out for opportunities and ended up landing a part time gig with one of my programming heroes, Anand Chitipothu, to work along with him at Rorodata.

Mistake number 1: Taking up a 3-day per week part time gig while I already had a 4-day per week engagement with Akshara (even if the nature of work was just trivial maintenance at that point).

We got on fine at the beginning. I hadn’t even anticipated the trouble with time management. This ended up in me staying up till 2am or 3am in the mornings. My sleep cycle screwed up considerably.

Mistake number 2: Failing to realize quickly that the work pace and style at an NGO and at bootstrapping startup are completely different.

I was relaxed. I would sleep if I felt sleepy, I would goof off if I couldn’t concentrate, which all ended up in the work piling up from both the companies day after day. This started creating frustration for my colleagues as it was almost as if they couldn’t count on me to finish my job in time.

I remember arrogantly thinking the compliment that my first boss, Kiran, gave me while I was at HasGeek: “You’re good at getting shit done”.

Mistake number 3: I got extremely complacent. With that, even if I missed a day’s work, I would think “They aren’t going to fire me right? I am that good. Everyone is dying to hire me”.

With this attitude, lacking any proper working setup at home, a 7-day per week work schedule, on February 20th, Rorodata decided to terminate my contract. I wasn’t surprised as I remember telling my family that it wasn’t working out and probably I was going to get fired (although my ego never truly believed that).

However, during that week’s PyCon Pune, I had a long conversation with Nigel, who helped me figure out what all I needed to do to setup a proper work space at home.

I had a new monitor, cleaned up and made an office room, bought an office chair and everything setup. That’s when I had to leave Rorodata.

Life goes on…

That was a blow, a very severe one, to my ego. I never quite came to terms with it really. It hurt bad. Real bad. I realized I sucked big time. Almost twice a week for the next 3-4 months after that, I would sulk away into a corner brooding about the opportunity that I had completely destroyed. It was a dream job, and I just… sigh…

Even though that nagged me all the time, I still had to keep up my work at KLP. The notion of being fired and unemployment scared me. I got my shit together and concentrated on work like never before. I learned my lesson.

The last few months

We had our yearly meeting during March 15th. The fact that everyone involved, at the core, worked to create meaning for Children’s education, and was not working for profit or make a huge exit, gave the work culture an interesting atmosphere.

The slack conversations and personal chats almost revolved around personal and practical problems in the society rather than the next coolest thing happening in the tech world.

The main difference I felt was not having that feeling of “your boss is good and friendly, but at the end of the day wants you to work really hard so she/he can make huge lump of money sometime down the line”. That wasn’t there. At all.

Work hard so that we can bring about sustainable change which will impact children’s education. If you couldn’t connect with that, you won’t be able to work long at this place.

It was relaxing, it was fun, and most importantly it was extremely gratifying. As I used to say, “Now I can show my Mom and Dad what I am really doing with my skills!”.

The last few months had been tremendous. We were evolving. From Karnataka Learning Partnership, we were growing into India Learning Partnership. A huge database unification process along with introducing a data scientist into the team has stirred the organization in quite an exciting path.

Oh, and also I got a chance to attend and speak at DjangoCon Europe.

I was researching on managing multi-state data with a single Django app and allowing organizational access one fine day when….

Enter Bitlab Studio!

Remember me mentioning my first ever international trip and conference talk? Well, the organizer of PyCon Singapore that year was Mr. Martin Brochhaus. I follow him on Twitter. Games, bitcoins and Singapore+Python is what I usually see from him. On June 8th, I simply, just like that, decided to DM him about what the scene in Singapore is and if there would be any opportunity there for a Django guy like me.

We had a brief chat where he talked about the state of tech and what people usually made around those parts. We ended the chat by him telling that he would keep an eye out for me and asking me to send him a resume, if I had one.

22 days passed by before I remembered that I hadn’t sent him my Resume. On June 30th, I sent it to him, he said he’d talk to his team and get back to me. I was like “wut”.

We did a video call two days after, everyone got to know each other and they asked me to jump in! By the coincidence of coincidences, it was exactly during those few months that they were pondering to hire a new employee.

The now and the future

Like I mentioned at the very beginning of this post, that last two times I quit, I had enough frustration built up. However in July, with a heavy heart, I told the KLP team about my opportunity at Bitlab studio.

As much they were worried about letting me go, they understood that this was an offer I couldn’t refuse and a good opportunity for my career growth. They allowed me to work for 3 hrs a day for the last two months with Bitlab, which I did.

Marvelous Martin (founder), Tremendous Tobi (Co-founder) and Delightful Dan (first employee) are extremely cool cats to work with. (* cough * * cough *… edited to avert waterboarding threats). The fact that Martin mentored both of them to a large extent reflects in their conversations with me. They know that I need time to get accustomed and to grow. Patiently explaining frontend technology to a 3-year experienced backend dev like me takes extreme restraint – and they have that.

So yeah, there it is! They are happy with my work over the last two months and now I am a Bitlab Studio employee! It is a completely remote gig with a yearly retreat. I am learning, working and getting trained on ReactJS already while I continue to help them develop and maintain a client’s infrastructure.

