Anywho, it just so happens that particular birthday is a little different. You see, a lot has happened in the past year — in my personal as well as my professional life (I was going to write //student//, but well :D ). And even more importantly, I think some even bigger things will happen in this coming year, so its definitely something that I’m eagerly looking forward to. And to all the people who think //know// they belong to the group I mentioned earlier, I just want to say **thank you**.

Cheers!

I can divide this year into three phases — pre-summer, summer, and post-summer.

Pre-summer was the most significant: I failed to prepare the dilation paper in time for SIGCOMM, and barely managed to push it into SOSP; I went through the most painful week of my life and it almost broke me; I re-realized how friends can be the supporting pillars in times of crises; I bought my first car in the US (she’s a beauty!) and had an amazing time driving up to the Bay Area.

The summer (internship) period was a time for new people and places: I had a great time with a wonderful bunch of interns at HP; I had tons of fun-filled weekends playing taboo and pictionary and roaming around the Bay Area scouting for food places with my friends; I learned what it was like to work in an industrial research lab; I moved my web site to paid hosting and discovered Textdrive; I started taking an interest in web based technology and related startups; and I became formally involved with the Apache Forrest project.

Post summer, it was mostly a follow through in the momentum of the past events: submitted NSDI paper; met up with Jason and had him take a picture of me with davie; got involved with Udai; I began an introspection that will hopefully evolve into something meaningful in the coming year; made a trip to India; started working towards a USENIX paper;

I don’t believe in new year resolution, but there //are// some things I look forward to doing in the coming year. In short, I need to fix all the things about my life that I don’t feel good about: my working style (I think I can be far more productive than I am if I stop wasting time in the less important things), I need to put some more enthusiasm in the work at hand, and in general I need to act more and think less.

I also do hope to get some more experience and exposure, and meet some more people. Finally, I hope to continue the introspection I began some weeks back — its basically a small effort on my part to try and understand who I really am, both at an individual level, as a person, but also at a more global and societal level. Whats my identity as an Indian? What does it mean to be an Indian? What is our identity as global citizens of the world? Do we even need a national or even a global identity? And so on.

Globally speaking, 2005 was perhaps one of the worst years in recent times. We saw the terrible Tsunami, the US elections, the deadly hurricanes, the Iraq war, the earthquakes, the terrorist attacks, the bird flu and several other unpleasentries. But I hope, as a race, as a civilization, we end the year at a positive note, with hope in our hearts that mankind will yet come out with warmth and compassion and show the vitality and spirit that has helped it survive tumultous times before.

This post might sound pessimistic and cynical, but things are not as bad as they seem. Its just that when I sit down to think, its usually the bad things that stand out.

Here’s wishing everyone a great new years ahead!

Both of us agreed that its not really fair to have such qualms. I mean, after all we live the life we choose. Well, there **are** exception, but lets leave out the unforunate lives of people who are forced to act against their will. In usual circumstances, we make free, deliberate, conscious decisions to do what we want and be what we are. Why then, in most cases, we have this deep buried feeling that we should be doing something else?

I often feel, for instance, that I should have chosen a more exotic career — like studying deep sea volcanoes, or sunk submarines or become an expert on the rings of Saturn or the moons of Jupiter. We make the choices we make, and I’m perfectly happy with the life I’m living. But the thought still comes up time and again.

I guess some of it is because of the simple fact that there are just too many things to do in life, and one can’t do them all. And then there’s the saying that “the grass always seems greener on the other side”. But I wonder if there is something more fundamental to this than simply the desire to do something else than what we really like doing? Do we just fool ourselves into believing that we love the things that we do? Is there any real way of ever finding out what our “real” passion is?

I know this post doesn’t make much sense. But these are “aimless musings” after all :D