The 2010s - Part 1

The 2010’s was my 20’s. I was in the middle of under graduate course when the decade begun. An average engineering graduate who doesn’t know what engineering really was or what’s the future is offering. The end of year marks the recruitment to my current employer. Yes right, I’m with the employer for almost a decade.

IIRC 13k was my 1^st my first salary. Couldn’t recall how I spent it, guess gave it to my mom. My first smartphone was Galaxy Ace with 142 MB of memory (now there are plenty of apps that comes with larger memory footprint than the phone).

Chennai was a far away city while the beginning, now I’m looking for a home to set up my family here. There are umpteen number of tickets booked between Chennai & Coimbatore. The ticket prices grown from 400₹ to 1200₹. The travel experience too improved a lot, bus tracking, TVs, WiFis, snacks onboard. Travel became far more pleasant.

Technology deserves a special mention here. I’d a habit of trying out apps from the playstore. “What’s the loss in trying out the new thing” was the logic. The 1^st time I tried there were hardly 10-12 contacts using Whatsapp. Roll down a decade, everyone using it. ‘the family whatsapp group’ is a thing now.

Also, this decade I got a quite a number of gadgets -

• Macbook Pro
• Pixel 2
• JBL Endurance BT
• Kindle PaperWhite
• PS4
• Google Mini
• Raspberry Pi

None of this was an impulsive shopped item. Barring PS4 & Mini I’m using rest of the things quite regularly.

As mentioned earlier, I was naive at the beginning.

How naive was I?

MS Outlook was unknown. Don’t know purpose of Excel. Never heard of Online shopping. WiFi, what is it?

Thanks to the changing time. This decade enabled the naive-me to accustom with above mentioned gadgets.

I was not so fluent in my UG domain - Electrical. While joining the IT firm, I completely forgotten the some electrical knowledge and started learning the Computer. I wouldn’t call myself an expert in Computer, but nonetheless I am doing better than a decade. The SQL, Cloud, Enterprise Software, Big Data, Programming, Flame war all happened in this period.

Books deserves a special mention. The first half of the decade was period of maniac reading, thanks to the long(4-9 hrs) power cuts. I was not a fan of ebooks then, used to buy 2^nd hand books. The price was the only concern then. Looking back, I should have bought the new ones and kept it for my home-library.

Thanks to the smartphone craze, I did read few ebooks, Ghost in the Wires. It’s an autobiography of Kevin Mitnick, a former hacker and security consultant. This highlight is he replied and followed me back in the Twitter.

Before 2011, I never knew the existence of TV series. Thanks to Vignesh, I got introduced to White Collar, that’s how the addiction started. One point of time I was binge watching just to forget loneliness and winter depression. So many hours spent on Netflix, Prime and VLC player, the addiction still persists.

December, 2015. The onset of Chennai flood. The first calamity that I experienced from a close proximity. I don’t think I’ll forget the events anytime soon. The way we vacated our flat and crossed couple of kilometers on foot to run away from the impending flood, made me to reconsider the agony each refugees goes through. The scene was something like this video @ 38 second mark. The flood has affected everything from food supply to mobile network, public transport to airport. To give perspective, the usual 40 minute commute took 4 1/2 hours.

This decade is too special for me. I went abroad for onsite assignment, that too to the US of America. The first time getting into the large international flight, looking down the ice covered land mass, reaching the hotel from airport. Those were the days I would recollect in my old age, got forbid, the memory stays intact. The 2 year stay, understanding the culture, interacting with multi-cultural environment, taking domestic flight to reach the friends, realizing how much I was missing the family and friends, the experience-in-steroids.

Then the end of decade saw another important life event, marriage. While drafting the post, its not even a month got completed. That’s another experience which I will be explaining more in revisiting year ‘20.

Thank you 2010s, you have been a pleasant to me, even though there were quite few dreadful events.

See also

• The 2010s - Part 2