Super excited and super happy about this opportunity. I realize my drawbacks, things that I need to work on improving and to keep myself motivated for a remote working engagement now. While I hope, pray and work towards making this the best that it can be, the cracks are already beginning to show. 😛

I wish my teammates at KLP the best. They definitely have an exciting path ahead, both impact and technology wise. I am sure they will scale out and realize the dream of an India Learning Partnership in the near future.

Twitter comments:

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7 facts about the VAC & US Consulate Visa Center, Chennai.

Very recently, I had the opportunity to apply for a US Visa, and thankfully, get it approved as well. However, it was not without its troublesome and frustrating moments, a few of which I’d like to list down so that you can brace yourselves.

Keep in mind that the interview happens across two days:

The first day is at the VAC, behind the Good Shepherd square on the Kodambakam high road. They will scan your fingerprint and then take your mug shot.

The second day is at The Consulate itself. You’ll have your Visa interview here.

1. The VAC respects your time slot.

When you reach the VAC, you will be greeted with a humongous queue outside the walls. Worry not. The watchman at the gate respects the time slots that people applied for. If you just walk up to the front of the queue and show your appointment confirmation, he will let you through provided your time slot is within the next half an hour.

2. The VAC allows mobile phones inside.

You can take your cell phones inside. At one of the gates, they will ask you to take it out, and switch it off in front of them. You will be scanned thoroughly and asked to display any metallic object on you, including keys, your wallet and even your belt, if you have one.

3. The sign!

You’ll see a very… peculiar sign board outside the gates saying “DS form correction done very quickly and very cheap. Contact auto stand”. A couple of us had a nice laugh reading that loud again and again. Apparently, the first step at the VAC is checking for discrepancy in your DS forms. I did not see anyone being sent back, but make sure to have exactly the same details both on your passport and your DS form.

4. The Consulate does not care about your time slot.

I had booked the time slot for 8:00AM. When I reached near the embassy at around 7:35AM, there was this massive queue outside the walls, outside the barricade on the side walk. This was apparently the queue to just get inside the barricade that takes you to the door that will lead you inside the walls of the Consulate.

I went and queued up. A minute later, I simply asked the person in front of me whether he was there for the 8:00AM slot. He graciously replied that he was there for the 10:30AM appointment! I felt a shudder down my spine. Frustrated, I walked over onto the front through the highway (yes, we are queuing on the sidewalk of a highway) just beside the queue. Before I could ask the person standing there in a purple tucked in shirt and black pants regarding time slots, a couple of police officers came and shoved the few of us there on the highway back to the rear of the queue. All of them only spoke Tamil, so whatever I tried to communicate in English fell on deaf ears and they waved us all back to the rear.

Within these 5 minutes, the queue had grown to a +15 people. I went and stood behind them, patiently. By the time the queue was half done (it was 7:52AM then), a certain gentleman came up from the rear of the queue and asked me my time slot. Upon hearing my reply, he said his was at 8:30AM and asked me whether he could stand behind me in the queue. After a minute, I asked him to hold my place. I again went over the front and boldly stepped up to the man in purple shirt.

He was a very gentle and calm person who had just the right words for any sort of query you put to him.

He’d say: “Queue”.

I tried phrasing my concern of the 8:00AM appointment in three different ways to which I got the “Queue” answer all three times. I went back and joined the queue. All this while, all the other time slot people ranging from 8:30AM to 11:00AM went ahead in front of me.

5. The Consulate strictly forbids you from taking in any mobile phones, bags, pen drives, etc.

Even though this was clearly written on the appointment confirmation, I thought it was ridiculous that they would really expect people to not show up with cell phones. I mean, I had just taken an Uber to get to the place!

Suffice to say, after passing the initial purple shirt guy and getting inside the barricade, the security guard outside the front door thoroughly searches everyone and just says “No cell phones, pen drives and bags allowed inside”. No debate there.

6. The “Personal belongings deposit counter!”

Ha, this is great. While you would notice a small metal cart being manned by two shabbily dressed old gentlemen with these words above written on them standing in your way while you make your way into the barricade, you’ll most probably brush away the feeling that it has anything to do with you. Well, like it or not, if you have any belongings with you that is not allowed inside the embassy, then your only option is to drop it off at this small metal cart!

Unless of course, you have another person (friend / family) waiting for you on the highway being hauled by the police every other minute or so.

Suffice to say, I had to give my Moto G3 and Nokia 2690 phones at this counter in order to get into the embassy. They charge 10 bucks for safe keeping. They will print two receipts with your passport number on them, one of which you will have to sign which they will keep, and the other to keep with you.

NOTE: You might find people desperately hunting for 10 rupees to pay these safe keeping gentlemen. If you happen to see anyone like that, have a mind to just give the 10 rupees and help them out.

7. Special language queues.

I think that we enter our primary language or “Language in which I would like to have my Visa interview in” at some point while filling up our application form. The thing is, if your application has this “language” field as anything other than “English”, then you will be taken out of the primary queue, and given another language queue, for each languages (Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil). These queues have seats. So you can sit and relax while waiting for your chance while all the “English” language people have to wait in this huge queue waiting for at least 40 minutes to get your chance.

Well, that’s about it. Just thought of sharing these points so that you know these are for real.

