2012 is almost to the end and we will enter into the year 2013! (Yes, surely, I don’t think, anything will take away the world on 21st December!!). With that, let me do a recap of my year 2012.
Year started really well. I was glad to arrange surprise cake cutting with my family. I don’t believe in cutting cake etc but I always love to do things when most people enjoy something. Middle of January, we the entire family went to my in-laws place to celebrate Makara Sankrathi and since it was our first big festival after the wedding, we were more keen to celebrate and a Sathyanarana Vratham was performed.
Later, I was back at work with planning the year 2013 and lined up several initiatives both in India and overseas. In February, Hema and I went to attend Techshare India 2012 (sorry Shilpi, couldn’t help you guys with funding). It was a great conference took place for the 3rd time in India. I have presented two papers one on The Power of ARIA and another on Yahoo! Messenger and Accessibility. It was a pleasure to meet several accessibility enthusiasts and I only felt that exhibition could have been better though I enjoyed meeting people like Vishnu Educational Society, more products could have been showcased. I felt this may be since I have been in the industry for a while…
Another great event I have participated in February was the workshop organized by W3C India at LNM Institute of Information Technology. What a great set of enthusiastic staff and students. Thoroughly enjoyed interacting many of them.
March was a cool month, lots of planning and appraisals. Thanks to my manager at Yahoo!, I got a good rating!
April was tough; started the month with a shocking news that I no longer have my job at Yahoo! that is when I wrote my post on Three Years at Yahoo!. But I don’t blame Yahoo! for that, but it was just ridiculous decision taken by Scott Thompson, Yahoo!’s Former CEO. I am sad that decision has created problems to several other professionals in the industry. As a positive thinker, I would still personally take this with a positive spirit. I started exploring new opportunities, while looking for full time jobs, I was putting thoughts together for free lancing and that gave birth to SG Accessibility Solutions. Thanks to several friends who offered a great sense of encouragement. I’ll surely promote this brand in days to come. During this time, I wrote a couple of Accessibility reviews including one review on the website of Income Tax Department
While I was exploring possibilities, as suggested by our Guruji, we had a quick trip to Srirangam. Though the climate was super heat, the place and the temple is excellent. It was a pretty old and powerful Sri Ranganatha Temple
In midst of this, we got to know Hema’s grand father, who played a key role during our marriage met with an accident while riding his bicycle and was admitted in the hospital. However, more saddened news is that later in June, he passed away. Last we spoke to him was when we called him to seek his blessings on the eve of my birthday. We all deeply miss him and may his soul be rest in peace.
By mid of June, I got a few full time employment offers (glad I didn’t fail in any interviews) and chosen to take up my job with PayPal and that require us to re-locate to Chennai. Though we were busy in relocating, we did not want to miss the opportunity to celebrate our first wedding anniversary and we did a quick trip to Mysore.
Again, busy life is started at work with a lot of new dreams, thoughts and ideas. I am glad that I yet got another opportunity to build accessibility practice at one more multinational company. Glad that awareness level is increasing towards accessibility.
July was again a crazy month… We were busy with dealing with movers and packers and move our stuff from Bangalore to Chennai and as we settled in, we did a quick one day trip to Kumbakonam, a ton that is around 4 hours drive from Chennai. Wow, it is such a fantastic place. We learnt that there are about 100 temples within that town itself and we couldn’t cover even ten of them!
In September, we had Hema’s birthday and that was celebrated in Bangalore as the Annual General Body Meeting of the National Association for the Blind, Karnataka Branch has also happened on the same day. Unfortunately, I realized that my time wouldn’t be fruitful to spend for NAB Karnataka Branch as I have noticed the quality of services are going down and decided to move on from the position of their governing council.
In October, with a heavy heart left Hema in India and I traveled to the San Jose, USA on work. Had a fantastic time with our very new and own Accessibility team at PayPal led by mighty Victor Tsaran. Only sad part is my brother Chi. Vinay was not healthy and admitted to hospital and later he traveled to India for treatment. Now, he is doing well and back at his job.
December started with events to mark International Day on Persons with Disabilities and I was on a panel organized by NASSCOM Foundation and HCL Technologies. Then we went to attend our relative’s wedding Chi. Keerthi Teja and Chi. Sow. Sandhya. Congratulations both of you and have a wonderful married life!
This year actually concludes with an Accessibility awareness event we have organized at our eBay office in Bangalore. Wow, it was a superb event with Deepa N from EMC2 and Vidya of EnAble India sharing their expeeriences of how they use the internet and how accessibility would play a critical role in their lives. Thank you guys!
Update: I thought the year concluded with that great event at eBay, but it’s end with saddened demise of Hema’s grand mother. She passed away on the day of 27th December. May her soul be rest in peace.
The day when I saw the Computer for the first time at my uncle’s office in the year 1995, I was so inspired and internd to learn to use this vast technology. However, I am told that since I have problem with my vision, it is impossible for me to operate the computer and hence, I am not suitable to IT Industry. In the year 1999 I came to Mumbai in order to undergo the Telephone Operator’s Training at National Association for the Blind, India and subsequently, one day I was searching for the Cybercafe in order to gather some information on education in IT for blind, low vision and visually impaired people. As a matter of fact, some mistakes also show a wonderful way towards success. I was misguided and therefore, instead of cybercafe, I have reached to Shramik Vidya Peeth which is an unique institute imparting training in various fields including Computers. I have Welcomed by its Director and approved to undergo the course in their programme. I have undergone three months training in MS-Office under the auspicious guidance of Miss. Pallavi Bodhare. This is how I have entered into IT Industry