Apart from these, I booked my accommodation at St. Xavier’s guest house for 650 bucks a night. I must say these people put the word “budget” in “budget hotel”! It was good enough for a one night stay, but if you’re the type who wants everything to be crystal clean and well serviced, then this might not be the place for you.

Also, while you’re waiting for the interview in the queue, you can actually see others’ interviews being conducted right in front of you at all the counters. You will see interesting questions, emotions, rejections and acceptances as well. Be strong and be confident. If your case is solid, then you don’t need to worry.

I got my B1/B2 Visa and am pretty excited about attending & speaking at Djangocon in two weeks!

Many thanks to Elizabeth from Chinnocio for helping me out with the Visa application process.

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Help me pick a story.

At times when you least expect it, is when you suddenly get a whiff of a lovely idea for a story. I’ve had more than a few such instances and even though a few of those ideas have materialized into stories on this blog, I’ve lost even more due to putting it off for another time.

This is the way I found in order to let those ideas remain, so that I have one to pick from whenever I feel like writing. Below, you can find the ideas that I have in mind right now. As much as this is just a reminder/reference for me, I’m putting this up as a blog post so that you can tell me which story you would like me to write first. Leave a comment if you feel like it.

Currently started drafts:
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1. A long life, and a few last words.

Last words of an old Tree.

2. The Lost Ones.

The land of characters made up by authors, who never make it to books.

Lingering ideas:
———————

1. The Seed of Eternity.

His journey seeking the seed of eternity. Believed to contain the entire history of Earth, passed on from generation to generation. A certain plant/tree or a community of them are responsible for guarding and nourishing the seed of eternity within each generation before passing it onto the next. His quest leads him to places unknown, where he learns the language of the Green and listens to the stories they have to say.

2. The Village of Kadur.

A remote village located at the foot of a mountain range. The arrival of the supply truck that reaches Kadur once every year is considered to be the Holy day. Celebrations and Festivals happen around the day the truck arrives. Even the elders of the village remember the truck reaching Kadur on the same day every year since their childhood. The story speaks about the mysterious driver, and about that day when the truck does not show up…

3. His Journey to Salvation. (Half baked story idea)

Software Engineers, heroes of the digital world. The days of yore and the stories of brave knights and brave adventurers setting out on dangerous journeys to slay the dragon or fetch the Excalibur are over. With planes, automobiles and arms, they are heroes no more. The world today is at the fingertip of people who command the greatest knowledge over the digital world. Their nemeses fight hidden and are never known. Join our hero as he sets off on his quest to brave the odds and slay the nemesis once and for all, saving our World and restoring peace to the era.

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A review on Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere.

Prologue
————-

It was during the September of 2014 that I enjoyed watching Will Smith movies so much that I stumbled upon the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. From then on since last week, the “purpose”, the “thing”  that I made sure I did everyday was to watch at least one episode of The Fresh Prince. I did not enjoy it as much as I did Mind Your Language, but you do know how these TV series grow on you, don’t you? Free time meant finishing off as much as I can of the series.

What a sad life.

I remember back in my 11th grade how our TV got burnt from a lightning. I got so bored back then that I took a Calvin & Hobbes comic lying around in the junk (yes, I had left it in the junk box) and read it. I got hooked onto “reading” from that moment on. However, over the past one year, reading had come down to technical documentation, random blog posts from Twitter, etc. It was when I finished The Fresh Prince and I saw I had free time in a day, that I simply picked up Neil’s Neverwhere and flipped through it.

It was amazing.

I must say the first book that I read by Neil Gaiman was Smoke & Mirrors. I was not too impressed, not to say confused, suffice to say I kept it back nicely in my stash after the first few pages. I bought and read Ocean At the End of the Lane afterwards, which I must say, I did not quite enjoy again, although I finished it. I read Sandman and I absolutely loved it, but it was a bit too expensive to keep buying and it was a comic book.

Having had that experience with Neil’s books, I came to the conclusion that his writing is not as engaging and interesting as his talks and speeches. Even then, he did inspire me. You can understand how much if you read through A Fortunate Evening. It was only last week that I found out he had endorsed the exact story that I had written, already through this cartoon of his: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEKheZs2dkg. Thanks to my brother Noufal for sharing it with me.

Why I am so motivated to write this review is because I spent 7 hours yesterday reading. 3 and 4 hours continuously. The last time I did that was with Lord of The Rings, almost 4 years back.

Review
———–

In that cartoon of his, he says that one of the few sentences that any writer loves the most to hear from their readers is, “What happens next?”. The moment that question arises in a readers mind, the writer gets that grin on his face, thinking, “Now I’ve got you in the palm of hands. BUHAHAHAH!”.

First few pages into Neverwhere, that is exactly the question that came into my mind. Even with the last two pages remaining, I could not contain my curiosity. I postponed a meeting with an institution by half an hour just to get through to the end of the book.

One of the most interesting things that struck me about the book was the way his imagination was working. If you are ‘just’ a passionate reader, you’ll zip right through the book, traversing a terrible world, experiencing things that you might have never imagined before. However, if you’ve ever flexed your creative muscles, trying to talk about the non-existent, trying to convince people of it, then you will see what I mean by saying I found it of interest to see how his imagination worked.

During several instances while going through the book, not because the writing was not engaging, but because I had tried to walk down the same road of writing fiction, I was intentionally able to disconnect, take a few steps back and look at what was happening. You could immediately feel the way Neil was having fun, taking advantage of his creative liberties. Being a reader, you will never feel the occurrences to be vague, but the moment you try to see it is a fiction story, you could seem him using the elements around him to build upon what he has. The feeling of connect was truly exhilarating.

The intertwined story telling really built up the excitement. It was almost like that Guitar solo when Joker was upto something in those Nolan Batman movies. From the reading time of switching between two story lines, you could judge how far the climax of that specific part was. This itself gives you the urge to keep going forward, if the story itself is not enough.

The story ending was not one of the best that I have read, but that doesn’t bother me one bit. A good read allows you to create a universe and characters inside it, and relate to them as if you had met them just two days back. I would read any book to get that feeling, which Neverwhere definitely imparted. You will find yourself a lovely sister in Door, two terrible menaces in Croup and Vandemar and an unassuming random-everyday Joe in Richard Mayhew. Although the book did not have any ‘extreme’ moments, so to speak, as there were in Lord of The Rings, it still gave a pleasant reading experience.

If you are a lover of fiction/fantasy, then Neverwhere is definitely recommended.

Epilogue
———–

Not particularly in relation with this specific book, but when I finished reading the story, I realized that words was one of the greatest gifts that God has given humanity. The more you learn how to understand words, and how to wield it, the stronger you become as a person.

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Uninvited savior.

Getting down from the bus, he slowly walked over to his office, which was a ten minute walk away. It was early in the morning, and he could see the health conscious people running their rounds in the parks, the shop owners lighting up the small lamp in front of their deities, hoping and praying for a good day of business, the birds leaving their nests in search of their day’s fill, the servants of the home walking their masters’ dogs and like so, the city slowly waking up and coming to life.

What hurt him most was seeing those little kids, on such cold mornings, with their heavy bags and sleepy eyes, waiting for their ride on the express way to hell. Many of them called it school. He knew of parents who just wanted their kids out of their way so that they could work, enjoy and have their own lives. He could not help but wonder then why they brought these poor little souls into this world in the first place. He hated school.

His stride was slow. There was no hurry. Unlike the other days, today he had no song on his lips. He was lost in thought thinking of the suffering that many kids had to face in the name of education. To make things worse, child molesters lurked in every nook and corner. It was only recently that a drug gang was busted near an Upper Primary School in his village. Evil had its roots so close to our loved ones, closer than us, pampering and calling to them in their most vulnerable and private moments.

All of a sudden, a van turned around the corner and screeched past him. The ghastly face of the children inside told him all that he needed to know.  In an instant, he picked up a big branch that was lying close to him and threw it at the van. The bewildered driver applied the brakes and tried to turn into the next lane. However, within a few seconds, he had jumped on the fence, ran across and caught up with the van.

He banged on the driver’s door, making the van come to a complete stand still. The screams of the children within got his adrenaline pumped up, and he pulled open the door. He caught the driver by his collar and threw him out of the van, yelling at him.

“You nasty little piece of shite. You ain’t kidnapping anyone today!”

The commotion had got few of the neighbours out. They ran and caught him while he was landing punch after punch on the driver’s skinny face, whose slightly protruded teeth was bleeding by then.

“What are you doing!? That’s the driver taking those kids to school!”, shouted one of them.

“Let go of me! I just saved those kids from this sick kidnapper!”, he retorted.

“Are you crazy?”

“Ask them!”, he shouted and ran over to the back of the van. He opened the door and asked, “Don’t worry, don’t worry. Everything’s fine now. Uncle has taken care of the bad man. Tell me, how did he get you?”

“We are going to school uncle. We got in the van from our homes”, one of the kids replied, to which all the other kids nodded approvingly in unison.

“But.. but.. I saved you… You don’t have to. You can get out.. I saved you…”

The realization slowly dawned on him. He lowered his gaze, and fell on his knees, and sat there, a defeated man.

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Weekend PythonExpress workshop at BMSIT, Bangalore.

Arun taking it away!

That’s Arun. Jovial, cool, slightly crazy and a nice guy who is as curious as a 5 year old all the time about the things happening around him.

Santosh, the celebrity of BSMIT.

That’s Santosh. Don’t get him started on being sarcastic. He’ll just have too much fun. A pure geek since his college days, there are very few people around whom he is not acquainted with.

Yours truly.

Last but not the least, yours truly.

Arun, Santosh and I planned to do a beginner level Python workshop at the BMSIT Engineering college as a part of the Python Express initiative. Karthik, who was the organizer, was only too happy to welcome us. The three of us decided to use Anand’s Python Practice Book as a guide. We were planning to cover until Object Oriented Programming. However, there was no point in rushing through.

The idea was to get the kids comfortable with Python. Both Arun and Santosh realized this very well. During the introductory session, which was handled by Arun, he quickly gauged that most of the students were not even comfortable using the interpreter. He took his time, teaching them about variables, strings and conditional statements, by giving them enough exercises to work on as well as using his incredible humour and charm to keep the crowd engaged.

Arun - The man.

Only Santosh and I knew it was his first ever session. No one could have guessed. He was in the zone and a couple of kids came and personally thanked him for making the introduction so welcoming that they were motivated to sit through the entire session. One of them even skipped lunch to stay back!

Way to go Arun!

He finished his session by 12:20PM when we broke for lunch. The lunch was exceptionally good and we had a full stomach by the end of it. We got back and it was about time for Santosh to start his session.

The poor guy had a really sore throat. We tried to arrange speakers, but they were even less audible than one’s voice. In a room with ~100 young, energetic, curious youth, you had to shout at the top of your voice to have your voice heard. That is exactly what Santosh did.

Santosh in charge.

He lost himself among the crowd and did not care about his voice. He had a keen sense of understanding the audience well and dynamically changing his presentation style to suit them.

We had a box of chocolates around. Every time someone finishes a problem first, they are awarded a delicious chocolate! We really needed to buy a bigger box.

Gauging the exhaustion on the face of many, we decided to wrap up our workshop around 4 by finishing off a quick peep into file handling.

I must say it felt good to have been back at a college. When I was roaming around the lab, I noticed most of them earnestly taking down notes in a notebook out of the fear that they would be missing some point. To one of the guys, I asked,

“Hey, will you really be referring back to these notes again?”

He: “Absolutely! Not all of it, but many points in it”.

“Alright”, I said and went around.

While I was passing this young man a second time, he called me and said,

“To be honest, no. I don’t think I will be referring to this at all”

“Thanks for not lying to me”, I said with a smile.

It was good to meet Karthik, who was the one coordinating the entire thing. It was interesting to know he was a Linux Kernel lover who was cracking his head on getting deep into it. Dharshan, his friend, one with a very soothing personality, was a great help in getting us around the venue as well as with the setup.

I did not get to know many of their names, but I remember Aranya, a college student who is an “investment consultant”. Yeah, no kidding. I have his card right here. Also Utkash, who was really keen on getting to understand the intricacies of the Internet. Then there was Kunal, who was from the EEE stream, but interested in programming. A very enthusiastic lad.

All in all, it was a day well spent. Malaysia was extremely fun (long story) and after hanging around the front gate for a while, our cab came at around 5 and we were on our way.

I should do this more often.

 

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An introduction to Redis – PyCon Singapore 2014.

The following is the transcript of the talk “Redis – What, why and where” that I gave at PyCon Singapore 2014. You can find the slides down below. Try as I might, I was not able to embed the slides from slides.com. So I have shared the links.

My talk was on Friday, 20th June, 2014 at 1:00PM.

—-

Ladies and gentlemen,

Do you know what my prayer was the moment I knew I got my talk selected? That I would not be allocated a slot right after lunch. Yet here we are.

You must be wondering why a dude from India has come all the way over to Singapore and is giving a talk on Redis at a Python conference. Well, I believe you’ll have the answers to those questions by the time I am done with my talk. This is intended for a beginner level audience and as such, if you have already implemented redis in your stack, then you might be a little disappointed.

There are times when, in your Django web application, you need a certain specific data to be saved. Let me give you an example. Let us say you are gathering all the tweets for the Football World Cup. You hit the Twitter API and tweets are pouring in by the second. How do you keep a counter? Of course, put a Python variable in the loop and keep incrementing.

tweets = fetch_tweets(hashtag = "#WorldCup2014") #Use the Twython Library
count = 0
for tweet in tweets:
    entities = process_tweet(tweet)
    count = count + 1

The only problem is that if another process/view wants to display it, it won’t be able to access it.

Which means you should have persistence. If you’re using Postgres or any other SQL database for that matter, you could have a field that would allow you to keep the count or maybe do a count(*) on your Tweets model each time you want to get the total number of tweets.

#Assume you have defined a model Tweet
count = Tweet.objects.all().count()

The count(*) option is going to get your SQL query to execute quite slow once you have about 20000 rows or so.

#Assume you have defined a model Stat to store the count which has a field tweet_count
Stat.objects.get(hashtag = "#WorldCup2014").update(tweet_count = F('tweet_count') + 1)

The next option being to increment the count within the Postgres field. This has an immense potential to lead you into race conditions and thereby screwing up your count.

So a fast, reliable and persistent solution is to have redis. Believe it or not, you can use this as an actual Database because of its persistence. All you need to do is to get the redis server up and running on your machine, use the redis-py Python library to increment a “key” by one each time a new tweet comes in. You don’t even need to “initialize” the key. The increment command creates a key if it is not already present and increments it. Really neat. Hence, redis is a persistent key-value based NoSQL Data storage.

import redis #We are using the redis-py library
r = redis.StrictRedis()

tweets = fetch_tweets(hashtag = "#WorldCup2014")
for tweet in tweets:
    entities = process_tweet(tweet)
    r.incr("tweets_count", amount = 1)

count = r.get("tweets_count")

Now, persistence is not the only thing that makes Redis useful. Suppose you just don’t stop with counting tweets. You count the pictures, videos and other links form within them. Also, you are doing the same with Facebook as well. Now you have two sources and their corresponding fields. Intuitively, a dictionary comes to mind. Name of one dictionary would be “Twitter” and the other one “Facebook”. Each of them will have fields “statuses”, “photos”, “links”, etc.

Guess what? Redis has a dictionary data type and let’s you do exactly this. The various types of in-built data types that it provides is fantastic. People tend to call it the data structure server due to this reason.

import redis
r = redis.StrictRedis()

tweets = fetch_tweets(hashtag = "#WorldCup2014")
for tweet in tweets:
    entities = process_tweet(tweet)
    r.hincrby("Twitter", "tweets_count", amount = 1)
    if "photo" in entities:
        r.hincrby("Twitter", "photo_count", amount = 1)
    if "video" in entities:
        r.hincrby("Twitter", "video_count", amount = 1)
    if "link" in entities:
        r.hincrby("Twitter", "link_count", amount = 1)

twitter_photos_count = r.hget("Twitter", "photo_count")
...

posts = fetch_fb_posts(hashtag = "#WorldCup2014")
for post in posts:
    entities = process_post(post)
    r.hincrby("Facebook", "posts_count", amount = 1)
    if "photo" in entities:
        r.hincrby("Facebook", "photo_count", amount = 1)
    if "video" in entities:
        r.hincrby("Facebook", "video_count", amount = 1)
    if "link" in entities:
        r.hincrby("Facebook", "link_count", amount = 1)

fb_photos_count = r.hget("Facebook", "photo_count")
...

It supports 5 data types comprising of strings, sets, dictionaries, sorted sets and lists.

So, one, the persistence and two, the data types. These two are what makes Redis special.

Narcissism
———-

Oh and incidentally, I am Haris Ibrahim K. V. and I am from the southern most state of India called Kerala. I work as a Computer Science Engineer at a small company called Eventifier. I’ve been a Python developer only since the past 7 months and hence, have relatively lesser experience when it comes to programming. Although I have organized conferences and workshops by myself, as a part of my earlier job, this is my first ever talk at one. So there might be a few rusty edges. Do bare with me. Also, as a hobby and passion, I love writing.

Alright, enough with the narcissism. Let’s get back to business.

Redis stores its data in a Big In-Memory dictionary where they keys can only be strings, but the values can be any of the 5 data types that we mentioned earlier. Each of these data structures have their own implementation which will come to later. Let us go back to a few more use cases where you can use redis.

LEADER BOARD (using sorted sets)

Let’s talk about leader board. What I am trying to do here is to give you examples that cover all the 5 data structures that Redis provides so that you will know what to use where and why. Leader board. I am sure you are familiar with the concept of leaderboard, but for those among you who are not, it is place where the top 10 of something is shown. Top 10 or 20, it does not matter. But a list of entities sorted based on their rank.

An example should clarify this right away. Let’s go back to the football world cup example. The tweets are pouring in. Boy, reminds me of monsoon back at home. Anyway, You want to show the most retweeted tweets in descending order of their retweet count. This will give you an idea of what is trending for that particular hashtag. Now, what do you do? This is where the “sorted set” data type comes into picture. As the name suggests, it is a set, but sorted.

What is this sorted based on? Ah yes. So when you hear a sorted set, the picture that should come into your mind is a key with a value as a list of tuples. I use “tuples” in a loose sense. Once you have that picture in mind, this is how the structure would look like:

key: (score member) (score member)

All you need to do is to define a key called “trending_tweets” and then use the “zadd” redis command to specify the score as the number of retweets and the member as the “tweet text + username” or something.

import redis
r = redis.StrictRedis()

tweets = fetch_tweets(hashtag = "#WorldCup2014") #Use the Twython Library
count = 0
for tweet in tweets:
    entities = process_tweet(tweet)
    r.zadd("trending_tweets", tweet.retweet_count, tweet.text)

trending_tweets = r.zrange("trending_tweets", 0, -1)

You could also store the tweet ids as the members and just do a query on your SQL database to fetch tweets with those particular ids. This would work much better since sorted set is a set and it will be expensive to maintain uniqueness on members if they are huge chunks of text.

import redis
r = redis.StrictRedis()

tweets = fetch_tweets(hashtag = "#WorldCup2014") #Use the Twython Library
count = 0
for tweet in tweets:
    entities = process_tweet(tweet)
    t = Tweet.objects.create(tweet = tweet)
    r.zadd("trending_tweets", tweet.retweet_count, t.id)

trending_tweets = r.zrange("trending_tweets", 0, -1)
popular_tweet_list = []
for tweet_id in trending_tweets:
    popular_tweet_list.append(Tweet.objects.get(id = tweet_id))

To retrieve the top 10, use the “zrange” command and specify the indices. That should get you going.

CACHING (using list)

This introduces a new data type as well as a useful feature.

Redis allows you to set “expire” on certain keys. You can specify the key name and the number of seconds in which the key should expire. You might have already guessed it. Yes, you can implement a caching mechanism with this. The timeout remains valid as long as you only “alter” the keys using operations such as increment, add, etc. However, if you set the key once more or delete it, the deal is off. No timeout for you.

The way to implement this would be to first know what value want to be cached. Save that value into redis with a key. Call expire(key, seconds) and you’re done. What goes hand in hand with this is the TTL command. Known as Time To Live. As you could guess, this gives you the time left before a certain key expires. It returns -2 if the key has expired or -1 if an expire has not been set on the key to begin with. Pretty handy.

Let’s go back to the Football world cup tweets example once again. Suppose you want to showcase the photos that got retweeted the most every 5 minute or so. You might have to do something like fetching the popular tweets, get the corresponding photo url, push them into a list and set an expiry on that list’s name.

import redis
r = redis.StrictRedis()

tweets = fetch_tweets(hashtag = "#WorldCup2014") #Use the Twython Library
count = 0
for tweet in tweets:
    entities = process_tweet(tweet)
    t = Tweet.objects.create(tweet = tweet)
    r.zadd("trending_tweets", tweet.retweet_count, t.id)

trending_tweets = r.zrange("trending_tweets", 0, -1)
popular_tweet_list = []
for tweet_id in trending_tweets:
    popular_tweet_list.append(Tweet.objects.get(id = tweet_id))

if r.ttl("trending_photos") in [-1, -2]:
    for tweet in popular_tweet_list:
        r.rpush("trending_photos", tweet.media_url)
        trending_photos = r.lrange("trending_photos", 0, -1)
        r.expire("trending_photos", 120) #Expire in 2 minutes
else:
    trending_photos = r.lrange("trending_photos", 0, -1)

The list is a double ended list actually. You can insert at the left or the right. Accordingly you can pop from either side as well.

CREDITS

The first person whom I would like to thank is someone who deserves much more than me to be up on this stage and give this talk. However, he usually prefers to be behind the scenes, getting things done and motivate people to do things. He is my colleague and the CTO of the company I work for, Mr Nazim Zeeshan and there he is.

The second would be Sripathi. There is a company called HasGeek back in India who organizes technology conferences and workshops. They had organized a Redis miniconf recently where Sripathi gave a talk on Redis Memory optimization. What I am going to present next is from his inspiration.

Last but not the least, the PyCon Singapore team who organized and made this a reality. Kudos to them!

INTERNAL DATA TYPES

This is something that I picked up from what Sripathi explained. I confess I’m not an expert on this but thought it would spark a few minds if presented. Redis stores all that we talked about right now internally using 6 different data types.

Refer to the slides and video for this part.

—-

Slides:

http://slides.com/harisibrahimkv/redis-what-why-and-where

Video:

https://archive.org/details/IntroductionToRedis

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A sunny Saturday at BeaglesLoft.

Siva sent me, Krace, Kartik and Sayan an email asking whether we would be available on the 7th of June to volunteer for the first offline Django meetup. I was only too happy to receive the invitation and replied saying “I believe I can make it”.

The next mail in my inbox is where I found TechBuilders. The email was from the BangPypers mailing list posted by someone called Niranjan. This is the link that was in the mail:

http://techbuildersbayesianreasoning.splashthat.com/

Even during my time at HasGeek last year, I used to keep wondering why isn’t there any learning related to Math happening among all these Computer geeks who were working on Python, JS, Ruby, etc. I even had a decent conversation regarding this with the one person whom I found to be interested in the Math aspect of computers. His name is Abhijith and we became friends at the Fifth Elephant conference last year when he signed up to volunteer for it.

Suffice to say, visiting that link, when I saw that these people were trying to bring Math and Computer Science together, I knew it was something that I could not miss at any cost. I sent Siva and the rest of them an email then and there itself saying I had stumbled upon this TechBuilders meeting and might not be able to make it for the Django workshop.

I love teaching and hence was extremely upset about missing the Django workshop. However, on the other hand, I felt like the TechBuilders people had read my mind. It was, as Paulo Coelho would say, a calling. I could not resist going. Also, I had to give up on my Saturday writing as well.

It was being hosted at Haggle’s office. The people working at Haggle were the ones behind BeaglesLoft (a playground for creators and innovators) and also behind TechBuilders, their initiative to teach the Bangalore tech community something that it is lacking. The office was just a 5 minute walk away from my home.

The mail which we received from Asya, the quick witted community manager at BeaglesLoft, on the day before had asked all of us to be there at the venue exactly at 10:30AM and not to follow the “Indian Standard Time”. Little did they realize the inevitable force they were reckoning with. The meeting started at 11:00AM.

The event was supposed to start off with Sandipan from JustDial giving a talk on how they were using Bayesian theorem at their company. Unfortunately, he had some emergency and could not make it. So Niranjan, who is the founder of Haggle, took the stage and started off by introducing us to what the whole deal was about.

The thing that I liked about Niranjan was that he was not pretentious. He really observed Math was not a part of the IT culture, along with the liberal arts being treated as a completely separate entity as well. He wanted to create an atmosphere where these things would co-exist and would value each other’s importance. There, he was doing it.

Not just that. I have heard many people twisting their words to indirectly mean “spread the word”. Niranjan directly told us to do it. His conviction to doing this impressed me. Apart from taking the initiative to build the community, I must say he is a really good teacher too. He taught me Math and that, is amazing.

If you were to meet me before my 4th year of college, I would have told you, without question, that I was going to become a Math teacher. So when he talked about Mass Probability function and the Bayesian theorem in a way that I could understand after more than 2 years of staying away from it, it felt really great.

You must read his series of blog posts on Bayesian Reasoning here: http://beaglesblog.tumblr.com/tagged/techbuilders

We were asked to read them before attending the meetup. Having been the college kid, I put it to the last moment as usual. An hour before the meetup! I finished off all the posts within 45 minutes and it was time to leave in order to reach the venue on time. That dreadful feeling of not having revised what you had learned that dawns upon you on the morning of the exam day was on me. I know, it is funny. But to know that it was not something to worry about, made me feel even more excited to attend the gathering.

Towards the end of his session, he proposed a few use cases where Bayesian reasoning could be applied so that we could break up into teams and work on modelling them.

One was about a Rikshaw driver. Suppose you were one and someone came and asked you to take him to Jayanagar, how would you apply Bayesian reasoning to know whether it would be profitable for you to take him there.

Second one was about the problem given on the blog itself, identifying a person whom you meet in the US as being from Bangalore or not.

The third one was the famous Monty Hall problem. Even though I say it is famous, it was the first time I was hearing of it. It is an interesting problem which makes you realize why Math ain’t your gut feeling. It is a bit crazy, but yeah, read it.

We decided to then split up into three teams of 5 each. The decision was followed by an interesting 5 minutes of trying to figure out an algorithm to split us up. Whether the count should start from 1 and go until 5 before the 15 us were through or whether it should start form 1 until 3 until all of us were through. The confusion was funny enough to have while we were learning Math!

I was in team 2 consisting of:

Sandeep, an IIITB graduate who was going to join Haggle in a few months. He was sharp. The moment we gathered around a table to “brain-buzz”, he came up with this idea of building a recommendation system which would analyse the social media streams of users and figure out what sort of restaurants he preferred to eat out of.

Ashray, who was working with Haggle already. A strong and silent person, I would say. He was as keen as the rest of us on learning together.

Ashutosh, who is Sandeep’s junior at IIITB. He is awesome. When I was struggling to get the basics really strong, he took my pen and paper from me and taught me the reasoning from step 1 patiently, with examples and proper explanation. I hope to see more of him over the coming days.

Last but not the least, Fasil. I would define him as exuberant, but not the BSing kind. He was very outspoken but knew exactly well what he was speaking about. He was working on his own startup.

By the time we had discussed and modelled our recommendation system, it was time for presentations.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the drinks and biscuits that were there all along! No, no, seriously. What kind of a chump would I be if I did not mention this after eating 6 of those delicious cream biscuits right under the nose of my team mates while they were busy building the recommendation system!

Asya, Reya and Tania made sure we had the best atmosphere for thinking and solving the problems at hand. These are the times when I really see the importance of good community managers. They make other people’s lives easier. I never saw myself like that when I was at HasGeek I guess. I just hope others did at least.

It was time for the presentations and team 1 was the first one to go in front. They had build a model around detecting the person who was sarcastic. After analysing manually a few 100s of a person’s tweets and identifying the sarcastic ones in them, each person was assigned a probability of being sarcastic based on how many times he was sarcastic among his past 100 tweets.

This was done for more than a few users. After having built the prior data, when a new tweet came in, you could use the Bayesian reasoning to find out what was the probability of that tweet being sarcastic given it was from a particular user. They had a few numbers as well for demoing this.

Second one was us. Well, I have already explained what we did. The interesting point that Niranjan made was to use more than just words for our probability calculation. Because if we were to just look at words like “Pizza”, “Burger”, etc, then we would miss out on differences between sentences like “I hate pizza” and “I love pizza”.

Once ours was concluded, team 3 came in. They had a funny use case. I have learnt to take things in a lighter note and I hope people don’t jump around reading the use case. It was about the probability of a girl going out with you given the fact that she smiled at you. As funny as this was, for a few of them to think of something like this, would mean that the social media that we have today would have already gone miles ahead in terms of taking advantage of  us on similar terms. It was scary.

Niranjan came up to conclude the presentations. This is where he asked us to spread the word and help build the community. He left the rest of the afternoon as an open invitation to do anything sitting together or to move out.

They were taking memberships for the community and I “sold my soul”, as Asya put it. We hung out with each other for an hour or more, getting to know each other better.

I met Samarth, a smart lad who was a Hardware hacker by passion working at Infosys. His face was familiar and there was only one question that I could ask him about it. “Were you there at any HasGeek events?”. Yep, he was there for Droidcon 2013.

Then there was Vamsee, who was a kindred soul when it came to people calling him “Vamshee” adding that all-too-horrible “h” right in the middle! We shared our grief with each other over how inconsiderate people were towards our feelings.

Then there was Ashutosh, Jha (because I really can’t remember his other part of the name), Fasil, Prateek, who asked me, “Hey, aren’t you that guy who wrote that Eventifier blog post? That was amazing”. I was so happy! Jon from Minsh was there. It was good to meet him after such a long time. He was the first few geeks whom I interacted with as soon as I had joined HasGeek. Definitely a part of what made me grow.

We shook hands and were about to leave when I met this unassuming young fellow at the stairs.

“Hey, don’t I know you?”

“I am Rishab. Umm.. Do you know me?”

I unleashed my secret weapon once again.

“Were you at any HasGeek event before?”

“Oh… Were you at MetaRefresh 2013?”

“Yeah, I was a part of the organizing committee”

“Okay. Maybe you heard about that guy who gave a talk on CSSDeck?”

“Oooh! It was you! Now I remember… Cool man”

So that was him. He had generated a whole lot of buzz with his flash talk at that conference. He said he was working on his own startup now. I bid him goodbye and was on my way.

Now I have an excuse to learn Math. I hope these folks keep at it. It was amazing.